onal power, without any roots and
constitution of its own, why should the Church be denied the benefit of
the common sense, and the change in ideas and usage, which have been so
largely appealed to in civil matters? Why are we condemned to a theory
which is not only out of date and out of harmony with all the
traditions and convictions of modern times, hut which was in its own
time tyrannous, revolutionary, and intolerable? Arguments in favour of
the present Court, drawn from the reason of the thing, and the
comparative fitness of the judges for their office, if we do not agree
with them, at least we can understand. But precedents and arguments
from the Supremacy of Henry VIII. suggest the question whether those
who use them are ready to be taken at their word and to have back that
Supremacy as it was; and whether the examples of policy of that reign
are seemly to quote as adequate measures of the liberty and rights of
any set of Englishmen.

The question really calling for solution is--How to reconcile the just
freedom of individual teachers in the Church with the maintenance of
the right and duty of the Church to uphold the substantial meaning of
her body of doctrine? In answering this question we can get no help
from this volume. It simply argues that the present is practically the
best of all possible courts; that it is a great improvement, which
probably it is, on the Courts of Delegates; and that great confidence
ought to be felt in its decisions. We are further shown how jealously
and carefully the judges have guarded the right of the individual
teacher. But it seems to us, according to the views put forward in this
book, that as the price of all this--of great learning, weight, and
ability in the judges--of great care taken of liberty--the Church is
condemned to an interpretation of the Royal Supremacy which floats
between the old arbitrary view of it and the modern Liberal one, and
which uses each, as it happens to be most convenient, against the claim
of the Church to protect her doctrine and exert a real influence on the
authoritative declaration of it. We all need liberty, and we all ought
to be ready to give the reasonable liberty which we profess to claim
for ourselves. But it is a heavy price to pay for it, if the right and
the power is to be taken out of the hands of the Church to declare what
is the real meaning of what she supposes herself bound to teach.

IV

SIR JOHN COLERIDGE ON THE PURCHAS