There are no published statistics of this body, but there are churches in many of the principal cities of England (seven in London) and Scotland ; in Dublin and Belfsst ; in Paris, and a few other places in France; in Basle, and Berne, and other towns in Switzerland ; in Berlin, and many other places in North Germany ; and a number of smaller congregations in Holland, and Belgium, and North America. — ^W. W.A.
To the above account it is proper to add that, in the judgment of the Christian Church generally, the dis- tinctive doctrines of the Catholic Apostolic Church are regarded as erroneous, and its poli^ and usages as re- actionary, and opposed to the true development of the Church.
1. As to doctrine,— The C. A. Church is especially distinguished by its doctrine as to spiritual gifts. ** Like the Montanists of the second century, they look upon these apostolic gifts and offices as the necessary conditions of a healthy state of the Church at any time ; make their disappearance the fiiult of Christiata- ity ; and hold it impossible to remedy the defacts of the Church without a revival of the charisms and the apostolate. They appeal to such passages as 1 Cor. xii, 27-81 ; Eph. iv, 11-18, where undue emphasis is laid on * tm ;' and to Thess. v, 19, 20 ; 1 Cor. xii, 81 ; xiv, 1, where the apostle not only warns Christians against quenching the holy fire of the Spirit, but also positively requires them to strive earnestly after His miraculous gifts. There seems to us to be here a mix- ture of truth and error on both sides. In these charisms we must distinguish between the essence and the tem- porary form. The first is permanent ; the second has disappeared, yet breaks out at times sporadically, though not with the same strength and purity as in the apostolic period. In the nature of the case, the Holy Ghost, when first entering into humanity, came with peculiar creative power, copiousness, and fresh- ness ; presented a striking contrast to the mass of the unchristian world ; and, by this very exhibition of what was extraordinary and miraculous, exerted a mighty attraction upon the world, without which it never could have been conquered. Christianity, however, aims to incorporate herself in the life of humanity, en- ter into all its conditions and spheres of activity as the ruling principle, and thus to become the second, higher nature. As it raises the natural more and more into the sphere of the Spirit, so in this very process it makes the supernatural more and more natural. These are but two aspects of one and the same operation. Ac- cordingly we find that, as fast as the reigning power of heathenism is broken, those charisms which exhibit- ed most of the miraculous become less frequent, and after the fourth century almost entirely disappear. This is not owing to a fault of Christianity, for at that very time the Church produced some of her greatest teachers, her Atbanasius and her Ambrose, her Chry- ^oetom and her Augustine. It is rather a result of its
victory over the world. Spiritual gifta, however, £d not then fully and forever disappear, for in times ef great awakening and of the powerftQ descent of tiie Spirit, in the creative epochs of the Chvrch, we now and then observe phenomena quite similar to ^lose of the first century, along with the corresponding dangers and abuses, and even satanic imitations and caricatures. These manifestations then gradually cease again, ac- cording to the law of the development of a new princi- ple as just stated. Such facts of experience may serve to confirm and illustrate the phenomena of the apos- tolic age. In judging of them, moreover, particularly of the mass of legends of the Roman Church, which stiU lays claim to the perpetual possession of the gift of miracles, we must proceed with the greatest cantkni and critical discrimination. In view of the overvaliu ation of charisms by the Montanists and Irvingitea, we must never forget that Paul puts those which meet shun free inspection, and most rarely appear, as the gift of tongues, fiu> beneath the others, which pertain to the regular vital action of the Church, and are aft all times present in larger or smaller measure, as the gifts of wisdom, of knowledge, of teaching, of drying spirits, of government, and, above all, of love, that greatest, most valuable, most useful, and most enduring of all the friiits of the Spirit** (Schaff, Apostolic Ckmrdk, §116).
2. Their worship is almost wholly out of the line of Protestant development and feeling. Their use of In- cense, and of lights on the altar ; their priestly vest- ments— alb, girdle, stole, chasuble, rochet, etc — ^with the pomp of &eir worship, belong neither to the prim- itive age on the one hand, nor to the Reformed Chnrch on the other.
For a fuller account, by the author of the arddes given above (the Rev. W.W. Andrews), see BibUoAeea Sacra, January, 1866, p. 108 sq. See also Schaff, in the Deutsche Kirdtenfmmd, vol. iii ; EngUsk Rev. ix, 212; Thiersch (H.W. J.), Vorlesungen Hber KatkoUcmnm wd ProtestasUismus (Erlang. 1845, 1846, 2 vols.) ; Thiersch, Die Kirche mm Apostol. ZeUaUer (1862, 8vo) ; Lomim QfUMrterhf Beview, No. iii, art 1 ; Uturgtf and Lkamg of theC.A, Church (N. Y. 1856) ; W. W. Andrews, Trw ConstitM^ qfihe Church (N.T. 1854) ; JacoU, Lekre der /mn^tten, 1868; Smith's Hagenbach, Hulory of DoC' trineSf ii, 414 ; Baxter, Irvingism, Us Rise^ Proffress^ and Present State (Lond. 1886) ; Kdstlin, in Herzog^s Heal- EncyUop&die (Am. ed. ii, 658) ; Quarter^ Jownal of Prcjpiheey, «^uly, 1866, art 1 ; Maury, in Betme des deix Mondes, Sept. 1858 ; and the articles Gifts ; Iryxvo.