What do Reformed Episcopalians believe? : eight sermons preached in Christ Church, Chicago

APR 28 1993

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I* •*

What Do

Reformed Episcopalians

Believe?

Eight Sermons preached in
Christ Church, Chicago,

BY-

Rt. Rev. CHARLES EDWARD CHENEY, D. D.,

Bishop of ihe Synod of Chicago,

^m Of «M«^

APR 28 W3

Issued "by

REFol|^l!!9bB|ttscoPA^PuBU£^gP^^iETY, Limited,

'i 604 C "sfnut ^^^^pmiadclphia.

(Copyrighted, 1888.)

TO MY BELOVED WIFE,

"Whose intelligent loyalty to the Principles, and
Steadfast devotion to the Interests of

The Reformed Episcopal Church,

Suggested the preparation of this little volume, it is
Affectionately Inscribed by

Her Husband.

■^'^ .^,

(a)

PREKACE.

The necessity for some work of a character similar to
the following sermons, constitutes the only apology for
their publication.

It is hardly to be expected that a Church which has
only had a separate life of fourteen years, should pos-
sess a distinctive literature of its own. Yet it is greatly
to the credit of the Keformed Episcopal Church that it
has already produced in the form of pamphlets and
published sermons, many admirable contributions to
its own ecclesiastical history and apologetics.

But the writer of the following discourses has long
been convinced that, while certain phases of our polity
have been set forth with ability and learning, we have
lacked a manual covering the whole field of our distinc-
tive positions.

To the author of this book, and probably also to many
of his brethren, it has been a matter of regret that our
Church has not heretofore given to the public any ex-
planation or defence of those peculiarities in which she
differs from other Evangelical Churches.

Why this is an Episcopal Church ; why we conserve
the historic Episcopate ; why we worship in the use of
liturgical forms ; why we retain Confirmation as a mode

(iii)

IV

of admission to full membership of the Church ; why
we perpetuate the ancient order of the Christian Year
with its regularly recurring seasons ;— are all questions
frequently asked of the Eeformed Episcopalian, but to
which the literature of his own Church gave no reply.
The present volume is a humble attempt to supply this
felt want.

Primarily these sermons were preached to a single
congregation. The liberality of the Keformed Episco-
pal Publication Society has given them at once a per-
manent form and a wider field.

The author desires to express his great obligation to
the Rev. H. S. Hoffman, for affording opportunity to
consult authorities not easily found in private libra-
ries ; to the Rev. Mason Gallagher, D. D., for his aid in
the study of some important questions of American
Ecclesiastical history, and to the Rt. Rev. Thomas
Huband Gregg, D. D., for evidence contained in his
correspondence with some of the leading minds of the
English Church.

Christ Church, Chicaqo,
May, 1888.

CONTENTS.

PAGE.

The Reformed Episcopalian at the Baptismal

Font 3

The Reformed Episcopalian and the Rite of

Confirmation 26

The Reformed Episcopalian at the Lord's

Table 45

The Reformed Episcopalian and his Minister. 67

The Reformed Episcopalian and his Bishop. . 84

The Reformed Episcopalian and his Prayer

Book 105

The Reformed Episcopalian and the Church

Year 128

The Reformed Episcopalian and his Duty to

his own Church 147

Appendix „.., 171

(V)

THE REFORMED EPISCOPALIAN AT THE
BAPTISMAL FONT.

" Go ye therefore, and teach all nations^ baptizing
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost.'' St. Matt, xxviii: 19.

The divisions of the visible Churcli have often
been represented by the rending into fragments of
the seamless coat of Christ, from which even the
rude soldiers at the CruciQxion shrank.

So sad and pessimistic a view of the condition of
Christendom, has its origin in a false notion of
what constitutes the real unity of Christ's people.

On that night in Gethsemane, when our Lord
began His high priestly work of interceding for
those whom He redeemed with His blood, lie
prayed — " That they may be one — even as we are,"
Jno. xvii: 11. Did He mean that this oneness was
a unity extending to outward form, and visible or-
ganism? The answer is in the very language of
the prayer itself. He sought that His disciples
should be one. even as He and His Father were one.
But God the Father, throned in dazzling glory, in-
visible to human eye, yet wielding the forces of
(3)

Omnipotence, was not one, in any visible form or
outward organism, with the Man of Sorrows, who
stripped Himself of all glory, who humbled Him-
self to hunger and thirst — to eat and sleep — to be
tempted by the devil and persecuted by men, to be
betrayed and mocked and crucified. The perfect
unity between the Father and the Son was oneness
of nature and will — spiritual and invisible. Christ's
prayer then, was that His disciples amidst all visi-
ble and organic differences whicli might exist,
should be one in spirit, in heart, in purpose.

Christianity deals with the greatest problems
which ever set human thought at work. That all
thinking disciples should follow the same paths of
reasoning, or arrive at preciselj'' the same conclu-
sions, was never promised by the Master. All at-
tempts to force the followers of Jesus into one
and the same intellectual perception of doctrinal
truth, have uniformly resulted in a deadening
superstition on the one hand, or a re-action into
blank unbelief upon the other.

In the streets of our great cities, a huge steam-
roller is employed in crushing diverse materials
into a uniform pavement In its track are no in-
equalities. Earth and stone, granite boulders and
yielding clay, are perfectly compacted. But the
unity resulting is the unity — not of nature — but of
artificial power. ^

The history of European Christianity for many

centuries was the record of an outward and organic
unity. But it was tliat produced by a crushing
force. Few are they among believers in this nine-
teenth century who find in those dark ages tiie
highest type and best example of what the Church
of Christ should be. There are certain great facts
and principles, embodied in evangelical creeds and
confessions, which belong to the whole body of
Christ. They constitute the Temple of Divine Truth.
They are the common lieritage of that true Church
which our communion service calls " the blessed
company of all faithful people." But while the
human mind is constituted as it is, men will differ
as to the best and most effective ways in which
the common truth can be defended and preserved.

Look for illustration of the point which we are
making, to the sphere of education. The young
man who comes forth from one of our colleges or
public schools, with a strong, well-developed, sym-
metrical mind, has been beneath the moulding
hands of teachers — each of whom was an enthusiast
in his own depirtment. One of these instructors
felt that he could best build up tiie mind of his
pupil by mathematical science. Another devoted
his whole energies to making iiis 3'outhful charge
an adept in the ancient or modern languages. To
still a third, the one essential point to be gained,
was to imbue that eager intellect with a passion-
ate love for the physical sciences. But in his own

way, each teacher was loyal to the great end and
purpose of character building. To have been less
enthusiastic in his own department, would have
been a wrong wreaked upon his pupil.

So in the Church of Christ. To each of the evan-
gelical communions, one department of essential
truth seems the strongest pillar of the temple of
the Gospel. To keep that pillar erect — to watch
over its safety — to defend it when attacked — is
truest loyalty to the Gospel itself.

The Reformed Episcopalian claims no monopoly
of the whole truth of God. But he does recog-
nize his responsibility as the representative of cer-
tain principles, to neglect which would impair the
foundations of the entire building. In deepest
loyalty to the Gospel and tlie King, he claims the
right to acquaint himself with, and to make known
to others, the methods by which he would aid in
upholding the stately structure of universal Chris-
tian itj-.

But where shall be our starting point? Biog-
raphy begins at the cradle. The geographer in his
tracing of a river's course, sets out from its foun-
tain-head. History has its threshold where man
appears first on the earth.

So membership of a visible church has its initial
point in the solemn rite which Christ ordained as
the entrance upon His earthly l^ingdom. Let this
be our sufficient reason for opening this course of

sermons with the topic, ^ The Reformed Episcopa-
lian at the Baptismal Font."

I. The position assigned to Baptism in the
Word of God.

The Reformed Episcopalian is jealous of any es-
sential doctrine which does not find its basis and
ultimate authority in the Bible. In this respect,
he treats religious principles precisely as the
patriotic American deals with the principles of
politics. In all that concerns my lights and duties
as a citizen of the Republic, I have a profound
veneration for the views and interpretations of the
constitution which appear in the utterances of
Washington, Jefferson, and the Adamses. The
words of such men are entitled to due respect.
But they can never place any great constitutional
question beyond the pale of controversy. The ul-
timate appeal must be to the constitution itself.
In like manner every Reformed Episcopal clergy-
man, whether he be deacon, presbyter, or bishop,
is required by his ordination vow to teach nothing
as essential to salvation, except t!iat which he is
persuaded is taught in Holy Scripture, or may be
clearly proven by it.

Little wonder if so solemn a promise should af-
fect his teaching upon points which are not abso-
lutely essential to salvation. Even in regard to
matters of smaller moment, the Reformed Episco-

8

palian desires to know whether God's written Word
has borne its testimony.

But no careful student of the Scriptures will
come to tlie conclusion that baptism is a subject of
trifling importance.

'J here are no less than seventy-six passages in the
New Testament wliich deal with this question.
God has not thrust it into a corner. It is as impos-
sible to read the Bible, and ignore the allusions to
baptism, as to scan the midnight heavens, and for-
get the existence of the stars.

But the importance of tlie rite is not to be gauged
merely by the frequency with which it is mentioned.
There is a far more weighty evidence. The Lord
Jesus Christ Himself insisted upon being baptized.
He had no sins to be washed away. Surely, He
needed not to have the element of water applied to
His blessed person as s3'mbol of such spiritual
cleansing. Yet such importance did He attach to
this symbolic use of water, as a teacher of man's
sinfulness, and need of inward cleansing — that He
compelled John the Baptist to baptize Him. Matt,
iii: 13-15.

Isaiah had foretold seven hundred years before,
that Christ should " be numbered among the trans-
gressors.'' Sinless Himself — He yet was baptized,
that in all respects He might be identified with
sinners.

His ministry was marked by the baptism of

9

those who became His followers. Though He
** baptized not'' with His own hands, His disci-
ples administered that rite to more converts than
even John had baptized at the waters of the Jor-
dan. John iv: 1, 2.

Go one step further. The last words of a father
to his children, do not deal with trifles. The final
instructions of a general to the officers who lead
an army to desperate battle, concern the points
vital to success. Yet the latest words which Jesus
spoke to those whom He sent forth to bear His
banner to the ends of the earth, imposed on them
a command to baptize all who through their Gospel
should believe on Him. Matt, xxviii : 19.

The Reformed Episcopalian plants his feet
firmly on the Scrij)ture when he proclaims the mo-
mentous nature of the sacrament of baptism.
For, as he pushes on his study of the New Testa-
ment, he meets the fact that the command of the
Master was cariied out by His inspired apostles.
It would be difficult to recall in the pages of the
Acts, a solitary record of conversion — whether it
be that of Saul of Tarsus, of the 3000 Jews on the
day of Pentecost, of the jailor at Philippi, or of
Lydia, the purple-seller of Thyatira — in whici) the
yielding of the heart to Christ, is not followed by
the "confession of the mouth" in baptism. The
Reformed Episcopalian does not say with the
Roman Church that there is no possibility of sal-

10

vation without this symbolic cleansing. He has no
proof that the penitent thief had ever been bap-
tized. Nor can he limit God's mercy where a
repentant and believing soul may be placed in cir-
cumstances which make the act of baptism im-
possible. He does not pretend to make himself a
judge of such believers as may be found, for ex-
ample, in the Society of Friends, who have been
misled by a false spiritualizing of a positive com-
mand of Christ. To their own Master they must
stand or fall. But he does hold with unwavering
firmness to the simple fact, that the Bible clearly
declares it the duty of every believer to confess
his faith by a baptism with water in the name of
the Holy Trinity. Such a fact lifts the baptismal
washing out of the realm of mere optional cere-
monial. It makes it obligatory on every soul who
trusts in Jesus and would do His will.

II. It is this same fidelity to the Word of God,
which compels the Reformed Episcopalian to be-
lieve that THE QUANTITY OF WATER USED IN SYM-
BOLIZING THE Spirit's power to purify, is a

MATTER WHICH DOES NOT CONCERN HIM.

He is willing to yield all honor and Christian
regard to brethren who refuse to admit to the
table of the Lord those Christians who have not
received baptism by immersion. But it is a deep
conviction of Scripture truth which leads him to
protest against what seems to him such unbrotherly

11

exclusion. For it is the Bible which makes bap-
tism with water a symbol of the soul's spiritual
cleansing through the work of the Holy Spirit. It
is the Bible which teaches that the other sacra-
ment is a symbol of the soul's feeding by faith on
a crucified Saviour.

The Reformed Episcopalian cannot help asking
why the quantity of bread and wine should not be
prescribed in the Lord's supper, if the quantity of
water must be prescribed in baptism ? If a morsel
of bread — a taste of wine — which in themselves
satisf}^ neither bodily hunger, nor bodily thirst, are
yet sufficient to symbolize how Jesus satisfies the
soul — why should not as much water as the hollow
of the hand will hold, be sufficient of that cleans-
ing element to symbolize how Jesus by His Spirit
purifies the heart ?

The limits of this sermon forbid an extended
argument Let iJi suffice to say that the Greek
veib |3artTt^w, from which we get our word '' bap-
tize," has never been proven to mean the total im-
mersion of the ho\y in water. Both Plutarch and
Xenophon among the classic Greek authors use it
with reference to the sprinkling which a gardener
bestows upon his plants. Is there any evidence
that when this word^ far older than the New Tes-
tament, came to be enlisted in the service of the
Gospel writers, its former classic meaning was al-
together changed ? On the contrary, there is not

12

one passage where we are compelled to believe that
it meant a complete submersion.

1 can only give one or two examples. I refer
you for a fuller investigation to a most unanswer-
able tract of the Rev. William H. Cooper, D. D., a
venerable presbyter of our own Church, entitled,
'' Facts for the Unprejudiced. "

St. Mark, speaking of the Pharisees, says,
■" When they come from the market, except they
wash, they eat not '* Mark vii : 4. In the original
it reads, " Except the}^ hai^tize themselves." But
we know that the ceremony referred to certainly
did not involve an immersion of the whole body
previous to every act of eating ; for this last puri-
fication was reserved for cases of special ceremonial
defilement.

St. Luke tells us that the Pharisee who had in-
vited our Lord to dinner, was shocked because
Jesus '' had not first washed " — in the Greek, '' bap-
tized himself.'' Luke xi : 37, 38. Can we believe
that the host expected every guest to totally sub-
merge himself as a preparation for the feast ?

Again St Mark speaks of the Pharisaic ceremony
of the washing — or in the original — the *' baptism '
of *' tables,'' or, as it may be rendered, '* couches."
Were the tables of a Jewish house totally im-
mersed ? Are we to believe that some vat or bap-
tistery was universally provided by the Pharisees
for such a purpose ?

18

John the Baptist predicted that Jesus should
" baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire,''
Matt, iii : 11. The fulfillment came upon the day
of Pentecost. But how? The author of the Book
of Acts replies, '^ There appeared unto them cloven
tongues as of fire; and it sat upon each of them.'*
Acts ii : 3. They certainly were not immersed in
fire. Again, when Peter preached to Cornelius and
his household, "the Holy Ghost," we are told,
^^ fell upon all them which heard the AVord." Acts
x: 44. They were not immersed in the Holy
Spirit. Yet when Peter comes to describe the
scene to the disciples at Jerusalem, he describes it
as a baptism. " Then remembered I the word of
the Lord, how that He said, John indeed baptized
with water; but ye shall be baptized with the
Holy Ghost." Acts xi : 16.

But the passage most frequently urged as settling
the whole question, is in St. Paul's .epistle to the
Romans. It reads, ''Know ye not that so many
of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were
baptized into His death ? Therefore we are buried
with Him by baptism into death ; that like as
Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of
the Father, even so we also should walk in newness
of life." Rom. vi: 3-6.

Our friends who claim that there is no baptism
except in immersion, declare that the figurative
expression "buried with Him," must be literally

14

carried out by the entire burial of the baptized
person in water.

It seems incredible that this purely figurative
language should be thus pressed to literal and
minute conclusions by excellent and learned men.
For in the very same passage, St. Paul also asserts
that we are " jylanted together in the likeness of
His death " Why should we not carry into lit-
eral details this figure also ?

Or when the apostle adds, *' Knowing this, that
our old man is crucified with Him" — why not
with equal reason press the figure to mean a lit-
eral stretching of the Christian on a cross?

It would be an easy task to prove that all the
monuments of the primitive Church, the pictorial
inscriptions of the earl}^ Christians on the walls of
the catacombs, as well as the recorded history of
ancient Christianity, unanimously show that bap-
tism was performed either by immersion, by
sprinkling, or by a combination of both {vide
"Apostolic Baptism," by C. Taylor). But the Re-
formed Episcopalian rests his persuasion upon the
written word of God. From that he knows no
appeal.

III. We attest the genuineness of ever}^ import-
ant document by a seal. Baptism in all branches
OF THE Christian Church, is the seal set to the

MOST important TRANSACTION WHICH CAN TAKE
PLACE BETWEEN A HUMAN SOUL AND ITS MaKER AND

15

Redeemer. It attests the covenant entered into
between the sinner and his Saviour in the hour
that, penitent and believing, the soul receives
Christ as its only atoning sacrifice.

Jesus invites — " Come unto Me." The soul re-
sponds by a trustful and loving surrender. But
the surrender is not completed in all its fulness,
until the seal of baptism has been set to the solemn
yet joyful transfer. But the Reformed Episcopa-
lian cannot forget that Christ never invited adults
alone He did not merely ask men and women to
^*come." He said, '^ Suffer the little children to
come unto Me." Mark, x: 14. His invitation and
command was that parents who believed on Him
should dedicate their offspring by a complete sur-
render, even as themselves. Surely, He meant that
the infant equally with the parent, should receive
the seal of such surrender. His reasoyi for requir-
ing the children to be brought to Him makes the
case still stronger. " For," He says, " of such is
the kingdom of heaven.''^ He declares as plainly
as words can speak, that the children of believing
parents are members of His kingdom and Church.
We have His word for it. Can anything be more
uusoriptural than to refuse to the very class of souls
whom Jesus has thus pointed out as members of
His kingdom, the seal by which that membership is
witnessed ?

Moreover, as the Reformed Episcopalian follows

16

His Lord to tlie close of His earthly career, he
bears Him giving His special commission to the
pardoned and restored Apostle Peter. He lays it
upon the conscience of His penitent disciple that
be is to "feed " His " sheep." But as if it were
even more a duty, He firs/; says, " Feed My lambs.^^
John xxi : 15-17. Then the lambs belong to Christ.
Equally with the sheep/ they are in His flock and
His fold. Would the " Good Shepherd " put His
mark, His seal. His sign, upon the sheep, and not
upon the lambs ?

Nor can the Reformed Episcopalian forget that
when the apostles went forth in Pentecostal
power and wisdom, they baptized whole families.
LycUa of Thyatira was baptized, " and her house,^^

an expression which is the exact equivalent of

our word " family." Acts xvi : 15. Not only did
Paul and Silas baptize the Philippian jailor, but
" all /lis." Acts xvi : 33. St. Paul, in writing to
the Corinthian Church, does not take the trouble to
say whether or not he baptized Stephanas, the head
of a household ; but does place it on record that he
baptized his family. 1 Cor. i: 16. Incredible, in-
deed, does it seem to the .Reformed Episcopalian,
that if the Jewish custom of receiving the little
ones formally into the Church by a distinct and ap-
pointed ceremony, was departed from by the early
Christians, no command to that effect was given,
and no controversy sprang up about so inexplicable

17

an omission. To the Relormed Episcopalian, the
subject is intensely practicaL All history attests
that in the early Church, believing parents realized
a responsibility for their (children's Gospel training,
which is sadly wanting among members of the
Church to-day. The primitive Christian realized
that in solemn dedication, his child had been given
to Christ. It was ihe parent's duty and privilege
so to surround the child from its very cradle with
the atmosphere of Christian truth, and prayer, and
daily instruction, that the child should grow up into
a sense of its own responsibility for the fulfillment
of parental promises. The secret of much that
made the first centuries of Christianity v/hat they
were, lay in this family religion, ever stimulated
and sustained by the consciousness in both parents
and children, that alike they had been dedicated to
the Lord.

Those early disciples did not leave their offspring
to first hear the elements of the Gospel from the
lips of a Sunday school teacher. Nor did they be-
lieve that their little ones must grow up in the dark-
ness of alienpttion from God, till some revival should
let in a sudden flash of spiritual light.

If parents among Reformed Episcopalians will
follow the leadings of their Church, it will make
infant baptism universal among us, and will make
it a reality and a power — not a superstitious and
meaningless form.

18

lY. Fidelity to the Bible compels the Reformed
Episcopalian to enter his solemn protest against
THE theory that the new birth is inseparably

TIED to BAPTISiM.

When our Pilgrim Fathers left native land, and
family ties, and sweet associations in old England,
to make a new home and nation across the sea, the
world bad a right to ask what drove them from the
country of their birtli. Fourteen years ago, some
of us turned away with sad hearts and bitter tears,
from associations sweet and precious as native land
or childhood's home. The world has a right to ask
what drove us out from our mother Church. Tbe
full answer will be given as this course progresses.
But one of the causes which forced that separation,
belongs to my theme to-day. Our old-time prayer
book required its ministers to declare immediately
upon the baptism of an infant or adult, that the
baptized person was then and there borii again of
the Spirit of God (vide Baptismal Offices, Prot-
Epis. Prayer Book). A babe is brought to the
baptismal font, " a child of wrath " {vide Church
Catechism). The water of baptism is put upon its
I brow, and lo ! then for the first time, the minister
lifts up his voice to God in this thanksgiving, " We
thank Thee that it hath pleased Thee to regenerate
this infant with Thy Holy Spirit.''^

To every evangelical Christian, the new birth is
that " creative act of the Holy Ghost, by which He

19

imparts to the soul a new spiritual life." Yet our
former prayer-book service tied this work of the
Omnipotent God, wonderful as the original creation
of man, to a ceremony performed by a sinful crea-
ture. We recognized the fact that experience
showed tliat very often none of the fruits of the
Spirit were brought forth by those who had been
baptized. We were startled by the Bible testimony
that f imon Magus, baptized by apostolic hands,
was yet " in the gall of bitterness and the bond of
iniquity." Acts viii : 23. We appealed to our high
church leaders for Scripture proof that the new
birth was inseparably tied to baptism with water.
They pointed us to Christ's language to Nicodemus,
*' Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit,
he cannot enter the kinscdom of God." John iii : 5-
We saw that Christ clearly taught that His disci-
ples must be baptized both with water and the
Holy Spirit But we could not find one word in
Jesus' solemn utterance to the Jewish rabbi, which
said, "The baptism with water insures the baptism
of the Spirit." I may say to the newly-landed im-
migrant, '• Except you be naturalized, and filled
with the spirit of your adopted country, 3'ou cannot
be an American." But I dare not say, " Take the
step of legal natuialization, and the spirit of patri-
otic devotion will of necessity come with it."

Then we were pointed to St. Paul's words to
Titus, ''According to His mercy He saved us by

the washing of regeneration, and the lenewing of
the Uoly Ghost." Titus iii : 5

But to assume that '' the washing of regenera-
tion " was baptismal washing, was simply to beg
the question at issue. Nor only so ; but we j er-
ceived that St. Paul brought out this " washing of
regeneration," as sometliing specially in contrast
to " works of righteousness which we have done."
liy these works he asserted we were not saved. But
in the case of the vast majority of the Christians in
the days of Paul and Titus, including both of them-
selves, the act of baptism was the deliberate act of
an adult, voluntarily done as a ivork of righteous-
ness. It, therefore, could not be "the washijag of
regeneration " referred to by the ai)OStles.

Still, a^^ain, we were reminded that St. Peter de-
clares, " Ba})tism doth also now save us." 1 Pet. iii :
21. But we could not fail to read the rest of the
verse, " not the putting away of the filth of the
flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward
God."

In a word, evangelical ministers in the Protestant
Episcopal Church, found themselves pushed into
this fearful position. They found no evidence in the
Scriptures that regeneration was uniformly wrought
by the act of baptism. God's Spirit was free. John
iii • 8. He miafht new create the soul in the hour
of the baptismal rite, or before, or afterwards. Yet,
every such minister must give up the use of the

21

baptismal service, or else in solemn words of
thanksgiving to God, publicly declare that which
he did not believe to be God's truth.

Do not imagine that such a dilemma faced the
low churchmen of the English and American Epis-
copal Church, for the first time, when the contro-
versy arose which resulteii ia the Reformed Episco-
pal Church. Evangelical ministers and laymen had
groaned under the bondage of the baptismal service
from the days of the Reformation. They perceived
the awful chasm wiiich yawned between the plain
teachings of the Gospel, and the words which the
prayer book put into the mouth of the olficiating
minister. They saw how, under the literal teach-
ing of the baptismal service, the souls of sinners
were imperilled. Believing themselves to be regen-
erated by God's Holy Spirit in the act of baptism,
and thus saved by the baptismal wasliing, men came
to trust their entire hope for eternity to an outward
and mechanical ceremony.

They saw, too, that a more than Romish super-
stition pervaded the minds of the humble and un-
lettered members of the Church, leading them to
believe that the unbaptized infant must certainly
perish. They heard from high diurch pulpits the
echoof the language of such teachers as Bishop Mant,
who proclaimed that in baptism we have " a new
principle put into us, and sanctification and purity
unspotted are attributed to the Church of Christ as

22

the effect of the washing of wnter." They heard it
asserted in the language of the same prelate, that
*' baptism is the new birth." And when, with the
Bible in their hands, they refuted such false doc-
trine, tlieir own people pointed them to the bap-
tismal service, anJ asked, '' Do you not, every time
you baptize with water, pray God to ' sanctify this
water to the mystical washing away of sin' ? Da
you not, when the application of water has been
made, turn to the people, and say, ' Seeing now,
dearly beloved, that tliis child (or this person) is
regenerate, let us give thanks' ? Do you not then
before the searcher of hearts say, ' We thank Thee
that it hath pleased Thee to regenerate this child
(or this person) with Tliy Holy Spirit'?"

Do you ask how such low churchmen — honest, con-
scientious. God-fearing, managed to stay in the old
Church, and repeat on every baptismal occasion a
statement which they believed to be inconsistent
with the word of God? 1 can best answer that
question from my own experience. I satisfied my
conscience, through many years of ministry in the
Protestant Episcopal Church, by trying to explain
away the language of the service. Two or three
widely different theories had been put forth by low
churcli theologians, either one of which, it was be-
lieved, would bridge over the abyss between the
prayer book and the Bible. One of these was that
the service spoke of a sort o^ ecclesiastical regener-

23

ation, a new birth into the visible Church, rather
than into the spiritual life *

Another was that the service spoke what was
called, " the judgment of charity." In other words^
it charitably took for granted that the baptized in-
fant or adult would repent" and believe, and God
would give His spiritual new birth to that soul. It
told the minister to imagine himself for the moment
far down the future, supposing repentance and faith
to have been exercised, and regeneration therefore
to have been imparted. On such an hypothesis he
could speak of what might be, as though it were
accomplished, and so declare to God his thank-
fulness for it I That good and great men in the
evangelical party could satisfy their consciences
with so artificial and unnatural an explanation, only
showed how hard pressed low churchmen were to
find some method to fill up the gulf between the
Bible and the baptismal service, f

There came a day when conscience told me that
I was juggling with plain words, to torture from
them that which they did not mean. The service
did not speak of the future, but of what had just
now been accomplished hythe application of water.
" We thank Thee that it hath pleased Thee to re-
generate this person."

In agony of soul, I turned to the other explana-
tion. Did not the baptismal service mean that a
new birth was wrought by baptism only in the

* Vide Appendix, A. f Vide Appendix, B.

24

sense of introdacing the baptized person into the
new world o^ C/nirch 2Jrivil('ges? Was it not a
sacramental and ecclesiastical, instead of spiritual
regeneration, of which the prayer book spoke ?

But the language of the service refused this
'• flattering unction " to my soul, it met me with
the plain words, " that it hath pleased Thee to regen-
erate ivilh Thy Holy Spirit " Surely that meant
not ecclesiastical, but apiritual regeneration !

