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Their authority had no force beyond the feelings, or faith, of the individuals who voluntarily subjected themselves to it. When the Church was admitted to the corporate right of citizenship, her Bishops were endowed with certain temporal powders as a means of enforcing upon all their inherent spiritual authority, but, as a return to the State for this immense concession, they were required to exercise their spiritual functions within certain prescribed channels and through certain public tribunals. The uniformity and publicity thus enforced was a guarantee to the State for the due exercise of episcopal power. This I conceive to be the true view of Ecclesiastical Courts. They are channels appointed by the State for the just limitation of the spiritual authority of the Church and exist as a result of the compact between Church and State.
I submit that, in these days, when the Church of England has no longer the Spiritual control of the whole people and when all denominations are, or ought to be, upon a perfect equality in the eye of the law, it becomes both the State and the Church to revise the terms of their compact, and to place it upon a footing consistent, on the one hand, with the more enlightened and equable policy of the State, and, on the other, with the just claims of the Church and with her inherent constitution. I have, therefore, endeavoured in these propositions so to adjust the terms of that compact, as, without depriving the Church of England of her public
