't.i' 1£Lf&. 
 
 LETTER OF THE REV.^ 
 JAI^S A. LATAl^E ^ 
 TO 
 BISHOP JOHNS^ 
 
 BX6072 
 i.L35 
 
' 4. 1 1 . :>.7 
 
 ...% 
 
 &S. 
 
 ■^OeiCALSf-»'<^ 
 
 "T3>X4.d . 
 
 I 3^ J 
 
— l-* /■> Vfi? 
 
 L3S 
 
 ^^.^^XbJ»KK/Af<^ 
 
 APR 1 1 H7? 
 
 %G/0AL8t^f^ 
 
 #: 
 
 ^ 
 
 X" 
 
 LETTER OF THE REV. JAMES A. LATANE, 
 
 EECTOR OF ST. MATTHEW'S CIIURCir, WHEELING, WEST VIRGINIA, 
 
 BISHOP JOHNS, 
 
 RESIGNING THE MINISTRY OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 
 
 St. Matthew's Church, 
 Wheeling, W. Va., January 12, 18T4. 
 
 My Dear Bishop: — It is with sincere grief that I write to 
 announce to you my purpose to withdraw from the ministry of the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church. 
 
 I know that this announcement will cause you both surprise and 
 pain ; but I beg you to believe that the decision has not been reached 
 without much reflection and prayer, and that the step is taken with 
 the utmost reluctance, and only fi'om imperative convictions of duty. 
 Every earthly consideration is against it. My relations to you, and 
 to Bishop Whittle, and to many dear brethren in the ministry in the 
 Diocese of Virginia, my affection for the Church in Staunton, where 
 I commenced my ministry and labored for fourteen years, my many 
 obligations to the people of my present charge, my desire, attested 
 by my whole ministry, to do the Lord's work in quietness and peace, 
 the natural shrinking which every manly heart must feel from enter- 
 ing upon a course which will cause me to be esteemed a fool by 
 many whose good opinion I value, and the uncertainties of the future, 
 both as to the field of my labor and the support of my family, are 
 all against the step, and have all been calmly, deliberately weighed. 
 
On the other hand, I have nothing to plead in favor of it, and 
 nothing to sustain me in taking it, but a clear conviction of duty 
 to God and to the cause of His truth in the earth. 
 
 Let me say further, that in deciding the matter I have not taken 
 counsel with others. For obvious reasons, until my mind was made 
 up 1 could have, and up to this moment I have had, no communi- 
 cation, directly or indirectly, with Bishop Cummins or any of his 
 adherents. And I beg you to believe that had I feit that the case 
 admitted of it, I would most gladly have sought counsel of you and 
 of some of my brethren in the ministry. But when the matter was 
 not a new one, when all the facts of the case were before me, and 
 when it was a simple question of duty in view of the facts, I felt that 
 I could most safel}' decide it where 1 have at least sought to decide 
 it, in my secret chamber, and on my knees before God. 
 
 REASONS FOR LEAVING THE CHURCH. 
 
 Let me then state distinctly my reasons for leaving the EpiscopnJ 
 Church. They are just those ditticulties which have been for some 
 years past a burden and grief to many in the Church. 
 
 I. The first is the unhappy division of the Church into what are 
 known as the High-Ghurch and the Loiv-Church parties. 
 
 I will not say that in the Church there are two seeds, the seed of 
 Romanism and the seed of Protestantism ; but I will say that the 
 Church, as it now is, is an army with two banners, justification by 
 the sacraments inscribed on the one, and justification by faith on the 
 other. And there never can be any cordial union between the parties 
 arranged under these two banners. It has been tried in the Church 
 time and again, tried in missionary operations, in Theological semi- 
 naries, and in Church-book Societies, tried lionestly, and by good 
 men on each side, and, in every instance, has lamentably failed. 
 The two parties are not agreed, and cannot walk together. Their 
 differences are real, and are irreconcileable. The Low- Church party 
 cannot cooperate with the High-Church party without being false 
 to what it has ever held to l)e the doctrines of the Reformation, and 
 without sacrificing what it believes to be the first princii)les of the 
 Oracles of God. The division in the Church, therefore, with the 
 unhappy strife and discord attending it, is one which cannot be 
 healed. 
 
 n. The second is the countenance apparently given by certain 
 expressions in the Prayer-book to those ^^ erroneous and strange 
 doctrines contrary to God^s word,^^ out of which the division in the 
 Church has grown. 
 
 Those doctrines pertain to the effects of Baptism, to the nature of 
 the Lord's Supper, and to the office of the Ministry. 
 
