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Bishopric, it is then added, is supplied by the Prussian King; and he is to be entitled, with the English Crown, to a right of alternate nomination to the See.

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To the article in which these statements are contained, and which itself appears to proceed from authority, are added two formal proclamations, signed by a Minister of the Prussian Crown, in which the Bishopric is plainly alluded to as an important instrument in the "development of the German Evangelical Church;" and the concurrence of the British Crown is alleged in this scheme for securing in all future times" to the Evangelical Church of the German nation, as "the mother of all Evangelical Confessions, in the land of "the origin of Christianity, rights commensurate to its dignity and greatness, beside the Latin and Greek Churches." The maintenance of the German Protestant Confession of Faith and Liturgy is also declared.

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To this, which is the foreign view of the transaction, may be added the following advertisement, which has appeared (seemingly by authority) in the English papers.

"BISHOPRIC OF THE

UNITED CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND

IN JERUSALEM.

"His Majesty the King of Prussia having sent a special Envoy to seek the co-operation of her Majesty's Government in endeavouring to obtain for Protestant Christians in the Turkish dominions privileges similar to those enjoyed by the Greek, Latin, and Armenian Churches, and by the Jews; and having also applied to his Grace the Primate of all England, whose attention had been for some time directed to that object, to consecrate a Bishop, who might reside in the City of Jerusalem, as the representative of the Reformed Church, and protector of its interests; it has been determined, after mature deliberation, and with her Majesty's consent, to consecrate a Bishop of the United Church of England and Ireland in Jerusalem. The duty of the Bishop will be to superintend the English clergy and congregations in Syria, Chaldea, Egypt, and Abyssinia, and such other Protestant bodies as may hereafter place themselves under his episcopal care, and be admitted into communion with his Church; to direct the efforts now making in those countries for the conversion of the Jews; and to enter into relations of amity

with the bishops of the ancient Churches of the East.* Towards the endowment of the bishopric his Majesty the King of Prussia has already devoted the sum of £15,000, yielding a clear interest of £600 per annum, as one-half of the income of the Bishop. The funds required in addition are to be raised in this country by voluntary contributions," &c.

To these statements, others of a similar character, though of less authority, might be added; but these are enough, and more than enough, to furnish a topic for this letter.

Your knowledge of ecclesiastical history has taught you the difference between the English and Foreign Reformations; your sense of Catholic truth forms the ground of your attachment to the Church of England; you have never heard before of the intimate relations between us and Prussian Protestantism; you are ignorant of the existence of any "Reformed Church" which an English Bishop can represent, except the Church of England: and therefore you may well be perplexed and grieved by such announcements as these.

In these feelings, let me assure you, many others so earnestly participate, that, notwithstanding the great and varied excitement which I have of late years witnessed in our Church, I apprehend, from the character which has been given to this design, consequences far more serious to our internal unity and strength than any which have yet occurred. I speak of "the character which has been given to this design," not of the design itself, nor of any substantive measure likely to arise out of it;-not of the design itself, because as yet the number of our Bishops-notwithstanding what has been said above of the heads of our Church-of our Clergy, and our Laity, who are acquainted with the specific Articles upon which the scheme is based, is, I believe, extremely small;

* The relations of an English Bishop to the Eastern Churches in matters of doctrine, do not form any part of the subject of this Letter. I may observe, however, that the antiquity of these Bodies is not in question, but their orthodoxy and Catholicity. Bodies holding any doctrine condemned by the first four General Councils are, in our law, heretical; and, an English Bishop will, of course, take care that he does not involve himself in their guilt. [It is to be wished that the letter commendatory which is given in the Appendix III. had been more explicit in the description of the bodies to which it is addressed.]

and therefore, startling as it may appear, the Church of England, which is to support so strange a character in the proposed drama, knows the part which she is to play only from the hand-bills which announce it to the public. Nor do I speak of substantive measures as likely to cause disunion amongst us, because I hope to point out reasons why measures of such a tendency cannot be adopted.

But here you will probably be disposed to cut me short, by asking, whether I deny the facts that the Bishopric at Jerusalem rests upon the provisions of an act of the British Parliament,—that the Crown of Prussia has been a principal agent in procuring its establishment, has given liberally towards its endowment, and hereafter is to have an alternate right of nomination to it. Of these facts, indeed, I question none. What, then, you will say, remains undone, and how can I think it worth while disputing any longer upon a question, the main outlines of which are so clearly laid down? If I object, I may protest; and if I think our Church has forfeited her catholicity by this act, I am bound as a catholic to leave her; but to sit down, in order by reservations and distinctions, to quibble a way out of the difficulty into which we have fallen, is, you may think, an idle and unworthy expedient.

