also on the authority of numerous decisions of the court of King's Bench, (those cited in my last letter being but a few of those that might be adduced,) that parishioners are "compellable" to repair their churches by the common law of the land. And if so, though I am by no means prepared to deny that the ecclesiastical courts may have power to enforce the obligation, thus much is clear, that the common-law courts have such power,-a power which (judging from their past acts) they would not hesitate to exercise in a matter like church-rate, even supposing that the ecclesiastical courts retained power to enforce it, and certainly a power which we cannot but suppose they would apply, if the ecclesiastical courts were, as they have been by some alleged to be, powerless in the matter.

Before I conclude, I would just point out how clearly the liability of parishioners for the repair of their churches has been recognised by the legislature within the last few years, in the acts for building and enlarging churches.

Thus, in 58 George III. c. 45, §. 70, it is said:" And be it further enacted, that the repairs of all such district churches or chapels shall be made by the districts to which they respectively belong, by rates to be raised within the district, in like manner as in case of repairs of churches by parishes."

So again, in 3 George IV. c. 72, §. 20:-" All chapels acquired and appropriated, or built, or enlarged, or improved under any of the said recited acts shall be repaired by the respective parishes or places at large to which such chapels shall belong; and rates shall be raised, levied, and collected, for that purpose, in like manner in every respect as for the repair of the churches of such parishes and places; and all the laws in force, for making, raising, levying, and collecting rates for the repair of churches, shall be applied and put in force, for the raising, making, levying, and collecting such rates for the repair of such chapels."

And again, still more clearly, in §. 30 of the same act :-" Provided always, that in every such case the inhabitants of the parish or place in which such new church or chapel shall be built, shall raise and pay to the said commissioners, towards the expenses of such new church or chapel, either by subscription or rate, such sum, at the least, as would have been necessary for the repair of the old church or chapel, in case such new church or chapel had not been built; and such further sum as the inhabitants of such parish or place wOULD HAVE BEEN LIABLE TO RAISE in such parish or place, for any purposes relating to the EFFECTUAL AND SUFFICIENT REPARATION OF AND MAINTAINING SUCH OLD CHURCH OR CHAPEL, OR THE CEMETERY THEREOF, or any other expense incident thereto, or to which such parish or place WOULD HAVE BEEN LIABLE in respect thereof, in case such new church or chapel had not been built."

Upon the meaning of these passages there cannot, I suppose, opinions. I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

be two

WILLIAM GOODE.

London, July 5, 1838.

OCCASIONAL SERVICES.

SIR,—I must beg for room to reply briefly to Dr. Elrington's attack. I. He expresses surprise that I should have said, that "the era of 1688 may be noted" by "foreign invasion and royal parricide," and hopes that the opinion is "false" which so considers it. I reply-1, When a foreign army (14,000, according to Hume,) lands in England, marches through the land, drives before it the King of England and his troops, takes possession of St. James's at the point of the bayonet, displaces the English sentinels, and mounts guard in the capital of the empire, I must be allowed to call such a transaction a foreign invasion;" and I cannot but think, that if a similar course were taken at the present day for the sake of establishing popery, Dr. Elrington would himself so apply the term. 2. When a daughter drives her father from house and home, sends armed men to fire upon him in case he should resist, and who do fire upon him when he does resist, (e. g., at the battle of the Boyne,) I must needs think that such a person incurs the guilt of" parricide," although the interposition of Providence may prevent the balls which her emissaries discharge against the author of her being from taking effect upon his person; and I cannot but think, that if the daughter of an Irish peasant were to act thus against her father for becoming a protestant, Dr. Elrington himself would not scruple so to designate her. Is God, then, a respecter of persons, that what is sinful in a peasant should not be sinful in a prince? If HE is not, may his ministers be? Or is that which would be denounced as impious in a papist, to be praised and admired in a protestant? There is one who has said something about "divers weights and divers measures," which I do not choose to repeat, as I have no wish to annoy one whom I respect.

