Resuming which view, I would remark, that not only was the sin more presumptuous in its first aggression, but, in its ulterior effects also, it was more pernicious-the unjust delivery of innocence to lawfully constituted authority, for oppression, tending to make men averse to what God has appointed for their good.

In this view, the text in question is again much connected with the sin of Hophni and Phineas, which, it is stated, "was very great" (and here very great" is tantamount to " the greater sin" affirmed of Judas)" before the Lord; for men abhorred the offering of the Lord." In that instance, the abuse of a sacred and generally beneficial appointment alienated the conscience from its dutiful feeling towards God. The sin, therefore, of him that delivered Jesus to Pilate, was "the greater," because it drew aside the moral judgment of men to perverseness, and would eventually seem to justify resistance to that order, peace, and seemliness, comprehended under one word, LAW, of which (to adopt Hooker's beautiful expression) "no less may be affirmed than that its seat is the bosom of God, and its voice the harmony of the world.”

Believe me ever, my dear Sir, yours faithfully,

PRYTANIS.

SCHOOL AT LIVERPOOL.

SIR, AS I have time for a few lines, I beg to thank "Clericus" for his able statement of the church and dissenting schools in Liverpool. (See pp. 78-81 of your Magazine for July.) I need not suggest to "Clericus" the importance of being guided by "fact" in our computations; and I am sure he will not take it amiss if I point out to him what appears to me to be inaccurate amongst so much that is excellent. "Clericus" will observe that in my paper (May, 1834,) I charged the calumniator of the church with adding, in the non-church schools," the full complements of the day and Sunday scholars together, as if they had been entirely different children," thus nearly doubling the real amount of attendants; but that, with regard to the church schools, he took care not to compute by the same rule. If I am not mistaken, "Clericus" has undesignedly committed almost the same act of injustice to his own side of the question. "Clericus" estimates the number of children attending schools, not connected with the church, on Sundays, as amounting to 3030; and this entire sum he adds to the full number of children who attend the same schools during the week. Now the point which I would respectfully suggest to his consideration is this-How many of these 3030 Sunday scholars do, in fact, attend some of the day schools, and are consequently reckoned twice over. there be one in five who are exclusively Sunday scholars, and who do not go to any of the enumerated day schools? I think not one in ten. So that "Clericus" might, with truth, have produced a much more favourable result than he has done; though, I conceive, he has merited the best thanks of the church for the practical demonstration he has exhibited of its power, its munificence, and its benevolence.

Will

I did not think it necessary to write to you purposely on this point, and perhaps it is now too late; but accuracy of" fact" is so desirable, and the paper of "Clericus" is so valuable, that any remarks which may tend to lay a more perfect foundation for such calculations, if necessary in future, may not be unworthy of record.

R. W. B.

THE CONVOCATION OF THE PROVINCE OF CANTERBURY.

NO. IV.

Ir may be recollected that I proposed three questions for consideration on the subject of the convocation :-what was its real nature and history relatively to the church? what was the principle, and what the actual extent of the civil governor's jurisdiction over it, and assumption of its powers? and, thirdly, what was the place which the lower house held in its constitution? The last of these three has been discussed, as far as is necessary to illustrate the history of its suspension in the beginning of the eighteenth century. And for any other purpose, one may hope it ever will be unnecessary; for it was (to say the least) a heavy calamity that members of the lower house should have felt it their duty, from the circumstances of the times, to stand upon their rights against the authority of their bishops. Not to dwell on the unbecoming appearance of such an opposition, it must be borne in mind that the privilege actually conceded on all hands to the lower house, the veto on the proceedings of the upper, is in itself almost too liberal a grant of power for the episcopal principle; and is only defensible (I suppose) on the ground of the size of the dioceses, and the crown's prerogative in the choice of bishops. "Maximo enim," says Wilkins, "præ aliis nationibus presbyteri synodi Anglicana fruuntur privilegio in concilio provinciali, ut dissensus eorum universa domûs superioris decreta irrita reddere valeat." Having this veto upon all proceedings of their bishops, surely the clergy should have been satisfied. But, perhaps, those of them who had released themselves from their pledge of canonical obedience to their deprived bishops, might consider lightly of the obligation which subjected them to those who had succeeded in their place; perhaps, also, there was reasonable ground of jealousy as regards those whom William's government had promoted. But, though much might have been said. in their defence had they refused altogether to recognise the new prelates, one does not see the consistency of taking them for their rulers and then not submitting to them. But enough on this unpleasant subject. Now let us pass to the consideration of a second of the questions originally proposed-viz., the nature and history of the convocation relatively to the church. And first a few words in statement of the controversy respecting it.

