Supreme Head of the Church of England, and not only was all power of whatever kind which had before been exercised by the Pope assigned to him, but all the clerical system in all its parts placed under his control.

It cannot be denied that the process of committing all power over the ecclesiastical estate to the personal discretion of the Sovereign went to an excessive length, and that it was afterwards abused'. The King was empowered not only to repress all kinds of heresies and enormities, but to declare what was to be accounted as heresy. In these enactments lay the germ afterwards developed into the Courts of High Commission. Such powers are only defensible on the ground on which a dictatorship is found necessary in times of danger. But the constitutional principle of the King's supremacy is one of vital importance in view of the unity of human life and of the commonwealth which we are vindicating. The King represented the whole church. He was the head of the whole

1 See the Commissions for the exercise of the episcopal office given by Henry to Bonner, and by Edward to Cranmer. Burnet's Reformation Records,' Pt. i. B. 3, No. 14, and Records,' Pt. ii. B. 1, No. 2. They assume that all episcopal jurisdiction, including the power of ordination, resides in the Sovereign, and is committed by him to the bishops. Bonner's Commission assumes, further, that the King had committed the power of ordination, together with the rest of his ecclesiastical power, to Cromwell, and that it is only because of the Vicegerent's numerous occupations that the power of ordination is transmitted to the bishop. Cranmer's Commission assumes that the power may be revoked, and should from time to time be restored to the King, and regranted at his pleasure. These assumptions as to the exercise of the supreme power are instances of the temporary dictatorship. But that all jurisdiction of all kinds emanates from the Sovereign was acknowledged very generally. It is admitted by a writer so anxious to rehabilitate the credit of the English clergy during their struggle to retain power as Mr. Dixon. See 'History of Church of England,' from the abolition of the Roman jurisdiction, by R. W. Dixon, M.A., (Smith, Elder, and Co., 1878,) i. 56-9.

community, not of one section of it.

The principle

of the Royal Supremacy means that the Christian community as a whole, represented by its Sovereign, is to be supreme over all its parts. It implies that the clergy are not to be regarded as a separate class having an independent power over the church, but as the ministers of one important church-function, which is to be exercised in harmony with the rest, and subject to the will of the whole community. It recognises that the will of Christ resides, not in the ministers of public worship acting separately, but in the whole brotherhood, to which alone we can apply the words, His body, the fulness of Him who filleth all in all.' And this is consonant with the most ancient opinion and usage of the church: for apostolical and evangelical precedent, as shown in such words as Tell it unto the church',' or by St. Paul's conduct in the case of the incestuous man at Corinth, is in favour of admitting the whole body to a voice in ruling and in judgment 2.

We must add one thing more as involved in this assertion of the Royal Supremacy, the ultimate supremacy of the lay over the clerical element within the church, whenever the two came into collision; and especially of the lay interests, those of just government, over the clerical interests, those which circle round the function of public worship. The English sovereigns have never taken holy orders, nor assumed to ordain or to administer the Sacraments in their own persons. Yet they are heads or supreme rulers in the church; and they are this in their lay capacity. In

1 Matt. xviii. 17.

2 1 Cor. v. 4, 13; 2 Cor. ii. 6, 7, 10.

the Act 37 Hen. VIII, c. 17, which provides that laymen may be judges in ecclesiastical courts, it is expressly stated that this is consonant with the general constitution, seeing that the King is a layman'.' This implies a recognition of the fact that the secular life, the business of the great mass of Christian men and women, is that which is the supreme function of the Church. The ministry of public worship exists for the sake of human duties, that these may be fulfilled in the spirit of Christ, not these duties for the sake of public worship. The Church, though bound together by common prayer and the sacraments, exists for the higher purpose, expressed in one of the noblest of our prayers, That every member of the same, in his vocation and ministry, may truly and godly serve the Lord.'

6

6

We may sum up the Reformation settlement, then, in these terms. The whole body of citizens, which was called by one collective term, This Church and Realm' (a single word followed by a verb in the singular number 3), moved together under its sovereign ruler. All its acts were those of one great Christian commonwealth or church. This great community resolved

3

1 End of § I.

2 Second Collect for Good Friday.

See, as an instance, the third question in the Service for the Ordination of Priests: 'Will you minister the Doctrine, etc., of Christ, as this Church and Realm hath received the same?'

In the celebrated discussion between Roman and Protestant divines in Westminster Abbey in the year 1558, attended by the whole Parliament and presided over by the Lord Keeper, the Reformed Divines, among whom were Scory, Cox, Horne, Grindal, Guest, and Jewel, undertook to defend as their second thesis, 'That every particular Church has authority to institute, change, and set aside rites and ceremonies.' They begin by defining the meaning of Church.' And, first, by

to manage its own affairs in all respects independently of the Pope, and of the clerical system of the Middle Ages. Its faith was not bound to the Roman church system, but was a faith in God, in truth, and in righteousness. And, further, within its own borders it was determined that the ministers of public worship should not separate themselves from the rest of the community, but should be, in matters relating to public worship and teaching, as in other matters, subject to the Sovereign power of the realm or church, owning that the part exists for the sake of the whole, that the function of public worship is designed to minister, and is subordinate, to the general life.

It was this settlement which involved the reform of public worship and the standards of Christian teaching. Into that I do not enter here, wishing to redress the balance which has been displaced by the tendency commonly shown to regard the changes in public worship and teaching as in themselves constituting the Reformation. This reform of the standards of doctrine and of worship must be for us, however important, only one amongst many salutary instances in which the growing demand among the people for reality and simplicity in the conduct of life found its expression in the Acts of the Sovereign and the Parliament.

The settlement, which I have described, was approved by all the progressive spirits of the day. It was approved by Henry, who, with all his faults, was a thoughtful and far-seeing statesman, laborious, deeply

every particular Church they mean every kingdom, province, or country, which is formed into a distinct society.' Collier's 'Ecclesiastical History,' vi. 207.

sensible of the demands of the national conviction and of the important issues involved in the Reformation. It was approved by Thomas Cromwell, who undertook as the King's Vicar-general the conduct of the Reformation, and who presided in the Convocation. It was approved by Cranmer and his colleagues, who marked their sense of the supremacy of the Crown by accepting from Edward VI new commissions for the exercise of their office. But it was not official men alone who approved it. The principle of the Royal Supremacy was forced upon the most thoughtful men of the sixteenth century. It was approved not only in the next generation by Hooker, whose theory might have been an afterthought upon an established order of things, but in the early dawn of the great movement by Tyndale, the Translator of the New Testament, the most courageous and the most independent of the workers and martyrs of the English Reformation 2.

Tyndale formed his opinions almost alone. He was influenced probably, in his early manhood at Oxford, by Colet. But Colet had no thought of the great changes that were at hand; Tyndale distinctly foresaw and aimed at them. He was probably thirty-seven years old when Luther's first protest rang through Europe, and was then tutor to a family in Gloucestershire. But he formed the purpose even then of translating the Scriptures into English: and within nine years, amidst many difficulties, he executed the task so

1 See p. 246, note.

* See 'Life of Tyndale,' by Rev. F. Demaus, a work of considerable critical merit, published by the Religious Tract Society.