Which is the Church of Christ? : a summary : by Rev. Owen Meredith Waller.: a machine-readable transcription.

THEN WHICH IS IT, AND WHERE IS IT?

The Church is certainly a visible body of Christians, not founded by a man or men, but by Jesus Christ; having a Divine Founder it is then a Divine society seeking men to save them from the degrading power of 0005 5sin and everlasting punishment in hell. It is not then, as is so commonly and popularly thought, a mere human society founded by Luther, 1530; Calvin, 1541; Knox, 1560; Robert Brown, 1583; Roger Williams, 1639; John Wesley, 1739; or Swedenborg, 1783. In brief, the Church founded by Jesus Christ is the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, as Christ so often described it [Matt. 13:47; 5:19; 13:44]; endowed with power from on high transmitted through her unbroken line of the Apostolic Ministry, but obedient to her Divine Founder, who is at the right hand of God in Heaven.

This Church of four distinct marks in the Acts existed before the completion of the New Testament at least some sixty years, and it was the Church that by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit pronounced the New Testament inspired, and rejected 0006 6other books claiming to set forth the life of Christ, 300 years after it was founded. The Old Testament is the document of the Jewish Church, that Church having been in existence for a 1,000 years before its document was completed. Therefore this Church of the Acts can not be set aside for one claimed to be founded upon the Bible.

For 300 years, then, this Apostolic Church existed with Apostolic doctrine, ministry, sacraments and prayers before she gave the New Testament to the world with her certificate that it was the inspired Word of God.

The Protestant Episcopal Church of America as the daughter of the Church of England, has ever possessed, and does now possess and hold most sacred, these four marks that identify her unmistakably with 0007 7the primitive and Apostolic Church, as a true branch of the same.

First. As to doctrine this Church holds and defends the pure teaching of the early Church, without taking from or adding to the same. There are few indeed who would question this.

The Holy Trinity [John 14:16, 26; Acts 2:33; Gal. 4:6].

The Incarnation of God's Son [Luke 1:35; John 1:14; Matt. 1:23.]

The Redemption of man by Christ Jesus [Matt. 1:21; 20:28; Gal. 1:4.]

Regeneration in Holy Baptism [Tit. 3:5; Rom. 6:4; Gal. 3:27.]

The Holy Communion [Matt. 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22:19, 20.]

Confirmation [Act 8; Heb. 6:2.]

The Resurrection of the dead [Luke 14:14; John 11:23.]

The Judgment [Acts 17:31; Heb. 9:27.]

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Belief in these statements and other fundamental teaching of Holy Scripture is in accord with the mind of the Apostolic Church.

Secondly. As to the unbroken line of Bishops, Priests and Deacons, who have succeeded for more than eighteen centuries other ministers Apostolically ordained, that has been most jealously guarded and maintained by the Episcopal Church.

There may be some who have never given any study to the Apostolic Succession of ministers in the Church founded by Christ. No one could well doubt the fact or deny the doctrine who had patiently investigated the matter. The New Testament is itself witness to the fact that the Apostles appointed others to do Apostolic work and to be their successors; at least thirty Apostles are mentioned in the New Testament. Among them were Paul, 0009 9Matthias, Barnabas, Andronicus, Silas, Luke, Titus, whom St. Paul appointed Bishop of Crete, and Timothy, whom he appointed Bishop of Ephesus; there were also at least ten others whose names are recorded, space does not permit us to mention.

Now, if the original twelve could have eighteen Successors, certainly they could and have had a continuous line of successors down the centuries. The titles of the three orders of the ministry may, at first, mislead the unlearned.

(1) In the New Testament the highest order were Apostles. The second, “ordained in every city,” were presbyters, (presters or priests), also called bishops, and the lowest order deacons.

As the Apostles began to die off, the title “Apostle” was limited to them and their successors who had 0010 10probably seen Christ, at the same time the title “Bishop” was set apart to denote the highest order which succeeded the original Apostles. This is stated by Clement of Alexandria in the second, and Jerome in the fourth century. While Theodoret writing in 440 says: “The same persons were in ancient times called either presbyters or bishops, at which time, those who are now called bishops were called Apostles. In process of time, the name of Apostle was left to those who were sent directly by Christ, and the name of bishop was confined to those who were anciently called “Apostles.” From Palestine the Church spread to Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Spain and England, carrying with her the Apostles' doctrine, ministry, sacraments and prayers.

