necessary to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints, in the way of free and fair discussion.

Peculiar necessity is laid upon the friends of evangelical piety, at the present day, from the attitude assumed by the advocates of the prelatical and papal systems, who have united and are making common cause against the principles of the Reformation and the spread of the Christian religion through Protestant agencies. The exclusive rights of Episcopacy, however honored by the antiquated governments of Coutinental Europe, or sustained by the arm of British power, we regard as harmless and childish. But when it begins anew to nerve the energies of persecution, to wage an exterminating war against the entire brotherhood of the Protestant family, and violently to circumscribe the spread of the Christian religion, even among the heathen, all liberty of inaction and indifference is taken from us, and we are summoned to the high work of personal defence and the salvation of men. The outrages of the Romanists upon the islands of the Pacific are comparatively of trifling importance, for nothing better was to be expected from that quarter. But when men, commissioned directly from the church of England, will openly oppose our missionaries in distant Persia; and others, educated by our own funds, reared among us, long and affectionately received to our confidence, after an apparently cordial co-operation in missionary labors with our own brethren abroad, are suddenly found strangely changed, and denouncing, in the face of heathen converts, as unauthorized, the ministrations of our churches, and as unscriptural all our ordinances and institutions, we are not at liberty to rest or to remain silent. The most abundant testimony has established the truth of the serious charges brought against Mr. Badger in Persia, and every day is showing more and more clearly the decided hostility and opposition of Mr. Southgate to the labors of the American Missionaries in the Levant. The extraordinary change in his character and conduct, had it taken place on heathen ground, had not so surprised us. But it was immediately succeeding his fraternal interview with the prelates

and brethren of the Episcopal church in his native land, and in connection with the remarkable epistle from the six American prelates to the patriarch of Constantinople and their salutations to their brethren in the East.

From this time every thing is changed, and Episcopalians in almost every part of the world, as by some electro-magnetic influence, are suddenly seized with a holy zeal for their exclusive prerogatives, and all besides are pronounced foreign to the covenant of grace.

However favorable the times might have appeared, and however consonant these assumptions may be with the peculiarities of human nature, their advocates have undoubtedly failed in their calculations. The time had not arrived. The world was not prepared for such an intellectual and moral retrogression. And we trust that this sad experiment will result in the firmer establishment of truth, and a more rapid spread of spiritual religion. And it is for the security of this end, that we feel bound to discuss in every form the character and tendencies of the principles and claims advocated by the friends of the prelacy.

In this discussion we see no reason for the broad distinction so often made between the individual classes of the prelatists or the advocates for the Episcopate. They may differ widely from each other on other questions, and present striking varieties of moral character and doctrinal sentiment, while in the one great and essential question of the prelacy or monarchy in the church, they are one and indivisible. The overshadowing influence of a diocesan, unimpeachable but by his peers, and holding office for life, with every species of patronage in his hands, easily diffuses his own sentiments, and even the shades of his moral character, through the extended circle of bis jurisdiction.

While, for more than two centuries, this single question of Episcopacy, in the character of its "priesthood," has been looked upon as of secondary importance, we regard it as lying at the basis of the whole system, and as the source of all our difficulties with its practical tendencies. The tenaciousness

with which Episcopalians have adhered to it; the immense. sacrifices made to sustain it; the subordinating of every other question, doctrinal and practical, to this; show that this is to them "articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiæ."

As long as the evangelical Episcopalian, the spiritual, catholic Episcopalian, adheres to this dogma, and sacrifices his individual rights as a minister of Jesus Christ, we believe him to be in error, and united in upholding a system which sixteen centuries have shown to be unscriptural, and ruinous to the civil and religious interests of mankind.