I had reached a point where I must choose, in
God's sight, between the baptismal service and the
Bible. You know the result. But God had been
working upon other minds and consciences as He
had upon my own._

When at last the Reformed Episcopal Church
stood forth full-panoplied for its great conflict, it
was with a baptismal service which echoes the
teachinor of the word of God. It struck out the
assertion which made baptism with water the un-
failinor channel of regeneration. It made its mes-
sage, reiterated every time the sacrament is per-
formed, a clear enunciation of the truth that baptism
is a sign and seal of spiritual regeneration, but not
tliat regeneration itself I ask, then, in closing,
that your cordial love and devotion be given to a
Church which is true to the word of God, upon a
question which meets us at the very threshold of
the visible kingdom of Christ.

" Sire," said an American engineer to the Czar

25

Nicholas, of Russia," I have marked out the course
of your projected railway on this map. We must
avoid this range of mountains here. There, we
must follow the tortuous valley of the liver. And
at this point we must touch au'important town by
deflecting from a straight course."

The Czar took his pencil, and drawing a straight
line from terminus to terminus, said, " We will
build the road on that line,"

Our old prayer book of the Protestant Episcopal
Church veered to right and left of the Scripture
line in its baptismal service. But God drew the
unerring course of the Bible with the pencil of the
Holy Ghost, and said to the Reformed Episcopal
Church, "Build there." We have honestly and
prayerfully tried to do it.

THE REFORMED EPISCOPALIAN AND
THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION.

"0/ the doctrine of baptisms and of laying on
of hands. ''^ Heb. vi : 2.

A general sameness never wakens curiosity.
But on the other band, singularity always ex-
cites our interest. A man appearing in the strange
dress of some remote country, stands out in such
contrast to the monotonous and colorless character
of our Anglo-Saxon attire, that we cannot help fix-
ing our e^es upon him.

The same general principle holds good in the
sphere of religion. The peculiarity of speech and
dress which characterizes a Quaker, and the singu-
larity of garb and manner distinguishing the sister-
hoods of the Roman Church, attract our notice far
more tlian the every-day and common-place appear-
ance of other equally devoted and spiritually-
minded Christians. In portions of our own coun-
tr}^^ there is a sect of which few persons would
have ever heard, but for the fact that they main-
tain, as a sort of sacrament, the ceremony of wash-
ing each other's feet, in literal imitation of our
Divine Lord,

2r

The rite of confirmation, or reception of believers
into the full membership of the Church by " the
laying on of hands," is no novelty in universal
Christendom. Out of the four hundred and twenty-
five millions of nominal Christians in the world,
three hundred and forty millions admit their mem-
bers by some form involving this imposition of
hands. Confirmation is not merely the inheritance
of the Episcopal Churches of England an(\ America,
but of that vast body of Protestants on both sides
-of the sea, who bear the name and cherish the teach-
ings of the great Reformer, Luther.

The rite is sedulously preserved by that singu-
larly pure and spiritual body of believers, who
have sprung from the persecuted Waldenses — the
members of the Moravian Church

Tlie statistics of Protestantism show that con-
firmation is the chosen metliod of admission to the
visible fold of Christ, among one-half of that por-
ium of Christendom which denies the authority,
and rejects the supersiitions of the Greek and Ko-
man Churches.

But on the other hand, it is equally true that to
the majority of evangelical Christians in the United
States, this ancient ordinance is something which
has the aspect of a stranger and an alien.

And very naturally so. For this country owes
its evangelization, to a large degree, to three great
branches of the Christian Church — neither of

28

"wlik'li lias retained the rite of confirmation. Th
Puritans of New England rejected this ceiemon^
■when they refused to be ruled by bishops. Th
Presbyterian Church, against the preferences c
Calvin, dropped confirmation as early as the day
of the lieformation.

While John Wesley lived, the members of his re
li^^ious societies never separated from the Churcl
of England, and were generally confirmed in it
pari-h churches. But in America, from the first
the Methodist Church, which Providence made th
pioneer of the Gospel to our Western States, foJ
lowed another mode of publicly confessing Christ
No wonder tlien, that when American evangelise
has been advanced so largely by churches t
whicli confirmation is unknown, the masses of ou
Protestant wor.-hippers look upon that ordinr.nc
as a singular peculiarity. A Christian trainee
from infancy in some one of our sister churches
enters for tlie first time an Episcopal place of wor
sliij'. It happens to be on a Sunday when a ban<
of young believers are publicly to give their alle
giance to the Saviour. Such a scene awakens n
surprise. He is used to similar occasions. Bu
when he learns that the oflTiciating minister who re
ceives these souls into the visible Kingdom o
Christ, is not the pastor of this flock, but aa ovei
seer of mnny congregations, he naturally demand
an explanation. Still more is he surprised by th

29

singularity of tlie ceremony, when with solemn
prayer for God's defending grace, the bishop lays
his hands separately upon the head of each one of
these new confessors of the faith. So marked is
the difference from the familiar modes of public
profession of Christ's name, that it raises a whole
brood of inquiries in his mind. While he may not
question the solemnity and beauty of the cere-
mony he witnesses, it yet has such singularity, that
he justly seeks some adequate explanation of it.

To afford sach inquirers the answer to which
they are entitled, is the purpose which I have in
view in this sermon. Let us ask then. What rea-
sons HAS THE Reformed Episcopalian to give

FOR THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION ?

A builder feels a natural satisfaction when he
finds himself able to biy the foundation-stones on
a basis of bed-rock. It would perhaps b3 a simi-
lar satisfaction that the advocate of confirmation
would experience, if he discovered in the New Tes-
tament that Christ had clearly and unequivocally
commanded this precise observance.

Yet it would be a pleasure mingled with keenest
pain. For such a command would put the rite of
confirmation on the same level with baptism and
the supper of the Lord.

It would make it imperative on all who acknowl-
edge the authority of Christ. To refuse or to
neglect to be confirmed, would be rebellion against

80

our King. It would brand one-half of Protestant-
ism with tlie stigma of disloj^alty to Jesus. Of
what wortli the Puritan's stern piety, the Presby-
terian s devotion to Gospel truth, t!ie Methodist's
spiritual enthusiasm, if these Christians openly re-
fused obedience to a requirement of Christ Him-
self? The broadest charit}^ could n t cover with
its mantle, so flagrant a revolt against the Master.

But to such a position no Reformed Episcopa-
lian is driven. The man who gras[)s t )o much, at
last will grasp thin air. He who attempts to claim
for confirmation the authority of Christ, weakens
the cause for which be pleads.

Let us frankly and candidly admit that there
exists in the New Testament no trace of such a
Divine appointment.

At the same time, however, the Reformed Epis-
copalian does not allow that the rite of confirma-
tion finds no sanction or warrant in the Scripture.
If the canon of Holy Writ ended with the four
Gospels, we should find no Bible sanction for many
of the institutions and practices which the whole
Church of God holds dear.

There is no record that the Lord Himself com-
manded the appointment of deacons, or authorized
the establishment of such an office. But the fact
that the apostles, under the influence of the Holy
Spirit as they were, chose the seven. Acts vi : 5,

31

has led the universal Church to follow their ex-
ample

Has it ever occurred to you that you can put
your finger upon no text of the New T-estament
where Jesus ever directed the Lord's supper to be
administered to women, or even to any lay meml^cr
of the. Church ? It was in an assembly of apostles
only, it was in a gathering of men exclusively, that
He commanded, " Do this in reriiembrance of Me."
Matt, xxvi : 20. But the later practice of the
apostles themselves has settled all question, if any
ever arose, as to the ri^ht of all genuine believers
to co'jamemorate the Saviour's love

When Philip the Evangelist had preached the
Gospel with suc'i power in the City of Samaria,
that multitudes " both of men and women " turned
to the Lord, they were baptized in the name of the
Lord Jesus.

Now notice what follows The apostles at Jeru-
salem hear of this glorious awakening in Samaria.
And forthwith Peter and John — not pastors of
congregations — not deacons, like Philip — but higher
officers of the new-born Church, and representa-
tives of the whole body of believers — are de-
spatched to the scene of Philip's labors — for what?
To pray for these new disciples, and to lay their
handsupon their heads. Actsvii:7. Ifthiswerean
isolated case, we might perhaps suppose that it was
an exception to the general rule of apostolic prac-

32

tice. But the nineteenth cliapter of the Acts
reveals to us the great apostle to the Gentiles
preaching Christ in the rich and dissolute city of
Ephesus."

Among his hearers are some who had been pre-
pared for accepting Christ by the teachings of John
the Baptist or some of his disciples. They knew
no otlier baptism than that which Christ's stern
herald had administered as a symbol of repentance.
Paul baptizes them. But he does not stop with
this obedience to the last command of Jesus. He
*' laid his hands upon them." Acts xix ; 6.

The careful and candid reader of the New Testa-
ment will naturally ask the qucition, " Why was
the sacrament of baptism, ordained as it was by
Christ Himself, supplemented by this imposition
of hands?" What necessity existed that those
already sealed to Christ by the baptismal sign,
should submit to another and additional ceremony ?
The Reformed Episcopalian answers for himself
and for his Church, that such an ordinance would
liave a two fold significance and value. It would
renew in the most solemn way the consecration to
Christ which baptism had previousl}'' made. It
would involve confirming before a higher officer of
the Church, the covenant into which tlie soul had
entered at baptism. Such a re-consecration and
such a confirmation of the covenant, if sincere, is
alwavs a means of grace. Not in any mystic or

33

superstitious sense ; but because by it the soul is
stirred anew, and love and faith revived. Nor
only this ; but when such public renewal of bap-
tismal engagements was made before one wlio rep-
resented, as the apostles did, no local church or
congregation, but ihe whole body of believers; and
when such a messenger of the Church at large,
sealed the act by the imposition of his hands, it was
peculiarly significant. For it substantially said to
the young believer, " Your baptismal obligations
bind you not merely to the little flock in Samaria,
in Ephesus, in Corinth or in Thessalonica ; they
do not introduce you into loving fellowship only
with the pastor whose preaching led you to Jesus;
Ijut they make you one of that larger and broader
communion composed of all who love the Lord."

Now let us do full justice to those who hold a
different view of the imposition of the .apostles'
hands, from that maintained by the advocates of
confirmation.

It is forcibly argued that both in Samaria and
Ephesus, the extraordinary and visible manifesta-
tion of the Holy Ghost followed the laying on of
hands.

There were some miraculous and supernatural
gifts bestowed upon these new members of the
Church, like those upon the Day of Pentecost when
the disciples spake in languages which they had
never learned.

34

" The imposition of hands," say the opponents
of confirmation, " was solely to accomplish this
result. The Holy Ghost was visibly bestowed by
the touch of the apostles. That was the purpose
and end of the ceremon3^ Buttiie age of miracles
passed away. And since such outward, visible
and supernatural gifts of the Spirit are no longer
the heritage of God's children, the ceremony
through which they were imparted, has no business
in the Church. It is like the ceremon}'' of a royal
coronation maintained in a republic wliere kings
are no longer known."

I believe this to be a full and fair sta,tement of
the objections urged against any Scripture sanc-
tion for the rite of confirmation.

But no chain is stronger than one of its links.
The argument which I have tried to state in its full
force, depends wholly upon one supposed fact ;
that the aole object of the apostolic laying on of
hands was to impart the Iloly Ghost in His super-
natural gifts. But is that a fact? Once every
week I wind my clock. The result is, that with
every sfxty minutes which elapse, a hammer strikes
the gone:, and the bell tells the hour. But no man
would argue that this striking of the hour was the
sole object which I had in view when I used the
key. There was a more important end to be
secured, in confirming the regular movement of the

35

wheels, and the forward march of the hands on
the dial plate.

Miracles and extraordinary gifts of the Holy
Ghost were never the most important things in the
Church of Christ. Because supernatural powers
followed the im[)Osition of apostolic hands, we
have no right to conclude that the ceremony ha<l
no other purpose whatsoever.

Notice too, how thi^ view is strengthened b}^ the
history of the Apostolic Church That record
clearly shows th:it the laying on of hands was not
necessary to the ^rivi ng of supernatural powers of
the Holy Ghost.

There was no imposition of the apostles' hands
upon the other disciples on the Day of Pentecost.
Yet " they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and
began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit
gav^ them utterance." Acts ii : 4.

We have no account of Peter laying his hands
on the household of Cornelius But the Holy
Ghost fell on them also in the gift of tongues
Actsx: 44-46.

Nothing then can be clearer than this ; that it is
a mistake to assume that the sole end of this rite
was to secure the miraculous influences of the
Spirit. There were other ways in whicii the gifts of
the Holy Ghost were bestowed. The conclusion is
irresistible that the laying on of hands, while it
was accompanied in apostolic days by the wonders

36

of spiritual power, had some wider and more
permanent end in view.

Tlie argument that, bec.iuse miraculous gifts
were anciently given with the layirjg on of hands,
therefore the rite must cease when supernitiiral
powers were no longer the possession of the Church,
proves too much.

For God bore witness witii these gifts to the act
of united prayer. Acts iv: 31 He followed the
preaching of the word \\y imparting the gift of
tongues to Cornelius and his household. Acts xi :
15. Shall we therefore reason that united prayer
is no longer to be continued ; and that preaching
should be dropped from the agencies of the
Church ?

But there is a crowning evidence for the perma-
nency of the imposition of hands, to wliich I have
not yet alluded.

The Epistle to the Hebrews, Heb. vi ; 2, alludes
to three pairs or couples of religious doctrines, as
being among the foundations of the truth. *' There-
fore," says the sacred writer, "leaving the princi-
ples of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto
perfection; not laying again the foundation of
rept ntance from dead works, and faith toward God ;
of the doctrine of baptisms and of laying on of
hands; of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal
judgment."

Now if the imposition of hands was some rite

37

belonging only to tlie early age of Christianity,
and not meant to be a permanent ordinance — how
does it come to pass that the New Testament thus
puts it among "the principles of the doctrine of
Christ," which enter into the very " foundation " of
the truth? How does it come to be named in
the midst of facts and realities as momentous as
repentance and faitli — as enduring as the resurrection
and the judgment ? Albert Barnes replies that it
may refer to the act of ordination of ministtrs, or
to the laying on of hands to heal the sick, or yet
again to the act by which the miraculous powers of
the Spirit were iniparted by apostolic hands.

The Reformed Episcopalian is willing to admit
that it may have meant any one of these. He
cheerfully concedes that it may have involved any
laying on of hands as a religious ceremony —
thou2:h it were but that of a father blessinir his
child. Gen. xlviii : 14, But why should such acts
as these be classed with most solemn and momen-
tous verities? Above all, why should "the laying
on of hands " be yoked with "baptisms," precisely
as "faith" is yoked with "repentance," and
*' eternal judgment " with "the resurrection"? Is
it uncharitable to other Christians; is it a leaning
to superstition ; which compels him to believe that
he is following tlie practice of the apostles in
adhering to this special form of reception to the
Church ?

38

Time forhids more tiiaii n bar- [illusion to rea-
sons v.hicli have their weiglit, LUough lying outside
the Word of God.

The iiistory ot early Christianity after the days
of the apostles, is full of references to this rite as
universally prevailing in the Cliuich. Precisely
like the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to
the first day of the week, confirmation seems to
have come down in undisputed practice from the
apostolic example. Is it argued that it became an
empty mummer}^, abused to the ends of priestcraft
and superstition? True I but tiie same abuse char-
acterized for ages the two sacraments of baptism
and the supper of the Lord.

Moreover, the xavy fact that the vast majority of
evangelical Christians mnintain the practice of
infant baptism, renders absolutel}^ nece-sary some
method of puhlic admission to the Church, of those
baptized in childhood. Dedicated by Christian '
parents to the Saviour's service, shall there be no
way opened by which the young Christian can
assume all the responsibilities of such a consecra-
tion? Is tliere to be given no special and public
act in which he can voluntarily say that the repent-
ance and faij-h which were hoped for and prayed
for at his baptism, are now his own ? Every Church
which baptizes its children, has some ceremony to
receive them when personally re[)entnnt and be-
lieving, on their voluntar}^ confession of Christ.

39

The Reformed Episcopalinn has no word of dis-
paragement for any appr<t{>ritite form which other*
may adopt He only chdajstliat n^^ne can be more
appropriate, more solemn, moie beautiful, or more
in accord with " apostolic practice," than confirma-
tion.

But why ask those baptized in adult years, to
submit to tills additional ceremonial? Tue ans-
wer is two-fold. We follow the example of the
apostles, who laid their hands upon the heads of
those who had in mature life been openly baptized.
But beside this pattern set before us, we recognize
2i, practical value in the confirmation of those bap-
tized in adult years,

A bishop presides over many parishes. His
visits to each necessarily cannot be frequent. But
when he does come for the administration of this
rite, it affords an opportunity for those who have been
Ifed to Christ, and who have confessed that faith, to
renew their baptismal obligations. It is a deepen-
ing of the inscription which baptism engraved upon
the heart

It ma}^ be added that there are few greater evils
in the Church of Christ, than the selfish and nar-
row isolation of a single church. Tliere is a tend-
ency on the part of an individual paiish to become
like arailwa}'' train, following the narrow course
which its own track marks, and its own hea'l-light
illuminates, regardless of all that may be on either

40

side. But confirmation is an act in which an
official of a larger organization loarticipalea. The
provision which gives the act of administering this
rite into the hands of the bishop, emphasizes the
principle that the person confirmed, thereby becomes
not a member of this congregation or that parish,
but a member of the whole Reformed Episcopal
Church. He thereby pledges himself to its wel-
fare and its progress.

The Reformed Episcopalian finds his love for
this solemn ordinance deepened, when he discovers
that his broad, catholic, and spiritual view of
confirmation has met with the approval of the great
leaders of Christendom. Some of the best of those
who have chosen another method of confessing
Christ, have given to this rite the warmest com-
mendation.

John Calvin boldly declares : " It was an ancient
custom of the Church for the children of Chris-
tians, after they were come to years of discretioD,
to be presented to the bishop in order to fulfil that
duty which was required of adults who offered
themselves for baptism." The great apostle of
Preabyterianism then attacks the Roman Catholic
perversion of the rito, and adds, "Such imposition
of hands therefore, as is simply connected with
benediction, I highly approve, and wish it were
now restored to its primitive use, uncorrupted by
superstition." (Calvin's Institutes, Vol. II, p. 605)

41

The same testimony to the antiquity and value
of confirmation was rej)eated in a report of a com-
mittee on the subject — appointed some years ago
by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church. (Yide ''Common Prayer Interpreted;"
p. 310.)

Richard Baxter — as pure a saint as modern times
have known — himself a Presbyterian, wrote a care-
fully prepared argument for confirmation. (Bax-
ter's Works, Vol. XIY.)

The early Methodists were generally confirmed
in the parish churches of England. Adam Clarke,
long after he was a Wesleyan preacher, presented
himself for confirmation to the Bishop of Bristol.
Forty years afterward, he writes of this step,.
"Upon this point my sentiments are not changed."
(Life of Adam Clarke ; Yol. I, p. 94 )

Dr. Richard S. Slorrs, a very Nestor of the Con-
gregatioijal Churches, has introduced a mode of
public rccognilion of bai)tized children, which
partakes of some of the features of our confirma-
tion. {Christian at- Work.)

The sweetest and most nutritious bread may be
made the vehicle of poison. God lias given us
nothing which may not be abused and perverted
from its true purpose. The rite of confirmation
aflTords no exception to the rule. Upon it a fungus-
growth of evils developed in the Cliurcli from
which our own sprang, that largely contributed to

42

produce the separation of the Reformed F^piscopa-
lian.

Yet these evils were not the result of the ordi-
nance itself. We clearly saw that thousands of
young persons were brought forward for confirma-
tion, with no preparation of heart, and no adequate
sense of the solemnity of the act. It crowded the
•church with a membership of souls lacking the
essential requirement of spiritual membership of
Christ. Yet when we came to revise the service
for confirmation, it was scarcely changed from its
old form. It needed no such alteration as the
baptismal office, to make its voice chord with the
Bible. The trouble was not in the service for con-
firmation.

But it lay deeper. The false theory of the office
of a bishop, to which I shall refer in a later ser-
mon of this course, poisoned the wholesome bread
of tlie doctrine of confirmation.

Bishop Doane declared that " the bishops are
apostles." (Bishop G. W. Doane's Missionary
Bishop, p. 22.)

The " Tracts for the Times," which first turned
the Protestant Episcopal Church Homeward, speak
of bishops as "the representatives of the apos-
tles." The same authority tells us that the bishops
are to be considered "as if they were apostles. "
" The apostles may still be said to be among us.
Whatever we ought to do, had we lived when tho

43

apostles were still alive, the same ouglit we to do
for the bishops " " The bishop rules the whole
Ohurch below, as Christ rules it above " "Our
bishops arc armed with the apostles' power to con-
fer spiritual gifls.''^

How inevitable — how logical the result I The
apostles bestowed spiritual gifts by the touch of
the baud. The same power must belong to their
successors. Thus confirmation becomes a magical
rite, dependent for its value and efficacy solely upon
the contact of an Episcopal hand.

The Reformed Episcopalian purified the rite of
confirmation when he showed from the New Testa-
ment that the apostles had no successors in their
unique and solitary work. He m-ade the laying on
of hands somethinj: more than a superstitious and
mechanical act, when He made the bishop simply
a, presiding minister, receiving the new convert in
the name of the Church.

Still more directly was confirmation perverted
by the dangerous doctrine of baptismal regenera-
tion. The baptized person was born again by vir-
tue of the sacramental water. The Holy Ghost
liad been implanted at the font. That regenera-
tion could not be supplemented by any later spirit-
ual birth. Dr. Dix's " Trinit}^ Church Catechism"
declares that by baptism " we become God's
adopted children and heirs of heaven ; we are

44

cleansed from sin, and made temples of the Holy
Ghost."

What further preparation for the reception of
confirmation could be required ? Certainly no
spiritual qualification beyond this is possible.
And so, the Pra3^er Book directed every minister,
after baptizing a child, to warn the parents that
they should "bring him to the bishop " to be con-
firmed by him, when he could repeat the Creed, the
Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the
Church Catechism !

Is it strange that such a theory of confirmation
opened a wide door to unspiritualize the Church ?

The Reformed Episcopalian struck at the tap-
root of the weeds which choked this rite with
errors, when he protested against the idea that bap-
tism and regeneration are inseparably tied together.
He does not require the confirmed person to " be
brought to the bishop to be confirmed." It must
be a voluntary act. He does not come in order to
be made a Christian. He comes because through
repentance and faith he has been pardoned, washed
in the blood of Christ, and sanctified by the Holy
Ghost.

The true soldier of his country is always such
before he puts on the uniform. The national livery
only makes all the world know what his heart is.
Confirmation makes no man a soldier of the Cross,,
who was not such at heart before.

THE REFORMED EPISCOPALIAN AT
THE LORD'S TABLE.

^^And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and
blessed it, and gave it to the disciples, and said.
Take J eat ; this is My body. And He took the cup,
and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying. Drink
ye all of it : for this is My blood of the New Tes-
tament, which is shed for many for the remission
of sins." St. Matt, xxvi : 26-28.

No visible institution of Christianity, so im-
presses the mind and the imagination, as the supper
of the Lord. Its hoary age makes it venerable.
It antedates the Christian Church itself.

" Soldiers," cried Napoleon, to his army in
Egypt, " behold the Pyramids ! Forty centuries
are looking down upon you."

Yet the passover, out of which the communion
sprang, the passover which prefigured the sacri-
fice of Jesus, as the supper of the Lord recalls
it to memory, belongs to the age when the Pyra-
mids were built. The communicant is looked down
upon by the witness of four thousand years. And
when the Pyramids shall crumble, the Lord's sup-
(45)

46

per shall remain. For, " as oft as ye do eat this
bread, and drink this cup, ye do show forth the
Lord's death until He come."

Little»wonder if superstition has seized upon so
venerable an ordinance, and used it as a potent
Tveapon to subvert the freedom of God's children.
ft is the duty of every Reformed Episcopalian, as
■of every Christian, to know the exact nature of so
-conspicuous and solemn an institution of Christ.
Let us attempt that duty to-day, with prayer for
the Spirit's guidance.

I. What is the Scriptural and Evangelical
VIEW OF THE Holy Communion?

It would seem as if the New Testament had left
us without excuse if we blunder as to the true
answer to this inquiry. For doubt and contro-
versy generally arise in regard to things concern-
iing whose early origin history has left us in the
dark.

The windowless " round towers " upon the rocky
-coast of Ireland, have given rise to whole volumes
of controversial literature. Antiquarians and
scholars have debated with each other whether
they were places of religious' worship, or fortresses
for defence. But the discussion carried on for
<jenturies, is not ended yet. For history contains
no line or word to tell the story of their erection.

But the record of the institution of the Lord's
supper has been given in the Bible so fully, so

47

clearly, and with such repetition, that error would
seem impossible and debate unnecessary. We have
four distinct and separate accounts, differing from
each other in regard to no material fact. Three
out of the four evangelists, viz., St. Matthew, St.
Mark, and St. Luke, have told the story nearly in
the same words. It would seem as though these
three accounts were sufficient. But when the apos-
tle Paul finds the Church at Corinth perverting
this sacrament from its holy purpose, he gives to
that Christian community a fourth narrative of the
first origin of the Lord's supper, which he declares
he had received by direct inspiration from the
Lord Himself. 1 Cor. xi : 23.

Now the first thing which attracts the attention
of the Reformed Episcopalian who studies this
fourfold record, is the simplicity of the Lord's
supper.

Our foreign dispatches tell us that it is not an
unlikely event, that the imperial crown of Germany
may at any time be set upon the head of a child but
five years old. How strangely out of place, upon
such an infant — just as simple and childlike by
nature as the little one in your home — will be the
imperial robes, the glittering orders, the pompous
splendors, and the artificial dignity which surrounds
a monarch I

Equally unnatural, in the light of the New Tes-
tament accounts of the Lord's supper, seem to the

48

Protestant Christian, the pomp and ceremony with
which the communion is sometimes celebrated. If
the Lord Jesus had tried to choose a method of
establishing an institution in his Church, which
should be singularly plain, simple, and unencum-
bered by ritual, He could hardly have selected a
different way. That simplicity appears in the p^ace
selected for the last supper. No splendid temple,
no gorgeous sanctuary, no decorated shrine, wit-
nessed the first eucharist. It was the bare upper
chamber of some Jewish house borrowed for the
occasion.

The same simplicity is revealed in the total want
of any ritual details. Christ wrote out no rubrics
of direction how the Church was to perpetuate this
feast. The shelves of our ecclesiastical libraries
are crowded with "manuals of devotion," for the
use of communicants. They descend to minute
directions as to postures, and even how the bread
should be taken in the hand, and the chalice lifted
to the lips. But Christ did not depart from the
simplicity of the sweet yet solemn rite, by even an
allusion to these minor matters. Christians have
quarrelled whether their attitude around the Lord's
table should be standing, as in the Greek Church ;
sitting, as is the practice of Presbyterians ; or
kneeling, as with Episcopalians. Yet no one of
these postures is that of the apostles, for tliey
reclined on couches, as the old Oriental fashion

49

was at feasts. " The simplicity which is in Christ,*^
forbade attention to such details. The Reformed
Episcopalian kneels, simply because the whole
question of attitude is plainly a matter of indiffer-
ence, in which every Church may exercise its
choice.

Observe, too, how this simple and natural idea
of the communion is preserved in the symbols em-
ployed. Jesus might have chosen s6me striking,
unique, unprecedented emblems of His dying love.
Instead of that, He takes the bread and the wine —
both of which the Jews used in keeping the pass-
over, and which were therefore right before Him.
He seemed to say, " I make the simplest and most
natural act of your daily life a blessed and sacred
thing. I hallow with the remembrance of My love
to you, even your partaking of food and drink.*'
It was anticipating St. Paul's language : " Whether
ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the
glory of God." When St. Paul rebukes the Corin-
thian Church for its failure to discern the real pur-
pose of this sacrament, he says, ** Wherefore breth-
ren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for
another." How clear it makes it that the Lord's
supper was a simple meal in memory of Christ.
Not a word even to indicate that the presence of a
minister was necessary to the due celebration of
the rite 1

The fourfold history of the institution of this

60

sacrament, leads the Reformed Episcopalian, in
perfect accord with other evangelical believers, to
regard the Lord's supper as a special memorial of
Christ's atoning death.

