Page:Remarks on Some Late Decisions Respecting the Colonial Church.djvu/26

 we do must be based on it, if we wish that what we do shall last.

word "Sovereign," when applied to a King or Queen of England, is used of course in a popular, and not in a strict, sense—as a title, and not as a precise description of the powers really possessed by the wearer of it. The same observation applies to the words "supremacy" and "supreme," which indeed differ from "sovereignty" and "sovereign" only as being different forms of the same word. The King of England has not the power of imposing his own will as law (which is the criterion of Sovereignty) in ecclesiastical affairs, any more than in affairs not ecclesiastical; that power resides, not in him, but in a body of which he forms a part or member. As King, he is entrusted by the law with special powers, and clothed with special attributes, collectively called his Prerogative, in relation to foreign affairs, to war, to trade and navigation, to the judicature, and other things—amongst the rest, to the Church by law established. The powers entrusted to the Crown in relation to the Established Church, collectively called the Supremacy, are a part, or have been affirmed to be so, of its old common-law prerogative, declared and re-asserted, without being precisely defined, by the Statutes of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. They are not very extensive, consisting mainly of the power to nominate Bishops and that of permitting and controlling, in modes pointed out by law, the action of Synods and Convocations. Judicially, the King in Council is the highest Court for ecclesiastical appeals as he is for certain classes of appeals in civil cases, and as the House of Lords is for other appeals: the Court in each case is a Court of law, created and regulated by law; and for personal "supremacy," —for any personal action on the part of the Crown,—there is no more room in ecclesiastical suits than in suits of any other kind. It may be added that as the powers of the Crown in reference to trade, navigation, the coinage, and the like, have been limited and moulded by various Statutes, and the exercise of them parcelled out among different administrative departments, so the ecclesiastical prerogative has been operated upon by the Ecclesiastical Commission Acts, and the Acts constituting and regulating the Judicial Committee.

A vague metaphorical title like that of Head of the Church, or a somewhat exacter title like that of Supreme Governor, is nothing in itself; it simply denotes certain legal powers and attributes in relation to the Establishment, which are neither more nor less liable to be extended by way of inference or analogy than the powers lodged in the Crown with reference to war or trade. If it be suggested, for instance, that the Crown has power to command the Archbishop of Canterbury to consecrate a Bishop to whom no see is assigned, that is a power the existence of which must be proved like that of any other alleged power. That the Supremacy should have worn, so to speak, a more personal aspect—that we should have