te had a separate and
independent responsibility, so that it could not, without breach
of duty, allow them to be parted from itself. It was, therefore, I
submit, an intelligible and, under given circumstances, a
warrantable scheme of action, under which the State virtually
said: Church decrees, taking the form of law, and obtaining their
full and certain effect only in that form, can be executed only as
law, and while they are in process of being put into practice can
only be regarded as law, and therefore the whole power of their
execution, that is to say, all juris diction in matters
ecclesiastical and spiritual, must, according to the doctrine of
law, proceed from the fountain-head of law, namely, from the
Crown. In the last legal resort there can be but one origin for
all which is to be done in societies of men by force of legal
power; nor, if so, can doubt arise what that origin must be.

If you allege that the Church has a spiritual authority to
regulate doctrines and discipline, still, as you choose to back
that authority with the force of temporal law, and as the State is
exclusively responsible for the use of that force, you must be
content to fold up the authority of the Church in that exterior
form through which you desire it to take effect. From whatsoever
source it may come originally, it comes to the subject as law; it
therefore comes to him from the fountain of law.... The faith of
Christendom has been received in England; the discipline of the
Christian Church, cast into its local form, modified by statutes
of the realm, and by the common law and prerogative, has from time
immemorial been received in England; but we can view them only as
law, although you may look further back to the divine and
spiritual sanction, in virtue of which they acquired that social
position, which made it expedient that they should associate with
law and should therefore become law.

But as to the doctrine itself, it is most obvious to notice that it is
not more strange, and not necessarily more literally real, than those
other legal views of royal prerogative and perfection, which are the
received theory of all our great jurists--accepted by them for very
good reasons, but not the less astounding when presented as naked and
independent truths. It was natural enough that they should claim for
the Crown the o