Atterbury, Binckes, and their party, maintained in the pamphlets mentioned in my first paper, that the convocation was an essential part of the constitution, established by law, "by the same law as the gentleman receives his rent, or the member enjoys his privilege." When required to produce the particular law which makes its asVOL. VII.-Feb. 1835.

sembling imperative on the sovereign, instead of its being (as the court party maintained) at his option, they allowed as much as thisviz., that his writ was absolutely necessary for its assembling, but they maintained, at the same time, that it was absolutely necessary that he should grant it, and that for two reasons: first, if the meeting of convocation were a privilege or liberty of the English church (which no one could deny), the king was bound in two ways, by his coronation oath, to issue his writ according to custom. For Magna Charta (they argued), to which the king had sworn, pronounced "quod ecclesia Anglicana libera sit, et habeat omnia jura et libertates illæsus;" next, that one especial part of the oath administered by the archbishop contained a promise on the king's part to "preserve to the bishops and clergy of this realm, and to the churches committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them;" so that, since the assembly of the clergy in convocation was, beyond dispute, a privilege recognised by the law, no particular law was necessary to bind the sovereign, who was bound more solemnly by his express oath, which the law imposed.

Next, they maintained that their assembling was matter of constitutional right; for the convocation, they said, was a member or a necessary adjunct of parliament; so that, independently of law or promise, it could not constitutionally be abolished or suspended, They shewed from history that from the earliest Saxon times the clergy had been summoned with the laity to the king's great council; that, as time went on, the mode of their assembling, from being indeterminate, became definite and regular; then again, from circumstances, was varied, and lastly became fixed in the particular form which had then for centuries been matter of usage; that, on the other hand, during this process and ultimate settlement, the ordinary annual church synods gradually came into disuse, so that the convocation, as then constituted, was the representation both of an important political privilege, and a standing ecclesiastical ordinance of the church; that at first they met in one body with the laity, or parliament (as it is now called), afterwards separated from it, and then again divided themselves into two provincial synods; that this arrangement was for awhile interrupted by a new writ from the king (the præmunientes clause inserted into the bishops' writ), summoning them to parliament, which wa was a fresh evidence of their constitutional right, but that the former custom was again restored and had so continued to that day, the above-mentioned clause being still retained in the bishops' writ, though not acted on, in token that their right remained where it was; that under all these changes, under whatever irregularities of time, place, and form of meeting, the great rule obtained that they met in connexion with parliament, as a member of it, (closer or more detached, as the case might be,) but still as constitutionally annexed to it; lastly, that since the Reformation the convocation had invariably met with the parliament and been dissolved with it, except in the solitary and extraordinary instance of 1640, when it sat after the parliament was dissolved, and which no one would urge as a precedent, though åfter all, even as such, it only affected the question of the termination of

convocation, not of its assembling. They added, that anciently the same general appellation was given to both meetings, the parliament being called a Wittena Gemote, the convocation a Church Gemote, and that in various modern documents (besides the præmunientes clause above noticed) the parliament was said to include the clergy, as in a mandate of Bonner's, 1543, which has the words "prelati et clerus Prov. Cant. in parl.," in a petition to the pope in Henry the Eighth's time, speaking of the "milites et doctores in parl.," and in the phrase in the 5th of November service, "the nobility, clergy, and commons of this land, then assembled in parliament;" this being the reason why a clergyman could not be a member of the House of Commons. They proceeded to argue, that, if the convocation was thus an adjunct to the parliament, the king's writ was but the formal instrument, necessary indeed (as a license of marriage may be), but not to be refused without leading to grave political consequences.