In one of our public parks a statue stands, to
keep in memory for all generations a great states-
man whom it represents in marble. That commem-
oration is the one central idea with which it w^as
erected. It doubtless serves other purposes a&
well. The great pleasure ground is ornamented by
its presence. It bears witness to the liberality of
the rich, and the self-denying patriotism of the
poor. It forms a bond of union between the mul-
titude of contributors to its erection. But these
do not constitute the one great end which its erec-
tion had in view. If these subsidiary purposes be
crowded to the front, and so kept before the public
mind that the remembrance of the dead hero shall
be lost sight of, better that the sculptor never
touched chisel to the stone 1 A doctrine of the
Lord's supper which belittles this memorial fea-
ture, has lost the primal end for which the com-
munion was instituted.

Our Lord used language in His gift of this ordi-
nance to Ilis disciples, which can be only reasonably
and consistently explained on the basis of its being
primarily a memorial rite. He broke the bread,
and gave it to them, with the words, *' Take, eat, this
is My body." Now, setting aside for the present.

51

-the Roman Catholic theory of a miraculous change
by which the bread was altered in its substance-
into the literal body of Christ, what could He have
meant by words like these? Precisely what a
father would mean, who, when about to cross the
sea, gives his picture to his children, and says,.
" This is myself." He does not mean that the por-
trait is actually his own personal being, but that it
represents it And the only value of such a rep-
resentation is that it helps the memory to recall
him. So, too, He speaks of the wine, " He took
the cup, and when He had given thanks, He saidy
This is My blood of the New Testament, which i&
shed for many for the remission of sins.'' The
moment that you fall short of the Popish theory of
a trausubstantiation of the wine, you must of neces-
sity understand Christ to mean that the wine was fit
representation of that blood which He was to shed
for sinners. It was ever afterward to appeal to the^
memory of the believer.

Nor need we depend on a mere interpretation of
His words in giving the emblems. St, Luke dis-
tin :tly states that Jesus told the disciples what was-
the purpose of these symbols, and of the Christian's-
partaking of them. " This do," He said, " i»
remembrance of Me." Besides, when St. Paul
received from Christ Himself the account which he
gives in his first epistle to the Corinthian believers^
he also declares that the very words of Christ were

52

those which St. Luke has recorded. And as if to
make it clear that it was a ceremony to be perpet-
uated in the Church mainly as a memorial rite, St.
Paul tells us that Jesus followed the giving of the
cup with this still more explicit expression of His
will, " This do ye, as oft as ye shall drink it, in
remembrance of Me "

Obsei've, too, the appropriateness of the emblems
to bring out in conspicuous relief, the memory of
Christ's sacrifice. The bread of which they partook
had been before that hour employed by Christ as
a type of His body. St. John vi: 35-58. But now
it is broken. Each account mentions with particu-
larity this fact of the bread being thus treated in
His hands. As if Christ would have the fact of
His blessed body being bruised and pierced, the
one prominent idea in the recollection of His peo-
ple. In the City of Boston, thousands daily pass a
statue of Abraham Lincoln. But it represents him
in the act of taking the fetters from the limbs of a
slave. It clearly seems to say that those who put
that striking figure there, were not merely anxious
to have posterity remember the great president,
but remember him in that particular act of his
eventful life. So do the broken bread and the flow-
ing wine touch the memory of the Christian with
the recollection of a Saviour in the act of giving His
life for sinners.

Thus, the Reformed Episcopalian finds no

53

incomprehensible *' mystery " in the communion
as a means of grace. He does not approach the
Lord's table with the feeling that it is some magic
charm in which he is to find spiritual help, as the
Romanist expects to find it in touching a relic of
the saints, or the wood of " the true cross." Its
philosophy is as clear as the noonday.

For what can rekindle in the heart the glow of
love, like the stirring of the memory ? In days of
war, your voluntary substitute took your place in
the ranks, and died upon the field of battle. Can
you bring out from the place in which you treasure
it, the memento which he sent you when he lay
dying, and which is stained with his heart's blood,
and 3^et feel no stirring of your soul's deepest love?

But the Reformed Episcopalian does not forget
that together with this memorial idea of the com-
munion, another great truth is coupled.

The Lord's supper is a visible Gospel. We can-
not see these emblems of the death of Jesus with-
out their preaching to us eloquently and powerfully
the doctrine of His atonement. Why, then, do we
not satisfy all that this sacrament demands, when
we have looked upon the consecrated symbols of
His dying love ? Why eat the bread ? Why drink
the wine ? Will not our love be wakened by the
sight of this pictorial representation of His suffer-
ing for us ? We have no hesitation in answering.
Our bodily life is itself an emblem of our spiritual

51

life. Precisely as we sustain our bodily existence^
by partaking of food and drink, so by faith do we
feed upon Christ. The Old Testament had fore-
shadowed it, when the prophet, turning from the
rites and ceremonies of the Mosaic Law, cried from
liis walchtower of vision, " The just shall live by
faith." Habak. ii : 4. Christ Himself echoed the
same great truth, when long before the night in
which he was betrayed. He solemnly declared,
*' Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and
drink His blood, ye have no life in you."

That He did not refer to the communion in these
strongly figurative words, is plain. He uttered
them at least a year before He instituted the Lord's
supper. He spoke to an assemblage of Jews, who
could by no possibility know anything of this
ordinance to be established in the future. More-
over, when He discovered that they only saw in
them a gross and earthly meaning, and wondered
how they were to eat His flesh and drink His blood,
He corrected their blunder. He told them that in
His body He was to ascend to heaven, and that
under the figure of His body and blood, He had
spoken of His Spirit. " What and if ye shall behold
the Son of man ascend up where He was before ?
It is the Spirit which quickeneth. The flesli profit-
eth nothing. The words that I speak unto you,
they are Spirit and they are life." " He that

5d

believeth on Me hath everlasting life." John vi :
62, G3.

If any words could express more clearly than
these, that simple trust in Christ and His word,
sustains the spiritual life, as eating and drinking
sustain the bodily life, it is difficult to imagine what
those words could be What follows ? Evidently
enough, that when the Saviour established the
Lord's supper. He ordained this eating of the
bread, this drinking of the wine, to be a symbol of
the faith by which we must receive Him into our
souls, and live spiritually upon Him.

It maybe added that the Reformed Episcopalian
sees one other great truth brought clearly before
him in this symbolic rite. In thus entering into
fellowship with his suffering Lord, he also becomes
a member of the vast brotherhood, whatever be the
name they bear, who partake of Christ by faith,
"the blessed company of all faithful people." By
trust in Christ, they " all eat the same spiritual
meat, and drink the same spiritual drink." They
symbolize and picture forth that loving fellowship
by this visible gathering around the same table, and
exhibit their common love and common interest in
each other, by calling their memorial feast, " the
communion."

No wonder that basing his view of the Lord's
supper upon the teaching of the word of God alone,
the Reformed Episcopalian opens wide his arms ta

56

ivelcome to this sweet and precious feast, all who
Jove his " Divine Lord in sincerity and truth."
II. What has the Reformed Episcopalian

DONE TO RESCUE THE LoRD'S SUPPER FROxM UNSCRIP-
TURAL PERVERSION?

William of Orange, the leader of Protestant faith
and civil liberty, against the Church of Rome and
the tyranny of Spain, once placed his young son as
a hostage in the hands of Philip II, the Spanish
king. When at last restored to his father, the
youth had been transformed. He had become a
Spaniard in national spirit, a tyrant in political
principle, and a bigoted Romanist in religion.
Where lay the secret of so vast and complete a
<;hange ? Simply here. The Spanish teachers began
early. The Reformed Episcopalian who reads the
history of the visible Church of Christ, discovers
a like amazing transformation in the sacrament of
the Lord's supper. He sees the simple, natural,
logical truth that was embodied in a sacred meal,
taken in common by believers, to commemorate the
death of Christ, changed into an appalling mystery
and gorgeous ceremonial. He sees the bread no
longer broken, but in the form of a wafer. He sees
the wine, in bold violation of the Saviour's last
command, taken from the laity and reserved for the
clergy alone. He sees the table which bore wit-
ness to the primitive principle of the communion as
a solemn, commemorative feast, replaced by aa.

57

altar, on which a priest offers the consecrated ele-
ments as a sacrifice to God. He sees the wafer
lifted up like an idol, and the people bowing in
prostrate adoration as before God Himself. He
sees the universal Church accepting for a thousand
years the doctrine that the priest by his consecrat-
ing act has transmuted the bread and wine into the
literal and actual body and blood of the Redeemer.
How came to pass so amazing a revolution? The
answer is that the enemy began early. There is no-
trace of such a ceremony or such a doctrine in the
New Testament. We read of " the breaking of
bread, and prayer " in apostolic history, and the
epistles to the apostolic churches. We see the-
Christians gather at the simple meal which calls to
their memory their suffering Lord. But that is all.

Yet, no sooner do we leave inspired teaching, and
open the pages of the writers known as the " early
fathers," than the perversion of the Lord's supper
begins to appear. The good seed sown by the Son
of Man was not yet grown, when the tares sprang
up also.

No heresy of the Roman Church so directly led
to the Reformation, as that of transubstantiation —
the doctrine that what had been up to their conse-
cration, bread and wine, became by miraculous
change the actual flesh and blood of the Redeemer.
Yet, so deeply rooted was this monstrous theory,
that even Luther could not fully rid his own mind

58

of its remnants. Rejecting transubstantiation, he
tried to reconcile bis loyalty to God's word with
what he called " consubstantiation " — the notion
that while the bread and wine did not lose their
nature, and were still bread and wine after conse-
cration, yet in union with them was the body and
blood of Christ.

But the reformers of the Church of England, on
this point gave no uncertain sound. They may
have entertained false theories in regard to bap-
tism, bat they did not find on that field the battle
which they were to fight. The whole struggle of the
English reformation raged about the supper of the
Lord. And here they drew broad and unmistakable
the Scripture line between Christ's truth and
Rome's perversion. Let it ever be remembered
that of the many hundreds who died amidst the
flames of martyrdom, which Bloody Mary lighted,
not one who did not give his life rather than accept
a false doctrine concerning the communion. From
Cranmer, the primate and archbishop, down to the
humblest peasant and artisan, the English witnesses
for Christ, were witnesses even unto death, against
€very form of perverting the simplicity of the
Lord's supper. (Blakeney's Hist. Prayer Book,
pp. 528, 529.)

It would be natural to conclude, that whatever
error might find place in the Church of England
and her daughter in America, it would be impos-

59

sible that they should wander from the truth con-
cerning the communion. Here, surely, the princi-
ples for which Cranmer and Latimer, Ridley and
Hooper died, will be guarded as men guard their
homes and the lives of their children.

But the weed of a false doctrine of the eucharist
is one which has tough roots, and readily sprouts
again. From Reformation days there were those in
the English Church who shrank from the strong,
clear views of Cranmer, and his companions in
martyrdom. They gained the ear of Elizabeth,
eager to reconcile her Popish subjects to a Protes-
tant liturgy. They led her to revise the commu-
nion service, so as to abolish a rubric denying the
so-called " real presence." (Blakeney's Hist. Prayer
Book, p. 449.) The same class of religious
teacliers still further corrupted the service when
the prayer book was revised in the days of that
worthless king, Charles II. (Proctor's Hist. Prayer
Book, chap, v.) The germs of a doctrine which the
reformers died at the stake rather than accept, were
sown in' the soil of the service. They sprang up
here and there in the Church, but only reached
their baleful harvest time when fifty years ago
the Oxford Tracts appeared. From that hour
no Canada thistles ever spread more rapidly.
To-day, the doctrine of the " real presence " per-
vades our mother Church, and is taught directly or
indirectly by the vast majority of her clergy. What

60

is that doctrine ? Briefly, it is that while there i»
no change of substance in the bread and wlne^
Christ is spiritually present in them after the con-
secration. Mark the language. Every Protestant
believes with Archbishop Cranmer, that Christ is
really present in the Lord's supper in the hearts of
*' all them that worthily receive the same." (Cran-
mer's Answer to Gardiner.) But the advocates of
the notion of the real presence, mean such presence
in the bread and in the wine. The officiating priest
by consecration has imparted to the elements them-
selves the spiritual presence of Jesus Christ. Do
not think that I exaggerate. Listen to this lan-
guage from an accepted advocate of the doctrine :
" The body and blood of Christ are sacramentally
united to the bread and wine, so that Cbrist is truly
given to the faithful." *' His flesh, together with
the bread ; and His blood, together with the wine."
(Tracts for the Times, N. Y. Edition, 1839, Vol. 1,
p. 199.) "The nature of this mystery is such
that when we receive the bread and wine, we also
together with them, receive the body and blood of
Christ." (Ibid, p. 214.) Dr. Pusey declares in
his letter to the Bishop of Oxford, " There is a true^
real and spiritual presence of Christ at the holy
supper * * * * independently of our faith."

Dr. Pusey writes of the Lord's supper, "It is
truly flesh and blood, and these received into us-
cause that we are in Christ, and Christ in us."

CI

Dr. Dix's Trinity Church Catechism says, " The
bread and wine become Christ's body and bloody
yet remaining true bread and wine." (p. 51).

Dr. James DeKoven writes, " Believing in the
presence of the body and blood of the Lord in the
consecrated elements^ I believe that presence t ) be
in no sense material or corporal, but ppirituaU
though none the less real and true." (Letter to
certain Wisconsin clergymen, 18t4.)

In Pusey's '^ Eirenicon," a work written to prove
how slight are the differences between the Church
of England and the Church of Rome, lie refers ta
''• Palmer on the Church," as a book " framed word
for word on our formularies, which received the
sanction of two archbishops, and which used to be
recommended to candidates for holy orders.'^
From the work referred to he quotes these remark-
able words : " She (the Church of England) believes
that the eucharist is not the sign of an absent body^
and that those who partake of it receive not merely
the figure, or shadow, or sign of an absent body,
but the reality itself. And as Christ's Divine and
human natures are inseparably united, so she
believes that we receive in the eucharist, not only^
the flesh and blood of Christ, but Christ Himselfj,
both God and man." (Eirenicon, p. 31.)

Now, observe the exact idea which these quota-
tations give. It is that the real presence of Christ
in the holy communion, is not a presence in the

62

hearts of believers. It is " independent of their
faith." But it is in the bread and in the wine. In
one word, the Spirit of God is placed, through a
man's consecration of the elements, in a piece of
bread, and in a cup of wine I Is the Roman doc-
trine of transubstantiation any more degrading to
the Spirit of God than this ? Or is it strange that
other perversions of the truth should have followed'
in its train ?

If the consecrated bread and wine upon the Lord's
table are really the body and blood of Christ, then
it logically follows that the table ceases to be such.
It has become an " altar," on which is offered anew
the body and blood of Jesus as an oblation to the
Father. " It is not," says Dr. Dis, " a sacrifice by
way of a new death, but by way of a standing
memorial of His death. It pleads to the Eternal
Father, sets forth before the world, and applies to
our souls the one sacrifice of Christ."

Then, too, as we shall see in a later sermon of
this course, the minister becomes a sacrificing
" priest," who oflfers, like the sons of Aaron, the
sacrifice of Christ's body and blood. Hence it is
that in the old Church, the word *' minister " has
come to be superseded by that of " priest." We no
longer hear of a faithful parish minister, but a
" parish priest." Yet we have only to turn to the
Epistle to the Hebrews to learn that every trace of
a sacrificing priesthood like that of Aaron passed

63

away when Jesus offered His " one sacrifice for sins
forever," and " sat down at the right hand of God.'^
Christ is the only priest of the Christian, except
that every true believer, minister or layman, is one
of " a royal priesthood."

But, above all, the whole system known as
" ritualism," by which the public worship of the
Church once so dear to us, has been completely
disguised, is based on this false theory of the
Lord's supper. The vestments which have super-
seded the simple robes worn formerly by ministers
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, are imitations
of those which are supposed to have been worn by
priests who offered sacrifices. A leader of the
Church of England ritualists, in answer to the
question, " What meaning do you attach to the
vestments?" replied, *' I take them to be a distinc-
tive dress of a priest at the time of celebrating the
holy communion." (Principles at Stake, p. 142.)
In the earlier days of the Church out of which our
own sprang, it was sometimes customary to bow the
head at the name of Jesus in the Creed, to signify
belief in His Divinity. To-day, a far more pro-
found obeisance is made at multiplied points of the
service, but — mark it well — always toward the
table. Why ? Because that table i3 now *' the
altar," with super-altar upon it, and crucifix crown-
ing it. And if this theory of the " real presence,''
and a sacrifice in the Lord's supper, is true, they

64

are right who bow. For, if the awful presence of
the Son of God is on that table, then, surely, I can-
not prostrate myself in an adoration too profound.
But if it be an unscriptural and idolatrous doctrine,
then this bowing toward the so-called altar, is as
offensive to God as prostration before a Chinese
image or an African gree-gree.

Back to the word of God the Reformed Episco-
palian has gone. Our Church has planted its feet
upon the rock, in restoring the Lord's supper to its
primitive simplicity. Open your Book of Common
JPrayer, and in its fore-front you find a " Declara-
tion of Principles." In the name of the Reformed
Episcopal Church, it condemns as " erroneous and
strange doctrines contrary to God's word," the
theory " that a Christian minister is a priest in any
other sense than that in which all believers are a
royal priesthood ; that the Lord's table is an altar
on which the oblation of the body and blood of
Christ is offered anew to the Father ; and that the
presence of Christ in the Lord's supper is a pres-
ence in the elements of bread and wine."

We framed our whole liturgy on the principles
laid down in this declaration. From cover to cover,
you will nowhere find a minister of the Gospel
called a 'Spriest." We blotted out the dangerous
expression which styled the elements of bread and
wine, "these holy mysteries." We saw in them
no mysterious nature, but only simple and appro-

65

priate emblems. We went back to the reformers
of the Church of England, and found that Cranmer
and his fellow- martyrs had dropped out f:om the
communion service, as it was first prepared, a
Romish prayer, entitled the " oblation." The influ-
ence of the high church Bishop Seabury had pre-
vailed to have it inserted in the American prayer
book. We removed it once more, and restored the
service for communion to the Protestant form la
which the reformers had bequeathed it. We
required that the minister in delivering the bread
to the communicant, should call it " bread," and
when delivering the cup should call it '' wine " —
that thus the Church should bear perpetual witness
to the fact that no change had taken place in these
emblems through the prayer of consecration.

We found that the Protestant Episcopal Church
had omitted, under the same inspiration of Bishop
Seabury, the rubric of the Church of England posi-
tively declaring that the consecration prayer does
not change the nature of the elements, and that no
worship of those elements is intended by kneeling
at the communion. We put it back where Cranmer
once had written it.

Then, to crown the work, we graved it upon the
very constitution of this Church, that no altar
should ever be permitted in any edifice in which
Reformed Episcopalians should worship.

In an evil hour Archbishop Cranmer yielded to

66

the Bloody Mary's threats, and signed a paper
recanting his own protest against the doctrine of
the real presence in the bread and wine of the com-
munion. Bitterly did he repent his cowardly act,
and when the flames leaped up around him in the
hour of his martyrdom, he thrust his right hand,
which had written his recantation, into the hottest
fire. *' Unworthy hand I unworthy hand I" cried
the penitent martyr.

Reformed Episcopalian, remember that for you
to yield one hair's -breadth to the ritualism which
has crept like a mildew over your old Church, is to
do before God and angels and men, the very act of
which Cranmer's ^* unworthy hand " was guilty.

THE REFORMED EPISCOPALIAN AND
HIS MINISTER.

^^Ancl whosoever will he chief among you, let him
he your servant ; even as the Son of man came,
not to he ministered unto, hut to minister, and to
give His life a ransom for many.''^ St. Matt.
XX : 27, 28.

A child is born into this worki as some shell or
bit of sea-weed is tossed by the waves upon the
shore. It lives by no choice of its own. But Jesus
Christ always spoke of His birth as His " comino^.'*
It was His own voluntary act which laid the Babe
of Bethlehem in the manger-cradle.

Like a leaf that flutters down upon the hur-
rying stream, the future of a child is shaped and
controlled by currents and eddies, the drift of
which baffles all human prophecy. No such con-
tingencies affected the child over whose birth the
angels sang their carols. He came into this world
with a definite mission, which no power of man or
devil could thwart. He was born only that this
pre-arranged destiny might be carried out. *' To
this end was I born, and for this cause came I into
the world," said Christ, to tlie wondering Pilate.

When the twelve, fired by a low ambition for
power, and jealous of each other, quarreled for
(67)

68

liigh rank in Christ's earthly kingdom, He rebuked
them with the language of the text. He Himself
had but one purpose from His birth at Bethlehem
to the cross on Calvary. It was to be a minister,
a servant of other men, for such is the exact mean-
ing of the Greek word in which He described His
office.

In this text the double work of Jesus is con-
"tained, like the twin seeds in their shell. He was
<to be a minister to men, and a ransom for men.
That last feature of work He wrought out ''once
ibr all." No man can add to the complete-
ness of that concerning which with His dying breath
Ho cried, " It is finished."

But His ministry for men goes on. Through
•^those whom He still sends, He ministers to the sin-
ful and the lost.

I. The Reformed Episcopalian believes in,

AND HONORS A MINISTRY AUTHORIZED AND APPOINTED

.iBY Christ Himself.

lleligious controversy has sometimes served to
wrap the truth in fog-clouds of doubt. But the
Ijattie waged around the question of the ministry,
tias certainly had the opposite effect. Its fierce
tthunderstorms have cleared the theological atmos-
rphere, and left some points so sharply defined that
further discussion seems unnecessary.

Romanist and Protestant agree so far as this,
ihat both confess that the word of God author-

69

izes the appointment of a class of men whose
lives shall be wholly consecrated to the sacred
ministry. There is substantial unanimity in ac-
knowledging that our Lord Himself appointed
men to such an office, in His choice of the twelve
apostles, and in the sending forth the seventy dis-
ciples. Matt, ix: 5-3; Luke x: 1. Vast multi-
tudes had become His nominal followers. But out
of their ranks He selected these, as soldiers might
be selected from the army to become officers and
ieaders in the campaign. The loftiest tree that ever
towered toward heaven, and shadowed the earth
with its spreading branches, ha'l its birth in some
tiny seed, ^o, the germ of the ministry of the
Gospel is in this simple historic fact that Christ
made selection from those who followed Him in
His brief earthly work, of some to be leaders in
proclaiming the kingdom of heaven.

The point to be kept in view is not whether all
of Christ's people should not be in some sense
preachers of the Gospel, it is not whether every lay-
man is not bound to spread the glad tidings. But
the root-principle which lies at the basis of this
whole subject of the ministry, is in the record of
the four Gospels, that the Saviour sent out a
selected class of His disciples with a special com-
mission in proclaiming the word. To this extent,
it is clear that the ministry rests solidly upon
Christ's own authority.

70

In the great plain of the Sacramento Yalle}', I
have seen a rivulet take its rise among the foot-
hills, grow to the proportions of a river, flow on
with strong current for a time, and then strangely
disappear, beyond the power of man to discover it.
Such a failure is a strange anomulj'' in nature. It
would be yet more strange in the spiritual world, if
Christ, whose love to man, unsealed in apostolic
days the flowing stream of the Gospel ministry, had
in later times suffered it to perish from the earth.
He promised that His presence with those whoni He
sent on this special work, should continue " to the
end of the world." Matt, xxviii ;■ 20. The work
of the ministry was to be perpetuated till " all
nations " had heard the Gospel. Matt, xxiv : 14 ;
Markxiii: 10; Rom. i: 6. The Reformed Episco-
palian firmly believes that Christ has kept that
pledge of His own word. He reads history, and
sees " a darkness that may be felt " fall upon the
world. Ignorance, superstition, false religion, and
wide spread corruption perverted for a thousand
years the "simplicity that is in Christ.'' But
through it all, he sees that the true succession of
the ministry of Jesus never failed. In monastery
cells, in lonely Alpine valleys, in the courts of
kings, and in the humble homes of the poor, Christ's
Spirit prepared His ministers, whose light in dark-
est ages shone out like the stars. Thus, in full
accord with the reformers of the Church of Eng-

71

land, the Reformed Episcopalian holds that the
Spirit of God alone can make a minister of Christ.
The Holy Ghost separates some men for this sacred
office by an inward impulse through the teaching-
of the Bible, compelling them to cry out with the
apostles, " Wo is me, if I preach not the Gospel."'
No other power, no other preparation, can create
" an able minister of the New Testament." 2
Cor. iii ; 6. The Reformed Episcopalian stands
by the strong statement which the late Bishop
William Bacon Stevens, of Pennsylvania, made in
a published sermon, before his elevation to the epis-
copate of the Protestant Episcopal Church, " Edu-
cation will supply the mind with knowledge ; art
will adorn it with its graces and beauty ; oratory
will make the tongue eloquent; personal accom-
plishments will make the man admired ; the hands,
of a bishop may give him outward authority to
minister the word and sacraments. But none of
these, nor all combined, will make him a minister
of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the work of the
Holy Ghost." (Sermon of Bishop Stevens, quoted
by Rev. M. B. Smith, in his " Open Letter," June
6th, 18t4.)

No wonder, surely, that with such authority lying-
behind the ministr}-, and giving it all its power,
the Reformed Episcopalian holds in honor every
true minister of the Lord Jesus. For us to despise
or to neglect our ministers, to fail to hold up their

72

hands in prayer, encouragement, and material sup-
port, would be a far greater sin than it would be in
s. Church which holds that a mere outward ordi-
nance can make a man a minister of Christ.

But it will be asked, " Does not the Reformed
Episcopalian demand that his minister shall be set
apart to his sacred office by a solemn ordination ?"
I answer that no Church on earth is more tenacious
of such an orderly recognition of the Spirit's call
to Christ's work.

The foreign -born American may have been full
of the spirit of his adopted country before he was
recognized by that country as a citizen. But the
nation demands that be shall be naturalized in
token of such recognition. The President of the
. United States was such in reality before he took
the oath of inauguration. But good government
requires that he be formally inducted into his high
responsibility.

The Reformed Episcopalian holds earnestly that
it is the duty of the Church, when satisfied by trial
and examination, that God the Holy Ghost has
moved a man to seek the ministry, to acknowledge
that work of the Spirit by formal ordination.

But who shall ordain ? If the New Testament
had clearly settled that question, no choice could
be allowed. If by that supreme authority, it be
settled that bishops alone have such a duty
entrusted to them, then we have no right to depart

73

from such a Scripture model. If, on the other hand^
there be clear Scripture proof that only presb^^ters
can exercise the prerogative of ordaining others,
we sin when we commit such a duty to some higher
officer of the Church. But if, with all the concen-
trated study of eighteen hundred years, no man,,
however learned, has been able to put his finger
upon one passage of the New Testament, which
fixes beyond all doubt just where the power to
ordain resides in the Church, then it is perfectly
evident that each Christian Church must decide
that question for itself. In the light of the
early history of the Church of Christ, the
Reformed Episcopalian, with all other Episcopa-
lians, is led to require a bishop to take part in every
ordination. Bat CLiurch history is one thing; the
word of the living God is another. And, therefore,
our Church recognizes the full validity of the
ordination conferred by its sister Churches. We
fully believe that Christian history justifies us in
perpetuating episcopal ordination. We believe that"
in this way ours is what our Twenty-Fourth Article
of Religion calls it — a "historic ministry." We
honor it as continuing what has been handed down
to us from the early ages of the Church. We
honor it as a precious heritage from our fathers of
the English Reformation. But until we can find in
God's written word, a clear statement that ordina-
tion by bishops alone, is honored by the Holy

74

Ohost, we dare not brand with condemnation the
orders of other Churches whose ministry God has
blessed.
II. The Reformed Episcopal Church stands

AS A WITNESS TO BEAR TESTIMONY AGAINST TWO DAN-
GEROUS ERRORS CONCERNING THE MINISTRY.

