grant to the civil magistrate the
absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors, the Church of Rome, in
the eleventh century, set all Europe on fire. Rather than grant to the
civil magistrate the absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors, the
ministers of the Church of Scotland, in our time, resigned their livings
by hundreds. The Church of England had no such scruples. By the royal
authority alone her prelates were appointed. By the royal authority
alone her Convocations were summoned, regulated, prorogued, and
dissolved. Without the royal sanction her canons had no force. One
of the articles of her faith was that without the royal consent no
ecclesiastical council could lawfully assemble. From all her judicatures
an appeal lay, in the last resort, to the sovereign, even when the
question was whether an opinion ought to be accounted heretical, or
whether the administration of a sacrament had been valid. Nor did the
Church grudge this extensive power to our princes. By them she had been
called into existence, nursed through a feeble infancy, guarded from
Papists on one side and from Puritans on the other, protected against
Parliaments which bore her no good will, and avenged on literary
assailants whom she found it hard to answer. Thus gratitude, hope, fear,
common attachments, common enmities, bound her to the throne. All her
traditions, all her tastes, were monarchical. Loyalty became a point
of professional honour among her clergy, the peculiar badge which
distinguished them at once from Calvinists and from Papists. Both the
Calvinists and the Papists, widely as they differed in other respects,
regarded with extreme jealousy all encroachments of the temporal power
on the domain of the spiritual power. Both Calvinists and Papists
maintained that subjects might justifiably draw the sword against
ungodly rulers. In France Calvinists resisted Charles the Ninth: Papists
resisted Henry the Fourth: both Papists and Calvinists resisted Henry
the Third. In Scotland Calvinists led Mary captive. On the north of
the Trent Papists took arms against the English throne. The Church
of England meantime condemned both Calvinists and Papists, and loudly
boasted that no duty was more constantly or earnestly inculcated by her
than that of submission to princes.
The advantages which the crown derived from this close alliance with
the Established Church were great; but they were not without serious
drawbacks. The compromise arrange
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