for King, Lords, and Commons passed the Act of 13 Car. II. cap. 12, in which, lest the revival of ordinary episcopal jurisdiction should by any possibility be supposed to confirm the Canons of 1640, they were expressly excluded. Thus they have no parliamentary sanction; nor have they the royal sanction which the compact of the Church with Henry VIII. and his successors required; for Charles the Second affixed his signature, and gave his approbation, to this Act; nor did he by any special exertion of prerogative stultify this proceeding, sanctioning as one estate of the realm, what he had repudiated in common with the other two. The Church also refrained from reviving these obnoxious defunct Canons; for though several efforts were made to induce the Convocation to consider them, and they were referred to the bishops several times for that purpose, nothing was done, and they were wisely allowed to lie quietly entombed; and were never further noticed, much less acted upon. Yet these are the canons which Mr. Oldknow, and some other rash and ill-informed clergymen, are now appealing to, when admonished by their diocesans to refrain from superstitious ceremonials. Are they ignorant that other canons have been issued from time to time since the Reformation, and have either become defunct with the reigning monarch, or been superseded by subsequent canons, or been invalid for want of the approval of the Crown? Of this last class are the extraordinary set of Canons of 1606, which James the First had too much common-sense to sanction.* Are all these to be for the public defence, care, and protection of them; yet nevertheless subjects have not only possession of, but a true and just right, title, and property to and in all their goods and estates; and ought to have; and these two are so far from crossing one another, that they mutually go together for the honourable and comfortable support of both. For as it is the duty of the subjects to supply their king, so is it part of the kingly office to support his subjects in the property and freedom of their estates. "And if any parson, vicar, curate, or preacher, shall voluntarily or carelessly neglect his duty in publishing the said explications and conclusions, according to the order above described, he shall be suspended by his ordinary, till such time as upon his penitence he shall give sufficient assurance or evidence of his amendment; and, in case he be of any exempt jurisdiction, he shall be censurable to his Majesty's commissioners for causes ecclesiastical. "And we do also hereby require all archbishops, bishops, and all other inferior priests and ministers, that they preach, teach, and exhort their people to obey, honour, and serve their king; and that they presume not to speak of his Majesty's power in any other way, than in this Canon is expressed." Constitutions," A. D. 1603 to 1610, were published in 1699 from the papers to Bishop Overall, who had been prolocutor to the Synod. The volume consists of more than three hundred quarto pages; the Canons being fenced in with long argumentative proofs, the historical facts of the Old Testament being turned into political propositions with much misplaced ingenuity. The book, after sleeping in manuscript till the Revolution of 1688, was published (twenty years after Overall's death) to serve a purpose. In the life of Overall a passage is extracted from Bishop Burnet, which we will copy; because it connects with the singular fact that it was this very book, published by Archbishop Sancroft to shew the unlawfulness of the Revolution, that reconciled Dr. Sherlock to it, and led him to take the oaths to the new government. "Our Bishop (Overall) is known in England chiefly by his 'Convocation Book,' of which Burnet gives the following account: 'There was a book drawn up by Bishop Overall four-score years ago, concerning government, in which its being of a Divine institution was positively asserted. It was read in Convocation, and passed by that body, in order to the publishing of it, in opposition to the principles laid down in the famous book of Parsons the Jesuit, * These extraordinary " Canons and published under the name of Doleman; revived? and is every Presbyter or Deacon at liberty to appeal to them, as if they were the living voice of the Church? On what ground would Mr. Oldknow urge any distinction between the Canons of 1606 and those of 1640? Will he say that the former were never sanctioned by the Crown? Neither have the latter been since the days of Charles the First, who was under the pressure of Laud's heavy hand. But he will say that he considers the Canons of 1640 as speaking the sense of the Church. But why more than those of 1606, which were passed by both houses of Convocation; and were never rescinded? whereas those of 1640 were so by the refusal of the Convocation of 1662 to have anything to do with them. But the whole proceeding of the Tractarians, respecting these Canons, is preposterous; for what government, jurisdiction, order, or uniformity of faith or practice, can we have, if every clergyman is allowed to appeal from our recognized documents, from our Prayerbook, Articles, Homilies, and Canons, to what he calls "the Church Catholic," or to Articles or Canons