DIVISION II.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

CHAPTER I.

THE ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

THE church of England is a fragment broken off from the Papal despotism, and erected into an independent national establishment. This schism occurred under Henry VIII., and was brought about by his means. It is one of the most remarkable events in history.

Arthur, prince of Wales, son of Henry VII., having espoused Catharine of Arragon, fourth daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and dying six months afterwards, his brother, subsequently Henry VIII., accepted the hand of the widow, while his sister Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII., married James IV. of Scotland, and transmitted the rights of her descendants to the Stuarts, ultimately raising that family to the throne of England.

Henry VIII. succeeded his father in 1509, at the age of eighteen; made the celebrated Cardinal Wolsey his prime minister; and, possessing abundant resources secured by the parsimony of his father, commenced his reign by indulging in great dissipation, and giving loose reins to his pleasures. Cardinal Wolsey flattered and humored him in his vices, and endeavored to profit by them to secure his own greater elevation and power.

The attention of Henry was engaged by war and diplomacy in turn; and, indignant at the successes of Luther, and the gen

eral interest that was excited throughout Europe by his labors, he entered the lists against him as a champion of the Catholic church. He composed a treatise in defence of the seven sacraments, which was honored by the Pope as fit to rank with the learned and pious treatises of Jerome and Augustine, and for which he received from his holiness the title of the Defender of the Faith. This title is still retained by the English sovereigns, and is an excellent specimen of the absurdity and irregularity with which honorary titles are usually conferred.

In 1527, Henry became enamored of Anne Boleyn, one of the queen's maids-of-honor, and early formed the design of getting rid of his wife and marrying this new favorite. Embracing a favorable opportunity, when the Pope, Clement VII., had a difference with Charles V., emperor of Germany and Catharine's nephew, Henry requested that his existing marriage with Catharine might be annulled. He had serious scruples about its lawfulness, and considered it a violation of the law of Leviticus on the subject. To enlighten the Pope with respect to the law of marriage, the king sent him an original treatise on it, in support of his request. But the Pope had doubts; and, being pressed by Charles V. on one side, and Henry VIII. on the other, was in a strait between the two.

Anxious not to disoblige Henry, and not to offend Charles, he temporized, and found means to delay deciding on the subject, in the hope that the king might change his mind, and overcome his scruples with respect to the lawfulness of his then existing connection.

Henry, irritated by this delay, banished the unfortunate Catharine from his court in 1529, after which the further consideration of his case was transferred from England, where it had been taken up by Papal legate, to Rome. The king was so angry at this that he degraded Cardinal Wolsey, his prime minister and confidential adviser, from his offices, stripped him of his property, and overwhelmed him with disgrace, so that he died the next year, 1530, of a broken heart.

Cranmer, favorable to the reformation, was called to occupy the place of Cardinal Wolsey; and the king, after obtaining from a majority of the principal universities of Europe opinions favorable to his wishes, charged the entire body of the Papal clergy with conspiring against him, and claimed the right to confiscate their vast property and subject them to imprisonment on account of this conspiracy, according to a law on the subject, giving him such power. A convocation was immediately called, and a hundred thousand pounds offered him for a full pardon. He refused to accept it, unless the clergy would acknowledge him supreme head of the church in England. This they did. In this way he obtained the consent of the clergy to acknowledge his supremacy in the church in England.

He then raised Cranmer to be archbishop of Canterbury, obtained from him a divorce from Catharine, had the Papal authority in England formally annulled by parliament, and himself declared supreme head of the English church, with most of the spiritual prerogatives previously of the Pope.

He did not intend to change the church establishment essentially, except to install himself in the office of its Pope, or supreme head.

He, however, regarded the religious orders as his implacable enemies, and took decisive measures to reduce and humble them.

In the mean time, he became disaffected with Anne Boleyn, his new wife; had her suddenly arrested, conveyed to the Tower, and in seventeen days condemned and executed for adultery. The next day he married Jane Seymour, one of her maids-of-honor. During these changes, great religious discontent was excited, several revolts broke out, and thirty thousand malcontents marched from the north of England towards London, with a view to effect a revolution against the king. These rebels, however, were dispersed, and their principal leaders executed. The monks were accused of being secret instigators of this rebellion, and the king determined to crush them entirely, and destroy their religious communities. Parliament passed the necessary measures, and

the principal religious orders were broken up, and their estates seized by the crown, to the amount of a hundred and sixty thousand pounds.

Amidst all these violent proceedings, Henry was a violent and intolerant defender of the principal errors of the church of Rome.

Under his successors, the church of England experienced a variety of fortunes. In 1554 the Roman Catholic system was reëstablished as the religion of the nation, and attempted to be enforced by a bloody persecution, in which three hundred of the anti-Papal party were burned at the stake, including archbishop Cranmer, and bishops Latimer, Hooper and Ridley; but, on Mary's death and the accession of Elizabeth, Protestantism was reëstablished; without any considerable change, however, in the polity of the church, except that the offices and prerogatives of the Pope devolved on the sovereign.

Episcopacy was abolished in 1643, and Presbyterianism adopted in its place, and partially introduced. The state of things continued unsettled during the civil war with Charles I. and the protectorate of Cromwell. But, at the accession of Charles II., Episcopacy was again reëstablished, with the prohi bition of dissent. This continued till the revolution of 1688, which brought William, prince of Orange, to the throne, when a more tolerant policy was pursued with regard to dissent, and dissenting orders allowed.

Some important reforms have been effected in the church of England; but, for the most part, it retains the polity which it had under Henry VIII., and while under the Papal hierarchy.

The government of the church of England is episcopal. It cuts off from the Papal system the Pope, substituting in his place the sovereign of the country, with less ample powers; and also cuts off the religious orders and monastic establishments. These are very great improvements, but they are far from bringing the church back to the primitive apostolic organization. It is constituted after the Roman Catholic model, and might very

properly be called the English Catholic church, in distinction from the Roman Catholic. It is a national church; and is in theory meant to be the only church of the nation.

Its only difference in theory from the Papal church is, that the latter is designed to be the catholic church of the world, while the former is designed to be the catholic church of England.

CHAPTER II.

OFFICERS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

The King or Queen.

THE king, and, in case that a female is the reigning sovereign, the queen, is the supreme head of the church of England, and governs it by archbishops, bishops and presbyters. The king is the virtual Pope or super-archbishop of the English church, and has the supreme control of its affairs. He convenes, prorogues and regulates the general synods or convocations, nominates candidates for vacant bishoprics and certain other ecclesiastical preferments, and receives and issues appeals from all the inferior ecclesiastical courts. Appeals from the archbishops' court to the king are tried by judges whom the king appoints for the purpose, and who are called court delegates. These judges are appointed from the judges of the courts of Westminster and doctors of the civil law, together with several spiritual and temporal lords, in greater or less number, according to the pleasure of the king.

When the king is a party to any ecclesiastical suit, the appeal does not lie to him, as he could not with propriety be made a judge in his own case, but to all the bishops in the kingdom, assembled in the upper house of convocation.

In extraordinary cases the decision of the may be revised by a commission of review.

court of delegates The king grants