municants, as the chief divinely appointed channel of saving grace.

The consecrated bread and wine, it is taught, are the "vessel" or "veil" or "garment" of the real body and blood of Christ, which is the sacrifice offered. Any man who undertakes to offer this sacrifice without a commission from a bishop of "apostolical descent" is a follower of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and exposed to a corresponding punishment. Baptism--which may be given even by laymen, in exceptional cases-conveys to the soul justification and the new birth.' As to non-episcopal Christian communions, they "have cut themselves off from the participation of the one Spirit as living in the Church and flowing through the sacraments, which are veins and arteries of the one body."""

9. ISOLATION OF THESE TWO CHURCHES.

The Anglican and the Protestant Episcopal Churches are not in fraternal relations with any other. Refused recognition by the Greek and Roman communions with which they would fain fraternize, they themselves refuse to acknowledge the Protestant Churches by which they are surrounded as in the unity of the Church of Christ. "From that moment" (when the renewed Act of Uniformity was passed, 1662), says Green the historian, the Church of England stood "isolated and alone among the churches of the world."

"It [baptism] is the passage out of a state of wrath into a state of grace, and carries with it forgiveness of sins, purchased for us by the Blood of Christ, and all other blessings of the Christian covenant." (Goulbourn, "The Holy Catholic Church," p. 136.)

2"It is not a question whether we can give up all symbolism in religion; the only question is, how the Church can use religious symbolism without abusing it. The symbol is not in itself an evil thing, whether it be a light before an altar, a silver star in the Chapel of the Nativity at Bethlehem, or a statue of Luther kissing the open Bible, or a flower before a pulpit. It is only when the symbol is made an idol that the truth is betrayed." (Newman Smyth, "Passing Protestantism and Coming Catholicism," pp. 186, 187.)

"The Reformation had severed it irretrievably from those who still clung to the obedience of the Papacy. By its rejection of all but Episcopal orders the Act of Uniformity severed it as irretrievably from the general body of the Protestant Churches whether Lutheran or Reformed. And

Attempts have been made by English Churchmen to open the way to the recognition of their communion as a true Church of Christ by the Orthodox Eastern Church.' But all has thus far been unavailing. The Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Oriental Church has always been ready with the answer to any such suggestions, Unless you hold the Orthodox Faith (which, in fact, you do not), it is vain to ask our recognition or fellowship.

A similar attempt was made by prominent members of the Church of England, less than fifteen years ago, to obtain from the Pope an official declaration of the validity of Anglican orders. Even so great and wise a statesman as William Ewart Gladstone thought it worth while to write a letter containing an able argument on the subject to Cardinal Rampolla, and was strangely sanguine enough to hope for a favorable result from the united undertaking. But the reply of Leo XIII., in the Bull Apostolica Cura (September 13, 1896), was a death-blow to all such hopes. The Pope refused to recognize any ordination by English bishops-the main ground of his decision, to state it with the utmost brevity, being that the Anglican rite of ordi

while thus cut off from all hearty religious communion with the world without it sank into immobility within." ("History of the English People," Vol. III., p. 363.)

'For example, in the latter part of the reign of Peter the Great, and a hundred years later by certain English Tractarians. Of wider significance was the Conference of Bonn (1874), of which Dean Howson and Canon Liddon were members. The Conference was composed of Old Catholics, Anglicans, Russian and Eastern Orthodox Christians, and American Episcopalians. Its object was to secure inter-communion for the churches (informally) represented. (See Schaff, “Creeds of Christendom," Vol. II., P. 545.)

"Leo XIII. was approached by those who claimed to speak, if not for the entire Anglican body, at least for a numerous section of its members. They assured him that there was a widespread opinion among you that our practice of reordaining convert clergymen was an imputation on your Church which had not originated in any due inquiry, but rested on historical assumptions which could no longer be sustained. They told him they felt strongly on the matter, in the belief that you were being treated with a manifest disregard for truth and justice; and they urged that the effect was to nourish prejudices against the Holy See most injurious to the cause of Christian reunion." ("Vindication of the Bull Apostolicæ Curæ,” p. 5.)

nation to the priesthood does not "intend" to confer, and hence cannot possibly confer, the power to offer sacrifice. All, therefore, was null and void. The Anglican body's sacraments were no sacraments, their ministry no ministry, they themselves no Church of Christ.'

