Evangelical sects. We feel these Letters the more, for they seem to us to have some foundation in the articles and faith of the Episcopal Church, and because we are not able to refute them, without placing that Church, in some respects at least, in contradiction with herself. They show us that she does really contain a Protestant element, which is not reconcilable with her Catholicism. Yet, on the other hand, these "Novelties," of which the Bishop speaks, are evidently no novelties. They are, and have been from the first, maintained by the greatest and most authoritative names in the Anglican Church, and are supported by its liturgy, canons, and homilies. It cannot, we think, be denied, that the Episcopal Church is somewhat deficient in unity, and that it is now suffering from the vague and indefinite terms originally adopted for the sake of peace. what in these days should be the duty of a true Churchman? Should he seek to enlarge the Protestant element, and to widen the breach, even at best too wide? Or should he not rather seek to free his Church from the inconsistencies which, in troublous and unsettled times, were suffered to creep in, by bringing out its Catholic elements, and placing it as nearly in harmony with religious antiquity as the nature of the case will admit?

But

We can make many allowances for Bishop Hopkins' Protestantism. He has been engaged in a controversy with the Roman Catholics, in defence of the Protestant Reformation, and that reformation is not defensible on Catholic principles. But is it necessary to defend it? In point of fact, is it defensible on any principles compatible with established ecclesiastical order? Our Oxford divines are severe enough, in all conscience, against Rome; but they have not succeeded, and, so far as we are able to see, cannot succeed, in justifying the reformers in their separation from the Holy See. If we understand their church system, they hold that the Church is not an aggregate body, but a body corporate, and, therefore, that it can exist and act only in its corporate capacity. The unity of the Church, in their

view, is not merely the unity of faith, the unity of spirit, of discipline, of usage, but also the unity of the body, that is, of the corporation.

They hold, indeed, as do all Catholics, that the Church is herself subject to the law communicated through Christ and the apostles, the law given originally by the Great Head of the Church, from which she may not depart, and contrary to which she may decree nothing. But then she is the witness, the keeper, and the interpreter of the law. Though she does not make the law, she authoritatively declares what the law is, and from her decision there lies no appeal. She is, then, so far as concerns her members, supreme in all matters pertaining to faith and practice. Hence, whatever she decrees must, for them, be the law, the word of God, to which they may offer no resistance, and in no case refuse obedience.

Now, prior to the Reformation, the Church either did or did not exist. If it did not, then either Christ founded no Church, or the Church he founded had failed. If he founded no Church, he made no provision for our salvation, and therefore cannot be called our Saviour; if he founded a Church and it has failed, then he himself has failed, and cannot be relied on, for he declared his Church should not fail.

If the Church did exist, it existed, according to our Oxford divines, as a corporation. Was the Church of England this corporation? or only a member of it? If it was it, its acts could bind all the faithful throughout the world. Will this be pretended? But if she was not it, in its unity and integrity, she could not, of herself alone, speak and act in its name, and with its authority. She could speak only in the one voice of the whole. How, then, could she separate herself from the rest of the Church Universal, without resisting the authority and breaking the unity of the Church? The act of separation could be orderly only on condition of being authorized by the Church in its corporate capacity. But it was authorized only by the Church of England, whose acts were not, and could not be, the acts of the

Church, in its corporate capacity. On what ground, then, can it be pretended that the act was not disorderly and schismatic ?

When we define the Church to be a corporation, we necessarily assume it to have some visible centre, a visible head, and a visible order; for otherwise it would have no unity, no individuality, and no corporate faculty. There would be no intelligible distinction possible between the acts of the Church, and the acts of a disorderly assembly of individuals claiming to be it, and to speak with its authority. Was this visible centre, this visible head, in England? Was England the centre and head of the ecclesiastical order? Was it from England that all circulated, as the blood from the heart to the extremities? Of course not. Rome, it cannot be denied, was the acknowledged centre of unity, and the Pope the acknowledged visible head of the ecclesiastical body. Where was the authority competent to set this order aside? Could there be any authority competent to do it, but the Church herself acting in her corporate capacity? But the Church could thus act, only when acting under and through the corporate head, that is to say, through the constituted authorities, as its legal organs. The members of the Church, when acting without or against authority, are a disorderly or revolutionary body. They are the Church, only when acting according to its order, under the established authority, and through legal forms. But the Church of England, in her act of separation, acted without and against the established order of the Church, against its legal authority. How, then, could her separation be justified, save on mobocratic or revolutionary principles ?

