work
like the present, set forth by the direction and under the sanction of
a Bishop of London.

In looking over the cases which have been brought together into a
connected series, the first point which is suggested by the review is
the great and important change in the aspect and bearing of doctrinal
controversies, and in the situation of the Church, as affected by them,
which the creation and action of this Court have made. From making it
almost a matter of principle and boast to dispense with any living
judge of controversies, the Church has passed to having a very
energetic one. Up to the Gorham judgment, it can hardly be said that
the ruling of courts of law had had the slightest influence on the
doctrinal position and character of the Church. Keen and fierce as had
been the controversies in the Church up to that judgment, how often had
a legal testing of her standards been seriously sought for or seriously
appealed to? There had been accusations of heresy, trials,
condemnations, especially in the times following the Reformation and
preceding the Civil War; there had been appeals and final judgments
given in such final courts as existed; but all without making any mark
on the public mind or the received meaning of doctrines and
formularies, and without leaving a trace except in law reports. They
seem to have been forgotten as soon as the particular case was disposed
of. The limits of supposed orthodox belief revived; but it was not the
action of judicial decisions which either narrowed or enlarged them.
Bishop Marsh's Calvinists never thought of having recourse to law. If
the Church did not do entirely without a Court of Final Appeal, it is
simply a matter of fact that the same weight and authority were not
attached to the proceedings of such a court which are attached to them
now. But since the Gorham case, the work of settling authoritatively,
if not the meaning of doctrines and of formularies, at any rate the
methods of interpreting and applying them, has been briskly going on in
the courts, and a law laid down by judges without appeal has been
insensibly fastening its hold upon us. The action of the courts is
extolled as being all in the direction of liberty. Whatever this praise
may be worth, it is to be observed that it is, after all, a wooden sort
of liberty, and shuts up quite as much as it opens. It may save, in
this case or that, individual liberty; but it does so by narrowing
artificially the natural an