which are not now in force? If Mr. Oldknow's diocesan were to command him upon his canonical obedience to do something enjoined by the Canons of 1606 or 1640, and not by those of 1603, he could in law and in conscience refuse, if he saw fit, and were not induced to comply on other grounds. Is it then seemly that he should urge against his bishop, what his bishop could not enforce against him? His bishop could not, for instance, force him to take the Et Catera oath of the Canons of 1640. But let us not be misunderstood respecting the Canons of 1603. Our argument has required us to show that they are the only Canons passed since the Reformation which have any force; those of the reign of Elizabeth expiring with her; those of 1606 never having had the royal sanction ;* and those of 1640, which were instantly but king James did not like a Convocation entering into such a theory of politics, so he wrote a long letter to Abbot, who was afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, but was then in the Lower house. By it he desired that no further progress should be made in that matter, and that this book might not be offered to him for his assent; there that matter slept. But Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, had got Overall's own book into his hands; so, in the beginning of this (king William's) reign, he resolved to publish it, as an authentic declaration that the Church of England had made in this matter; and it was published, as well as licensed, by him a very few days before he came under suspension for not taking the oaths (October 1689). But there was a paragraph or two in it that they had not considered, which was plainly calculated to justify the owning the United Provinces to be a lawful government; for it was there laid down, that when a change of government was brought to a thorough settlement, it was then to be owned and submitted to as a work of the providence of God; and part of king James's letter to Abbot related to this. But what gave this book much consequence on its revival was, that the celebrated Dr. Sherlock acknowledged that he became reconciled to take the oaths to the new government, at the Revolution, by the doctrines above-mentioned in Overall's work." * As Overall's Convocation Book is not generally accessible, we will give a brief specimen of these extraordinary Canons of 1606, which, though they have not the slightest authority in the Anglican church, Mr. Oldknow might, with more shew of reason, refer to as expressing her voice, than those of 1640; since they were passed by both houses of Convocation in both provinces, and were never, like those of 1640, repudiated; for the proceedings in the Convocation of 1661, after the Restoration, were an authoritative and intentional, though tacit, repudiation. At that Convocation there was a zealous party of the old Laudean faction, especially in the Lower house; and as the king had granted his licence to the Convocation to make or revise Canons, these persons wished to avail themselves of the circumstances of the moment, which were set aside by Parliament as illegal, never having been revived by royal authority, or by the Church, but on the contrary having been disallowed by the three estates of the realm in a solemn act of legisla highly favourable to the Church, to revive the defunct Canons of 1640, or as much of them as possible; and for this purpose they teased the house of Bishops by their applications, and a committee was appointed, but only to take into consideration the very guarded and limited question, "quinam eorundem fuerunt, aut sunt, debite et idonee observandi et usitandi;" to which, after full deliberation, they gave the most prudent answer-a silent negative; that is, they declined restoring them, or admitting that they either "are" or ever "were" debite et idonee observandi. Many of the leading members assuredly disapproved of them; and all moderate men must have foreseen that to restore them, even in a revised form, would be extreme folly, and would probably cause a fatal return of opposition to the church; yet it was not desirable to rend the Convocation at such a moment, and therefore the matter appears to have been allowed to drop, and the canons thus remained in their defunct condition. Indeed so careful was the Convocation to avoid in the slightest degree acknowledging these Canons to be any portion of the law of the Church, that when in its eighty-fifth session, it was called upon "by the direction of the Commons House of Parliament" to consider what was proper to be done " de reverentia solenni inter liturgiæ publicæ celebrationem," it took not the slightest notice of anything in the Canons of 1640 (no, Mr. Oldknow, not even of the seventh) but went back to those of 1603; and "Major pars domus superioris convocationis in votis dedit, ut constitutio in libro constitutionum, sive canonum ecclesiasticorum, alias in anno Domini 1603, sub titulo De solenni reverentia inter liturgiæ publicæ celebrationem,' edit' et provis' dictæ Domui Communitatis Parliamenti præsentetur." Mr. Oldknow had perhaps never heard of these matters; but then he should not have bandied ecclesiastical arguments with his bishop, who doubtless had. We owe much gratitude to the "major