On the other hand, these same two Episcopal churches of England and America have, through their Bishops' Chicago-Lambeth Declaration, proposed fraternity and even organic union with other Protestant churches. The Christian spirit in which it was done evoked, as was meet, a sympathetic response. But the proposal requires, as one of the four conditions, that only their own ordination to the Christian ministry shall be regarded as valid. It could not reasonably have hoped to be accepted.

Here, then, in this offer of a via media, appears the unwilling maintenance of a somewhat singular ecclesiastic isolation. May

'The Archbishops of Canterbury and York replied to the Papal Bull-referring to the Church of Rome as a "sister Church of Christ." The Roman Archbishop and Bishops in England wrote in vindication of the Bull-referring to the Church of England as "your communion," "the Anglican body," or one of "the separated communities."

"The Articles of Unity were adopted by the House of Bishops in Chicago, 1886; in London, at Lambeth Palace, with slight modifications, 1888; by the Episcopal General Convention, 1892.

This condition, or Fourth Article of Unity, is phrased as follows: "The acceptance of the historic episcopate locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of his Church.”

"To approach the great Protestant churches of the world with the statement that their ministries are unlawful is to propose not reunion, but absorption; not consideration, but contempt." (Bishop W. C. Doane, as reported in a recent address to the Diocesan Convention of Albany, N. Y.)

"It is a most encouraging sign that Churchmen, no matter who they are, should get together to try to do away with the isolation of the Anglican communion. It is a good thing for men to recognize that that isolation is not natural and is not final in any direction, whether it be considered from the point of the compass where Protestantism lies or the opposed point of the compass where Romanism is found." (The Churchman, February 22, 1908.)

"The scope and destiny of the Anglican Communion are here at stake. As a minority among English-speaking Christians it may indeed maintain

we determine its true significance? Is it that of simple fidelity at all hazards to a divine trust of ministerial orders, containing a "great deposit" of sacramental grace, or is it that of a pathetic misconception of the mind of the Master as to the vocation of his ministers and the intercommunion of his churches?

a glorious tradition and preserve an influential type of spiritual life and activity; but its full natural growth and the proper exercise of its ideal function are not possible without the recovery of those who have been alienated from it in the past." (Dean Armitage Robinson, "The Vision of Unity," p. 61.)

IV.

THE EPISCOPAL IDEA: PATRIARCHAL, IMPERIAL,

PAPAL.

THE merely prelatic theory of church government is really a theory of diocesan government, and nothing more. For the common oversight of two or more dioceses, it can consistently make no provision. Because, according to this theory, the whole governing power inheres in the individual bishop, each one acting alone as a monarch in his own district. What then shall be the relations of the various bishops to one another? Over which district shall each be ruler? Some man or some body of men must decide. Or, supposing that there should be agreement as to territorial jurisdiction, each several appointee taking posse'ssion of his particular diocese-how shall all the dioceses collectively, constituting the Church as a whole, be ruled? Where is the supreme authority?1

In some Episcopal churches-the English and the Russian, for example-the State is this supreme authority. But it will hardly be maintained that the rule of the State over the Church is also an original institute of Christ. Indeed, how the bishops can

'Dr. William Jones Seabury's solution of the difficulty is as follows: "It is true that Christ's commission imposes an obligation upon the bishops to act in common, but, inasmuch as the nature of their authority is such as to presuppose the power of individual action in direct responsibility to Christ alone, the common action can only be by consent and voluntary agreement, which is federation. Every individual bishop holding an entire share of the power of his order is able to exercise it independently of all others similarly commissioned; and if he waive this ability in deference to Christ," and so on. ("Introduction to Church Polity," pp. 150, 151.) I cannot reconcile the ideas in either of these two sentences. If "Christ's commission imposes an obligation upon the bishops to act in common," how can this common action "only be by consent and voluntary agreement?" Or, to take up the same idea as differently expressed in the next sentence: It either is or is not the will of Christ that the bishop should exercise his power independently; if it is, then he cannot rightfully subordinate the exercise of this power to the decision of others; if it is not, then he is not rightfully “able to exercise it independently."