should the college advertise for candidates, and give the preference to some man from a foreign circuit, the gentlemen of the Midland will not permit him to practise in Warwickshire. They will consult the records of their court and find authority for opposing him. Nor do I see any ready means of escape from this difficulty but by the election of a Midland Circuit man. And I know not whether even this course will be entirely open to this college, for I have heard of such a thing as a barrister being prohibited from lecturing on his circnit. To such strange lengths people go when once they begin to interfere with the law! It is possible, indeed, that the council by special favour may come to some arrangement, which may satisfy circuit etiquette, by either transferring the patronage into the hands of its leaders, or ap-pointing under their patronage some man who will give no alarm to professional jealousy."

ART. VII.-The Papal and Royal Supremacies Contrasted. A Lecture delivered in St. George's Catholic Church, Southwark, on Sunday, May 12, 1850. By the Right Rev. N. WISEMAN, D.D., Bishop of Melipotamus, V.A.L. London: Richardson. 1850.

DR. WISEMAN has taken advantage of the services appointed to be held in the Roman Catholic chapels, in thanksgiving for the return of the Pope to the Vatican, by endeavouring to increase the discontent of the Tractarian party, and at the same time presenting the papal supremacy in its most plausible and least repulsive form, so as to catch a few of the stragglers, or such as have only in a superficial manner made themselves acquainted with the mutual relations of Church and State, the principles of which are either unknown or kept out of sight by all Roman Catholic writers, but have been asserted, and often very explicitly and ably, by high Churchmen and Tractarians.

The Papal and Royal Supremacies" are contrasted in the lecture before us; but a contrast of a very different kind will have been drawn by mankind already, and will be recorded in the pages of history. It will stand out as a palpable and obvious fact, conceded by Dr. Wiseman himself when arguing for the finality of the decision of the Privy Council, that the royal supremacy has stood unshaken and unquestioned by the Church of England for centuries, while the papal supremacy has been continually disputed and often rejected even in papal states. Twice in our own days has the Pope been driven from Rome itself; and even at the present moment he only

keeps his seat because he is surrounded by republican bayonets, whose commanders intend to make him a puppet for the people, while they are left at liberty to play their own game, knowing that they can at any time cast him aside when they have no more need of such a blind.

Many historical recollections are suggested by the events which are now in progress. We naturally ask-" Where was the papal supremacy before the time of Pepin and Charlemagne? e? And where would it be now, if a band of the same foreigners at the bidding of another Pepin had not conquered Rome for its Sovereign, and did not still uphold the papal supremacy against its own subjects?" The facts are in ludicrous contrast with Dr. Wiseman's poetic effusion:-" It is because the successor of Peter has gone back in triumph, in the midst of the joy and of the tears of his subjects, to that seat of his spiritual jurisdiction which was allotted to him by the providence of God-by his Divine Master himself!"—a sentence which we presume was calculated for the atmosphere of St. George's-fields, for it would scarcely go down before any London audience of which we can form a conception.

The contrasts in other respects, likewise, are most unfortunate for Dr. Wiseman. We cannot help running over in retrospect the events of the last fifty years-the papal supremacy trampled under foot by a Corsican upstart-the Pope himself dragged in triumph to Paris-compelled to sanction the divorce of a blameless wife, only in order that an usurped throne might be consolidated by an imperial alliance; and in these last days, we have beheld another Pope who, either in simplicity or in policy, thought it necessary to relax the bonds of rule, in order to preserve any semblance of supremacy, and finding all at once snapped asunder by the people; and he found the power so completely gone, and the prestige which once surrounded a Pope so completely dissipated that, fearing for his personal safety, he escaped through a back gate in disguise; and he now only returns because Rome lies at the feet of another Napoleon, who will unquestionably expect the present Pope to perform any act of vassalage which he may require, though the altered circumstances of the times will not admit of their being quite so degrading as those exacted from his predecessor by the Corsican. Such is the present position of the head of the papal supremacy!

And then we remember the contrast which England has presented during the whole revolutionary period of the continent. The sceptre held at the beginning of the last fifty

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years by an aged monarch, sustained chiefly by the veneration felt towards one who represented the constitutional supremacy in these realms; and darkened and shrouded as were his declining years, and succeeded as he was by sons who had not the same strong personal hold on the affections of the people, still the supremacy underwent no shock and suffered no diminution. And now that a young Queen sits upon the throne, surrounded by none of the extrinsic and vulgar attributes of supremacywhich Dr. Wiseman takes care to avail himself of in a quiet crafty way, though he cannot but allow the throne to be adorned with every personal and domestic virtue-even now, we assert, that the royal supremacy is much increasing in strength, because the attention which has been drawn to the subject makes it better understood.

Or looking at England itself, under all this variety of personal character in its rulers, what do we behold? We see England alone exempted from the calamities which have overtaken the other nations of Europe. Our trials and contentions have been financial and political rather than revolutionary and destructive, many of them arising from a plethora of wealth rather than from poverty or distress. While every capital of the continent has been twice or more convulsed with revolutions, and ancient dynasties have been suddenly overthrown, no hostile foot has trodden our soil, and the citizens of London, enrolled as special constables at their own free choice, sufficed to put down the Chartist gatherings, some of them as formidable in number and as desperate in purpose as those which raised barricades in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin; and which, when suppressed at all, required a regular army, and a long siege, and much bloodshed, to overcome the insurgents and then to keep them down.