II. Dr. Elrington says, that whether the opinion was true or false, the promulgating it was "unnecessary and injudicious." The remark seems to me to come with an ill grace from him. I did not write a line upon the subject, except in vindication of myself, and those who thought and acted as I did, from the heavy censures which he and others brought against us as guilty of a dereliction of duty, and of a disregard of every solemn obligation, for not reading the new service for the fifth of November. With such an object in view, it was (I conceive) neither uncalled for nor unnecessary to shew that, even if the service had all the authority which was pretended, we had conscientious scruples about using it, as seeming to sanction and approve, in the face of God and of the church, some of the greatest evils and worst crimes to which human society is exposed. Perhaps, indeed, it might have been more "judicious" to have passed such censure by as unworthy of notice altogether, which probably would have been done but for the quarter from which it came. But it is not (I think) for him who brought the accusation to blame me for replying to it.

III. His next remark I cannot understand. He says, that the question of the obligation to obey the Act of Uniformity on the fifth of November does not turn at all upon the construction to be put upon the act for changing the style; and the reason he assigns is, because

this act (in his opinion) repeals the Act of Uniformity as far as that day is concerned. I can only suppose that, in his hurry to get his letter in time to appear in the "British Magazine," he did not allow himself leisure to read over what he had written. When he further says, that by the act for altering the style "there is an obligation imposed of deviating from the service established by the Act of Uniformity," does he really mean that a clergyman who uses the Common Prayer on the fifth of November is indictable for a misdemeanour by 24 Geo. II., c. 23, which in the body of the act says not one word upon the subject, and only in the calendar appended to it notices it as a day for which a particular service is appointed? If not, then it is clear that he has not weighed the words he has used.

IV. Under his favour, I will be content to think the inference I drew from the thirty-sixth canon fair and reasonable; if he thinks otherwise, he is welcome to his opinion, without reproof from me. But when he affirms, by way of "simple answer" to my statement, that when the thirty-sixth canon was framed, the convocation had never been consulted on the Liturgy, I must join issue with him. In the first place, if he will refer to Collier, Eccles. Hist. ii. p. 235, he will find that in the very first year of the reign of Edward the Sixth (Nov. 30), “A Form delivered by the Archbishop of Canterbury for the receiving the Holy Eucharist under both kinds, of bread and wine, was read in the lower house of convocation, and subscribed by the prolocutor and some others. And in the next session (Dec. 2), this order was unanimously agreed by all then present, being sixty-four." In the next place, if he will turn to Collier, Eccles. Hist. ii. 276, he will find mention of a letter of Edward the Sixth, July 23, 1549, written on the following account:- -"Bonner, notwithstanding the flexibleness of his humour, was not compliant with the Liturgy to a full satisfaction. . . . . The council, therefore, thought it advisable that the king should write to quicken him in his duty. This letter sets forth that this Common Prayer Book was not only agreed to by the unanimous consent of both houses of parliament, but that it was settled by the like assent of the bishops in the same parliament, and of all other learned men of this realm in their synods and convocations provincial." The letter was written in 1549; it is therefore of the first book that it speaks; and I can only account for the passage which Dr. Elrington has cited from Heylyn in reference to this same book, by supposing that at the time he wrote it he was not aware of the letter in question, which the subsequent research of Collier brought to light. But when Heylyn comes to speak of the second book, 1552, concerning which more doubt has generally been expressed, whether it ever received due ecclesiastical sanction or not, he by no means takes it for granted that the alterations made in it were made without convocation. says, that "the acts of the convocation (1552) were so ill kept that there remains nothing on record touching their proceedings, except it is the names of such bishops as came thither to adjourn the house." Hence, partly, the doubt whether the articles put out in that year ever passed convocation; which yet he thinks "not altogether improbable

He

though we find nothing to that purpose in the acts thereof,

which either have been lost or were never registered." Concerning the Liturgy altered in that year, he says, that "possibly (the alterations) might receive the like authority from convocation that the articles had, though no such thing remain upon record in the registers of it." (Heylyn's Hist. of the Reformation, Lond. 1674, pp. 121, 122. That the alterations made in the beginning of the reign of James the First were not submitted to convocation is, I believe, true enough.

V. With regard to what he asserts concerning the supreme power of the crown, I will only observe, that the extent of that power can only be ascertained by the decisions of the courts of law; and that, though the opinion of one in Dr. Elrington's station is entitled to respectful consideration, yet when I find my Lord Hardwicke expressly affirming, that in England "the crown hath not the full legislative power," (cited in Burn's Eccles. Law, I. preface xxxiv.,) and Dr. Elrington, on the contrary, affirming that, the mandate of the sore reign" "is ecclesiastical law in this country,' ,"* I hope I may be excused if I prefer the opinion of the Chief Justice of England to that of the Regius Professor of Divinity in Dublin. I am sure I hope the Professor is wrong; for otherwise, if the crown should think fit to substitute for the present fifth of November service one containing thanksgivings for the suppression of the ten Irish sees, such mandate would be "obligatory on the clergy," and part of our "ecclesiastical law." This would be about on a par with the thanksgivings in the present service, which, when duly weighed, will be found to include thanksgivings for the suppression of the fourteen Scottish sees, and the deprivation of Ken and the rest of the nonjurors.

