Erastianism of his tone.  Princes, he said, “may make what laws or constitutions they think fit for the Church.... a canon is but as matter prepared for the royal stamp.”  In this view, obviously, the Church is more than a department of the State.  But Wake went even farther, “I cannot see why the Supreme Magistrate,” he wrote, “who confessedly has a power to confirm or reject their (Convocation’s) decrees, may not also make such other use of them as he pleases, and correct, improve, or otherwise alter their resolutions, according to his own liking, before he gives his authority to them.”

So defined no Church could claim in any true sense the headship of Christ; for it was clearly left at the mercy of the governmental view of expedient conduct.  Wake’s answer aroused a sensation almost as acute as the original Letter of Shower.  But by far the ablest criticism it provoked was that of Francis Atterbury, then a young student of Christ Church and on the threshold of his turbulent career.  His Rights, Powers and Privileges of an English Convocation Stated and Vindicated not only showed a masterly historic sense in its effort to traverse the unanswerable induction of Wake, but challenged his position more securely on the ground of right.  The historical argument, indeed, was not a safe position for the Church, and Wake’s rejoinder in his State of the Church (1703) is generally conceded to have proved his point, so far as the claim of prescription is concerned.  But when Atterbury moves to the deeper problem of what is involved in the nature of a church, he has a powerful plea to make.  It is unnecessary now to deal with his contention that Wake’s defence of the Royal Supremacy undermines the rights of Parliament; for Wake could clearly reply that the seat of that power had changed with the advent of the Revolution.  Where the avoidance of sympathy is difficult is in his insistence that no Church can live without an assembly to debate its problems, and that no assembly can be real which is subject to external control.  “Their body,” as he remarks, “will be useless to the State and by consequence contemptible”; for its opinions will not be born of that free deliberation which can alone ensure respect.  Like all High Churchmen, Atterbury has a clear sense that Church and State can no longer be equated, and he is anxious to preserve the personality of the Church from the invasions of an alien body.  To be real, it must be independent, and to be independent, it must have organs of self-expression.  But neither William nor Anne could afford to forego the political capital involved in ecclesiastical control and Erastian principles proceeded to their triumph.