Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 07.djvu/438

LEFT PROTESTANT The protest should be made as soon as he enters the port, ... the limit usually assigned being within 24 hours of his arrival. The word is also applied to a declara- tion made by a party before or while paying a tax, duty, or the like demanded of him which he deems illegal, denying the justice of the demand, and asserting his own rights and claims in order to show that the payment was not volun- tary. PKOTESTANT, one who protests. In Church history, the name given to those princes and others who, on April 19, 1529, at the second diet of Speyer, pro- tested against the decision of the ma- jority, that the permission given three years before to every prince to regulate religious matters in his dominions till the meeting of a General Council should be revoked, and that no change should be made till the council met. Besides protesting, they appealed to the emperor and to the future council. The diet re- jecting their protest, they presented a mere extended one next day. Those first Protestants were John, Elector of Sax- ony; the Margrave George of Branden- burg, Onolzbach, and Culmbach; the Dukes Ernest and Francis of Liineburg; the Landgrave Philip of Hesse; Wolf- gang, Prince of Anhalt, and the repre- sentatives of the imperial cities of Strassbui'g, Ulm, Nuremberg, Constance, Reutlingen, Windsheim, Memmingen, Lindau, Kempten, Heilbronn, Isny, Weis- senburg, Nordlingen, and St. Gall. The name is now extended to all persons and churches holding the doctrines of the Reformation and rejecting papal author- ity. PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, a denomination in the United States directly descended from the Church of England, which doctrinally claims to be based on the Holy Scrip- tures, as interpreted in the Apostles and other ancient creeds of the Church that have been universally received, and to have kept herself aloof from all the modern systems of faith, whether of Cal- vin, or Luther, or Arminius, leaving her members free to enjoy their own opin- ions and refusing to be narrowed down to any other creed or creeds than those of the Apostles and the Primitive Church. She claims also to have re- tained all that is essential to church or- ganization in her episcopate, and in her liturgy to have not only a wise and judi- cious compend of doctrine and devotion, but also one of the most effectual of all possible conservative safeguards for the faith once delivered to the saints. The characteristic tenets of the Church of 362 PROTEUS England, besides the fundamental doc- trines of the Trinity and redemption through the all-sufficient atonement once made for all by the death of Christ on the cross, are a regeneration or spiritual birth in baptism, in which the baptized becomes a member of the Church, and a growth in grace by the use of the sacra- ments and ministrations of the Church duly administered and duly received, made efficacious by the word of divine truth and the gracious influences of the Holy Ghost, freely given to all who duly seek and faithfully use them. The Church has power to decree rites or cere- monies, and to decide matters of faith; clei-gymen are allowed to marry; and communion is to be given in both kinds. The number of sacraments is two — bap- tism and the Lord's Supper. Three clerical orders are recognized — bishops, priests, and deacons. Those of the sec- ond order are entitled archdeacons, deans, rectors, vicars, or curates, accord- ing to their functions. From the time of the first congrega- tions of the Church of England in Amer- ica, in 1607, to the close of the Revolu- tion, all the clergy in the colonies were regarded as under the supervision of the Bishop of London. The first American bishop was Rev. Samuel Seabury, who, in 1783, was consecrated in Scotland as Bishop of Connecticut. All Protestant Episcopal churches in the United States are associated in one national body, called the General Convention, which meets triennially. The General Conven- tion directs the manner in which the qualifications of candidates for orders shall be estimated and determined; regu- lates the particulars in regard to the election and ordination of the orders of the ministry; defines the nature of ec- clesiastical offenses, and decrees the pun- ishment thereof; settles the particular form and orders of its common prayer, and publishes authorized editions of the Book of Common Prayer; and directs the mode and manner of its intercourse with foreign churches. No law or canon can be enacted without the concurrence of both clergy and laity. In 1919 the Communicants in the United States numbered 1,098,173, the Churches 7,425, and the Ministers 5,544. PROTEUS, in the Homeric or oldest Greek mythology, a prophetic "old man of the sea," who tends the sea flocks of Poseidon (Neptune), and has the gift of endless transformation. His ^ favorite residence, according to Homer, is the is- land of Pharos, off the mouth of the Nile; but according to Vergil, the island of Carpathos (now Skarpanto), between Crete and Rhodes. Proteus was very