[[8]] A State can, of course, endow, as well as establish, any form of religion it selects. It has a perfect right to do so. But the State has never endowed the Church of England, and it can only disendow it in the sense that it can rob it of its own endowments—just as it can, by Act of Parliament, rob any business man of his money. It has done this once already. At the Great Rebellion, the Church of England was, in this sense, disestablished and disendowed. By the Act of Uniformity of Charles II, it was reinstated into the rights and liberties from which it had been deposed. But it remained the same Church which Augustine established in England all the time. Its reinstatement no more made the Church a new Church, than the restoration of Charles II made the monarchy a new monarchy.
[[9]] It is sometimes asked, Does not the presence of the Bishops in the House of Lords constitute an Established Church? No. Representatives from all the sects might, and some probably will, sit there without either making their sect the established Church of the country, or unmaking the Catholic Church the Church of the country. Bishops have sat in the House of Lords ever since there has been a House of Lords to sit in, but neither their exclusion, nor the inclusion of non-Bishops, would disestablish the Church of England.
It is also asked, do not the Prime Ministers make the Bishops? Prime Ministers, as we shall see, do not make but nominate the Bishops.
[[10]] Augustine is worried, as we are worried, by the variety of customs in different Churches, and asks Pope Gregory "why one custom of masses is observed in the Holy Roman Church and another in the Church of the Gallic Provinces". "My brother knows," replied Gregory, "the custom of the Roman Church in which he was brought up. But my pleasure is that you should, with great care, select whatever you think will best please Almighty God wherever you find it, whether in the Church of Rome, or in the Church of Gaul, or in any other Church, and then plant firmly in the Church of the English that which you have selected from many Churches.... Choose, then, from each individual Church things pious, religious, righteous, and having, as it were, collected them into a volume, deposit them with the minds of the English as their custom, their Use."
[[11]] Art. XIX.