 There are expressions in the Baptismal Service which seem to 
 teach that every infant, when baptized, is thereby "regenerated with 
 the Holy Spirit." And, though I am satisfied that this doctrine was 
 .not held by the framers of the Prayer-book, nor intended to be ex- 
 
pressed in the service, and therefore is not really the doctrine of the 
 Church, yet the expressions are so liable to be misunderstood, and so 
 hard to be satisfactorily explained, and as a matter of fact are so 
 constantly misunderstood, and do practically educate and confirm so 
 many in a false view of the effects of Baptism, that they ought to be 
 altered. Regeneration is stated in the word of God to be essential to 
 salvation ; the mode and means of regeneration are things which 
 concern the way of salvation ; and to affirm that Baptism invariably 
 effects I'egeneration, and that every person who has been baptized 
 has, therefore, been regenerated, is dangei'ously to delude human 
 souls, and that, too, in a particular essential to salvation. And yet 
 this doctrine, contrary as it is to God's word, is distinctly and con- 
 stantly taught and believed in the Church, and finds countenance 
 at least in that service where the minister, in the case of every child 
 and every adult baptized by him, is required to say, after the act of 
 baptism, this child, or this person, is noio regenerate. And so long 
 as the Baptismal service remains in the Prayer-book in its present 
 form, that teaching will go on, as it has done so alarmingly of late, 
 to increase and prevail more and more in the Church. 
 
 THE DOCTRINES OF A PRIESTHOOD AND A SACRIFICE IN THE SACRAMENT 
 
 NOT SCRIPTURAL. 
 
 Again, there are expressions in the Prayer-book which give coun- 
 tenance, at least, to the notion of a Priesthood in the Christian 
 Church, and of a sacrifice in the Lord's Supper. 
 
 Now, if there is any truth plainly taught us in the word of God, 
 then it is there plainly taught, especially in the epistle to the He- 
 brews, that our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, is the one perfect, 
 ever-living, ever-sympathizing, and all-sufficient Priest of His people, 
 ojid that they need no other ^ that His death upon the Cross was a 
 full, perfect, and complete sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, 
 offered once for all and never to be repeated, and that priests and 
 sacrifices have been distinctly and forever aholishedin the Church on 
 earth. 
 
 And yet the opposite notion, unscriptural as it is in doctrine and 
 oorrupting in practice, finds countenance at least in the Prayer-book, 
 in the following instances : 
 
 Pirst of all, it constantly applies to the ministers of the Church 
 the name Priests. 
 
 Then, in the service for ordaining them, the Bishop uses this lan- 
 guage ; " Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Priest 
 in the Church of God, now committed to thee by the imposition of 
 our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and 
 whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained." (There is here an 
 alternate form allowed, but a majority of the Bishops use the form I 
 have given.) 
 
Then, in the stated services of the Church there is a " Declaration 
 of ab.-iolution or remission of sins, to be made by the Priest alone, 
 standins:: the people kneeling." 
 
 And then, in the service for the " institution of ministers into 
 Parishes or Churches " (a service adopted by the General Conven- 
 tion of the Church, and now found, whether rightly or not, in every 
 Prayer-book), the table used for the administration of the Lord's 
 Supper is spoken of as an "^ altar,''^ the minister's relation to the peo- 
 ple of his charge is desciibed as a '"''sacerdotal connection between 
 him and them," and he is invested with power " to perform every 
 act of sacerdotal function among them." 
 
 Now in regard to the form of words quoted above from the ordi- 
 nation service, let it be remembered that no such words were used in 
 the Church of Christ, in the ordaining of her ministers, for more than 
 a thousand years after the Apostles' time, and that it was not until 
 the Church of Rome had begun to assert her high claims, and in the 
 days of her grossest corruption, that she impiously presumed to use 
 them. 
 
 In regard to the word Priest, let it be remembered that the in- 
 spired writers of the New Testament seem scrupulously to have 
 avoided applying the term in any way, directly or indirectly, literally 
 or even figuratively, to the ministers of Christ. So true is this, so 
 divinel}' guided were they in guarding this point, that no writer of 
 any age, so far as I know, has ever claimed to have found one passage 
 in the New Testament which, even in the remotest way, applied the 
 term Priest or Priesthood to the Christian ministry. Yet in the 
 face of this fact, and contrary to God's word, the Prayer- book con- 
 stantly calls them Priests. 
 
 I know that the word Priest is said to be a contraction in the 
 Prayer-book for Presbyter. But Priest is a plain English word, and 
 has a plain English meaning. It means one who has verily a "sacer- 
 dotal function to perform," an expiatorj' sacrifice to make, and the 
 real blood of some slain victim to offer unto God. The word is 
 never used by any English speaking people, or in any English book, 
 except the Prayer-book, in any other sense. 
 
 Can we be surprised, then, when the Prayer-book calls the minis- 
 ters of the Protestant Episcopal Church Priests, and uses such lan- 
 CTuao'e in regard to their office, that many of them come to look upon 
 themselves, and their people to look upon them, as really priests, and 
 their office as a priestly office, and the Lord's Supper as a sacrifice, 
 and the Lord's body and blood as in some form offered in that sacri- 
 fice? Or can we wonder when such language is used in the Prayer- 
 book, in investing the ministers of the church with the office of Priest, 
 that the doctrine and practice of priestl}' confession and absolution 
 should claim a rightful place in the Church? Or can we hope to get 
 rid of the teaching and the error until we get rid of the language 
 which teaches the error ? 
 
THE HOPELESSNESS OF THE CONTEST WITH THE HIGH-CHURCH ELEMENT. 
 
 III. The third is the absolute impossibility of get ing rid of these 
 objectionable exjjre.ssions in the services of the Prayer-book. 
 
