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they can be spared from parochial charges, and th as the General Council.
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practice his position is. thos far. only a sort of prepara- lariocs in the in!
L for the presbyterate. Jast what the office mediately, to th.
wrfll become in the growth and devekpmeftt of the have been taken looking to a change in the
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pecaliir mission of this Chorch is in the line of English Reformation. In the vital and historical can-
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: : is evideni. however, that the
REFORMED EPISC. CHURCH 1012 REFORMED EPISC. CHURCH
large and liberal allowance for the peculiarities of peo- ples living under contrasted systems of civil govern- ment, and growing np with tastes and social habits and modes of thought of distinct types. The Reformed Episcopal Church in America and in England is the same Church, yet the streams that Bow out of the one fountain, as they diverge into these several nationali- ties, an immediately modified by the civil, social, and ecclesiastical soil and climate they find, identical in doctrine, spirit, and organic life, they vary somewhat in the forms of organization and worship that adapt them i" their respective spheres. Already a policy is taking shape by which each national Church shall en- joy a limited independence of legislation, discipline, and worship, thus to work out its own history and des- tiny. Just what shall constitute the nexus, the vital ligature that shall make the Church, however widely extended, a unit, an organic bod}-, cannot yet be iden- tified. Such, however, will undoubtedly be the connec- tion that it will embrace provision for the meeting of a council within a certain term of years, and having un- der its control t hose wide questions that affect the char- acter and interests of the Church as a whole. This Church was not organized for a day or for a place, but for the world and for time.
These statements in regard to doctrines, orders, wor- ship, discipline, and general usages are little more than an expansion of the original declaration of principles adopted at the organization of the Church, Dec. 2, 1873, which is given as a comprehensive summary :
I. The Reformed Episcopal Church, holding "the faith once delivered to the saints, "declares its belief in the Holy
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the word of God, and the sole rule of faith and practice; in the creed commonly called the Apostles' Creed ; in the divine institution of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper; and in the doctrines of grace substantially as they are set forth in the Thirty -nine Articles of Re- ligion.
II. This Church recognises and adheres to episcopacy, not as of divine right, but as a very ancient and desirable form of Church polity.
III. This Church, retaining a liturgy which shall not be imperative or repressive of freedom in prayer, accepts the Book of Common Prayer, as it was revised', proposed, and recommended for use by the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, A. D. 1785, reserving full lib- erty to alter, abridge, enlarge, and amend the same, as may seem most conducive to the edification of the peo- ple, " provided that the substance of the faith be kept en- tire."
IV. This Church condemns and rejects the following erroneous and strange doctrines as contrary to God's Word:
Fit st, That the ( Ihurcb of Christ exists only in one order or form of ecclesiastical polity.
Second, That Christian ministers are "priests" in anoth- er sense than that in which all believers are a "royal priest hood.''
Third, That the Lord's table is an altar on which an ob- lation id" the body and blood of Christ is offered anew to the father.
/■'■'in th, That the presence of Christ in the Lord's supper is a presence in the elements of bread and wine.
Fifth, That regeneration is inseparably connected with baptism.
III. Statistics.— The statistics of this Church thus
early in its history are necessarily fvw and simple. If,
however, they are carefully noted, they will, it is be-
idicate wider extension and more rapid growth
than have marked most other ecclesiastical bodies in
the bt ;inning of their history.
1. The Number of Clergymen as reported to the last council (that of 1878) was eighty-eight, of whom six were