It may be alleged that the Church of Rome had apostatized, that the Pope had transcended his powers, and exercised an authority which was illegal, oppressive, and demoralizing. Be it so. But where was the authority to take cognizance of the fact, and to institute measures for redress? Only the Church in its corporate capacity, of course; for in any other capacity the

Church does not exist. Irregularities are never to be irregularly redressed; for the redress itself would be an irregularity, requiring to be redressed. Now, the Church of England, not being the Church, but only a member of it, was not competent to sit in judgment on Rome and her Bishop, nor to undertake, on her own responsibility, to redress the abuses she might believe to exist; for a part can never erect itself into a tribunal for judging the whole; since, save in union with the whole, the part does not even exist.

All that England had a right to do, on Catholic principles, was, to exert herself, as a member of the Catholic Church, in a legal and constitutional way, in submission to the constituted authorities, to redress such abuses as she believed to exist. To attempt, in church or state, to redress abuses by rejecting the constituted authorities, and breaking up the established order, is to attempt revolution; and the right of revolution, we all know, is incompatible with the right of government, for the one negatives the other. If you assert your right to revolutionize the Church, you deny the supremacy of the Church, which you began by asserting. We say, again, therefore, that we do not see how our Oxford divines can justify the proceedings of the English Church in separating from the corporation of which she was a member, if they assume the unity of the Church as a corporate body.

Shall we be told, as we have been, that the Church of England was originally a free and independent Church, possessing within herself all the rights and prerogatives of the Church of Christ, that she originally owed no allegiance to the Roman See, or the Roman Pontiff, and that in the sixteenth century she merely asserted her ancient freedom, and suppressed the errors and corruptions caused by the papal usurpations? We reply, that this is not historically true, either in relation to the ancient order, or in relation to the Reformation; and, moreover, if it were, it would falsify the whole church theory of the Oxford divines themselves. They hold the Church to be one body, and not a body aggre

gate, but a body corporate. To assert the independence of the Anglican Church is to assert her existence as a church polity complete in itself. Then she was either the Catholic Church in its unity and integrity, or the Catholic Church is not a single corporation, but an aggregate of several corporations. The first will not be pretended; the second denies the unity of the Church as a corporation; which we understand the Oxford divines to assert.

con

Here, we suspect, is the original fallacy in the reasoning of our Anglican divines. They assume, sciously or unconsciously, that each national Church is one independent church polity, complete in itself. That the temporal powers have always favored this doctrine, there is no question; and that their struggles to reduce it to practice have occasioned all the calamities which have befallen the Church since the days of Constantine, there is just as little question. But this doctrine is incompatible with the freedom and independence of the spiritual power, which demands a common centre of unity, unaffected by geographical lines, or national distinctions. This the temporal power saw clearly enough; but the freedom and independence of the spiritual power was precisely what the temporal power did not want. It would have no power in the nation not subject to itself. It would itself be supreme in spirituals, as well as in temporals, and rule according to its own will. But this it felt was impossible, if the clergy or their superiors held their appointments, or investments, from a power independent of it, and if accountable to a tribunal it could neither constitute nor control. Here is the secret of the struggles of the temporal powers against the ecclesiastical. The haughtiest monarch dared not lay violent hands on the humblest parish priest, and the monk's cowl symbolized a mightier power than the diadem. This was not to be endured; it was too great a restriction on civil despotism; and the temporal power, therefore, sought with all its force to maintain each national Church, independent of all foreign ecclesiastical authority, in order to be able to subject the Church in