 I use the expression "absolute impossibility" advisedly, and am 
 indebted for its use in this connection to Bishop Potter, of New 
 York. In 1869, when certain innovations in doctrine and usage, of 
 Romish character, were being boldly propagated in the Church, and 
 were fast bringing its Protestant and Scriptural character into dis- 
 trust and reproach, and when, in consequence, there was a move- 
 ment on foot which, if not arrested, must end in a disruption of the 
 Church, nine of the Bishops met in New York to confer togetlier as 
 to what was to be done to avert the danger. The result of their 
 conference was " the conviction that if alternate phrases cr some 
 equivalent modification in the office for the ministration of baptism 
 of infants were allowed, the pressing necessity would be met." They 
 therefore undertook to secure such alternate phrases or equivalent 
 modification, and with this view addressed to the other Bishops the 
 paper known as the "Proposition of the nine Bishops." 
 
 The proposition was a modest one. It did not involve the change 
 of one word in the Prayer book. Jt did not require any clergyman 
 to omit one word, or to add one word, in the Baptismal service as 
 he had always used it. It only asked that any minister who desired 
 it might be allowed to omit from the service that single clause which 
 makes him seem to declare of every infant, after he has baptized it, 
 this infant is now regenerated with God's Holy Spirit. 
 
 And the proposition was a reasonable one. All that is essential 
 to baptism, I mean outwardly, is the application of water '• in the 
 name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." This 
 is the formula given by our Saviour Himself, and the baptism is per- 
 fect and complete when the water has been applied and those words 
 pronounced. The liberty asked for could, therefore, in no possible 
 way, affect the validity or efficacy of the sacrament. And as it would 
 have been a great relief to many in the Church, it ought, in brotherly 
 kindness and charity, to have been allowed them. 
 
 And then the proposition was couched in the most becoming terms. 
 The nine Bishops put it in the form of a " respectful and affectionate 
 request of their brother Bishops." 
 
 And what was the result ? The proposition was fairly scouted. 
 Bishop Potter at once made it the subject of a pastoral letter, in 
 which he declares that he is " too entirely assured of what the judg- 
 ment of the General Convention must be, to feel the smallest concern^ 
 save for the character and well-being of a certain number of indi- 
 viduals ;" that " the movement will end in a mortifying discomfiture;^^ 
 that " very nearly the whole Church will stand amazed that any 
 respectable body of churchmen, not to say Bishops, could have been 
 found to give their countenance to such propositions," and that " it 
 is indeed astonishing that they did not see that the thing to which 
 they were urged to give their countenance was an absolute impossi 
 
bility.'''' Not satisfied with this, he next very kindly takes the trouble 
 ''to point out to the nine Bishops, and to their friends, that, with 
 their views and wishes, they can have no interest in asking our 
 General Convention to undertake the task of revising the Prayer- 
 book ; " and lest this should not have the desired weight with them, 
 he boldly threatens them that whenever such revision shall take 
 place, then, '' if two-thirds of the Bishops and three-fourths of the 
 Dioceses may be expected to act according to their principles," it 
 would result in such changes (and he distinctly specifies them;, as 
 would make the Prayer-book teach unmistakably the doctrine of 
 priestly absolution, and the doctrine of the presence of our Lord's 
 body and blood, " verily and indeed," in the Lord's Supper. 
 
 And for one, I honestly believe that in this matter Bishop Potter 
 has stated nothing but the truth. When at the last General Conven- 
 tion (Baltimore, 1871) the majority voted down every Canon that 
 could be framed against Ritualism in the Church, when respectful 
 petitions for alterations in the Baptismal service in the Prayer-book 
 were so easily disposed of, without even the formality of a discussion, 
 and especially when such a modest and reasonable proposition as 
 that of the nine Bishops, not really altering one word in the Prayer- 
 book, failed so signally to accomplish anything, and the movement 
 ended, as Bishop Potter so confidently predicted it would end, in a 
 mortifying discomfiture, I cannot hope for the success of any new 
 movement in that direction. 
 
 I know it will be claimed by some that the " Declaration of the 
 Bishops " touching the Baptismal service was gained at that Con- 
 vention. I wish I could regard that Declaration as in any sense " a 
 gain" to the Low-Church party. But I cannot. 1st. It had no 
 authority ; being merely an informal and unofficial expression of 
 opinion on the part of most of the Bishops, or if of any authority, 
 the precedent was a most dangerous one for the minority in the 
 Church. 2d. It meant nothing ; some of the signers declaring after- 
 wards that it made a moral rather than a religious, a scholastic 
 rather than a theological distinction ; and not a single High-Church 
 Bishop admitting that it touched the doctrine of Spiritual regenera- 
 tion in Baptism. And 3d. It effected nottiing ; the Declaration has 
 been lost, thrown aside, torn up, scattered to the winds, by most of 
 the laity who ever saw it, and meantime the Baptismal service 
 remains unaltered in the Prayer-book, and every minister of the 
 Church has to go on declaring, again and again, as before, that 
 every baptized child is regenerated. Out of regard to Dr. Andrews, 
 to whom the credit of having devised and brought about this mode 
 of relief is generally a=cril)ed, I would gladly have withheld the 
 expression of this opinion of its merits : but in this instance surely, 
 Magnus Apollo dorniitat. 
 
