Again, does the sovereign, by giving the royal assent to a Bill for the removal of Jewish disabilities, violate the undertaking of the coronation oath, ‘to maintain the laws of God, and the true profession of the Gospel’? By the ‘laws of God’ we must, I presume, understand ‘the _commandments_ of God’ to be meant. The phrase occurs continually in Scripture in that, and no other, sense. But how is the maintenance of these impaired by the admission to the legislature of the Jew, who acknowledges these commandments as religiously as does the Christian? Again, there is ‘the true profession of the Gospel’—that is, I conclude, the profession of the Gospel, untainted by heresy or falsehood. But the Jew would have no power of tainting this, though he _were_ to become a member of Parliament. Parliament does not determine theological controversies, sit in judgment on heresies, does not admit candidates for orders, does not ordain or consecrate. If the Jew were to be allowed, through his election to the House of Commons, to meddle with any of these things, that would, no doubt, be a very different matter, which all loyal Churchmen would resist to the utmost. But notoriously the Jewish member of Parliament neither possesses nor desires anything of the kind.[218] There is, in truth, a confusion in some men’s minds between ‘God’s laws’ and Christian dogmas, which misleads them. As Head of the State, the sovereign upholds the ‘laws of God’—of public morality, that is to say—which are rightly so called, because they are primarily of God’s ordering. These, all men, whatever be their distinctive creed, are bound to support. As the Head of the Church, again, the sovereign maintains Christian dogmas through the ministrations of those who hold offices in that Church, and takes cognisance of denials and perversions of the Faith. To these offices there never has been any proposal to admit the Jews, nor is there the least likelihood that such ever will be made. FOOTNOTES: [214] Sir Moses Montefiore paid £1,200 for his admission to the Stock Exchange. [215] In the twelfth prayer, used by the Jews for many centuries, in their public worship, occurred the words: ‘Let there be no hope for those who apostatize from the true religion, and let heretics, however so many they be, perish in a moment. And let the kingdom of pride (the Roman empire) be speedily rooted out and broken in our days.’ In the liturgy of the Ashkenazim this prayer (which tradition attributes to Gamaliel) now stands thus: ‘Let the slanderers have no hope, all the wicked be annihilated speedily, and all tyrants be cut off quickly.’ In that of the Sephardim the prayer runs: ‘Let slanderers have no hope, and let all presumptuous apostates perish in a moment. May Thine enemies and those that hate Thee be suddenly cut off, and all those that act wickedly be suddenly consumed, broken, and rooted out; and humble Thou them speedily in our days.’—Horne’s _Introduction_, iii. 474. [216] Romans x. 1.