tain it, when restored, are as strong in America as anywhere else in the world."

It might be added that the forces which constitute order in the United States, and maintain it, when constituted, are also as strong as anywhere. The guaranties of a written Constitution protect the citizen and his property against the government; and the government has no other purpose than to protect him and his against injustice and violence. As we look across the Atlantic and see the rough hand with which parliament can unsettle vested rights and destroy titles, in the vain effort to quiet Ireland by conceding what she does not ask, we may well be proud of the series of amendments which have lifted our Constitution into a protection to individual rights against all attack, even though it be made under the guise of law.

SIMEON E. BALDWIN.

THE term High Churchman is commonly limited to Episcopalians. This is natural, as it originated among them. I am not learned in the origin and development of the phrase, but I suppose that Churchman is earlier than High Churchman. Churchman, of course, meant one who adhered to the national Church, dissent from which being regarded as schismatical was held to deprive dissenters of the right to call themselves churchmen, just as Confederates were not allowed by us as Unionists, because we did not allow that their union was legitimate. And a High Churchman would be simply one who was very intense, on whatever grounds, in his opposition to dissenters. Thus, Elizabeth-in this sense, which, though the term is later than her time, I take to have been the original one was in reality a very High Churchwoman, not because she cared particularly about the episcopal succession, but because she was thoroughly bent on maintaining national unity in religion.

But the most compendious method, in a time when various systems of church polity were striving for the mastery, was for each to maintain that its own way had a specific and exclusive Divine sanction. The Presbyterians, in this derivative sense, were the first High Churchmen, Thomas Cartwright having been, as described by Green, a singularly intense one. Beza, too, is quoted somewhere as having discontentedly muttered that England might almost as well not be Protestant as not be Presbyterian. Therefore the earliest contention of the Episcopalians that their system is specifically and exclusively legitimate, appears to have been in good measure a reaction against the exorbitant claims of Presbyterianism.

The Episcopalians, however, had an advantage over the Presbyterians, which they soon pushed. The latter could not deny the Anglican ordinations, since bishops are undoubtedly presbyters. But, once provoked by the Presbyterians, how could the Anglicans fail, being human, to fall back on the tradition of so

many ages, that a bishop only is competent to ordain presbyters? It is true, the Anglican succession has come through a knot-hole, and Rome pronounces it to be "at the least exceedingly doubtful.” Yet the Utrecht succession has also come through a knot-hole, and there are no misgivings, on any hand, as to the genuineness of that. If a knot-hole is large enough to admit a thread, the continuousness of the thread is not broken. Therefore Anglican High Churchmanship soon came to imply that peculiar and inordinate stress on the episcopal succession which distinguishes it to this day.

High Church, therefore, seems to be capable of three stages of meaning. First, an exalted sense of the claims of a national church. Secondly, the contention that a particular church system is of exclusive New Testament legitimacy. Thirdly, the ordinary Episcopalian position, that episcopal ordination alone, in the historical line, is ascertainably valid.

Of course the phrase, "High Church Congregationalism," must bear the second of these three senses. How far it was High Church at the beginning, I do not know, not being learned in its origines. But, as I understand, it appeared from the first in this form: Christ has given to every covenanted congregation of believers the full competency to provide for all the ministries and functions of the Christian life. Yet this proposition, so far, is not High Church. It lacks the negative boundary on the other side, namely, that every authoritative association of two or more congregations is anti-scriptural and illegitimate. The affirmative proposition does not imply the negative. It is really only a restatement of Christ's own promise: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." For where Christ is, there, surely, is the fulness of spiritual prerogative, to every company that is really met in his name, and not in factious divisiveness. This evidently confirms a reserved right to every company of Christians, great or small, to evacuate an older order, and institute a new one, when it is plain that the elder order has exhausted its present power to nourish their spiritual life. But this does not imply that the Church can only legitimately exist in a congeries of independent congregations. Assume this negative position and add it to the positive side of

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the thesis, and you have, undoubtedly, High Church Congregationalism.

Very probably Robert Browne stated his great deduction in this High Church form. It may have been needed in selfdefence. But the life of Congregationalism did not lie in that. It lay in the rediscovery of what Mr. Hatch calls the right of free association, which he says was not effectively slain in the Church until the middle of the third century, when that excellent but overbearing Churchman, Cyprian, carried through the condemnation of the Novatian congregation at Rome as schismatical. Luther, as Dr. Schaff shows, grasped this principle at first, but not being able at that time to manage it, let it drop, and confined himself to the reassertion of the universal priesthood of believers in the universal church. Its independent rediscovery by Browne, and practical realization by his successors, was a momentous and auspicious event. In some respects it may almost be called a second Reformation. It opens an easy door of escape to those many Christians who previously, under a superstitious dread of a fictitious definition of schism, had been languishing under the bondage of corrupt or lumbering systems of church authority, and thus has opened many a spiritual dungeon to the free breath of an unfettered life. True, the moderated Anabaptists of the continent had doubtless already enjoyed the reality of it, and helped to confirm it in England, as their successors have ever been the purest of Congregationalists. But they have been so absorbed in another direction, that it has been reserved for the Congregationalists proper to bring their system to a recognized corrivality with Episcopacy and Presbyterianism, and to make New England, on the side of associated Christian life, no ineffective compeer of Geneva, and not overmuch inclined to veil the crest even to Canterbury. And though Methodism arrogates to itself the especial honor of being the champion of Protestantism against Rome, there may be those who think that the centralized administration of its principal form, and various other peculiarities, involve possibilities of betrayal as well as of defence. But no one sees in Congregationalism any possibilities of betrayal. We see only an elastic freedom which weakens Italian domination by a sort of irresistible contagion. Methodism and

Jesuitism have been compared before now, and may be compared again, both on their good and evil sides. But thus far Jesuitism and Congregationalism have remained terms most widely disparate.

But though the assertion of a reserved right in the Church, after so many centuries of desuetude, requires, or may require, large and long-continued exemplification in distinct families of Christian churches, and doubtless its permanent exemplification in some, it by no means follows that a reserved right must be a constantly and universally asserted right. Then it would not be a reserved right. It is not involved in the nature of a spring that it should be always in action. Congregationalism is the strong assertion of State rights. States have rights, and inalienable rights, and he is a most imperfect Unionist who denies it. For how can there be a true Union without integral realities to unite? But most of us will allow that national unity has rights also. A simple "league of perpetual friendship" " doubtless better befits the churches than the States. But the common guidance of common interests, even among the churches, often requires something closer than a league.

Here is the question. The Spirit of Christ, in the first century, fashioned the Church into such forms as suited her necessities. Has not the Spirit of Christ the same prerogatives in all the following centuries? There are certain principles of indefeasible validity, because without them the Christian life cannot actualize itself. But as every variation of the human form is legitimate which allows an easy realization of the specifically human life, so every variation of church form which allows an easy realization of the specifically Christian ends must, by that very fact, be acknowledged as legitimate. One might think that this would secure universal acknowledgment as self-evident. And so no doubt it would, but for the heavy clouds of hereditary prejudice which have hung over us ever since the days of medieval traditionalism, when the system that prevailed, because it had prevailed so long, was assumed to be exclusively Divine. But we are slowly learning, that if we could restore the exact form of the Apostolic Church, we should, by that very fact, prove ourselves unapostolic. Duo faciunt cum idem, non est idem. The apostles, should they