 THE POSITION ASSUMED TOAVARDS OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 
 
 IV. Still another reason is the attitude in which the Episcopal 
 Church stands in the present day to other Protestant Churches. 
 
It is now held by an overwhelming majority in the Episcopal 
 Church that there can be but one form of Church polity; that 
 ordination by Bishops, deriving their authority by succession, in an 
 unbroken line, from the Apostles, is essential to a valid ministry; 
 and that without such ordination there can be no true Church, and 
 no law/id administration of the sacraments. 
 
 JVov/ I have faithfully sought to bring this theory to the test of 
 Scripture, at three several periods of my ministry, each time devoting 
 weeks and months to the careful examination and comparison of all 
 the passages in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles which 
 seemed to bear upon the question, and the result is the clear convic- 
 tion that no such claim is authorized by the Word of God.* The 
 Mosaic dispensation, for obvious reasons, was designed of God to 
 possess one unvarying form through all the ages of its destined 
 continuance. Therefore, when it was to be inaugurated, God called 
 Moses up into Mount Sinai, gave him the minutest directions con- 
 cerning every particular of it, even showing liim a pattern of the 
 Tabernacle and of all the instruments to be used in the service thereof, 
 and solemnly charged him ; " See that thou make all things accord- 
 ing to the pattern showed to thee in the Mount." Had our Saviour 
 designed His Church to be constructed on any such principles, or to 
 be of one prescribed and invariable form, then surely, when He gave 
 His last charge to His Apostles, He would have showed them a 
 pattern of the Christian Church, or given them explicit instructions 
 as to its intended form. Or if He had left it to His Apostles, acting 
 under Divine Inspiration, to establish forever such a form, then 
 surely they would have drawn the plan and written out the details, 
 and left them on record. And in the absence of any such definite 
 plan and instructions, either from Him to His Apostles, or from 
 His inspired Apostles to the Church, we must conclude that no such 
 invariable form of government is of Divine authority, or essential to 
 the being of a Church. For if established since the days of the 
 Apostles, it must have been either by a fallible or by an infallible 
 Church ; if by a fallible Church, it has no rightful authority and 
 -cannot be binding for all time and in all places ; if by an infallible 
 Church, thei*e has never been but one branch of the CLiristiau 
 Church which claimed to be infallible, and those who hold that 
 there can be but one form of Church government, have no higher 
 authority for that dogma than for any other dogma of the Church 
 of Bome. 
 
 THE TREE TO BE JUDGED BY ITS FRUIT. 
 
 I have also looked at this theory in the light of existing facts in 
 the Christian world. If the theory be true, if an exclusive Episcopal 
 ministry in the Christian Church be of divine origin and authority, 
 then the non-episcopally ordained ministers of the various Churches 
 of the Reformation are committing in our day, as many of the 
 advocates for Episcopacy do not hesitate to allege, the sin of Korah, 
 
8 
 
 Dathan and Abiram in the days of Moses. But if so, where is the 
 evidence of it ? Is it in the devout, blameless, consistent Christian 
 lives they lead ? Is it in the blessing of God upon their labors, and 
 the power and success of their ministry ? Is it in the souls who, by 
 God's grace, through their instrumentality, are turned from the power 
 of Satan unto God, and find pardon, and peace, and life, and salvation 
 at the foot of the Cross of Christ ? Are these the marks and tokens 
 of God's displeasure, of God's judgments, against a bold, daring, 
 presumptuous sin ? In other words, and to put the question in the 
 very form in which our Saviour put it to the Pharisees, who were 
 denying the baptism of John because he had not asked them for 
 authority to baptize, " the ministry of these servants of Christ, is it 
 from Heaven or of men ?" Dare any man say it is not from Heaven ? 
 And dare we set up a standard of our own, by which we disown 
 those whom God hath owned, and condemn those whom God hath 
 accepted, and separate ourselves from all fellowship on earth with 
 those with whom we shall be glad enough to take our places in 
 Heaven ? 
 
 And yet the Episcopal Church in this country and in our day 
 has practically planted herself on this high ground and assumed this 
 imperious attitude towards the great bulk of Protestant Christians. 
 It is true that her standards of doctrine remain unchanged, and the 
 Nineteenth and Twenty-third Articles in the Prayer-book still testify 
 to her original Protestant stand on this question. But the other has 
 become the prevailing sentiment in the Church, and is fast becoming 
 embodied in the Canon Law of the Church. So far has positive 
 legislation gone in this direction, if we accept the current interpreta- 
 tion of certain Canons, that no minister of the Episcopal Church can 
 now, hy any official act, recognize any other Protestant Church as a 
 true Church, or ministers of any other Church as lawful ministers of 
 Christ. As the Church Journal, of recent date, boastingly states 
 it, " It may be an opinion tolerated in the Ghnrch, that the apostolical 
 succession is not necessary to a valid ministry. It is an opinion, 
 however, which the Church absolutely forbids every Parish, every 
 Convention, every Deacon, Priest or Bishop from acting on." Or, 
 as the Hartford Churchman, of the same date, puts it, more pointedly 
 and arrogantly, "Any man has a right to believe Free trade is better 
 than Protection, even though he is living under a Protectionist 
 Government; but if he carry his Free-trade opinions into practice he 
 is a smuggler •/' and so the editor believes, and glories in believing, 
 that the Episcopal Church has outlawed all non-episcopal ministers, 
 and views any minister of her own who would officially recognize 
 them as an ecclesiaslieal smuggler. This may be the law of the 
 Church ; I cannot positively deny it. This certainly is the spirit 
 of the recent legislation in the Church. But I thank God, it is not 
 the spirit of many of her ministers and multitudes of her people. I 
 thank God that there are thousands in her communion who have 
 never yet bowed the knee to this Baal. Yea, I thank God that there 
 are to-day thousands in her bosom whose hearts beat in full sympathy 
 
