Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/560

Rh ANGLICANISM 500 ANGLICANISM the Church in Spain the Erclesia liispanica. That such national or resional appellations were a part of the style of the lioinan Curia itself, and that they in no sense could have implied any indication of in- dependence of Rome, is suificiently well known to all who are familiar with pre-Reformation records. Pone Honoriuslll, in 1218, in his Bull to King Alex- ander speaks of the Scottish Church {Ecdesia Scot- ticana) as "being immediately subject to the Apos- tolic See" (Papal Letters I, 60), and the abbots and priors of England in their letter to Innocent IV, in 124G. declared that the English Church {Ecdesia Anglicana) is "a special member of the Most Holy Church of Rome" [Matthew Paris (Rolls Series), IV, 531]. In 1413 .rclibishop .rundel, with the assent of Convocation, affirmed against the Lollards the faith of the Englisli Church in a number of test articles, including the Divine institution of the Pa- pacy and the duty of all Christians to render obe- dience to it (Wilkins, Concilia, III, 355). In 1521, only thirteen years before the breach, John Clerk, the" English .mbassador at Rome, was able to assure the Pope in full consistory that England was second to no country in Christendom, " not even to Rome itself", in the "service of God: and of the Christian Faith, and in the obedience due to the Most Holy Roman Church" (Clerk's oration, ed. Jerome Era- ser). The first point of severance was clearly one of Erastianism. When news of the papal decision against the divorce reached England, Henry VIII gave his assent to four anti-papal statutes passed in Parliament in the spring of 1534, and in November the statute of the Royal Supremacy declared the King to be Supreme Head of the English Church (without the limiting clause of 1532), and an oath was prescribed, affirming the Pope to have no juris- diction in the realm of England. The actual ministry of preacliing and of the sacraments was left to the clergy, but all the powers of ecclesiastical jurisdic- tion were claimed by the sovereign. The Act of Supremacy required that the King, as Supreme Head of the Church, " shall have f uU power and autliority from time to time to visit, repress, redress, reform, order, correct, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offences, contempts, enormities whatsoever they be which by any manner, spiritual authority or jurisdiction ought or may be lawfully reformed" (26 Henry VIII, i). The bishops were made to sue out their faculties from the King, and, that the meaning of this humiliation should be un- mistakal)le, the very form of the license granted them affirmed the plain Erastian principle that the Crown was the source of their jurisdiction, "seeing that all authority of jurisdiction, and indeed juris- diction of all kinds, both that which is called eccle- siastical and that which is secular, is originally de- rived from the royal power, as from the Supreme Head and foundation, and source of magistracy within our Kingdom" (^Vilkins, Concilia, III, 799). The l)ishops and clergy in convocation were forbid- den to make canons except when the King, by his "Letters of Bvisiness", gave them permission to do so, and even then the canons so made were to have elTect only when approved by the King. Another -statute secured to the Crown the absolute control in the appointment of bishops. The chapters were bound luider penalties of Prcemwiire to elect the person named by the King and no other, and the Arclibisliop wa-s bound under the same shameful penalties to consecrate the person so named within twenty days after receipt of the King's writ (Sig- nilimril) conunanding him to do so. This enact- ment, which an Anglican bisliop in recent times has aptly described as "the Magna Charta of tyranny", remains in force to the present day. Within the la.st few years the Law Courts have ruled that no opposition to the episcopal confirmation of a person nominated by the Crown can be allowed. Thus the chief note of the Henrician -settlement is the fact that Anglicanism was founded in the acceptance of the Royal, and the rejection of the Papal Suprem- acy, and was placed upon a fiecidedly Erastian basis. When the Act of Royal Supremacy, which had been repealed by Queen Mary, was revived by Elizabeth, it suffered a modification in the sense that the Sov- ereign was styled "Supreme Governor" instead of "Supreme Head". In a suUsequent ".dmonition", Elizabeth issued an interpretation of the Royal Su- premacy, to the effect that she laid claim "to no power of ministry of divine offices in the Church". At the same time she reasserted in full the claim made by Henry VIII as to the authority of the Crown in matters ecclesiastical, and the great re- ligious changes made after her accession were carried out and enforced in a royal visitation commissioned by the royal authority. In 1628, Charles I, in a Royal Declaration prefixed to the Articles, stated that it belonged to the kingly office "to conserve and maintain the Church committed to our charge, in unity of religion and the bond of peace", and de- creed that differences arising as to the external policy of the Church were to be -settled in Convocation, but its ordinances were to be submitted to the Crown for approval, which would be gi-en to them if they were not contrary to the laws of the land. Arch- bishop Laud, in 1640, had a series of canons drawn up in Convocation and duly published, but this at- tempt at spiritual independence was speedily sup- pressed. The indignation of Parliament was so great that he himself begged leave to withdraw them, and the House of Commons passed a resolution unani- mously declaring that "the Clergy in Convocation assembled has no power to make any canons or con- stitutions whatsoever in matters of doctrine, disci- pline or otherwise to bind the Ciergy and laity of the land without the common consent in Parlia- ment" (Resolution, 16 December, 1640). The effect of the legislation under Henry VIII, revived by Elizabeth, and confirmed in subsequent reigns, has been, as Lord Campbell pointed out in his famous Gorham judgment, in April, 1850, to locate in the Crown all that decisive jurisdiction which before the Reformation had been exercised by the Pope. Until the year 1833, the Crown exercised this supreme jurisdiction through a special body called the Court of Delegates. Its members were appointed under the Great Seal, and consisted of lay judges, with whom might be associated a number of bishops or clergymen. In 1833 this Court was abolished, and its powers w'ere transferred to the King in Council. Hence matters w-hich come under its purview are now decided by the King upon the advice of that part of the Privy Council which is known as the Judicial Committee. The statute (2 and 3 Wil- liam IV, xcii) expressly states that its decisions are final, and are not subject to any commission of re- view. It must be observed that this tribunal does not profess theoretically to decide articles of faith, or to pronounce upon the abstract orthodoxy or heterodoxy of opinions. "Its duty extends only to the consideration of that which is by law established to be the doctrine of the Church of England, upon the due and legal construction of her Articles and fornuilaries" (Ciorham decision, March, 1850). But upon this ground the Crown decided that the views of Mr. Gorham, whoso notorious rejection of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration had shocked his bishop and scandalized the Tractarians, were "not contrary or repugnant to the declared doctrine of the Church of I'.ngland as by law established". Nu- merous protests and appeals were made by High Churchmen, but all attcmjits to reverse the decision were unavailing, and .Ir. Gorham duly received in- stitution to the benefice which his bishop had refused