THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 241 



plausibilities lay round in abundance, the raw material 

 of them, that is, requiring only to be woven into webs 

 and veils. The protesters might, for example, have con- 

 tinued their protest within the pale of the Establishment. 

 They might have raised the flag of rebellion, have told 

 the civil authorities that, let them do what they chose, 

 the majority would exercise the spiritual government of 

 the Church, and have declared that, whenever a minister 

 called himself the pastor of a parish against the will of 

 the people and in defiance of the Church, they would 

 let him consume the loaves and the fishes, but would 

 depose him from the office of the ministry, appoint 

 another man in his stead, and direct the people to re- 

 cognize the latter as their pastor. This course of de- 

 nouncing and defying the State is the highest pitch of 

 devotion to Church principle to which the typical Angli- 

 can attains or aspires. Henry, Bishop of Exeter, over- 

 ruled by the Privy Council in his dealings with one 

 whom he believed to be a heretic, excommunicated all 

 men, the Primate of the Church of England included, 

 who should dare to interfere with his ecclesiastical juris- 

 diction. When his gesticulations and exclamations, his 

 protests and pronouncements and anathemas, were treated 

 as so much amusing pantomime, Henry crossed his legs 

 in the House of Lords and was content. The gesticulat- 

 ing and exclaiming, though it had produced no manner 

 of effect on Mr Gorham, or on the Archbishop of Canter- 

 bury, or on the Judicial Committee of Privy Council, or 

 on any other earthly man or thing, possessed the sin- 

 gular property of calming Henry's agitated bosom, and 

 setting free his energies for assault and battery upon all 

 ' schismatics ' from the Anglican Church. But in all ages 

 of the world save ours, and in all countries of the world 

 save that Eden which lies between the Cheviot hills and 



VOL. IT. 1G 



