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THE

GENIUS AND MISSION

OF THE

PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH

IN THE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

BY THE REV. CALVIN COLTON, LL.D.,

PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC ECONOMY, TRINITY COLLEGE,

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REV. PIERCE CONNELLY, M.A.,

SOMETIME DOMESTIC CHAPLAIN TO THE LATE EARL OF SHREWSBURY
AT ALTON TOWERS.

LONDON:

J. S. HODSON, 22, PORTUGAL STREET,

LINCOLN'S INN.

1853.

110. d. 56.

BOD

COPYRIGHT

ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY J. 8. HODSON, 22, PORTUGAL STREET,
LINCOLN'S INN.

PREFACE.

BY THE REV. PIERCE CONNELLY, M.A.

Ir is not necessary to agree with Professor Colton's views of Church-history or Church-polity, in order to be satisfied that his work is one of public interest.

For the second time in three hundred years, Religion has forced itself into the field of English politics. Its unhuman exclusion is no longer possible. And it comes into the field in the shape of no feeble novelty, waiting for time and circumstances to give it an organization, influence, and a position. It comes in the shape of the old embodied MYSTERY, the mighty HARLOT-MOTHER, that is long used to crack the sceptres and trample on the crowns of merely territorial sovereigns. And it comes with unlooked-for developments of strength, and with accumulated knowledge and confidence and scorn. Rome's faith, strong as that of angels, in the reality and depth of human pride and cowardice and credulity; her contempt, worthy of Lucifer, for our carnally divided Christianity, have been strangely justified. The check which she received in the days of Leo X., had the solemnest reparation at the hands of allied Europe, when, in 1815, at the bidding of Christian England, the Impostor-Pontiff was recognized as Priest and King, and conceded a higher rank than Emperors. And in 1829, when the Reformation was repealed by Act of Parliament, there was virtually decreed to the Pope, a prospective share in the government of the British Empire greater than

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