And we conceive that there is now imperious demand for the renewed consideration of this subject, not only from the facts already alluded to, but also from the existing state of sentiment in the prelatical communion, and from the growing spirit of exclusiveness and assumption which has distinguished it for the last few years. At the time of the Reformation, no such importance was attached to the simple question of Episcopacy as it now assumes. The reformed churches in the Episcopal communion almost universally admitted the ministerial acts of other denominations, and their pulpits were open to the Scotch and Continental reformers, without the requirement of reordination; and some passed even to the highest honors of the English establishment without the initiatory rites of prelatical prescription. And for generations succeeding, almost to the present century, many have been found to co-operate with other denominations in spreading the gospel, and have extended Christian civilities to the clergy of other communions. But of late all this seems to be dying away, and an iron-hearted rigidity has seized and professedly sanctified the entire body of prelatists; the terms of their communion have grown exceedingly strait, and the tone of their assumptions utterly exclusive and intolerant.

Not only so, but an unusual effort is seen, every where, to enlist the popular feeling in their behalf, and to urge their doctrines, their dogmas, and their men, into every circle and every plan of civil immunity. The public funds are claimed for their private benefit; institutions reared and enriched by

the beneficence of other denominations are converted into establishments of exclusively prelatical patronage; almost every chaplainship in the army and navy is filled by a prelatical ministry, and the public arsenals and ships of war are supplied with Episcopal prayer books and prelatical formulas of devotion, at the public expense.' With these facts before us, we say again, we are not at liberty, as descendants of the Reformers and as the children of the Pilgrims, to rest unconcerned and inactive.

We propose, in this article, to consider some of the tendencies of Episcopacy, or its necessary influence upon our civil and religious institutions. In this discussion we shall embrace both the framework of the prelacy, and those doctrines which have generally been embraced by the Episcopal church, as consonant with their system and essential to its very existence. We grant that a respectable portion of the Episcopal church, in the time of the Reformation, were evangelical, and in sentiment sympathized with the Genevan church, and incorporated the very sentiments of Calvin into their standards.

Yet it is obvious that this was the result of circumstances, and shows how far the spirit of republican institutions and a tolerant religion had grown into the church of England, under the influence of the Puritans, and from its associations with Scotland and the Continent of Europe. It was this that led to the separation of the best portion of the church from the hierarchy of England, when all hope of general reformation was gone; and though, from that time to this, a few men of eminent talents and moral worth have been found cherishing and defending evangelical sentiments in the Episcopal church, they have always found themselves in an uneasy and unnatural position, and subject to distrust and strong opposition from the brethren of their own communion; and even to the present moment, they present the unhappy spectacle of disunion and open hostility, while felicitating themselves on exemption from the sin of schism.

1 See Debate in the General Assembly met at Louisville, May, 1844.

The preaching, the discussions, and the invariable policy of the Episcopal denomination as a body, has been to explain. away the evangelical and Calvinistic character of their own articles, and to work out of their system and society the leaven of Genevan theology. In this they have been but too successful, and the day seems to be past when the voice of Scott, Newton and Martyn is heard with respect and reverence, to any extent, in the circles of Episcopalians. Even Hannah More and Dr. Whately are too puritanical. The voice of proscription is loudly raised against the venerable arch-prelate of Dublin, and the leading organ of the Episcopal church in America boasts that in all the "meetings of the sectaries" at their late anniversaries in the city of New York, not one Episcopalian was to be seen.

I. The prelatical principles are hostile to republican institutions and equality of rights among men.

This position we believe to be sustained by the nature of Episcopacy itself, and by the uniform operation of its principles as seen in the history of civil governments.

What are the principles of Diocesan Episcopacy? They are, that God has established an order of men, as the ministers of his church, who have exclusive right to all the functions and immunities of that church; who are to perpetuate themselves, and who are arranged in three distinct orders, the supreme power resting in one man, who, when once raised to his diocesan prerogatives, becomes invested by a "divine right,” for life, with exclusive powers to create and commission all the ministers of the gospel for the entire geographical circle of his Episcopate. This presents the germ of the powers assumed by this system, the growth or details of which it would be difficult to define, and history itself seems in doubt how to record and where to limit them.

At first there may appear nothing dangerous to a republican government, in the mere fact, that a clergyman is ordained by a diocesan prelate, rather than "by the laying on of the hands of the presbytery," as authorized in the gospel. But when this power is claimed by one individual, as concentrat