meddle with and govern what she professes to believe and teach, or
that the proper and natural persons to deal with theological questions
are the class set apart to teach and maintain her characteristic
belief. Whatever may ultimately become of these assumptions, they
unquestionably represent the ideas which have been derived from the
earliest and the uniform practice of the Christian Church, and are held
by most even of the sects which have separated from it. To any one who
does not look upon the English Church as simply a legally constituted
department of the State, like the army or navy or the department of
revenue, and believes it to have a basis and authority of its own,
antecedent to its rights by statute, there cannot but be a great
anomaly in an arrangement which, when doctrinal questions are pushed to
their final issues, seems to deprive her of any voice or control in the
matters in which she is most interested, and commits them to the
decision, not merely of a lay, but of a secular and not necessarily
even Christian court, where the feeling about them is not unlikely to
be that represented by the story, told by Mr. Joyce, of the eminent
lawyer who said of some theological debate that he could only decide it
"by tossing up a coin of the realm." The anomaly of such a court can
hardly be denied, both as a matter of theory and--supposing it to
matter at all what Church doctrine really is--as illustrated in some
late results of its action. It is still more provoking to observe, as
Mr. Joyce brings out in his historical sketch, that simple carelessness
and blundering have conspired with the evident tendency of things to
cripple and narrow the jurisdiction of the Church in what seems to be
her proper sphere. The ecclesiastical appeals, before the Reformation,
were to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction alone. They were given to the
civil power by the Tudor legislation, but to the civil power acting, if
not by the obligation of law, yet by usage and in fact, through
ecclesiastical organs and judges. Lastly, by a recent change, of which