(b) Their steadfastness in the Apostles' fellowship, dealings, doings, ministry or form of government.
(c) Their steadfastness in the breaking of the bread, or the Holy Communion; Holy Baptism being included in the Apostolic doctrine.
(d) Their steadfastness in the Apostles' manner of praying or in the set forms of prayer, at first, for twenty-five years in the Temple and the synagogues of the Jews.
These being the four marks of the church at that time, is there now in existence any church having these selfsame marks? Without any doubt, Christ was the founder of that visible body of Christians, the church in Acts II. Does that church exist to-day? It must, because Christ said: "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it."—Matt. 16:18.
then which is it, and where is it?
The church is certainly a visible body of Christians, not founded by a man or men, but by Jesus Christ. Having a divine founder it is then a divine society, seeking men to save them from the degrading power of sin and everlasting punishment in hell. It is not then, as is so commonly and popularly thought, a human society founded by Luther, 1530; Calvin, 1541; Knox, 1560; Robert Brown, 1582; Roger Williams, 1639; John Wesley, 1739; or Swedenborg, 1783. In brief, the church founded by Jesus Christ is the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, as Christ so often described it (Matthew 13:47, 5:19, 13:44); endowed with power from on high transmitted through her unbroken line of the Apostolic ministry, but obedient to her Divine Founder, who is at the right hand of God in heaven.
This church of four distinct marks in the Acts existed before the completion of the New Testament at least some sixty years, and it was the church that by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit pronounced the New Testament inspired, and rejected other books claiming to set forth the life of Christ, three hundred years after it was founded. The Old Testament is the document of the Jewish Church, that church having been in existence for a thousand years before its document was completed. Therefore, this church of the Acts cannot be set aside for one claimed to be founded upon the Bible.
For three hundred years then, this Apostolic Church existed with Apostolic doctrine, ministry, sacraments, and prayers before she gave the New Testament to the world with her certificate that it was the Inspired Word of God.
The Protestant Episcopal Church of America as the daughter of the Church of England, has ever possessed, and does now possess and hold more sacred, these four marks that identify her unmistakably with the primitive and Apostolic Church, as a true branch of the same.
First, as to doctrine this church holds and defends the pure teaching of the early church, without taking from or adding to the same. There are few, indeed, who would question this.