ment and
with everybody else; and Churchmen, like everybody else, submitted to
him. But the "Imperialism" of Henry VIII., though it went beyond even
the Imperialism of Justinian and Charlemagne in its encroachments on
the spiritual power, as little denied the fact of that power as they
did. He recognised the distinct place and claims of the spiritualty;
and, as we suppose that even the editors of this volume hardly feel
themselves bound to make out the consistency of Henry, they might have
spared themselves the weak and not very fair attempt to get rid of the
force of the remarkable words in which this recognition is recorded in
the first Statute of Appeals (24 Henry VIII. c. 12). The words would,
no doubt, be worth but little, were it not that as a matter of fact a
spiritualty did act and judge and lay down doctrine, and even while
yielding to unworthy influence did keep up their corporate existence.

But when the ecclesiastical legislation of Henry VIII. is referred to,
not merely as the historical beginning of a certain state of things
which has undergone great changes in the course of events, but as
affording a sort of idea and normal pattern to which our own
arrangements ought to conform, as supplying us with a theory of Church
and State which holds good at least against the Church, it seems hard
that the Church alone should not have the benefit of the entire
alteration of circumstances since that theory was a reality. Those who
talk about the Supremacy ought to remember what the Supremacy pretended
to be. It was over _all_ causes and _all_ persons, civil as well as
ecclesiastical. It held good certainly in theory, and to a great extent
in practice, against the temporalty as much as against the spiritualty.
Why then are we to invoke the Supremacy as then understood, in a
question about courts of spiritual appeals, and not in questions about
other courts and other powers in the nation? If the Supremacy, claimed
and exercised as Henry claimed and exercised it, is good against the
Church, it is good against many other things besides. If the Church
inherits bonds and obligations, not merely by virtue of distinct
statutes, but by the force of a general vague arbitrary theory of royal
power, why has that power been expelled, or transformed into a mere
fiction of law, in all other active branches of the national life?
Unless the Church is simply, what even Henry VIII. did not regard it, a
creation and delegate of the nati