The other day there came to you, flashed through
the depths of ocean, a cable dispatch. It con-
sisted of one solitary word. Received by any
. other than yourself, it would have had no deeper
meaning than ordinarily attaches to that single
name. But to you it was a cipher, and in its
hidden significance it held concealed a message that
it would take whole sentences to express.

The monosyllabic word, " priest," seems on its
surface, as innocent of all hidden meaning as any
in our English tongue. For it is simply a contrac-
tion of the term " presbyter," the Greek form of
*' elder." It originally means, therefore, only an
older man, such as might naturally be entitled by
experience to be a teacher of his juniors.

So far as my knowledge of the various forms of
Church government goes, I am not aware that any
Church exists, in which there is not an oflSce of
" the elder," or " presbyter." And if we shorten
the word into " priest," what danger is in the act ?
Simply this : that our translators of the New Tes-
tament selected the word " priest," as the name by
which to render into English speech, a totally differ-

75

ent Greek word which invariably means a sacrificer —
or one who offers an expiation for sin. It is never
used in Scripture in an}' other sense. The sons of
Aaron, like their father, were priests, because it
was their distiactive work to offer on God's altar,
bloody sacrifices, which pre-figured and typified the
bloody sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. They
stood as mediators between God and man. They
offered sacrifice in atonement for a guilty people,
who otherwise might not dare to approach God,
They also presented the offerings of the people,
which could only be accepted as they were given to
God through these officiating priests. In one word,
the Aaronic priesthood " stood between the living
and the dead," mediating for guilty men before a
holy God.

But when Christ cried from the altar of Calvary's
cross, '* It is finished," the Old Testament priest-
hood died as stars die in the heavens, when the sua
arises in his strength. The typical priest was no
more, because the real Priest had offered His "one,
full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and
satisfaction for the sins of the whole world." The
whole Epistle to the Hebrews is an argument
expressly written to prove that the priesthood under
the old dispensation had been done away by the
sole expiation of the Lamb of God. " There
remaineth no more sacrifice for sin," But if no sac-
rifice, then no altar and no priest. *' There is one

76

Mediator between God and man, the man Christ
Jesus."

The New Testament indeed calls all true believ-
ers " a royal priesthood," and " an holy priesthood.''
But why ? Because they are members of Christ
Himself, "bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh."
As being " in Christ " we can " enter into the holi-
est by the blood of Jesus." But, O, do not fail to
remember it ! Not one solitary passage of the New
Testament ever styles a minister a " priest " on
account of his ministerial office. For a minister to
arrogate that title to himself, is to revolt against
the plainest teaching in the word of God.

It maybe added that the earliest of the unin-
spired writers known as " the fathers," betray in
their writings no trace of this perilous doctrine.
(See Lightfoot on The Christian Ministry, pp. 247-
253.) Not until the third century did early Chris-
tianity become corrupted by the notion that a min-
ister is a priest.

But the dark ages came. The Roman Church
rivetted its fetters on a superstitious people.
What bond could hold the conscience in such
slavery as this— to make the lay member of the
Church look on his minister as a "priest," who
alone could ofler a sacrifice for sin, or present an
oblation to God upon His altar. The Council of
Trent put that dogma into its decrees, and chained
the Church to the conquering car of a priestly

77

caste, i^ gainst that doctrine the Reformation was
the protest of living Christianity. But in the
Church of England, " the eldest daughter of the
Ke formation/' this priestly idea has been revived.
I have elsewhere alluded to the change which has
passed over our mother Church in the name by
which its ministers are called. Some of us " old-
fashioned Episcopalians " recall a time when the
word " priest " was rarely used in reference to a
minister of Jesus. To-day, every rector of a parish
is spoken of as " the priest in charge." But what
does this change mean ? Let the answer come from
the lips and pens of those who thus use the word.
The Rev. Mr. Mackonochie, of St. Alban's, in
London, says, '' The priest gives to every commu-
nicant the heavenly food of the Divine sacrifice."
(Principles at Stake, p. 141.) Dr. Pusey, Arch-
deacon Denison, and twenty one clergymen of the
Church of England, addressing the Archbishop of
Canterbury, say, " The same body once sacrificed
for us, and that same blood once for all shed for us^
sacramentally present, are pleaded by the priest.''*
{Ibid, p. 141.) The. Rev. Mr. Bennett, on his exam-
ination, was asked :

" Do you consider yourself a sacrificing priest V*

"Yes."

" In fact, a sacerdos, a sacrificing priest ?"

"Distinctly so."

78

" Then you think you offer a propitiatory sacri-
fice?"

" Yes ; I think I do offer a propitiatory sacri-
Jicer {Ibid, p. 142.)

We cross the sea. We enter Old Trinity Church,
in New York City. Its rector wields the vast influ-
-ence of the wealthiest religious corporation in our
country. His whole Church endorses his sound-
ness by his election to preside over its last General
Convention in this city. Let us hear him teach the
children from the " Trinity Church Catechism :"

*' When we celebrate the holy" eucharist on earth,
with what do we join ourselves ?"

*' With the offering of Christ in heaven."

" How so ?"

" Christ in heaven, is doing in glory, what the
priest on earth is doing in a holy mystery.'* (Trin.
Ch. Cat., p. 50.)

Such is the teaching which in our mother Church
lies hidden in this seemingly harmless word,
" priest.'* Against it, our beloved Reformed Epis-
copal Church is a perpetual witness. She has no
sacrificing priest but Jesus. She dares not allow
her prayer book to apply to a preacher of the word,
and pastor of the flock, a name which would rob
Jesus of His glory in offering His sole sacrifice.

Closely connected with this error is that which
teaches that our Lord not only appointed a minis-
try, but also its precise form and order. We are

79

told that as an architect furnishes a builder with a
detailed pattern containing minute specifications of
the building to be constructed, so did our Lord
give to the apostles the specifications after which
the Church was to be moulded for all coming time.
" Wheatley on the Book of Common Prayer," a
standard work in the Protestant Episcopal Church,
and a text-book in its theological seminaries, dis-
tinctly asserts, " What Aaron, and his sons, and
the Levites, were in the temple, such are the bish-
ops, presbyters, and deacons in the Christian
Church." (Wheatley, p. 97.) "These were ap-
pointed by God, as those were, and therefore it can
be no less sacrilege to usurp their oflSce." (Ibid.)
Again, " None but those who are ordained by such
fts we now call bishops, can have any authority to
minister in the Christian Church. (Ibid.)

Dr. Dix's Trinity Church Catechism puts this
theory in even stronger terms. It states that dur-
ing the " forty days " between the resurrection and
the ascension, Christ gave to the apostles, as the
first bishops of the Church, ''a definite constitu-
tion, government and officers." It declares that
Christ has never permitted but " one kind of gov-
ernment for His Church," and that, ''episcopal
government. ' ' To belong to a religious body not
having this episcopal goverment, ''is disobeying
Christ." No man can be " a lawful minister " who
has not been " ordained by a bishop." The " Prot-

80

estant sects " are not Churches at all, but have
" cut themselves off from the Catholic Church, by
abandoning the Catholic ministry." (Pp. 76-19,
87 and 88.) Such is to-day tlie generally accepted
view held concerning the ministry in the Protestant
Episcopal Church. In the past, the low church
party resisted it bravely. But the Mcllvaines and
Meades, the Tjngs and Anthons, have passed away.
The feeble relic of the once powerful evangelical
element may here and there faintly remonstrate ;
but it is like the pressure of a child's finger against
the onward march of a glacier.

Nothing but a separate organization, having all
the episcopal characteristics that the old Church
could claim, yet standing on the strong foundation
of the Bible, could successfully bear witness against
such an error.

When the Reformed Episcopal Church was
founded, its Twenty-Fourth Article, which you will
find in your prayer book, and which I ask you care-
fully to read, declared such a view of the ministry
'' unscriptural and productive of great mischief."
It graved deep on its constitution, the ecclesiastical
equality of presbyters, " whether episcopally or
otherwise ordained."

Its canons not only allow interchange of pul-
pits with other evangelical ministers, but provide
for their reception into its ministry without re-
ordination.

81

Are we justified in such a protest as this Church
makes against the two errors — that Christian min-
isters are sacrificing " priests," and that the tliree-
fold ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons, is
clearly necessary to the being of the Church ?

The consequences of those errors justified us.
For they excluded from the Church of Christ, mil-
lions of the noblest witnesses for Jesus that ever
lived in holiness, and died in triumphant faith.
They made their ordination to be an unmeaning
farce, their sacraments to be utterly invalid, and
their whole work, by which, to a very large degree,
our own land has been evangelized, to be a rebellion
against God. Out of the priestly and exclusive
theory of the ministry sprang also the notion of
auricular confession and absolution by a priest.
For when a bishop laid his hands upon a candidate
for the sacred office, the prayer book authorized
him to say, " Receive the Holy Ghost, for the office
and work of a priest in the Church of God, now
committed unto thee by the imposition of our
hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are
forgiven ; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are
retained." The abomination of auricular confes-
sion in a Protestant Church, is boldly commanded
in the catechism already quoted. (Pp. 66, 33-
35.) The question is asked, '* By whom is God
pleased to forgive sins in the Church ?" And the
answer runs, " By the priests of t'.e Church.'*

82

Such is the logical result of such a flew of the
ministry.

Our protest is justified by the English reformers,
No fact of English history is more undeniable than
that the martyred founders of the English Church
recognized the ministry of the Presbyterian
Churches of Scotland, Germany, Holland and
Switzerland.

Archbishop Cranmer was aided by Knox,
Melancthon, BuUinger, Calvin, Bucer, and Martyr
— all ministers of non-Episcopal churches, in
the preparation of the prayer book. {Vide Dr.
C. M. Butler's " Old Truths and New Errors,'^
p. 116.) Not only so, but for a hundred yearSy
under the bishops of the Reformation period^
Englishmen who had received only Presbyterian
ordination,^held parishes, and ministered without
question in tiie English Church. {Ihid^ p. 123^
Keble's Preface to Hooker, p. 38 ; Blakeney on the
Prayer Book, chap, vii ; Bishop Short's History of
Church of England, sections 314 and 324 ; Goode
on Orders, pp. 45-4T ; Bishop White's " The Case
of the Episcopal Churches in America Considered,'^
p. 21.) The writings of the men who died at the
stake under the Marian persecution, are full of the
clearest acknowledgement that episcopal ordina-
tion is not necessary to a valid ministry. (Blake-
ney, p. 630-632.)

But, above all, our protest is justified by Scrip-

* Vide Appendix, C.

83

ture. Even the ordination services of the Protes-
tant Episcopal Church make no claim that the
Bible alone proves any fixed and definite constitu-
tion of the ministry. They only assert that Scrip-
ture and the " ancient authors " show that the three
orders existed from the daj^s of the apostles. No
microscopic search reveals authority for the state-
ment quoted from the Trinity Church Catechism,
that Christ, in the forty days between His resurrec-
tion and His ascension, gave to His Church a
*' fixed constitution " for all time, in the threefold
orders of " bishop, priest and deacon,"

And from one end of the New Testament to the
other, tlie word *' priest" is never applied to a
Christian minister. St. Paul calls himself an apos-
tle, a preacher, a witness to Christ, but never a
priest. St. John styles himself an "elder," 2 John
1, but nowhere a priest. St. Peter writes, " The
elders (or presbyters) which are among you, I
exhort, who am also an elder." But St. Peter
would as soon have denied his Lord again, as to
have written, " Who am also a priest."

Christ came to be our eternal Priest and Sacrifice
in one. But He '' humbled Himself" to minister
unto men. May God save His Church from a
human ministry which would rob the Lord Jesus of
His supreoie and solitary Priesthood.

THE REFORMED EPISCOPALIAN AND
HISBISHOPc

^' This is a true saying, If a man desire the office
of a bishop, he desireth a good thing, ^^
1 Tim. iii : 1.

At the presenji day, according to the latest
statistics, there are about four hundred and twenty-
five millions of nominal Christians in the world.
Out of these, in rough numbers, something like
three hundred and twenty millions are Episcopa-
lians. (McClintock & Strong's Cyc.)

Let us freely admit that in the sphere of relig-
ion, majorities are never a test of truth. No spirit-
ually minded Christian will claim that the value of
any religious principle depends on the approval or
disapproval of the larger number of mankind.

But, at the same time, we may not forget that so
remarkable a phenomenon demands some adequate
■explanation.

If three out of every four Americans held a cer-
tain view of the question of the protective tariff,
•or of civil service reform, it would not of ne(?essity
prove that opinion to be truth. But it would
prove that it was entitled to a most respectful con-
sideration. In exactly that attitude does the Epis-
(84)

85

copal polity in church government appeal to Chris-
tian minds.

But what is Episcopacy ? There are some names
whose real meaning you only discover when you
deal with them as the devotee of science deals with
the stones known as "geodes." They must, as it
were, be broken open, to find what lies hidden
inside. Such a word is the Greek " episcopos,'^
which in the English Bible is translated " bishop."
It has in it just this significance — it means an
*' overseer."

Clearly then, an Episcopal Church is one which
believes that certain ministers hold a position of
oversight in church aflTairs. There may be very
diflferent notions as to the authority which these
overseers possess. There may be widely variant
views as to the source from which their authority
is derived. But the essential principle of Episco-
pal government, which lies underneath all its forms,
consists in this gift to certain ministers of an over-
sight of the Church of Christ. Bearing this defi-
nition in mind, let us ask ourselves :

I. Does the Reformed Episcopalian believe

TilAT the office OF A BISHOP IS OF DiVINE

appointment, and perpetuated by an unbroken
Apostolio Succession ?

A family portrait gallery often reveals some
peculiar feature descending from generation to
generation. Our Church was born of the Protes-

8d

tant Episcopal Church. And if we inherited from
our mother extravagant views of the office of a
bishop, it would only be an illustration of the laws
of heredity.

For not more clearly do high church writers
asseit that Christ established the sacraments of
baptism and the Lord's supper, than they insist
that He appointed the three-fold order of bishops,
priests, and deacons. (Marshall on Episcopacy ,,
pp. 61 and 62. Chapiu oa the Primitive Church,
pp. 168-1 U. Tracts for the Times, No. 2, p. 10.
Bishop Doane's Missionary Bishop, p. 22). But
the Reformed Episcopalian protests against such a
position as contrary alike to the Scripture, to his-
tory, and to all the analogies of human life.

A village springs up on the virgin prairie of the
West. A mere hamlet as yet, its government is of
the simplest character. Two or three men are
vested with all authority that so primitive a state of
things, demands. But population grows. The
hamlet becomes a town. The necessities of the
case call forth a demand for a new class of officers.
By and by, a city, numbering its tens and hundreds
of thousands, has swallowed up in its vast popula-
tion the little germ out of which it sprang. New
emergencies arise, and the government which was
adequate for a country town, is succeeded by the
complete municipal machinery of a great and
populous city.

87 •

But those who founded the place did not provide
the offices of city magistrates, aldermen, mayor,
and judges of various courts, while the hamlet
consisted of a half a dozen houses and a half a hun-
dred peoj^le. Those offices were created when the
need for them arose. It is the natural and his-
torical way.

Exactly parallel to this is the account of the
natural development of the Apostolic Church.
The early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles-
reveal to us no ministers, no administrators, no
governors of the new born Church, except the
Twelve Apostles.

But as the Gospel spreads, and multitudes are
added, the emergency calls for anew set of officers^
and the deacons for the first time appear. The
lowest office in the ministry is the earliest to be
created. But it arose only when needed, and grew
out of an unforeseeh emergency. (Lightfoot on
Christian Ministry, p. 185-189.)

But all this time the entire Christian Church had
been confined to a single city. Jerusalem alone had
contained the whole of Christ's " little flock.""
Now persecution drives them out. Scattered
throughout Palestine, they carry the great tidings.
with them. New churches spring up far distant
from the apostolic centre. The Twelve can not
be pastors in a hundred different towns. And so
another new emergency calls forth the appoint-

88

ment of '* elders " or " presbyters." It is not till
the eleventh chapter of the Acts, and probably ten
years after the appointment of the seven deacons,
that elders or presbyters are mentioned. They
-came like the deacons, to supply a felt want. They
ivere appointed only when such a want arose. But
from the beginning to the end of the Acts of the
Apostles you look in vain for any record of the
'Creation of the Episcopate.

The name " bishop " is not in the book of the
Acts, except as St. Paul calls the presbyters of
Ephesus '' overseers," where the Greek word is
equivalent to *' bishops. " Wherever the name is
used througiiout the epistles, it refers to presby-
ters. Every advocate even of the highest claims
for divine authority for the office of the bishop,
frankly confesses that " bishops " and " presby-
ters " are used everywhere in the New Testament
to signify the same office. ' Bishop Henry U.
Onderdonk, in his tract on " Episcopacy Tested
by Scripture," distinctly says, " The name ' bishop'
which now designates the highest grade in the min-
istry, is not appropriated to that office in the Scrip-
ture. The name is given to the middle office, or
presbyters, and all that we read in the New Testa-
ment concerning * bishops,* is to be regarded as
pertaining tothit middle grade. It was after the
apostolic age that the name * bishop ' was taken
from the second order, and appropriated to the

89

first " (p. 12). With Bishop Onderdonk agree all
the writers of distinction of the Anglican Church,
as well as every other church, from Hooker (Eccles.
Polity Book YIII, Y. 1) down. Surely nothings
then can be clearer than this fact, that a bishop
and a presbyter in the view of the Kew Testament
are one. If when no apostles remained alive to
exercise oversight in the Church, some presbyters
were chosen to hold a supervisory position, and to
them the name of " bishop " was given to distin-
guish them from their fellows, it was to meet a felt
need in tlie Church precisely as with the deacons
and presbyters. But nothing can be more certain
than the fact that no Divine command exists for
the appointment of such an order in the ministry.

Even if we admit the claim that Timothy was
made a bishop at Ephesus, and Titus at Crete, by
the authority of the apostle Paul, it would not fol-
low that it bound the Church everywhere, and in
all ages to maintain such an office as a permanent
feature of the ministry. For the apostles sanc-
tioned the community of goods among Christians ;
yet no believer in modern times regards that prin-
ciple as obligatory on the Church or its members,
Acts ii ; 42-45.

Apostles sanctioned anointing the sick with oil,
Jas. v: 14. But no man regards it as a Divine
command for all lands and ages.

St. Paul recognizes an order of "deaconesses,"

90

and commends a Christian woman to the Church
at Rome, expressly calling her by that name, Rom.
xvi : 1. Yet the order of deaconesses has almost
died out from the Church, and no Christian imag-
ines that a Divine obligation requires the Church
to restore it. Episcopacy may be a form of church
polity equally suited to all times and regions. We
Reformed Episcopalians would be last to deny it.
But that because after the apostles died, Episco-
pacy is found prevailing throughout universal
Christendom, it is therefore a polity which God
requires as essential to the existence of His
.Church, we abhorrently deny.

But it will be asked, does not the Church of
England, and through her, the Protestant Episco-
pal Church in the United States, claim an " Apos-
tolical Succession " of bishops, so that in an
unbroken chain from the apostles down to the
latest prelate consecrated, each one can trace his
ecclesiastical pedigree? Unquestionably such a
claim is made, and on the basis of it, we are told
that outside of this genealogical line there can be
no valid transmission of ecclesiastical authority.

How monstrous such a doctrine is, can be more
fully realized when we remember that it makes
invalid and a mockery all the work which since the
Reformation, God has wrought by the non-Epis-
copal Churches. On this theory they are no
churches. Says Dr. Chapin (Primitive Church,

91

p. 93), writing in regard to this Apostolical Suc-
cession, " The existence of the Church is insep-
arable from it." At the same time that this theory
remands all non-Episcopal Churches to the category
of unauthorized *' sects,'' it makes the corrupt and
idolatrous Roman Church to be a true Church of
Christ, because the chain of " Apostolic Succes-
sion " has been preserved in the consecration of its
bishops

Yet no line or word of the Scripture can be
adduced to prove that either Christ or His apos-
tles commanded any such galvanic chain to be con-
structed, through which the unseen current of church
life should flow. There is no record in the Acts or
the Epistles of a solitary consecration of a bishop.
The chain drops powerless because its very first
link is wanting. However far down the centuries
the so-called succession may have been extended,
there is no proof that it ever had a beginning.

But we are told that the early fathers of the
Church and writers of its history, give us every
link of this chain. In Chapin's '' Primitive
Church," the list is seen, page after page, from St.
Peter and St. James, down to the last chosen bishop
of the Anglican Church in the United States. But
these lists are based upon statements derived from
fragmentary writings of men, most of whom lived
in the third and fourth centuries of the Christian
era. Chapin himself is forced to confess that " it

92

was not customary in tho Primitive Church to
record the names of the consecrators of the bishops "
(p. 276). How utterly untrustworthy such lists are,
is seen in the fact that the different catalogues con-
tradict each other.

One list makes Clement the first bishop of Rome.
Anotlier as positively confers that dignity upon
Linus. Still a third leaves Clement out, and
remands Linus to the second place in the succes-
sion. (See Mossman's History of the Early
Church, p. 1-5. McClintock & Strong's Cyclop,
Art. " Pope.") No wonder that Bishop Stilling-
fleet writes (Irenicum, Part II, Chap. 6) " The
succession of Rome is as muddy as the Tiber "
And yet we are gravely told that the " existence "
of God's Church on earth " depends " upon this
contradictory testimony.

As we follow this frail thread down the ages, it
becomes still more confused and tangled. There
■were long dark ages in which all history becomes a
hopeless labyrinth. Yet the believer in Apostolic
Succession must hold that all Church existence
depends on a certainty that through that period of
ignorance and corruption, when bishops were
feudal chiefs and warriors armed cap a-pie for bat-
tle, and when their lives were the shame of man-
kind, each one was duly consecrated, and the long
chain never broken.

Added to this, we have the positive testimony of

93

Jerome in the fourth century, and of a host of
later writers, that the great metropolitan Church
of Alexandria (whose line of bishops figures largely
in these lists) during two hundred years imme-
diately succeeding the apostles, always chose its
own bishop from among the presbyters, who laid
their hands upon him in consecration. (Galla-
gher's " Prim. Eirenicon ")

The Reformers of the Church of England, who
sealed with their blood their testimony to the
truth, unanimously reject such a theory of Apos-
tolical Succession. Cranmer argued that a presby-
ter and a bishop were of the same order, and that
no consecration to the Episcopate was necessary.
Bishop Jewel distinctly states that the Scripture
makes a bishop and presbj^ter the same, and " only
church custom " elevates the former above the
latter. Even Archbishop Whitgift, opposing Puri-
tan attacks upon Episcopal order, owns that *' the
Church of Christ may exist icilh or without this or
that form of government.''^ (See Dr. C. M. But-
ler's Old Truths and New Errors, pp 113-118.)

What the reformers and martyrs of the English
Church thus forcibly and boldly taught, was also
the earnest conviction of the first bishop of the
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States,
The venerable William White, Bishop of Pennsyl-
vania, has been well styled " the father of Episco-
pacy in America." When the English bishops,

94

after the Revolutionary War, hesitated to conse-
crate a bishop for the revolted colonies, Dr. White
recommended that bishops should be appointed
:and consecrated by presbyters, (" Case of the
JEpiscopal Churches in America Considered."; So
stands the case. Against this theory of Apostolic
Succession, the protest rings out from good men of
every age, from all Christian history, and from the
Word of God.

II. Why does the Reformed Episcopalian

THEN, RETAIN THE OFFICE OF A BISHOP ?

What is useless is a hindrance. No army on a
forced march carries unnecessary burdens. There
is no evil against which public opinion cries out
more vehemently than the multiplication of need-
less offices. Why then have we bishops? Our
/answer is that we sincerely believed in the practi-
cal value of having in the Church such a presiding
'.officer.

Not long ago I stood at the entrance of a mili-
tary camp, appealing for admittance. But whether
or not 1 had a right to enter, was not determined
by the whole regiment. Neither did the entire
staff of officers bear that responsibility. It rested
with one officer to settle whether the glittering
ibayonet of the sentry should be lowered, and I
^admitted. Such a rule was inconvenient for those
who sought admission. It doubtless provoked
remonstrance. But its practical wisdom no rea-

95

sonable man could doubt. For a divided responsi-
bility for any important duty, is always perilous to
safety. To hold one individual responsible, is the
fruit of ripe experience.

The Church of Christ has ever taught that the
entrance to its ministry cannot be too carefully
and jealously guarded.

The Reformed Episcopalian holds that in no
way can the worthless and the ignorant, the
unsound in doctrine and the unholy in living, be
so effectually barred from entering the sacred min-
istry, as by holding one officer of the Church
responsible for ordination to the work of Gospel
preaching. Responsibility is like the precious
metals. One grain of gold may be beaten so thin
as to cover a surface of fifty square inches. But
its thinness destroys its tenacity and strength. It
is an awful responsibility to which a church holds
one of its officers, when it demands that he shall
answer for the entrance gate of ordination. It
cannot fail to impress him with a sense of his need
of God's grace and wisdom sought in prayer.
The Reformed Episcopalian does not believe that
such responsibility will waken so profound a sense
of watchfulness and prayer when it is beaten out
to cover fifty or a dozen men with the duty of
ordaining.

Let us pass from the entrance of the ministry
into the government of the Church itself.

96

No bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church
can ever be " a lord over God's heritage." But as
an adviser and a friend, he stands among his fellow-
ministers a presiding officer. If heart-burnings
and jealousies creep into the hearts of fallen men,
who, though ministers of Christ, are liable to
temptation, it is his to " reprove, rebuke and
exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. "

He occupies too, the responsible position of a
mediator and arbitrator, when differences spring
up between ministers and their congregations.
Troubles which might grow to vast dimensions and
a shameful publicity, and add to the scandals that
block the progress of Christianity, if either left to
themselves or entrusted to the settlement of coun-
cils or ecclesiastical courts, may be quieted and
harmonized by the wisdom and godly counsel of a
presiding officer of the whole Church.

Moreover, who can so stir up the stronger
parishes " to support the weak," who can to the
same decree interest one church in another, and
push on the missionary effort of the whole body,
as an officer whose sympathies, interests, and
responsibilities are enlisted not in a single congre-
gation, but in the Church as a whole ?

The force of this argument for the practical
worth of the Episcopate, is strengthened when we
look around us at our sister churches.

The man who loses an arm, is apt to supply

9T

the deficiency by an artificial substitute. To a cer-
tain degree it does the work of the lost limb ; but
it also proves how necessary that limb was. Does
it not also prove that a presiding oflScer among his
fellow presbyters, is a necessity to the Church,
when we find in the non-Episcopar Churches, a
bishop — not in name — but in actual work and
responsibility ? In almost every city of our coun-
try, some one Presbyterian clergyman is a bishop
in the sense in which the Reformed Episcopal
Church retains that office, except that he is not the
sole ordainer. I feel sure that our Congregational
brethren would cheerfully admit that tbeir growth
in the West has been largely due to a supervision
— an Episcopal oversight — of all the scattered
congregations — exercised by certain secretaries of
Home Mission work, who are bishops in every
sense save the authority to ordain.

It clearly shows that such an office is a natural
and necessary one. It grows out of the inevitable
demand of all human society that for every body
there should be a head. Are we Reformed Episco-
palians wrong, when we claim that having the office,
we should give the officer his ancient name ?

We have been charged with inconsistency in one
prominent fact of our history. The Reformed
Episcopal Church rejects, as we have seen, the
theory of an unbroken succession of Episcopal
consecrations from the apostles down. " Why

98

then,'^ it has been asked, " did ifc come 'into exist
ence only when a bishop of the old line led the
movement? Why does it continue, to consecrate
bishops by bishops, and thus perpetuate a succes-
sion to which it attaches no importance?"

The answer is, that Reformed Episcopalians do
attach importance to their historic Episcopate.
We do not hold that it is necessary to the exist-
ence of a valid ministry and a true church. But
vre believe that it links us with the glorious Re.
formers of the English Church. Their polity is
ours. It puts us clearly in that ecclesiastical
family which preserves the idea of a president
among presbyters, which history testifies was the
practice of the early Church.

