RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Catholic Apostolic Church Catholic Emancipation
the same crisis (1840) the principle was laid down that the purity of the prophets' doctrine must be attested by the apostles, and thus the superiority of the apostolic office vindicated. The same year marks the beginning of another important change. The apostles who had been traveling on the Continent had come there into contact with Roman Catholicism, and the result was a definite assimilation to its ways of the " Catholic Apostolic Church," as it was now officially called. All traces of Scotch Presbyterian or English non-conformist traditions were gradually eradicated. Altars were now erected separated from the body of the church by a rail at which the communicants knelt. The people were taught to regard the Eucharist as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in which the elements, changed by the Holy Ghost into the body and blood of Christ, were offered to God in commemoration of his death. The same tendency appeared in the liturgy introduced in 1842 and drawn up mainly by Cardale, which went back to early forms, Eastern as well as Western. The eucharistic vestments were adopted practically as in the Roman Catholic Church; extreme unction was introduced in 1847; from 1850 the consecrated elements were reserved in a tabernacle and every morning and evening (on the analogy of the showbread) exposed, not as objects of adoration but to assure the people of the Lord's presence and abiding intercession. In 1852 the use of candles on the altar and incense was added, and in 1868 holy water. The most original ceremony is the " sealing," which was introduced in 1847 on Cardale's motion; with reference to Rev. vii. 3 sqq. it was taught that those who were to be saved must be sealed in order to escape the great tribulation. This was to be done by the apostles with laying on of hands and unction; candidates must be at least twenty years old.
The result of the discord which followed these innovations, of the defection of the apostle Mackenzie, and of the failure of prophecy to fix the exact date of the Lord's coming, all contributed to keep down the numbers of the body, which in 1851 counted 4,018 members with thirty-two churches, a decline from the days of the first enthusiasm. But the movement had already spread to other countries. In 1835-36 it had gained a foothold in Geneva; in 1841 a propaganda had been undertaken in southern Germany by Caird (husband of Mary Campbell, one of the original claimants of the gift of tongues), and still more zealously in northern Germany by the apostle Thomas Carlyle (q.v.), who established public worship in Berlin in 1S48. Outside of Holland, however, little progress was made in other countries. Doubts were awakened by the death of one apostle after another, and in 1860, at a meeting of the apostolic college at Albury the prophet Geyer called for the elevation of the evangelists Bohm and Caird to the apostolic office. These two then, and in 1870 some others, were recognized as coadjutor apostles. Geyer was not satisfied, and in 1861, being in Konigsberg with Woodhouse, proclaimed the call of a local evangelist Rogasatzki to the apostolate. The latter soon made his submission, but a schism ensued. In 1863 Geyer himself was called, and ten months
later one Schwartz, especially for Holland; on the assumption that there must always be twelve apostles, there were six in Hamburg and three in Amsterdam by 1875. Woodhouse, the last English apostle, died in 1901. In the English body prophecy was allowed less and less importance, and Cardale's treatise Propliesying and the Ministry of the Prophet in the Christian Church (1868) practically gave it its death-blow.
The accessible figures give the present number of churches in England as about eighty, and in the United States as ten, with 1,491 communicants. Probably more numerous are the followers of the German and Dutch branch, which has increased in strength, though its separation from the English body has favored a tendency to fanatical extravagance and to the abandonment of the likeness to Roman Catholicism in externals. Apostles, prophets, and other functionaries appear in ordinary dress, and the altar is usually replaced by a common table. The element of adoration in public worship is less and less emphasized, while more stress is laid upon conversion by preaching and prophecy and the assembling of the faithful for the speedy coming of the Lord. The insistence on the number of twelve apostles which was the justification for the schism is now considered merely as the letter, the essential being the permanence of the office, so that in 1900 there were fourteen apostles ministering in this branch. Its principal seats are Brunswick, Hamburg, Berlin, and Konigsberg. In recent years it has extended also to North and South America, and claims that with the help of a native missionary no less than 15,000 converts have been " sealed " in the island of Java. Its official organ is the Wachterstimmen aus Ephraim, published monthly by the apostle Fr. Krebs at Iserlohn, Westphalia, Prussia, containing reports of the journeys of the apostles and statistics of conversions. (T. Kolde.)
Bibliography: The sources are found in the writings of Edward Irving, and in the following works on his life: W. Jones, Biographical Sketch of Rev. Edward Irving, with Extracts fromhis . . Principal Writings, London, 1835; W. Wilks, Edward Irving, an Ecclesiastical and Literary Biography, ib. 1854; Mrs. O. W. Oliphant, Life of Edward Irving, Illustrated by his Journals and Correspondence, 2 vols., ib. 1862, new ed., 1865 (on this consult D. Ker, Observations on Mrs. Oliphant's Life of Edward Irving, Edinburgh, 1863); T. Carlyle, in his Reminiscences, ed. C. E. Norton, 2 vols., London, 1878; T. Kolde, Edward Irving, Leipsic, 1901. For the history and doctrine of the Church consult: J. N. Kohler, Het Irvingisme, The Hague, 1876; E. Miller, History and Doctrines of Irvingism, 2 vols., London, 1878; H. M. Prior, My Experience of the Catholic Apostolic Church, ib. 1880; S. J. Andrews, God's Revelations of Himself to Men, New York, 1886; E. A. Rosstauscher, Der Aufbau der Kirche Christi auf den ursprunglichen Grundlagen, Basel, 1886; A. S. Dyer, Sketches of English Nonconformity, London, 1893.
CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION: The name given to the Act by which Parliament, on Apr. 13, 1829, finally removed the civil disabilities under which the Roman Catholics of England and Ireland had labored ever since the reign of Elizabeth, when those who refused to take the oath of supremacy and conform to the Established Church were excluded from the House of Commons and from all political power. They suffered from a mass of
Catholic Emancipation Ceadda