holic. This tendency has been
common in the East also, where with the growth of racial rivalries the
Orthodox Church has split into a series of national churches, holding
the same faith but independent as to organization.

A yet further development, of comparatively recent growth, has been the
formation of what are now commonly called in England the "free
churches." These represent a theory of the Church practically unknown to
the Reformers, and only reached through the necessity for discovering a
logical basis for the communities of conscientious dissidents from the
established churches. According to this the Catholic Church is not a
visibly organized body, but the sum of all "faithful people" throughout
the world, who group themselves in churches modelled according to their
convictions or needs. For the organization of these churches no divine
sanction is claimed, though all are theoretically modelled on the lines
laid down in the Christian Scriptures. It follows that, while in the
traditional Church, with its claim to an unbroken descent from a divine
original, the individual is subordinate to the Church, in the "free
churches" the Church is in a certain sense secondary to the individual.
The believer may pass from one community to another without imperilling
his spiritual life, or even establish a new church without necessarily
incurring the reproach of schism. From this theory, powerful in Great
Britain and her colonies, supreme in the United States of America, has
resulted an enormous multiplication of sects.

It follows from the above argument that, from the period of the
Reformation onward, no historical account of the Christian Church as a
whole, and considered as a definite institution, is possible. The stream
of continuity has been broken, and divides into innumerable channels.
The only possible synthesis is that of the Christianity common to all;
as institutions, though they possess many features in common, their
history is separate and must be separately dealt with. The history of
the various branches of the Christian Church since the Reformation will
therefore be found under their several titles (see ROMAN CATHOLIC
CHURCH; ENGLAND, CHURCH OF; PRESBYTERIANISM; BAPTISTS, &c, &c.).
(W. A. P.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Upon the spread of the Church during the early centuries see
especially Harnack's _Mission und Ausbreitung des Christenthums in
den ersten drei Jahrhunderten_. An interesting parallel t