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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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a copy is preserved in Toulmin ' s edition of Neal ' s History , &c , [ pp . 360 —362 ] ; I mean the High Commission issued by Queen Elizabeth in 1583-4 . Of this commission Neal says , that " it empowers the commissioners to
inquire into all misdemeanours not only by the oaths of twelve men and witnesses , but by all other means and ways they could devise ; that is by the inquisition , by the rack , by torture , or by any ways and means that fortyfour sovereign judges should devise . "
Hume , * speaking * of the same document , employs NeaPs language respecting it : while Brodie , actuated by political views , feelings and principles the very opposite of the panegyrist of the Stuarts , attemptsf to controvert the statement of Neal and Hume .
That statement is , however , correct . The proof of its correctness will be found in an analysis of the commission , and in an abstract of its several paragraphs . In the first of them power is given to the commissioners to inquire as
well by the oaths of twelve good and lawful men , as also by witnesses , and all other means and ways you can devise , &c . This paragraph , the reader should know , is confined to the subject of inquiry : not a word occurs here about the restraint or punishment of persons held to be offenders .
The second paragraph , while it gives full power of censuring and punishing , restricts the punishment to lawful ways and means : it speaks of penalties and forfeitures , yet of these
according' to the forms prescribed in the said act fof uniformity , in the first year of Queen Elizabeth ] , In this paragraph , be it considered , we have not a word about inquiry .
Punishment is exclusively the topic of the third paragraph , which is also silent as to inquiry , and most studiously directs the punishment to be what is limited and appointed by the laws .
The fourth paragraph has no bearing on the present question , but regards the deprivation , under certain circumstances , of such individuals as have ecclesiastical livings . * History , &c \ . V . 2 S 2 [ of the ed . of 171 ) 23 . t History of the British Empire , &t \ , I . 19 fc 197 .
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In like manner , the fifth paragraph respects offences strictly ecclesiastical : lawful ways and means are to be devised for the searching out the hr ?
mises , and the offenders are to be punished by fine , imprisonment , censures of the church , or all or any of the said ways at the discretion of the
commissioners . Nothing * can well be more illegal than the letter , spirit and tenor of the next , the sixth paragraph , which empowers the commissioners to examine suspected persons on their corporal
oaths , for the better trial and opening of the truth , and to punish them , if contumacious , by excommunication , or other censures ecclesiastical , or by fine , according to your discretions , &c .
Of the seventh paragraph one clause gives power for the arrest and safe custody of accused or suspected persons : the other contains some instructions in respect of receivers , &c . In the three remaining paragraphs authority is granted to visit and reform
colleges , cathedrals , &c , so far as their statutes are concerned , to tender the oaths of supremacy to all ministers and others compellable by act of parliament , to certify the names of such as refuse it into the King ' s Bench , and to use a specific seal of office .
Thus I have examined every part of this High Commission . The investigation establishes Neal ' s care and accuracy : and hence we might fairly argue to his general correctness and governing love of truth . Hume in this instance happens to be right . Why he was never reluctant to set forth
the arbitrary measures of Queen Elizabeth , no attentive readers of his own Life , and of his History of the Stuarts , can need to be informed . As to Brodie , if he had discriminated between the case of inquiry and that of punishment , he would not have
contradicted NeaPs and Hume ' s representation of the tyrannical spirit of this state-paper . * In the mode of the investigation the Commissioners were left considerably to their discretion : in the punishment they were bound down by law . Let us now return to Warburton . * The remark applies to Southey , ubi supra .
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516 Examination of fFarburton > &c .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1825, page 516, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2540/page/4/
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