with the spirit of a late holy man of Gocl and honored minister of the 
 Gospel in the Episcopal Church, in the city of Baltimore, who for the 
 last twenty years of his life made it a rule never to pass, in his 
 daily walks about the city, the Church building of any Christian 
 denomination without silently lifting up his heart in prayer to the 
 Great Head of the Church for his blessing upon that Church, its 
 minister, its people, and its work ! 
 
 VINDICATION OF BISHOP CUMMINS. 
 
 Again, this question of the attitude of the Episcopal Church 
 towards the other Churches of Protestant Christendom was, after 
 all, the real question involved in Bisliop Cummins' communion act at 
 the recent meeting of the Evangelical Alliance. The right or the 
 wrong, the lawfulness or the unlawfulness, of his conduct, turned 
 solely on this point. That meeting was a noble gathering of the 
 great Protestant household of faith. It was a goodly and a pleasant 
 sight to see Christian brethren from almost every land, and nation, 
 and people, and tongue, meeting together and dwelling together in 
 such blessed unity. And it was surely most appropriate that, at 
 the close of their meeting, and before parting never to behold one 
 another's faces again in this world, they should gather as the members 
 of one great and blessed family around the table of their Common 
 Lord. And yet for taking his place at that table and uniting with 
 Christian brethren of other Churches in that sacred service. Bishop 
 Cummins was denounced in the most unmeasured terms, was accused 
 of having violated the Constitution and Canons of the Church, and 
 was charged with having been unfaithful to the most solemn vows a 
 human being* can assume. 
 
 Now, were these charges false, or were they true ? I do not discuss 
 this question so far as Bishop Cummins is concerned. He needs 
 no defense at my hands. His character as a Christian man and a 
 Christian minister stands unimpeached before the Christian world. 
 In the freshness and strength of his early manhood he took upon 
 him the vows of God and devoted himself to the service of God in 
 the ministry of the Gospel of Christ; and sacredly', faithfully, and 
 with his whole heart, so far as the eye of man can see, and with signal 
 marks of Divine blessing upon his work in every station he has 
 occupied, has he from that day to this remembered and kept those 
 vows to God. And in now laying down his office in the Episcopal 
 Church, and in going forth to labor in a new field, where, as he 
 honestly believes, he may 3'et more faithfully serve God and His 
 cause in the earth, he has done what as a Christian man he had a 
 perfect right to do, has done it in the most manly, and honest, and 
 straightforward way, and has done only what the Reformers of the 
 Church of England did when they came out of the Church of Rome. 
 
 But I ask the question because of its bearing on the attitude of the 
 Episcopal Church to the other Churches of the Reformation. And 
 on this point there is this sad and significant fact : While Bishop 
 
10 
 
 Cummins ivas so loudly condemned for that Communion act, there 
 was, so far as I know, but one paper in the entire Episcopal Church 
 in this country which spoke out in fearless, and honest, and hearty 
 terms, in defense of him and in justification of his act. Surely 
 this single fact clearly marks bow far the Episcopal Church has 
 already drifted from lier ancient Protestant moorings, and no one 
 who has watched for the last few years the course of the current 
 of public sentiment in her Communion can question that she is 
 destined to drift on yet further and yet faster in the same direction. 
 It cannot be otherwise. It follows as a logical necessity from that 
 division in the Church, and from those unscriptural views of the 
 effects of baptism and of the nature of the Lord's Supper and of the 
 office of the ministry, to which reference has already been made. 
 Just in proportion as those views spread and prevail in the Church, 
 will the Church become more exclusive in its character and more 
 unchurching: towards other bodies of Protestant Christians. 
 
 PATIENCE AND PASSIVENESS OP THE LOW-CHURCH MEMBERSHIP UNDER 
 THEIR TRIALS — CONTEST AVITHIN THE CHURCH USELESS. 
 
 And I must say that when, in the last few weeks, I have gone over 
 all these difficulties in the Protestant Episcopal Church, and looked 
 them calmly in the face, the result has been a feeling, not of surprise 
 at the uneasiness and restlessness many in the Church have felt for 
 years past, but of amazement that so many of us, from love to the 
 dear old Church, and for the sake of her peace, and still hoping for 
 better things, have borne them so long and so patiently. And when 
 I have seen so clearly, as it seemed to me, that the whole tendency 
 of things in the Protestant Episcopal Church, as it is to day, was not 
 for the better but for the worse, I have not wondered that Bishop 
 Cummins has at last felt himself verily called of God to take the 
 lead in organizing a Reformed Episcopal Church, and still less do I 
 wonder that many, in different parts of the Church, are, in their 
 gecret hearts, anxiously considering the question whether they too are 
 not called of God to join hands with him in the good work. 
 
