pel. Then, as now, a noble part of the great Reformed body— a portion of the one redeemed and emancipated Church, greatly but not specially or exclusively honored by the Saviour, the Episcopal denomination has a claim to high honor in the work of maintaining truth, and diffusing religion in the world; but at no time has it ever been able to place itself in such an eminence in piety, learning, or zeal as to lay the foundation of a claim of being exclusively the Church, or to justify it in using those terms which it has been so much accustomed to employ in speaking of other denominations.

(2.) In demanding that the Episcopal Church shall recognize the ministry, the membership, and the sacraments of other denominations, we are asking merely that it shall act in accordance with the earliest position of the Episcopal Church itself. These exclusive claims are a late growth in that body, and are in no manner necessary to the true notion of the church as understood by the early English Reformers. In the best and purest days of Episcopacy, the ministry of other branches of the great Protestant body was freely recognized as being in all respects on a level with those who had been ordained by the imposition of the hands of a prelate. It was no part of the views entertained by the Episcopal Church in England at the time of the Reformation, that the ministers of other denominations were to be excluded, or that their right to minister in holy things was to be denied: and Episcopacy has gained nothing in piety, in influence, or in power by the exclusive spirit which has sprung up in modern times. It is well known that the ministers of foreign churches were recognized in England by Cranmer and by those associated with him; that they were recognized, also, even in the times of Elizabeth, and that the exclusive doctrine which now prevails in the Episcopal Church had no pervading or prevailing influence in England till the time of Charles the Second. Thus, Mr. Hallam says,* "It had not been unusual from the very beginning of our Reformation, to admit ministers ordained in foreign Protestant Churches to benefices in England. No re-ordination had ever been practised with respect to those who had received the imposition of hands in a regular church; and hence it appears

*Constitutional History of England, pp. 424, 425.

that the Church of England, whatever tenets might latterly have been brought in controversy, did not consider the ordination of [by] Presbyters invalid. Though such ordinations as had taken place during the late trouble, [the times of Charles I. and the Protectorate of Cromwell,] and by virtue of which a great part of the actual clergy now in possession, were evidently irregular, on the supposition that the English Episcopal Church was then actually in existence; yet if the argument from such great convenience, as men call necessity, were to prevail, it was surely worth while for men to suffer them to pass without question for the present, enacting provisions, if such were required, for the future. But this did not fall in with the passion and policy of the bishops, [in the time of Charles II.] who found a pretext for their worldly motives of action in the supposed divine right and necessity of Episcopal succession; a theory naturally more agreeable to arrogant and dogmatical ecclesiastics than that of Cranmer, who saw no intrinsic difference between bishops and priests; or of Hooker, who thought ecclesiastical superiorities, like civil, subject to variation; or of Stillingfleet, who had lately pointed out the impossibility of ascertaining, beyond doubtful conjecture, the real constitution of the Apostolical Church, from the scanty, inconclusive testimonies that either Scripture or antiquity furnish." All that we could ask of the Episcopal Church would be to go back to the principles of Cranmer, Hooker, and Stillingfleet: the principles which recognized a true ordination and ministry in Bucer and Ecolampadius.

(3.) We urge this claim in reference to the Episcopal Church, because the exclusive spirit is not necessary to any proper views of the ministry in that church or elsewhere. It was not so adjudged in the early periods of the Reformation in England; it is not now so judged even by the established Church in England, for by the Articles of Union, the Presbyterian Church is recognized as a true church-one of the articles of the union of England and Scotland (A. D. 1707) being, "that the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches of England and Scotland shall be forever established as essential and fundamental parts of the union.'

* Hallam's Constitutional History, p. 674.

The early history of the Episcopal Church in England, as we have seen, is opposed to the exclusive spirit; the present public position of that church in England, as recognizing the Scotch Presbyterian Church as a true church, is opposed to this exclusive spirit; all proper notions of the ministry is opposed to it; all the argument that there is in the case is opposed to it. Nothing in history can be more hopeless than the effort to make out the actual spiritual descent of Bishop White or Hobart as Prelatical Bishops in a direct uncontaminated line from the college of the Apostles, or from any one of the Apostles; and nothing that assumes to be a grave matter is more ridiculous or contemptible, than the attempt, with a grave face, to exhibit such a demonstration. There is not a pecuniary claim of the smallest possible value, or a claim of any other kind, that could be defended on that ground before a court of common pleas :-not a title to an heir-loom, or to a right of common, or to an acre of land, that could be maintained for a moment on such an argument, and no sensible man would for a moment regard any pretended right as of the slightest value, that did not rest on a better foundation. It is a most marvelous thing that sensible men persist in asserting their belief in any such ascertainable pedigree, or in its worth, even if it could be ascertained. Where, in all the New Testament, is there the slightest hint that the validity of the ministry depends on the fact of such an ascertained descent; or that a ministry is invalid where such a pedigree can not be made out? If the New Testament had asserted this, the assertion would now strip all Episcopalians, as well as all others, of any right to administer the ordinances of religion, and at once degrade the whole of them to the condition of laymen.

