“I believe in the Holy Ghost; the Holy Catholic Church; the Communion of Saints; the Forgiveness of Sins,” etc.
In this sentence, according to Bishop Pearson on the Creed, are announced four important doctrines: 1. The Holy Ghost; 2. The Holy Catholic Church; 3. The Communion of Saints; 4. The Forgiveness of Sins.
To each one of these the good Bishop devotes some twenty or thirty pages of explanation.
But it is customary with many clergymen in reading to slur the second and third articles together, thus: “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints”—that is to say, I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, which is the communion of saints.
Now, in the standard edition of the English Prayer Book, and in all the editions published from it, the separate articles of faith are divided by semicolons—thus: “The Holy Ghost; The Holy Catholic Church; The Communion of Saints.” But in our American editions the punctuation is altered to suit a modern rationalistic idea—thus: “The Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints.”
The doctrine of the Communion of Saints, as held by primitive Christians, and held still by the Roman and Greek Churches, is thus dropped out of view in the modern Protestant Episcopal reading.
But what is this doctrine? Bishop Pearson devotes a long essay to it, ending thus:
Every one may learn by this what he is to understand by this part of the article in which he professeth to believe in the Communion of Saints.
Thereby he is conceived to express thus much: