what may possibly be, without any fault in the judges, a fatally
mischievous construction of the text and letter of her authoritative
documents. In the next place, no one can fail to see, no one in fact
affects to deny, that the general result of these recent decisions,
capricious as their conclusions look at first sight, has been to make
the Formularies mean much less than they were supposed to mean. The
tendency of every English court, appealed to not as a court of equity
but one of criminal jurisdiction, is naturally to be exacting and even
narrow in the interpretation of language. The general impression left
by these cases is that the lines of doctrine in the English Church are
regarded by the judicial mind as very faint, and not much to be
depended upon; and that these judgments may be the first steps in that
insensible process by which the unpretending but subtle and powerful
engine of interpretation has been applied by the courts to give a
certain turn to law and policy; applied, in this instance, to undermine
the definiteness and certainty of doctrine, and in the end, the
understanding itself which has hitherto existed between the Church and
the State, and has kept alive the idea of her distinct basis,
functions, and rights.

This is the view of matters which arises from an examination of the
proceedings contained in this volume. What is the argument urged in the
Historical Introduction to justify or recommend our acquiescence in it?
It seems to us to consist mainly in a one-sided and exaggerated
statement of the Supremacy claimed and brought in by Henry VIII., and
of the effect in theory and fact which it ought to have on our notion
of the Church and of Church right. The complaint of the present state
of things is, that those who may be taken to represent the interests of
the Church in such a matter as the character of her teaching are
practically excluded from having any real influence in the decision of