Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/421

 THE ARCHDEACON OF LIVERPOOL 369

Gospel and the Protestant Reformed religion established by law, and will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of this realm, and to the Churches committed to their charge all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them or any of them ? &quot; The Queen s answer was, &quot; All this I promise to do,&quot; and then, with her hand on the Bible, she took the oath to perform and keep all that she had before promised. This, he pointed out, was part of the Act for establishing the Corona tion Oath, 1688-89, i W. & M., c. 6, which Act required that the same oath should be administered to every King or Queen who should succeed to the Imperial Crown.

&quot; You see, therefore,&quot; the Archdeacon continued, &quot; that the King s Declaration is a repudiation on his part of the doctrine of transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, and the invocation and adora tion of the Virgin Mary and the Saints, as super stitious and idolatrous. It also disclaims all mental reservation or any power of dispensation by the Pope. The first part was enacted in 1673 as a test Act, in addition to the oath of supremacy imposed on all who held office under the Crown, but the whole form as we now have it was drawn up and enacted in 1679, and was imposed on all Members of Parliament. This was avowedly in order to prevent Roman Catholics entering Parlia ment. There had been many plots and efforts for many years to restore the Roman Catholic religion

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