ry VIII 1534 Macaulay and
other English
Historians.
Lutheran Germany Martin Luther 1524 S. S. Schmucker
in "History of
all
Denominations."
Unitarian Germany Celatius About Alvan Lamson,
Congrega- 1540 Ibid.
tionalists
Congrega- England Robert Browne 1583 E. W. Andrews,
tionalists Ibid.
Quakers England George Fox 1647 English
Historians.
Do America William Penn 1681 American
Historians.
Catholic Jerusalem Jesus 33 New Testament.
Church

From this brief historical tableau we find that all the Christian _sects_
now existing in the United States had their origin since the year 1500.
Consequently, the oldest body of Christians among us, outside the Catholic
Church, is not yet four centuries old. They all, therefore, come fifteen
centuries too late to have any pretensions to be called the Apostolic
Church.

But I may be told: "Though our public history as Protestants dates from
the Reformation, we can trace our origin back to the Apostles." This I say
is impossible. First of all, the very name you bear betrays your recent
birth; for who ever heard of a Baptist or an Episcopal, or any other
Protestant church, prior to the Reformation? Nor can you say: "We existed
in every age as an invisible church." Your concealment, indeed, was so
complete that no man can tell, to this day, where you lay hid for sixteen
centuries. But even if you did exist you could not claim to be the Church
of Christ; for our Lord predicted that His Church should ever be as a city
placed upon the mountain top, that all might see it, and that its
ministers should preach the truths of salvation from the watch-towers
thereof, that all might hear them.

It is equally in vain to tell me that you were allied in faith to the
various Christian sects that went out from the Catholic Church from age to
age; for these sects proclaim