But that is not all. Our argument of practical
utility again has its influence. The work of thia.
Church must always be largely in the line of open-
ing a refuge for Episcopalians. It must be a home
for men who love a liturgy and Episcopal govern-
ment, though loving the Gospel better. And to
such it is able to say, " Whatever you had in your
mother Church, of historic value, you have here
also. If your old Church claimed to give you an
Episcopate historic beyond all question, so do we.''
AVhen Bishop Cummins entered on the work of
this Church, he wrote to the Presiding Bishop of
the communion from which he withdrew, that he
took the step in order to " transfer his work and

99

office to another sphere." He entered this Chorcb
bringing his Episcopal office with him. As such
he consecrated other bishops.

It has been urged that canon law requires three
bishops to consecrate. But history is full of
instances in which but one acted as the consecrator.
(Chapin's" Primitive Church," p. 284.) Dr. Pusey
himself writes, " Consecration by one bishop i*
valid." (Letter to Bishop Gregg, Dec. 4th, 1876.)
Cannon Liddon, as high authority as the highest
churchman could desire, has distinctly admitted
over his own signature, when his opinion of the
historic position of our Episcopate was sought, " A_
consecration by one bishop is valid. All orders^
conferred by a bishop so consecrated are undoubt-
edly valid." (Letter to Bishop Gregg, Nov-
ITth, 1876.)

Dean Stanley, certainly one of the profonndest^
students of Ecclesiastical History that the EnglisU
Church has produced, has also pronounced his ver-
dict as follows : " Whoever lays hands on presby-
ter or deacon (whether bishops or presbyters)*
takes part in the consecration or ordination z
though a single bishop is sufficient in each case."
(Letter to Bishop Gregg, Oct. 18th, 1877 )

We can therefore give to our brethren wha
desire a pure Gospel in a historic church, an invi-
tation which could not have been extended, if ours,
were not a church in the line of the historical Epis*
copate.

100

But our Church has a reason over and above its
practical argument for Episcopal polity. Antiq-
uity considered by itself, proves nothing to the
Christian. There are ancient institutions which
degrade man and dishonor God. Polygamy and
slavery are gray with age.

But when we cherish something which itself is
good, and possesses a manifest practical value, it
adds to that value, to know that it has stood the
test of ages. There are certain principles of right
and justice which constitute the bulwarks of society
in this nineteenth century. But it certainly adds
to the estimate in which we hold them, when we
find them in the Magna Charta, and know that they
have stood between freedom and despotism since
the barons at Runnimede wrested them from the
reluctant hand of King John.

We have seen that Episcopacy has a practical
value in our own day. Surely, it ought to add to
the honor in which we hold it, if history shows
that it has CQme down to us from the apostolic
age.

If too, we find that the New Testament hints at, if
it does not clearly prove, the fact that overseers were
appointed while tiie apostles lived, to do precisely
the work which bishops do in an Episcopal Church
of our own time ; and if later history shows that
through all the earlier centuries of Christianity
that polity prevailed, we have a valid reason for
retaining the E[)i'=!eonnl ofTice.

101

That such evidence is to be found in tlie New
Testament appears indisputable to the Reformed
Episcopalian. All Protestants admit that the
Twelve Apostles ordained other ministers, and
that upon them there fell " the care of all the
churches."

Now the simple question is, did these Episcopal
duties of ordination, and supervision of the
churches cease to be exercised by presiding pres-
byters when the apostolic band gradually passed
away from earth ? Even before the death of the
last apostle, did there exist no such presidency
among the presbyters of the early Church when
the work became too extensive lor the personal
supervision of the Twelve ? Let the reply come
from St. Paul's own writings. He says to Tim-
othy : " The things which thou hast heard of me
among many witnesses the same commit thou to
faithful men who shall be able to teach others
also," 2 Tim. ii : 2.

And when we ask how, and in what form, the
authority to preach was to be conferred by Tim-
othy, we receive the answer from the same author-
ity. He tells Timothy to " lay hands suddenly on
no man." He was to use the same watchful care
and thorough examination of a candidate, expected
of a bishop now ; but when such investigation was
complete, he was to admit the man who had thus
been scrutinized by " laying on of hands,^^ 1 Tim.
V: 22.

102

Still stronger does the point of our argument
appear in the directions given to Titus, "For
this cause," says St. Paul, *' left I thee in Crete,
that thou shouldest set in order the things thai; are
wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I have
appointed thee."

These two presbyters of the early Church mani-
festly exercised a power which did not belong to
other presbyters. St. Paul exhorts Timothy to
forbid the preaching of certain doctrines, 1 Tim.
i : 3, which can only be explained on the theory
that he had supervision of his fellow ministers.
Explicit directions are given him as to the qualifica-
tions on which he should insist in those exercising
their ministry under him, 1 Tim. iii. He is to
count a presbyter who ruled well, *' worthy of
double honor." He is not to receive an accusa-
tion against a presbyter, except in the presence of
two witnesses, 1 Tim. v; 17 and 19. When satis-
fied of sin on the part of a presbyter, he is to
rebuke him publicly, 1 Tim. v ; 20. Titus is given
instructions to " rebuke with all authority." -If
necessary, he was " to stop- the mouths '' of those
who taught for the sake of filthy lucre. He was
vested with judicial power to reject those who
held and taught heresies in doctrine, Titus i : 11 ;
ii : 15; iii: 10. It seems almost impossible to
avoid the conclusion that these two early ministers
of Christ were entrusted by apostolic hands with

103

precisely the duties and responsibilities which now
pertain to the office of a bishop.

Let us make no mistake. Let us create no mis-
understanding. The New Testament does not say
that Timotliy and Titus were apostles. It does not
assert tliat they, or either of them, ever succeeded the
apostles in their peculiar office. But it does make it
reasonably evident that even in the apostles' days,
some presbyters were appointed to oversight of
the Church. They were entrusted with special
authority in the two departments of admitting
men to the ministry, and exercising a leadership
and presiding influence. How perfectly natural it
would be that as martyrdom, or a more peaceful
death took the apostles from their earthly work^
the model suggested by their appointment of Tim-
othy and Titus, and perhaps others, as presiding
presbyters, should lead the Church to make such
an office a permanent feature of its polity. (Yide
Lightfoot on the Ministry, p. 194-19T ) And what
was so natural, actually took place. As early as
the period A. D. 107-116, Ignatius testifies that
the Episcopal polity was universal in the Church.
(Marshall on Episcopacy, pp. 109-113 ) (Litton
on the Church, p. 301.)

It is unnecessary to cite the long category of
Christian writers whose testimony makes it clear
that from the time of Ignatius, onward for 1500
years, bishops presided over all the ever spreading
activities of the Christian Church. We may justly

104

reject many of the opinions of these writers. We
may treat their doctrinal views precisely as we do
those of any other uninspired men. The Bible is
the supreme test to which they must be subjected
•even as the preaching and writing of teachers in the
nineteenth century. But their religious opinions
are one thing. Their historic testimony is another.
They are competent witnesses as to what took
place in their own age. And their evidence is
-absolutely like that of one man. Beyond all ques-
tion they prove that the universal polity of the
Church from within a hundred years of the death
of Christ onward, was an Episcopal polity.

What makes this the more remarkable, is the
fact that while endless controversies arose regard-
ing Christian doctrine and government, there is
no record of any question concerning the settled
polity of the Church being a government by
bishops. Orthodox and heretics on that point were
perfectly agreed.

The Reformed Episcopalian cannot believe that
within thirty years of the death of the last apostle,
the universal government and polity of the Church
could have become Episcopal, if such a system
had been repugnant to the apostles' own teaching
and practice. May God help our beloved Church
to prove by its history yet to be, that Episcopacy
and broad charity may be yoked together, and the
love of Christ made known by a church, which
preserves the office of a bishop I Amen.

THE REFORMED EPISCOPALIAN AND
HIS PRAYER BOOK.

^^And it came to pass, as He was praying in a cer-
tain place, when He ceased, one of His disciples
said unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John
also taught his disciples, ^^ St. Luke xi : 1.

Among the external peculiarities of our Church,
none attracts more attention than the fact that we
worship with a liturgy, or precomposed form of
devotion. Precisely as some singularity of feature
or expression of the face, is more quickly noticed
than a more important and vital singularitj'' of
inward character, so does our Prayer Book worship
more readily arrest attention than our doctrinal
principles.

For three hundred years a controversy has agi-
tated the Protestant Churches, regarding set forms
of prayer. But ancient as the discussion is, it has
not died of old age. It is a living question to-day.
Like many other debated points, it has not alwa3^s
been discussed with a large-minded fairness or
Christian temper. I earnestly trust that modera-
tion and sincerity may be the features of our con-
sideration of it.

L Why does the Reformed Episcopalian
EMPLOY A Prayer Book in public worship?
(105)

106

In my boyhood, when commerce was conaucted
hy the aid of a currency more varied than the
leaves upon the trees, every counting-house was
provided with a '* counterfeit detector." It settled
every question. To its standard every suspected
bank note was referred. We have a far more infalli-
ble " detector " of what is false in religion. The rock
■on which the Protestant builds, is the Word of God
alone. To that supreme test we must submit.
Hence if a liturgy employed in public worship, is
clearly inconsistent with the Bible, the sooner we
reject precomposed prayer, the better.

It must be a hasty glance which we give at the
past history of God's people, but it certainly will
shed some light upon the vexed question of liturgical
worship. When God had delivered Israel at the Red
Sea, the rescued people engaged in a solemn act of
worship, Exodus xv. Moses and the men of Israel
sang a chant of thanksgiving. But Miriam and
the women take up the burden of the same words,
and sing them responsively. It is difficult to see
how such worship could have been conducted with-
out some prearranged form.

Again, in the 6th chapter of the book of Num-
bers, God speaks to Moses and gives him this
direction : " Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying,
On this wise shall ye bless the children of Israel,
saying unto them," and then follows a long and

107

elaborate benediction, of which every word is pre-
composed and prescribed.

In the 10th chapter of the same book, Moses is
described as using a set form of words whenever
the Ark of God led forth the people, and whenever
it re&ted on their march.

Five hundred years later, we find David using a
form of worship when the Ark, after long captivi-
ty is brought to Jerusalem, Ps. Ixviii : cxxxii.

When Solomon offered his solemn prayer at the
dedication of the Temple, he uses the very lan-
guage prepared and written by his father David in
the preceding generation. (Comp. 2 Chron vi :
41 with Ps. cxxxiii.)

But why go back to a period so remote ? Let
our text bear its witness. Twice over did Jesus
give to his disciples what we call the " Lord's
Pra3^er," It was in response to their appeal,
*' Teach us to pray, as John also taught his disci-
ples."

No one believes that the Jews who composed the
following of Christ, were strangers to the act of
prayer. They clearly meant to say that John the
Baptist had taught his disciples some form of sup-
plication adapted to their needs under his prepara-
tory stage of the Kingdom of God, And now
Christ's followers ask for a form of prayer that
shall be an advance upon John's — a distinctively
Christian prayer. And with that request the Sa-

108

viour complied. He not only said, " After thia
manner therefore pray ye," Matt, vi : 9, but also
as St, Luke records, " When ye pray, say " — thus
distinctly giving them a liturgical form, Luke xi :
2. Surely we need no stronger evidence that a form
is not necessarily out of harmony with either the
Old or the New Testament.

But another reason impels the Reformed Epis-
copalian. A responsive form of worship is a con-
tinual protest against a ministerial and priestly
monopolizing of the public service of Ood. It is
an easy way to rid one's self of all business cares,
to " sign a power of attorney," by which a man di-
vests himself of his own personal rights, and
transfers his individuality to another.

That act, in the sphere of religion, constitutes
the Roman Catholic idea. The rights, responsi-
bilities and duties of the laymen are transferred to
the priest. All religious worship centres in the
celebration of the mass. It is not needful that
any beside the priest should be present. The peo-
ple have in it no necessary share.

When the Reformation came, its leaders were
quick to see that one of the most effective means
to secure to the laity a recognized place in the
Church, was a responsive liturgy. Luther pre-
pared forms of worship for Germany. The Swed-
ish Reformers followed his example. The Mora-
vians possess and use to-day a service book, dating

109

back to 1 032 Calvin was among the earliest to
perceive the importance of a book of common
prayer, and liimself gave a liturgy to the churches
of Switzerland. Even the Presbyterians of Scot-
land, in Reformation days, did not wholly depart
from the principle of a pre-arranged mode of pub-
lic worship. (McClintock & Strong's Cyclop.,
Art. "Liturgy.")

In England a Scriptural Prayer Book was felt
to be the first essential step toward giving the lay-
man his Christian rights. Cranmer and his fellow-
workers called to their aid the great lights of the
Reformation in other lands, and with their help laid
in the English Church the deep foundations of litur-
gical worship. But in every case the underlying
principle, and the impelling motive were the same.
It was the conviction that nothing can guard the
rights of the Christian layman against priestly
encroachment, like a form of worship in which the
people have their necessary share.

Moreover, a liturgy possesses a singular teaching
power. One can always discover a man's doctrinal
views from his prayers. Precom posed or extempo-
raneous, a prayer is like the coin bearing the image
and superscription of the mint in which it was
stamped. Consequently prayer must be a powerful
doctrinal preacher. The public worship in a congre-
gation is continually teaching either falsehood or
truth. But extempore prayers, of necessity change

no

with every alteration in the belief of him who leads
the worship.

The manifest advantage of a precomposed form
is that it steadily and persistently teaches the
same truth. Out of an old-fashioned iron studded
door, it is possible to draw the nails. But only by
reducing the door itself to a heap of chips. So
with a liturgy. Only by its destruction can you
separate from it the truth it contains. Were I to
become a Unitarian, and deny from this pulpit the
essential Divinity of Christ, the liturgy with its
supreme exaltation of the Saviour, with its three-
fold ascriptions to the persons of the Trinity,
would steadily give the lie to every sermon I could
preach.

There can be no more striking witness to this
principle, than is furnished by the present condi-
tion of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Forty
years ago the vast majority of the laity, a goodly
proportion of the clergy, and nearly one half of the
House of Bishops, were avowedly evangelical low
churchmen. To day the old evangelical party is
like the race of mound-builders of our Western
plains. It is hopelessly extinct. Why? Because the
Prayer Book was a more powerful teacher than the
evangelical pulpit. Baptismal regeneration, priestly
absolution, a sacrifice in the Lord's supper, and an
exclusive church system, were interwoven with the
fibre of the services. They persistently contra-

Ill

dieted the low churchman in his pulpit. I bless
God that the Reformed Episcopalian has a Prayer
Book which is a consistent teacher of evangelical
truth. I may be false to the Gospel. So may
every other minister of this Church. But so long
as this Prayer Book is used for our worship — so
long will the desk overcome the pulpit in its teach-
ing power.

Such are some of the reasons why the Reformed
Episcopal Church is a liturgical Church. They
are reasons which are not only satisfactory to
us, but are profoundly influencing other Chris-
tian Churches. Within the past three years the
thinking Christians of our own country have been
stirred by an able discussion on this subject in one
of the great literary magazines. (Yide The Cen-
tury Magazine, 1885, '86, '8t.) That debate, par-
ticipated in by the leading minds of all the
churches, was initiated by a distinguished Presby-
terian clergyman, who advocated liturgical wor-
ship as the best method of uniting the scattered
forces of Protestant Christianity. Right or wrong
in his conclusions, he certainly has brought the
fact to light, that in the minds of evangelical
believers there is a growing conviction in the
direction of a precomposed form of public
worship. The Reformed Episcopalian can desire
for his own Church and liturgy nothing better than
such an agitation of Christian thought.

112

II. What is the Prayer Book op the Re-'
FORMED Episcopal Church ?

The impression has been created that ours is a
new liturgy, sprung upon the work! like a fresh
invention in meclianics. If such were the case, it
would justly prejudice the Christian mind against
it. For a prayer book is not like the tree which
Japanese jugglers make to spring up and grow to
full stature in an hour. It must be the product of
the ages. There is a reverence in the prayerful
disciple of Christ, which leads him to feel that if he
is to worship in the use of forms of prayer, they
must be those in which the penitence and praise,
the hope and faith of ages past have found expres-
sion. Precisely such is the Prayer Book of the
Reformed Episcopalian.

It may surprise some who hear me today, to be
told that in almost every instance in which we
have departed from the liturgy of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, we have gone back to the sec-
ond Prayer Book of Edward the Sixth, the work
of the martyrs of the English Reformation. Ours
is therefore a more ancient form of prayer than
that with which we formerly worshipped. More-
over, those parts of our service in which our
liturgy agrees with that of our mother Church,
have been handed down from the earliest ages of
Christianity.

There is notliing in uninspired language that stirs

113

my soul like the old hymn called the " Te Deum,"
" We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to
be the Lord I" It bears me back upon its sublime
praise to the days when Christians, driven from the
surface of the earth, met for worship in rock-hewn
catacombs. Nor can I forget, as an American,
that this was the first Christian song heard on the
soil of this Continent, when Columbus fell upon
his knees, and the Te Deum praised God for a new
Western world.

But at the very latest, the Te Deum was used as
early as the sixth century. (Wheatley, p. 150.
Procter's Hist, of P. B., p. 223.) The Gloria in
Excelsis, the opening words of which were sung by
the angelic choirs when Christ was born, has voiced
the praise of believers for at least twelve hundred
years. (Palmer, Origines Liturg. II, 158 ; Proc-
ter, p. 361 ; Wheatley, p. 335.) The Apostles'
Creed has been the outline of Christian doctrine
accepted and repeated in worship, from the fourth
century. (Procter, p. 229 ; Wheatley, p. 155.)
Nor is what we call the Nicene Creed of much
later date. Originating in the year 325, and put
in its present form half a century later, since the
year 381, its clear and trumpet-like tones have pro-
claimed the Divinity of the Saviour. (Procter, p.
229.)

Still more ancient are the Yersicles, *' The Lord

114

be with you;" "And with thy spirit." (Wheat-
ley, p. 160 ; Procter, p. 240.)

The great majority of all the brief prayers
which we call "collects," have breathed the plead-
ings of believers into the ear of God for more than
twelve centuries. (Wheatley, p. 212 ; Procter, p.
271.) Surely, such a heritage, consecrated and
hallowed by the devotion of Christian ages, and
fragrant with the memories of saints in glory, la
a possession which no true believer will despise.

But it will be said that the Protestant Episcopal
Church claims all this sanction of the centuries for
its liturgy, and that we changed what was handed
down to us by the Reformers of the English
Church. Is it true ?

Through three hundred years of growth in art,
no painter has been vain enough to try his pencil
in attempting to improve Raphael's matchless pic-
ture of the Transfiguration. If like that master-
piece, the liturgy of the old Church came down to
us precisely as the Reformers bequeathed it, then
his would indeed be a bold hand which should ven-
ture on its revision. But exactly the opposite is
the truth. The Prayer Book of the Protestant
Episcopal Church has known no less than seven
revisions. Five of these were made in England,
and two in the United States of America. Some
of these revisions were in the interest of Protes-
tant and Scriptural truth, some sought to assimi-

115

late its worship to that of the Church of Rome.
But the fact stands attested by the unerring wit-
ness of history, that our fathers both in England
and America, have no less than seven times delib-
erately revised the Book of Common Prayer.
Like some old cathedral, it has seen in each period
of the past, some dilapidated portion taken down,
and new additions made.

It is ignorance of this indubitable fact of his-
tory, which has made many Episcopalians feel that
to revise the Prayer Book were a sacrilege like
revising the Word of God. They have been led
to imagine that as the old Ephesians supposed
that their silver statue of Diana dropped down from
Jupiter out of the skies, so this silvery liturgy had
dropped down from the sacred hands of the
Reformers.

When Henry YIII for wholly worldly reasons
broke away from the Papal power, no attempt had
been made to have throughout the English Church
a uniform public service. There were different
forms or ''uses," as they were called, indifferent
dioceses of England. But with Henry's death,
his son, Edward VI, mounted the throne. It
was like the young Josiah succeeding to the
orown of his idolatrous father. Then came
what may be called the first revision of the
Prayer Book. It was the work of men educated
in the Roman Church, and just opening their

116

blind eyes for the first time to the light. They
saw "men as trees walking.'' No wonder that the
liturgy they produced was full of the false teach-
ings in which its compilers had been trained. No
wonder that this ^rs^ Prayer Book of Edward VI
taught that the Lord's supper was a sacrifice, the
holy table an altar. No wonder that it permitted
auricular confession and prayers for the dead.

Cranmer and his associates w^ere all this time
studying the Bible. Slowly but surely they
came into the full light of the Gospel. Three years
after the first Prayer Book of Edward YI, was-
published, they could not conscientiously use it,
and in 1552 the second Prayer Book of Edward
VI, appeared. Strange as it may seem— that lit-
urgy, given to the Church of England, three hun-
dred and thirty-six years ago, when the Christian
world was just emerging from its long night of
Papal darkness, was the most truly Protestant ser-
vice book that the English Church has ever pos-
sessed. Its baptismal service, it is true, taught a
grievous error. But aside from that, it was almost
wholly Scriptural and evangelical. It rejected
Superstitious ceremonies. It cast out the doctrine
of '' the real presence " in the bread and wine. It
expunged the word ''altar" as applied to the
Lord's table. It did away with auricular confes-
sion. And to the communion service it added the
very rubric which you will find substantially in

117

your Reformed Episcopal Prayer Book (but not
in tliafc of the Protestant Episcopal Church)
explaining that when we kneel at the communion,
Tve mean no act of adoration of the elements of
bread and wine. (Blakeney, p. 34. Procter,
pp. 37-39 )

Time forbids that I should more than mention
tlie later alterations of the Prayer Book in the
English Church. In 1559, Queen Elizabeth sought
to reconcile her Popish subjects by a new revision.
It was then that the rubric to which I have just
referred was stricken out. (Blakeney, p. 51 ; Proc-
ter, pp. 59 and 60.) The sun of reform moved
backward in the ecclesiastical sky. Every change
made was in the direction of conformity to the
Church of Rome.

Twice was the English Prayer Book revised
under the monarchs of the House of Stuart. But
in each case, the changes made it less and less the
Protestant liturgy which Edward YI had be-
queathed. Under Charles II, the most godless
and morally corrupt king that ever disgraced the
English crown, no less than six hundred changes
were made in the services. (Procter, p. 137.) But
Archbishop Laud was the Primate of the Church
of England. A Romanist in everything except
the name, he gave a Romeward impulse to the work
of revision, and the Prayer Book of 1662 became
thenceforward the liturgy of the English Church,

118

(Procter, Chap. Y.) (Fisher on the Prayer Book,
Chap. lY.)

ISow observe what this hurried historic glance
reveals. It demolishes the absurd notion that tliere
is no precedent for revising the Book of Common
Prayer. What our English forefathers did not hesi-
tate repeatedly to do, we have a right to undertake. -
But it also shows the reason why the Church of
England was always " a house divided against
itself." The ancient creeds and prayers, the Scrip-
tural anthems and versicles, and indeed the whole
framework of the liturgy, were teaching evangeli-
cal truth and making low churchmen of multi-
tudes who faithfully used it in worship. On the
other hand, the Church catechism, tbe baptismal,
the communion and the ordination services were
mixing subtle poison in the children's bread, and
steadily creating a drift toward tiie Church of
Rome.

A century passed away, and the American colo-
nies became a free nation. Episcopalians were
scattered throughout the land, without bishops and
without a Prayer Book adapted to the altered
circumstances in which they were placed. In
the year 1785, a convention of clergy and laity
met in the City of Philadelphia, to lake meas-
ures for the organization of the Protestant Epis-
copal Church in tlie United States. Its president
was the venerable William White, afterwards bishop

110

of that Cburcli in Pennsylvania. Among its lay
delegates were such men as John J a}', James
Duane, Francis Hopkinson, and Cliarles Pinckney
— men whose genius and patriotism made th&
Revolutionary period of our national history an
era of surpassing splendor. That convention
appointed a committee to revise the English
Prayer Book. The result of their work was " the
Prayer Book of 1785."

In all its distinguishing features it went back to
the old Reformation work of 1552 — the second and
Protestant Prayer Book of King Edward YI. It
left out all assertion of necessary regeneration in
baptism, all suggestion of "real presence " in the-
bread and wine of the Lord's supper ; it expunged
the word "priest," and substituted "minister."
In one word, it was-^ Protestant and evangelical
liturgy from cover to coyer.

Adopted by the convention, the new Prayer
Book was read in worship at the closing session by
Dr. White. Let us see what followed.

Dr. William White, of Pennsylvania, and Dr.
Samuel Provoost, of New York, were subsequently
chosen bishops, and on the 7th of February, 1787,
were consecrated to their office by the Archbishop
of Canterbury at Lambeth in England. That
consecration was on the basis of the Prayer
Book as revised by the convention of 1785.
(See Appendix)* That Prayer Book of Bishop

^ Appendix, D.

120

White, is in all essential features the one adopted
b}^ our Reformed Episcopal Church, and with
which we worship to-day.

But before 1785, Dr. Samuel Seabury, of Connec-
ticut— an extreme ritualist and high churchman, had
failed of securing for himself Episcopal consecration
from the English Church. Its bishops had grave
doubts whether he had ever been duly chosen to
the office. (Internat. Review, July, 1881, pp. 319-
322.) Then Dr. Seabury appealed to the Scottish
Episcopal Church to aid him. By that extreme
semi-Romish communion, his secret election, in
which no layman had any part, was accepted, and
he was consecrated at Aberdeen nearly three years
before the consecration of Bishops White and
Provoost.

But Dr. Seabury's consecration was given by
the Scottish Episcopal Church with a purpose in
view. It was followed by his solemn pledge that
he would introduce into the American liturgy,
the idea of a priestly sacrifice in the Lord's
supper. (See Bp. Seabury's "Concordat," in
Blakeney's Hist, of the Prayer Book, pp. 159-161.)
That pledge he fulfilled to the letter. He per-
suaded Bishop White to give a reluctant assent to
uniting the Church in Connecticut with the newly
formed Protestant Episcopal Church.

Bishop Provoost to the last was opposed to
Bishop Seabury's admission. But in 1789, when

121

the Prayer Book of 1785 had hardly come into
general use, the influence of Bishop Seabury suc-
ceeded in overthrowing the work of the first Con-
vention of the American Episcopal Church.

The Prayer Book on the basis of which the Eng-
lish bishops had consecrated Bishops White and
Provoost, was rejected. A new liturgy, permeated
by the sacramental and ritualistic teachings of
Bishop Seabury and his Scottish consecrators^
was adopted. This last is the Prayer Book of the
Protestant Episcopal Church to-day.

The Prayer Book of the Reformed Episcopalian
is the old and original liturgy, adopted by the first
Convention of the American Episcopal Church,
and on the ground of which its first bishops were
consecrated.

III. How SHOULD THE REFORMED EPISCOPALIAN

TO USE HIS Prayer Book ?

It is needless to say tliat he ought to use it
intelligently. The best of tools may be worthless,
and even dano^erous, in the hands of the io^nv^^rant.
The Prayer Book needs to be understood in order
to be a genuine help to devotion. To such an
understanding, its history which we have studied
in this sermon, is essential.

But the Reformed Episcopalian needs to be an
intelligent student of his liturgy because sincere
Christians are sometimes intensely prejudiced
against it. The believer who worships with a

122

liturgy should be able in all Clirislian cliarit}^ to
defend it. He vvill find that man}"- earnest but
ignorant Christians believe a Prayer Book to be
Popish. He will be told, " You worship with a
book ; so does the Eomanist."

The answer is, that it is no argument against
what is good in religion, that a corrupt church
employs it. On the same ground we might reject
the Atonement and the Trinity. Does any man
refuse quinine when malaria has laid hold upon his
physical strength, because the tree which fur-
nishes the drug, grows in the most malarious land
on earth ?

Nor is it true that the Roman Church has any-
thing corresponding to our " common prayer. ' '
Her priests and her people have different service
books. But any one book which requires concur-
rent worship on the part of the clergy and the laity,
is something unknown to the Papal Church. -(Mc-
Clintock & Strong's Cyclop., Art. "Liturgy.")