 The main difficulty, I have no doubt, with many, as for days it 
 was with me, is the question whether a reformation cannot, in the 
 end be effected in the Church, and therefore, whether it is not a 
 matter of duty <o fight the battle in the Church. A careful review 
 of all the f^icts of the case has left me utterly without hope in that 
 quarter. In the Church the battle has been fought; and in the 
 Church the battle has been lost. Thirty-five years ago, when the 
 Oxford "Tracts for the Times " began seriously to endanger the 
 Protestant teaching and the Protestant character of the Church in 
 this country, open war was declared, and from that day to this has 
 raged all along the lines. And as the matter stands to-day in the 
 Church, as the result of a thirty-five years' struggle, the one party 
 has gained complete ascendency, has a majority of three-fourths in 
 
11 
 
 the House of Bishops, and perhaps nearly as large a majority in the 
 Lower House, has absolute control of the entire machinery of the 
 General Convention, and, as a party, is thoroughly organized, flushed 
 with victory, and going on conquering and to conquer. 'J'he other 
 party is in a hopeless minority, thoroughly disorganized, dispirited 
 by defeat, uncertain what to do, and like a man who cannot find his 
 hands in the day of battle. 
 
 And more than this ; in the Church, the struggle is hopeless for 
 another reason. Tlie High-Church has on its side the great 
 educational power of the Church. It uses readily and easily, for the 
 inculcation of its views, the catechism, and the Baptismal and other 
 services ; and these are read, and heard read, many times a year, by 
 parents, and sponsors, and children, and the congregation generally, 
 and that, too, on the most interesting occasions, and when they 
 make the deepest impression. While the Thirty-nine Articles of the 
 Church, which were designed to be the standard of doctrine for 
 the Church, and which sustain the Low-Church party in its teaching, 
 and prove conclusively that it holds to-day the doctrines held by 
 the framers of the Prayer-book, cannot be used efficiently either 
 in the education of the young or the instruction of the congregation 
 generally, and, as a matter of fact, are not read, or heard read, by 
 one Episcopalian in ten, more than once in ten years. 
 
 With the parties thus unequally matched, and with the contest to 
 be waged on these unequal terms, I can see nothing in the future 
 for the Low-Church party, if it continue in the Church, but further 
 defeat, further disintegration, and in the end the surrender of what 
 it has ever held to be the truth of God. 
 
 But even if the contest were not so hopeless, my honest convic- 
 tions are that itJiad better be ended. There is no necessity that the 
 two parties should fight out their differences in the Church. Where 
 no Divine law compels co-existence, separation is surely better than 
 discord. Where two persons or parties are not agreed, they had 
 better not walk together. And where they cannot do the Lord's 
 work together, they had better, for the present, do it apart. So 
 thought Barnabas and Paul at Antioch, and so they decided to act. 
 Their separation was a painful necessity and a most humiliating 
 occurrence; but the wrong of it was in their disagreeing; the 
 wrong was in their sharp contention ; the wrong was in their quar- 
 reling ; and not in their separating. And so in the Episcopal 
 Church to-day, the wrong is in there being two contending parties 
 in the Church; the wrong is in one party's teaching the doctrine 
 of justification by the sacraments, the other that of justification by 
 faith ; the wrong is in one party's insisting on having priests, and 
 altars, and sacrifices in the Church, the other on having no priests, 
 no altar, and no sacrifice but Christ; and as each party claims the 
 Prayer-book, and the Prayer-book cannot be altered ; and as separa- 
 tion is better than discord, the only remedy is separation. 
 
12 
 
 REASONS FOR TAKING THIS STEP SOLITARY AND ALONE. 
 
 Another difficulty which for da^^s kept me undecided, was the 
 feeling that, in such a matter, there ought to be concert of action 
 on the part of the Low-Church party. But the question was, how 
 was this to be brought about ? I have never entei'ed into any secret 
 organization, have never taken part in any secret caucus, and 
 especially in this matter have felt that whatever was done ought to 
 be done openly before the Church, and in the broad light of day. 
 For this reason, a secret meeting to secure concert of action was 
 out of the question. On the other hand, a public meeting was, for 
 obvious reasons, impracticable. If the meeting were called for the 
 avowed purpose o^ considering the question of leaving the Church, 
 those whose minds were made up to take the step could not 
 honestly take part in such a meeting. And if it were called for the 
 avowed purpose ot effecting a separation^ IhoBQ yi^ho&o, minds were 
 not made up to that step would hopelessly compromise their 
 position in the Church by attending such a meeting. And for still 
 more obvious reasons, no Convention or Council of any Diocese 
 could be expected to take action in the matter, until it had come 
 to be more discussed, more considered, and better understood. 
 Therefore, as soon as my mind was positively made up, I felt that 
 the only course for me to pursue was to lay down at once my office 
 in the Church, take my position distinctly outside of the Church, 
 and from that position say whatever I had to say in justification or 
 explanation of the step. 
 
