BRITISH AND FOREIGN EVANGELICAL REVIEW. APRIL 1865. TAKEN ART I.-The English Episcopates. MAKEN in its entirety of origin, influence, and reflex action, the Episcopate of Christendom is one of the widest of the wide themes of research. The topic is one; the ramifications almost endless. With these elongated forms of development we do not intend to deal. We shall have to do with what Dr Chalmers would call the ab intra rather than the ab extra, and this restricted to the Episcopate as seen in England. It will pave the way along which we intend to travel, if we bear in mind that the British Isles received and retained a very large, if not indeed the largest, portion of the essential elements of the primitive episcopacy; and it is in consequence of this adherence to the original form that we discover such evident traces of the difficulties which Rome experienced, first in establishing, and afterwards in consolidating her own distinctive polity. The exotic brought over by Augustine required time to climatize. But it is a singular fact, that even after this polity had become established, it nevertheless not only left standing numerous evidences of the principles it had supplanted, but actually incorporated some few, at least, of these principles into that "RULE of Christianity which, by the endeavours of Augustine, first appeared from this archiepiscopal see.' The British bishops had repelled the attempt to engraft that Rule upon their system of ecclesiastical government; and the Scottish * Epistle of Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, A.D. 943. VOL. XIV.NO. LII. bishops, Aidan, Finan, and Colman, not only withdrew themselves from it, but established their own kind of episcopal government in nearly every part of England; so much so, that Bede tells us that out of the seven or eight bishops then in England, "there was no other bishop in all Britain. canonically ordained besides that Wini."* All the bishops except this one (and he illustrious for having purchased the see of London with money, for which he had to perform penance, and according to canon law rendered it more than doubtful whether all his official acts were not ab initio void) took their ordination from the Scottish race. During the thirty years of their episcopate in England, these bishops had preserved an uncompromising adherence to the original form of episcopacy. They never amalgamated with that of Rome. Thrice were they denounced: first at Whitby, in 664, when Colman, "perceiving that his doctrine was rejected, and his sect despised," went back to Iona; next by Ecbricht, archbishop of York, in 740; and, lastly, by the National Council held in 816, mainly because "it was not known by whom they had been ordained, as they had no such order as that of metropolitans, nor paid any regard to other orders." This notable decree was passed more than 200 years after Augustine had "first" brought in his "Rule of Christianity:" a very conclusive proof that another order of episcopacy than that of Rome had taken deep root in England, or "the sect" which had been despised in 664 would not have been of sufficient importance to be re-condemned in 816. The decree is still more remarkable. It repudiates certain men because they had repudiated "metropolitans." Why was this? Simply because each party had cogent reasons on its side: the Roman episcopates because, without metropolitans, the foundation of the popedom was taken away; and the Scottish episcopates, because metropolitans had not formed any part of the original episcopal polity. Their bishops, like the first race, had received their appointment direct from the church; whereas the metropolitan obtained his appointment from, and was an engraft by, the crown. And it is a remarkable fact that this first principle, although somewhat curtailed and crippled, was yet preserved by one of the Kentish kings, when he renounced all right to interfere in the election of a bishop.§ A still more remark *Bede, lib. iii. c. xxviii. A.D. 665. Johnson's Ecclesiastical Laws. † lbid. c. xxvi. § See his Laws in Johnson's Collection, A.D. 692, repeated and extolled in the law of the king of Mercia, A.D. 742. Non-Diocesan Episcopates 223 able fact, however, remains to be told and confirmed. It is this:-There are now SOME BISHOPS WHO ARE ONLY PAROCHIAL. We do not here refer to those bishops who are designated "parochial" by the early ecclesiastical historians; neither do we refer to the historic fact, that in England bishops were said to exercise their functions within a certain geographical limit, which was called a parish; for the word diocess was seldom used, nor was it at all employed in England, with authority from the pope, until the year A.D. 1138. To neither of these matters do we here refer, but to a certain class of episcopates, who have no superiors above them, nor suffragans under them; but who are emphatically independent of both diocesan and archbishop; who possess independent rights of their own, by virtue of institution, to what is called "a living." It is true this class of episcopates may be said to be a dissolving remnant of the earliest of the early bishops. Still, as a remnant, it is replete with deep historic interest; and when seen, even in its retiring element, teaches lessons which we do well now to learn. The case stands thus :-There are in the Episcopal Church what are called Peculiars. They are single parishes, or several parishes grouped together, which have placed over them an authority that is wholly independent of the diocesan. They arose from various causes. Sometimes they formed parts of the monastic institutions ;* at other times they were created by popes, who, by this means, sought to curb, or at least lessen, the power of the English bishops, who, as a general rule, were inimical to Roman pontiffs; and at times they obtained legal existence by force of one of the oldest ecclesiastical prescriptive rights. There they were, however, and there they still are, be their original source what may. Now, what do we find? We find that as late back as A.D. 1279, Archbishop Peckham ("roaring John," he was vulgarly called) said, "We entreat all exempt religious priests and seculars too, if there be any such, that they freely comply with this ordinance (saving the privileges of their exemption in other respects), or at least do, by their own authority, ordain it to be observed. They are to know that we will thank them for their good will, and shall lament to find them otherwise disposed." And in 1281 we hear him again say, "We forbid" (certain things which no one was to presume to do), "unless he be exempt from the ordinary juris it *For instance, Edgar, in his Charter of Freedom to St Peter's (now Peterborough), says, "I free it thus, that no bishop have there any command without the abbot of the minster."