SECTION I.

DEFINITION OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES.

It is not the Church of Rome-it is not the Church of England-it is a Christian and Protestant American Church-at unity with the ancient and universal Church of Christ.

WHAT is the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States?

I. It is not the Church of Rome, nor does it hold any connection or communion with that Church. Its standards of prayer and of doctrine all contain, some designedly and more undesignedly, a protest against the errors and anti-catholic claims of the Church of Rome.

For our educated readers, and others who have been at all acquainted with the Protestant Episcopal Church, the above assertion is sufficient; but as many persons, otherwise intelligent, who have never been familiar with the Protestant Episcopal Church, have a vague idea of something papistical about it, we are induced, for the benefit of such, to explain a little further.

The 19th Article of Religion of the Protestant Episcopal Church reads, in its latter clause, thus: "As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith."

The name of "the Protestant Episcopal Church” should be sufficient to absolve it from all suspicions of

being inclined to the peculiarities of the Church of Rome.

In the Homilies, which by the 35th Article are "declared to be an explication of Christian doctrine, and instructive in piety and morals," there are frequent rebukes of the various errors of the Church of Rome, and sometimes in terms which the "ears polite" of a modern audience could not tolerate.*

* To select a passage not so harsh as some others, yet decisive upon the point, we quote from the 28th Homily-the 16th of the 2d Book:

"It is needful to teach you, first, what the true Church of Christ is ; and then confer the Church of Rome therewith, to discern how well they agree together.

"The true Church is a universal congregation or fellowship of God's faithful and elect people, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the Head Corner Stone. And it hath always three notes or marks, whereby it is known: Pure and sound doctrine; the sacraments administered according to Christ's holy institution; and the right use of ecclesiastical discipline. This description of the Church is agreeable both to the Scriptures of God, and also to the doctrine of the ancient Fathers; so that none may justly find fault therewith.

"Now if you will compare this with the Church of Rome-not as it was in the beginning, but as it is at present, and hath been for the space of nine hundred years and odd-you shall well perceive the state thereof to be so far wide from the nature of the true Church that nothing can be more. For neither are they built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, retaining the sound and pure doctrine of Christ Jesus; neither yet do they order the sacraments, or else the ecclesiastical keys (discipline), in such sort as he did first institute and ordain them. . . (Proofs of the three charges are urged.). . . . Which thing being true, as all they which have any light of God's word must needs confess, we may well conclude, according to the rule of Augustine (Contra Petilian. Donatist. Ep. Cap. 4), that the Bishops of Rome and their adherents are not the true Church of Christ, much less then to be taken as chief heads and rulers of the same. Whosoever, saith he, do dissent from the Scriptures concerning the head, although they be found in all places where the Church

It is well to remind the reader that Cranmer, and Latimer, and Ridley, and Hooper, and Farrar, and other distinguished martyrs were Protestant Episcopal Bishops; and that John Rogers of famous memory, and Lawrence Saunders, and Bradford, and Taylor, as well as others who gave their testimony to Protestantism in the midst of the flames, were ministers of a lower grade (Presbyters) of the Protestant Episcopal Church; and that the most distinguished writers against the Roman Catholic scheme, including, with those just mentioned, such men as Barrow, and Chillingworth, and Hooker, and Jeremy Taylor, and Leslie, and Jewell, and of our own day, Mr. Faber, have been ministers likewise of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

It has become very much a fashion now-a-days to designate the Church of Rome as the Catholic Church, and to call its members and its dogmas by the name of Catholic; and uninformed persons are therefore frequently surprised, while attending on the worship of Protestant Episcopalians, to hear them declare as one of the articles of their belief or Creed: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." Now, in this phrase the Protestant Episcopal Church expresses a belief in the Holy Catholic (i. e., universal) Church, or, as it is elsewhere expressed in her daily prayers, "the Holy Church universal-all who profess and call themselves Christians;" and not in the narrow and exclusive scheme of the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed, in the use of this phrase the Episcopal Church, which carries the name of Protestant as a part of its very title, unequivocally denies to

is appointed, yet are they not in the Church: a plain place, concluding directly against the Church of Rome."

the Church of Rome (against whose errors the protest is made) any exclusive right to the name of Catholic, and by implication attributes to it a character directly opposite to that of the Holy Catholic Church in which a belief is professed. It is to be regretted that language is employed so loosely, and that by men who ought to know better, and who do know better, as not only to convey a false meaning, and to corrupt our language, but to destroy the sense of the old creeds of Christendom, and even to extend and to perpetuate grievous error of opinion in the community.*

We may further state, that a grand principle of the Protestant Episcopal Church is—the primitive and absolute co-equality of Bishops; and hence this Church can never have any sympathy with the Church of Rome, which seeks to elevate one Bishop to a vast height above all others. It may be affirmed, without fear of disproof, that Protestant Diocesan Episcopacy is the strongest barrier that can be reared against the principle of the

*It may not be generally known that the Roman Catholics found an argument, very effective among the ignorant, for their claim of being the infallible and true Church, upon this very fact, that even Protestants call them "Catholic." Bishop Burnet, on the 19th Article, referring to Cardinal Bellarmine's assertions, writes thus: "The last way they (the Roman Catholics) take to find out this (true and infallible) Church by, is from some notes, that they pretend are peculiar to her, such as the name Catholic, etc., together with the confession of their adversaries." In answering this argument, the Bishop proceeds: "Can it be thought that the assuming a name can be a mark? Why is not the name Christian as solemn as Catholic? Might not the Philosophers have concluded from hence against the first Christians, that they were, by the confession of all men, the true lovers of wisdom; since they were called Philosophers much more unanimously than the Church of Rome was called Catholic?" If the good Bishop had lived in our day and country, he could not thus have replied to the argument of the Romanist.

Papacy; for, in all other systems, the natural tendency of things is to ecclesiastical monarchy-a supreme and controlling influence and power to be exercised, most absolutely because not defined by law, by the most crafty, or the most talented, or the most experienced, or the best.

Our remarks might be extended to great length on this topic, but, we trust, enough has been said to illustrate, even to the uninformed, the entire independence of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States from the Church of Rome.

II. It is not the Church of England. It has no legal connection in any respect with England, nor with any other country whatsoever besides the United States, excepting the connection, such as it is, of the sincere and earnest Christian sympathy it feels for the English Protestant Church (which is a very different thing from the English Government or the English Establishment of Church and State), and its connection, also, through its missionary undertakings, with countries ignorant of pure Christianity.

To be sure, and we acknowledge the fact with gratitude, it was originated by members of the Church of England; to be sure, it was an English Church before it became American, just as the nation was English, and when it became American retained its language and its old common law in its new independence. Just so it is now an independent Church, just as the Congregational and Presbyterian churches of this country, originally English, are independent of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches of England from which they originated.