 Under these circumstances and for. these principal reasons, I 
 have felt it my duty to withdraw from the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church. In taking the step, I may truly say I do it by faith ; for 
 I go out, almost literally not knowing whitiier I go, or who, if any, 
 of my friends will go with me. The Reformed Episcopal Church, as 
 organized by Bishop Cummins and others, meets entirely my views 
 of a Scriptural Church : 
 
 1. It plants itself firmly on the Word of God, as the sole rule of 
 faith and practice. 
 
 2. It adopts a Scriptural Liturgy, in which no countenance is 
 given to the Romish doctrines in regard to Baptism, and the 
 Lord's Supper and the Ministry, and it allows Christian liberty in the 
 use of that Liturgy. 
 
 . 3. It retains Episcopacy, not as of divine right, but as a very 
 ancient and desirable form of Church government. 
 
 And 4. It recognizes as Christian brethren all who love our Lord 
 Jesus Christ in sincerity, and as sister Churches all the Protestant 
 Churches that hold the faith once delivered to the Saints. 
 
 WHAT WILL WEST VIRGINIA DO? 
 
 But though this Church commends itself entirely to my judgment 
 and my affections, I shall wait to connect myself formally with it 
 until I see what my brethren in the Church of Virginia aiad West 
 
13 
 
 Virginia will do in the matter. I know that there are many of them 
 who have long been distressed and burdened on account of those 
 Romish innovations in doctrine and usage which are fast undermin- 
 ing the Protestant character of the Church, who have longed to see 
 those expressions in the Pra3'er-book which give countenance to such 
 things stricken out or altered, and who, almost despairing of any 
 reformation in the Church, must now be anxiously considering their 
 duty in regard to this movement for a reformed Church. And I 
 cannot help remembering, and dwelling upon the thought, that the 
 Church in the Diocese of Virginia occupies to-day, in the providence 
 of God, not only a peculiar position, but one of peculiar responsi- 
 bility. As yet, by God's grace, and happily for her, she has been 
 able to keep back from her own liorders the rising tide of Romish 
 error, and to maintain her Protestant and Scriptural faith, as no 
 other Diocese in the land has begun to do. And now, with three 
 godly Bishops (yourself, and Bishop Whittle, and Bishop Payne) 
 within her limits, and a band of true men in the ranks of her clergy 
 and her laity, she is a Church complete in herself, and can enter on 
 this needed work of reform as no other part of the Church in England 
 or this country can. Let her undertake it, and none dare question 
 her right to do so ; let her consummate it, and none dare impugn the 
 validitj^ of her action ; and no living man can foretell the great work 
 which, under God, she may thereby accomplish for Him and His 
 cause in the earth. And I honestly believe, if all the facts of the 
 case, and all the dangers of her longer connection with the Protestant 
 Episcopal Church in the United States, as at present constituted, 
 could be laid before the minds of her people, and a fair representation 
 of their sentiments be had, that nine-tenths of her laity and two-thirds 
 of her clergy would be found uniting their voices in one glad shout : 
 Let vs end this discord in the Church ; let us separate from those 
 with whom ive cannot dwell in peace ; let us stop this tampering with 
 our convictions of truth and duty in the use of expressions which 
 dangerously deceive human souls ; let us throw down from the walls 
 of our Zion these coverts and hiding-places for Romish errors, and 
 Ritualistic sacrifices, and priestly confessions, and absolutions ; and 
 let us see our Church with her old bulwarks and her old towers, 
 standing again in her rightful place, in the very center of Protestant 
 Christendom. 
 
 THE PROBABLE FUTURE OF THE NEW CHURCH. 
 
 A reformed Episcopal Church, thus inaugurated, would attract to 
 itself, sooner or later, all the elements of Protestantism in the present 
 Episcopal Church. It would command, at once, the confidence and 
 sympathy of the great body of Evangelical Protestant. Christians. It 
 would gather into its fold multitudes, through the length and breadth 
 of the land, who desire an Episcopal Church, with an orthodox faith, 
 a scriptural liturgy, and a Christian spirit. It would take its place 
 among other Protestant Churches, not as a rival sect, but as a Church 
 
14 
 
 of peace. It would set them a noble example of devotion to truth 
 iu matters essential, of liberty in matters non-essential, and of charity 
 towards all the different households of the great Protestant family. 
 It would be a living witness for their essential unity in the faith, 
 and a standing protest against all narrowness and exclusivism in 
 spirit. It would, so far as in it lay, sheathe the sword of controversy, 
 and give itself to the great and glorious work of preaching Jesus 
 and saving souls. And it would be a great step towards bringing 
 together in closer sympathy the now divided hosts of Protestantism, 
 and preparing them to present a united front in that dread struggle 
 with Romanism and infidelity, which, if the language of prophecy 
 and the signs of the times have not been strangely misread, is to 
 come upon the Christian Church throughout the Christian world. 
 
