Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/401

Rh E N G E N G 381 in their convocations, and became subject to the general law of the land in this matter. In view of this concession they obtained the right of voting for members of parliament. In 1717 the lower house of the Canterbury convocation show ing, as was thought, a turbulent spirit and a tendency to oppose the house of Hanover, the action of convocation was suspended, and it remained silent for one hundred and thirty-five years. The unconstitutional and oppressive character of this enforced silence of the spiritualty produced much discontent, and led in modern days to an organized attempt to overcome it. As convocation still continued to meet as a formality, and then to be immediately prorogued, opportunity was taken, of its meeting, in February 1852, to present to the lower house a large number of petitions pray ing for the r&vival of its action. They voted an address to the upper house enforcing the prayer of these petitions, and were allowed to present it. The action of this long inanimate body thus recommenced, and, the Government not seeing fit to oppose it, has gone on with increasing vigour ever since. The constitutional status of the Church of England has been considerably affected by various measures passed since the Restoration. The chief of these are the Toleration Act of William and Mary, the Act of Union with Scotland of Queen Anne, the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act, and the Jewish Disabilities Removal Act. Through the operation of these Acts the two houses of the legislature no longer consist entirely of members of the Church of England, although their right to legislate for that church remains the same. The effect of this is very perceptible in the course of modern legislation. The Church of England can no longer levy a compulsory rate on all occupiers for the maintenance of the church fabrics, as formerly. The exclusive right of performing the marriage service has also been taken from her, the completest equality between the religious bodies existing within the state being aimed at. This, so far as is consistent with the preserva tion of a certain prerogative to the church, as the church of the sovereign and one of the estates of the realm, and of the ancient church endowments, may be said to be the accepted principle of modern legislation. IV. Law. The Church of England is governed by a system of jurisprudence made up of three elements, the Common Law, the Canon Law, the Statute Law. The first consists of customs, precedents, and judicial records ; the second of all canons passed or accepted by English synods, which are not &quot; contrariaut to the laws, statutes, and customs of the realm,&quot; and which, if passed after the, Act of Submission of the Clergy, 1534, have received the sanction of the crown ; the third of Acts of Parliament relating to the church. Of these there is now a very large number. The laws relating to the church being of a mixed character, the judicial administration of those laws is assigned to various tribunals, some of a purely ecclesiastical kind, some of a purely secular kind, and some in which the ecclesiastical and secular elements are combined. All questions of civil rights are within the jurisdiction of the secular courts. Questions touching the orthodoxy of the clergy, their conduct in their ministrations, and their morals are subject to the jurisdiction of the bishops, with the right of appeal from a lower to a higher court, and ultimately to the sovereign in council. The ordinary ecclesiastical tribunal of first instance is the consistory court of each diocese. Of this the bishop is judex ordinarius, but he does not preside in it in person, but by his chancellor. In the case of criminal offences charged against any of the clergy, the bishop s mode of proceeding is regulated by recent legislation, which has substituted another tiibunal for the ancient diocesan court. This is contained in the Act 3 and 4 Viet., c. 86, entitled &quot;An Act for better en forcing Church Discipline.&quot; Under this Act the bishop may either proceed against the accused clerk himself, by issuing a commission to five persons to inquire whether there is a case, and then if this is found, proceeding to try it with three assessors; or he may send the case at once to the provincial court, where it will be tried before the Dean of the Arches. A further regulation of procedure in the case of clerks charged with offences against the rubrics of the prayer book has been made by the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1876. See Bede, Opera, ed. J. A. Giles, Oxon, 1843-5 ; Ussher, Eccles. Britann. Antiquitatcs (ed. Elrington), Dublin, 1841-62 ; Stilling- fleet, Oriyincs Britannicce (ed. Pantin), 2 vols.,0xon, 1842 ; Churton, Early English Church (Eng. Lib.), 1841; Soames, Latin Church daring Anglo-Saxon Times, 1848 ; Jeremy Collier, Ecclesias tical History of Great Britain (ed. Barham), 9 vols., 1840; Thomas Fuller, Church History of Britain to 1648, 3 vols., 1837; Inett, History of English Church, 2 vols. ; D. &quot;Wilkins, Cwicilia Magnce Britannia;, 4 vols., 1737; Foxe, Acts and Monuments of Christian Martyrs (ed. Cattley), 8 vols., 1841 ; Nic. Sander, De Origine et Progressu Schismatis Anglicani (ed. Ricliton), Col. Agr., 1585 ; Burnet, History of the Reformation (ed. Pocock), Oxford, 7 vols., 1865; Strype, Historical and Biographical Works, 27 vols., Oxford, 1822-28 ; Heylin, Ecdesia Eestaurata, 1674 ; I)odd, Church History of England, with notes by Tierney, 5 vols., 1840 ; S. R. Maitland, Essays on Reformation, 1849 ; Hook, Lives of Archbishops of Canterbury, 9 vols., 1860-76; Massingberd, History of the Reformation (Eng. Lib.), 1842 ; J. H. Blunt, History of the Reformation, 1860, and Annotated Prayer Book, 1867; Soames, History of the Reformation, 4 vols., 1826 ; Perry, History of Church of England, 3 vols., 1862-4, and Student s Manual of English Church History, 1878 ; James Anderson, History of the Church of England in the Colonies, 3 vols., 1856; Proctor, History of the Prayer Boole; Cardwell, Documentary Annals of Church of England History of Conferences Synodalia, 5 vols., 1839-42 ; Blunt and Pliillimore, Law of the Church of England, 2 vols. ; Clausnitzen, Gottcsdienst, Kirchcnrerfassung, und Gcistlichkcit der bischoflichcn cnglischen Kirchc, Berlin, 1817 ; G. Weber, Gcschichte dcr akatholischfn Kirchen u. Sckten in Grossbritannicn, 1845-53 ; and J. L. Funk, Organisation der englischcn Staatskirche, Alten- burg, 1829. (G. G. P.) ENGLISH BIBLE. The history of the vernacular Bible of the English race resolves itself into two distinctly marked periods, the one being that of Manuscript Bibles, which were direct translations from the Latin Vulgate, the other that of Printed Bibles, which were, more or less com pletely, translations from the original Hebrew and Greek of the Old and New Testaments. The Manuscript Bible. As far back as the English language can be followed, there are traces of the work of English translators of the Scriptures. 1 St Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne in the first half of the 7th century (died 651 A.D. ), is said by Bede to have employed those who were about him, laymen as well as clergy, in reading and learning the Scriptures, espe cially the Psalms ; and the laymen of Northumbria were not likely to understand any but their native tongue. A little later Ctedmon, a lay monk of Whitby (died 6 SO), whose gifts as a poet had been discovered while he was a cow-herd on the neighbouring downs, composed a metrical version of several parts of the Old and New Testaments from English translations which had been made for him by monks who understood the Latin Vulgate. Rather later still, Eadfrith, bishop of Lindisfarne (died 721), is said, on some authority known to Archbishop Ussher (Works, xii. 282), to have translated most of the books of the Bible ; and similar traditions are handed down respect ing the Venerable Bede (died 735), Alcuin (died 804), and King Alfred (died 901). The earliest relic of such work that actually remains extant is an English Psalter, 1 There seem indeed to have been copies of a vernacular version in the earlier language of the country, for Gildas writes in the begin ning of his history that, when English martyrs gave up their lives for Christianity during the Diocletian persecution in the beginning of the 4th century, &quot; all the copies of the Holy Scriptures which could be found were burned in the streets.&quot;