chapter of each cathedral, who go through a mock election, when they receive a document called a congé d'élire, with a letter missive from the crown, which requires them, within twelve days, to assemble and elect the person nominated by the crown. They may elect no other person; they must elect this person upon pain of a præmunire, which is a very serious affair. All parties in the cathedrals know that they have no right of deObedience is always expected; disobedience would be ruinous. Every dean and every member of the chapter knows that election is a mere pretence; for where there is no freedom of choice, there can be no election. Yet, strange to say, this mock election, conducted with all the forms of a religious ceremony and in connexion with the public worship of Almighty God, is legally or constitutionally necessary to complete the official character of a bishop, or to place the given individual in the true line of apostolical succession. It seems to be admitted in this clumsy affair, that, somehow or other, a church-election is essential. But so they wrap it up; while Rome sneers both at the politico-ecclesiastical farce, and the pretended successor of Peter. It must be evident, even to churchmen, that this congé d'élire is a useless and perilous affair-no better than a snare for the consciences of clergymen, who are expected, yea constrained, to say they have elected, when they have only accepted, a bishop, appointed, or elected really, by the prime minister. The man thus named to them, they may think very unsuitable to be placed in the apostolical succession, but they must approve. Perhaps there are many cases in which deans and chapters cordially disapprove; yet they must not only accept-that would be mere passivity-they must, by their voice, say they approve and elect the said person. This is a mischievous snare for their consciences; but it is of a piece with other snares laid for the consciences of clergymen at every step in our established church.

It is a rare thing for a dean to have at once the tender conscience and manly courage of the Dean of Hereford! It is not often that a dean is exposed to such a trial as that of saying, that he elects another man to an office he had desired and sought for himself. Dean Merewether wished to be a bishop, and wished to appear an honest man; wished to obey his sovereign, and keep a clear conscience, if possible; but this congé d'élire places him in a grievous dilemma, because he thinks Dr. Hampden a heretic, or little better than an infidel; and yet he has received a virtual command from the head of the church to elect him bishop. It is a delicate case for any clergyman, when his official obligation says obey, and conscience says disobey; yet it is a position in which many a clergyman has been placed. Whether Dr. Merewether looked calmly at all the difficulties of

his position, it is not for us to inquire; but it is open to any one to observe, that, if conscience constrained him, on the one hand, so solemnly to protest against Dr. Hampden, why did not conscience also suggest, on the other hand, the solemn obligations he had undertaken to obey absolutely the queen's majesty, in every cause civil and ecclesiastical? Had he forgotten how often he had, ex animo, sworn to the thirty-seventh article, and how solemnly he had bound himself thereby to obey the head of the church in every thing? But we inquire not too curiously into this case; our only aim, at present, being to show this snare, among many others which the established church lays for men's consciences, as well as the degradation which it compels men to inflict upon themselves, when they inwardly feel, with Paley, that they cannot afford to keep a conscience. Most of the clergy, no doubt, feel that they have bound themselves, by their assent and consent to the thirty-nine articles, to obey the queen's command, and, in consequence, they quietly submit, and say nothing about their conscientious objections to the person or the act. They sold their conscience to passive obedience when they accepted the price. Most of them, therefore, never again dream of letting conscience out of prison upon such matters. But in the present case, the conscience of Dr. Merewether, being over subtle and too much excited, slipped its keeper, obtained its liberty, and made a most unseemly and unusual brawl in a cathedral, where, it is well known, that to assert the rights of conscience, is to lift up the voice of treason, and invoke an authority disowned; and where, if any conscientious recusant of church-rates had uttered the same plea before the consistory court, he would presently have found himself on the way to the county prison, to afford another illustration of the manner in which conscience is treated by church-law and church-men. But Dr. Merewether pleads conscience in a case in which he ought to have had no conscience-for the election of Dr. Hampden was a foregone conclusion to the man who had sworn to obey the head of the church in everything ecclesiastical; and it seems a marvellous thing to us, a thing that could scarcely have occurred in any other religious community, that, though surrounded by all the pious and learned members of the chapter, no one ventured to remind him, that the plea of conscience came too late, for that the whole fraternity had taken their emoluments upon the terms of implicit obedience to the royal head of the church; and that, if conscience were allowed to rise up there, against both law and conscience, they must either renounce their livings, or go to prison for conscience-sake, like scurvy dissenters and church-rate recusants.

But we must leave this strange and edifying scene in Here

ford cathedral, with the remark, that the sooner the crown or legislature releases the deans and chapters from the humiliation, disgrace, and snare to which this congé d'élire exposes them and the church, the better for all parties. By abolishing the mock election, and making the appointment of bishops a mere act of the crown, reserving to the existing bishops simply the act of consecration, the necessity or the opportunity for such scenes as the world has recently witnessed, would be superseded. As things are managed at present, every one must perceive that the theory of a state-church clashes in innumerable ways with individual conscience, both within and without its fold. Dissenters are immured in jail, while dignitaries are tempted to rebel against the sovereign, or are held up as public examples of immorality; and clergymen of every grade, from the humble curate to the archbishop, writhe under the fetters of state power, which even their pay does not make them wear gracefully or decently. This, however, is not our business, and we should not have noticed it, but for the credit of our common Christianity, which, we think, all parties must admit, is likely to be not a little disparaged by these collisions between the stateconscience and the individual conscience, and which seem to be inseparable from the theory of a state-church. How to harmonize the headship of Christ with the headship of the Queen is the problem.