To this view my reply is contained in the following pages; in which I propose to show you, not what the Jerusalem Bishopric is designed and wished to be by its promoters, nor what is the tenor of its secret articles, (for these are matters for those to show whose measure it is), but what by the constitutional laws of this Church and Realm it cannot be, and thus to enable you to test by something more solid than the diplomatic theories of foreigners, or the private inclinations of individuals amongst ourselves, the true character of the

measure.

For this purpose you must bear with me while I rehearse the history of some transactions which may be considered introductory to the Act of Parliament, under the permissive provisions of which the new Bishop has been consecrated. You must also submit with patience to other details; and lastly, I must beg you throughout to remember, that,

when Bishop Alexander is mentioned, I refer to him, not as an individual, for in this capacity I know nothing of him, but as the Bishop whose case as Bishop is under consideration.

The Church of England, as you know, claims the succession of its orders by regular descent from the Apostles, and so altogether upon a spiritual authority antecedent to, and unaffected by, the events of the Reformation. And whatever may be objected to us on the score of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, Henry the Eighth himself allowed, "As to spiritual things, meaning by them the Sacraments, being by God ordained as instruments of efficacy and strength, whereby grace is of His infinite goodness conferred upon His people; forasmuch as they be no worldly nor temporal things, they have no worldly nor temporal head, but only Christ that did institute them, by whose ordinance they be ministered here by mortal men, elect, chosen, and ordered as God hath willed for that purpose, who be the Clergy."*

But I need not remind you that the transmission of holy orders, in itself of divine institution, has from the earliest times of the Church been subjected to conditions of Christian prudence and ecclesiastical discipline. The faith of the candidates, their morals, their age and outward quality, their loyalty, the consent of their ecclesiastical superiors, and other particulars, have been made in all churches, at various times, the subjects of canons and civil constitutions.

In the Church of England this has been the case as well as elsewhere, and without troubling you, at this point, with details which will come in more properly hereafter, it is enough to state that, for many years before the year 1784, no man could be admitted to Holy Orders in the Church of England without taking an oath of allegiance to the English Crown. In the last named year, however, circumstances occurred to cause an alteration in this rule. The United States of America had become separated from the mother country: and since, by an odious policy, they had been left

* Letter of Henry VIII. touching his title. See Wilkins' Concilia, iii. 764.

destitute of Bishops while British Colonies, it became necessary to resort to England for a continuation of their orders.

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The condition of the oath of allegiance, however, was one to which it was impossible that foreign citizens should submit. And so an Act* was passed which recited that there were "divers persons, subjects or citizens of countries out of his Majesty's dominions, inhabiting and residing within the said "countries, who professed the public worship of Almighty "God according to the Liturgy of the Church of England, "and were desirous that the Word of God should continue "to be adminstered unto them according to the said Liturgy, "by subjects or citizens of the said countries, ordained according to the form of ordination in the Church of England," and then proceeded to enact that the Bishop of London for the time being, or some other Bishop by him appointed, might ordain foreigners to be deacons and priests for the purposes aforesaid, without requiring them to take the oath of allegiance.

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The Americans being however desirous to possess, not the priesthood only, but also the episcopate, and preferring, as it appears, the Anglican to the Scotch branch (then sadly oppressed), although they had already obtained one Bishop of Scottish consecration, procured the further legal impediments which bore upon this point to be removed, by an Act+ passed in the year 1786, which recited, that " by the laws of "this realm no person could be consecrated to the office of "a Bishop without the king's licence for his election to that "office, and the royal mandate under the great seal for his "confirmation and consecration; and that every person who "should be consecrated to the said office was required to' "take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and also the "oath of due obedience to the Archbishop; and that there "were divers persons, subjects or citizens of countries out of

* 24 Geo. 3, c. 35.

† 26 Geo. 3, c. 84. [It may well be questioned whether some parts of the preamble of this statute were not introduced for the purpose of riveting upon the Church fetters which the law had never before so absolutely imposed. To examine this fully, however, would require a more lengthened discussion than can here be entered into.]

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