Bishopsgate

“ The church of All Hallows-on-the-Wall was built in 1765 on a bastion of the old Roman wall that enclosed old London. Close to the church door at the back of the ancient burying ground, a bit of the wall is still to be seen.
Bishopsgate is one of the few very old streets that escaped the Great Fire. It is strangely narrow, and its hurrying throngs add to the general picturesqueness of the high-roofed structures and the quaint many-angled windows that line its sides. ”

“ Not only the bishops had to confirm, ordain to all orders, consecrate, anoint, impose penance, and excommunicate, but they had to decide land questions concerning lands in frank almoin, all probate and nullity of marriage cases, and to do all the legal work of a king’s baron besides. The judicial duties lay heavily upon him. He used to say that a bishop’s case was harder than a lord warden’s or a mayor’s, for he had to be always on the bench; they only sometimes. They might look after their family affairs, but he could hardly ever handle the cure of souls. ”

“ But since the middle of the nineteenth century, as the Anglican Church has become at once more threatened and more energetic, as more of the life of the nation has flowed into her and round her, the office of a bishop has risen in importance. People show more interest in the appointments to be made, and ministers have become proportionately careful in making them. Bishops work harder and are more in the public eye now than they were eighty, or even fifty, years ago. They have lost something of the antique dignity and social consideration which they enjoyed. ”

“ They may be very excellent casuists, so far as their knowledge extends; yet, being only simple mortals themselves, they can know no more about the matter than the most ignorant of their parishioners. Though my Lords Spiritual, the Bishops of England, are by far the most temporal, sleek, and comfortable covey of prelates on the surface of this globe—whatever they may do in their political capacities, it would be profane to suppose they could have private audiences either in the upper or lower department of the other world, until their post obitums fall in, and give them the entrée. ”

“ In 1610 three of these bishops went to England, and received episcopal ordination from the English prelates, and on their return conferred it on their colleagues. And finally, in 1612, it was enacted by the Scottish Parliament that all General Assemblies should only be appointed by the Crown; that the bishops only should present to livings; that they should admit no one who would not first take the Oath of Supremacy to the king, and of canonical obedience to the bishop; that they should possess the power of deprivation and the right of visitation, each in his own diocese. ”

“ Our unhappy union between Church and State has created a class of bishops which has no parallel anywhere else in Christendom. In order to become a bishop in England, at any rate of the kind that has a seat in the House of Lords, it is necessary to be a gentleman, or rather to have the outward and visible signs of being a gentleman, to be a scholar, or to be a diplomat. ”

“ King William's bishops—a set of men who, on the whole, did very high honour to his selection—were regarded by a number of the clergy with suspicion and aversion, as his pledged supporters both in political and ecclesiastical matters, no less ready to upset the established order of the Church than they had been to change the ancient succession of the throne. These, in their turn, scarcely cared to conceal, if not their scorn, at all events their supreme mistrust, for men who seemed in their eyes like bigoted disturbers of a Constitution in which the country had every reason to rejoice. ”

“ Let not the presbyters and deacons do anything without the consent of the bishop, for it is he who is entrusted with the people of the Lord, and will be required to give an account of their souls. Let the proper goods of the bishop, if he has any, and those belonging to the Lord, be openly distinguished, that he may have power when he dies to leave his own goods as he pleases, and to whom he pleases; that, under pretence of the ecclesiastical revenues, the bishop’s own may not come short, who sometimes has a wife and children, or kinsfolk, or servants. ”

“ And with what face especially can those maintain that the bishop is the visible head of each diocese, and in being such does not contradict, but illustrate, the headship of Christ, who yet deny that there is one in the whole Church put in the like place over bishops, and see in such an appointment an infringement on the office of Christ? Such an argument is so profoundly illogical and inconsistent, that one has difficulty in believing it to be seriously held, or is hopeless of bringing conviction to those who cannot see an absurdity. ”

“ The bishops are almost the first object that attracts your eye. They sit on benches by themselves, on the Government side, but beyond the ministerial bench. In the “dim religious light” of the Upper House, you can scarcely make out what they are. You see venerable wigs, and black robes, and lawn sleeves; and if you look sharp, you may, at times, catch the outline of a reverend face—most probably of Dr. Tait, the energetic bishop of London, or of the pug nose and plebeian profile of Samuel of Oxford. They are very regular in their attendance, and frequently take part in the debate. ”

“ It is plain that the assembled bishops, when they came together in a body, could do more both for ecclesiastical discipline and for moral improvement than they could do, each one in his own diocese. One cause may have been that, in a synod, the assembled prelates might seem to be really speaking as fathers in God, while the exercise of their local jurisdiction was too much mixed up with the petty and not always creditable details of their courts, with those tricks and extortions of archdeacons and other officials of which we have often heard. ”

“ Rowley, it would be difficult for me to express how grievously it pains me to have to seem to interfere in the slightest degree with the successful prosecution of your work among the poor of Chatsea, especially to make such interference one of the first of my actions in a new diocese; but the responsibilities of a bishop are grave. He cannot lightly endorse a condition of affairs, a method of services which in his inmost heart after the deepest confederation he feels is repugnant to the spirit of the Church Of England. ”

“ We now for the first time find bishops, after they had been nominated by the king, going to Rome for confirmation, and the Roman court claiming to have the right to reject a royal nomination. Various matters, too, were now referred to the Pope for decision, contrary to the custom of the English Church. Other foreign fashions were also introduced. In England, any place was chosen for a bishop’s see that was a convenient centre for diocesan work; on the Continent, bishops always had their sees in cities. ”