pars Domus Superioris Convocationis," that the Oldknows of that day did not once more overthrow the Church. In selecting a short specimen from the Canons of 1606 we know not where to cull from, as they contain many hundred propositions woven together with much ingenuity, and containing many true and valuable, and many far fetched and doubtful, things. We will however select a few of the shortest. "VI. If any man shall therefore affirm, either that the civil power and authority which Noah had before the flood, was by the deluge determined; or that it was given unto him again by his sons and nephews; or that he received from them the sword of his sovereignty; or that the said distribution did depend upon their consents, or received from them any such authority, as without the same it could not lawfully have been made; or that this power, superiority, and authority, and all the parts thereof, which Noah's three sons and their children had (as is before declared), did not proceed originally from God, or were not properly his ordinances, but that they had the same from the people,. their offspring; he doth greatly err. "VII. If any man shall therefore affirm, either that the priestly office, and authority ecclesiastical, which Noah had before the flood, was by that deluge determined; or that it was by the election of his offspring conferred again upon him; or that Sem, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were neither priests, nor had any ecclesiastical authority, until they were chosen thereunto by their children and nephews; or that the priesthood and ecclesiastical authority were not the ordinances of God, for the governing and instructing of the church, according to the will and direction of God himself delivered and revealed unto them, as is aforesaid; he doth greatly err. "VIII. If, therefore, any man shall affirm, that the said posterity of Noah's children did well in altering either the manner or form of civil government, which God had appointed, by bringing in of tyranny or factious popularity; or of the ecclesiastical, by framing unto themselves a new kind of priesthood or worship after their own humours; or that it was lawful for such as then served God, upon any pretence to have imitated their examples in either of those courses ; he doth greatly err. "IX. If any man, therefore, shall affirm, either that the uniting of the children of Jacob into one nation, or the severing of the civil and ecclesiastical functions (the prerogatives of birthright) from Reuben the first-born, and dividing of them from one person was made by themselves; "X. Or that their servitude in Egypt was unjustly suffered to lie upon them tion. But do we therefore consider that the Canons of 1603 are a sufficient or a faultless code of Church law? Very far from it. Many parts of these Canons have become obsolete by time, and others are set aside by various statutes; some things in them were not perhaps judicious even at the period of their enactment; and the obligation to conform to them, even upon the part of the clergy, is subject to considerable restriction. We will quote what is said upon this point by Archdeacon Sharp in his “ Charges on the Rubrics and Canons," as cited and adopted by Bishop Mant in his "Notes on the Book of Common Prayer," under the head of the office for “ the ordering of priests." "As to the Canons to which we are not bound by any formal promise, but only by virtue of their own authority, I believe no one will say that we are bound to pay obedience to them all, according to the letter of them. For the alteration of customs, change of habits, and other circumstances of time and place, and the manner of the country, have made some of them impracticable; I mean prudentially so, if not literally. Others of them are useless and invalid on course, through defect of proper officers, and proper inquiries, to render them of force and effectual. And there are hardly any of them, but what have been upon extraordinary occasions dispensed with by our governors. And yet on the other hand that they are of very considerable authority appears from hence, that they are the standing ecclesiastical laws of the realm, the constant rules of the ordinaries' inquiries at their visitations, the grounds of presentments of delinquents and irregularities upon oath, and the foundation upon which ecclesiastical censures and judgments commonly stand. "To the question, then, what measures of obedience we of the clergy owe to those Canons which respect our own behaviour or function, I answer, that in my own opinion there are three sorts of dispensations which will justify us in not strictly follow following ollowing the letter of the Canons, provided we always have an eye and regard to the general design of them. "The first sort are formal and express dispensations from sufficient authority, which are good in law and conscience too. "The second are particular tacit dispensations; that is, when the ordinary or other proper guardian or conservator of the ecclesiastical laws is known to be consenting in any special case, though he doth not signify such consent either by instrument or open declaration. And these I hold to be good in conscience, whatever they be in law. "The third are general