Church was accordingly mooted at the Lambeth Conference of 1908. The bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, on the other hand, derive their orders from Thomas Coke, a presbyter of the Church of England, who in 1784 was ordained by John Wesley, assisted by two other presbyters, “superintendent” of the Methodist Society in America. Methodist episcopacy is therefore based on the denial of any special potestas ordinis in the degree of bishop, and is fundamentally distinct from that of the Catholic Church—using this term in its narrow sense as applied to the ancient churches of the East and West.
In all of these ancient churches episcopacy is regarded as of divine origin; and in those of them which reject the papal supremacy the bishops are still regarded as the guardians of the tradition of apostolic orthodoxy and the stewards of the gifts of the Holy Ghost to men (see Orthodox Eastern Church; Armenian Church; Copts: Coptic Church, &c). In the West, Gallican and Febronian Episcopacy are represented by two ecclesiastical bodies: the Jansenist Church under the archbishop of Utrecht (see Jansenism and Utrecht), and the Old Catholics (q.v.). Of these the latter, who separated from the Roman communion after the promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility, represent a pure revolt of the system of Episcopacy against that of Papalism. (W. A. P.)
EPISCOPIUS, SIMON (1583–1643), the Latin form of the
name of Simon Bischop, Dutch theologian, was born at Amsterdam
on the 1st of January 1583. In 1600 he entered the university
of Leiden, where he studied theology under Jacobus
Arminius, whose teaching he followed. In 1610, the year in
which the Arminians presented the famous Remonstrance to the
states of Holland, he became pastor at Bleyswick, a small village
near Rotterdam; in the following year he advocated the cause
of the Remonstrants (q.v.) at the Hague conference. In 1612
he succeeded Francis Gomarus as professor of theology at
Leiden, an appointment which awakened the bitter enmity of
the Calvinists, and, on account of the influence lent by it to the
spread of Arminian opinions, was doubtless an ultimate cause of
the meeting of the synod of Dort in 1618. Episcopius was chosen
as the spokesman of the thirteen representatives of the Remonstrants
before the synod; but he was refused a hearing, and the
Remonstrant doctrines were condemned without any explanation
or defence of them being permitted. At the end of the synod’s
sittings in 1619, Episcopius and the other twelve Arminian
representatives were deprived of their offices and expelled from
the country (see Dort, Synod of). Episcopius retired to
Antwerp and ultimately to France, where he lived partly at
Paris, partly at Rouen. He devoted most of his time to writings
in support of the Arminian cause; but the attempt of Luke Wadding
(1588–1657) to win him over to the Romish faith involved
him also in a controversy with that famous Jesuit. After the
death (1625) of Maurice, prince of Orange, the violence of the
Arminian controversy began to abate, and Episcopius was
permitted in 1626 to return to his own country. He was appointed
preacher at the Remonstrant church in Rotterdam and
afterwards rector of the Remonstrant college in Amsterdam.
Here he died in 1643. Episcopius may be regarded as in great part
the theological founder of Arminianism, since he developed and
systematized the principles tentatively enunciated by Arminius.
Besides opposing at all points the peculiar doctrines of Calvinism,
Episcopius protested against the tendency of Calvinists to lay
so much stress on abstract dogma, and argued that Christianity
was practical rather than theoretical—not so much a system of
intellectual belief as a moral power—and that an orthodox
faith did not necessarily imply the knowledge of and assent to
a system of doctrine which included the whole range of Christian
truth, but only the knowledge and acceptance of so much of
Christianity as was necessary to effect a real change on the heart
and life.
The principal works of Episcopius are his Confessio s. declaratio sententiae pastorum qui in foederato Belgio Remonstrantes vocantur super praecipuis articulis religionis Christianae (1621), his Apologia pro confessione (1629), his Verus theologus remonstrans, and his uncompleted work Institutiones theologicae. A life of Episcopius was written by Philip Limborch, and one was also prefixed by his successor, Étienne de Courcelles (Curcellaeus) (1586–1659), to an edition of his collected works published in 2 vols. (1650–1665). See also article in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie.
