rd _digestus_, meaning carried apart, resolved, digested, and
is applied to a body of laws arranged under their proper heads or
titles. The Canons set forth by the General Convention as thus
arranged come under four titles, viz.:

TITLE I.--Of the Orders of the Ministry and of the Doctrine and
Worship of this Church. Under this head there are Twenty-six Canons.

TITLE II.--Of Discipline, Thirteen Canons.

TITLE III.--Of the Organized Bodies and Officers of the Church,
Nine Canons. {81}

TITLE IV.--Miscellaneous Provisions, Four Canons.

There is also an appendix of Standing Resolutions.

Dimissory Letter.--A letter given to a clergyman removing from one
Diocese to another. The General Canons provide that "before a
clergyman shall be permitted to settle in any Church or Parish, or
be received into union with any Diocese of this Church as a Minister
thereof, he shall produce to the Bishop, or if there be no Bishop,
to the Standing Committee thereof, a letter of dismission from under
the hand and seal of the Bishop with whose Diocese he has been last
connected . . . which shall be delivered within six months from
the date thereof; and when such clergyman shall have been so
received he shall be considered as having passed entirely from
the jurisdiction of the Bishop from whom the letter of dismission
was brought, to the full jurisdiction of the Bishop or other
Ecclesiastical Authority by whom it shall be accepted and become
thereby subject to all the canonical provisions of this Church."
The effect of this law is that in the Episcopal Church there can
be no strolling, irresponsible evangelists or preachers, and thus
the people are protected from imposture, and may know, when the
proper steps are taken, that their ministers come to them fully
accredited and duly authorized to minister to them in Christ's Name.

Diocese.--The territorial limits of a Bishop's Jurisdiction.
Properly speaking the Diocese is the real unit of Church life.
Originally the Bishop went first in the establishing of the Church
in any nation or country; out of this Jurisdiction grew the parishes
or local congregation, being ministered to by the Priests {82} under
the Bishop. In the American Church, through force of circumstances,
the reverse of this has been the case. But notwithstanding, the
fact remains here as elsewhere that the Diocese with the Bishop at
its head is the real unit of Church life and organization, and the
Parish a dependency o