is a prevailing misconception of the principles of unity, and that, if the premises herein advanced shall be generally understood, there will be a great progress toward a United Church. The common conception is too contracted. If he is not very much mistaken, the principles herein exhibited are familiar to comparatively few, and will to most minds suggest a train of reflections altogether unusual.

It had been well if the writer could have backed his reasonings by the influence of some personal authority or reputation. But, if he lacks that advantage, his reasonings will have a fairer opportunity to test their force. He comes as a Christian man to communicate to his brethren something for their mutual benefit, something which, he hopes, they will cordially and frankly receive. He commends this outline of thought to the patient and matured examination of the Christian public, and he will be glad if some abler hand shall fill it up more elaborately. He can say, with good Bishop Burnet, in the preface to his "Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles," although he applies to himself with diffidence the language of so distinguished a man: "I had no other design in this work, but first to find out the truth myself, and then to help others to find it out. If I succeed to any degree in this design, I will bless God for it; and if I fail in it, I will bear it with the humility and patience that becomes me. But as soon as I see a

better work of this kind, I shall be among the first of those who shall recommend that, and disparage this."

A few words are due to his Episcopal brethren particularly. Ever since he has been in the discharge of his calling, both as a missionary and as a parochial minister, he has felt almost daily the need of some such book as this, both for the instruction of his own people and for information which others need to have. He has been sometimes greatly surprised at the extreme misapprehensions prevalent with regard to the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, when the means of better knowledge have so long been spread before the public. His familiarity with these misapprehensions has blunted the sense of surprise, while it has nourished a sense of continual regret and sadness. He has hoped to find his want supplied, and has finally undertaken the task for himself, since the need is great, and it is hard to wait patiently for an uncertainty.

There is a class, and a numerous one-that of theological students, or candidates for orders who might, as the writer's former observation and personal experience has demonstrated, be much benefited by some such work as this. It is required, indeed, by a general canon, that "the last examination" of every candidate, prior to his ordination as deacon, must be "on Church history, Ecclesiastical polity, the Book of Common Prayer, its history and contents, and the Constitution

and Canons of this Church and those of the Diocese to which the candidate belongs." Now, on Church history, Ecclesiastical polity, and the Book of Common Prayer, especially the two former, the student may be very well informed, and his examination satisfactory. But on the Constitution and Canons of the Church his information is ordinarily slight, and his examination (if attended to) unsatisfactory, for this good reason, that he cannot study them except at disadvantage, because they are nowhere so arranged that he can associate them with the system of principles which they illustrate. Hence it is true that most of our candidates for orders, even at their first ordinations, although they may be excellent scholars in the Scriptural, and what we may call the historical doctrines of their Church, do not have clear and accurate and defensible views of their Church as it is-as a practical and working system in the present day and in our own country. A treatise like this volume, and especially its sixth chapter, might be a useful manual to the class of students referred to, and a convenient aid to those who have the charge of their education in the department of ecclesiastical studies.

Besides, there are many persons who would like information as to the Protestant Episcopal Church, touching the several points and peculiarities of its whole sys⚫tem. There are many inquirers as to these topics; and such a manual as this may prove a valuable help to lay

men or to clergymen in answering such inquirers, giving in one volume information which, without this, can be procured only from many volumes.

Excellent books have been written on different points in the system of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and illustrative of its peculiar doctrines and customs, with very great profit. But, after all, there is no work which, in a plain, didactic style, develops the entire system of the Protestant Episcopal Church as it is, which shows out the whole Church as an existing and operating system of to-day. There is no work which illustrates distinctly the comprehensiveness of the Protestant Episcopal Church, with regard to its adaptation to the purposes of Christian and Ecclesiastical Unity-the Divinely-intended purposes of the one great Catholic or Universal Church of Christ. These blanks the writer has endeavored to fill; or rather, he has endeavored to exemplify, by short precedents, how these blanks may be filled. It is his impression that a book, upon a plan similar to this, and better executed, might be useful in all our parishes, and might be very generally circulated with much advantage, not only to the Protestant Episcopal Church, but also to the great object of Christian and Ecclesiastical Unity, which all true disciples of our Lord have so much at heart-in other words, to the exhibition of the real and chief end for which God's Church is founded among men.

It is necessary to take this practical view of our subject, because, after all, it is the most important. In the history and institutions of the Church, whose track has marked the course of nearly two thousand years, there must be much to deeply interest the student; and such a one, in proportion as he enlarges his acquisitions, will learn more and more of the minute causes of those institutions and their connection with the history of man, and the gradual development of the philosophy of the human mind. But the man of every-day life has often not the time nor the taste for such investigations. Besides, all his habits are practical, and concerned with his common and pressing interests; and the question from him is: What is the system? He cares not for its history nor for its remote causes. He wants to know only this—that the system is now practical, that it will work well for him, that it does now suit his individual and personal wishes and wants. Bishop Brownell, in the course of an address delivered by him to the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Connecticut held in June, 1840, has well expressed this prevailing sentiment, when he says (and the emphasis is his own): "We love the Church as it is"-we love it as a practical system, working in and for our own day, working by and for ourselves. It is this view, practical and the most important to us, which we would present to our readers.