Fro PRP EDITOR OP THY "SPECTAT0R."1 Sm, — Anent this question Professor
Maitland (who in his "Roman Canon Law in the Church of England," cap. II., p.86, numbers himself among those "whose object is not to silence
the papist, but to understand a certain tract of old history ") says, cap. IlL, p. 114, of the same work :—
" Too often we speak of 'the Church of England' and forget that there was no ecclesiastically organised body that answered to that name. No tie of an ecclesiastical or spiritual kind bound the bishop of Chichester to the bishop of Carlisle, except that which bound them both to French and Spanish bishops."
What the tie was that bound the Bishop of Chichester to the Bishop of Carlisle, and what the tie is which binds the modern Bishop of Chichester to the modern Bishop of Carlisle, every one knows, and knows, too, that the two ties are distinct and inconsistent. Is it, then, too much to say that the form of the modern Church of England is essentially different from the form of any association of provinces before the Reformation, and that any continuity between the two bodies can be merely material and external ? As for Magna Charts, and the liberties thereby secured to the Ecclesia Anglicana, can there be a doubt that the liberties were the privileges of the clergy, and that Ecclesia Anglicana (sometimes used in the plural) was a convenient term for the clergy in England, and did not include the laity ? Accordingly it falls fax short of the Spectator's view of the Church of England.—I am, Sir, &c., St. Charles' House, Brentwood. EDWARD J. WATSON.
[It is admitted by all lawyers that the Church of England is not a corporation. This, of course, does not prevent the
Church of England being a true Church, and part of the Universal and Catholic Church of Christ, but it should prevent the Archbishop of York from speaking as if the Church were an artificial person, in whose name he or other ecclesiastics could act. The only body which can legally act for the Church of England is the High Court of Parliament—including the Sovereign—or the Sovereign alone in certain eases prescribed by statute. The Sovereign, who is "in all causes ecclesiastical as well as civil within these his dominions supreme," acts, of course, through and by the Courts of Law. The Supremacy makes the ecclesiastical as well as the civil Courts in the last resort his Courts. In truth, the Church of England consists of all the baptised persons in the realm. Of these, some are conforming and some nonconforming, but both have rights, for the law has never "unchurched" the Noncon- formists. The Church of England is a National Church and not an episcopal sect.—En. Spectator.]
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