Note 753 — Chapter XII

This test, 30 Car. 2, stat. 2, is the declaration subscribed by members of both houses of parliament on taking their seats, that there is no transubstantiation of the elements in the Lord's supper; and that the invocation of saints, as practised in the church of Rome, is idolatrous. The oath of supremacy was already taken by the Commons, though not by the Lords; and it is a great mistake to imagine that catholics were legally capable of sitting in the lower house before the act of 1679. But it had been the aim of the long parliament in 1642 to exclude them from the House of Lords; and this was of course revived with greater eagerness, as the danger from their influence grew more apparent. A bill for this purpose passed the Commons in 1675, but was thrown out by the peers. Journals, May 14, Nov. 8. It was brought in again in the spring of 1678. Parl. Hist. 990. In the autumn of the same year it was renewed, when the Lords agreed to the oath of supremacy, but omitted the declaration against transubstantiation, so far as their own house was affected by it. Lords' Journals, Nov. 20, 1678. They also excepted the Duke of York from the operation of the bill; which exception was carried in the Commons by two voices. Parl. Hist. 1040. The Duke of York and seven more lords protested.

The violence of those times on all sides will account for this theological declaration; but it is more difficult to justify its retention at present. Whatever influence a belief in the pope's supremacy may exercise upon men's politics, it is hard to see how the doctrine of transubstantiation can directly affect them; and surely he who renounces the former, cannot be very dangerous on account of his adherence to the latter. Nor is it less extraordinary to demand, from many of those who usually compose a House of Commons, the assertion that the practice of the church of Rome in the invocation of saints is idolatrous; since, even on the hypothesis that a country gentleman has a clear notion of what is meant by idolatry, he is, in many cases, wholly out of the way of knowing what the church of Rome or any of its members believe or practise. The invocation of saints, as held and explained by that church in the council of Trent, is surely not idolatrous, with whatever error it may be charged; but the practice at least of uneducated Roman catholics seems fully to justify the declaration; understanding it to refer to certain superstitions, countenanced or not eradicated by their clergy. I have sometimes thought that the legislator of a great nation sets off oddly by solemnly professing theological positions about which he knows nothing, and swearing to the possession of property which he does not enjoy. [1827.]