was done to break the uninterrupted succession of the Archbishopric of Canterbury.'

We have tried to make it clear that the Church of England is not, in any sense as understood and represented by Liberationists, established by law; but that if there be any sense in which she may be said to be established by law, it is only as to her external civil corporate life, and in her relations to the State, in the sense that any ancient institution in the kingdom, of which King, Lords, Commons, and people were from the earliest date in their private and official capacity members, can be said to be established by law. That is, she was recognized as a spiritual society and organization, having nothing contrary to the aims and interests of the civil power, and that, as such, she was from time to time sanctioned and upheld by the laws of the land, and safe-guarded in the possession of her rights, privileges, jurisdiction, and property by law, and her own codes of ecclesiastical law were sanctioned by the State by its common and written civil law.

But why should Liberationists and others object to the Church, or to any other institution, because it is thus established by law? Surely there is nothing in the sanction of law to make a good institution bad, or a bad institution good! How can the institution of the Church be morally or spiritually the better or the worse in consequence of its possessing the sanction of law, or because of her law being externally interwoven with the civil law? The fact is-and the summing up of the whole matter is that the Church was, by her own inherent spiritual power, established according to law, and with the sanction of law, but not by the agency of law. Liberationists seem to think that if they can only associate anything in the name of religion with law,' they have succeeded in attaching a stigma to it, and in prejudicing it in the eyes of the public. Now we entirely fail to see, as they allege, that the creation of new bishoprics, the formation of new parishes, the building of churches, and the carrying out of Church discipline simply according to law, can be anything morally or spiritually the worse because they are in any way associated with law, and are in more or less direct or indirect relationship to law. The provisional sanction and help of law are necessary to the giving of legal expression and enforcement to anything in the State, whatever may be its nature. Dissenters themselves certify their chapels for worship 'by law.' They register them for marriages 'by law.' Marriages take place in them 'by law.' They put their chapels in trust by law.' They formulate and schedule their creeds in the trust deeds, and have

the doctrines therein set forth interpreted by law.' 'By law they meet together for public worship. In their communities they exercise discipline on their members and ministers 'by law.' Their chapels are exempt from rates and taxes and the interference of the Charity Commissioners 'by law.' 'By law' their ministers, by reason of their official religious capacity, are exempt from the performance of many public duties to which other citizens are liable. And 'by law Dissenting ministers officiate at marriages, funerals, &c.1 So that, if to be able to attach the words 'by law' to any institution or person be to fix odium upon it in the eyes of the religious public, Dissenters certainly have a full share of any such supposed odium proceeding from the words by law.' When the opponents of the Church say that her discipline is 'prescribed by law,' without making any statement qualifying such an assertion, the ordinary reader would naturally conclude that Parliament itself originated, drew up, and legislatively embodied, the law of the Church's discipline. Now all this is not only contrary to patent facts, with which a mere child-student in Church matters ought to be familiar, but it is simply absurd. Of course there is a limited sense in which the laws and discipline of the Church may be said to be prescribed by law, just as the rules and regulations of any corporate or other body requiring a special Act of Parliament, or protected by the provisions of a general Act of Parliament, may be said to be prescribed by law. But it is evident that the legal prescription by Parliament of the observance of the rules and regulations of such a body could only be made with reference to such rules and regulations as the society might be willing to bind itself to the observance of, and not only with its consent, but on its prayer. So, with reference to the canons and constitutions, they were, for the most part, in existence long before there was a Parliament—at least a Parliament in its present constitution. The laws which constitute the disciplinary code of the Church of England did not originate with Parliament. They have been the gradual growth of many centuries, the Church in various periods of her history, from her experience and knowledge, adding to them, modifying, amending, or altering them, as may have seemed to her good so to do. Some of the most fundamental laws originated in apostolic and primitive times, others having their sources in diocesan and provincial synods, or in general

1 For a list of some of the principal Acts of Parliament by which Dissent in these particulars is 'established by law,' see The Established Church Question: How to deal with it, sections 2 and 17.

Church Councils, from the earliest period of the Church's history. Acts of Parliament do but give legal sanction and authority to them, just as, on the same principle, though not exactly in the same way, they would give legal sanction and authority to the rules and regulations of any Dissenting body.

