THROWING OFF THE GUISE.
By G.
The rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in this city, as reported in the Tribune, preached a sermon on the 22d ult., in which he took the ground that the Episcopal Church was essentially Catholic, and not a Protestant denomination. He contended that the word Protestant was a misnomer, and should be dropped as misleading and non-descriptive. A direct quotation from the discourse is as follows:— The teachings of the Book of Common Prayer in use daily in our church is essentially Catholic. Even so great a non-conformist as the late John Parker declared that the Book of Common Prayer was steeped in Catholicism. We can come to a conclusion as to the standing of a church by studying its doctrine and its theology, and if we study the teaching of the Protestant-Episcopal Church we can arrive at but one conclusion—that the church is essentially Catholic in everything but name. The professed Protestants of other denominations who persist in the observance of Lent and Easter and Sunday and other Roman festivals, and in the neglect and perversion of the legitimate ordinance of the church of Christ, thus making of no effect the commandments of God, will, sooner or later, be also pulling down the thin wall that nominally separates them from the Roman church. It is only a question of time, and a very short time. No prospective consummation is more clearly pointed out in the prophetic Word, or more plainly indicated in the signs of the times. G.