cumscription of the divine substance," which substance in its infinite fullness Christ possesses, therefore Christ is responsible for Adam's apostasy and is chargeable with its guilt! That ainazing declaration I shall not undertake to criticise. It would be superfluous. I do not remember ever to have read anything like it. It certainly has the merit of originality in dogmatic theology; and its acceptance would revolutionize the traditional faith of the Church. It would disclose the deeper unity of the creeds by destroying every one of them. I do not see how universal restoration can be logically evaded, though Dr. Strong declines to push his Christology to this extreme. But others will do it even if he does not; and I do not see how they can be blamed.

One thing is plain-he who accepts the monism commended in these articles must be prepared to pay a heavy price. There are many things in the articles which are superbly said and which every devout man will most heartily indorse. But there is a dead fly in the precious ointment. The philosophical and theological assumptions constitute the framework of the logic, and I cannot regard them as anything but subversive. I dread their influence upon our young men, who will not stop where the author does. These articles will be read, and have been read, by others besides Baptists. They concern themes in which all Christendom is vitally interested; and this is my apology for passing them under review. I appreciate the irenical temper of the author; but I fear that in his desire for theological harmony he has made unguarded and fatal concessions. At all events, it seems to me that the resultant gospel is not "the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints.”

I do not object to the phrase "ethical monism." I rather like it. It suggests a conception of the unity of being at once true and profound, the careful exposition of which would be in the highest degree helpful. It would be a monism constituted by ethical relations and conserved by ethical energies. But such is not the monism which Dr. Strong has expounded and which he commends. The monism of his articles is the monism of substance, to which certain ethical qualifications are appended. Ethics deals with moral personality, not with substance. And ethical monism should make

the infinite and absolute moral personality of God its point of departure-not the divine substance. When Dr. Strong elsewhere says that in creation man is "intellectually united to God, and that in regeneration man is "spiritually" united to God, he more than commands my unqualified consent. Only I should add that in creation man is "ethically" united to God, as well as "intellectually," and that regeneration only makes effective in conscious personal life the intellectual and ethical relations established by creation and violated by sin. A union intellectually, ethically, and spiritually mediated, constituting identity of rational and moral life, is a profound and stimulating truth. It simply carries out the idea that man bears the image of God because he is the offspring of God. Stars are made, souls are born. The first are the product of God's dynamic energy; the second are the product of his generative energy. But a unity of substance is a very different thing; and, whatever the resultant monism may be, it can be called ethical only by courtesy. The ethical conception is not generative and determinant in such a system. It secures that place only when the unity of being is regarded as rational and moral, when the eternal base of the system is found in the infinite and absolute moral personality of God-in his rational and holy will, not in his substance. I like the text, but I do not like the sermon.

AJ F. Behrends

ART. III.-THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE.

THE House of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church adopted, in 1886, four principles of agreement as a condition of union with other Churches. Two years later, the Lambeth Conference of English Bishops, after some debate, adopted similar conditions. The fourth principle or condition of union in the platforms of both Churches was the acceptance of what is by them termed "the historic episcopate;" by which phrase is meant a recognition of the necessity of episcopal ordination to the validity of ministerial functions in the Christian Church. The dictum is that where there is no episcopal ordination there is no true ministry, therefore, no sacraments, and, consequently, no Church.

This interpretation of the historic episcopate by the Lambeth Conference, in opposition to another interpretation by a learned and respectable minority who certainly were as well versed in the history of the Church of England as their opponents, has been much regretted by many who believe in the organic union of Christendom, and who had cherished the hope that the separative forces of the Reformation period had been modified by the thought-drifts, the religious tolerances, and the liberalizing influences, political, social, and commercial, of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is not the first time in the history of the Church that a beautiful dream has faded away in the shadow of traditional dogma. The recent utterances of the Protestant Episcopal bishops in the New York Independent (March 8, 1894) are further accepted as rendering impossible the union of the Churches on any such basis as the historic episcopate. That any learned body of Protestant divines should now deliberately demand belief in apostolical succession, not of doctrine, but of touch as a condition of Christian union, and should affirm that their body alone possessed such tactual succession, is something extraordinary, and goes very far in confirmation of the supposition that the most primitive habits of thought and practice may exist and thrive side by side with the highest civilization.