Having thus endeavoured to clear the ground, so far as the alleged establishment of the Church of England by law is concerned, we have now to inquire what the Liberation Society means, aims at, and seeks to accomplish, by the proposed Act of Parliament Disestablishment. And here we would remark that it means and intends that the State should by law take away from the Church that which the State neither by law nor by any other means gave. While we do not pretend to catalogue all the consequences of proposed Disestablishment, we may indicate some of them. By an Act of Disestablishment it is proposed to enact that on and after a given day the ancient National Church of England shall, as now legally recognized, be entirely abolished; that her parochial and diocesan organizations, so far as they are known to the ecclesiastical or civil law, shall be dissolved; that all ecclesiastical laws shall be repealed, and ecclesiastical courts done away with; that the clergy shall be released from the performance of their ministerial and parochial duties; that the bishops shall be released from any legal obligation to perform the duties and obligations which relate to their episcopal office, and that neither the bishops nor the clergy shall thenceforth be recognized by the law in their religious and ecclesiastical offices as representatives of the Church of England; that no ecclesiastical rubric, canon, constitution, creed, prescribed order of service, or rules of discipline as they now exist, as capable of enforcement by ecclesiastical and civil law, shall be in any way legally binding upon any bishop, minister, or layman of the Church, and shall cease to have the sanction of the law; that the ecclesiastical constitution of the Church herself, as it now exists, shall be dissolved; that neither by the Act of Parliament disestablishing the Church, nor by any charter granted under the proposed Act, or subsequently to the Act, shall the new Church that may be re-formed and reorganized out of the disintegrated and scattered fragments, nor any central body representing the Church, be recognized; that the bishops shall be removed from the House of Lords and shall be deprived of every right or privilege now attaching to their ecclesiastical status and office, and that the clergy shall forfeit every right and privilege which they possess as belonging to their office, and be reduced before the law to the position of

laymen; that the whole laity shall be deprived against their will of their Mother Church of England as they and their forefathers for hundreds of years before them have known her, and that they shall be robbed of all the spiritual rights and blessings involved in her existence and connected with her ministrations as the National and Established Church of England. Such are some of the results which the Liberation Society aims at accomplishing by its proposed scheme of Disestablishment, and such are some of the alleged advantages to Church and State which it dangles before the eyes of Churchmen and Englishmen, in its Case for Disestablishment, as reasons why they should support its enforcement upon Churchmen by Parliamentary legislation. The Liberation Society attempts to support and urge its case by advancing the well-known, worn-out stock arguments which have been as often exposed and refuted as they have been repeated, and which it would be mere waste of time and space to enumerate, much less to demolish, in these pages. Those of our readers who may be interested in the statement and refutation of such arguments will find them catalogued in order, and fully dealt with in publications, which the Liberation Society has never attempted to reply to, and which it appears to have overlooked in the preparation of its Case.' The part of the Case 'which proposes Disendowment will be dealt with in a subsequent article.

ART. X.-THE REVISED VERSION OF THE

OLD TESTAMENT.

The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments translated out of the Original Tongues: being the Version set forth A.D. 1611 compared with the most Ancient Authorities and Revised. (Oxford and Cambridge, 1885.)

TUESDAY, May 19, 1885, marks an epoch in the history of the English Bible. Whatever may be the final destiny of the Revised Version: whether, after exciting an ephemeral interest, it shall be relegated to the limbo of forgotten books; or whether it shall take its place side by side with the 'Authorized' Version as a kind of critical companion and compen

1 See The Englishman's Brief on behalf of his National Church and The Established Church Question: How to deal with it.

dious commentary; or whether, after some half century of friendly rivalry, it shall supersede that Version in public and private use, by virtue of its greater fidelity of rendering and lucidity of expression; it cannot be denied that a noble and thankworthy endeavour has at length been brought to a conclusion.

It will be interesting briefly to recall the origin of the work. Fifteen years ago, on February 10, 1870, Bishop Wilberforce, of Winchester, moved in the Upper House of the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury that a Committee of both Houses should be appointed to report upon the desirableness of a Revision of the Authorized Version of the New Testament. The proposition was seconded by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, and on the motion of the late Bishop of Llandaff (Dr. Ollivant), seconded by the late Bishop of S. David's (Dr. Thirlwall), it was extended to include the Old Testament as well as the New.1

The Report of the joint Committee was presented to the Upper House on May 3, embodied in the following resolutions:

'I. That it is desirable that a revision of the Authorized Version of the Holy Scriptures be undertaken.

2. That the revision be so conducted as to comprise both marginal renderings and such emendations as it may be found necessary to insert in the text of the Authorized Version.

3. That in the above resolutions we do not contemplate any new translation of the Bible, or any alteration of the language, except where in the judgment of the most competent scholars such change is necessary.

4. That in such necessary changes, the style of the language employed in the existing version be closely followed.

5. That it is desirable that Convocation should nominate a body of its own members to undertake the work of revision, who shall be at liberty to invite the co-operation of any eminent for scholarship, to whatever nation or religious body they may belong.' 2

This Report was discussed, adopted, and communicated to the Lower House, by which it was discussed and adopted on May 5.3 A Committee, consisting of eight members from each House, was appointed, which met on May 25, framed a body of General Principles or Rules for the conduct of the work (which may be found in the Revisers' Preface to the New

1 The debate on the motion may be found in the Chronicle of Convocation for 1870, pp. 74 ff. 3 Ibid. pp. 328 ff.

2 Chronicle, pp. 209 ff.