tacit dispensations, when the ordinaries or other spiritual judges, whose business it is to enforce discipline and rule, do appear, by a general and avowed neglect of putting the Canons in force, to agree and consent to their non-observance. That is to say, private clergymen do not seem to be bound to what their superiors in the church do not seem to expect or require of them; or which at least they do forbear by mutual agreement to enforce. "These three kinds of dispensations seem to be good and justifiable, provided, as I said before, that there be a particular expediency in not adhering strictly to the letter of the canons, and the general and main design of the rules injoined in them be as well or better answered another way. "The rules of direction which follow upon these observations are these two: which indeed not only respect the Canons, but several other statute laws yet in force. First, to adhere closely and strictly to the letter of them in all cases, where we cannot plead any of the three kinds of dispensations above-mentioned. Secondly, in all cases, where we can plead a dispensation from the letter, to answer the true intention of them some other way: and not to depart further from them than we have satisfactory reasons as well as leave to justify and war so long by Almighty God; or that they being his church, he left them destitute of such comforts of direction and instruction, as were necessary, those times considered, for their civil or ecclesiastical estate; or that the people took upon them the appointing of the heads of their tribes and families, or the choice of their civil superiors, or of the priests; or that the example of those wicked kings may be any lawful warrant for any other king so to oppress the people and church of God; he doth greatly err."(Overall's Convocation Book, pp. 8-14.) rant us in doing. And by these two rules it will be no difficult thing to take the just measures of our obedience to every particular Canon or Statute, that relates to our function, habit, or conversation." We adopt, with Bishop Mant, Archdeacon Sharp's opinion as our own; and with the restrictions which he mentions we do not think that any clergyman needs feel any conscientious difficulty in the matter of canonical obedience as respects the code of 1603; but as for that of 1640, we have no concern with it; and most ignorant and conceited is it for a callow young clergyman, when mildly reprehended by his diocesan for irregularity and self-willed proceedings, to prattle about his dutiful obedience to Laud's canons, which he chooses to follow by calling that an altar, which the Anglican canons call "a decent communion table," and by bowing towards it, whereas the Anglican canons direct only that he is to bow at the name of Jesus. What is to be the next step? Will our Tractarians tell their diocesans that, in order to repress Puritanism, they intend to urge their parishioners (in the language of the Declaration which Laud induced Charles I. to revive) to practise, on the Sunday afternoon, after service, "dancing, either men or women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmless recreation; also May-games, Whitsun-ales, Morris-dances, and the setting up of May-poles, and other sports therewith used, so as the same be had in due and convenient time, without impediment or neglect of Divine Service;" only " barring from this benefit and liberty all such known recusants, either men or women, as will abstain from coming to Divine Service, being therefore unworthy of any lawful recreation after the said service, that will not first come to the Church and serve God; and prohibiting in like manner the said recreations to any who, though they conform in religion, are not present in the church at the service of God before their going to the said recreations?" Happily, if any Tractarians should be disposed to revive such proceedings, they will not at present find a Laud to perseute the clergy, in High Commission court, for not complying with the requisition, or to choke a judge of the land with a pair of lawn sleeves for upholding the sanctity of the Lord's-day.* If Mr. Oldknow should ask what we have now to do with the Book of Sunday Sports, or Laud's High-commission proceedings in enforcing it, we reply, just so much as we have to do with the Canons of 1640; and more as shewing the effect of substituting a religion of ceremonialism for spiritual service. * Parliament had passed an Act for preventing gross profanations of the Lord's Day. Judge Richardson enforced that Act; which incensed Laud, and caused him to rail on the Judge so abusively at the Council table, that the Judge ran out, exclaiming that "he had been almost choked with a pair of lawn sleeves." Laud, to spite the Puritans, induced the King to issue the Declaration of Sports, setting up his prero gative against the Act of Parliament; and the clergy were compelled to publish the Declaration, under penalty of severe cognizance by the High Commission. Heylin, Laud's chaplain, calls this Declaration " a most pious and religious purpose," "a pious and princely act, nothing inferior to that of Constantine or any other Christian king or emperor." CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 52. 2G |