sed to mean. The
tendency of every English court, appealed to not as a court of equity
but one of criminal jurisdiction, is naturally to be exacting and even
narrow in the interpretation of language. The general impression left
by these cases is that the lines of doctrine in the English Church are
regarded by the judicial mind as very faint, and not much to be
depended upon; and that these judgments may be the first steps in that
insensible process by which the unpretending but subtle and powerful
engine of interpretation has been applied by the courts to give a
certain turn to law and policy; applied, in this instance, to undermine
the definiteness and certainty of doctrine, and in the end, the
understanding itself which has hitherto existed between the Church and
the State, and has kept alive the idea of her distinct basis,
functions, and rights.

This is the view of matters which arises from an examination of the
proceedings contained in this volume. What is the argument urged in the
Historical Introduction to justify or recommend our acquiescence in it?
It seems to us to consist mainly in a one-sided and exaggerated
statement of the Supremacy claimed and brought in by Henry VIII., and
of the effect in theory and fact which it ought to have on our notion
of the Church and of Church right. The complaint of the present state
of things is, that those who may be taken to represent the interests of
the Church in such a matter as the character of her teaching are
practically excluded from having any real influence in the decision of
questions by which the character of that teaching is affected. The
answer is that she has no right to claim a separate interest in the
matter, and that the doctrine of the Royal Supremacy was meant to
extinguish, and has extinguished, any pretence to such a claim. The
_animus_ which pervades the work, and which is not obscurely disclosed
in such things as footnotes and abridgments of legal arguments, is thus
given--more freely, of course, than it would be proper to introduce in
a book like this--in some remarks of Mr. Brodrick, one of the editors,
at a recent discussion of the question of Ecclesiastical Appeals in a
committee of the Social Science Association. He is reported to have
spoken as follows:--

The Church of England being established by law, could not be
allowed any independence of action; and those who wished for it
were like people who wanted to have their cake and eat