Excerpt from Letters on Church Matters, Vol. 1 You will, in this slight introductory statement, see suffi cient reason why this state of things might not unnaturally be confounded with that recently introduced into England by the officiousness of Pio N 0110; but when I shall go on to Show you, first, that this episcopal body is the remnant of an old establishment; secondly, that its ancient territorial hier archy fell into desuetude after it ceased to be established; thirdly, that it was for some time governed by bishops, with out territorial titles fourthly, that these bishops, proprio mom, in the teeth of the State, re-assumed territorial designa tions that at length they were recognised by the Parliament of England, but not under their territorial designations and, finally, that the English bishops, here acting in their spiritual, and not. In their political capacity, do, for all that, treat them as territorial bishops possessing the same authority over dis tricts in Scotland governing them, to borrow a phrase from Cardinal Wiseman), which they themselves possess over the districts into which ecclesiastical England is divided. I think you must acknowledge that the confusion is on the side of Lord John Russell, and that the theory of episcopacy, as held and acted on by our bishops, makes the present question one of ecclesiastical precedent and canon law, and not one of the Queen's supremacy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.