Nero, derived to Nero any right to Claudius's throne.
We hear nothing of these matters. The magistracy described by St. Paul
is the magistracy conceived of by Sir Matthew Hale 'as necessary to be
kept up at all times.' An application of this simple principle to some
of the more marked proceedings of our civil courts during the last two
years will be found an admirable means of testing their degree of
judicial wisdom. 'It is absolutely necessary to have justice kept up
at all times,' and this not less necessary surely within than beyond
the pale of the Church. It is necessary that a minister of the gospel
'be blameless'--no drunkard, no swindler, no thief, no grossly obscene
person; nor can any supposed flaw in the constitution of an
ecclesiastical court disannul the necessity. A man may sit in that
court in a judicial capacity whose competency to take his seat there
may not have been determined by some civil court that challenges for
itself an equivocal and disputed right to decide in the matter. There
may exist some supposed, or even some real, flaw in that supreme
ecclesiastical authority of the country, through the exertion of which
the Church is to be protected from the infection of vice and
irreligion; but this flaw, real or supposed, furnishes no adequate
cause why justice in the Church 'should not be kept up.' 'Justice,'
said Sir Matthew, 'must be kept up at all times,' whatever the
irregularities of title which may occur in the supreme authority. The
great society of the Church has a right to justice, whether it be
decided that the ministers of _quoad sacra_ parishes have what has
been termed a _legal_ right to sit in ecclesiastical courts or no. The
devout and honest church member has a right to be protected from the
blasphemous profanities of the wretched minister who is a thief or
wretched swindler; the chaste and sober have a right to be protected
from the ministrations of the drunken and the obscene wretch, whose
preaching is but mockery, and his dispensations of the sacrament
sacrilege. The Church has a right to purge itself of such ministers;
and these sacred rights no supposed, even no real, flaw in the
constitution of its courts ought to be permitted to affect. 'Justice
may be kept up at all times.' We have said that the principle of Sir
Matthew Hale serves to throw a kind of historic light on the judicial
talent of our country in the present age, as represented by the
majority of our Lords of Session.