In 597 when Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome, sent Augustine to 0011 11England he found there the Church with the four marks. After awhile the Bishop of Rome, by political methods, gained great influence over the English Church, in so much that he was receiving from England greater revenues than the King. When the tremendous revolt against the Papacy came about in Europe in the sixteenth century the English people simply ejected the Pope's emissaries and with them, Italian influence and corruption from England and the English Church. The Church remained essentially the same she had been for centuries.

The word “Reformation” signifies the putting of something into a new shape. It is therefore not the destruction of the old and the substituting of the new, but rather the reshaping, cleansing and revivifying of the old. The melting down of the family silver and the re-shaping it 0012 12on new models is not to acquire new silver. Perhaps it was so distorted by abuse that it required new shaping. This was very much the case with the church of England.

The Reformation in England was effected on very different lines from that on the Continent of Europe. Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, and others, were but individuals attracting to themselves multitudes of other individuals, and together they established societies of Christians. The Apostolic Churches on the Continent did not, as such, participate in the Reformation movement. In England the Reformation, i.e., the re-shaping, restoring and cleansing was more wisely conducted. The Church there had existed since the days of the Apostles. For six hundred years it remained independent of the Roman world power, and it 0013 13was only after the Norman conquest that the papal authority became well established in England. When a Reformation seemed necessary, it was conducted, not by individuals leaving the national church, but by the whole Church of England. In A.D. 1532 the quarrel of Henry the Eighth with the Pope, led to the overthrow of the Roman power in England. Henry is not to be credited as a reformer, much less as the founder of any Church. He never made an attempt to found a Church. When he was born in 1491 he found the Church existing in England, and when he died in 1547 he left the same Church, but cleansed and independent, in England. The ancient Church was not changed, and the old religion did not give place to a new. The Papacy was opposed to the independence of the National Churches 0014 14for which the Church of England had always contended.

Accordingly, when the power of the Pope was broken and thrust out of England, the Church was at liberty to restore Apostolic purity and freedom to the Nation and the individual.

Parliament prohibited the payment of money to the Pope and appealing from English to Papal Courts. In 1539, the Bible was given to the people to read in their native tongue. The services were read in English instead of Latin. The Chalice was given to the laity. The worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary was abolished and praying to departed saints forbidden. These reforms were conducted by the Archbishops, Bishops, Priests and Deacons and Laity, i.e., by the whole Church. The Pope was not without his adherents during this period, who opposed 0015 15these changes most vehemently. But these traitors to the Church of England found they could not stem the tide for an open Bible and pure religion. In 1569 Pope Pius Fifth created the great sin of schism by commanding all in favor of papal power in England to withdrew from the English Church and form an Italian party. In 1685 the Italian Church supplied this party with a Bishop. To-day the Italian Mission in England is doing all in its power to make headway against the Church of England, but in vain.

We can now come briefly to the Episcopal Church in America. She was first planted in the American Colonies under the oversight of the Bishop of London In 1609, the Church of England planted her first Church on American shores at Jamestown, Va. After the Revolution, the Church in this country became the 0016 16American Episcopal Church, receiving the Apostolic Ministry from the ancient Apostolic Church of England. Samuel Seabury of Connecticut, was consecrated at Aberdeen in 1784, and William White of Philadelphia, and Samuel Provoost, of New York, were consecrated at Lambeth Palace in 1787. These were the first three Bishops with jurisdiction, and thus was the Apostolic Succession maintained in the Episcopal Church in unbroken line from the days of the Apostles.

In conclusion, the Episcopal Church has ever continued steadfast in the sacraments and prayers, and by these four undeniable and unmistakable marks shows that she is a true branch of the same Church described in Acts II.

The question now becomes, not which church do I like or prefer, not to which church did my parents belong, but which church did Christ found for me to be trained in? To that church it is my bounden duty to unite myself. Amen.