wpolox=polovnfeìs, sed (ex recenti instituto) inter collegas dotibus ad communem ædificationem potior, &c. Pag. 6, 7, 8. So that Blondel himself, a professed adversary, grants the office of a bishop to have been from the very first establishment of churches; but only alledges (how truly I do not now enquire) that this office at first went by succession; and that soon after the year 108, it came every where to be elective. And to make this scheme of his out, he is forced to have recourse to a very extravagant supposition; namely, that the churches every where, on a sudden, as if they had conspired together, made a change in the manner of appointing their bishops or presidents, and brought it from succession to election: although it is very evident that so material a change in a thing of that consequence could not be introduced without great opposition, which therefore must have made it a business of longer time than he supposes. The sixth and last proposition which I have laid down, touching the necessity of episcopacy, is so plain an inference from what went before, that I think it cannot be gainsaid. For that the form of church-polity, settled by the Apostles, should, immediately, after their decease, be universally changed, and that without any opposition given, or so much as notice taken by any writer of that age, or near it, that such a change there was, is a supposition that sure no man that considers thoroughly will ever admit. From the confession therefore of the most learned adversaries of episcopacy, our churchman gathers enough to conclude, with the established church, that bishops, as well as priests, or presbyters and deacons have been even from the Apostles' time. Pref. to the Form of Ordinat. I pray observe, that St. John lived to the year of Christ 99, or, as some say, two or three years longer. Now if the church, during his life, had innovated in the matter of episcopacy, he certainly would have given public opposition to it: and how. so great a change as is pretended could universally, and without opposition, be introduced within eleven or twelve years after his death, is, to me, a riddle not to be accounted for. THE NATURE OF SUPREMACY, IN MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL, VESTED IN THE CROWN. BY ANTHONY ELLYS, D.D. BISHOP OF ST. DAVID'S. As great weight is laid on the declarations, which the Romanists say, our laws make, that all the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of our bishops flows originally from the crown; it will be necessary to enter into the discussion of this objection more minutely. The first point to be considered, is the nature of supremacy in matters ecclesiastical, vested in the crown by the act of 1 Eliz. chap. i. Now that the meaning of this act was not, as the Papists affirm, to declare that the king had a right to preach or administer the sacraments, or to ordain, or inflict church censures with spiritual effects, we may be sufficiently assured; because, that statute refers to and revives those acts of Henry VIII. particularly 26 Henry VIII. chap. 1. by which the ancient jurisdictions belonging to the crown were restored and united to it; and the king, having been acknowledged to be supreme head on earth of the church, was invested with full authority to visit, repress, and pose, reform all errors, heresies, &c. These same words are used in the oath of supremacy appointed by the first of Elizabeth. It is, therefore, reasonable to supthat this latter act is to be understood, as to the spiritual authority it intended to confer upon the crown, in the same sense with the former, (see Bacon on Governm. part ii. p. 161.) which, indeed, Queen Elizabeth soon after declared in her Admonition, which was referred to and confirmed by an act of parliament. Now Henry the Eighth declared publicly, that he did not pretend, by this act, or by any other way, to have a right to administer the sacraments, &c. or to confer the same right upon others but, on the contrary, acknowledged, that the bishops and clergy derived these merely spiritual authorities immediately from Christ.* For in the Institution of a Christian Man, published by the especial command of that king, and subscribed by twenty-one bishops, and many of the clergy, it is asserted, (fol. 39.) "that Christ and his apostles did institute and ordain, in the New Testament, that, besides the civil powers, there should be also continually in the church militant, certain other ministers and officers, who should have special power : * In a commission granted by King Henry the Eighth, to the Bishop of Hereford, he is licensed even to ordain. But no prince ever pretended to convey the spiritual character; ergo, all that can be meant here, is, that the bishop is licensed to exercise this spiritual part derived from Christ, so as that it shall have a temporal effect; and the persons so ordained shall be acknowledged by the state in quality of priests. and authority, and commission, under Christ, to preach and teach, to dispense and administer the sacraments, to consecrate the blessed body of Christ, to loose and absolve, to bind and excommunicate, to order and consecrate others in the same room and office." And ibid. fol. 50: "We may not think that it doth appertain to the office of kings, but priests, to preach, teach, and administer the sacraments, to absolve, excommunicate, and do such other things belonging to the office and administration of bishops and priests." And even in the commissions by which some bishops in the reign of Henry the Eighth held their bishopricks of him during pleasure, and had his license to execute their spiritual functions, there is a clause, in which he acknowledges them to have a spiritual authority not derived from the crown but from Christ, Præter et ultra ea, quæ tibi, ex sacris literis, divinitus, commissa, esse dignoscuntur.* During the reign of his son Edward the Sixth, in the ordinal then composed for ordaining of bishops, the archbishop says to the bishop, who is to be consecrated, "Will you maintain and set for❝ward, as much as in you shall lie, quietness, and "love, and peace among all men, and such as be "unquiet and criminous within your diocese correct " and punish, according to such authority as you "have by God's word, and as to you shall be com"mitted by the ordinance of the realm ?" The * Apol. for the Clergy, p. 19. Lesley's Regale, 62, 63. |