Page:The witness papers.djvu/12

VI powers and rights of each were held equally from Christ the King.

By both these characteristics the Church of Scotland has been distinguished from the Church of England.

The southern Establishment was the work of kings and statesmen. The constitution of the Church grew gradually into shape and form as part of the civil constitution of the realm. Slight share in its construction was taken by divines;—no share at all by the people. It was Henry, it was Burleigh, it was Elizabeth, who were the nursing fathers and nursing mothers of the Church of England. Ecclesiastical personages aspired to nothing higher than being their recognized and rewarded functionaries. From their position as divines they derived no commanding or regulating authority. The mechanism of the Church of Rome occupied the land, and they complacently lent their aid while it was adapted to the circumstances of a civil popedom. The question of the original constitution of the Christian Church was not forced upon them by circumstances, and they were well content to evade it. The result was, that independent spiritual jurisdiction was conclusively withheld from the Church of England. The Act of Supremacy bound her to the state.

The part played by the people in the construction of the Church of England was still more insignificant than that played by divines. The Tudor sovereigns—able, energetic, imperious, proud by nature, proud in virtue of their prerogative—thought little of the feelings of the commonalty in promulgating their haughty decrees. The English—the most