Protestant
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, protested against the decision of the majority, 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 rejecting their protest, they presented a more extended one next day. Those first Protestants were John, Elector of Saxony; the Margrave George of Brandenburg, Onolzbach, and Culmbach; the Dukes Ernest and Francis of Lüneburg; the Landgrave Philip of Hesse; Wolf gang, Prince of Anhalt, and the representatives of the imperial cities of Strassburg, Ulm, Nuremberg, Constance, Reutlingen, Windsheim, Memmingen, Lindau, Kempten, Heilbronn, Isny, Weis senburg, Nördlingen, and St. Gall. The name is now extended to all persons and churches holding the doctrines of the Reformation and rejecting papal authority.
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 Scriptures, 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 Calvin, or Luther, or Arminius, leaving her members free to enjoy their own opinions 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 retained all that is essential to church organization in her episcopate, and in her liturgy to have not only a wise and judicious 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 PROTEUS England, besides the fundamental doctrines 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 sacraments 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 ceremonies, and to decide matters of faith; clergymen are allowed to marry; and communion is to be given in both kinds.
The number of sacraments is two-baptism and the Lord's Supper. Three clerical orders are recognized-bishops, priests, and deacons. Those of the second order are entitled archdeacons, deans, rectors, vicars, or curates, according to their functions. From the time of the first congregations of the Church of England in America, in 1607, to the close of the Revolution, 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 Convention directs the manner in which the qualifications of candidates for orders shall be estimated and determined; regulates the particulars in regard to the election and ordination of the orders of the ministry; defines the nature of ecclesiastical offenses, and decrees the punishment 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.