Plus ça change . . .

http://accurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2008/04/plus-change.html

[Anglican Curmudgeon] 5 Apr 2007--I am working on a post that will trace the history and the abuses of the "Abandonment of Communion" canons of The Episcopal Church. In the course of my research, I came across some documents that seem to suggest that we have all been through this before. The occasion was the formation, by a group of "low church" dissenters led by the assistant Bishop of Kentucky, the Rt. Rev. George D. Cummins, of the Reformed Episcopal Church in December 1873. A minister in the Diocese of Pennsylvania, the Rev. Marshall B. Smith, wrote a brave letter to his diocesan, the Rt. Rev. William Bacon Stevens, on June 6, 1874, in response to the address the latter had given at the Diocesan Convention that year. In the letter, the Rev. Smith (who had assisted in the formation of the REC) quotes the following part of his Bishop's address....