VI. I have more reasons than one for not entering into the distinction he draws between the English and the Irish church; and, in this hour of weakness and danger to the latter, must needs think, to use Dr. Elrington's own expression, that it "has been as unnecessarily as injudiciously" brought forward by him. But when he makes the following observation,-"That parliament should have designedly used such words as to confirm the services of 1662, when they had sanctioned for sixty years the new services, by appointing preachers" [what has this to do with it?]" and attending some one or other service each year," [does he mean that the parliament was responsible for the conduct of the officiating minister?] "is a position which does not require a serious answer;" I must observe that the idea of the parliament having deliberately intended to confirm any special services at all by the act in question never entered my imagination, until I found Dr. Elrington and others actually urging that act as of force to determine what service ought to be used on the day in question, when, of course, it became necessary to examine the words of it, which, whether" designedly" or no, are found to be directly contrary to his position. And I presume, that it is by what a statute does say, and not by what, in the opinion of an individual, however eminent, it ought to say, that the force and meaning of the statute is to be understood.

Dr. Elrington's words are-" Now, if in a case unprovided for by the Act of Uniformity, the mandate of the sovereign prescribing the service for that day be not obligatory upon the clergy, I know not what is ecclesiastical law in this country."

Dr. Elrington asks in his note, "Was it (the calendar) not confirmed along with the Prayer Book in 1662?" Indeed I will not maintain the contrary, though I had met with something in one of the books I consulted (upon which, having now returned them to their different owners, I cannot now lay my hand,) which led me to conIclude that it was not so. But I beg Dr. Elrington to observe that if it was, then the original services received in 1662 all the parliamentary authority which he considers 24 Geo. II. to convey, and that consequently James II. and William III., by their alterations of those services, were offending against the laws of the realm to a greater extent than I had imputed to them.

VII. I am much obliged to Dr. Elrington for calling my attention to an inaccuracy which he thus affords me the opportunity of correcting. For some time the earliest proclamation for the observance of a special service on the day of the accession, that I could meet with, was one of George I., for the first of August, which I copied; when afterwards I found in "Nicholls, on the Common Prayer," one of Queen Anne, I altered the name of the sovereign, at the head of the proclamation, from George to Anne, but forgot to substitute the eighth of March in the body of the proclamation for the first of August, as I should have done. For this piece of carelessness, I hope the purchasers of the book will forgive me; and if they will add the following to the foregoing erratum, I shall be obliged to them :-p. 64, last line, for "destruction of the seed royal," read "murder of Gedaliah." p. 86, line 11, after CONVOCATION put a comma, instead of the full stop.

VIII. Dr. Elrington might have spared himself the note-"If it be meant that the accession service was then (Queen Anne's time) first put forth, Mr. Perceval is mistaken. See preface to the Service for Accession, in Wheatley, on the Common Prayer"-if he had observed that, side by side by the service put out in Queen Anne's time I had printed the "original service," "published in 1626, approved by convocation 1640;" to which Wheatley refers in the place to which Dr. E. alludes.

IX. Whether the fiat of Lord John Russell, or of Mr. O'Connell, should his turn come, would be a better safeguard to the church than our own legitimate and constitutional assemblies, I will leave to others to consider. It is clear, that if "the supreme power of the" crown is competent to "supply defects" "unprovided for by the Act of Uniformity," the appointing a committee of bishops to assist the crown must be a mere matter of favour, and not of right. But I protest altogether against any such construction of the royal supremacy in the church as that which Dr. Elrington maintains. There is no canon of the church catholic, nor of the church of England, which recognises, or has ever recognised, such authority as existing either in a metropolitan or in a patriarch; nor is there any statute of the realm, nor canon of the church, nor decision of any court of law in the kingdom, which can be adduced in support of such authority in the crown. The distinction which Dr. E. attempts to draw between liturgy and articles and canons, affirming these last to belong to convocation, while

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