The Church of England being established by law, could not be allowed any independence of action; and those who wished for it were like people who wanted to have their cake and eat it.  As to the Privy Council, he had never heard its decisions charged with error.  What was complained of was that it had declined to take the current opinions of theologians and make them part of the Thirty-nine Articles.  There was no need whatever for the Privy Council to possess any special theological knowledge.  The only case where that knowledge was necessary was when it was alleged that doctrines had been held in the Church without censure.  That was a case in which considerable theological lore was required; but it was within the province of counsel to supply it.  Divines had now discovered, what lawyers could have told them long ago, and what he knew some of them had been told—­namely, that it would not do to treat the Thirty-nine Articles as penal statutes; because, if that were done, a coach might be easily driven through them.  If they had wished to maintain the authority of the Articles, they would have done best to have kept quiet.

The present Court of Appeal is deduced, in the Historical Introduction, as a natural and logical consequence, from Henry VIII.’s Supremacy.  Undoubtedly it is scarcely possible to overstate the all-grasping despotism of Henry VIII., and if a precedent for anything reckless of all separate rights and independence should be wanted, it would never be sought in vain if looked for in the policy and legislation of that reign.  So far the editors are right; the power over religion claimed by Henry VIII. will carry them wherever they want to go; it will give them, if they need it, as a still more logical and legitimate development of the Supremacy, the Court of High Commission.  Only they ought to have remembered, as fair historians, that even in the days of the Supremacy the distinct nature and business of the Church and of Churchmen was never denied.  Laymen were given powers over the Church and in the Church which were new; but the distinct province of the Church, if abridged and put under new control, was not abolished.  Side by side with the facts showing the Supremacy and its exercise are a set of facts, for those who choose to see them, showing that the Church was still recognised, even by Henry VIII., as a body which he had not created, which he was obliged to take account of, and which filled a place utterly different from every other body in the State.  Henry VIII. played the tyrant with his Churchmen as he did with his Parliament and with everybody else; and Churchmen, like everybody else, submitted to him.  But the “Imperialism” of Henry VIII., though it went beyond even the Imperialism of Justinian and Charlemagne in its encroachments on the spiritual power, as little denied the fact of that power as they did.  He recognised the distinct place and claims of the spiritualty; and, as we suppose