sincerely desirous of perfecting the reformation of the Church of England, repeatedly exerted themselves to carry into completion the work commenced by Edward. The readers of D'Ewes, Strype, and the Parliamentary History, must often have remarked the frequency with which the Commons appointed committees to revise Edward's code, and the urgency with which they pressed that it might be passed into statute, and thus so far reform the grievances so loudly complained of, from the anomalous condition of a professedly Protestant Church being still regulated by Papal canons and constitutions. Elizabeth, however, and her prelates, had no desire to see a code of laws enacted which should deprive the one of the advantage of being able to turn all the glorious uncertainties of law' in favour of her own schemes, or defraud the other of the personal benefits to be derived from a corrupt code, especially as both the one and the others knew well that a compliant judicial bench would, in every instance in which its aid should be required, decide in their favour.

The Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum,' therefore, remained at the demise of Elizabeth as it had done at the death of her brother, and no attempt has been since made to form a code of canon law for the Southern Establishment.* In consequence, therefore, of the clause already recited in the Act of Submission, such canons, constitutions, ordinances, provincial and synodal, as (in the reign of Henry VIII.) were then already made, and were neither contrary to the laws, statutes, or customs of the realm, nor injurious to the king's prerogative royal, remain till this day part and parcel of the ecclesiastical law of England. It is to this provision,' says Dr Cardwell,† that the Church of England is indebted for the interest it still possesses in the constitutions of popes, and the ordinances of Papal councils, and for that peculiar darkness that still continues to brood over ecclesiastical laws.'

But this is not the only dark and antique code of which the Southern Establishment claims the benefit. It was not enough to have imported the laws of Rome papal into a Protestant kingdom, -similar honour must be done, as we shall immediately see, to Rome pagan, by introducing its laws into a Christian church. The ecclesiastical law of England,' says Burn, is compounded of these four main ingredients, the civil law, the canon law, the common law, and the statute law. When these laws do interfere and cross each other, the order of preference is this: the civil law submitteth

• Those who would examine the provisions of the unfinished code of Edward, will find much information in Collier's Eccl. Hist., Barham's edition. See Index, under the title, Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum.'

Synodalia, i. pref. vii, n.

Ecclesiastical Law, i. pref. i.

to the canon law, both of them to the common law, and all the three to the statute law.'

Burn shows at length what is meant by all these laws. By the civil law,' he says, is meant the laws of the ancient (heathen and Popish) Romans; and generally, the whole civil law in use at the present day is comprised in those four books of Justinian,-the Code, the Digest, the Institute, and the Novells,' along with the Theodosian Code,' to which he had previously referred. The canon law, again, according to the same authority, consists of the decrees, decretals, and extravagants of the popes, with the legatine constitutions of his representatives in England, particularly Otho and Othobon, and the provincial constitutions of the archbishops of Canterbury, from Stephen Langton to Henry Chichley. • The business upon this head,' in order to apply these complicated and cumbrous authorities to actual cases as they occur, must be,' says Burn, to inquire first what is the canon law, and then to find out how far the same was received here before the said statute (25 H. VIII., c. 19), and then to compare the same with the common law, and with the statute (law), and with the law concerning the king's prerogative, (which also is part of the common law,) and from these will come out the genuine law of the church.' Church? The kingdom of Christ, which is not of this world? Verily, it does not present a very heavenly aspect if we may judge of it by its laws. Oh what a glorious field is here for pettifogging and chicanery! What a very deodand to certain lords we know of would be this mass of conflicting rubbish, (were it but the ecclesiastical law of Scotland), to overwhelm our Church with adverse decisions. The universal cry in England is against the scandalous dilatoriness' of the ecclesiastical courts. Our only astonishment is, that they should ever be able to arrive at a decision at all.

The third source of Anglican ecclesiastical law, says Burn, is ⚫ the common law, which is so called because it is the common municipal law or rule of justice throughout the kingdom.' The origin of this law he explains to have been, that each tribe and race, Celtic, British, Saxon, Scandinavian, and Norman, which at any time inhabited the land, introduced its own laws and customs, and engrafted these upon the institutions and laws of the kingdom. The product of all these laws and customs collected, not in written statutes, but in precedents and established usage, constitute the common law, which also is part of the code of the church. The last part, and the strongest, of the ecclesiastical code of England is the statute law, viz., that which is embodied in acts of Parliament. These,' says Burn, are the constituent parts of the English

ecclesiastical law as practised and exercised in the ecclesiastical courts.'

We have neither time nor space, nor yet is it necessary, to show how essentially diverse, how diametrically opposed to this code, is that which obtains in the Church of Scotland. All the canons and constitutions of councils, popes, and legates we swept away at the Reformation, and proclaimed the Bible, the Bible alone, as interpreted by our own courts, to be the only law of the Church. Our constitution, perfect in all its parts, our standards of doctrine, discipline, government, and worship drawn from the living fountain of heaven's own truth,-these we framed for ourselves without aid or countenance from, in very contradiction to, the kingdoms of this world. As a Church of Christ, possessed of all the rights and immunities of an independent kingdom, we entered into an alliance with the state. We were at the first free, and we surrendered nothing at the union. Our persons and properties we left, as before, to be regulated by the laws of the land, but our consciences, our faith, our whole ecclesiastical economy, we had neither the right nor the permission to surrender-and we did not surrender them. Our fathers drew a line of demarcation, broad and deep, between the church and the state. We did not identify them as was done in England, according to the celebrated simile or illustration of Hooker. The church, in every thing spiritual, is as free from the control of the state as the state, in every thing temporal, is from that of the church.

