it was objected that a power to bind and to loose, altogether
distinct from temporal power, had been given by our Lord to his
apostles, some theologians of this school replied that the power
to bind and to loose had descended, not to the clergy, but to the
whole body of Christian men, and ought to be exercised by the
chief magistrate as the representative of the society. When it
was objected that Saint Paul had spoken of certain persons whom
the Holy Ghost had made overseers and shepherds of the faithful,
it was answered that King Henry was the very overseer, the very
shepherd whom the Holy Ghost had appointed, and to whom the
expressions of Saint Paul applied.3

These high pretensions gave scandal to Protestants as well as to
Catholics; and the scandal was greatly increased when the
supremacy, which Mary had resigned back to the Pope, was again
annexed to the crown, on the accession of Elizabeth. It seemed
monstrous that a woman should be the chief bishop of a Church in
which an apostle had forbidden her even to let her voice be
heard. The Queen, therefore, found it necessary expressly to
disclaim that sacerdotal character which her father had assumed,
and which, according to Cranmer, had been inseparably joined, by
divine ordinance, to the regal function. When the Anglican
confession of faith was revised in her reign, the supremacy was
explained in a manner somewhat different from that which had been
fashionable at the court of Henry. Cranmer had declared, in
emphatic terms, that God had immediately committed to Christian
princes the whole cure of all their subjects, as well concerning
the administration of God's word for the cure of souls, as
concerning the administration of things political.4 The
thirty-seventh article of religion, framed under Elizabeth,