_Letter to a Convocation Man_, probably written by Sir Bartholomew
Shower, an able if unscrupulous Jacobite lawyer, which maliciously,
though with abounding skill, raised every question that peaceful
churchmen must have been anxious to avoid. The _Letter_ pointed out the
growth of infidelity and the increasing suspicion that the Church was
becoming tainted with Socinian doctrine. Only the assembly of
Convocation could arrest these evils. The author did not deny that the
king's assent was necessary to its summons. But he argued that once the
Convocation had met, it could, like Parliament, debate all questions
relevant to its purpose. "The one of these courts," said Shower, "is of
the same power and use with regard to the Church as the other is in
respect to the State," and he insisted that the writ of summons could
not at any point confine debate. And since the Convocation was an
ecclesiastical Parliament, it followed that it could legislate and thus
make any canons "provided they do not impugn common law, statutes,
customs or prerogative." "To confer, debate and resolve," said Shower,
"without the king's license, is at common law the undoubted right of
convocation."

Here was a clear challenge which was at once answered, in _The Authority
of Christian Princes_, by William Wake, who was by far the most learned
of the latitudinarian clergy, and the successor of Tenison in the see of
Canterbury. His argument was purely historical. He endeavored to show
that the right to summon ecclesiastical synods was always the
prerogative of the early Christian princes until the aggression of the
popes had won church independence. The Reformation resumed the primitive
practice; and the Act of Submission of 1532 had made it legally
impossible for the clergy to discuss ecclesiastical matters without
royal permission. Historically, the argument of Wake was irrefutable;
but what mostly impressed the Church was the uncompromising Erastianism