the peer of Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate, yet he was equal to either, save Chaucer. That he produced nothing positively to justify such a claim was the result of a mistaken career, not of inability. The fancy, the wit, the mad rhyming raillery of "The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng," the tenderness and humor of "Phyllyp Sparowe," sharply-drawn sketches of vices in the "Bowge of Courte," and the devout tone of the "Woffully Araid,” prove a claim to powers equal to far better things than these even. But he hid his rare talent under a worthless heap of abusive and temporary satires. By these he has been judged and condemned. And then the contemptuous reference in a passing couplet by the poet who ruled under Queen Anne has sealed the fate of the reputation of a man remarkable for what he had done, and deserving a juster award.

M

OST members of the "Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America" are acquainted with the following formula: "It is evident unto all men, diligently reading Holy Scripture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church,Bishops, Priests, and Deacons." In this formula, which introduces the series of offices provided for setting apart those who are, in one capacity or another, to serve at her altars, our branch of the Church authoritatively instructs her members that the Church Catholic has, from the beginning, been possessed of three sorts or grades of ministers. Good Churchmen, then, even if they spare themselves the diligent reading which is suggested to them, will rest in the conclusion that the presence of all these grades is essential to the completeness of the ecclesiastical system; they would be excusable if they accepted the conclusion that if any grade were lacking, the Catholic Church would be incomplete. They will not tolerate the absence even of the lowest of the three. Repeating to themselves the words of the Apostle, "Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary" (I. Corinthians, xii. 22), they will, while confronting the advocates of parity with the ancient war-cry, "No Church without a bishop!" be ready, if they can find anybody to oppose them on such an issue, to cry, "No Church without a deacon!" We propose to show with what a

cheerful courage this last watchword may be uttered whenever our adversaries, grown weary of forever assailing the episcopate, shall make a sudden charge on the diaconate.

We find, on pursuing our examination of the ordinal, that the Church gives the fullest sanction to the utterance of this note of defiance by her champions. The first rubric under the office for "making deacons" prescribes a "sermon or exhortation," which shall declare, among other things, "how necessary that order is in the Church of Christ." This rubric, repeated in the next office of the ordinal, is not repeated in the third, so that we feel a little more sure of deacons than of bishops, and become very stubborn in affirming that no Church can exist without them. And as we turn to contemplate the English and American Churches, and prepare to invite the scrutiny of any captious antagonist who may be conveniently at hand, we remark, with a gratification which we do not wish to conceal, the evidences that they possess the diaconate. We can appeal even to our laity to bear witness to its existence. There are probably not many laymen of mature age who have not at some time or other seen a deacon. But there is accessible documentary evidence in the shape of journals, diocesan and general, which is not less convincing than the personal recollections of the laity. The journal of the very last convention in Connecticut assures us that on or about the first of June, in the year 1872, as many as nineteen deacons were canonically resident in that diocese. A careful inspection of the list shows us, it is true, that these nineteen were not all locally resident, but we find that when every abatement has been made, at least eight ministers of this grade were at the time specified officiating in Connecticut. There was, in short, one for every county in the State. Indeed, the number is so great as to occasion us some uneasiness; for it appears from ancient authors that the Council of Neo-Cæsarea, held in the year 315, ten years before the Council of Nicæa, fixed the number for each diocese, or city, at seven. Connecticut had, therefore, it would seem, one deacon too many actually at work, without including the eleven supernumeraries who were fortunately doing nothing, or were busy at a safe distance from the jurisdiction of their diocesan. It is very painful to lie under the censure even of a provincial synod, of the ante-Nicene period, and we learn with great satisfaction that we are relieved from censure by the decrees of the second Council in Trullo, which set aside the embarrassing canon of Neo-Cæsarea. It is clearly proven, therefore, not only that deacons are necessary, and that we have them, but that in one diocese, at any rate, we have no more than we can

