There is a popular error that a clergyman, when in doubt upon any question of Christian faith or practice, has only to apply to his Bishop, and that he has authority to settle the question. Some recent writers have helped perhaps to foster this notion by their ill-considered professions of entire deference to episcopal authority. No circumstance has contributed so largely to expose the very limited extent of it as the controversies of the present day. A Bishop, in fact, has scarcely any discretionary power amongst the greater part of the clergy as to questions of doctrine. He can refuse ordination to a candidate, or a license to a curate, subject, however, to an appeal. If he should refuse institution to a benefice, the civil courts would demand the reason. He may institute a suit for heresy; and this must be proved by a reference to the Scriptures and four general councils, not to the Articles or Book of Prayer. Yet of late great deference to episcopal authority has been expressed, and the Charges of Bishops have been anxiously looked for. The manner in which they have been received by some exposes the hollowness of the deference professed, the absence of the power supposed, and the true reason for the anxiety to receive them. They are estimated as the works of partizans in a controversy, not of judges in a cause. They are extolled by those to whose opinions they lean; they are criticized without reserve, and sometimes with very little respect, by any who are dissatisfied with them. The truth is shown in all its nakedness, that Bishops have no more _power_ on such questions than other men, and less influence perhaps than some other writers. Yet the Bishops of the Church appear to stand somewhat in the same position as our judges. But how differently are the _dicta_ of the latter received! Their decisions indeed are open to argument from their inferiors in the same profession, but before a superior court, and not by calling on the public to be the judge of written controversy between the parties. Their decisions may be reversed by a superior court, but in a solemn, respectful, and orderly manner, without being rudely assailed; and the ultimate appeal being to the House of Lords, or the Privy Council, no judge, who properly feels the liability to error in the wisest, can sustain a shock to his feelings or character if such superior tribunals should differ from his own judgment. Very different, as we have remarked, is the fate of an Episcopal Charge in these days; and, until the cause is removed, there is no prospect of remedying a state of things so discreditable to the Church: the probability is that it will be worse.