We shall also find that the prejudice exists, that
a liturg}'^ inevitably produces formalism. We are
told that a Prayer Book makes the worshipper a
mere parrot-like employer of phrases to which he
attaches no meaning. But the argument is child-
ish. You ma}^ pour melted lead into a mould, or
let it flow freely out upon the ground. But it will
grow hard in the one case as in the other If a man
loses his hold on Christ, and ceases to seek sin-

123

cerely for the influences of the Holy Spirit, there
will be coldness and spiritual hardening, deadness
and formality, whether he pray extemporaneously
or with a liturgy. For many years, though myself
an Episcopalian, I listened every Sunday to the
preaching, and joined in the public prayers of a
distinguished Congregational pastor. Yet with
each sentence of "the long prayer," I knew what
the next was to be, precisely as I do in the peti-
tions of the litany. It was a form of prayer after
all. Yet I am very sure that sainted man was not
" a formalist."

Can any good reason be given against precom-
posed prayers, which does not equally apply to
precomposed hymns of praise ? Well did old John
Newton write,

" Crito freely will rehearse
Forms of prayer and praise in verse ;
Why should Crito then suppose
Forms are sinful when in prose ?
Must my form be deemed a crime,
Merely from the want of rhyme ?"

Still again, prejudice charges that in the litany
especially, we indulge in what Christ forbade as
^' vain repetitions.^'

But the intelligent worshipper with a Prayer
Book cannot forget that the Psalms of David, com-
posed and used for public worship, are marked by
precisely such repetitions. Nor did our Lord
rebuke repetition in prayer, but "vain " or empty

124-

repetition. On that awful night of His agony in
the garden, three times did He pray that the cup
might pass from Him, "saying," St. Matthew
expressly records, " the same words.' ' We need not
fear formalism when following in his blessed steps.
An intelligent use of his Prayer Book will pre-
vent formalism in public worship, because no Re-
formed Episcopalian can study his liturgy, with-
out perceiving that it is not a tyrant to hold him
in bondage, but & teacher to instruct him. He can-
not open his Prayer Book without confronting the
"Declaration of Principles," announcing that this
Church retains a liturgy, '•'' wliicli shall not be
imperative, or repressive of freedom in prayer.''^
He turns a few pages, and finds an extract from
the Canons, ordered by the General Council to be
printed in every edition of the Prayer Book,
which provides " that nothing in this Canon is to
be understood as precluding extempore prayer
before or after sermons, or on emergent occa-
sions."

After the General Thanksgiving in the morning
prayer, the Reformed Episcopalian reads a rubric
distinctly allov/ing extemporaneous supplication
to be substituted for what are called *' the occa-
sional prayers," i. e., those for the sick, the afflicted,
or those in peril by sea or land. And if this shall
lead him to a broader investigation ot the spirit
and practice of his Church, he will find that its Gen-

125

eral Council has directed the encouragement of
laymen to engage in meetings for social prayer,
and that such meetings are universal in the parishes
which compose our entire communion.

But the Reformed Episcopalian should use his
prayer book not only intelligently, but spiritually.
Who is the man that is stirred in soul, uplifted
into a new world, quickened in every faculty, as he
gazes on a masterpiece of art, or listens to burning
eloquence, or is swept along the tide of delicious
song ? Only the man who deliberately yields him-
self up to it, and loses himself and all around him,
in it.

So it is in worship, whether extemporaneous or
precomposed. We must give ourselves sincerely
to it. We bow our heads in silent prayer when we
enter the sanctuary. Doubtless we ask that such-
absorption in worship shall be our experience. But
how do we carry it out ? I fear that too often sve
grieve the Spirit by making no honest effort to lose
ourselves in the service. Some are in the habit of
leaving the worship to their neighbors. Others
respond indeed to the psalter, but take no part in
the litany, nor have a hearty voice for the '* Amen "
at the close of every prayer.

From the beginning to the end of the service,
the Prayer Book should never leave your hands,
except in the Scripture reading. When you close
it in anthem or in prayer, you lead yourself into

126

temptation to wandering tlioughts, and set an evil
example to those around you.

Nor only so; but our very postures have their
relation to our spiritual enjoyment and blessino- in
the worship. The reason why people do not kneel
i-n prayer is because they are not praying. If
they realized that they were actually pouring their
hearts' needs into the ear of God, they could not
help assuming the natural attitude of prayer. And
the posture would in its turn react in helping to
make their devotion a living reality. To lounge
indolently while Gods praise is sung, has but one
meaning, when age or infirmity do not excuse it. It
means that there is no praise in your heart. Even
though you have no musical power, with your
open Prayer Book in your hand, you can follow
the glowing anthem or the sublime Te Deum.

Remember also that your children can be trained
to public worship in a liturgical service, as they
cannot be where all except the singing of hymns is
extern [)Oraneous. They have a right to the teach-
ing power of the service. Its *^ line upon line, and
})recept upon precept," can be inwoven with the
earliest dawnings of childish intelligence. But
only as parents lead their children to the house
of worship, and guide them in the use of the
liturgy by their aid and their example.

Dr. Albert Barnes, an earnest opponent of litur-
gical worship, once wrote that when Episcopalians

127

took part in prayer meetings, " their prayers are
models of simple, pure and holy worship."
(Barnes' Position of tlie Evangl. Party in the
Episcopal Church, p. 31.)

No wonder. From childhood they had been
imbued with the spirit of a worship which filled
the souls, and lingered on the lips of martyrs for
Jesus. They had caught the refrain of the
anthem which echoed in dimly-lighted catacombs,
" in dens and caves of the earth."

'- Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ I

" Thou art the everlastins: Son of the Father I"

THE REFORMED EPISCOPALIAN AND
THE CHURCH YEAR.

^^For Paul determined to sail by Ephesus^ because
he would not spend his time in Asia ; for he hasted,
if it were possible for him, to be at Jerusalem the
Day of Pentecost,^^ Acts xx : 16.

^^ Ye observe days, and months, and times, and
years ; I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed
upon you labor in vain,^^ Galat. iv : 10, 11.

Our two textg present two seemingly contradic-
tory portraits of the Apostle Paul.

The variations between two photographs of the
same person, may often be explained by a change
of dress, a different attitude, or a fleeting expres-
sion of some inner feeling sweeping across the
countenance like a cloud across the sky.

It is not so easy to account for the startling
divergence between these two pictures of the same
religious teacher. At the first glance they appear
to contradict each other. On the river Tigris,
the Arab boatmen pray with their faces to the
East. But so crooked is the stream, that in
order to keep the eastward position, they are
constantly shifting their attitude from one direc-
tion to another. Shall we conclude that the
(128)

129

current of St. Paul's life was so tortuous that
he was ever changing his attitude in reference
to great and momentous questions ?

Look for a moment at these two contrasted pic-
tures. The first represents the apostle on his
way from the continent of Europe to Jerusalem.
Ephesus, with its Christian Church, lay just on
the path his ship would follow. To the elders and
the people of that community of saints, he was
attached by ties only to be compared with those
binding the parent to the child. Yet he " deter-
mined to sail by Ephesus " In the Greek it reads
^^past Ephesus." Why? Did they not need his
fatherly counsel ? Would there be no comfort
to his own soul in " beholding their order and the
steadfastness of their faith in Christ?"

These were not the causes which lay behind
his resolve. The reason is plainly given. He was
determined to be at Jerusalem on the Day of Pente-
cost. Nor was this merely the fixing of a date at
which he had set his heart on reaching the Holy
City. For, on a previous occasion, he hurried
away from the entreaties of his friends with the
explanation, " I must by all means keep this feast
which Cometh in Jerusalem," Acts xviii : 21.

It was a strange reason for St. Paul to give.
The feasts and ordinances of the Mosaic law had
been abrogated in Christ. Had He not " blotted
out the handwriting of ordinances " which was

130

against us, " nailing it to His cross ?" Yet
apparently St. Paul was so eager to observe
this dead ordinance of the Jewish law and ritual^
that he sails past the faithful flock of Ephesus in
his haste to keep Pentecost at Jerusalem.

Now look at the contrasted picture. Portraits
often differ because taken at different periods of
life. But unless all our chronology is at fault,
the date of the Epistle to the Galatians varies but
a year or two from that of this voyage past Ephe-
sus and its Christian Church. (Yido. Conybeare
& Howson, Farrar's Life of St. Paul.)

That epistle is full of sad reproofs of the be*
lievers in Galatia. They were apparently making
the Gospel of Jesus secondary to the observance of
Jewish forms and ordinances. Not least danger-
ous in its perversion of the truth was the fact that
they insisted upon the Mosaic feasts and fasts as a
necessary part of Christian obedience. *' Ye ob-
serve days, and months, and times, and years."
So strongly does St. Paul feel the peril of this
error, that he adds, " I am afraid of you, lest I
have bestowed upon you labor in vain."

How strangely inconsistent does this reproof
appear, when put side by side with the apostle's
intense eagerness not to miss the celebration of
Pentecost at Jerusalem 1

Yet one simple thought, which runs all through
the New Testament, is like the stroke of a master,

131

bringing these two discordant views of the apostle
into perfect harmony. That thought is this : The
Christian may often accept as a privilege, that
which he allows no man to impose on him as a
bondage.

No British subject shall outdo me in profound
honor to the noble woman who wears the crown of
England. It is my right and privilege thus to
reverence the exaltation of a pure womanhood.
But if any sought to impose such reverence upon
me as the ground of my citizenship, and the condi-
tion of my rights as a free man, it would stir in my
veins blood which flows from the far-off fountain of
revolutionary ancestors. Like St. Paul, " I was
free born."

Precisely here lay the point of divergence be-
tween St. Paul and the Galatian Church. The
apostle could find spiritual blessing in keeping cer-
tain seasons which his Jewish fathers had observed.
But the Galatians sought to make them the basis
of Christian character. Just as they imposed cir-
cumcision on Gentile converts as necessary to sal-
vation through Christ, so they doubtless imposed
a regard for Jewish days and months and years, as
an essential of Christian character. It was against
such perversion of the believer's liberty, that St.
Paul entered his ringing protest.

The Reformed Episcopalian draws precisely this

132

line of distinction between the use and abuse of
what he calls ** the Christian Year."

No Puritan shall revolt more indignantly than
he against imposing any seasons or times upon the
Christian Church or the Christian member of the
Church. Yet he may find in those seasons, helps
to growth in grace, which he counts among his
sweetest Gospel privileges. Let us then inquire,
What is the Christian Yeab, which the Re-
formed Episcopalian observes?

A systematic order is something which generally
lies beneath the surface. A glance at an arching
elm or gnarled oak, reveals to me the grace and
grandeur of the tree. But it takes investigation
to discover the perfect system by which the roots
gather nutriment, and the minute veins bear the
vital sap through trunk, and branch, and twig, out
to the remotest leaf that quivers in the breeze.

In war time, a new recruit is enlisted in the
army. In the first glow of his enthusiastic
patriotism, the one idea which lays hold upon his
mind, is that he is to fight the battles of his countr3\
But it takes but little time to learn that a soldier's
life is to be governed by a plan which assigns to
every day and every hour its own peculiar duty.

Not unlike this, is the discovery which gradually
comes to him who enters on tlie work of a Chris-
tian soldier in a liturgical and Episcopal Church.

Educated perhaps in some other Christian

133

Church, he only recognizes at first, the fact that
Episcopalians, in their public worship, employ cer-
tain precomposed forms of prayer and praise, con-
tained in the Book of Common Prayer.

But, by and by, it dawns upon him that under-
neath this fact there is a system, an order and a
plan, which gradually reveal themselves. He can-
not foUow the worship of the Prayer Book, with-
out perceiving that it takes a year, and dividing it
into certain seasons, engraves upon each of these,
the commemoration of some one great Christian doc-
trine or some event in the life of the Saviour. All
history is witness to the value of such a system as a
mode of education. We may cut deep in marble
or bronze the inscription by which we would per-
petuate some fact or principle or honored name.
But "the tooth of time " is relentless. All ma-
terial monuments crumble. All inscriptions upon
them fade. But the seasons return with unfailing
certainty. That which Is engraved upon a day, a
week or a month, will reappear as surely as time's
revolution does its work.

The Reformed Episcopalian who follows the
leadings of his Book of Common Prayer, will find
directly succeeding the communion service, a series
of " collects, epistles, and gospels, for use through-
out a year." The collect is simply a brief prayer;
the epistle is an extract from one of the letters
which by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, were

134

written to the early Christians, and the gospel is a
selection from one of the four histories of our
Saviour's life on earth. But the three — the collect,
gospel and epistle, are like the harmonious chords
of a perfect instrument of music. They blend in
teaching the same tru-th. Some one special fact
or doctrine breathes through all three alike.

But when you turn to these services for the
Christian Year, you discover — perhaps to your
surprise (if educated in some other church), that
its first day bears no relation to what we commonly
call the New Year season. We begin not with Jan-
uary, but with a Sunday falling in December, or
possibl}' even in November. For ours is not the
secular year, not the year of the astronomer, not the
year of the man of business. It is the Christian
Year.

The First Sunday in Advent is our New Year's
Day. The services are evidently meant to take us
back, as it were, to tlie days when men were look-
ing for the coming of the Son of God. We stand
where such Israelites as Zacharias, the father of
John the Baptist, and Simeon, and Anna stood,
and watch and wait for the angel's song to an-
nounce that Christ is born. Three Sundays more
make up the Advent Season. But through them
all ** one unchanging purpose runs,"

It makes every fa'itliful member of our Church,
like one who looks out to sea, expecting the ship

135

which bears homeward his long absent friend. It
leads us to realize God's infinite love in sending
His own Son to live with men and to die for men.
Above all, it will not let us forget that He has-
given His word that He will come again.

Our Master foretold that even His own people
should " slumber and sleep," and become forgetful
of this cardinal fact of His Second Advent. But
the Episcopalian who allows this truth to slip from
his grasp, does so in defiance of his Church,,
which annually sets the services of the first four
Sundays of the Christian Year, like watchmen to-
cry in drowsy ears — " The Lord is at liand."

Then comes the birthday of our Lord. Our
appointed worship for Christmas Day is full of glad-
ness. But it is a gladness like tliat which Isaiah
foretold, ** when a holy solemnity is kept." Wher-
ever there are hearts to glow with joy, and tongues
to sing in praise, the fixing of this one day concen-
trates every thought upon the love that led the Son
of God to humble Himself to be born of woman.

A little further on, and we reach the season bear-
ing the Greek name — " the Epiphany.'' It means
literally " the shining forth." It suggests to our
minds a light shut in and obstructed by opaque
walls, suddenly bursting through all that dims ita
glory, and flinging its rays far out upon the night.
The stranger to our services is told that by the
Epiphany season we recall the visit of the " Magi **

186

' — " the wise men from the East " — to the newborn
King of the Jews. Perhaps the appointment not
only of a chosen day, but of several Sundays
which follow, to commemorate an event briefly re-
corded in the New Testament, demands explanation.
But in the Epiphany lies the title deed of the
Christian who is not of Israel's race, to his share
in Christ's salvation. The Old Testament never
let the subject drop, of the coming Epiphany when
Gentiles should know the salvation which began
■with the Jewish race. Every prophet foretold that
glorious day. Over and over did Jesus Himself
in both parable and direct statement teach His dis-
ciples— " Other sheep I have which are not of this
fold." And the star-led Magi from the distant East
were the first of that mighty multitude of Gentile
birth to claim what God had promised. The Sun-
days of the Epiphany season are not out of pro-
portion to the magnitude and importance of the
event they fasten in the memory.

Nor only so ; but Epiphany is ever like a hand
that points us to work undone, like a voice that re-
minds us of duty. If we forget that there are mil-
lions yet of Gentiles on the earth — heathen who
never heard of Christ — this season of the Chris-
tian Year ever urges us to missionary work and
liberality and prayer.

Passing from Epiphany, we are reminded by our
services of the approach of Lent, and of the

137

Easter glory which appears beyond it. Three Sun^
days intervene between the season of Epiphany
and that of Lent. They bear the old Latin names
of Septuagesiaia — the seventieth, Sexagesima —
the sixtieth, and Quinquagesirna — the fiftieth. Not
accurately, but only in round numbers, they sug-
gest to the mind that we have reached in our jour-
ney to the resurrection of our Lord, the seventieth,,
the sixtieth, the fiftieth day before Easter.

If you study the collect, epistle and gospel for
each of those days, you will find that with an in-
creasing solemnity they are leading you toward the
one great thought of Lent— true and godly sor-
row and sincere repentance for sin.

As you push on in the examination of the ap-
pointed services of the Prayer Book, 3'ou find that
Ash Wednesday opens the door to a season of forty
days of special humiliation, self-examination and
prayer. The name which this day bears is one
which grew out of an old custom now long
disused, of employing ashes as a token of mourn-
ing. To us the mere name is nothing, except as it
serves to mark the day on which we begin the
solemn season to which it introduces us.

But the stranger in our Church naturally asks,
what the six weeks of the Lenten season signify ?
Why do we set apart this fixed period for special
religious exercises ? What is the nature of the
appointed worship during these forty days ?

138

The answer must needs be brief. But its phil-
osophy is rooted deep in the necessities of our spirit-
ual life. The growing Christian is one who obeys
the apostolic direction to " pray without ceasing."
He may not every moment be touching the keys of
the instrument, but he does keep it in tune ready
to respond with the music dear to the ear of God.
Yet nothing is more certain than that, with all this
constant prayerfulness of spirit, he must have
appointed times to pray.

But what is true of the member of the Church
is equally true of the whole body. What is needed
in each day's journey, is needed in the whole year.

We have pressing upon us an imperious de-
mand of our spiritual nature, that some period in
every year should be made a time of special and
peculiar self-examination and reconsecration to the
service of the Master. Can there be any clearer
proof of this fact than the evidence which meets
us in the annual efforts in revival work, put forth
each year by our sister churches ? Not one of
them which does not have its Lenten season. It
may differ in its date and its duration from our
own. It may bear a different name. But the idea
and the object are absolutely the same. Some of
our Methodist brethren may object to the Lenten
season. But their own '' protracted meetings " are
really a Lent under another name. The Evangeli-
cal Alliance, composed of the Gospel loving

139

churches of the Protestant world, has not hesita-
ted to appoint a fixed season as " a week of prayer. "
If the Reformed Episcopalian believes that
he needs thus to set apart six weeks instead of
one, he is only carrying out to a fuller degree the
principle established by other evangelical Chris-
tians,

During this solemn season our services con-
stantly emphasize the fact of our own sinfulness.
Like John the Baptist, they are preachers of re-
pentance. But with a fullness which the rough-
clad herald of Christ never exhibited in his proc-
lamation of the Lamb of God, they reveal an
atoning Saviour.

Step by step, they lead us on through the weeks,
until in Passion Week — the close of Lent — they
dwell upon a suffering Saviour in all the details of
His atoning work. With Good Friday we look
upon the cross and behold our Substitute before
the law, which we have broken ; as He bears " our
sins in His own body on the tree."

Easter Sunday comes to set God's seal to
Christ's completed sacrifice. It leads us to the
empty sepulchre, and while it testifies to the
Father's acceptance of the finished work of the
Son, it also assures the believer that the same
power which burst the seal and rolled away the
stone, shall raise his body from the grave, to be
gloriously immortal.

140

Time forbids more than an allusion to the
remainder of the Christian Year. We set apart a
day to commemorate the Ascension of our Lord,
and thus to keep in mind the grand work of Jesus
in the present, as *' He ever liveth to make inter-
cession for us." Then on Whitsunday we recall
that Pentecost when " a nation was born in a day."
Thus each year we preclude the possibility that
the Reformed Episcopalian should ever forget
the person, the work, or the office of the Holy
Ghost.

On Trinity Sunday we bear our testimony with
the Christian Church of all ages, to the central
truth of the three-fold personality in one eternal
Godhead.

The objection has been sometimes urged that by
thus affixing to a certain period of the year, the
special consideration of some one duty, or doc-
trine, or fact in our Lord's career on earth, we
abridge the liberty of the Christian minister. It
has been argued that thus to narrow the range of
topics toward which our minds and hearts are
turned, is to leave no room for a thousand themes
perfectly in accord with Gospel preaching, and to
crowd out a host of Scripture subjects which do
not directly belong to any of the Sundays from
Advent to Easter. A glance at the Prayer Book
affords the sufficient answer. Following Trinity
Sunday, come the twenty-five Sundays after Trinity.

141

While each of them has its collect, epistle, and
gospel, in perfect harmony with each other, the
services do not prescribe any one great theme, like
those of Christmas, Easter, or Whitsunday. Thus
through fully one-half of the Sundays of the year,
our Church has plainly permitted the widest range
of expository preaching.

It may be well at this point to notice that the
Church Year of the Reformed Episcopalian differs
in one important feature from that of the Protes-
tant Episcopal Church. In our revision of the
Prayer Book we dropped the special services for
what were called "saints' days." We were will-
ing to honor apostles and martyrs, even as they
followed in the footsteps of Christ, But when we
found that the Church of Rome had multiplied
these days commemorative of so-called "saints,'*
till the three hundred and sixty-five days of the
year were not half enough to give one day to each
— when we found that ritualists and Roraanizers-
were constantly adding to the number of names to
be remembered by some holy day, we felt that-
the line must somewhere be sharply and clearly
drawn. We therefore made the Christian Year ta-
be a memorial of no sinful mortal, however pure
His life, or glorious His death. From one end to
the other, it reveals '^ Jesus only." Like the old
painter, who, finding that in his picture of the'
Lord's supper, the chalice which held the wine

142

drew the admiration of beholders, and so in "his
jealousy for Christ's glory, dashed his brush
through the rare painting of the cup — we blotted
out from our Church Year, all which could dis-
tract attention from Jesus our Lord. •

Our rapid glance at what constitutes the Chris-
tian Year, has already suggested some of the
reasons why every Reformed Episcopalian should
avail himself of the helps to growth which it
affords. Let us briefly sum them up.

We do not for one moment claim that the Scrip-
ture requires any such observance. We dare not,
therefore, if we would, impose the Christian Year
upon any Christian's conscience. St. Paul would
stir in his bloody grave to rebuke us, as he rebuked
the Galatian Church, if we demanded that believers
should keep these appointed days as essential to
the Christian life.

Christmas, Lent, Easter, Whitsunday can all be
traced back to a very early period of the Church's
history. (Wheatley. Proctor on the Prayer Book.
Whytehead on the Prayer Book.) But there is no
footprint which they have left upon the Scriptures
of the New Testament.

Let us not, however, forget that we have no
Bible evidence that Christians in apostolic days
built churches and devoted them to worship.
No text of the Bible clearly proves family prayer
to be a Christian duty. No line of the Word

143

of God prescribes the gathering of children in
a Sunday school. Not a proof-text can be adduced
for the use of instruments of music in Christian
worship. Yet the overwhelming majority of
intelligent believers would feel that Christianity
was losing ground in the world, if church edifices
were no longer erected, if the family altar were
thrown down, if Sunday schools were to shut
their doors, and if no organ were to accompany
sacred song. Why do we value these things?
Not because God's word prescribes them. But
because while in themselves in harmony with the
spirit of the New Testament, Christian experience
has found them useful. We have applied to them
the test of utility, and are satisfied with the result.

On precisely the same basis does the Reformed
Episcopalian place the Christian Year. It has
passed through the fiery crucible of at least four-
teen centuries. (Wheatley, p. 212. Whytehead's
Key to the Prayer Book, pp. 110, 111.) It has
come forth like silver refined in the fires. What
then, is the value of the prescribed arrangement of
the Christian Year ?

It constantly preaches Christ. The ancient
Romans used to say that every road in the vast
empire led to Rome. So does every one of these
appointed services lead to the atoning Son of God.
History and experience are witnesses that no
canon law and no ecclesiastical discipline, can ever

144

"build walls strong enough and lofty enough to
shut out false ministers and teachers of error from
the Church. But if every pulpit in the Reformed
Episcopal Church were to be filled by a Judas, be-
traying the Saviour, if every minister were to
preach what St. Paul calls "another Gospel," the
services of the Christian Year would brand him as
false, and contradict his utterances.

Do not let us forget that the order and system
of these appointed services, are calculated to build
up a symmetrical and well balanced religion.
Men are apt to be like the lonely trees on our wind-
swept prairies. The branches of the cottonwood
are often only on the side of the trunk opposite to
the source of the prevailing winds. Christians
are prone to become one-sided in their growth.
Ministers frequently allow some true doctrine
to become a hobby, absorbing all their pulpit-
teaching. But he who is guided by the Chris-
tian Year, finds himself led to give to each
great truth its due proportion. He may preach
on the Resurrection at Christmas, or the Cruci-
fixion at Whitsuntide, or tell the story of Christ's
birth at Good Friday— but all the while, the
appointed services utter their rebuke. And if,
through all the year, he dwell on some one
favorite theme — however important it may be — the
Prayer Book rings out like a trumpet^ voicing the

145

demand of the people for instruction in the whole,
instead of a part of Gospel truth.

Hence, too, the Church Year is an additional
security of the lay membership of the Church,
When you commit your spiritual guidance to a
pastor, you do not mean to become a passenger in
a balloon, driven here and there by every wind of
heaven. You mean to trust yourself to his guid-
ance as to that of the pilot on an ocean steamer,
who follows day by day the instructions of his
chart. The map which the Christian Year marks
out, is ever open to the examination of the lay
member of the Reformed Episcopal Church. He
has a right to demand that his minister shall be
guided by it.

Last of all, the Church Year is a help to Christ
tian unity.

A hundred years ago, outside of the Episcopal
Church, the celebration of the great festivals of
the Christian Year was looked upon by the major-
ity of American Protestants as a relic of Roman
superstition. But to day, Christmas, Easter, Whit-
sunday, even Good Friday and Ascension Day,
are kept with appropriate services by thousands of
evangelical churches, and by vast numbers of
evangelical Christians. Some of our leading relig-
ious papers, with no Episcopal or liturgical affilia-
tions, have strongly urged that the "week of prayer"

146

should be made to conform in date with the fi rst
week of the Lenten season.

Dr. Charles W. Shields, a distinguished clergy-
man of the Presbyterian Church, in a paper which
has evoked the deepest and most wide-spread
interest, has argued that " to restore more fully the
links of the Christian Year, which are already soci-
ally and legally recognized among us, and to let
them be illustrated by the epistles and gospels
which have marked their circuit for centuries past,'^
"would be a long step in the direction of uniting the
Christian Churches of the United States, {Century
Mag., Nov., 1885.)

Such is our Christian Year. Eloquent of Christ
alone, purged from all superstitious honors to
saints who were but fallen men, building up Chris-
tian character in symmetrical proportion, and ever
bringing into closer fellowship with each other, all
who are in fellowship with Jesus^ it claims the
love and intelligent appreciation of every Reformed
Episcopalian. May we so use it here, that we may
be better fitted for that Church whv:)3e years are
the cycles of eternal joy I Amen.

THE REFORMED EPISCOPALIAN AND
HIS DUTY TO HIS OWN CHURCH.

''Walk about Zion, and go round about her ; tell
the towers thereof. 3Iark ye well her bulwarla^^
consider her palaces ; that ye may tell it to the
generation following ^''^ Psalm xlviii : 12, 13.

It is natural to find in Mount Zion a type of
Christ's visible Church. It was the centre of the
Hebrew worship. There every religious rite was
p2rformed by God's appointed priesthood. There
sacrifice and incense, the appeal of prayer and the
gladness of praise consecrated and hallowed the
chosen seat of Israel's God.

We surely may transfer to the Christian Church,
where " a royal priesthood " of all true believers
offer up spiritual sacrifices, something of the
honor with which the Jew regarded Zion. That
honor, says the Psalmist, demanded a survey of
the holy mountain. It only required that God's
people should know how glorious their seat of wor-
ship was, to lead them to feel a profound love and
reverence for it.

Above all, such study of the towers and palaces

of Zion, would enable them to teach their children

how beautiful and holy was God's house. They
(14T)

148

^were to "go round about Zion, that they might
tell it to the generation following." With a kin-
xcired thought concerning our own Church, I enter
upon the closing sermon of tnis course.

