ed reviewers are both in honor and in duty bound to keep
themselves absolutely clear of controversial bias. The movement
is not a movement to alter in any slightest respect the dogmatic
teaching of the Church, not a movement to unsettle foundations,
not a movement toward disowning or repudiating our past, but simply
and only an endeavor to make the Common Prayer, if possible (and
we are far from being sure, as yet, that it is possible), a better
thing of its kind, more comprehensive, more elastic, more readily
responsive to the demands of all occasions and the needs of "all
sorts and conditions of men." Some who are deeply persuaded that
only by doctrinal revision in one direction or another can the
Prayer Book be made thoroughly to commend itself to the heart and
mind of the American people will esteem the measure of change
above indicated not worth the effort indispensable to the attainment
of it. Be it so; other some there are who do think the attempt
well advised and who are willing to waive their own pet notions
as to possible doctrinal improvements of the book for the sake of
securing a _consensus_ upon certain great practical improvements
which come within the range of things attainable.

Certain it is that any attempt of a body of reviewers like this to
disturb, even by "shadowed hint," the existing doctrinal settlement
under which we are living together, would be resented by the whole
Church.

There are divines among us who in the interest of a more sharply
defined orthodoxy are conscientiously bent upon securing the
reintroduction among our formularies of the so-called Athanasian
Creed.

There are others who consider that a more damaging blow at the
catholicity of our dogmatic position as a Church could scarcely
be dealt.

Again, there are theologians who account the Prayer Book to be
so thoroughly saturated in all its parts with the sacramental
idea, that they would account it not only a piece of far-seeing
statesmanship, but also a perfectly safe procedure to allow those
who chose to do so to thank God after a child's baptism for the
simple fact that he had thereby been "grafted into the body of
Christ's Church."

But over against these stand a much larger number who think
nothing of the sort, and who would put up with the liturgical
shortcomings of the Prayer Book, go without "enrichments" for
a thousand years, rather than see the single word "regenerate"
dropped out of the post-baptismal office.