TITLE I.--Of the Orders of the Ministry and of the Doctrine and Worship of this Church. Under this head there are Twenty-six Canons. TITLE II.--Of Discipline, Thirteen Canons. TITLE III.--Of the Organized Bodies and Officers of the Church, Nine Canons. {81} TITLE IV.--Miscellaneous Provisions, Four Canons. There is also an appendix of Standing Resolutions. Dimissory Letter.--A letter given to a clergyman removing from one Diocese to another. The General Canons provide that "before a clergyman shall be permitted to settle in any Church or Parish, or be received into union with any Diocese of this Church as a Minister thereof, he shall produce to the Bishop, or if there be no Bishop, to the Standing Committee thereof, a letter of dismission from under the hand and seal of the Bishop with whose Diocese he has been last connected . . . which shall be delivered within six months from the date thereof; and when such clergyman shall have been so received he shall be considered as having passed entirely from the jurisdiction of the Bishop from whom the letter of dismission was brought, to the full jurisdiction of the Bishop or other Ecclesiastical Authority by whom it shall be accepted and become thereby subject to all the canonical provisions of this Church." The effect of this law is that in the Episcopal Church there can be no strolling, irresponsible evangelists or preachers, and thus the people are protected from imposture, and may know, when the proper steps are taken, that their ministers come to them fully accredited and duly authorized to minister to them in Christ's Name. Diocese.--The territorial limits of a Bishop's Jurisdiction. Properly speaking the Diocese is the real unit of Church life. Originally the Bishop went first in the establishing of the Church in any nation or country; out of this Jurisdiction grew the parishes or local congregation, being ministered to by the Priests {82} under the Bishop. In the American Church, through force of circumstances, the reverse of this has been the case. But notwithstanding, the fact remains here as elsewhere that the Diocese with the Bishop at its head is the real unit of Church life and organization, and the Parish a dependency of it and from which it gets its corporate existence as a Parish. In the phraseology of the Canons, a missionary Bishop presides over a "Missionary Jurisdiction" which it is expected will develop into a Diocese, but according to the true theory of the Church his _Missionary Jurisdiction_ is really a Diocese. (See CATHEDRAL.) Diocesan.--The name given to a Bishop who presides over a Diocese. The word also means relating or pertaining to a Diocese.