222 THE ANCESTOR to be a minister. There are rumours of a second edition of Mr. Pemberton's work : let us express the hope that in it these and other like slips may be corrected. Mr. Eeles' book however is of a very different stamp from Mr. Pemberton's. It deals, as its title announces, with the teaching of the service. Mr. Eeles begins by a very excellent account of the relations between the king and the Church. He points out that the king is appointed as a special minister for the government of the Church, a duty which has not only been taught in the coronation service itself, but which has been exercised by kings from very early times. Mr. Eeles shows that such duty has been performed by Saul and the kings of Judah as well by the Christian emperors, Constantine and Charles the Great, and he also might have added the Anglo-Saxon and Norman kings. From that time until Henry VIII. the kings have still exercised that right, although the Papacy did all in her power to deprive them of that right. Under Henry VIII. indeed the royal prerogative was exaggerated, but this abnor- mal position was deliberately given up by Queen Elizabeth, who returned to the old position which had been held by the kings of England previous to the exposition of Hildebrand's theories. So too with the doctrine that the king is both lay- man and cleric, Mr. Eeles i shows that it is of ancient origin. This doctrine, startling though it may seem to those who have only heard the doctrines of Roman curia in the middle ages with regard to the royal and imperial power, is of very ancient origin. Something very like it may be found at the outset of Bible history in the person of Melchizedek. The opinion may be said to have been held in the Church almost since the conversion of the Empire to Christianity : and it continued to be very widely spread in the Church during the middle ages in spite of the policy of the popes. At the same time it is not to be held, as some persons seem to think, a matter de fidcy binding on all faithful Christians. It is possible that it is an opinion of little importance : the point is that it has been very generally held in the Christian Church both in the east and west. Besides this interesting account of the theory of the royal estate, Mr. Eeles describes the service in detail and gives as an appendix the coronation orders of Charles I., of Queen Victoria and Queen Adelaide, so that a comparison may be made of the service under the Liber regalis and that of to-day ; or we must
