and yet is something more than the scientific gospel of physiological self-interest,' founded on the action of physiological functions only. For, whilst taking its stand on the actual facts of existence, it holds up the highest moral standard on spiritual grounds. It conceives of the ethical ideal as innate, as an integral part of human nature; and, since each individual mind is a mode of the soul of Souls,' pervading all things, it furnishes the basis of human solidarity. It is a system freeing the mind from the slavery of prescriptive forms of morality and inaugurating the new theory of disinterested ethics, opening up a new avenue of moral progress by the introduction of a higher type of moral perfectibility.

Two centuries intervene between Spinoza and ourselves; and the estimate formed of him and his work has risen considerably in the interval. Called by Malebranche 'le misérable Spinoza,' and by Massillon 'a monster of impiety,' thought by Cudworth scarce worthy of confutation, and treated with scant respect by Hume, he has come to be regarded as one of the philosophic leaders of the modern world. There are those still who prefer to dwell on the demerits of his system, its glaring inconsistencies, its imperfections of form and substance. There are others who too readily condemn it as 'a philosophy of atheistic monism.' But, whatever may be advanced in depreciation of his system as a whole, in its metaphysical aspects more especially, its author will never cease to be considered as one of the mighty spirits of our race, distinguished by his evident love of truth and the fervid pursuit of it under great difficulties, and also by his persistent advocacy of a noble ideal which has done much to raise the moral temperature of Europe. In his complete detachment from the world, his noble independence, his intellectual integrity and spiritual elevation, he fully deserves the high encomium of an opponent when he says: Blessed be thou, great, yea, holy Benedictus, notwithstanding thy vagaries in thought and word when philosophising on the nature of the most High! His truth was in thy soul, His love was in thy life.

M. KAUFMANN.

Art. 6.-ROMAN CANON LAW IN ENGLAND.

1. The Canon Law in Medieval England. By Arthur Ogle. London: Murray, 1912.

2. Roman Canon Law in the Church of England. By F. W. Maitland. London: Methuen, 1898.

3. Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History. By William Stubbs. Third edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900.

THE question how the old Roman Canon Law, the Corpus Juris Canonici, was regarded in the English Ecclesiastical Courts before the Reformation seems somewhat remote from present-day concerns, and yet it touches matters political, religious and historical of immediate and vivid interest, affecting us more deeply, at any rate more consciously, than anything that the Ecclesiastical Courts, exiguously surviving to-day, are likely to accomplish. Welsh Members of Parliament, filled with unassimilated reading, argue that, if the Pope's law ran in our Church Courts until the middle of the sixteenth century and then ceased to do so, the Church before that time and since cannot be one and the same body. Therefore property given before the change, and still enjoyed nearly four hundred years afterwards, must, to satisfy tender Celtic consciences, be now taken away and bestowed on Welsh County Councils. The 'Tablet' newspaper (May 18, 1912), from another point of view, hails the establishment of the same proposition as something analogous to pricking 'the bubble of the continuity illusion.'

Thus Nonconformists and Roman Catholics combine to give a practical application to this problem, the historical interest of which has at divers times attracted many students, and notably, in recent years, Bishop Stubbs and Prof. Maitland, who have been supposed to represent antagonistic schools of opinion. Mr Ogle's book, 'The Canon Law in Mediæval England,' has drawn fresh attention to the question. His main object is to defend Stubbs's view, as he understands it, from the assault of Maitland; and he has performed his task with chivalrous devotion to the memory of the great historian and a familiarity with the subject which few

persons possess. Unfortunately the effectiveness of his work is diminished by two defects. By some accident Mr Ogle has evidently written his book without knowing Stubbs's published views in their final shape, as revised by himself after reading Maitland's criticism. Secondly, devotion to Stubbs has betrayed him into a tone of disparagement of Maitland which is unnecessary and unjust. To represent Maitland as indulging in vivacious flippancy is really inexcusable and, we must add, unsupported by anything brought to light in Mr Ogle's book. Prof. Maitland never wrote on any matter of legal history without adequate knowledge and research; and to take literally, as Mr Ogle does, Maitland's characteristic apology for making an invasion into a region that was unfamiliar' to him, betrays a misunderstanding of his mind and methods. It would be equally easy to quote Stubbs's assurance that he lectured on the history of Canon Law by way of learning something' about it, and equally fallacious to take his disclaimer seriously.

