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by virtue of that act, and of the said letters patent under her highness, her heirs and successors, to exercise, use and execute all the premises "according to the tenour and effect of the said "letters patent, any matter or cause to the contrary notwithstanding."

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2. By the same act, every ecclesiastical person, and every ecclesiastical officer or minister, and every temporal judge, justice and mayor, and every other lay or temporal officer and minister, and every other person having the queen's fee or wages within the realm, were directed to take the following oath, under pain of forfeiting their office, and of being disabled from holding any office in future.

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'I, A. B. do utterly testify and declare, in my "conscience, that the queen's highness is the only

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supreme governor of this realm, and all other her

highness's dominions and countries, as well in "all spiritual or ecclesiastical things, or causes, as "temporal; and that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate, hath or ought to have

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any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence "or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within "this realm; and therefore I do utterly renounce "and forsake all foreign jurisdictions, powers, su

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periorities and authorities, and do promise, that "from henceforth I shall bear faith and true alle"giance to the queen's highness, her heirs and "lawful successors, and to my power shall assist ❝ and defend all jurisdictions, pre-eminences, privi"leges, and authorities granted or belonging to the "queen's highness, her heirs and successors, or

"united or annexed to the imperial crown of the "realm. So help me God, and the contents of "this book."

Persons maintaining by writing, word, act or deed, the authority, pre-eminence, power or jurisdiction, ecclesiastical or spiritual, of any foreign prince, prelate or potentate, were punishable-for the first offence, by forfeiture of goods and chattels, and imprisonment for a year; for the second, by the penalties of a præmunire; and for the third, with death, and the other penalties incident to conviction of high treason.

3. By an act passed in the fifth year of her reign, persons in general who should maintain the jurisdiction of the see of Rome were subjected, for the first offence, to the penalties of a præmunire; and for the second, to the punishment of high

treason.

4. In a future page we shall have occasion to mention the admonition of queen Elizabeth respecting the oath of supremacy, declaring the sense in which it should be taken. The last act which has been cited directs, that the oath shall be taken and expounded in such form as is set forth in that admonition.

XVI. 2.

An Inquiry into the nature and extent of the Spiritual Supremacy conferred by these acts on Queen Elizabeth.

WHEN the Reformation took place, an alliance had long subsisted in England, and every other

country in Europe, between the church and the state. In consequence of it, the state had conferred upon the church the power of enforcing several of her spiritual injunctions, by those acts of temporal power, which the civil courts of the king possess for enforcing their sentences. This was done, either by authorizing the ministers of the church to issue process from the civil courts, in aid of their spiritual injunctions; or by erecting courts entirely appropriated to the spiritual concerns of the church, and investing them with the temporal process of the civil courts. The objects, on which such courts exercised their jurisdiction, gave them the appellation of spiritual courts; but the process, by which they carried it into execution, was temporal. To this extent, therefore, they were temporal, or civil courts of the king; and so far as respected their right to this process, the king was the supreme head of their jurisdiction.

From these circumstances, it has been sometimes contended that the pre-eminence, spiritual authority, and spiritual jurisdiction, mentioned in the acts which conferred the supremacy upon Elizabeth, ought to be understood to denote, only that preeminence, supremacy, and jurisdiction, which the clergy, or their courts, receive from the state; and that the clauses in the acts, which deny the supremacy of the pope, were intended only to deny his right to that temporal power, which the state, in consequence of its alliance with the church, had conferred upon him.

Those, who contend for this construction of the

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oath, cite what is termed the admonition of queen Elizabeth. In the very year in which the act enjoining the oath of supremacy was passed, Elizabeth published a body of "Regulations of the 'discipline and order of the church." In one of these, she professes to notice the misconstructions of her claims to the spiritual supremacy. She then proceeds to say," her majesty neither doth, nor "ever will challenge any other authority than what "was challenged, and lately used by the said noble

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kings of famous memory, king Henry the eighth, "and Edward the sixth, which is, and was, of "antient time, due to the imperial crown of the "realm, that is,-under God, to have the sove

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reignty and rule over all manner of persons born " within these her realms and dominions, so as no power shall or ought to have any superiority over them." In the next parliament this explanation of the oath of supremacy received the sanction of the legislature.

In unison with this exposition of the regal supremacy, the 37th of the Thirty-nine Articles is expressed in the following terms :-" The king's "majesty hath the chief power in the realm of

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England, and other his dominions; unto whom "the chief government of all estates in this realm, "whether they be ecclesiastical or civil, in all cases “doth appertain; and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign jurisdiction. When we attri"bute to the king's majesty the chief government,

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by which titles, we understand the minds of some "slanderous folks to be offended,-we give not to

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our princes the ministering either of God's word or of the sacraments, the which thing the injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth, our queen, do most plainly testify, but, that only prerogative which we see to have been given al"ways, to all godly princes in holy scriptures by "God himself; that is, that they should govern all "estates and degrees committed to their charge by "God, whether they be ecclesiastical or temporal; "and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and " evil doers.

"The bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in "this realm of England."

The same description of the nature and extent of the spiritual supremacy of the crown was repeatedly given by king James. This we shall mention in a future page.

As a further testimony in favour of this construction of the oath, its advocates cite passages from the works of many personages of great distinction in the protestant church. Nothing, they say, can be more explicit than the language of doctor Bramhall, archbishop of Armagh, in the reign of Charles the first, in the work intituled "Schism guarded." "Neither Henry the eighth, nor any of his legis"lators,” says this eminent prelate, "did ever en"deavour to deprive the bishop of Rome of the power of the keys, or any part thereof; either "the key of order, or the key of jurisdiction: I mean jurisdiction purely spiritual, which hath place only in the inner court of conscience, as "over such persons as submit willingly, nor did

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