branches, Eastern, Roman, and Anglican. In other words, the Catholic Church today consists of the Eastern, Roman, and Anglican Churches taken together.

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No little confusion is caused for many by the existence of a number of Christian religious bodies outside this historic Church, some of them strong, imposing in appearance, and including in their membership numbers of noble, Godfearing people; and there are those who imagine that somehow it would be uncharitable or ungenerous not to acknowledge these bodies as parts of the Catholic Church.

Let us keep clearly in mind that this discussion is not personal. We are not for one moment questioning the goodness or sincerity of any individual, but considering facts and principles. Where two persons hold mutually contradictory views, it is surely no lack of charity to say that while both may be equally sincere, both cannot be right.

Considering plain conditions, then, it is the simple fact, as the writer sees it, that these modern denominations are not parts of the Catholic Church any more than were the various denominations of the first four centuries. The Gnostics, and Montanists, and Marcionites, and Donatists were never thought of as parts of the Catholic Church, and the word Catholic was used in the Creed expressly to exclude such. They were religious bodies including, to be sure, many good and sincere people, but plainly distinct from the Catholic Apostolic Church and founded in opposition to it. So with the modern denominations dating from the sixteenth century or later. They are religious organizations distinct from the historic Church, and the avowed and obvious reason for their foundation in each case was the belief that the existing Church was wrong in its teaching. This denial of the correctness of the historic Church's presentation of Christianity must therefore be the belief

today of all who accept the foundation principles of these denominations. On no other ground could these separated bodies justify their existence.

It is perhaps difficult for us to realize the religious situation four hundred years ago. At the beginning of the sixteenth century there was just one Church, the historic Catholic Church which Christ founded. Or, in other words, organized Christianity maintaining a continuous historic identity from the first century existed in the sixteenth century only as the Catholic Church. One would not have asked a person in the year 1500 A. D., "To which Church or denomination do you belong?", for there was only one. (People in the East of Europe belonged to the Eastern branch of it, and people in the West of Europe to the Western.) Then in the sixteenth century and later various individuals assailed the teachings of the Church and withdrew from it, declaring that it was and had been for centuries in grievous error in its setting forth of the Christian religion, so that those who wished to hear and practice the real teachings of Christ must separate from it. These men then proceeded to found religious denominations embodying their ideas of what Christianity should be. Such bodies were the Lutheran, the Calvinist or Presbyterian, the Congregationalist or Independent, the Baptist, Quaker, and various others. These denominations, then, as a simple matter of history were none of them founded by Christ or His Apostles. They date from modern times. The difference in this respect between them and the branches of the historic Church as described above is perfectly apparent. For example, if we ask when the Congregational denomination was founded there is no doubt about the answer. It was founded in England in the latter part of the sixteenth century. And so with the Lutheran, whose name indicates

the man from whose time its origin dates. But if we ask when the Eastern Orthodox Church was founded, the only answer is that the Church of which the Eastern Orthodox is one branch was founded nineteen centuries ago by Jesus Christ. The Eastern and Western Churches became originally distinct branches in the eleventh century, but neither originated then. This date marks simply the suspension of intercommunion between two geographic portions of the original Church. Or again, the Presbyterians began their present existence in the first half or the sixteenth century. The Anglican Church, on the other hand, like the Eastern and Roman Churches, is simply a local continuation in the present time of the original Apostolic organization.

In considering the matter of continuity on its organic side, it is to be noted that an indispensable factor in this is the preservation of the Apostolic Succession, i. e., the maintenance of the order of bishops, since it was these alone who could transmit Holy Orders. Now the Protestant denominations did not have any bishops, the sole agency whereby the original commission had been and could be transmitted." The loss of the Episcopate, then, meant the loss of organic continuity. The consequent loss of the priesthood, too, meant that these bodies have no valid sacraments except Baptism, which a layman can administer. They did, to be sure, as a matter of fact, repudiate along with the priesthood all the other sacraments except that which they gen

2 The Methodist body has those who are called bishops, but they are not bishops in the sense in which the Catholic Church uses the word. They are simply Methodist preachers set apart for administrative and supervising functions. The first ones were called simply Superintendents, and were designated as such by John Wesley, who as not being himself a bishop could not, even if he had wished to do so, confer Holy Orders. They do not have, nor claim to have, the Apostolic Succession.

erally preferred to call the Lord's Supper, and in this one a sharp break was made with all existing belief and practice. We do not know how much a devout Protestant may gain from this sacred rite; we only know that the Protestant idea of it is something quite different from the belief which the historic Church has handed down regarding the Holy Eucharist. And even if the same conception of this Sacrament had been maintained by the Protestant denominations, they have no priests, the order to which alone the historic Church has transmitted down through the ages by successive ordinations the power of consecrating the elements in the Eucharist to become the Body and Blood of Christ. The Church, then, has no reason to believe that this consecration takes place without a priest. The whole matter is, to say the least, uncertain. That is what is meant by invalidity. (The rite of the Lord's Supper in the Protestant denominations is admittedly all that they believe it to be; but it is not the same as the Holy Eucharist of the Catholic Church.)

Now compare with the case of the Protestant denominations the case of the Anglican Communion. Something happened, to be sure, in the English Church in the sixteenth century, and what it was has been indicated in the foregoing pages, viz.: that the English portion of the Catholic Church formally rejected not doctrines held by the whole Church but merely certain local beliefs, among them the purely Western theory of papal supremacy, as not being necessary articles of faith; and intercommunion ceased between this portion of the Catholic Church and that portion accepting the supremacy of the Roman See. But to say that the Anglican Church was founded in the sixteenth century would be as absurd as to say that the Eastern Orthodox was founded in the eleventh.

The English portion of the Catholic Church of course continued as such to maintain the Catholic faith, and also the Episcopate and Priesthood, that vital core without which organic continuity with the Apostolic Church would not exist. The last named matter is of fundamental importance. As a simple historical fact the Catholic Church in its three branches has the Apostolic Succession; other religious bodies do not. That is, the clergy of the Catholic Church hold the commission, the power, and authority which the Apostles received from Christ and transmitted in an unbroken series of ordinations. And each of the three branches of the Catholic Church, having this succession, is a local continuation of the original Christian organization. Other Christian bodies represent a sharp break with the historic Church, or an independent origin.

One wishes to be just to the founders of the Protestant denominations. Let us grant that they were sincere men,the most extreme and fanatical of them no less than any. They claimed, to be sure, that our Lord's original teaching had been corrupted and perverted by ecclesiastical influence, so that in breaking with the Church in the sixteenth century they were only reverting to the primitive faith and recovering Christianity as Christ taught it. But sincerity does not guarantee freedom from error, and we are considering principles. This proposition that the whole Church had erred in the Faith so that the religion set forth by the Church in the sixteenth century and for hundreds of years previous was not the true religion of Christ involves one or two very grave if not insuperable difficulties.

(1) Protestantism is obliged to say that the conception of Christianity held in common by over 400 millions out of perhaps 550 millions who today call themselves Christians is fundamentally wrong; and that for over a thousand