The Law of the Protestant Episcopal Church and Other Ecclesiastical Bodies; A Manual for Church Officers, with Forms

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891. Excerpt: ... PREFACE TO APPENDIX. My treatise on the law of the Protestant Episcopal Church received so kind a reception from the members of that body, and I have been honored by so many urgent requests from those prominent in other religious societies to add to it the law relating to their own organizations, that I have, with much hesitation, prepared the following. My only excuse for it is that the ground seems to be wholly unoccupied, and that I have spared myself no amount of toil in preparing it. It has been my effort to present the rules of law applicable to each denomination in so simple a form that any clergyman or layman may conduct all the business of the Church without the expensive aid of the legal fraternity. I have added forms for all ordinary proceedings which seem to me complete and able to endure judicial scrutiny. The only work on the subject now extant, so far as I am aware, is that of Hoffman, published many years ago, erudite and able, but largely a compilation of statutes and intelligible to lawyers only. Since its publication the law has been largely altered by more recent statutes, so that it would not now be a reliable guide even for the legal profession. I think no manual has ever before been offered to the public, which, like this, presents only a clear, simple, and very lucid view of the law of each of the large religious bodies, in such guise as to be, to lawyers and laymen alike, a guide and light on the path of ecclesiastical jurisprudence. George H. Humphrey. Rochester, N. Y., May, 1890. THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. HISTORY. PRIOR to the American Revolution the Presbyterian Church had but an uncertain footing in the State of New York. The Dutch Church tolerated no form of worship not in harmony with that set forth by the Synod of Dort. Its ...