in vain if at all. Nevertheless the political aspect of the English Reformation is that which most strikes us; and it is this which most needs to be set forth in a clear spiritual light. Nor is the task difficult to those who believe in the Divine character of political rule, and in the unity of the sacred and the secular in the Christian nation.

There are some persons to whom the word Political conveys a bad and worldly sense. It is connected in their minds with selfish scheming. So far as the Reformation movement in England was tainted with such a spirit, it was, no doubt, debased. But from no great movement which has ever taken place, not from the career of Constantine, of Charlemagne, or of Hildebrand, not from the English or the American Revolution, not from the great struggle for the suppression of slavery, has this evil spirit been wholly absent. And this remark must be impartially applied to all church movements. Few of the actors in them have been wholly free from ambition or self-seeking. It must be the task of Christians to detach from politics this selfish taint, first in idea, then in fact. We must maintain that just laws, just policy, just relations among men, are amongst the most sacred of all things. The political life is, no doubt, a neutral term, and must take its character partly from the motives of the agent, partly from the nature of the ToTeia to which it is applied. But when this ToλTeía is a great Christian community, then every measure which relates to it affects directly the kingdom of God; and we must credit its rulers with a sense of responsibility as office-bearers in the

R

church. Such a community is the body of Christ, and its internal relations expressed in its laws are the means by which its master-builders provide for its edification. What is political then becomes most properly Christian, and the statesman is a minister of Christ.

And this was the view of things on which the English Reformation proceeded. The more thoughtful men throughout the nation awoke to the consciousness. that the Papal power had disorganized the Christian community. The clerical system of Canon Law had become corrupt and oppressive. The Papal influence was a perpetual source of disturbance and division. And when the nation rose up under its King to put an end to Papal usurpations, and to reassert the ancient authority of the Crown, that is of the nation, over its own ecclesiastical affairs, when the King was substituted for the Pope, and English law and administration for the Papal decrees and judicature, this was a great step towards the substitution of Christian righteousness for unrighteousness. It was the counterpart, in public affairs, of the assertion of the need and power of faith in the individual soul: for that bade the individual no longer depend on the hierarchy, but look up to the Eternal justice for pardon; this was an act of national faith, the assertion that, in the ruling of the church and realm, the nation need not depend on an exotic system emanating from the Bishop of Rome, but had the right and duty of acting freely in the presence of the Divine rectitude.

Take the first great national act, which preluded

the English Reformation, and drew all the rest in its train, the abolition of appeals to Rome. No doubt, the special case over which the battle was fought, the King's divorce, was one of more than doubtful justice; but a good cause does not necessarily suffer from the special case in which its principle is asserted, as may be seen in the conflict against general warrants in our later political history, which turned upon the legality of the arrest of Wilkes for his infamous publications. And it would be difficult to say that Henry and his advisers were not sincere in the belief that the failure of heirs to the throne was a witness that the marriage with Catherine was invalid, and ought to be dissolved. But, further, it was perfectly well known that the reasons why the divorce was not granted were not that it was wrong or immoral, or contrary to precedent or law, but that the Pope was seeking some advantage for himself, and that he was afraid of the Emperor. The Universities were favourable to the King's cause; and that which was needed was a just tribunal. Hence the First Act of Appeals (24 Henry VIII, c. 12), which asserts that all such causes shall be decided within the realm, - and that the English spiritualty are fully competent to deal with them, expressed the conscientious conviction of clergy and laity combined. It required that causes relating to tithes, matrimony, and wills, all affecting seriously the social relations of men, should no longer be subject to the jurisdiction of the Pope, but to that of the King. The appeal was to be only to the ecclesiastical courts of the archbishops in England, by whom it was to be finally determined. The Preamble to the

Act vindicates the competence and rectitude of the English as contrasted with the Papal judges.

The further steps were taken in the same interest, that of the introduction of simple justice in the place of ecclesiastical fictions, and of national unity in the place of a divided rule. The unjust power of the Pope was gone as to matrimony, wills, and tithes; it must go also as to all other matters. In the next year, therefore (1534), the Second Act of Appeals (25 Henry VIII, c. 19) subjected all ecclesiastical causes of all kinds to the process prescribed by the first Act1. That Act, however, would have left each metropolitan as the final recipient of appeals in his own province. Contradictory judgments might have been pronounced, and the supreme authority, though not foreign, might still have been anti-national. An appeal, therefore, was given in all causes to the King, from whose Court of Chancery Delegates were to be appointed in each case to determine the cause. But, again, it would be useless to abolish appeals to the Pope if the papal decrees could still be accepted as laws. The Canon Law, therefore, was subjected to revision by a Commission composed equally of clergy and laity, in order to determine what parts of it might be retained as consonant to English law; and, though the Commission led to nothing, it has ever since been a maxim that the Canon Law is only admissible in England so far as it is consonant with the laws or

1 The words are (§ 3), 'That all manner of appeals, of what nature or condition soever they be of, or what cause or matter soever they concern, shall be made and had,' as in the Act of the previous year.

recognized usages of the nation. Thus at one blow fell the vast superstructure of Papal domination, which had been so largely tinctured by forgery, by usurpation, by corruption, and had distracted the consciences of men. The ecclesiastical courts were to be henceforward the courts of the King, that is, of the nation; the ecclesiastical law was to be the King's, that is, the nation's, ecclesiastical law.

1

But, further, if the English clergy might frame fresh laws apart from the nation, the whole evil system, or one equally unjust and anti-national, might grow up again. The Submission of the clergy made in the Convocation two years before was therefore incorporated into the law which restored the just balance of powers in the Christian commonwealth. The clergy were no longer to have an independent power of making ecclesiastical laws. They were to be ministers, not lords, of the church. It was enacted that the Convocations of the clergy should only proceed to business when a licence was given them to do so, that they should only discuss such subjects as were specified in the licence, and that their decrees should be subject to the King's consent. By a subsequent Act the King was declared

1 The Submission of the clergy was made on May 15, 1532. The First Act of Appeals passed on April 10, 1533; the Second Act of Appeals March 28, 1834. See Stubbs' Hist. Appendix to the Report of the Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, pp. 32-34.

226 Henry VIII, c. 1. The Act purports to be declaratory and corroborative of a power well known and acknowledged. The King is to be 'reputed the only Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England, called Ecclesia Anglicana,' and shall have full power and authority to visit, repress, redress, reform, order, correct, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, contempts, and enormities, whatsoever they be, which by any manner of spiritual authority or jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be reformed any usage, custom . . . or any

...

other thing or things to the contrary notwithstanding.'