Page:Remarks on Some Late Decisions Respecting the Colonial Church.djvu/17

 had they called themselves members of the Church of South Africa. The difference is, that the one description implies the acceptance of tenets and rules which are known, and the other of tenets and rules which are not known; and that, if the question what their tenets and rules were should be raised incidentally in a civil Court, it would be unnecessary in the one case to produce evidence which would be necessary in the other.

Every religious society properly so called—that is, every number of persons having not only common religious beliefs, but some common religious organization—has certain selected tenets (not necessarily the most important in the opinion of all its members) which it regards as tests of agreement with itself, or as terms of communion. The Articles and Formularies are in England made by law the standards, to a certain extent, of faith and public teaching for clergymen of the Established Church, and we have accepted them as such. The Apostles' Creed is, in the Baptismal Service and the Service for the Visitation of the Sick, treated as comprising the terms of communion. A judge, who had to enquire what were the tenets and discipline of an unestablished society calling themselves members of the Church of England, would be justified in assuming that these standards occupied among them a position analogous to that which the same standards hold among ourselves.

The word jurisdiction occurs so often, and plays so important a part in these questions, that it is worth while to make sure of its meaning. The first rule of sound reasoning is to use the same