From documents regarding Bishop Cummins’ formation of the Reformed Episcopal Church.
Bishop Cummins, on leaving:
I. First, then, you well know how heavy has been the trial of having to exercise my office in certain Churches in the Diocese of Kentucky where the services are conducted so as to symbolize and to teach the people doctrines, subversive of the “truth as it is in Jesus,” and as it was maintained and defended by the Reformers of the Sixteenth Century.
On each occasion that I have been called upon to officiate in those Churches, I have been most painfully impressed by the conviction that I was sanctioning and endorsing, by my presence and official acts, the dangerous errors symbolized by the services customary in Ritualistic Churches.
I can no longer, by my participation in such services, be “a partaker of other men’s sins,” and must clear my own soul of all complicity in such errors.
2. I have lost all hope that this system of error now prevailing so extensively in the Church of England, and in the Protestant Episcopal Church in this country, can be or will be eradicated by any action of the authorities of the Church, legislative or executive.
Bishop Alfred Lee, in response:
I. You speak of “the trial of having to exercise your office in certain Churches in the Diocese of Kentucky, where the services are so conducted as to symbolize and teach doctrines subversive of the truth as it is in Jesus.” You “have been painfully impressed by the conviction that you were sanctioning, by your presence and official acts, the dangerous errors symbolized by the services customary in Ritualistic Churches.” But, my dear brother, were your lips sealed when present in your official capacity? Were you not clothed with authority to preach the Word, to reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine? Could you not bear your testimony against dangerous innovations as plainly and decidedly in the pulpit and from the chancel, as upon the platform in our large eastern cities? Nay, if in one place more than in another you could be out-spoken, would it not be in your own Diocese, and among those committed to your oversight? There, emphatically, you could put forth your energies, strive “to banish and drive away from the Church all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God’s Word, and call upon and encourage others to do the same.” This, I freely admit, is no pleasant duty, but when the question is of abandoning a post to which we once thought the Lord had called us, then is it the time to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ So long as no restraint was placed upon your presentation of the truth in sermons, charges, addresses and pastoral letters, you could deliver your own soul; neither could you “be made partaker of other men’s sins.”
That there should be within our Church false teaching and practices, symbolizing errors, is indeed a grief and burden to many of her faithful ministers and member. I am not one to make light of them.
But is it a new thing? Was the Apostolic Church unvexed by similar evils? Had St. Paul nothing to contend with from “false brethren,” and from the intrusion of “another Gospel?”
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In combatting such errors, had you not with you the Word of God, the doctrinal standards of your Church, the protest of the reformers, the blood of martyrs, the sympathy and prayers of thousands of earnest Christians? Is such a cause to be despaired of? Does not truth rise up invincible from depression and defeat, and vindicate her heavenly birth? I believe better things of that grand old Church whose light has never been quenched since kindled at martyr pyres, and which for centuries has borne the brunt of outward hostility and internal treachery.
But admitting the dangers to be great, and the prospect gloomy, is that a reason why the pilot should desert the helm? The shepherd abandon the flock? If the shepherd sees the wolf coming is not that the time to stand at his post, even if he must give his life for the sheep? If you cannot wholly keep out the enemy, so formidable or so insidious, you may hope by all means to save some of the flock entrusted to your care. You are well aware that to a large body of the clergy and laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church, I might say a large majority, Romish and Ritualistic invocations are as distasteful as to yourself. Is it the post of a good soldier of Jesus Christ to desert in the hour of peril brethren who are striving to fight the good fight of faith?
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