ve arisen from the
confiscation of monasteries in the time of Henry VIII., when,
instead of restoring the tithes to Church purposes, they were
given to Court favourites.

INCARNATION. The act whereby Christ, the "Word, was made flesh."
The "taking of the Manhood into God."

INCUMBENT. A person in possession of a benefice. (See _Benefice_.)

INDEPENDENTS. The first body of Dissenters which actually broke
away from the Church of England was that of the _Independents_,
or--as they are nowadays perhaps more intelligibly called--the
_Congregationalists_. An Independent sect seems to have existed
about the year 1568, the whole question in dispute between them
and the Church being then, as it is still, essentially one of
"discipline," or Church Polity. They made each congregation a body
corporate, governed exclusively by itself, and disclaim, more or
less, every form of union between churches. In doctrine they are
strictly Calvinistic, and, reviving the ancient heresy of Donatus,
they profess to receive only accredited or really serious Christians
into their fellowship, and to exclude any who may prove themselves
unworthy members.

The Independents are sometimes called _Brownists_, from Robert
Brown, a clergyman of the Church of England, who was the first to
secede from her ranks, and who, retreating to Holland, set up a
separatist communion.

There are 76 County and other Associations at home and in the
Colonies, with 3,895 meetinghouses, and 1,039 preaching stations,
300 being foreign mission stations; of ministers and missionaries
they have about 3,500. They reckon to have about 360,000 members in
the British dominions.

INDUCTION. The ceremony whereby a minister is put in actual
possession of the living to which he has been presented.

INFALLIBILITY. The claim set up by the Church of Rome, either for
the Pope, or the Church, or for the Pope and the Church consenting
together; of absolute freedom from error in deciding questions of
faith and doctrine. Roman divines are not agreed among themselves
as to precisely _where_ the infallibility of their Church is found.
Certain it is that Councils and Popes have contradicted and
anathematized each other.

INNOCENTS' DAY, THE HOLY. This festival has been observed ever
since the 3rd century, in memory of the slaughtered children of
Bethlehem (Matt. ii. 16.) Its old English name is Childermas, and
it is kept on December 28th; the attendants on the nativity being
St. Step