INTRODUCTION. THE jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as a final Court of Appeal in causes ecclesiastical is part of the supremacy of the Crown, from which all jurisdiction, spiritual or temporal, is derived; but the ecclesiastical jurisdiction which flows from the supremacy is merely co-extensive with the temporal jurisdiction: the Crown has no higher power in causes ecclesiastical than in temporal matters. The legal supremacy of the thirty-seventh Article of the follows: Queen is defined in the Church of England, as 'The Queen's Majesty hath the chief power in this realm of England, and other her dominions, unto whom the chief government of all estates of this realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign jurisdiction. 'Where we attribute to the Queen's Majesty the chief government-by which titles we understand the minds of some slanderous folks to be offended-we give not to our Princes the ministering of God's Word, or of the sacraments, the which thing the injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen do most plainly testify; but that only prerogative which we see to have been given always to all godly princes in Holy Scriptures by God Himself; that is, that they should rule all states and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be ecclesiastical or temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evil-doers. The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction. in this realm of England.' The Canons of 1603, passed by Convocation and sanctioned by the King, are equally explicit. By these Canons, which bind the Clergy so far as they are not contrary to the statute and common law of England, it is decreed as follows:- That all ecclesiastical persons having cure of souls shall, to the uttermost of their wit, teach and declare that all usurped and foreign power is for most just cause taken away and abolished, and that, therefore, no manner of obedience, or subjection, is due to any such foreign power; but that the Queen's power within her realms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and all other her dominions, is the highest power under God, to whom all men do by God's laws owe most loyalty and obedience before and above all other powers and potentates in the earth.' (Canon 1, abridged.) "That whoever shall affirm that the Queen's Majesty hath not the same authority in causes ecclesiastical that the godly Kings had among the Jews, and Christian Emperors of the Primitive Church, or impeach any part of her regal supremacy in the said causes restored to the Crown, and by the law of this realm therein established, let him be excommunicated ipso facto.' (Canon 2.) 'No person shall be received into the ministry nor admitted to any ecclesiastical function, except he shall first subscribe to this article following:-That the Queen's Majesty, under God, is the only supreme Governor of this realm, and that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate hath, or ought to have, any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within her Majesty's said realms and dominions.' (Canon 26.) |