cision, not merely of a lay, but of a secular and not necessarily
even Christian court, where the feeling about them is not unlikely to
be that represented by the story, told by Mr. Joyce, of the eminent
lawyer who said of some theological debate that he could only decide it
"by tossing up a coin of the realm." The anomaly of such a court can
hardly be denied, both as a matter of theory and--supposing it to
matter at all what Church doctrine really is--as illustrated in some
late results of its action. It is still more provoking to observe, as
Mr. Joyce brings out in his historical sketch, that simple carelessness
and blundering have conspired with the evident tendency of things to
cripple and narrow the jurisdiction of the Church in what seems to be
her proper sphere. The ecclesiastical appeals, before the Reformation,
were to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction alone. They were given to the
civil power by the Tudor legislation, but to the civil power acting, if
not by the obligation of law, yet by usage and in fact, through
ecclesiastical organs and judges. Lastly, by a recent change, of which
its authors have admitted that they did not contemplate the effect,
these appeals are now to the civil jurisdiction acting through purely
civil courts. It is an aggravation of this, when the change which seems
so formidable has become firmly established, to be told that it was,
after all, the result of accident and inadvertence, and a "careless use
of terms in drafting an Act of Parliament"; and that difficult and
perilous theological questions have come, by "a haphazard chance,"
before a court which was never meant to decide them. It cannot be
doubted that those who are most interested in the Church of England
feel deeply and strongly about keeping up what they believe to be the
soundness and purity of her professed doctrine; and they think that,
under fair conditions, they have clear and firm ground for making good
their position. But it seems by no means unlikely that in the working
of the Court of Final Appeal there will be found a means of evading the
substance of questions, and of disposing of very important issues by a
side wind, to the prejudice of what have hitherto been recognised as
rightful claims. An arrangement which bears hard upon the Church
theoretically, as a controversial argument in the hands of Dr. Manning
or Mr. Binney, and as an additional proof of its Erastian subjection to
the State, and which also works ill a