Thanks to the labours of Bishop Stubbs, Prof. Maitland and Mr Ogle, a fairly definite answer to the problem propounded in the opening sentence of this article can be given. On March 31, 1534, the Canterbury Convocation considered the fateful question, whether the Roman pontiff has any greater jurisdiction bestowed on him by God in the Holy Scriptures in this realm of England than any other foreign bishop.' They gave a decisive answer in the negative, which was subsequently repeated by the York Convocation. On June 9, 1534, Henry VIII issued his proclamation for 'abolishing the usurped power of the Pope.' At this date the Ecclesiastical Courts were numerous and important. The Canterbury Provincial Courts of Arches, of Audience and of the Prerogative, and similar Courts for the Northern Province, the Consistory Courts of the Bishops, the Commissary Courts of capitular bodies and of minor or peculiar jurisdictions, and the Archdeacons' Courts, formed a great network of tribunals. They took cognisance of nearly all matrimonial questions, whether of prohibited degrees, validity or separation, of probate matters, of the ecclesiastical rights and duties of the whole clerical body, including those in minor orders, of the morals of clergy and laity alike, and of a vast amount of other business connected

with churches, churchyards, fees, dues, tithes and other ecclesiastical property, and with the election and control of churchwardens and other church officers. This work was done by a crowd of judges, commissaries, delegates, advocates, proctors and apparitors trained in the Church law of the day, i.e. the Roman Canon Law, supplemented by the English and Legatine Constitutions, varied by local custom and limited as to the area of its operation by the Prohibitions of the King's Court. The Pope, as the author of Decretals which, in fact, supplied law for the English Church Courts, was so important a feature of the system, that there was urgent necessity, after the abrogation of the papal power, to find some principle which would enable business to go on and avoid the chaos which the Pope's disappearance from Church law threatened. Such a principle is enshrined in the preamble of the Peter-pence Act, 1534 (25 Henry VIII, ch. 21). Church law will continue as before, but, so far as it consists of foreign materials, e.g. the Corpus Juris Canonici, it will continue not because 'observance' is due to the laws of any foreign prince, potentate or prelate,' but because,

'by sufferance of your Grace and your progenitors, the people of this your realm have taken [those laws] at their free liberty by their own consent to be used amongst them and have bound themselves by long use and custom to the observance of the same.'

From the Reformation downwards, therefore, the basis of legal authority for such parts of the Roman Canon Law as are still acknowledged in England has been custom. As a principle governing the action of the Ecclesiastical Courts since the sixteenth century, this solution is clear, and it is accepted by jurists (e.g. Sir M. Hale, 'Hist. Com. Law,' 26, 27). The difficulties which it presents lie only in its practical application. But it is, of course, a different question how, as a matter of historical fact, the papal law was regarded before the breach with Rome. The adoption, by those who rejected the Pope, of a theory for future guidance, which their circumstances rendered almost inevitable, does not help us to discover the view actually held in a previous age, when the spiritual authority

of the Pope was not questioned. The Peter-pence Act, it is true, ascribed the apparent observance of the laws of the 'foreign prelate' only to 'accustomed and ancient laws of this realm originally established as laws of the same by the said sufferance, consents and custom, and none otherwise.' It was, however, the practice of Henry VIII to represent, sometimes truly, his revolutions as restorations-the rescue of ancient rights from papal usurpation; and neither he nor his Parliaments can be accepted as impartial witnesses. Nevertheless it must be admitted that the view commonly adopted by English writers ever since has been that before, no less than after, the Reformation the Roman Canon Law was not obeyed in England because it was the 'jus commune' of the whole Western Church, but merely as containing rules voluntarily adopted here, which by force of custom had ripened into laws; so that papal Decretals might be and were rejected in the English Church Courts if they had not acquired the sanction of custom or were inconsistent with the homemade Canon Law contained in the provincial constitutions of English Archbishops. The Report (1883) of the Ecclesiastical Courts Commission (p. xviii) states:

'But the canon law of Rome, although always regarded as of great authority in England, was not held to be binding on the courts. No new code was imposed at the Conquest or later. The laws of the Church of England from the Conquest onwards were, as before, the traditional Church law developed by the legal and scientific ability of its administrators, and occasionally amended by the constitutions of successive archbishops, the canons of national councils, and the sentences or authoritative answers to questions delivered by the Popes.'

This portion of the Report was, it is believed, the joint work of Drs Stubbs, Westcott and Freeman. It is not perhaps so clear as it would have been if it had been written by any one of these eminent men. That is the usual result of joint composition. If by the Canon Law of Rome is meant the Corpus Juris Canonici, it cannot be said to have been binding as a whole anywhere. Of its five divisions-(1) Gratian's Decretum ; (2) Gregory IX's collection of Decretals; (3) Boniface VIII's Sext; (4) The Clementines published by John