174 KEY. CHANCELLOR J. J. LIAS, M.A., ON THE DECAY OF 
Church, which culminated in the visits of Bishops Beinkens and 
Herzog to England in 1881, when they repeatedly received 
Holy Communion with the bishops and clergy of our Church. 
Since that time a coolness has been allowed to grow up on both 
sides, which has slowly and steadily increased. Bishop Herzog 
had already, in 1880, crossed the Atlantic, and had been received 
in full Convention by the American Church as a Catholic 
Bishop. But the same mysterious coldness, the causes of which 
I am unable to fathom, seems to have crept in between the 
American Church and the Old Catholics. The latter fancy it is 
because they are a small and not rapidly growing body (how far 
this is true we shall see presently). It has doubtless been increased 
by what is known as the “ pact of Utrecht ” (what that is I will 
shortly explain). But I am hound to say, personally, that I can 
see no rational ground for the coolness which exists, and that I 
am convinced that it is the duty of lovers of peace on both sides 
to put an end to it as soon as may be. 
The new movement was imperilled at the outset by dangers 
from within as well as from without. The first intention of 
those who raised the standard of rebellion was, as “ Old 
Catholics,” to take their stand upon the doctrine and practice 
of the Latin Church previous to the Vatican Council. But at 
no great distance backward there loomed upon them the dogma 
of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, decreed by the 
Pope on his own sole authority in 1854. To this decree they 
were themselves, if not actively, yet at least passively, bound. 
By degrees they found themselves compelled to disown the 
decrees of Trent, and finally to cut themselves adrift from all 
which had not formally been decreed as doctrine previously to 
the great schism between the East and the West in the eleventh 
century. With this doctrinal reform, the necessity of reform 
in the discipline and ritual, of the Church was inseparably 
connected. This new departure, however unavoidable, placed 
them on an altogether different footing to that which they at 
first intended to take, and was soon found to have raised up 
some serious difficulties in their way. It was, nevertheless, 
impossible to recede from the path of reform, and Transub- 
srantiation, the Boman doctrine of Purgatory and its abuses, 
that of Invocation of Saints, the belief in Seven Sacraments, in 
the necessity of Confession, in the application of the Sacrifice of 
the mass to the sold of any one person, living or dead, were 
given up, and a commemoration of the souls of the faithful 
departed was substituted for public prayers for the dead. The 
Calendar was revised, and its reference to many legendary 