(4.) We urge this claim and this demand on the Episcopal Church, because it is an act of mere justice to the ministers of other denominations. By whatever influence the exclusive ministers of the Episcopal Church may have in the community, by just so much they are doing a public wrong to other men as learned, as able, as zealous, as useful and as pious as themselves; men who by all the evidence that can be furnished by character and by success, that they are called to the work of the ministry, are furnishing that evidence to as great a degree

certainly as the most favored and the most gifted of the Episcopal clergy; men, too, who, as ministers of the Saviour, will occupy as elevated a position before the throne of the Redeemer as they themselves will. They, by their doctrine of exclusiveness, are holding up before the world all other ministers of the Gospel, however learned, successful, or devoted to the cause of their master, as intruders into an office to which they have not claim; as deceivers-asserting a right to which they are in no way entitled; as injuring true believers by administering ordinances which have no validity; as Korahs and Dathans ministering strange fire before the Lord; as exposing both themselves and their flocks to the vengeance of heaven by unhallowed and unauthorized ministrations. Thus, by a fair construction of his public acts, every Episcopal minister in the land must be held to regard the ministers of all other denominations; thus he expresses a public wish that they should be regarded by their own flocks and by the world at large. There is a large class of ministers in the Episcopal Church who, we trust, cannot in their hearts so judge of the ministers of other churches; and we find it difficult to account for the fact that good men, such as they are, can consent to occupy a position which makes proper, if not inevitable, such a construction in regard to the views which they entertain of the ministers of the Lord Jesus in other denominations. They are "low-churchmen." They profess to regard substance more than forms; to consider the doctrines of the church as of more importance than any modes of devotion; to believe that there is one "Catholic Church," and that the members of that church are all who have been regenerated by the Spirit of God, and who have true faith in the Redeemer. Some of them go even farther than this. They would recognize the ministers of other denominations if their "canons" did not forbid it. But how is it that they can consent to live and minister under such canons; that by their own acts they proclaim every day that those canons are right, and that the ministers of all other denominations are intruders!

(5.) We have one other consideration to suggest to the ministers and members of the exclusive Episcopal Church. They are troubled that their church is not "popular" with the masses; that it does not commend itself to the public mind. They have,

we understand, appointed a committee to inquire into the cause of this, and to ascertain how the "church" may be made more "popular," or may commend itself anew to the community at large. There was occasion for the appointment of such a committee. The apprehensions of the Episcopal Church are wellfounded on this subject. Episcopacy, out of the cities, is not popular, and does not commend itself to the masses of the community. We can suggest to our Episcopal friends in their trouble one reason why this is so, and why it must be so. It is found in this spirit of exclusiveness. It is because they stand aloof from all the rest of the Christian world; and because it is not in accordance with the spirit and genius of the American people, that one small denomination shall thus proclaim by their acts that all the authorized ministrations of religion are with them, and that all others are left to the "uncovenanted mercies of God." Let that committee begin where it should begin, and seek to bring back the Episcopal Church to what it was when Bucer and Ecolampadius-when Calvin and Knox-were regarded as true ministers of religion-to the views of Cranmer, or even Hooker and Stillingfleet, and one reason why the "church" is not adapted to the masses, would cease forever. Till that is done; till the Episcopal Church ceases by its public acts to pour contempt on all other ministers and churches in the land, it will occupy the position which it does now-respectable; but among the least of the tribes of Israel.

And for similar reasons we claim and demand of the Baptist Churches that they shall recognize the members of other churches, as members of the Church of Christ. We do not ask this as a boon, we claim it as a right. We do not come and present a humble petition that this may be so; we insist that, in all good faith, it shall be so. We claim it on the ground that all the members of the redeemed church are equal before God, and are equal in their rights on the earth; on the ground that other Christians are not inferior in the evidence of piety, in zeal, in learning, in usefulness, and in the proofs of the Master's favor; on the ground that Baptists have no claim from their origin or their history to pre-eminence or exclusivism; on the ground that they can never so demonstrate from the Bible that immersion is the only mode of baptism that will