lawfully make use of. It is only reasonable, then, to suppose that our captious antagonist will have been driven back to the position of a candid inquirer. In this character he will undoubtedly ask us what deacons have to do. And while we are casting about us for a suitable reply, he may have time for some inferences of his own. Combining with the facts which we have set before him another fact which he has somewhere picked up respecting the close relation subsisting in very early times between the deacon and the bishop, he reasons as follows: It is plain that the deaconship is not a parochial, but a diocesan ministry, directly dependent on the episcopate. And inasmuch as in Connecticut there are exactly as many deacons as counties, it is probable that they are each charged with a subordinate jurisdiction; they are a species of presiding elders, or, very likely, of suffragan bishops, appointed to instruct and counsel and admonish the parochial clergy. Or, perhaps, their office respects the laity rather than the clergy; they journey from parish to parish to enlighten and rouse the people; they are, by eminence, the preachers of the diocese. Or, perhaps, finally, since the office of deacon appears at one time to have had something to do with the dispensing of charity, they are the diocesan almoners, the trustees of gifts and legacies, the bishop's council of advice in matters of finance.

By this time, we have refreshed our memories with regard to the functions of the diaconate, and we hasten to impress upon our disciple the magnitude of his errors. "You are wrong," we tell him, "in your primary inference as to the deacon's place in the system of the Church. You have only to open our Prayer Book in order to discover that every deacon is told, when he is admitted to his office, that he is to assist, not the bishop, but the priest, the clergyman who presides over the local Church; the parish is expressly named as the field of his labors. You are, of course, equally wrong in all your secondary inferences, in the various suppositions which you make as to the nature of his duties. How can you imagine that he is to superintend and teach the parochial clergy, when his knowledge of theology need not extend beyond the Prayer Book and the English Bible? How can you imagine that he is to spend his time in circuit-preaching, when he is not to preach at all unless licensed thereto by the bishop himself?' How can you imagine that he is to administer the pecuniary affairs of the diocese, when he generally contrives to get through with his diaconal work by the time he is four and twenty?"

1

Digest, Title I. Canon 2, § V. [1]; Canon 4, § III. [1].

The ignorance of our candid inquirer being thus far dissipated, we proceed to admonish him, with due severity, to respect and accept the claims of a Church with three orders, when he surprises us by begging leave to ask a few more questions. We have, of course, supplied him with a Prayer Book; we have also called his attention to the journal of our Diocesan Convention; he has somehow got into his hands a copy of the lately published journal of our last General Convention. Thus equipped, he proceeds, in that spirit of candor which we have so much admired and commended, to extract from our text-books and from us further information about the third order. "I perceive," he remarks, "that the object which you have in view in maintaining this order, is that the presbyters may have helpers in their parochial work; first, in the offices of worship and teaching, and, secondly, 'where provision is so made,' that is, I presume, in all well-regulated parishes, in the care of the poor and sick. The deacon is, by virtue of his office, the priest's assistant; the necessity for his office must lie in the fact that the priest that is, the parish priest-needs assistance. Now, will you be good enough to make it clear to me how eight deacons can perform the functions which you declare to be so necessary, in almost one hundred and fifty parishes? And will you also explain to me why, in view of the immense demand which this necessity must create for the services of these eight men, only two of them, as the list of your diocesan clergy shows me, are engaged in the specific duties of their office? It would appear that the law of supply and demand has been repealed in the Diocese of Connecticut. I am still further perplexed by the wider view of the condition of the Protestant Episcopal Church which is given me in the journal of your last General Convention. If I understand its statistical tables, the presbyters of your Church, numbering, a year ago, two thousand five hundred and sixty-six, could command the services of just two hundred and thirty-one deacons. If the deacons were evenly distributed through your various episcopal jurisdictions, one of them would be allotted to every eleven presbyters, or thereabout. Making due deduction for unemployed clergymen of the second order, each of your parish priests would perhaps be entitled to so much assistance as he could get out of the ninth part of a deacon. But the distribution is very far from even. The one diocese in which equal and exact justice is done to the presbyters, I find, by careful computation, to be the Diocese of Illinois. There the third and second orders stand to each other in the proportion of one to eleven and a fraction. But in New Hampshire, Mississippi,