The Sun.
London, England, 1869-05-31 00:00:00

THE RECENT DECANAL MEETING.

Archdeacon Denison has one merit which no one
can deny. He is not afraid to expose the faults of
the Church to which he belongs, or those of its
members. Referring to the recent meeting of cleans,
he writes a very characteristic letter in the John Bull
He says :
"The Government, it appears, are not prepared with
any measure for the increase of the Episcopate ; not sc
much as with a measure allowing, of such increase. But
they will be glad to hear ' what the deans have to say.
The bishops, having nothing to say, fall back upon the
deans. The deans have nothing to say, except that they
are excellent Church officers, and fully employed already.
This episcopal and decanal 'hide and seek' may be very
good sport to those who play at it ; and it makes the
world laugh. I can't help laughing myself, but I ought
to be crying."

INCREASE OF TILE EPISCOPATE.

A correspondent of a Church paper points out-thal
the two Archbishops and the three senior Bishop,
(London, Durham, and Winchester) receive together
£51,000 a year, and that fifteen bishops receive
£72,000 a year. He proposes to reduce the first
sum to £40,000, and the second to £60,000, and he
would thus get £23,000 a year for the foundation of
new sees ; which, we may add, as the new bishops
would not have to incur the expense of London
houses now involved by sitting in 'the House ot
Lords, would be sufficient for at least seven
bishoprics.
In connection with this matter we may mention
that Mr. Gladstone will receive on Thursday the
deputation in favour of the extension of the
Episcopate.

SILL ItOUNDELL PALMER ON THE ROYAL SUPREMACY.

There has lately been reprinted, by permission of
the writer, a letter which Sir Roundell Palmer, then
M.P. for Plymouth, addressed to one of the news-
papers in that town on December 30, 1850. The
subject is the Royal Supremacy, and to the views
then put forward this eminent statesman still
adheres. He says that the Sovereign, as head of the
State, has supremacy of temporal government,
according to the law of the land, over all persons
and estates of men, and in all judicial
causes. In this respect there is no exception ;
" all are alike, laity and clergy, the Churches of
England and Scotland, the dissenting bodies, Roman
Catholics, Jews, and heathens. Such a supremacy
is, in truth, an inalienable incident of every really
independent temporal government, whatever be its
form, whether monarchical, republican, or any other;
and it excludes the acknowledgment of any foreign
jurisdiction by which its independence can be con-
trolled." Sir Roundell considers that—

"The only general distinction between the authority of
the State, thus represented by the Sovereign, over the
Established Church and that which it exercises over
voluntary Churches or religious communities consists in
this :—That the laws and institutions of the Established
Church, concerning both spiritual and temporal matters,
are adopted into and enforced by the public law of the
land ; while those of voluntary Churches or religious
communities stand merely upon the footing of private,
agreements. It would be contrary to - sound prin-
ciples of civil government that anything should be
made part of the public law of the land, or that the
executive power of the State should be called into action
by the decree of any court, except under the authority of
the Sovereign. The Church, therefore, by accepting the
benefits of a legal establishment, and looking to the State
for executive sanctions, necessarily brings all the sub-
sequent acts of her own ecclesiastical legislation and judi-
cature within the scope of the general temporal supremacy
of the Crown ; and the mode of exercising that supremacy,
and the restraints under which it is to be exercised in
these as well as in all other matters, are ascertained and
regulated by the temporal law."
Sir Roundell contends that the Church is entitled
to have all properly spiritual questions referred to
her own ecclesiastical legislature whenever any new
enactments may be 'necessary. But this legislature
cannot meet without the sanction of the Crown, and its
acts must have th e concurrence of Parliament. Similarly
the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts is subject
to the revision of the temporal courts. It is in these
relations between Church and State that the eccle-
siastical supremacy of the Crown consists. The
result is not, as some persons suppose, a temporal
supremacy in temporal things ; and a spiritual
supremacy in spiritual things.
"It is one undivided temporal supremacy, extending to all
persons, causes, and things, whether ecclesiastical or civil,
of which the law of the land takes cognizance, and upon
which that law has operation. It does not, and cannot
extend to the province of religious belief, or to moral and
spiritual obligations recognised by the conscience as
springing from a source higher than the law of the land.
The notion of a proper spiritual supremacy of the Crown
• involves the alternative either of a State Papacy, or of a
merely political Church. No such anti-Christian preten-
sion has been made by any English sovereign since the
time of Henry VIII. It is clearly inconsistent with the
spirit, and even with the letter, of the 37th Article of the
Church of England ; and, if it may seem to have been
implied in some parts of the legislation of the Tudor
Princes, those arbitrary enactments have, happily, long
since been repealed." - •