doxy, it was yet impossible to build permanently on so uncertain a foundation. The result has been that the party which ultimately broke with the State, while it has shaken itself free from this impracticable theory, has gradually lost position and dignity by so doing, and that which adhered to it has maintained the theory as a theory, but has kept it carefully in the background, and studiously avoided bringing it into view, except on the rarest occasions; and in so doing, while retaining a position of dignity and importance, has lost its influence with the people, and is in danger, in its frantic efforts in our own day to reach a more defensible position, of breaking, in its turn, with the State, and losing its own raison d'être at the same moment.
The next fact which the history makes evident to us is that in this reign, at least, the supremacy really meant not any idea of State power in the abstract, but simply the concrete will-—too often, indeed, the mere caprice—of the individual sovereign for the time being.
In this instance, again, we find theory and practice, in these early days of the Reformed Church, very much at one. The Elizabethan Act of Supremacy (1 Eliz. c. 1) provides for the government of the Church by the sovereign herself, by the machinery of Commissions under the Great Seal; and Elizabeth accordingly, and her next two successors after her, looked upon the government of the Church as their own individual prerogative, and invariably resented any attempt on the part of Parliament to interfere with it.[1] Proof of this has already been given in these pages in abundance, and if it were not, it lies on the surface of every document, public or private, which deals with the subject throughout the reign. In the beginning of the reign we find