The court party granted that the clergy had this right to be summoned in convocation, but they drew a distinction between assembling and conferring. They said that the clergy had nothing beyond a right to be summoned; that a further license was necessary in order to their debating, and that they had no right to demand this; that the utmost extent of their right did not go beyond that of framing petitions to king or bishops when assembled under the primary writ. This ground of argument, which at first sight looks like an evasion, was maintained, first, by the fact that the convocation had often in matter of fact met without debating; next, by the received opinion of the church in the century last past; and further by the reason of the thing, the stated meetings of convocation having been held for the purpose of granting subsidies to the crown, and the custom naturally coming to an end with its object. Accordingly it was professed that the convocation had now become only an occasional assembly to provide for especial business, and that old precedents were sufficiently consulted by the king's formally convening them, though without suffering them to debate.

To this it was replied, that the same reasons which made the granting the writ for assembling a right of the clergy, made the license for debate also; but if not, then the convocation did not, in matter of fact, supply the place of an ecclesiastical synod, and thus it became necessary to fall back upon the elementary and essential rights and duties of the church, and to resume those canonical meetings which had only been suspended from a wish to accommodate the principles of the church to the particular civil polity in which it had been incorporated.

This is an outline of the controversy, which turned upon this :-not whether the meetings of convocation might be lawfully suspended, but whether it had a right to debate as well as to assemble, a right to demand the license as well as the writ. Atterbury, indeed, goes further than this in his view of its rights, denying in toto its need of any

Vide the learned article already referred to in the British Magazine for August, 1833.

license for any act short of the positive enactment of a canon; as if it might frame and pass any measure in the form of a canon, and present it for the royal assent, as a bill in parliament. On a question of this nature materials of argument lie so widely and plentifully for either side, that it requires a mind practised in weighing evidence, and much careful attention, in order to form an opinion worth putting upon paper. So far I suppose is clear, that at the present day a valid precedent against its right" to be put into a condition to do business," (to use the phrase of Atterbury's party,) exists in the actual suspension of its debates during the last 120 years; though, to be sure, certain recent changes in the constitution of parliament seem to create an opposite precedent of a novel kind, for insisting on inherent rights rather against custom and usage. Now for the history of convocation.

The diocesan council is the simplest form of ecclesiastical assembly, and that which, under the circumstances of the primitive church, would first come into use. "That the bishop of each diocese," says Wake, “has, by Divine commission, a power of governing the church of Christ over which he is placed, and, in order thereunto, to call together the presbyters which minister under him, was the constant sense of all the ancient councils and fathers of the church."

In our own church these diocesan synods were held at first twice a year, but in process of time the direction of the canon law was followed, which made them only annual. At this stated assembly all beneficed clergy in the diocese were bound to appear, and the regulars also, except when any were exempted, as time went on, from episcopal jurisdiction. If the diocese were small, and had but one archdeaconry, all the clergy met in one place; otherwise they met by parties, the bishop moving on from one archdeaconry to another. At these meetings the synodical inquiries were one part of the business, of which the ancient form still remains; then the causes, not only clergy, but laity, being at liberty to present complaints before the assembly; then the bishop's charge, in which he communicated to the clergy the decisions, if any, of the provincial council, and exhorted them to fulfil the ministry with which they were entrusted; lastly, the bishop's diocesan constitutions, if it so happened, were read and agreed to by the synod, and thenceforth became the law of the diocese, provided they were not contrary to any provincial canons. The mode of celebrating these synods was as follows:-the clergy in solemn procession came to the church where they were to meet, at the day and hour appointed by the bishop, and took their seats according to the date of their ordination. Then the deacons and laity (even women not excepted) were admitted. The bishop having entered, prayers were read; and then the bishop made an address introductory of the synod. A ser'mon followed; then the complaints were heard, the diocesan constitutions promulgated and passed, and the charge, with prayers, ended the meeting, which commonly lasted three or four days. It is easy to see that these councils are continued to this day in the bishop's periodical visitation, which at any moment (were it expedient) might resume the form of a synodal meeting. They were held, as above described, down to the time of Henry the Eighth.