But it is useless to continue such quotations. We merely ask how is it possible for our "Catholic" friends to reconcile these interpretations of the Church's official position made by men of the very highest authority within that Communion, some of them writing before the Revision of 1662, some of them members of the Committee on Revision itself, and writing anywhere from about the period in question till the beginning of the Eighteenth Century, with their own theory of a complete doctrinal change of front on this momentous question in the year 1662, and all this in the face of the clearest, official declaration of the Church herself that no changes whatever were made in any of her doctrines in that year, and the further abundant corroboration of this statement by numbers of the most eminent authorities of that period-some of whom personally took part in the work of the Revision? The truth is, as we have said before, the whole theory is a groundless fiction. It is one thing to say, therefore, that beginning about the time of the Restoration (and as a result of the suffering which the Church had undergone during the Interregnum at the hands of the Presbyterians) public sentiment began to change, and an attitude less liberal towards the claims of Presbyterianism began to assert itself, which was doubtless reflected in some individual cases in exclusive claims for the Episcopate (which we would not be disposed to question), but quite another to assert that the Church as a Church officially repudiated at that time her former doctrinal position on the subject of the validity of Presbyterian

Ordination. We do not deny the first proposition, but we emphatically deny the second. In short, to prove the truth of their contention, our opponents must show either that the Church completely reversed her former doctrinal position in the year 1662, or else that she had done so at some later period in her history. As the first alternative has been proved impossible, the second becomes their last resort.

But where can they point to any subsequent doctrinal revision? On the contrary, it is the consensus of opinion amongst all our ecclesiastical historians that no doctrinal or other alterations of any moment have been introduced since that epoch. Few authorities, we presume, stand higher in the estimation of our American Churchmen generally, than the late Bishop Seymour of Springfield, who nevertheless tells us that "the Revision of 1662 may be justly called the last, because no changes of any moment have been made since by the orders-in-council, which have necessarily been issued on the accession of successive sovereigns, and by the Amendment of the Act of Uniformity passed in the reign of Queen Victoria. The Church of 1662, therefore, has been from that date, and is to-day, the Ecclesia Docens of England." And, he adds, as showing the bearing of the doctrinal position of the Church of England upon that of our own,-"When we took our departure as an independent daughter Church, we brought our Mother's Prayer Book with us, and used it, as far as local circumstances would allow, as our own. This fact we explicitly declare in the Preface of our Prayer

Book, since we affirm in unmistakable language as follows: 'This Church is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline or worship, or further than local circumstances require."" (Art. by Bp. Seymour, Stevens's Genesis of American Prayer Book, pp. 67, 68.)

To bring the matter still more clearly before the mind of the reader, we here append a tabular synopsis of some of the principal official acts of the Church from the beginning of the Reformation downward. While the reform movement was initiated under Henry VIII., it did not progress to any extent until the reign of Edward, nor did it reach its final form or completion until the reign of Elizabeth, so that the Prayer Book, Articles, and other formularies, underwent considerable changes before assuming (15591563) what is substantially so far as essential doctrinal matters are concerned, their present form. While, therefore, for our present purpose, it would be unfair to quote any acts or formularies made prior to the reign of Elizabeth, which were subsequently eliminated or rescinded by lawful authority, as of any force to-day, yet it is of course self-evident that the substance of any act or formulary promulgated prior to that reign, which was never subsequently reversed or abolished by authority, are all the more admissible as evidence, inasmuch as their promulgation in a period of transition, and at a time when the Church had by no means settled all its doctrinal problems, and their continued preservation through all the

changes and alterations of a later period, bespeak the fact that upon these particular matters at least, there has never been any serious doubt even from the initial stage of the reform movement. Of such a nature, for example, is the Church's attitude toward the validity of Lay Baptism-a judgment formally expressed in the very 1st Prayer Book of Edward, 1549, and never since rescinded, and the obvious corollary deducible therefrom that even from the very beginning the Church has regarded all baptized persons (whether under Episcopal authority or not) as members of the Holy Catholic Church.