bishopric of Canterbury and the possessions of the same entirely, as well the spiritualties as the temporalities thereof, only of Your Majesty and of the Crown Royal of this your Realm" (quoted in Lee's The Church under Queen Elizabeth, p. 40, from Domestic State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. xi.).

Such has been ever since the constant tradition of the See of Canterbury, and of its suffragan sees, including Worcester and Birmingham. But surely this is an express withdrawal from the one Catholic Church, unless indeed, as some of the early Reformers maintained, the Reformed Church of England was the one Church in which the light of pure Gospel shone, and Rome and Constantinople alike were lost in damnable idolatry? But not so Bishop Gore (p. 179).

When the Bishop denies "absolute authority in any part of the Church," we misunderstand him and do him an injustice unless we throw the emphasis upon the word part. He admits the absolute authority of the whole Church, English, Greek, and Roman, where all three are at one. But as they are not at one at present, nor are likely to be at one in the proximate future, no undecided point of doctrine can ever be absolutely and finally decided by

any authority in our time. But then, the Bishop adds, we want no new decisions. It is enough for us to believe that in which we are all agreed-that which was determined in the first six centuries ere these divisions grew. This "historic Creed of Christendom," as he calls it, the Bishop draws out (pp. 45-47); and he will have it that nothing ought ever to be added thereto, no further development sought. Of course new questions will arise, but they must remain open questions; no answer returned to them by any authority can ever be considered binding upon the whole of Christendom.

Some of the weak points of this theory are the following:

(a) By it the Church ceases to be a teaching body, and is converted into a Record Office of ancient decisions.

(b) It supposes a harmony of religious views among English Churchmen which is far from actually obtaining. The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the Eternity of Punishment, the Real Presence, Baptismal Regeneration, Priestly Absolution, the Veracity of Scripture-every one of these points is now denied by communicants and even by clergymen of the Church of England. A general consensus could only

be obtained by striking them all out: Are they, then, points not to be insisted upon as of faith? They are contained in Scripture, in the Prayer Book, in the Articlesin other words, in the Record Office; but there is no living authority to enforce them and ban disbelief as of old.

(c) Is it so clear that the Anglican Articles and Prayer Book are the correct and adequate expression of the teaching of the undivided Church?

If there is no absolute authority in any part of the Church, and a decision of the whole Church (as Bishop Gore conceives it) is an impossibility at the present day, it follows that absolute authority has fled, at least for the present, from the Church of Christ. Let us consider what that means. In the Bible the Church is Messiah's Kingdom (Ps. ii. 6, 8; lxxi. vulg.; Dan. ii. 44; vii. 14; Luke i. 32, 33; Eph. v. 5; Col. i. 13); "the Kingdom of God" (John iii. 3, 5; Matt. xii. 28 ; xxi. 31, 43, and often in SS. Mark and Luke); "the kingdom of heaven" (continually in St. Matthew). As St. Gregory says, "The kingdom of heaven is the Church of the present time." Though perfect "Regnum coelorum praesentis temporis Ecclesia dicitur" (Greg. in Matt, xxv.),

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only in heaven, it is already establishedon earth. Now a kingdom, or a State of any kind, imports one absolute authority

-some one power vested in one man, or in a definite number of men, whose decision is final and admits of no appeal. Such is the power of Crown and Parliament in England. Where there is no absolute authority, there is no State. Where there are two independent_absolute authorities, there are two States. Where there is one authority, vague and ill-recognized, frequently disobeyed by more or less co-ordinate powers, the State is imperfect, adolescent or moribund, as the case may be. England,

France, and Germany were adolescent immature States in feudal times, and indeed for centuries afterwards. The Church, too, had her adolescence, during which there was less efficient concentration of ecclesiastical authority, and the power by rights supreme was often unable to act, and was occasionally contradicted. The Kingdom of God has grown, as earthly kingdoms grow, by growth of unity of authority. As Newman once put it, the Papacy is the heir of the hierarchy of the fourth century. A hierarchy of coordinate bishops had proved too unstable

a government. The Papacy, the plan of the "wise Architect" from the first, was at once a human need and a divine institution. We do not want to return in England to the Heptarchy; nor have we Catholics any hankering after the antiquated Conciliar methods of St. Hilary's and St. Augustine's time. Besides, at the present day, England, the East, and the Roman obedience are ecclesiastically too far estranged even to meet in Council; they own no one common, living authority; therefore they are not one kingdom of God on earth, not one Church. They own three several supreme authorities, the Papacy, the Holy Synod, and, I am afraid I must say, the King in Council. Either they are three Churches, or one of them is the Church, and the other two are in schism.

$9. Against Dissenters

It is quite true that whoever possesses a certain inward gift [baptismal regeneration] so far dwells in the unity of the Church. But it is the sacramental principle that the spiritual is imparted (since the Incarnation) through the material. This inward life depends on outward means.

Without