The royal supremacy has stood unmoved in England, while the repeated shocks which the papal supremacy has been subjected to on the continent cannot but convince every thoughtful person that it is now utterly weak and powerless. Dr. Wiseman is egregiously mistaken if he supposes that the return of the Pope to Rome is the restoration of the papal supremacy. He is only there on sufferance now, and will only remain there while upheld by force, unless he accepts the other alternative of abandoning the claim of supremaey, and, probably, being obliged also to concede other reforms. If left to maintain himself by inherent power, supposed to be attached to the name of Pope or to the chair of St. Peter, this boasted supremacy will be found an empty name-vox et præterea nihil. It has already repeatedly given way; and, on every similar

emergency, will hereafter fail in the day of trial, and mock the hopes of those who put faith in an exploded legend.

This historical and practical view of the question is really the plain, common-sense, way of looking at it, but this is not exactly the way in which it is convenient to Dr. Wiseman to approach it; and, therefore, we must examine what he is able to make of the subject when handling it in his own way. One would imagine, from his manner of opening it, that he was about to propound something strong, original, and cogent; but we find nothing more than the two hacknied common places of Peter being the rock, and of his being specially commissioned to feed the sheep of Christ, neither of which passages have anything more to do with supremacy than Tenterden steeple with the Goodwin sands; and which, therefore, probably in good discretion, Dr. Wiseman waives discussing, as it might only make manifest how little they bear on the point in question. "I am not going (says he) to enter into the discussion of the texts adduced to prove this pointI am only stating how [Roman] Catholics at once meet the question" (11). Having begun with the assertion that the "suprem authority in the Church of God can only come from him," and having referred to the texts in the sixteenth of Matthew and the twenty-first of John, he says" These passages the [Roman] Catholic tells you, at once, give to Peter a pre-eminence, a power, and by implication, to his successors, a jurisdiction, supreme in every part of the Church."

Does Dr. Wiseman mean to say that Peter had pre-eminence, and power, without jurisdiction; and that his successors had jurisdiction without pre-eminence and power; and though this jurisdiction was only "by implication," that it rendered them "supreme in every part of the Church?" We are not bantering: we are putting the question solemnly; for it is not a light matter with us to play fast and loose with such subjects as these. But as in the times of our fathers they continually complained of the lubricity of Romanists, and they could never get them to make a straight-forward declaration of their meaning, so it is now; and so it ever must be with men who hold themselves bound to defend positions which they know to be indefensible.

But, passing this, how is the confident assertion, that supreme authority in the Church can only come from God, borne out by texts which only prove, by the confession of those who cite them, that it is by implication alone that the authority of Peter is transmitted to his successors? Is authority by implication the same as authority from God only?

And does not the Church of England claim the very same authority by implication for that supremacy it maintains, apart from, and independent of, the Church of Rome?

As to the texts themselves, it is now found that the better part of valour is discretion; for, thanks to the sifting which they have received in modern times, they will no longer carry the weight they once had in the eyes of the vulgar; and it is a prudent course in Dr. Wiseman not to enter into the discussion. But he lets out one or two rather awkward admissions-namely, that Peter is not the rock in the same sense in which Christ is the rock, so that there are two rocks; and that Peter is not the foundation in the same sense in which Christ is the foundation, or in which the other apostles are foundations, so there are three kinds of foundations. And again: Peter is both one of the twelve foundations in common with the eleven, and he is also a distinct foundation in his individual personality; so that there are two Peters. And he founded the Church of Rome in conjunction with Paul; but the Church of Rome is wholly Peter's-he swallowed up Paul. To show that we are not misrepresenting Dr. Wiseman, and to give our readers a taste of Roman absurdities, we quote the passage word for word:

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"Now there are just two privileges given to Peter which might justly seem, if one might so speak, the exclusive possession of his Master. For other foundation can no man lay but that which is laid: which is Jesus Christ;' and yet Peter is made the foundation. Christ is the rock-Peter is the rock. There is communication made to Peter especially aud exclusively of that which is necessarily the privilege→ the peculiar privilege of Christ. All others are parts of the building: that which cements and unites them is the rock of the foundation. That Christ is that Peter is made. It may be remarked that where St. Paul calls the apostles the foundation whereon Christians are built, he joins to them prophets (Eph. ii. 20); which shows that he speaks of the apostles with reference to the evidences, or groundwork, of our faith. Again: in the Revelations the twelve apostles are spoken of as foundations (xxi. 14), but only of the walls of the city not of the city itself. Here also defence, or evidence, is alluded to. Moreover, they are the built foundation, precious stones laid in; not the rock on which these rest. That is Christ. But to Peter alone was communicated the prerogative of being the natural necessary support of the entire Church, on which it is builded up, itself not been (sic) built; but, like the rock, laid down, or created, by God. His appointment, in its very words, has reference to the stability, durability, unity, and concentration of the whole fabric. The stones even of a foundation may be shifted, made to change place, be clean removed, as has been the case with apostolic Churches. The foundation rock cannot give ́way, or be changed, or moved, as has been the case with the see of