it. As to
the Privy Council, he had never heard its decisions charged with
error. What was complained of was that it had declined to take the
current opinions of theologians and make them part of the
Thirty-nine Articles. There was no need whatever for the Privy
Council to possess any special theological knowledge. The only
case where that knowledge was necessary was when it was alleged
that doctrines had been held in the Church without censure. That
was a case in which considerable theological lore was required;
but it was within the province of counsel to supply it. Divines
had now discovered, what lawyers could have told them long ago,
and what he knew some of them had been told--namely, that it would
not do to treat the Thirty-nine Articles as penal statutes;
because, if that were done, a coach might be easily driven through
them. If they had wished to maintain the authority of the
Articles, they would have done best to have kept quiet.

The present Court of Appeal is deduced, in the Historical Introduction,
as a natural and logical consequence, from Henry VIII.'s Supremacy.
Undoubtedly it is scarcely possible to overstate the all-grasping
despotism of Henry VIII., and if a precedent for anything reckless of
all separate rights and independence should be wanted, it would never
be sought in vain if looked for in the policy and legislation of that
reign. So far the editors are right; the power over religion claimed by
Henry VIII. will carry them wherever they want to go; it will give
them, if they need it, as a still more logical and legitimate
development of the Supremacy, the Court of High Commission. Only they
ought to have remembered, as fair historians, that even in the days of
the Supremacy the distinct nature and business of the Church and of
Churchmen was never denied. Laymen were given powers over the Church
and in the Church which were new; but the distinct province of the
Church, if abridged and put under new control, was not abolished. Side
by side with the facts showing the Supremacy and its exercise are a set
of facts, for those who choose to see them, showing that the Church was
still recognised, even by Henry VIII., as a body which he had not
created, which he was obliged to take account of, and which filled a
place utterly different from every other body in the State. Henry VIII.
played the tyrant with his Churchmen as he did with his Parlia