 Would to God that I could hope to see the Church in the Diocese 
 of Yiroinia arouse herself, and rise to the dignity of her position, and 
 meet the measure of her responsibiiit}^ in this crisis of her history. 
 Tliat the present is a crisis in her history and in the history of the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church in this country, no one, it seems to me, 
 can honestly question. The movement of Bishop Cummins is but a 
 new phase of an old question, but a new spark from a long-hidden 
 fire, and in fact but one of the signs of the times. However the 
 Church papers may, " pooh-pooh" it and affect to despise it, the 
 authorities of the Church have shown, by their hasty action in the 
 matter, how differently they think and feel about it. It is as yet, it 
 is true, the day of small things with the movement ; but what sane 
 man, in the light of scripture, or reason, or history, will despise it on 
 that account? When waters have been long dammed up and are 
 ready to overflow, a little child may let them out ; with one of its little 
 fingers may make a line across the dam, along which the waters will 
 begin first to trickle, then to flow in a little stream, then to deepen 
 and widen a channel for themselves, and in the end become a mighty 
 and resistless torrent. And so this movement may yet be " as the 
 letting out of waters." Certainly the Low-Church party cannot much 
 longer maintain its present position, as one of defense and toleration 
 in the Church; cannot much longer maintain its existence as a party 
 of mere negations in the Church, denying baptismal theories, and 
 denying sacrificial offerings, and denying priestly assumptions ; cannot 
 much longer afford to be wasting its time, and consuming its energy, 
 and wearing out its spirit, in needless controversies about unscrip- 
 tural words and expressions in the Prayer-book ; canaot much longer 
 be expected to go on using language which seems to teach one thing 
 and needs to be explained to mean a very diflTereut thing, and so 
 countenancing errors which could be cut up by the roots in a single 
 day, effectually eradicated from the Church, by the change of a dozen 
 words in the Prayer-book ; and in a word, cannot much longer be 
 confined in a Church which imposes such a yoke, and must and will 
 continue to impose it, because a large majority in the Church has at 
 length come to hold and teach, and means that the Church shall hold 
 and teach, just those errors, which, contrary as they are to the word 
 
15 
 
 of God, and to the Thirty-nine Articles of faith in the Prayer-book, 
 and to the real doctrines of the Church, find their countenance and 
 their only countenance iu those few expressions in the Prayer-book. 
 The moveraent which has already carried Bishop Cummins and others 
 out of the Church, is, tberefore, under God, as sure to go onward in 
 some form, as waters to flow downward. 
 
 THREE QUESTIONS THAT PRESENT THEMSELVES IN THIS CRISIS. 
 
 And the great and solemn questions before the Church in the 
 Diocese of Virginia, as to-day, in the Providence of God, occupying 
 so favored and so responsible a position, are these three : — 
 
 Will it remain in the Protestant Episcopal Church, with the almost 
 certain prospect of the final overthrow and surrender of its principles? 
 Or will it withdraw in a body, as a Church complete in itself, and 
 thereby secure at once a Reformed Episcopal Church? 
 
 Or will it leave many of its members to withdraw one by one, " as 
 people, being ashamed, steal away when they flee in battle? " 
 
 I know it will be said that in taking the step I have taken I have 
 pursued this last course, and already fled away in the day of battle, 
 but if so, it has surely not been from any fear of man, or man's 
 reproach. It has been simply on the principle that a man's action 
 will speak louder than his words, and simply that I might bear, in 
 the must honest, and distinct, and emphatic way possible, my feeble 
 testimony to the necessity for a Reformed Episcopal Church. Had 
 I seen any other way of doing this half so efiectuallj^, I would gladly 
 have chosen it, and God helping me, fearlessly have pursued it. And 
 surely the struggle the step has cost me, could my brethren in the 
 ministry and oiher friends only know it, and the sacrifices it involves, 
 ought to satisfy them of the strength of my convictions and the 
 siitcerity of my motives. 
 
 And now, in concluding this letter, permit me, my dear Bishop, to 
 add, that if anything in it shall appear to be wanting in respect to 
 you or your office, I beg you to believe it has not, for a moment, been 
 so intended. My respect and admiration for you as the most faithful 
 pre icher of the pure gospel I have ever heard in any branch of the 
 Church of Christ, my personal obligations to you for so many kind- 
 nesses received at your hands, and every feeling of my heart, would 
 forbitl anything of the kind. When 1 commenced to write this letter, 
 1 had no idea of the length or the range of discussion it would 
 assume. But as I have mused, the fire has burned, my convictions 
 have come out clear and strong, and I have felt that, as a servant of 
 Christ, and in furtherance of what I believed to be for His glory, I 
 ought to be neither afraid nor ashamed to utter them. If aught has 
 been written amiss, may He pardon and overrule it ; if aught accord- 
 ing to His will, may He bless and prosper it. 
 
 VVith sincere veneration and afiection, I am, my dear Bishop, 
 Very truly, yours, etc., A. J. Latane. 
 
 To the Rt. Rev. John Johns, D. 2>., Bishop of the Protestant Epis- 
 copal Church in the Diocese of Virginia. 
 
) 
 
 ) 
 
 } 
 
PHOTOMOUNT 
 PAMPHLET BINDER 
 
 Manu/aclureJ by 
 
 GAYLORD BROS. Ue. 
 
 Syracuse, N. Y. 
 
 Stockton, Calif. 
 
BX6072 .L35 
 
 Letter... to Bishop Johns : resigning 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library