Book Description

Excerpt from The Novelties Which Disturb Our Peace: Letters Addressed to the Bishops, Clergy, and Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church Respected And Beloved Brethren in Christ: The sacred office of the Episcopate is confessedly invested with the most awful responsibility, even in its ordinary administration. When the Church is at peace in all her borders, and her bishops are only called upon to oversee their respective dioceses in the regular routine of accustomed duty, even then, how few can feel that they have acquitted themselves of their solemn trust with entire fidelity! How ready must we all be to supplicate forgiveness at the hands of the great Bishop and Shepherd of our souls, and to acknowledge the force of the apostles declaration, that the treasure of the gospel is indeed committed to earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power might be of God, and not of us! But far more delicate and difficult does our task become, when the peace of the Church is disturbed by intestine agitation. Scattered at distant points over our vast continent, meeting together only once in three years, and then during a period quite too short for an intimate and thorough understanding of our respective opinions, we are deprived of the power of mutual consultation, when those peculiar occasions arise, on which that consultation would be most desirable. Meanwhile, the irresponsible autocracy of the Press takes hold of the opportunity. Error and novelty gain ground. The clergy and the people choose their editorial leaders; and when at last, the sentiments of the bishops are declared, they are merely used as the complements of parties already formed, and are praised or blamed, just as the prejudice of party may dictate. The bishops, in theory, are indeed, the governors of the Church. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.