EPISODE, an incident occurring in the history of a nation, an
institution or an individual, especially with the significance of
being an interruption of an ordered course of events, an irrelevance.
The word is derived from a word (ἐπείσοδος) with a
technical meaning in the ancient Greek tragedy. It is defined by
Aristotle (Poetics, 12) as μέρος ὅλον τραγῳδίας τὸ μεταξὺ ὅλων χορικῶν μελῶν, all the scenes, that is, which fall between
the choric songs. εἴσοδος, or entrance, is generally applied to the
entrance of the chorus, but the reference may be to that of the
actors at the close of the choric songs. In the early Greek
tragedy the parts which were spoken by the actors were considered
of subsidiary importance to those sung by the chorus,
and it is from this aspect that the meaning of the word, as something
which breaks off the course of events, is derived (see A. E.
Haigh, The Tragic Drama of the Greeks, 1896, at p. 353).
EPISTAXIS (Gr. ἐπί, upon, and στάζειν, to drop), the medical
term for bleeding from the nose, whether resulting from local
injury or some constitutional condition. In persistent cases of
nose-bleeding, various measures are adopted, such as holding the
arms over the head, the application of ice, or of such astringents
as zinc or alum, or plugging the nostrils.
EPISTEMOLOGY (Gr. ἐπιστήμη, knowledge, and λόγος,
theory, account; Germ. Erkenntnistheorie), in philosophy, a
term applied, probably first by J. F. Ferrier, to that department
of thought whose subject matter is the nature and origin of
knowledge. It is thus contrasted with metaphysics, which
considers the nature of reality, and with psychology, which deals
with the objective part of cognition, and, as Prof. James Ward
said, “is essentially genetic in its method” (Mind, April 1883,
pp. 166-167). Epistemology is concerned rather with the
possibility of knowledge in the abstract (sub specie aeternitatis,
Ward, ibid.). In the evolution of thought epistemological
inquiry succeeded the speculations of the early thinkers, who
concerned themselves primarily with attempts to explain
existence. The differences of opinion which arose on this
problem naturally led to the inquiry as to whether any universally
valid statement was possible. The Sophists and the Sceptics,
Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans took up the
question, and from the time of Locke and Kant it has been
prominent in modern philosophy. It is extremely difficult, if not
impossible, to draw a hard and fast line between epistemology and
other branches of philosophy. If, for example, philosophy is
divided into the theory of knowing and the theory of being, it is
impossible entirely to separate the latter (Ontology) from the
analysis of knowledge (Epistemology), so close is the connexion
between the two. Again, the relation between logic in its widest
sense and the theory of knowledge is extremely close. Some
thinkers have identified the two, while others regard Epistemology
as a subdivision of logic; others demarcate their relative spheres
by confining logic to the science of the laws of thought, i.e. to
formal logic. An attempt has been made by some philosophers
to substitute “Gnosiology” (Gr. γνῶσις) for “Epistemology”
as a special term for that part of Epistemology which is confined
to “systematic analysis of the conceptions employed by
ordinary and scientific thought in interpreting the world, and
including an investigation of the art of knowledge, or the nature
of knowledge as such.” “Epistemology” would thus be reserved
for the broad questions of “the origin, nature and limits of
knowledge” (Baldwin’s Dict. of Philos. i. pp. 333 and 414). The
term Gnosiology has not, however, come into general use. (See
Philosophy.)
EPISTLE, in its primary sense any letter addressed to an
absent person; from the Greek word ἐπιστολή, a thing sent on a
particular occasion. Strictly speaking, any such communication
is an epistle, but at the present day the term has become archaic,
and is used only for letters of an ancient time, or for elaborate
literary productions which take an epistolary form, that is to say,
are, or affect to be, written to a person at a distance.
