and property. All Mary's
acts in favour of an independent legislation and jurisdiction of the
spiritualty were repealed. The crown appropriated to itself, with
consent of Parliament, complete supremacy over the clergy of the land.

The Parliament allowed indeed that it did not belong to it to
determine concerning matters really ecclesiastical; but it held itself
authorised, much like the Great-Councils of Switzerland, to order a
conference of both parties, before which the most pressing questions
of the moment, on the power of national Churches, and the nature of
the Mass, should be laid.

The Catholic bishops disliked the whole proceeding, as may be
imagined, since these points had been so long settled; and they
disliked no less the interference of the temporal power, and lastly
the presidency of a royal minister, Nicolas Bacon. They had no mind to
commit themselves to an interchange of writings: their declarations by
word of mouth were more peremptory than convincing. In general they
were not well represented since the deaths of Pole and Gardiner. On
the other hand the Protestants, of whom many had become masters of the
controverted questions during the exile from which they had now
returned, put forward explicit statements which were completely to the
point. They laid stress chiefly on the distinction between the
universal, truly Catholic, Church and the Romish: they sought to reach
firm ground in Christian antiquity prior to the hierarchic centuries.
While they claimed a more comprehensive communion than that of
Romanism, as that in which true Catholicity exists, they sought at the
same time to establish a narrower, national, body which should have
the right of independent decision as to ritual. Nearly all depended on
the question, how far a country, which forms a separate community and
thus has a separate Church, has the right to alter established
ceremonies and usages; they deduced such an authority from this fact
among others, that the Church in the first centuries was ruled by
provincial councils. The project of calling a national council was
proposed in Germany but never carried out: in England men considered
the idea of a national decree, mainly in reference to ritual, as
superior to all others. But we know how much the conception of ritual
covered. The question whether Edward VI's Prayer-book should be
restored or not, was at the same time decisive as to what doctrinal
view should be henceforth followed.[1