occasions, be
worthy of being voluntarily adopted.]

* * * * *

_Notes and References in connection with Essay VIII., on Subscription._

It may be useful here to supply a few memoranda as to the history and
present practice of Subscription to Articles.

In the _Quarterly Review_, No. 117, the following observations are made
respecting the first imposition of Tests after the English
Reformation:--

"Before the Reformation no subscription was required from the body of
the clergy, as none was necessary. The bishops at their consecration
took an oath of obedience to the King, in which, besides promising
subjection in matters temporal, they 'utterly renounced and clearly
forsook all such clauses, words, sentences, and grants, which they had
or should have of the Pope's Holiness, that in any wise were hurtful or
prejudicial to His Highness or His Estate Royal'; whilst to the Pope
they bound themselves by oath to keep the rules of the Holy Fathers, the
decrees, ordinances, sentences, dispositions, reservations, provisions,
and commandments Apostolic, and, to their powers, to cause them to be
kept by others. And, as their command over their clergy was complete,
and they could at once remove any who violated the established rule of
opinion, no additional obligation or engagement from men under such
strict discipline was requisite. The statement, therefore (by Dean
Stanley), that 'the Roman Catholic clergy, and the clergy of the Eastern
Church, neither formerly, nor now, were bound by any definite forms of
subscription; and that the unity of the Church is preserved there as the
unity of the State is preserved everywhere, not by preliminary promises
or oaths, but by the general laws of discipline and order'; though true
to the letter, is really wholly untrue in its application to the
argument concerning subscriptions. For it is to the total absence of
liberty, and to the severity of 'the general laws of discipline and
order,' and not to a liberty greater than our own, that this absence of
subscription is due.

"In point of fact, the requirement of subscription from the clergy was
coeval with the upgrowth of liberty of opinion: while the circumstances
of the English Reformation of religion made it essential to the success
and the safety of that great movement. It was essential to its success;
for as it was accomplished mainly by a numerical minority, both of the
clergy and laity of the l