“ The high station occupied by the bishop in the social hierarchy is proved by the amount of his wergyld and of the fines assigned to offences against his honour, his person, and his property. Although the bishop and the presbyter are in fact but of one order in the church, yet the state found it convenient to place the former on much the higher scale. In the “North-people’s law” an archbishop is reckoned upon the same footing as an æðeling or prince of the blood, at fifteen thousand thrymsas, and a bishop upon the same footing as an ealdorman at eight thousand. ”

“ The malcontents would not yield, for they had, as we have just seen, worked themselves up into a profound belief that everyone of their own crotchets was directed by the infallible word of God; and the bishops could not yield because to them to yield was to give up the cause altogether. They held their places simply on the condition that they maintained the state of Church doctrine and discipline which had been established by law and which Elizabeth was determined should not be changed. ”

“ Yet the bishop, man of peace though he proclaimed himself, was as powerful as he, but not so powerful as a baron in his well-fortified castle. For sometimes there were places beyond the influence of the Church, if one could reach them in safety; though when the Church hunted in couples, the king’s priest and the queen’s priest out together, then there was no certain refuge, and one must sally upon them bravely and run the risk of being excommunicated. ”

“ Besides the great subject of Baptismal Regeneration, the entire Episcopal theory and practice offended me. How little favourably I was impressed, when a boy, by the lawn sleeves, wig, artificial voice and manner of the Bishop of London, I have already said: but in six years more, reading and observation had intensely confirmed my first auguries. It was clear beyond denial, that for a century after the death of Edward VI. the bishops were the tools of court-bigotry, and often owed their highest promotions to base subservience. ”

“ Therefore it is desired, that two or more bishops may be appointed for them, to reside where his majesty shall think most convenient [not in New England, but in one of the Episcopalian colonies] ; that they may have no concern in the least with any person who do not profess themselves to be of the Church of England, but may ordain ministers for such as do; ... and take such oversight of the Episcopal clergy, as the Bishop of London’s commissaries in those parts have been empowered to take, and have taken, without offence. ”

“ The first effort of the Church, when awakened to her real condition, was to control the bishops that had come into her ministry, and whom she was powerless to remove. The next step was to attempt their removal, on the ground that the office of the bishop was unscriptural. Difficulties rapidly increased; opposing forces were daily growing stronger; the Civil government was against the Church; the regent, Scotland's chief ruler, bent all his energies in the defence of the bishops. ”

“ One could hardly desire a larger measure of popularity, either with his parish or in his diocese, than Bishop McCoskry enjoys. Every where the highest testimony is borne to the loveliness and excellency of his character, and the faithfulness and evangelical spirit of his ministry. This I heard from all quarters—from clergy and laity, Episcopalians and Presbyterians. Indeed I think the bishop's greatest danger lies in this quarter. May he still have grace as he hath hitherto done, amid all these praises of men, to count himself as nothing, and to sit as a little child at the feet of Jesus. ”

“ At this time, the old outcry about the Bishops became louder than ever, and the old Archbishop of York was so near being murdered as he went down to the House of Lords—being laid hold of by the mob and violently knocked about, in return for very foolishly scolding a shrill boy who was yelping out "No Bishops!"—that he sent for all the Bishops who were in town, and proposed to them to sign a declaration that, as they could no longer without danger to their lives attend their duty in Parliament, they protested against the lawfulness of everything done in their absence. ”

“ From these occasional and general absences of theirs, an opinion grew up by degrees, and now is established law, that there is a material difference between bishops and lay lords, in respect to their nobility. In truth, that they are not peers to each other, and consequently that a bishop cannot sit in judgment on the life of a peer, neither is he to be tried by the peers, but by a jury of commoners. ”

“ Previous to his reign the bishop had been the assessor of the ealdorman in the scírgemót or county-court, and ecclesiastical causes, except such as were reserved for the decision of the episcopal synods, were subjected, like those of the laity, to the judgment of the scírþegnas or shire-thanes: thus even probate of wills was given in the county-court. This participation of bishops in the administration of justice, useful and necessary in the early ages of Christianity, was very probably derived from the functions of their heathen predecessors, the priests of the ancient gods. ”

“ What can we, what dare we say in favour of priests when we remember Our Lord?"
"When a man does try to follow the Gospel a little more closely than the rest," Mark raged, "the bishops down him. They exist to maintain the safety of their class. They have reached their present position by knowing the right people, by condemning the wrong people, and by balancing their fat bottoms on fences. Sometimes when their political patrons quarrel over a pair of mediocrities, a saintly man who is either very old or very ill like Bishop Crawshay is appointed as a stop-gap." ”

“ At Manchester the episcopate was represented by the Bishops of Manchester, Oxford, Sydney, Mauritius, and, we believe, British Columbia; at Bristol by those of Gloucester and Bristol, Chichester, Ely, and Antigua; and the Archbishop of Armagh would, we believe, have been there had not business detained him. A bishop of this generation ought never to fear entering into a debate, even at a mixed meeting of clergy and laity. He may not be agreed with, but he certainly would be treated with respect and gain in future influence. ”

“ The intelligent lawyer, the enterprising merchant, the hardy soldier, and America had them all, grew bitter against the country of their ancestors. It would scarcely be believed, that the Episcopal Church was almost wholly abandoned to weakness, poverty, and unpopularity, and even that no bishop was sent to superintend the exertions, or sustain the efficacy, or cement the connexion of the Church in America with the Church in England. The whole of the united provinces were, by the absurd fiction of a sinecure law, "in the diocese of London!" ”