*

From this simple statement, which shows the absolute and irreconcilable diversity that exists between the constitution of our Church and the Church of England, it is manifest that no analogy can be drawn from the one which can be made at all to affect the other, and that no man who understands the subject will ever attempt to derive any maxims of legislation or authorities of decisions from what obtains, or ever obtained, in England which can be made to bear upon the question which at present distracts this country.

Instead of dwelling farther, at present, upon this line of observation, we conceive we shall afford more instruction and gratifica

• ، We hold that, seeing there is not any man a member of the Church of England but the same man is also a member of the Commonwealth; nor any man a member of the Commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England; there. fore, as in a figure triangular the base doth differ from the sides thereof, and yet one and the self-same line is both a base and also a side; a side simply, a base if it chance to be the bottom and underlie the rest: so, albeit properties and actions of one kind do cause the name of a commonwealth, qualities and functions of another sort the name of a church, to be given unto a multitude; yet one and the self-same multitude may in such sort be both, and is so with us, that no person appertaining to the one can be denied to be also of the other.'-Eccl. Pol. b. viii. c. 1. sect. 3; Keble's ed., vol. iii. P. 1, pp. 411, 412.

tion to our readers by showing the forms observed in the Church of England in conferring orders and inducting into benefices. We shall take the candidate for deacon's orders just when he has finished his studies at either of the great universities, without making any allusion to those who have studied at Durham, St Bees, Lampeter, or the Isle of Man; and we confine ourselves also to those who are to occupy parochial cures, without making any reference to those who are appointed to cathedral or collegiate preferments.

The first thing required of the candidate is, that he obtain what is termed a title to orders.' This consists of a species of presentation, addressed to the bishop of the diocese, by the incumbent who bestows the title; it intimates that the candidate has been appointed to serve as curate in a particular cure, and promises, on the part of the incumbent, to bestow upon him the legal stipend. The next thing required is, that the candidate obtain a certificate of moral character from his college, or, if some time have elapsed since he left college, from three beneficed clergymen, whose testimonial must be countersigned by their respective bishops, if their cures are not situated in the diocese in which the candidate has received his appointment. The third step is, that an instrument, technically termed Si quis, very similar to our edict, should be read during the time of divine service in the church in which the candidate statedly worships, with an attestation from the minister and a church warden that it was publicly read. The fourth requisite is, that he obtain a certificate from the divinity professor of the university at which he studied, testifying that he attended the prescribed course of lectures. And finally, he must procure a certificate of baptism from his parish register, signed by the clergyman by whom it was administered.

Having possessed himself of these documents, the candidate writes to the bishop of the diocese, at least three months before the time fixed for ordination, although it is enough if the documents are transmitted three weeks before that period, unless the bishop should require that they be sent earlier. In his letter of application the candidate must state his age, college, academical degree, and the usual place of his residence, together with the names of any persons of respectability to whom he is best known, and to whom the bishop may apply if he thinks fit concerning him; and in due time he will be informed by the bishop's secretary when and where to attend for examination.

In examination the bishop is the absolute judge of the candidate's literary qualifications, and may reject or sustain solely on his own conscientious sense of responsibility, without prohibition from, or appeal to, any other judge, court, or authority whatsoever. This is the statement of Burn, Blackstone, Nelson, Gibson, Watson,

and all the authorities we have had an opportunity of consulting.* Besides, although we have not found it mentioned in so many terms in any work we have consulted, we infer from cases which have come under our own observation, as well as from manifold passages in works of standard authority, that the prelate is as absolute a judge of moral character and fitness as of literary qualification. At all events, it is a ruled point that he is not bound to assign any reason whatever for rejection, and that in the matter of conferring orders he is under no secular control. It is perfectly true, as we shall show in the sequel, that when a qualified man, viz. one in full orders, is presented to a benefice, the prelate, if he refuse to institute him, is under very stringent superintendence from the secular courts. But in the matter of conferring orders, which is the proper point of comparison between an Anglican prelate and one of our presbyteries, the prelate has the most decided advantage according to the recent exposition of our laws. In conferring orders, the prelate is as unfettered as is a presbytery in granting licence to a preacher.

Having passed his examination to the satisfaction of the bishop, or his examining chaplain, and every thing else having been found satisfactory, the candidate is instructed to present himself for orders on the day appointed for that purpose; and having been ordained deacon, according to the form set down in the prayer-book, and received the bishop's licence, he is empowered to preach, baptise, and assist the priest in distributing the elements in the Lord's

supper.

Having been in deacon's orders a twelvemonth, the party is entitled to apply to be made priest. If, as almost always happens, he applies to the bishop that made him deacon, he requires to transmit only a testimonial of character, and notice of si quis as before. But should he apply to another, which very seldom happens, he 'must, in the first instance, state the particular circumstances which occasion the application, the curacy which he served, and for what period,' and transmit a copy of the same documents as when made deacon. He attends at the appointed term, is examined, if he appears before another bishop than the one who ordained him deacon that is if the prelate sees fit-is ordained priest, and is now qualified to preach, administer both sacraments, grant absolution, and perform all the ministerial functions.†

It may be as well here to notice, that, as it is evident that the intention of those statesmen with whom our Church has recently had so much to do, has been to assimilate the Church of Scotland to the Church of England, so they all profess that they will leave our presbyteries in possession of the same power to judge of literary qualification with which the Anglican prelate is invested.

Our principal authority for the preceding account is Instructions for the use of Candidates for Holy Orders, and of the Parochial Clergy.' By Christopher Hodgson, Secretary to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, 5th ed. 1838.