Section 17, provides that neither this act, nor any clause, article, or thing herein contained, shall extend or be construed to extend to or give any ease, benefit, or advantage to any Papist or Popish recusant whatsoever, or any person that shall deny in his preaching or writing the doctrine of the blessed Trinity, as it is declared in the aforesaid Articles of Religion.
By the 19 Geo. III. c. 44, it was recited, that certain Protestant Dissenters had an objection to the declaration in favour of the articles set forth in sect. 8 of the Toleration Act; and it was provided that, in lieu of that declaration, the following might be made:—“I, A. B., do solemnly declare, in the face of Almighty God, that I am a Christian and a Protestant, and, as such, that I believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, as commonly received among Protestant Churches, do contain the revealed word of God, and that I do receive the same as the rule of my doctrine and practice.”
In 1813, by 53 Geo. III. c. 160, the clause of the Toleration Act, excepting those persons who denied the doctrine of the Trinity, was repealed.
As to Roman Catholics, the severity of the laws against them was relaxed in 1778, and again in 1780. Further disabilities were removed in 1793, and at subsequent periods; but still they were excluded from parliament, and from all important civil offices, till 1829, when the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act was passed (10 Geo. IV. c. 7); and, in regard to all civil and political rights and privileges, they were placed upon the same footing as Protestants. Since then they have endeavoured, in respect to ecclesiastical matters, to assert an independence of the Crown of Great Britain, to which the Church of England itself does not lay claim. This attempt has been met by the 14 & 15 Vict. c. 60.
TONSURE. The having the hair clipped in such a fashion as the ears may be seen and not the forehead, or a shaved spot on the crown of the head. A clerical tonsure was made necessary about the fifth or sixth century. No mention is made of it before, and it is first spoken of with decided disapprobation.
The ancient tonsure of the Western clergy by no means consisted in shaven crowns: this was expressly forbidden them, lest they should resemble the priests of Isis and Serapis, who shaved the crowns of their heads. But the ecclesiastical tonsure was nothing more than polling the head, and cutting the hair to a moderate degree.
The rituals tell us, the tonsure is a mark of the renunciation of the world and its vanities; but the hair that is left denotes with what sobriety the person tonsured ought to use the things of this world.
fig. 1.
