The vestrymen of each parish are elected annually by the people.
In each of these three bodies the lay element possesses the virtual supremacy. In general convention, no law can be enacted, no lax discipline can be reformed, no erroneous doctrine can be corrected, without the express acquiescence of the lay-deputies. In the diocesan convention, no bishop can be elected, no delegates to the general convention can be appointed, and no local diocesan regulations can be established, until the laity agree. In the parish, no pastor can be called, no church-building be erected, no regular order be determined, while the people withhold their permission. And though, upon the face of it, this power may seem to be entirely negative, yet it is not so; for, in the right to choose their pastors and convention-delegates, the real control of the diocesan conventions, and, through these, of their bishops and the general convention, is placed ultimately in their hands, and, whenever they might choose to organize for such a purpose, a single generation would suffice to overturn the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the church itself.
In this respect, also, the Episcopal Church has practically conformed herself to the model which our national institutions set before her. If she believes that, in religious as well as secular affairs, "all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," her system and belief are certainly consistent, but it can hardly be pretended that either of them is divine. Nor will it be denied that all the objections to which the temporal is open on the score of instability and weakness are doubly pertinent to the ecclesiastical, so long as those whom Christ intended that his church should govern on the contrary really govern her.
But however unstable and insecure in all her fundamental and organic principles the Episcopal Church has thus been rendered by the inherent nature of her system, she certainly is far from flexible in her methods of external operation. Here all the strength of her conservatism concentrates itself. The Prayer-Book is "the apple of her eye." It cost her less to blot out a creed in which the faith of ages was embodied, and rob her clergy of the power of absolution, than it would now to change a single syllable of her "incomparable liturgy." Yet nothing is more widely understood, even in her own borders, than that this very liturgy is the greatest barrier which stands between her and the masses of the people; and that her inflexible, unvarying use of it on all occasions is the great patent cause of her acknowledged failures.
The entire Memorial movement proceeded upon the assumption that this inflexibility exists, and that to it must be attributed the uselessness of efforts which, under different methods, should have accomplished great results. The Memorialists did not hesitate to say that, with "her fixed and invariable modes of public worship," her "canonical means and appliances," "her traditional customs and usages," she was "inadequate to do the work of the Lord," and that, in their view, it was necessary to define and act upon a system "broader and more comprehensive" than that which then existed, and "providing for as much freedom in opinion, discipline, and worship as is compatible with the essential faith and order of the gospel." [Footnote 51] The commission boldly acknowledged that "we have to labor in places where very much of our work is outside of that contemplated in the plans of our offices," [Footnote 52] and that "our methods of dealing with men should be more direct and manifold." [Footnote 53] They admitted the "necessity of that diversity in our modes of operation which has not been heretofore sufficiently appreciated," [Footnote 54] and that "we have refused or neglected to use many gifts which Christ has bestowed on his church." [Footnote 55] Different bishops declared that her ministers "must often preach the gospel where the attempt to perform the entire service would be incongruous, unsuccessful, and injurious;" [Footnote 56] that at such times the clergy were "like David in Saul's armor," [Footnote 57] and objects of compassion in the eyes of others. The late Bishop Polk, with characteristic frankness, stated:
[Footnote 51: Memorial Papers, p. 30.]
[Footnote 52: Ibid. p. 50.]
[Footnote 53: Ibid. p. 53.]
[Footnote 54: Ibid. p. 52.]
[Footnote 55: Ibid. p. 58.]