own; that doubts are to be cleared up, limits fixed, the great crisis to be decided once for all, so that posterity shall be able to see its way and choose its side. And every age has hitherto proved to be mistaken. A contest is but a step in a deeper, wider, more enduring strife; its settlement one way or the other ends nothing necessarily but the particular dispute. It neither establishes securely, nor finally overthrows, the principles which seemed to be at stake in it. They may survive it : whether they do or not, whether the war may still be hopefully carried on, is seen in history to have depended very little indeed on the issue of solemn arbitrements, and apparently conclusive terminations. In our own case we say that the struggle between the political and ecclesiastical powers has been going on since the Reformation, and seems now at last likely to be decided. Let us take a wider view. Let us consider whether it has not been going on since the Conquest, since the conversion of England, since the conversion of the empire. Let us think whether it is not sure to go on, whatever may happen now, for ages to come; as long as Christian belief and Christian principles work in men's minds. Doubtless we may, by our cowardice, our concessions, or our rashness, indefinitely prejudice the cause of those who come after us. But it may give steadiness and calmness to our minds to recollect, that matters, probably, will not end with our settlements; and that if we act in faith and earnestness, even our mistakes may not be more fatal than our fathers' have been to us.

Again, seeing the struggle from so near, we come insensibly to look on it as a peculiarly English struggle; that the gradual loss of Church power, and narrowing of Church influence, is a peculiar note against the English Church. It may not be consolatory, but it is at least wise and fair, to see how matters stand with the Church in general. Is this circumscription of sphere, and loss of rights, and surrender of principles, confined to England, or confined to the English Church, since the Reformation? What was the prominence and extent of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in France, Italy, or Germany, in the 5th, the 10th, the 15th centuries, compared with what it is now? What has become, in countries of the Roman obedience, of the Church claim to draw to its own tribunals, matters where religious duty and conscience were involved-marriage, oaths, wills, the care of the poor, of widows and orphans, the crimes of ecclesiastical persons? What has become of those exemptions, claimed once, not as privilege, but as rights given by the Christian law, guarded so jealously, protected by excommunication? Where are all those causes decided now, which gave occasion to that vast and

imposing mass of canonical law, once the living rule of Christendom, which attracted to its study, not less the ambition than the subtlety and learning of many centuries? What were the penances which the Church appointed and enforced in the 3d century-what were they in the Frank and Anglo-Saxon penitential canons-and what are the penances which the Roman Church now thinks her people able to bear? What is now, we do not say the spiritual effect of excommunication, or the increased discretion in using so awful an instrument, but the practical feeling of society about it, which gave it its force as a weapon of the Church in former ages? How was a pope's interdict felt under King John, in England? How was it received in Catholic and devout Venice in the 17th century, where, after a total disregard of it for a whole year, by the whole body of the clergy, except three of the orders, the Pope was obliged to content himself with a diplomatic compromise; and his legate's tact was tried in imposing on the reluctant Venetians, not a penance, but an absolution, so private and so informal, that they continued to deny that they had either wanted or received it? What was the feeling of the Church about her property in earlier times, and what were her real powers of guarding it; powers of course dependent on the extent to which her feeling was shared by society at large? And what have been in later times-in Austria, in Tuscany, in Naples, in France, in Spain-we do not say the encroachments of greedy nobles, but the sweeping confiscations of Catholic kings or Catholic governments-and how has the Church judged it expedient to meet it? Has she spoken of excommunication? or, if she has spoken of it, has it not been in a whisper; very unlike, either for dignity or effect, to her awful voice of old? The theory of the deposing power is written in the pages of Bellarmine, and Bellarmine is still one of the greatest doctors of the Roman See-is the case conceivable, in which that power would now be used, to vindicate a right, even to avenge an outrage? Who would have deemed it credible or probable beforehand, that any circumstances should arise, which should make it a question with a pope, whether or no he should endure such a system as that which imposed the 'Organic Articles' on a Church of his obedience? and, it may be added, who could have said, that after such a step, by such an authority, it would be possible ever to retrieve it?

It is not in England only that the Church has withdrawn from ground which she once claimed, that her hold on society has been loosened. In fact, the English Church has retained far more of her ancient position and power than any other of the Western Churches. And let it not be said that the explanation

of this is in her spirit of compromise and their spirit of independence. It has not been by pressing their spiritual claims, and protesting against the world, that they have been deprived of their temporal power. The charge of compromise comes hard from them. Surely the principle of condescension and compromise has been accepted and acted on by the Roman Churches in the most varied forms; in privileges, in indulgences, in dispensations, particular and general, in concordats. It does not follow, because their difficulties are different from ours, that they are entitled to the monopoly of rightful compromise. They have yielded, to avoid breaking with the powers of the world, to secure their concurrence, to retain the means of power. They have yielded, when they could not avoid it, by making that the formally free act of the spiritual power which in reality it was forced to submit to, or risk a schism or a persecution. Acquiescence, guarded by refined reservations, has been the rule; resistance the exception. It has been so, because it seemed to thoughtful and well-intentioned men the best way at the moment of preserving the influence of the Church. And yet, notwithstanding Roman prudence, Roman losses have not been small.

