ity in the conduct of these important offices, each presbyter was required to go once or twice every year to the Bishop' of his diocese, and perform in his presence all the appointed services of the Church, that his errors might be corrected and he receive instruction how the Ritual should be properly conducted.

And as it was presumed that the most accurate and careful use of all the offices would be exemplified in the church of the chief Bishop of the province, it was in many provinces ordered by Canon that the mode of conducting services in all its churches should be the same as in the church of their Metropolitan.

The forms of worship thus appointed "to be used " by bishops or the synods (according to the circumstances) constituted the law of worship of their province or diocese; and from the conditions of the earlier ages of the Church, which have been referred to, they came very naturally to be known in ecclesiastical language as "The Use of a Diocese," or, "The Use of a Province or a Nation."

In some portions of the Church the bishops retained their primitive power over the "use" of their dioceses for many centuries, in others the Synod of the province assumed, from a comparatively early period, a gen

1 "Dictionary Christ. Antiquities." "Ordo.," p. 1521. "Sacramentary," p. 1829.

"History of the Holy Eucharist in Great Britain," by T. E. Bridgett (Romanist), Vol. I, p. 180, “In England, once at least, often twice in a

year, each priest was obliged to attend the Episcopal Synod, bringing "the sacerdotal vestments and whatever else was necessary to the cele"bration of the Mass, that his manner of performing the service might "be approved."

eral supervision of all the services within its jurisdiction. As the policy of Rome grasped more and more at universal supremacy, her Popes sought, as an indispensable means to that end, to obtain control of all the services of those portions of the Church which came within their influence. Most of the national and local Churches in Western Europe surrendered soon or late to these requirements, and discarding, some after long struggles and with great reluctance, their ancient offices, adopted the "use" of Rome. This the English Church, as we have seen already, never did. Through all the varied phases of its history down to the Reformation, the Church in England preserved in this regard what Dixon calls1 its "Catholic independence," its bishops maintained and exercised their primitive authority to make whatever "use" for their respective dioceses they preferred. In matters of such importance as required it, one or the other Conovcation would occasionally issue a general order, which thenceforth became a part of all the "uses" in the several dioceses in that province. In the sixteenth century, as the condition of the age and Church then called for such a change, these ancient "uses" were "transmuted into the English Prayer Book ;" and in the exercise of the same "Catholic independence" which had marked all the past, this was established and adopted as the one common "use" of all "The Church of England," and as such,

16 "History of the Church of England," Vol. II, p. 542. What he says of the general polity of the English Church is eminently true of this special feature of it (Vol. III, p. 361): "The English Churches pos"sessed and exercised from the very beginning the right of making laws "for themselves, and acquired from their own councils and the ordinances of their own prelates a body of ecclesiastical laws."

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in the words of Mr. Dixon, holds "the standard of English uniformity against the uniformity of Trent."

It is in this same sense and interpreted by this same History that the offices in our Prayer Book are declared to be "according to the use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America;" that is, "the Sacraments and other rites and ceremonies of the Church" are herein set forth, both as to words and ceremonial, as "this Church hath received the same." And this is the law according to which every bishop, presbyter or deacon is bound to minister them, or see that they are ministered, and he can know no other.

Another important feature of the title-page is the name of that branch of the Church whose services and laws of worship are "set forth" within. This is "The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America."

The association of the word Protestant with the English portion of the Church, and the fact implied in it, both come to us from the mother country. If there be any one thing by which the people and the Church of England have been distinguished from the rest of Western Europe, from the beginning of the claims of Roman supremacy, it has been that of protesting against this usurpation, and asserting their independence, ecclesiastical and national, of all external jurisdiction and authority. The reformation of the sixteenth century simply terminated decisively and forever the issues of these long centuries of struggle; and the Church of England became henceforth the type to the Christian world of a Church, catholic in

descent, in faith, in form, in orders, and Protestant against all that sought to transform Catholicity into Romanism, and the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, into submission to a power that was not ordained of God. Hence, both as an embodiment of the history of the past and an assertion of the same position of the English Church to-day, the term Protestant may rightly and wisely be applied to her. And it expresses now, to use the words of Justice Phillimore," as the constitution of Clarendon and the statutes "of Premunire and of Provisors had expressed before "the Reformation, the independence and national "existence of the Church of England and her distinct position from the Church of Rome."

But not only is the term applicable as a reminder of this important historical feature of the Church of England, it is associated with it in many ways by actual and legal use. "The English sovereign at his coronation swears to maintain the Protestant reformed religion established by law." "The crown" of England is always "to descend in the Protestant line." The old (now repealed) statutes of the Union of Great Britain and Ireland enacted that "the Churches of England and Ireland, as now established by law, be united in one Protestant Episcopal Church, to be called the "United Church of England and Ireland."1

1 The term was also applied by Parliament to the Moravian Church in an Act passed about the middle of the eighteenth century, granting relief to certain of its members who had removed to England. It is called "an ancient Protestant Episcopal Church, which had been countenanced and relieved by the Kings of England, his Majesty's (George "II) predecessors."-Encyclopædia Britannica, 8th Edition. "Bohemian Brethren."

With such antecedents in England the term would be one most likely to occur spontaneously to those who were active in the work of organizing a Church deriving its existence from this source, as a national, independent Church in the States of America. The suggestion that any one could be ashamed of the name "Protestant" would have been heard with surprise, not unmingled with contempt, by the great majority of Churchmen of all schools in this nation. They had not yet been taught to despise the Reformers, who, by their bravery unto death, had secured to England and to them liberty of thought and freedom of manhood, and with a learning and wisdom that have not been surpassed in any age or portion of the Church, restored the Church of England to its primitive purity of doctrine and apostolicity of form. Nor had they yet so forgotten the history of the past as to flout the Reformation which made it possible for the English Church to perpetuate the true principles of the Catholic ages, instead of being dragged in the train of Rome to the Trentism which buried the Catholic faith under the modern creed of Pius IV, and the Vaticanism which forever closed for the Roman communion the mouth of the Church Catholic, and in its stead left only a Papacy, which abandoned the claim, grand though false, that as a Church it was infallible, for the miserable substitute of submission to the dicta of a Bishop of Rome, infallible and "irreformable by the Church."

The facts connected with the employment of "Protestant Episcopal" as the official title of our branch of the Church Catholic, all show that it was not adopted in any mere casual or accidental way, but was the