1. The Episcopalians have a right to reform their services whenever they choose, and are at perfect liberty to agitate the question. By the constitution of their own church, they have the power to alter, change, or modify both their liturgy and their creeds. Did not the Church of England do this on several occasions? Has not the American Episcopal Church done it also? Did she not materially alter the prayer-book, leaving out, for example, both the form of absolution, and also the Athanasian Creed? That which has been done can surely be done again, especially in a body which disclaims infallibility, and is, therefore, sure of nothing, and is ever on all points open to progress. Here it seems to us that the high-churchmen have no ground on which to stand. They cannot assert that anything their church teaches is the voice of God, because she expressly tells them that she has no authority. They cannot hold any reasonable theory of ecclesiastical pretensions, because, by doing so, they would unchurch themselves. A church ought to know its own powers, if it have any. They may have their own opinions, and press them as such; but they have no right to lord it over the consciences of their brethren who disagree with them, as if they (the actual minority) were the church rather than their more numerous opponents. Their fathers whose "godly admonitions" they seek to follow, surely never meant to cast their "incomparable liturgy" in an iron mould. {41} Besides, in sober common sense, all the extravagancies of the low-churchmen are nothing compared to the doings of the extreme ritualists, who have so metamorphosed the service that no uninitiated Episcopalian could ever recognize it. Think of changing every rubric, and engrafting upon the common prayer the actual ceremonies and even the words of the Roman missal. We understand that few of the signers of the union manifesto are opposed to these advances of ritualism, and that many of them are ready to hear confessions or celebrate Mass when a good occasion is offered. With what face, then, can they find fault with their brethren who exercise their liberty in another direction? And inasmuch as there is a manifest inconsistency between various parts of the prayer-book, it would be well for them and for truth to have their code revised, that the world may know precisely what they do mean.