islature,
the snow would fall when the sun was in Capricorn, and the flowers would
bloom when he was in Cancer. And so the legislature might enact that
Ferguson or Muggleton should live in the palace at Lambeth, should sit
on the throne of Augustin, should be called Your Grace, and should
walk in processions before the Premier Duke; but, in spite of the
legislature, Sancroft would, while Sancroft lived, be the only true
Archbishop of Canterbury; and the person who should presume to usurp the
archiepiscopal functions would be a schismatic. This doctrine was proved
by reasons drawn from the budding of Aaron's rod, and from a certain
plate which Saint James the Less, according to a legend of the fourth
century, used to wear on his forehead. A Greek manuscript, relating
to the deprivation of bishops, was discovered, about this time, in the
Bodleian Library, and became the subject of a furious controversy. One
party held that God had wonderfully brought this precious volume to
light, for the guidance of His Church at a most critical moment. The
other party wondered that any importance could be attached to the
nonsense of a nameless scribbler of the thirteenth century. Much was
written about the deprivations of Chrysostom and Photius, of Nicolaus
Mysticus and Cosmas Atticus. But the case of Abiathar, whom Solomon put
out of the sacerdotal office for treason, was discussed with peculiar
eagerness. No small quantity of learning and ingenuity was expended
in the attempt to prove that Abiathar, though he wore the ephod and
answered by Urim, was not really High Priest, that he ministered
only when his superior Zadoc was incapacitated by sickness or by some
ceremonial pollution, and that therefore the act of Solomon was not a
precedent which would warrant King William in deposing a real Bishop.
[90]

But such reasoning as this, though backed by copious citations from the
Misna and Maimonides, was not generally satisfactory even to zealous
churchmen. For it admitted of one answer, short, but perfectly
intelligible to a plain man who knew nothing about Greek fathers or
Levitical genealogies. There might be some doubt whether King Solomon
had ejected a high priest; but there could be no doubt at all that Queen
Elizabeth had ejected the Bishops of more than half the sees in England.
It was notorious that fourteen prelates had, without any proceeding in
any spiritual court, been deprived by Act of Parliament for refusing to
acknowledge