granting the subsidy, or the double one of accepting the supremacy together with the grant of the subsidy. The form of expression is "recognoscimus." It declares, but it does not create, for the province of Canterbury could not create an attribute for the King of the realm, nor could it put forward in the character of a novelty what it meant to recognise as having existed from immemorial time. In opposition to the argument of unimportance, which seems to me the strangest of all contentions ever imported into this part of our constitutional history, I will in conclusion give some proofs that the Convocational proceeding now directly in question was one of great weight and significance. First, the Recognition of 1531 was an Act of unusual importance and solemnity, because it was not the mere establishment of a certain legal doctrine which might be affirmed to-day and denied to-morrow, and which was without authority both before the affirmation and after the denial; but it was the assertion and the recognition of a prerogative descended from immemorial time, in lawful existence before as well as after the enactment. In order to get rid of the judicial effect of such an enactment as this, its repeal was necessary; but further, its mere repeal would have been insufficient. We have an analogous case of great interest in the civil legislation of the eighteenth century, which explains my meaning and, I think, irrefragably confirms my position. In the year 1719 a declaratory Act was passed in England, which asserted the right of Parliament to make laws for the government of Ireland. In 1782 this Act was repealed. But the repeal did not satisfy the vigilance of Irish patriotism. Flood argued, that the withdrawal of this particular assertion of the right did not destroy the right itself, nor preclude its reassertion. His argument prevailed; and in the year 1783 another Act was passed to assert the contradictory of the proposition contained in the Act of 1719. This fresh Act declared that the sole right of making laws for Ireland resided in the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland. So also it ought to have been in the sixteenth century, in order to make good the argument of my assailants. There ought to have been both a repeal of the express assertion made by the Convocation of 1531 for the present existence of a certain right, and a contradiction of the far more important implied assertion that it had always existed. There was neither the one nor the other. Secondly, the Act of 1531 derived a special importance from the authority and weight of the men who concurred in passing it. Warham has received the glowing eulogium of Erasmus. Tunstal, "a spirit without spot," was a person of eminent learning and ability, and one of the best men of the sixteenth century. High praise was bestowed upon him in the sermon preached at his funeral after the Elizabethan settlement; and his protestation on behalf, not of the Pope but of the Church in the Northern Convocation, shows the courage as well as the deliberation with which he acted. The Recognition had the subsequent adhesion of Gardiner, who became a bishop in December, 1531. He was one of the great statesmen of England, and to him we owe it that foreign influences did not much more largely predominate in the council of Mary. As to Fisher, I will only further say that already in the year 1530 he had been imprisoned for his conduct in defence of the Church, and he had declared himself ready to die rather than assent to the divorce. This declaration of his (writes the secretary who served Campeggio †) has created a great stir, for he is in such repute that his opposition would be fatal to the dissolution of the marriage. It may be said that Warham before his death in 1532 made a notarial protestation on behalf of the Church of Canterbury, the Church of England, and the See of Rome. But this protestation, which did not nominatim point to anything that had been done, was expressly confined to statutes of the realm. It did not include Convocational Acts; and, as we know from the case of Tunstal that there was a power of protesting in such cases, we are obliged to infer that Warham to the last saw nothing in the recognition of 1531 which he desired to retract or qualify. Thirdly, this act of Convocation is of special authority, because it and it alone among the critical proceedings of the sixteenth century emanates from a Convocation which had not been tampered with. The Convocations of Edward the Sixth, of Mary, and of Elizabeth had been altered in their composition by the imprisonment or deprivation of obnoxious persons before they were put into motion. They differ from the Convocation of 1531, as the Long Parliament after the application of Pride's purge differs from the Long Parliament before * Bridgett's 'Life of Blessed John Fisher,' pp. 183, 190. + Monumenta Vaticana' (Lämmer), pp. 33, 34. Wilkins, iii. 746. it. They were, in fact, packed Convocations; while the Convocation of 1531 consisted entirely of persons, who had attained their respective places in regular course, and without reference to the controversies of the day, or the exigencies of political convenience. VIII. PROFESSOR HUXLEY AND THE SWINE MIRACLE.* 1891. THE controversy, in which this paper has to take its place, arose out of a statement, indeed a boast, as I understood it, by Professor Huxley,† that the adepts in natural science were assailing the churches with weapons of precision, and that their opponents had only antiquated and worthless implements to employ in the business of defence. I took upon me to impeach at certain points the precision of the Professor's own weapons.‡ Upon one of those points, the miracle of the swine at Gadara, as recorded in the Gospels, he had given us assumption instead of proof upon what he thinks the vital question, whether the keeping of the swine was an innocent and lawful occupation. He has now offered an elaborate attempt at proof that such was its character. The smallest indication of such an attempt in the original article would have sufficed entirely to alter *Reprinted from the Nineteenth Century. |