There is, however, another important view to be taken of this congé d'élire, or mock election of bishops, after they are already irrevocably made by the crown. Something is concealed historically under this French phrase. An election there ought to be, by somebody and of some sort. That is implied by the law and by the practice. But how came the great statesmen and greater reformers ofthe national church, to admit so dangerous and clumsy a fiction to creep into the constitution of their church? The Puseyites and the papists say, with apparent reason and justice, that the election of its bishops has always belonged to the church, and that this congé d'élire only marks the oppression and robbery of the church, by the arch-reformer Henry VIII. ; for that the reality which this only shadows forth, is one of its most ancient rights. But that Henry, who had determined to be a pope himself, and even something more, took the real choice into his own hand, and conceded to the cathedral clergy only the empty form, which he required to sanction and sanctify his sacrilege.

Hence the recent plot laid by the Puseyites in concert, no doubt, with the open Romanists, to re-assert this ancient right of the church, and to place the election of bishops beyond the reach of the monarch's sceptre. But to disturb so clear a right of the sovereign, and so radical a foundation of the protestant

church, required not only a special occasion, but special efforts of the bishops themselves. Dr. Hampden's nomination supplied that occasion, for he was an ultra protestant, and had long laboured under a mala fama, and some of the bishops were known to favour the plan for restoring the election to the church, and they could influence more to try one step towards it--a step that seemed so reasonable, as to oppose an odious man. Thus thirteen bishops attempted to stay the royal prerogative.

Henry of Exeter, in his letter to Lord John Russell, is very intemperate in condemning the congé d'élire, and very haughty in claiming for the church the right of election. Some things he states are true; but then, to produce the proper effect of truth, he should have told the whole truth, which we shall now attempt to do for him.

The crown, at the Reformation, did not claim any power in the nomination of bishops which it had not long previously enjoyed. It only repudiated the sanction of the pope, which had previously been deemed necessary. This, however, was essentially involved in the secession from Rome. But will the Puseyites, with Henry Exeter at their head, tell the people of England, that the clergy had ever enjoyed a free election of their bishops, since the kings of England had agreed to unite the ancient English church to that of Rome, and accept the apostolical succession from the Bishop of Rome? During times of national commotion, bishops had sometimes been appointed by the clergy, and sanctioned by popes, and the pope himself had often taken the initiative, in defiance of the royal prerogative; and sometimes our history presents the spectacle of two bishops contending, vi et armis, for the same see—one elected by the clergy, the other appointed by the crown; or, one by the crown, and another by the pope. Various were the issues of such contests. The true successor of the apostles always being ascertained, either by victorious arms, skilful diplomacy, or the richest presents at Rome, for his consecration. It was the same in every kingdom throughout Christendom. But in times of peace and order, and in the regular course of things, the monarch exercised an undisputed right to name the bishop; the chapters generally assented, and the pope consecrated, or sanctioned the consecration, by his proper officer. Between the king and the pope, the clergy rarely asserted anything beyond the right of a mock election, save when they were in a state of rebellion against the crown, which was, indeed, not unfrequently the case, while they could fall back upon their fealty to their other sovereign at Rome.

But when it is affirmed that the election of the bishops an

ciently belonged to the church, and by our 'blameless' Henry of Exeter (see his own quotation of 1 Tim. iii. 2), that the statute which enforces the nominee of the crown is 'the magna charta of tyranny, the most hateful and tyrannical law which is permitted to pollute our statute book;' we beg leave to suggest, that since the election of bishops has begun to be questioned between the state and the church, and the one side complains of foul oppression, and the other of interference with royal prerogatives, it would be desirable to sift the whole question clear of the rubbish of statutes and councils, congé d'élires and prerogatives, and discover, if we can, the few grains of pure goldthe precious truth Divine, concerning apostolical bishops, amidst the mountains of earthy matter which have so long concealed them. It is very well, in the present case, that sovereign power has been on the side of protestant principle, and has saved the church from the peril of an addition to its Romanizing bishops; but if we understand the history of this whole matter of bishopmaking and choosing, which can date, or ought to date, only from the New Testament, then the crown has no more right to assume it than the deans and chapters. For earlier in history than deans and chapters come the clergy of the diocese, or province, quite a different body from the chapter, and not in any sense represented by the cathedral body. But when we have traced the election of bishops back to the provincial clergy, we have not got quite far enough. For then originates the question, whence did the provincial clergy get the right of choosing the bishop? Have they had it quite from the beginning? Did the New Testament give it to them? Assuredly the earliest history of the church attests, that the bishop was chosen by the people, and that his charge was the people, not the clergy. Who does not know that this is as clear in ecclesiastical history as that there were Christian churches from the days of Paul and Timothy? Who does not know that the disturbances created by those popular elections of bishops, when Christianity had gained posession of the masses, figure upon the page of history as one of its most common facts, being often attended with riots, bloodshed, and outrageous eccentricities of the popular will, which supplied the first occasion for encroachments upon the rights of the people, by their civil rulers. The election of Ambrose, so late as the fourth century, a civilian, made at once a bishop by the will of the people, proves this. When the bishops of individual and independent churches came to have several inferior, or assistant clergy, under them, which was the first step towards metropolitan and diocesan episcopacy, the people had an equal vote with the clergy, and no bishop could be admitted or consecrated to his office, till the people of his church