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THE COMMUNION OFFICE.

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set forth; the canons were increased by the enactment of eight, requiring the exclusive use of the Prayer-book as established, stating the duty of the clergy in regard to episcopal visitations, directing the censure of notorious crimes and scandals, enforcing the sober conversation required in ministers, providing for the due celebration of Sundays, the preparation of a regular list of the clergymen of the church, and giving notice of the induction and dismission of incumbents.1

By far the most influential and significant change in the Prayer-book was by way of addition. It occurred in the most sacred office of all, the Order for the Administration of the Holy Communion, and was the work of Bishop Seabury, being the result of his concordat with the Scotch bishops, his consecrators. It consisted in placing the words of Oblation and Invocation immediately after the words of Institution, giving a completeness to the office which not only adds greatly to its solemnity and beauty, but also gives clearness to the doctrine embodied in it. The Invocation comes after the Oblation, and clearly discriminates

1 One or two minor changes in the service are indicative of special and local consideration. The Litany is appointed to be read after the Prayer for the President. This is said to have been the act of Rev. Dr. William Smith, to whom the preparation of the book was intrusted. The reason given was that President Washington never attended church of an afternoon, and so would never hear the prayer if the Litany came in before it. Another reason may have well suggested the unauthorized change, the fact being that, unlike the English service, there is no suffrage for the President in the American Litany, and no prayers for rulers in the "Antecommunion Office," save in the Prayer for the Church Militant, not always used. To secure constant prayer for the President the collect must invariably form part of the Order of Morning Prayer.

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The rubric allowing the use of the "Antecommunion Office "" where Morning and Evening Prayer are appointed to be said," as well as at the right side of the Table," is said to have been put in for the accommodation of Bishop White, the chancel of St. Peter's Church, where he officiated, being at the east end of the church, while the reading-desk and pulpit are at the west end. To be saved the conspicuous walk along the broad aisle would be consonant with the shyness and modesty of Bishop White, and so the rubric was made to read as at present.

the effect of consecration from transubstantiation, by calling the elements already consecrated and offered "thy creatures of bread and wine," and supplicating the aid of the Holy Spirit that the partaking of the outward sign may be effectual to the reception of the inward reality signified. It is by word and act the practical realization of the doctrine of the Catechism and the Articles that "the Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper only after an heavenly and spiritual manner.'

The Convention of 1789 adjourned on the 16th of October, after appointing a standing committee authorized to recommend to the bishops the calling of special meetings of the Convention, if necessary, and recording their opinion that the bishops have a right to call special Conventions when they think proper.

The adjournment thus found the church fully organized. The Convention in both houses had established its constitution, canons, and liturgy. It had not undertaken to create the functions of bishop, priest, or deacon, but it had undertaken to regulate the exercise of those functions according to established law. Thus the church took the form of a constitutional, not merely of a traditional body. The powers of all the orders within it were guaranteed and limited by express enactment. In its creeds and ministry it stood catholic and primitive. As an American ecclesiastical organization it established its own constitution and canons.1

1 Hoffman, "The Ritual Law of the Church," pp. 379, 380.

CHAPTER XIV.

A PERIOD OF SUSPENDED ANIMATION AND FEEBLE

GROWTH (1789-1811).

THE history of the Protestant Episcopal Church after its complete organization in 1789 falls naturally into four periods. The first, extending from 1789 to 1811, may not inaptly be styled "A Period of Suspended Animation"; the second, from 1811 to 1836, "A Period of Aroused Self-consciousness and Aggression "; the third, from 1836 to 1865, "A Period of Internal Conflict," arising from vigorous life and mutual misconception; the fourth, from 1865 to 1895, "A Period of Positive Advance," founded on mutual recognition.

The first period, from 1789 to 1811, which we have en. titled "A Period of Suspended Animation," was not without its marked features, nor was it altogether devoid of important action. The bishops and deputies, clerical and lay, did not return to their homes from Philadelphia simply to congratulate themselves that a church had been organized. But the temper of the time and the profound difficulty of adapting new institutions to the crude conditions of a new nation were shared alike by church and state. The political atmosphere was charged with political passion. The administrations of Washington and Adams and Jefferson were rife with personal acrimony and turbulent partisanship. Even the Presidents and their associated counselors did not escape the shafts of malice and detraction. It was

the "storm and stress" period of a young nation which did not understand how to adapt its inherent forces to its new possession of authority, and whose inexperience and unregulated enthusiasm deprived it of the calmness and sobriety which are the issue of established character and recognized achievement. An intense and unusual interest in politics absorbed the public mind. The church was remanded far back into the shadow. The spirit of irreligion and infidelity, moreover, was widespread, a not unnatural result of eight years of war and of the incoming of continental influences. Paine represented the vulgar, and Jefferson the philosophical skepticism. All ranks of life felt the benumbing influence. To hold its own was in itself an achievement for the church.

The Protestant Episcopal Church, notwithstanding its new name and constitution, was popularly regarded as an English institution, and distrusted or hated accordingly. Anti-British feeling, deepened by the unpopular Jay treaty, and culminating in the War of 1812, pervaded the ecclesiastical as well as the political world. The church's salient features, of a graded ministry with a sort of kingly officer in its bishop; a vested clergy, indicative of an aristocracy; . and a liturgical worship, suggesting a court ceremonial, and not to be distinguished by the common mind from formal devotion-all these apparent features made a far deeper impression than the fact of lay representation in a triennial Convention, or the restriction of bishops to spiritual jurisdiction. The church, in fine, was misunderstood in its temper and spirit; and had it been at that time understood, it would not have been better liked. The religious sentiment of the day demanded more fervor of personal expression in worship, more definite and insistent statement in doctrine concerning religious experience and metaphysical theology, more direct and intrusive personal dis

FAULTS OF THE CHURCH.

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cipline in regard to the conduct of communicants, than the Episcopal Church offered. The prevailing religious temper was largely subjective. The liturgical tone of the church was largely objective. The very features which constitute its abiding value and influence tended in this period to depreciate both.

And it cannot be said that the church was only misunderstood. Its own faults, as well as popular misapprehension, hindered its advance. It was nowhere a type of vigorous earnestness or aggressive spirituality. It was defending its right to be by its antecedents, instead of proving its right to be by its apostolic fervor and practical achievements. It stood by its guns, but it did not train them effectively on the enemies of ungodliness and unbelief. The energy which had brought the child to the birth seemed unequal to its nurture and training. The church's course for a long period was marked with all the obstinacy of a weak mind and a strong constitution. The preaching of the clergy was ethical rather than spiritual. The departure of the Methodists at the South had left the church there in a sort of respectable torpor; and the Congregationalists and Presbyterians of the Western and Middle States stood aloof on both patriotic and ecclesiastical grounds. No summons to the church was likely to be listened to which, like that of the loyalist Bishop Seabury to the patriotic Congregationalists of Connecticut, called on them to "relinquish the errors their fathers had through prejudice most unhappily imbibed."

The records of the General Conventions of this period show the paucity of growth by the slender representation of the churches. The two bishops and twenty clergymen and sixteen laymen of the Convention of 1789 are augmented by only five clergymen and four laymen in the Convention of 1811, a period of twenty-one years. The

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