more full with regard to these latter branches of power than with
regard to legislation. There had been in the Church, from its
first existence as a spiritual society, a right to govern, to
decide, to adjudge for spiritual purposes; that was a true,
self-governing authority; but it was not properly jurisdiction. It
naturally came to be included, or rather enfolded, in the term,
when for many centuries the secular arm had been in perpetual
co-operation with the tribunals of the Church. The thing to be
done, and the means by which it was done, were bound together; the
authority and the power being always united in fact, were treated
as an unity for the purposes of law. As the potentate possessing
not the head but the mouth or issue of a river, has the right to
determine what shall pass to or from the sea, so the State,
standing between an injunction of the Church and its execution,
had a right to refer that execution wholly to its own authority.

There was not contained or implied in such a doctrine any denial
of the original and proper authority of the Church for its own
self-government, or any assertion that it had passed to and become
the property of the Crown. But that authority, though not in its
source, yet in its exercise, had immersed itself in the forms of
law; had invoked and obtained the aid of certain elements of
external power, which belonged exclusively to the State, and for
the right and just use of which the State had a separate and
independent responsibility, so that it could not, without breach
of duty, allow them to be parted from itself. It was, therefore, I
submit, an intelligible and, under given circumstances, a
warrantable scheme of action, under which the State virtually
said: Church decrees, taking the form of law, and obtaining their
full and certain effect only in that form, can be executed only as