I. The duty of the Reformed Episcopalian

INVOLVES AN INTELLIGENT ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE
:PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF IIIS OWN CllURCH.

Membership of a church is like a garment which
touches one at every possible point of contact. It
.lias to do with every department of our life. It is
■meant to influence us in public and private. It
ought to control our daily business as our daily
devotion. It should have a place in our work and
our recreation. It belongs to our relations in the
family, the sanctuary and the scene of our every day
labor.

The world has surely a right to expect that we
shall grasp with a thorough comprehension that
'which touches our life at such a multitude of
points.

I once sat beside the driver of a California stage
-coach, as we rattled down a pitch-dark road at dead
iinidnight. We were in the heights of the Sierra
Nevada. I knew that the narrow highway skirted
the edge of sheer precipices, and made sharp
■curves, where the least mistake meant certain
death. Turning to my companion, 1 asked bow it
was possible for him to find his way along such
a, path at such an hour. The gruft' reply was a

149

question : " How do j^ou find your way about your
own house in the dark ?"

There was a world of philosophy in that rough
answer. It meant that he could literally feel his
way on that wild road, because as familiar with it
as one becomes with every room and passage of
the home in which he dwells.

The church to which one belongs, is his home.
A Christian who is iojnorant of his own church,
ought to be as rare as the man who knows nothing
of the house in which he dwells.

The reasons which demand intelligent acquaint-
ance with one's own branch of the universal
Church, lie upon the surface.

One of tiiese is, that thorough knowledge of His
own household of faith, will always tend to make
the Christian a better member of the whole family
of Christ. It has been my lot on several different
occasions to visit frontier outposts of our army.
One fact arrested my attention. Every cavalry-
man was a better soldier because devoted to his
own branch of the service. The infantry soldier
stood by his country's flag all the more bravely,
because he believed in infantry organization and
tactics. Nor was the artilleryman one whit be-
hind in military discipline and courage, because
that arm of the service was in his eyes the most
important to success. But each soldier's deep at-
tachment to his own special organization, was

based on the fact that he was thoroughly familiar
with its details. Such intimate acquaintance with
his own department of the army, did not lead to a
want of broad patriotism, or to disloyalty to the
flag which floated over all.

A man may have a blind, fanatical zeal for his
own church, which leads him to look on all other
Christians as outside ot the pale of salvation. He
may magnify his own branch of the Church Catho-
lic, till every other shall appear as an enemy of the
cause. But such a Christian is the product — not
of thorough knowledge of his own church, but of
ignorance regarding it. The proof of that posi-
tion is readilj' adduced from our own acquaintance
with religious bigotry. Take the Romanist
who narrows the scope of Christ's salvation to
those of his own communion ; and you will almost
invariably find that just in proportion to his in-
tense bigotry, is his ignorance of his own Church
in its history, doctrines, and methods. Intelligent
study of tlie Reformed Episcopal Church will only
make the Reformed Episcopalian more zealous for
the cause in which all true believers are united^
and more broad and comprehensive in his charity
toward all who bear his Master's name

Then too, let it not be forgotten that a thorough
acquaintance with one's own church, is like an
anchor which keeps the Christian from aimless
drifting.

151

The old proverb, " A rolling stone gathers no
moss," is nowhere more applicable than in the
sphere of religion. I should be the last to assail
the Christian who from strong conviction that he
could better serve Christ, or grow in grace, by
changing his church relations, withdraws from
one communior to enter another. In every lead-
ing denomination are laymen and ministers who
shine as lights, and hold the front rank in earnest
Christian work, whose education and early life at-
tached them to some church which convictions of
duty led them to leave for another. I am not
speaking of such. Our country owes a debt ot
gratitude which it can never pay, to men who for-
sook their early home across the sea, to cast their
lot with the people of tliis great Republic. The
West has been developed and enriched by immigra-
tion from the older States. On the same principle
every branch of the Church is under inestimable
obligation to those who have entered its fold from
other portions of Christ's vast household. But
immigration is one thing. Restless, unreasoniniT
roving is another. In religion, as in national life,
there are immigrants, and there are more trnmps
I know one individual who, in the twenty five years-
of mv acquaintance with him, lias changed his
church relations from one denomination to an-
other no less than eight times. The average
duration of his membership of any one commu-

152

nion, is but a fraction over three 3'ears. Such a.
Christian becomes a positive injury to the cause of
Christ. He wealiens the church he enters more
than the one he forsakes. Above all, he leads the
world outside to sneer at the want of any deep
conviction underlying his church relations. Can
you conceive of such a man as thoroughly grasp-
ing the truth as held by any branch of the Church ?
If in any evangelical communion he had struck
down the roots of a real study into its principles
and spirit, it would have saved the Church at large
from contempt, and himself from a life like that of
a wandering Bedouin.

How many professing Christians too, are to be
found, who while not formally severing their eccle-
siastical relations, yet roam here and there from
one place of worship to another, as fancy or in-
-clination may dictate. Attracted to one church by
the music, to another by sensational preaching, or
to a third by some theatrical ritualism, they add
nothing to the spiritual strength of the fold to
which they belong, while they undermine their own
relisfious life. Such souls can no more build
up their spiritual strength, than a man can
maintain vigorous health, who forsakes the plain
and wholesome food spread upon the home table,
to wander from restaurant to restaurant, seek-
ing unaccustomed delicacies. But such Chris-
tians are never to be found in the class who

153

honestly endeavor to be informed as to the princi-
pies of their own church. The man who forms aa
intelligent acquaintance with whatever is peculiar
to his own communion, and who sincerely tries to
la}'^ hold of its doctrines and methods, roots him-
self in that church so that he feels his personal
responsibility for it, and kindles in his heart a love
for its worship, which no mere accident of music,
or the style of the preacher, or the accessories O'
the place of meeting, can affect.

But while all this is true to a certain extent, of
any evangelical Christian, it is ten- fold true of the
Keformed Episcopalian.

For this Church is the youngest of the sister-
hood of evangelical churches. While in one sense
it is as old as the English Reformation, and while
it justl}^ claims to be the Protestant Episcopal
Church as founded by Bishop White and his co-
laborers, its separate existence is measured by only
a few short years. It came into being in a period
of Christian history when the drift of religious
movements was toward union rather than separa-
tion. The mere fact that it is the result of a
secession from an ancient and po^verful communion,
tends to create prejudice against it. The Reformed
Episcopalian stands in the attitude of one who is
bound to give satisfactory reasons for his position
among the churches.

Now and then, I am approached by members of

154

iny'~own flock, who tell me that in their intercourse
with others, in their chance acquaintance formed
in time of summer recreation, and in their corres-
pondence even with those who hold to them mere
business relations — they are asked to explain pre-
cisely the nature of this Church ; how it differs
from that out of which it sprang ; and what are its
doctrinal positions. And only too often, they tell
me that they have been compelled by their own
ignorance to admit their inability to give any satis-
fiictory reply. Yet if there be any church in exist-
ence whose members need an intelligent under-
standing of its principles, it is the Reformed
Episcopal Church.

But how shall our own people obtain such
thorough comprehension of their own doctrines
and methods ?

First of all, by a searching study of our Booh of
Common Prayer. Ours is a distinctively liturgical
Church. Its ministers are bound by their ordina-
tion promises to " conform to the worship " which
is prescribed in the Prayer Book. And within the
covers of that formulary of public devotion, brief
as it is, can be found the whole system of this
Church. The vast majority of all classes of Epis-
copalians use a Prayer Book as they do their Sun-
day clothes. It is a book simply for their guid-
ance in worship once a week. Consequently it is
never opened from Sunday to Sunday. It is this

155

simple fact which explains why thousands in the
Protestant Episcopal Church, intensely evangeli-
cal, avowedly low church in their sympathies, and
viewing with abhorrence any departure from Scrip-
ture teaching, have been perfectly satisfied to regard
their own Prayer Book as next to the Bible in their
esteem and love. In that book are services — like
those for ordination and the consecration of bishops,
for the institution of a rector and the visitation of
the sick, which are so rarely witnessed in actual
use, that multitudes have never heard them. But
who carefully studies them at home ? They may
contain the seeds and germs of Romanism ; but
these are unnoticed, because they are not forced
every week upon the attention of the worshipper
in church.

It is with deep conviction that I venture the
statement, that if the earnest and spiritually-
minded laity of the old Church were to take up
their own Book of Common Prayer, outside of
the place of worship, and compare its teachings
with those of the Bible, it would lead directly and in-
evitably to a vast exodus from that communion into
the Reformed Episcopal Church. Our Prayer
Book courts such study and comparison.

Some of you have crossed the Alps. Have you
never seen, a little distance from your road, but
diverging from it, the ancient highway now de-
serted, but on which perhaps the old Romans were

156

wont to journey? In every case your eye, at a
single glance, took in the cause which led to the
change. It made the route shorter, or it straight-
ened a crooked pathway, or it avoided some peril-
ous pass. So every change from our old Prayer
* Book which has been made in that with which we
worship to-day, has its obvious reason. With
John the Baptist fidelity to Scripture, it has made
" the path straight."

I plead then, with every Reformed Episcopalian
that he will make his liturgy something more than
a mere directory of public worship. A serious pri-
vate study of the Prayer Book cannot fail to fur-
nish him such knowledge of his own Church as will
put it in his power to answer every question which
honest inquirers may make as to the principles of
the Reformed Episcopal Church.

Next in importance as a source of information,
stands the history of this Church.

Patriotic Americans who lived in those stirring
times, when the great civil war shook the founda-
tions of our country, complain that there is a dearth
of books which clearly explain the causes out of
which that tremendous struggle sprang. They
realize that the rising generation, born since the
war was ended, are uninstructed in the great prin-
ciples which lay at the foundation of the most
momentous events in our national life.

A kindred difficulty besets the Reformed Epis-

157

copal Church. Its real history dates back to the
English Reformation. Its Prayer Book is, in its
main features, as old as the reigu of Edward the
Sixth. But the causes, which, working in the
hearts of evangelical Episcopalians, produced at
last a separate organization in the 3'ear 18T3, is
unknown to thousands of our own people.

No formal history of this Church has as yet
been given to the world. But the materials of
such a record are within the reach of all. In the
form of tracts and pamphlets published by our Re-
formed Episcopal Publication Society, and in the
biography of Bishop Cummins, the member of our
Church who really desires to be informed as to
what this Church is, and why it exists, can find
the history of conscientious struggles which re-
sulted in the formation of this communion. Es-
pecially do I commend to you the story of the life
of him whom God graciously gave to us as our first
bishop. A purer and lovelier life, a more Christ-
like fidelity to dut}'', a more unselfish sacrifice
for principle, cannot be found in the records of
"the noble army of martyrs."

Such is the first duty to his own Church resting
on every Reformed Episcopalian. If other Chris-
tians can aff'ord to be ignorant of the principles
and methods of the branch of Christ's Church to
which they may belong, he cannot. The world
around him, the religious sentiment of the nine-

158

teenth century, and the interests of his own com-
munion imperatively demand that he shall be able
to "give to every man that asketh, a reason for
the hope that is in " him.

II. The duty of the Reformed Episcopalian

INVOLVES EARNEST WORK IN THE UPBUILDING AND
STRENGTHENING OF HIS OWN ChURCH.

Faith and works are bound together by a liga-
ment which it is always perilous to sever. When
Saul of Tarsus was stricken to earth as he hurried
along the Damascus road, he recognized Jesus of
Nazareth as the One who spoke from the skies. It
was but the germ of faith. Weak, ignorant, im-
perfect, he nevertheless believed that the once per-
secuted Galilean was the '' Lord." But how
quickly did works follow in the track of his faith I
He cannot conceive of believing on Christ, with-
out obeying Christ. Forthwith he cries, " Lord,
what wilt Thou have me to do ?" From that day
onward, Saul's question has been repeated by
every soul which has truly believed on Christ. A
living faith always kindles a fire which blazes
forth in fervent desire to work in the cause of the
Saviour.

But all Christian experience goes to show that
the best workers for the Master have been those
who gave their labor along the lines marked out by
that branch of the Church to which they belonged.

Such an assertion may involve the charge of nar

159

rowness and sectarian bigotry. But a moment's seri-
ous and impartial consideration will refute the cruel
accusation. There is a noble work wliich is being
done by instrumentalities belonging to no one
branch of the Christian Church. Union move-
ments, such asi the Bible Society, the Tract Society,
and, above all, the Young Men's Christian Asso-
ciation, composed of evangelical believers of every
denomination, are the glory of the nineteenth cen-
tury. But who are the leaders in every one of
these vast agencies for the spread of the Gospel ?
In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred you will find
them to be men who also take the lead in all the
activities of the particular Church to which they
belong. Where you find a Christian so needlessly
broad in his catholicity, that he has no warm love
for his own communion, you will also find one who
does no real or valuable service in any union
organization for the evangelizing of the world.
But that is only the negative side of the argument.
There is a positive side. History and experience
are concurring witnesses that the best results in
Christian work have been accomplished by men
who were bound together by a deep attachment to
some one branch of the great Church of Christ.
What would have been this western region of our
country but for the pioneer evangelization of the
Methodist Church? Planted on this continent
after every other great denomination had a foot-

160

hold, it numbers to day two millions and a half of
members in the United States and Canada. It has
done a work for the newer regions of our land for
which every Christian ought to be devoutly grate-
ful.

But there is no church in all Christendom, unless
it be the Church of Rome, which has so compact
a denominational organization. There exists no
Protestant communion which is so intensely
devoted to working on its own denominational
lines. A Methodist is a Methodist wherever he
goes. He is bound to his own Church by ties
which attach him to its peculiar methods. No body
of Christians has to such a degree the quality for
which our English tongue has no expression, but
which the French would call " esprit de corps,''
It is because they move as one solid phalanx,
strong in their devotion to their denominational
work, that they have wrought such marvelous
results for the cause of universal Christianity.

Precisely that spirit and that kind of work is the
need of the Reformed Episcopal Church. Our dan-
ger lies, not in the direction of any sectarian nar-
rowness, but rather in that of allowing our broad
catholicity to lead us to undervalue our own
Church.

To the Gulf Stream the most advanced and civi-
lized countries of the world owe the fact that they
are not icy deserts, uninhabitable to man. But it

161

the heated waters of the Gulf Stream were dif-
fused through the whole breadth of the Atlantic,
their power would be nothing. One with the
ocean, yet retaining its own integrity and form as
a mighty river, the Gulf Stream moves on to bless
the earth.

Let us enter heartily into every union move-
ment for the spread of the truth of Christ. But
let it be our aim to be a compact and organized
body, strong in individuality, warming a cold
world because warmed ourselves by devotion to
the special trust God has committed to us.

Let me suggest one or two reasons why you
should love and work for your own Church.

To some of you it presents a claim like that
which one's birthplace has upon his aflfection. It
was in the Reformed Episcopal Church, in its clear
presentation of the Gospel of Jesus, that you
found your first hope in Christ. But for its work
you would be still in the darkness where you once
wandered.

Do you remember how one of our leading scien-
tific men, lost in the vast Yellowstone region and
chilled by the nightly cold of the mountains, saved
his life by a magnifying lens which chanced to be in
his pocket ? It was the sun's rays which gave the
needed fire. But it was the lens which concentrated
them. Christ alone saved you. But the warmth of
His truth came to your chilled soul through the

162

concentrating medium of the Church to which you
belong. Christ deserves your first love. But next
to Him your love is due to the instrumentality He
used.

But the Reformed Episcopal Church is entitled
to your loving and earnest work because of what
it is in itself. These sermons have indeed been
Tain, if they have not shown you that your own
Church is above all things else a Church faithful ta
the word of God. It knows no doctrine, no form
of service, no religious practice, which cannot bear
the test of the plummet and line of the Bible.

Moreover, while this Church is conservative of
all that antiquity has transmitted, which is of genu-
ine spiritual worth, it is progressive in meeting the
real wants of the Christian in the nineteenth century.
Liturgical, jet allowing free prayer ; Episcopal,
yet honoring the ministry otherwise ordained,
retaining a communion service hallowed by long
ages of Christian use, yet inviting to the Lord's
table "all who love our Divine Lord and Saviour
in sincerity" — it constitutes the once ** missing
link " in the unity of the visible Church.

It has a claim, too, upon your zeal and effort,
because its special work is one which no other
church can do.

The Protestant Episcopal Church in Great Brit-
ain, Canada, and the United States is a vast,
wealthy and powerful organization. Its adherents

163

in England and America are nu nbered by millions.
But the steady drift of that Church for fifty years
has been toward a false and unscriptural view of
the sacraments and the ministry, more and more
nearly approximating that of the Church of Rome.
Its public worship has so completely changed, that
if good old Bishop White were to return to earth,
he would not know the Church which he founded.
A gaudy ritualism has supplanted the simple
yet majestic service which we " old-fashioned
Episcopalians" once delighted in. To complete
the sad picture, we need only add that the last
General Convention of that Church, narrowly
escaped a vote striking out from the title page of
its Prayer Book the name " Protestant," while sub-
sequent events clearly indicate that such an oblit-
eration of all which suggests the English Refor-
mation, has been postponed but a few short years.
The laity alone prevented such action in 1886.
But the laity are powerless to check the drift.
Already there is a deep unrest among members of
that Church. Where can they go ? Some, it
is true, drift into other evangelical communions.
But they rarely find themselves at home. They
want an Episcopal Church. They crave liturgical
worship. They miss the ancient order of the
Christian year. Their taste cultivated in the forms
of the Book of Common Prayer, revolts against a
thousand thinors which are attractive to those

164

differently trained. The number of such laymen
is steadily increasing. Unhappy in tlieir own
Church because it has ceased to be what it once
was, and because they cannot in conscience approve
Romish doctrine in the pulpit, and Romish wor-
ship in the chancel, such souls are unable to find
their wants met in any non-liturgical Church.
There are thousands who would hail the Reformed
Episcopal Church as " the h.aven where they would
be," if zeal and liberality on our part opened our
services side by side with every ritualistic place of
worship in the country. But restricted as we have
been for means to extend our Church, and hitherto
without a seminary for the training of our young
men for the ministry, such la^'men are largely igno-
rant that such a relief exists as our Church would
afford them. I have actually known a lay member
of the old Church to be agreeably surprised to find
that we held the doctrine of the Trinity, and others
who supposed that we worshipped without the aid
of a liturgy, and still others amazed to find that
our clergy wore the old vestments in the public ser-
vice. Surely here is the special field of the
Reformed Episcopal Church. We are the only
organized body of Christians who can offer to them
the old-fashioned Episcopal Church, which our
fathers of the revolutionary epoch founded We
can give tliem the tiiree-fold ministry, the historic
episcopate, the liturgy in its purity, and the Church

165

year with its orderly teaching. Our old friends
may scorn our aid for a time, but the day is surely
coming when the evangelical laity of the Protestant
Episcopal Church will see that their only hope is
in the Church which we offer them.

Do any of you feel stirred to ask how you can
most effectively enlist yourselves in work for this
beloved Church ?

Begin at home. Realize your own responsibility
for the Church to which, in God's sight, you sol-
emnly gave yourself when your name was enrolled
among its members. Say to yourself, '•' This is the
Church— not of my bishop, ray pastor, my church-
officers — but of myself. It is my Church. God
holds me responsible for the work to be done by
this communion. I am not responsible for what
the other churches are doing, but for the success
and usefulness of the Reformed Episcopal
Church."

Such a sense of responsibility will lead you first
of all, to hold up the hands of your pastor by a
regular attendance on your own appointed place of
worship. The prevalent habit of roving from
one church to another has its root in a conscience
blunted to a profound sense of Christian duty.
I may be welcome to sit down at my neighbor's
table. I may find there highly-spiced food. But
as a member of a household, I am deserting the

166

place which belongs to me, and creating a gap in
the family circle which no one else can fill.

Then, too, such a sense of my responsibility,
will make me a Reformed Episcopalian whether at
home or abroad. When passing a Sunday in some
distant city, mj^ first inquir}'- will be not where I may
enjoy the best music, or hear the most eloquent
preaching, but whether there is there a band of Re-
formed Episcopalians — however small in numbers or
wealth— whom I may encourage by my presence. I
will seek out the minister, and give him the God-
speed of my fellow communicants. In one word,
I will interest myself in the whole Church to
which I belong. Wherever are Reformed Episco-
palians, there are my brothers and my sisters.
Such interest will lead me to take the one religious
paper which is the organ of our Church. I will
endeavor to be informed as to what our Church is
doing outside the narrow limits of my own parish.
I can only gain such information in the columns
of the Episcopal Recorder.

What deep interest, too, ought every Reformed
Episcopalian to feel in the gift which
God has led one member of our Church to bestow
upon it — our long desired^ yet long deferred bless-
ing of a Theological Seminary. Through twelve
years of our ecclesiastical history, we were com-
pelled to place our young candidates for the min-
istry under the care of " schools of the prophets ''

167

belonging to other churches. It separated them
from all Episcopal and liturgical influences. It
gave them a training in no way fitting them for
our special work.

But just when our hope was dying out that we
should ever have a Theological Seminary of our
own, God led one member of our Church to pro-
vide such a school with noble buildings and
splendid site, at a cost of nearly a quarter of
a million of dollars. Our Seminary needs addi-
tional endowments of professorships. It calls on
every Reformed Episcopalian to supplement what
one Christian woman has been led by God's grace
to do. It appeals to us for such personal interest
in its work as shall make it for all time a fountain
of blessing to our entire communion.

This sense of responsibility will lead parents to
train their children up in the principles and the ways
of their own Church. All honor to the Sunday
school work. No man shall question my loyalty
to it. But I do not hesitate to say that if we allow the ^
children to substitute attendance on the Sunday
school for worship in the church, then we are per-
verting the Sunday school from its real design. If
your children are old enough to be enrolled in the
Sunday school, they are old enough to attend one
church service on the Sunday. If you must choose
between the two, I unhesitatingly say that the
child trained from liis earliest years to the use of

168

the Prayer Book, and encouraged to participate in
the worship it provides, will more surely become
an intelligent and spiritually-minded Christian,
than the child who attends a Sunday school, and
neglects the services of the sanctuary.

Last, but not least, such a sense of responsi-
bility will lead us to liberality in giving, and con-
stancy in praying for our Church.

When a wealthy Christian, during our long
years of commercial distress following the panic
of 18*73, was asked why he doubled his subscrip-
tions to religious work, he answered, " Because
the times are so hard.'' So I say to every
Reformed Episcopalian, because this Church is so
young, and so poor, and so scattered, because upon
this generation rests the responsibility and the
honor of laying its foundations amidst reproach
and difficulty, therefore it has a double claim upon
your self-denying liberality. It needs your gifts
as no other stronger, older and richer organization
» needs the silver and the gold of its members.

For the very same reason this Church appeals to
you for your earnest prayers in its behalf A
Christian parent prays for that child who is in the
midst of peril, with an intensity beyond all his
intercession for the others of his flock. What
sui)[)lications from secret closet and family-altar
shielded as with the white wings of the angels, the
fioldier-boy in the fore-front of the hottest battle !

169

But this young Church, with a life measured by
only fourtean years, is in the heat of fierce battle
which other churches hardly know. Misunder-
stood by other evangelical churches, bitterly
assailed by the Church out of which it came,
upholding the Gospel banner against ritualism on
the one hand, and a loose free thinking on the
other, it appeals to you for daily remembrance at
the throne.

Let no difficulties lead you to despond. Dis-
couragement can only come to those Reformed
Episcopalians who shut their eyes to what God haa
wrought.

How brief a space in history is fourteen years !
Across its track my memory flies to that scene
where seven ministers and a handful of laymen
gathered around our sainted leader. I recall the
birth of a Church without cne organized parish or
a solitary place of worship. I look to the pres-
ent, and see that same Church rooted in American
soil from ocean to ocean. I mark its parishes in
the Dominion of Canada stretching from Pu^et
Sound to the Bay of Fundy. I cross the ocean
and find it growing in strength and influence in
England and even in Scotland. I see it possessed
of real property amounting to millions of dollars.
I am no prophet ; but if this be the fruit of our
work in fourteen years, what shall this Church be

170

when a century shall have marked the story of its
life!

My self-imposed task is done. It has been a
labor of love, in this course of sermons, to lead my
hearers to " walk about Zion and tell the towers
thereof." I am thankful to God thus to have
borne my spoken testimony. But still more grate-
ful am I to know that these words of mine shall
reach beyond those-who hear them, and outlive my
own personal ministry. If I may hope that in
printed form they shall help to " tell the genera-
tion following," the story of the birth and early
years of this beloved Church, and if, when my
tongue is still, they shall aid to make known
" what Reformed Episcopalians believe " — I can
joyfully say, " Now, Lord, lettest Thou Thy ser-
vant depart in peace."

APPBNDIX,

A.— Page 23.

The leading advocate of the view here referred to,
that Baptism produces a regeneration totally distinct
from any moral and spiritual change, is Bishop Hobart.
His sermons on this topic are very emphatic in repudi-
ating the idea that any change of heart and nature is
produced by the act of Baptism. He was, however, too
honest not to admit that in this position he was out of
accord with the drift of the teaching of his own High
Church party in the English Church. He speaks of
their "want of precision," and adds, "Among the
writers who have fallen into this inaccuracy of lan-
guage, are the two celebrated and eloquent preachers.
Dr. Barrow and Bishop Tillotson." Hobart 's Works,
vol. ii : p. 466,

Bishop Hobart 's view is most clearly expressed in his
own language; — " As St. Paul saith, ' By one Spirit we
are all baptized into one Body.' So that in the very act
of baptizing, the Spirit unites us unto Christ, and
makes us members of His body ; and if of His body, then
of His Church and Kingdom, that being all of His body.
And therefore all who are rightly baptized with water,
being at the same time also baptized with the Holy
Ghost, and so born both of the v/ater and the Spirit,
they are ipso facto admitted into the kingdom of God
established upon earth ; and if it be not their own fault,
(171)

172

will as certainly attain to that which is in heaven. It
is much to be lamented that many divines of the Church
of England have fallen into the modern. error, which
originated in the Calvinistic school, of applying the
word regeneration to denote the work of grace on the
heart, the operations of the Divine Spirit in forming
holy affections in the soul, and in leading us to newness
of life. This most important and essential change,
which in Scriptural and primitive language is termed
the renewing of the Holy Ghost — renovation — many
excellent and orthodox divines of our Church, follow-
ing unfortunately the fashion of the times, style reyene-

Bishop Alfred Lee in his little work on Baptism, in
which he endeavors to establish the hypothetical theory
of regeneration, alludes to this language of Bishop
Hobart, and comparing it with the teaching of the
Apostle John in his first epistle (I Jolm^ii : 29; iii : 9-14;
iv: 7; v: 1-18), pertinently asks, "How came the
Apostle John to fall into this modern error of the Cal-
vinistic school ?"

Bishop Hobart's view gained wide acceptance in the
Protestant Episcopal Churches in this country, but is
now well-nigh given up as untenable by the majority of
the Clergy of that Church.

In one of the more recent High Church works upon
this subject, that of the Rev. Dr. Adams of Nashotah
Theological Seminary, I have been unable so much as
to find an allusion to it, although the lack of an index
of topics may have led me to my failure to discover such
notice.

173

B.— Page 23.

" Goode on Baptism," is a work of profound erudi-
tion, and one which has been the main reliance of those
Evangelical teachers of the Church of England who
hold to the so-called " charitable theory " of Baptism.
But it is worth noticing that Mr. Goode himself feels
the almost insurmountable difficulties which attend his
explanations of the service. He says (p. 468), " The
mistakes and misconstructions to which this principle
has led would probably be now considered as affording
strong reasons against it. My own view would even in
theory, apart from the experience of results, be adverse
to the use of such language."

