REFORMED EPISCOPAL CHURCH, organized in New York city, Dec. 2, 1873, with 8 clergymen and 20 laymen, all of whom bad been or were at the time ministers and laymen in the Protestant Episcopal church identified with the " evangelical " or "low church" party. One of them, George David Cummins, D.D., had been assistant bishop of the diocese of Kentucky until Nov. 10, 1873, when by letter to the presiding bishop he resigned his office and withdrew from the denomination. He became the bishop of the new organization: the rev. Charles Edward Cheney of Chicago was also elected bishop, and consecrated on a subsequent day. The following statement, con densed from the declaration of principles adopted at the organization, explains in the briefest form possible the doctrines held and the reasons assigned for adding a new denomination to the many already existing: I. The Reformed Episcopal ehureh declares its belief in the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the word of God and the sole rule of faith and practice; in the apostles' creed; in tire divine institu tion of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper; and in the doctrines of grace substantially as they are set forth in the 39 articles of religion. II. It recognizes and adheres to episcopacy, not as of divine right, but as a very ancient and desirable form of church polity. III. Retaining a liturgy, not imperative or repressive of freedom in prayer, it accepts the book of common prayer as it was revised, proposed, and recom mended for use by the general convention of the Protestant Episcopal church 1785: reserving the right to make alterations in it, provided that the substance of faith be kept entire. IV. It condemns and rejects the following doctrines as contrary to the word of
God: 1. That the church of Christ exists only in one form or ecclesiastical polity. 2. That Christian ministers are "priests" in another sense than that in which all believers " are a royal priesthood." 3. That the Lord's table is an altar on which an oblation of the body and blood of Christ is offered auew to the Father. 4. That the presence of Christ in the Lord's supper is a presence in the elements of bread and wine. 5. That regener ation is inseparably connected with baptism.
Tire foundations of the University of the West have been laid at Chicago, near which a landed estate of At prospective value has been given to this church by Edward Martin of New York. At present only the Martin college of theology is in operation. At the seventh general council, Chicago, 1879, there were reported as belonging to the denomination: 6 bishops; 70 presbyters; 24 deacons; 70 parishes; 5,800 communicants, of whom 400 were added by confirmation, and 900 were otherwise received; nearly 800 Sunday-school teachers and 8,000 scholars; contributions for church and benevolent work, *128,000.