e
Reformation. But the statutes of the Reformation era relating to
jurisdiction, having as statutes the assent of the laity, and
accepted by the canons of the clergy, are the standard to which
the Church has bound herself as a religious society to conform.

The word "jurisdiction" has played an important part in the recent
discussions; whether its meaning, with its various involved and
associated ideas, by no means free from intricacy and confusion, have
been duly unravelled and made clear, we may be permitted to doubt. A
distinction of the canonists has been assumed by those who have used
the word with most precision--_assumed_, though it is by no means a
simple and indisputable one. Mr. Gladstone draws attention to this,
when, after noticing that nowhere in the ecclesiastical legislation of
Elizabeth is the claim made on behalf of the Crown to be the source of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, he admits that this _is_ the language of
the school of English law, and offers an explanation of the fact. That
which Acts of Parliament do not say, which is negatived in actual
practice by contradictory and irreconcilable facts, is yet wanted by
lawyers for the theoretic completeness of their idea and system of law.
The fact is important as a reminder that what is one real aspect, or,
perhaps, the most complete and consistent representation of a system
on paper, may be inadequate and untrue as an exhibition of its real
working and appearance in the world.

To sum up the whole, then, I contend that the Crown did not claim
by statute, either to be of right, or to become by convention, the
_source_ of that kind of action, which was committed by the
Saviour to the Apostolic Church, whether for the enactment of
laws, or for the administration of its discipline; but the claim
was, that all the canons of the Church, and all its judicial
proceedings, inasmuch as they were to form parts respectively of
the laws and of the legal administration of justice in the
kingdom, should run only with the assent and sanction of the
Crown. They were to carry with them a double force--a force of
coercion, visible and palpable; a force addressed to conscience,
neither visible nor palpable, and in its nature only capable of
being inwardly appreciated. Was it then unreasonable that they
should bear outwardly the tokens of that power to which they were
to be indebted for their outwa