" Fisher on the Prayer-Book,"— a treatise of which
the late Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter, so famous in the
well-known Gorham case, says, "It is the work of one
who is a scholar, r. lawyer, a logician, and a Christian
gentleman," — thus comments upon the generally-ac-
cepted Baptismal theory of the Evangelical party in the
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States and
Great Britian : ' ' The Charitable Hypothesis, as applied
to the interpretation of the Baptismal Service, involves
nothing less than an obvious violation of the most in-
dispensable rules of grammar and of logic. It does
not consist, as in the case of the oft-quoted passage,
' This is my Body,' in the mere substitution of a meta-
phorical instead of a literal rendering of a term ; but
rather in the admission of a non-natural in the place of
the natural interpretation of an entire proposition. As
to the natural sense of the declaration, ' This child is
regenerate,' there can be surely but one opinion. We

174

shall search in vain for any rule of logical or grammati-
cal interpretation, to justify the assumption, that by
such an expression room is left for doubt or contingency.
The assertion of the infant's regeneracy is absolute,
positive and unconditional. Whatever be the meaning
attached to either of the terms of the proposition, and
whatever be the precise theological interpretation of
the word ' regenerate,' the substance of the proposition
itself still remains essentially the same. It is still un-
deniably categorical ; so that to interpret it hypotheti-
cally, is to alter its very essence, and mvolves nothing
less than a positive contradiction of a singularly plain
and luminous statement. . . . The question before
us, it should be remembered, is a question not of things,
but of words. The point to be ascertained is not
whether, in the case supposed, a ' charitable' hope may
reasonably be entertained; but whether such hope is
properly expressed by the phraseology employed in the
service. These are two perfectly distinct subjects of
inquiry. And what, it may reasonably be -asked, can
the ' judgment,' even of the most charitable expectation^
have to do with a case where nothing but the most ab-
solute certainty can justify the phraseology employed ?"

C— Page 82.

In Chapin's " Primitive Church," pp. 407-409, a bold
and seemingly authoritative denial is given to the re-
cognized fact of history that the English Church, down
to the period of the Stuart restoration, received as min-
isters in its parishes, clergymen who had no other than
Presbyterial ordination. It seems necessary, therefore,

175

to give the plain historic^ round for the statement on
page 82.

Keble is certainly one whose authority ought to be re-
spected by the highest advocates of the Apostolic Suc-
cession. Yet he writes (See the preface to Hooker, p.
38), '' For nearly up to the time when he (Hooker)
wrote, numbers liad been admitted to the ministry of
the Church of England, with no better than Presby-
terian ordination ; and it appears by Traver's Supplica-
tion to the Council, that such was the construction not
uncommonly put upon the statute of the 13th of Eliza-
beth, permitting those who had received orders in any
other form than that of the English Service Book, on
giving certain securities, to exercise their calling in
England.*'

Let us listen to the testimony of Bishop Burnet,
" Another point was fixed by the Act of Uniformity,
which was more at large formerly ; those w^ho came to
England from the foreign Churches had not been re-
quired to be ordained among us; but now all, that had
not Episcopal ordination, were made incapable of hold-
ing any ecclesiastical benefice." (Burnet's Hist, of his
own Times, vol. i: p. 183.)

Strype's Life of Archbishop Grindal (quoted in Goods
on Orders), bears the most unequivocal evidence on this
point. It gives the exact language of the commission
given by Grindal to John Morrison, a minister ordained
by Presbyterial hands in Scotland, permitting him to
exercise his office in the English Church. It runs as
follows: "Since you, the aforesaid John Morrison,
about five years past, in the town of Garvet, in the
county of Lothian and kingdom of Scotland, were ad-
mitted and ordained to sacred orders and the holy
ministry, by the imposition of hands, according to the

176

laudable form and rite of the Eeformed Church of
Scotland ... we therefore as much as lies in us,
and as by right we may, approving and ratifying the
form of your ordination and preferment done in such,
manner as aforesaid, grant to you a license and faculty,
with the consent and express command of the most
Eeverend Father in Christ, the Lord Edmund, by the
Divine Providence Archbishop of Canterbury, to us
signified, that in such ordeiis by you taken, you may and
have power in any convenient places in and throughout
the whole province of Canterbury, to celebrate divine
offices, to minister the sacraments," &c.

John Cosin, Bishop of Durham, ought to be a witness
to whose testimony no high churchman could take ex-
ception. He was the friend of Archbishop Laud, and
was considered as belonging to the most extreme fac-
tion of the party which Laud represented. In a letter
written by him from Paris, where he had been driven
during the Parliamentary regime in England, he says,
*' Therefore, if at any time a minister so ordained in
these Erench churches, came to incorporate himself in
ours, and to receive a public charge or cure of souls
among us in the Church of England (as I have known
some of them to have done so of late, and can instance
in many others before my time) our bishops did not re-
ordain him before they admitted him to his charge, as
they must have done if his former ordination here in
France had been void. JVor did our laws require mure
of him than to dedare his public consent to the religion
received among us, and to subscribe the articles estab-
lished.''^

William Fleetwood, Bishop first of St. Asaph, and
afterward of Ely, belongs to the period of the Kevolu-
tion which placed William of Orange on the throne.

177

But as he was born during the Cromwellian supremacy,
and received his education during the Carolan reigns,
he is a most important witness as to the practice pre-
vailing in England while the Stuart kings were assimi-
lating the English Church to that of Rome. He says,
in his " Judgment of the Church of England in case of
Lay-Baptism," "We had many ministers from Scot-
land, from Prance, and from the Low Countries, wha
were ordained by presbyters only, and not bishops, and
■ they were instituted into benefices with cure, and yet
were never re-ordained, but only subscribed the ar-
ticles.*'

As Mr. Goode, to whose unanswerable work on the
Orders of the Church of England, I am indebted for
the most of the above quotations, has well said, "If
these cases do not prove that at least, our Church
has never disowned the validity of the ordinations of
the Scotch and foreign non-episcopal Churches, and
• that her practice till the Restoration was to recognize
their validity, nothing would do so."

The Rev. J. B. Marsden is a well known and volum-
inous writer of the Church of England. In his History
of the Early Puritans, a work of vast research, he
says, speaking of the reign of Elizabeth (pp. 231-235),

" Hitherto Episcopal ordination had not been con-
sidered as of the essence of the ministerial commission;
indeed there are several remarkable instances in which
Presbyterian ministers were not only beneficed in the
Church of England, but enjoyed its distinctions, and
filled some of its highest posts. The case of Whitting-
ham. Dean of Durham, is well known. He was pre-
sented to the deanery soon after Elizabeth's accession,
in 1563, having received orders from the Reformed
■Church at Geneva, in the Presbyterian manner. It

178

does not appear that his want of Episcopal ordination
would have rendered him obnoxious, had it not been for
the zeal with which he espoused the Puritan opinions-
on the subject of the vestments. At length in 1577,
Sandys, Archbishop of York, cited him upon several
charges, the chief of which was his Genevan ordination.
Whittingham however, asserted the rights of the church
at Durham, and challenged the Archbishop's power to
interfere. He then made his appeal to the queen, who
directed a commission to hear and determine the objec-
tions alleged against him. The president was Hutton,.
Dean of York, who expressed his pieference for Presby-
terian rather than Romish orders, in strong language*
* The Dean,' he said, 'was ordained in better sort than
even the Archbishop himself.' Sandys had sufficient
influence to obtain another commission, and of this the
lord president was a member. When the question of
his ordination had been argued, the lord president ex-
claimed, ' 1 cannot agree to deprive him for that cause
alone; thii,' he said, 'would be ill taken by all the
godly both at home and abroad ; that We allow of popish
massing priests in our ministry, and disallow of minis-
ters made in a reformed church.' The commission was
again adjourned, and here the business dropped, for the
next year the Dean of Durham died

" The range within which ordination was considered
valid in the Church of England in the age succeeding-
the Reformation, is shown more strongly in the case of
Travers, Hooker's celebrated coadjutor at the Temple*
It is uncertain whether Travers had received deacon's
orders according to the Church of England (for he had
a divinity degree from Cambridge), but he was member
from the first of the Presbyterian Church at Wands-
worth, Going abroad, he was certainly ordained 9.

179

presbyter at Antwerp, by the Synod there in 1578. Yet
we find him associated with Hooker, as preacher at
the Temple, in 1592. During this long interval then,
of fourteen years,' his Presbyterian orders had been al-
lowed. He was also private tutor in the family of Lord
Treasurer Cecil, When at length silenced by Whitgift,
it was objected to him, first, that he was not a lawfully
ordained minister of the Church of England; secondly,
that he preached without a license ; thirdly, that he had
violated discipline and decency by his public refutation of
what Hooker, his superior in the Church, had advanced
from the same pulpit upon the same day. Had the
first ground been felt by his opponents to be impregna-
ble, the other charges would probably have been
omitted, and Travers would have been dismissed, no
doubt, in a summary way. But it would seem that the
stress was laid chiefly on the two latter articles ; and,
indeed Travers was prepared with an answer to the
first, and with an answer which he did not fail to use.
An act had passed in the thirteenth year of Queen
Elizabeth, under which he was securely sheltered. It
recognizes the validity of foreign orders ; and conveys
to us historical evidence that ministers ordained by
Presbyterian synods were at that time beneficed in the
Church of England, It was sufficient thac the con-
forming minister should declare his assent, and sub-
scribe to the Articles of the Church of England.
Travers, in his petition to the privy council, pleads
the force of this statute, and declares that many Scot-
tish ministers were then holding benefices in England
beneath its sanction."

There appears no evidence to show that this bold as-
sertion of Travers was denied, as it certainly would
have been, if capable of successful refutation. Nothing

180

then can be clearer than the plain fact of history, that
at the time of this celebrated trial, '' many Scottish min-
isters,'^^ having no other than presbyterial orders, were
holding benefices in the Clmrch of England, under the
protection of the law to which Travers himself ap-
pealed

Tiie disingenuousness, to call it by no severer term,
of the advocates of extreme high church views, is seen
in the attempt of Chapin (Primitive Church, pp. 407,
408) to get rid of the clear testimony of history. Allud-
ing to the act of the thirteenth of Elizabeth, he says,
'' The first section enacts that every minister under the
degree of Bishop, who had received ordination or con-
secration hy any other form than that prescribed hy the
Ordinal of Edivard VI. (the italics are Dr. Chapin's),
should, in a certain limited time, subscribe to the arti-
cles of religion, confessions, etc." The obvious con-
clusion which Dr. Chapin meant his reader to draw
from the statement which he so strongly emphasizes by
italics, is that this provision was intended to meet the
case of men ordained in the Church of England, by
some other or later form than that prescribed by the
Ordinal of Edward VI. Thus he would escape the
natural inference that it w^as intended to meet the case
of the "many" Presbyterian ministers to whom Travers
refers. But while italicizing this clause of the law, Dr.
Chapin deliberately omits the rest of the language,
which makes the whole clause to read, " any other form
of institution, consecration, or ordering, than the form
set forth by ])arliament in the time of the late king of
most worthy memory. King Edward the Sixth, or now
used in the reign of our most gracious sovereign lady.''''

Nothing can be more evident than that the entire
clause was meant to allow ministers ordained by some

181

other form thayi that of the Church of England, to hold
livings, provided they should subscribe to the Articles.

But the want of fair dealing with historic facts, on
the part of Dr. Chapin, becomes more inexcusable as
he proceeds. In .speaking of the subscription required
by the statute of Elizabeth, he says, " One of the things
they were thus required to sign was the Preface to the
Ordinal." This is a gratuitous assertion, for which
ihere is not only no historic authority, but which is in
direct contradiction of the statute itself. Its language
is, "subscribe to all articles of religion ichich only con-
cern the true Christian faith, and the doctrine of the sac-
raments, comprised in a book intituled Articles, ^^ etc. I
have searched in vain the records of tlie Elizabethan
period of the Church of England, to find any proof of
the statement that the book 'intituled Articles," in-
cluded the Preface to the Ordinal. A reference to the
Prayer Book of the Church of England reveals the
*'book intituled Articles.'' appended to the Liturgy,
as an addendum, precisely as it was adopted by parlia-
ment in the year 1562. It in no way includes or even
refers to the Preface of the Ordinal.

At the risk of enlarging this appendix beyond my
original intention, T quote in full the statute of Eliza-
beth, which Dr. Chapm so shamefully garbles to suit
the purposes of the high Church party= It is given by
Marsden, p. 234,

'•'Anno xiiL Regina Elizabetha: A. D. 1570; chap.
12 —An Act for the ministers of churches to be of sound
leligion. Be it enacted by the authority of this present
parliament, that any person under the degree of a bishop,
which doth or shall pretend to be a priest or minister
of God's holy words and sacraments, by reason of any
other form of institution, consecration, or ordering,

lo2

than the form set forth by parliament in the time of
the late king of most worthy memory, King Edward
Yl, or now used in the reign of our most gracious sov-
ereign lady, before the feast of the nativity of Christ
next following, shall, in the presence of the bishop, or
guardian of the spiritualities of some one diocese where
he hath or shall have ecclesiastical living, declare
his assent, and subscribe to all articles of religion which
only concern the confession of the true Christian faith^
and the doctrine of the sacraments, comprised in a book
imprinted and intituled, Articles, whereupon it was
agreed by the archbishops and bishops of both prov-
inces, and the whole clergy in convocation holden at
London in the year of our Lord God one thousand five
hundred and sixty-two, according to the computation
of the Church of England, for the avoiding of diversi-
ties of opinions, and for the establishing consent touch-
ing true religion put forth by the queen's authority ; and
shall bring from such bishop or guardian of spirituali-
ties, in writing, under his seal authentick, a testimonial
of such assent and subscription ; and openly on some
►Sunday, in time of public service before noon, in every
church where by reason of any ecclesiastical living be
ought to attend, read both the said testimonial, and
the said articles; upon pain that every such person
which shall not before the said feast, do as above ap-
pointed, shall be ipso facto deprived, and all his eccle-
siastical promotions shall be void, as if he then were
naturally dead."

Archbishop Whitgift figures largely in the contro-
versy which arose regarding Travers, alluded to above.
That he was a man of harsh spirit and narrow views^
is very evident from his bitterness toward the Puritans.

lb

Q

Yet the equal narrowness of that faction in the Eliza-^
bethan Church of England, and their petty insistence
«pon trifling matters, alford much excuse for the tem>
per which Whitgift manifested toward them. But
how far, in spite of his intense dislike of tile Presbyte-
rians, he was from the position of the modern High
Churchman upon the question of the necessity of Epis-
copal ordination, may be judged from the following
extract from his works. It is to be found in his defence
of Episcopacy against Cartwright, the Puritan cham-
pion:

" But to be short, I confess that in a church collected
together in one place, and at liberty, government is^
necessary in the second kind of necessity, hut that any
one kind of government is so necessary that without it the
Church cannot he saved, or that it cannot he altered into
some other kind thought to he more expedieyit, I utterly
deny. And the reasons that move me so to do, be these.
The first is because 1 find no one certain and perfect
kind of government prescribed or commanded in the
Scriptures of the Church of -Christ. ... So that
notwithstanding government, or some kind of govern-
ment, may be a part of the Church, touching the out-
ward form and perfection of it, yet it is not such a part
of the essence and heing, hut that it may he the Church of
Christ without this or that kind of government, and there-
fore the kind of government of the Church is not neces-
sary unto salvation. (Whitgift's Works, vol. i, p. 184.)'^

lu

D.— Page no.

The statement that the consecrations of Bishops
^Vhite and Piovoost was on the basis of the Prayer
33ook of 1785, was asserted in a sermon preached by the
author of this little work some years ago, and subse-
quently published by request. The paper known as
The Churchman, in a review of this discourse, took
occasion to deny that the Prayer Book of 1785 was the
basis on which the historic succession was secured to
the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States,
and added that '' any tyro in ecclesiastical history "
could have corrected such a blunder. I have therefore
thought fit to give in this appendix the following lu-
minous statement of the historical facts in the case,
xjollated by my brother, the Eev. Mason Gallagher,
J). D., whose kindness in its preparation specially for
this appendix, has added to the many obligations of a
life-long friendship.

The Prayer Book of 1785, and the Historical
Episcopate. By Rev. Mason Gallager, D. D.

That the " Historical Episcopate" was conveyed by
the Church of England, and received on the basis of the
Prayer Book of 1785, by the Protestant Episcopal Church
in the United Slates, is clearly seen in the Journals of
the Conventions of 1785 and '86, as published by Bioren,
Philadelphia, 1817.

Prom these Journals we quote :

"AV^ednesday 28th of September, 1785. On motion
resolved, that a Comniittee be appointed ... to
consider of and report such alterations in the Liturgy,
as shall render it consistent with the American Revo-
lution, and the Constitutions of the respective States ;

18.3

. . . that a Committee be appointed ... to pre-
pare and report a draft of g-n Ecclesiastical Constitution
for the P. E. Church, and . . . that the preparing
of the necessary and proposed alterations be referred to
said Committee.

*' Friday, 80th. Kesolved that the Committee for
revising and altering the Liturgy, etc, do also prepare-
and report a plain for obtaining the Consecration of
Bishops, together with an address to the Most Rev-
erend the Archbishop, and the Reverend the Bishops
of the Church of England for that purpose.

" Tuesday, October 4th. Convention met pursuant
to adjournment. Ordered that the consideration of the
general Ecclesiastical Constitution be resumed, and
that the same be read and considered by paragraphs ;
which being done, was considered by paragraphs, and
the blanks filled up as agreed to, and is as follows:

"IV. 'The Book of Common Prayer and Adminis-
tration of the Sacraments, and other rites and ceremo-
nies of the Church, according to the use of the Church
of England,' shall continue to be used by this Church,
as the same is altered by the Convention, in a certain
instrument of writing passed by their authority, entitled
' Alterations of the Liturgy of the Protestant Episcopal
Church in the United States of America, in order to
render the same conformable to the American Revolu-
tion, and the Constitutions of the respective States.'

"The Hon. Mr. Duane, from the Committee for re-
vising, etc., reported that they had, according to order>
prepared a plan for obtaining the Consecration of Bish-
ops, and the draft of an address to the Most Reverend
the Archbishops, and the Right Reverend the Bishops
of the Church of England, and were ready to report the
same.

186

" Wednesday, 5tli October. . . . Resolved, that
the Liturgy shall be used in this Church, as accommo-
dated to the Revolution, agreeably to the alterations
now approved of and ratified by this Convention.

" Ordered, That the plan for obtaining Consecration,
and the address to the Archbishops and Bishops of the
Church of England be again read; which being done,
the same were agreed to, and are as follows :

" First. That this Convention address the Arch-
bishops and Bishops of the Church of England, request-
ing them to confer the Episcopal character on such
persons as shall be chosen and recommended to them
for that purpose from the Conventions of this Church
in the respective States. . . .

" Fourthly. That it be further recommended to the
different Conventions, that they pay especial attention
to the making It appear to their Lordships, that the
persons who shall be sent to them for consecration are
desired in the character of Bishops, as well by the Laity
as by the Clergy of this Church in the said States re-
spectively ; and that they will be received by them in
that character on their return."

In this address it is stated : " Our forefathers, when
they left the land of their nativity, did not leave the
bosom of that Church, over which your Lordships now
preside ... it was their earnest desire and resolution
to retain the venerable form of Episcopal Government
handed down to them as they conceived, from the time
of the Apostles, and endeared to them by the remem-
brance of the holy Bishops of the Primitive Church, of
the blessed Martyrs who reformed the doctrine and wor-
ship of the Church of England ; and of the many great
and pious Prelates who have adorned that Church in
«very succeeding age. The petition which we offer to

187

your venerable Body, is— that from a tender regard to
the religious interests of thousands in this rising em-
pire, professing the same religious principles with the
Church of England, you will be pleased to confer the
Episcopal Character on such persons as shall be recom-
mended by this Church in the several States here rep-
resented.

" We have stated to your Lordships the nature and
the grounds of our application : which we have thought
it most respectful and most suitable to the magnitude
of the object to address to your Lordships for your de-
liberation before any person is sent over to carry them
into effect." . . .

" Resolved, That a Committee be appointed to pub-
lish the Book of Common Prayer with the alterations,
as well those now ratified in order to render the Liturgy
consistent with the American Revolution, and the
Constitutions of the respective States, as the alterations
and new office^ recommended to this Church ; and that
the book be accompanied with a proper preface or ad-
dress setting forth the reason and expediency of the
alterations."

Journal of a Convention of the Protestant Episcopal
Church, held in Philadelphia Jrom June i'Oih to June
2Gih, 17 86.

" Thursday, June 22d, 1786. Ordered, That the letter
from the Archbishops and Bishops of England to this
Convention be now read, and it was read accordingly
in the words following : ' London, February 24th, 1786.
To the Clerical and Lay Deputies, etc. . . . The
Archbishop of Canterbury hath received an address
. . . from the Clerical and Lay Deputies, etc. . . .
directed to the Archbishops and Bishops of the Church

188

of England, requesting them to confer the Episcopal
Character, etc. We are now enabled to assure you that
nothing is nearer to our hearts than the wish to pro-
mote your spiritual welfare — and the enjoyment of that
Ecclesiastical Constitution which we believe to be truly
Apostolic — we cannot help being afraid, that in the
proceedings of your Convention, some alterations may
have been adopted or intended which those difficulties
do not seem to justify . . . while we are anxious
to give every proof not only of our brotherly affection,
but of our facility in forwarding your wishes, we can-
not but be extremely cautious, lest we should be the
instruments of establishing an Ecclesiastical system
which willbe called a branch of the Church of Eng-
land, but afterward may possibly appear to have de-
parted from it essentially, either in doctrine or in
discipline.'

" Resolved, That this Convention entertain a grate-
ful sense of the Christian affection and condescension
manifested in this letter : And whereas it appears that
the venerable Prelates have heard, through private chan-
nels, that the Church here represented has adopted,
or intended such alterations as would be an essential
deviation from the Church of England, this Conven-
tion trusts that they shall be able to give such informa-
tion to those venerable Prelates, as will satisfy them
that no such alterations have been adopted or intended.

"Monday, June 26th, 178G. The Committee reported
a draft of an answer to the letter from the Archbishops
and Bishops of England, which, being read and con-
sidered, was agreed to, and is as follows: While doubts
remain of our continuing to hold the same essential
articles of faith and discipline with the Church of Eng-

189

land, we acknowledge the propriety of suspending a
compliance with our request.

"We are unanimous and explicit in assuring your
Lordships, that we have neither departed nor propose
to depart from the doctrines of your Church. We have
retained the same discipline and forms of worship as
far as was consistent with our civil constitutions ; and
we have made no alterations or omissions in the Book
of Common Prayer, but such as that consideration pre-
scribed, and such as were calculated to remove objec-
tions, which it appeared to us more conducive to union
and general content to obviate, than to dispute. It is
well known that many great and pious men of the
Church of England have long wished for a revision of
the Liturgy, which it was deemed imprudent to hazard,
lest it might become a precedent for repeated and im-
proper alterations. This is with us the proper season
for such a revision. We are now settling and ordering
the affairs of our Church, and if wisely done, we shall
have reason to promise ourselves all the advantages
that result from stability and union.

" We are anxious to complete our Episcopal system
by means of the Church of England. We esteem and
prefer it, and with gratitude acknowledge the patron-
age and favors for which, while connected, we have
constantly been indebted to that Church. These con-
siderations added to that of an agreement in faith and
worship, press us to repeat our former request, and to
endeavor to remove your present hesitation, by sending
you our proposed Ecclesiastical Constitution and
Book of Common Prayer.

" These documents, we trust, will afford a full answer
to every question that can arise on the subject. We
consider your Lordships' letter as very candid and kind ;

190

we repose full confidence in the assurance it gives ; and
that confidence, together with the liberality and Catholi-
cism of your venerable body, lead us to flatter ourselves,
that you will not disclaim a branch of your Church,
merely for having been, in your Lordships' opinion, if
that should be the case, pruned rather too closely than
its separation made absolutely necessary.

Journal of the Convention of the P. E. Churchy held at
Wilmington, Del., October 10th and 11th, 1786.

" Tuesday, October 10th. On motion the letters re-
ceived from the Archbishops of England, with the form
of testimonials and Act of Parliament, enclosed and re-
ferred to, be now read, and they were read accordingly,
as follows: To the Committee, etc. ... It was
impossible not to observe with concern, that if the
essential doctrines of our common faith were retained,
less respect however was paid to our Liturgy than its
own excellence and your declared attachment to it led
us to expect, not to mention a variety of verbal altera-
tions, of the necessity and propriety of which we are
by no means satisfied. AYe saw with grief that two of
the Confessions of our Christian Faith, respectable for
their antiquity, have been entirely laid aside, and that
even in that which is called the Apostle's Creed, an
article is omitted, which was thought necessary to be
inserted, with a view to a particular heresy, in a very
early age of the Church, and has ever had the venerable
sanction of universal reception.

*' Nevertheless, as a proof of the sincere desire which
we feel to continue in Spiritual Communion with the
members of your Church in America, and to complete
the order of your ministry, and trusting that these com-
munications which we shall make to you on the subject

191

of these, and some other alterations, will have their
desired effect, we have, even under these circumstances,
prepared a Bill for conveying to us the powers necessary
for this purpose.

" We most earnestly exhort you, . . . that you
restore to its integrity the Apostle's Creed, in which
you have omitted an article merely, as it seems, from
misapprehension of the sense in which it is understood
by our Church ; nor can we help adding, that we hope
you will think it but a decent proof of the attachment
which you profess to the services of your Liturgy to
give to the other two Creeds a place in your Book of
Common Prayer, even though the use of them should
be left discreiional.

" The Committee appointed last evening to take into
consideration the matters contained in the letter from
the Archbishops of England, delivered in their report:
. . . The first question taken on the report of the
Committee was whether the words 'He descended into
Hell ' should be restored in the Apostle's Creed ? Upon
the Ayes and Nays 'being called for, the votes were as
follows : New York, Divided ; New Jersey, Aye ; Penn-
sylvania, Divided ; Delaware, Divided ; South Carolina,
Aye. So the words are to be restored, there being two
ayes and no negative. On the question, ' Shall the Ni-
cene Creed be restored in the Liturgy ?' the same was
unanimously agreed to. . . . It was moved and
seconded that a Committee be appointed to draft a
letter from this Convention to the Archbishops of Eng-
land, in answer to their late letter. . . .

"This Committee retired, and after some time re-
turned and reported a letter ... as follows : To
the Archbishops, etc. . . . We have taken into our
most serious and deliberate consideration, the several

192

matters so affectionately recommended to us in those
communications, and whatever could be done towards
a compliance with your fatherly wishes and advice con-
sistently with our local circumstances, and the peace
and unity of our Church, hath been agreed to, as we
trust will appear from the enclosed account of our Con-
vention, which we have the honor to transmit to 5^ou,
together with the Journal of our proceedings. We
are, etc." ...

Journal of a Convention of the P. E. Churchy Philadel-
phia^ July 28th to August 8th, 1789.

" Wednesday. July 29th, 1789. . . . The Conven-
tion met. Ordered, that the Rev. Dr. Smith, the Rev.
Dr. Beach, and Mr. Andrews, be a Committee to pre-
pare an address of thanks to the Most Reverend the
Archbishops of Canterbury and York, for their good
offices in procuring the consecration of the American
Bishops."

The above verbatim copy of the Convention Journals
of 1785, 6 and 9, would seem to render unnecessary any
argument with respect to the statement that the His-
torical Episcopate of the P. E. Church was received
on the basis of the Constitution and Prayer Book of
1785 and 6.

It was not until a fourth Convention in October,
1789, two years and eight months after Bishops White
and Provoost were consecrated, that this Constitution
and Prayer Book, specifically stated in the Preface to
the Book, to be based on the Revision of 1689, were
radically changed by a return to the principles and doc-
trines of the Revision of Charles II, 1662, such change
being made tlie condition of the adhesion of Bishop
Seabury and the loyalist clergy of New England. The

193

American Prayer Book, on which the Episcopate was
received, was cast aside for the Anglican, and so re-
mained until restored by Bishop Cummins and the Re-
formed Episcopal Church, thus representing legiti-
mately the Church of the Revolution, as well as the
Church of the Reformation, and both together, the
Church of the Apostles, as nearly as we have it. Peace
and purity were sacrificed in order to secure what has
proved a hollow uniformity and a source of doctrinal
corruption and chronic schism, and finally ecclesiastical
disruption.