If then we have to bear up against the discouragement of an apparent diminution, steadily and uniformly progressive, of Church influence, it is not our trial only. And if so, there is no wisdom,-even in order to strengthen an argument, or enforce an appeal,-in claiming a monopoly of grievance, or the lowest depth of degradation. But perhaps we misinterpret altogether the apparent law of Divine Providence. Perhaps the right way to look at former liberties and powers of the Church is to view them, not as things sacred in themselves, and meant to be held fast for ever, but as having laid a ground for us, without which we should not now be able to do our work in furthering God's kingdom; and their gradual disappearance, not as significant of the weakening of the Church, but as pointing to the line on which henceforth the Church is to be mainly thrown for its influence; that moral superiority which seems still to have an irresistible hold even on a sceptical and self-relying age,—' by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the 'armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left.' In this respect, and in others also, she seems being thrown back on her earlier days.

To keep in view, practically and vividly, both what is moral and spiritual, and what is political, in that mixed system which upholds and strengthens the Church, is the necessity and the

difficulty of those who have to work for her. It is not so easy to adjust these two lines of thought and action; not so easy for the same mind to follow both, for they naturally attract the interest and sympathy of different classes of minds. In exclusive attention to either there is the danger, on the one hand, of a vague and dreamy hopefulness, or an equally dreamy despair, ruinous to all thought, all effort, all practical truth; and on the other, of a stiff attachment to special points or measures, and a forgetfulness in the bustle and conflict of ecclesiastical business, and the necessary technicalities of theological debates, of the inscrutable mysteries of nature and grace on which they bear. To be dogmatic and not to be verbal-to feel that a remedy or a safeguard may in itself be temporary, and yet for the time indispensable-to appreciate in their full extent the evils and the perils of the day, without losing sight of its real good and its grounds of hope-to bear without flinching, and without glossing them over, uncomfortable facts-to be able to endure the humiliation of an unanswerable retort, or the still greater humiliation of apparent temporising or conniving at evil-to be earnest for a principle, without being the slave of a watchword-finally, to be able, without ceasing to be zealous for the work of to-day, to consider it in the light in which in years to come we shall look back on it,this has been necessary for the defenders of the Church in all former ages, and cannot be less necessary now.

It would be weakness to disguise from ourselves that we have a serious prospect before us. What is now proposed and looked forward to by Churchmen is a change-a change startling to the minds of most men, an anxious one, probably, to all. To bring it about, the usual obstacles to change must be encountered-political suspicion, political dislike, political indolence, political caution; strong adverse precedents understood in the most adverse sense. Still the claim-that what the English Church would have a right to, were she but a sect, she has a right to, as a power in the English State, as the Church, recognised by the English nation,-namely, the right to be really represented, as a Church,-is so strong and so reasonable, that when she makes it in earnest she must be heard. And the change, though great, is in entire harmony with that principle of improvement which has worked so long and widely in England; which does not destroy, but add on; which alters with as little visible change and break as possible; which, leaving what it finds, reinforces what appears too weak,—a principle of compensation and remedy, not of substitution and obliteration. But in making the change, technical difficulties, perhaps great ones, must be anticipated; and difficulties would

not be over with the restoration of the English Synod. Then would come the difficulties of government. And what they have been in the active and influential periods of Church history, as in the days of the Councils, the Schisms, or the Reformation, we, accustomed only to paper controversy, know little.

Doubtless, great difficulties await us, for we have a great duty to perform, and a great stake to win. To expect that a Church, claiming the position, and exercising the power and influence which the English Church does, is to go quietly through an age of thought, and boldness, and jealous watchfulness, without having to meet real difficulties at every step, is to expect what is contrary to that course of things in which the Church, though divine, has to take her part-is contradicted by all her history. It is impossible, without shutting our eyes, that we should not feel the seriousness of the prospect: it is impossible that such a prospect should not raise misgiving and anxiety.

But misgiving is not always so ominous as confidence. 'It is, ' indeed, a season of trial and uncertainty; but the most glorious days of history have dawned in doubt; and it is only what every conquering host has suffered on the morning of victory, 'if England is now spent with exertion, harassed by perplexity, ' and saddened with the recollection of many reverses'-so speaks a politician, looking forward, after a discouraging past, to a future no less replete with fear than with promise,— full of perilous risk, and of the chances of failure, a new era of colonization. It would indeed be a painful contrast if Churchmen should meet their seasons of anxiety with less high and firm a heart, with less steadiness and faith; and that, with such a history as the Church has had. We are sure that we express the feelings of many minds, when we say, that of all the wonders of history, the history of the Church is the strangest. How it has lasted--how ever seeming to fail, it has never failed -how strangely it has seemed to change, yet has remained in spirit and substance the same-how, not through ages like those of Egypt or China, but exposed to the most changeful centuries of history, it has still kept its own faith,-kept it, out of all analogy with that principle of change which seems a law of European society, and with those human changes which the Church underwent itself,-how, we say, this faith, which to human eye seems but opinion or prejudice, has resisted that fluctuation which no opinion or prejudice has been exempt from, and how, again, it has survived trials enough to destroy the firmest belief that was but opinion, trials brought upon it by the evil elements which had gathered round it, and provoked a retribution which threatened more than themselves,-with