-Bede's Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 968. diction, both Diocesan and Metropolitical, by the express tenor of his privilege."* These "Peculiars" had all the authority of the bishop's courts. They had the right of granting probate of wills, took cognizance of matrimonial causes, and in fact exercised all the legal jurisdiction claimed or exercised by diocesan or archiepiscopal courts. Hence, "by virtue of his institution," the rector of Banwell in the diocese of Bath and Wells (with less than 2000 population), imprisoned a man and his wife in Glamorgan county gaol for three months,† "for the lawful correction of their manners and health of their souls." As courts of law these Peculiars were deprived of their powers at the time the new Court of Probate and Matrimonial Causes was created. But they retained all their other rights, rights that are emphatically episcopal. An attempt was recently made to sweep these away as well; and hence the bill introduced into Parliament by the Attorney-General in the session of 1864, sought to extinguish all the privileges and rights exercised by those who possess "exempt or peculiar jurisdiction." The bill was withdrawn, and so the whole question remains as it was before. One other feature of these Peculiars must not be omitted. It is this:-Many of them belong to lords of manors, who appoint the rector or vicar, and thus create for themselves a bishop. Hence "the living of Wolborough" in the diocese of Exeter, "belongs to Lord Courtenay, and is a donative, and not subject to the bishop's visitation or jurisdiction in any respect." And hence too, the peculiar of Buildwas Abbey, in the diocese of Lichfield and Coventry, is in the gift of the lord of the manor, who, in his grant to the "clerk," says, "He shall have, exercise, hold and enjoy all, and all manner of spiritual jurisdiction." The population does not exceed 300. Again: of prebends there are 88 who exercise similar jurisdiction; of rectors or vicars, 63 (the see of Winchester alone having 45 of this last number); of deans or sub-deans, there are 44; and of lords of manors, 48.§ Perhaps there are few, if any, impartial persons but will admit it is a fair deduction from the foregoing facts, that the English Church has recognised, and by its practice ratified the principle, that neither the number of churches, nor extent of territory, are required to constitute an Episcopate. He can be a bishop, in the full acceptation of the term, as well over three hundred as over three hundred thousand * Johnson's Ecclesiastical Laws. Report of Ecclesiastical Commission, printed by order of the House of Commons, 1832 and 1842, page 570. Return to the House of Commons, April 1829, pp. 45; 82, No. 177. The Presbyter equal to the Bishop. 225 persons; and that in a village having but one church, as in a diocese having one thousand churches, and that within the very boundary where the greater power might be supposed to absorb the lesser one. We have here produced authentic records, which spread over a period of six hundred years. Long, however, as is that period, it is not the fountain head of the great principle to which these records relate, and by which it is placed beyond dispute. You must destroy the constitutions of Peckham in A.D. 1279 and 1281; nay, you must repeal the statutes* which declare all the constitutions shall be used and exercised "as they were afore the passing of the Act" of Henry VIII., before you can evade or impair the force of the deduction now drawn. And more than this, the records quoted do not shew the date when the principle for which we now contend was first enunciated. They do not refer to the precise period, when this distinctive principle of the episcopate in England first arose; on the contrary, they carry you back to an institution which had had an existence long anterior to their date. It will immediately occur to the reader that there must have been some underlying principle recognised, and at work, or this state of things could never have been referred to in the way they were by Peckham. You have this ancient underlying principle embodied in the fact, that THE PRESBYTER WAS EQUAL TO THE BISHOP. The presbyter belongs to, and stands at the head of, an ORDER which contains things that inhere in it: whereas the bishop holds only an office which involves duties originally performed by, but afterwards assigned by the presbyter to, the bishop. This opens out the question, why and how, bishops arose ? Our guide here shall be Jerome. He says "Before that, by the instinct of the devil, there were parties in religion, the churches were governed by the common council of presbyters. But because every one thought those he baptized were his own, rather than Christ's, it was determined in the whole world that one of the presbyters, chosen out of and by the other presbyters, should be set above the rest, to whom all care of the church should belong, and so the seeds of schism be taken away." And again, "Among the ancients the presbyters were the same with the bishop; but, by little and little, the whole care was devolved on one, that so the very nurseries of dissensions might be plucked up. As the presbyters know that, by the custom of the church, they are subject to him. who is their president, so let the bishops know that they are 25th Henry VIII. chap. xix. sect. vii., revived by the 1st Elizabeth chap. i. sect. iii. and x. |