a way which even its framers did not contemplate,
has brought so much distress into the Church, and
which yet, in defiance of principle, of consistency,
and of the admission of its faultiness, is so recklessly
maintained. Feeling and stating very strongly
the evil sustained by the Church, from the suspension
of her legislative powers,—“that loss
of command over her work, and over the heart of the
nation, which it has brought upon her,”—so
strongly indeed that his words, coming from one familiar
with the chances and hazards of a deliberative assembly,
give new weight to the argument for the resumption
of those powers,—feeling all this, he is
ready to acquiesce in the measure beyond which the
Bishops did not feel authorised to go, and which Mr.
Gladstone regards as “representing the extremest
point up to which the love of peace might properly
carry the concessions of the Church":—
That which she is entitled in the spirit
of the Constitution to demand would be that the
Queen’s ecclesiastical laws shall be administered
by the Queen’s ecclesiastical judges, of whom
the Bishops are the chief; and this, too, under
the checks which the sitting of a body appointed
for ecclesiastical legislation would impose.
But if it is not of vital necessity
that a Church Legislature should sit at the present
time—if it is not of vital necessity that
all causes termed ecclesiastical should be treated
under special safeguards—if it is not
of vital necessity that the function of judgment
should be taken out of the hands of the existing
court—let the Church frankly and at once
subscribe to every one of these great concessions,
and reduce her demands to a minimum at
the outset.
Laws ecclesiastical by ecclesiastical
judges, let this be her principle; it plants her
on the ground of ancient times, of the Reformation,
of our continuous history, of reason and of right.
The utmost moderation, in the application of the
principle, let this he her temper, and then her
case will be strong in the face of God and man,
and, come what may, she will conquer.... If, my
Lord, it be felt by the rulers of the Church, that
a scheme like this will meet sufficiently the
necessities of her case, it must be no small additional
comfort to them to feel that their demand is every
way within the spirit of the Constitution, and short
of the terms which the great compact of the Reformation
would authorise you to seek. You, and not
those who are against you, will take your stand
with Coke and Blackstone; you, and not they, will
wield the weapons of constitutional principle and law;
you, and not they, will be entitled to claim the
honour of securing the peace of the State no less
than the faith of the Church; you, and not they,
will justly point the admonitory finger to those remarkable
words of the Institutes:—
“And certain it is, that this
Kingdom hath been best governed, and peace and
quiet preserved, when both parties, that is, when the
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