Now, since the High Church party in the Church of England and in the Protestant Episcopal Church-by its insistence

upon this theory, which has been made a principle of belief equal in value to a revealed doctrine-rejects the validity of ordination in other Protestant Churches, the right to challenge, on Anglican principles, the validity of orders in the Established Church and its offshoot in the United States can neither be questioned nor denied. It cannot be quietly assumed that the Church of England is undoubtedly founded on a historic, legitimate episcopate and that, therefore, it possesses the right to lay down imperative conditions of union for other Churches. Before it or the Protestant Episcopal Church can lawfully presume to do this it must produce its own undoubted credentials or make good, without any element of incertitude in its evidence, its own high claims to tactual, authorized succession.

Upon what, then, does this claim to the historic episcopate in the Church of England rest? As a historic fact, it rests solely on the validity of Matthew Parker's consecration to the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury. From him the English episcopate is derived; he, and he only is the foundation of that hierarchical structure which now towers so loftily; and unless it can be demonstrated, as it has not been, without any suspicion of doubt that he was truly and canonically consecrated, then, on Anglican principles, this historic episcopate is a myth engendered of ecclesiastical pride, the claim of the Church of England is false, however venerable it may be and however agreeable it may be with its dignity and illustrious history, and its orders, on the same principles, like those of other Churches, are null and void. Once the issue is made, nothing can be taken for granted. Assumptions of what might have been done or of what may even seem probable from circumstances will be of no avail. The clean-cut historic facts will alone be admitted in evidence. In no instance will any degree of doubt be allowed. Nor, indeed, should Anglicans desire it; for if in the evidence there is reasonable ground for doubt, then, on the universal legal maxim, "Nemo dat quod non habet," the validity of all subsequent consecrations emanating from that source would be doubtful. Such uncertainty would be death to the historic episcopate and annihilation to the affirmations and demands of Anglican prelates.

What are the facts? When Elizabeth, on the death of Queen Mary, ascended the throne of England, in 1558, the Roman Catholic faith was the established religion of the realm. Such

ministers as had preached the pure word of God under Edward VI had fled to the Continent when Mary became queen, and at the accession of Elizabeth were for the most part still exiles. Catholic bishops filled the sees, and all laws, civil and ecclesiastical, enacted under Mary for the protection or enrichment of the Roman Church were still in legal force. The Parliament of 1st Elizabeth changed all this and made possible a new era. By repealing the laws of Queen Mary, which had restored the Catholic religion, and by reviving certain acts of Henry VIII and Edward VI, the reformed religion obtained a legal status over its rival, and was established in the place of the Roman Church as the religion of the nation.

The oath of supremacy to the new queen as head of the Church in England being tendered the Catholic bishops, they all, with one exception, refused to take it and, as a consequence, were ejected from their bishoprics by the High Court of Commission. In such manner were the episcopal sees of England. emptied of their occupants-a mode quite as legal as had been practiced in the preceding reign; and there now remained no bishop who might lawfully exercise the functions of his office. The archiepiscopal see of Canterbury, the highest in England, being vacant by the death of Cardinal Pole, who died twentyfour hours after Queen Mary, his cousin, it was a matter of prime importance that it should be filled as soon as possible by one in harmony with the new order of things in Church and State. For this purpose Queen Elizabeth issued, according to her royal prerogative, a mandate, bearing date September 9, 1559, to four bishops of the old faith and to Doctors in Divinity Barlow and Scory, who had been deprived of their bishoprics under Queen Mary, commanding them to consecrate Matthew Parker, professor of sacred theology, archbishop of Canterbury. The four Catholic bishops, recognizing neither the spiritual authority of the queen nor the ecclesiastical character of Barlow and Scory, refused to obey the mandate. The failure of this commission produced, it is affirmed, a second royal mandate, dated December 6, 1559. This was addressed to Kitchin, of Llandaff, William Barlow, bishop-elect of Chichester, John Scory, bishop-elect of Hereford, Miles Coverdale, formerly bishop of Exeter, Richard, suffragan of Bedford, John, suffragan of Thetford, and John Bale, bishop of Ossory. It was in obedi