This is the view of matters which arises from an examination of the proceedings contained in this volume. What is the argument urged in the Historical Introduction to justify or recommend our acquiescence in it? It seems to us to consist mainly in a one-sided and exaggerated statement of the Supremacy claimed and brought in by Henry VIII., and of the effect in theory and fact which it ought to have on our notion of the Church and of Church right. The complaint of the present state of things is, that those who may be taken to represent the interests of the Church in such a matter as the character of her teaching are practically excluded from having any real influence in the decision of questions by which the character of that teaching is affected. The answer is that she has no right to claim a separate interest in the matter, and that the doctrine of the Royal Supremacy was meant to extinguish, and has extinguished, any pretence to such a claim. The _animus_ which pervades the work, and which is not obscurely disclosed in such things as footnotes and abridgments of legal arguments, is thus given--more freely, of course, than it would be proper to introduce in a book like this--in some remarks of Mr. Brodrick, one of the editors, at a recent discussion of the question of Ecclesiastical Appeals in a committee of the Social Science Association. He is reported to have spoken as follows:-- The Church of England being established by law, could not be allowed any independence of action; and those who wished for it were like people who wanted to have their cake and eat it. As to the Privy Council, he had never heard its decisions charged with error. What was complained of was that it had declined to take the current opinions of theologians and make them part of the Thirty-nine Articles. There was no need whatever for the Privy Council to possess any special theological knowledge. The only case where that knowledge was necessary was when it was alleged that doctrines had been held in the Church without censure. That was a case in which considerable theological lore was required; but it was within the province of counsel to supply it. Divines had now discovered, what lawyers could have told them long ago, and what he knew some of them had been told--namely, that it would not do to treat the Thirty-nine Articles as penal statutes; because, if that were done, a coach might be easily driven through them. If they had wished to maintain the authority of the Articles, they would have done best to have kept quiet.