GENERAL PRINCIPLES 33 



claim of an exclusive prelatic succession 

 from the apostles. The corresponding 

 American Church has acquired this Angli- 

 can episcopate as supported by an admir- 

 able Presbyterian house of deputies. Next 

 we have the Church of Scotland, less beauti- 

 ful than her queenly sister of England, but 

 of the same lineage and the most vigorous 

 ecclesiastical force in our Christian civiliza- 

 tion. The Scottish Church also retained 

 the canonical Scriptures; the Apostles' 

 Creed, with the Westminster Confession as 

 an expansion of the Thirty-nine Articles; 

 and the two Sacraments connected with a 

 Directory ensuring the unfailing use of the 

 appointed words and elements ; its Pres- 

 byterian associates in England having 

 failed to establish the revised Prayer-Book. 

 But, being less entangled with the old 

 political hierarchy, it declared that it had 

 been " reformed from popery, not by pre- 

 lates, but by presbyters, as the only succes- 

 sors left by Christ and his apostles in the 

 Church." And this historic presbyterate, 

 as not inconsistent with the pure historic 

 episcopate, but antedating both the prelatic 

 and the papal sway in Britain, and con- 

 fessedly traceable back to the apostles' time, 

 3 



