CHAPTER XII. ECCLESIASTICAL ACTION PRELIMINARY TO THE FORMATION OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. WHEN the War of the Revolution had ended it became a difficult and delicate task to gather the scattered remnants of the English colonial churches together, and out of them to construct an ecclesiastical corporation coterminous with the nation. The nation itself was as yet unsettled in regard to the nature of the union of the States. The political condition of the confederation did not of itself tend to foster the conception of one uniform Episcopal communion for the whole country. The first efforts, therefore, for the resuscitation of the Episcopal parishes were provincial. The church, as well as the nation, passed through a confederate period which, only after several years, resulted in both cases in the adoption of a constitution which established unity. In the same year (1789) the United States became a nation with a President and a Constitution, and the Protestant Episcopal Church an organized ecclesiastical body with Bishops and a General Convention. Previous to this consummation the State, in ecclesiastical as well as political affairs, preserved a prominence which concentrated attention on the concerns of the church within its own borders. In the beginning of the national existence the Episcopal Church in each State considered itself an integral part of the church of Christ, independent in its government of any other branch of the church in Christendom. So ingrained was this idea that the habit of referring to the State rather than to the diocese continued long after ecclesiastical unity had been established. As a consequence, before any proposition had been made from any quarter, or any meeting had been held anywhere, looking to organic unity, the churches in the various States began to consider how best to secure the separate interests of their own locality. The ecclesiastical tie with the Bishop of London having been severed, and all support from the Venerable Society having ceased by the terms of its charter, three great necessities, forced themselves on the attention of earnest churchmen. These were: first, the conservation of church property; second, the preservation of the church's worship; third, the inauguration of an American episcopate. These three needs were differently emphasized in different parts of the country. The South, as the seat of the Establishment, had its attention first directed to the necessity of gathering up the fragments of church property which had survived the wreck of the war. As this property had its title in the enactment of a government which was now discarded, and as it had been given to an Establishment which was now repudiated, it was a question of moment and difficulty how to avoid complete parochial bankruptcy. The churches of the Middle States, Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, had been especially depleted, being in the pathway of the war. With clergy scattered and congregations dispersed, the thought which came first into the minds of the sincere churchmen who remained was how to gather together the spiritual body, and nourish it with the convenient food of the liturgy, and once more establish it in the ways of rational piety until such time as the full system of the church could be introduced. ACTION IN PENNSYLVANIA. 289 In New England, where the church had always existed in opposition to the popular will, and where it had especially felt the defect of incomplete organization, the first necessity descried and the first effort made was to secure the episcopate. It was in Connecticut, where the church had grown up on the soil, developed out of conviction, not merely received by inheritance; where its ministry was chiefly native, and its character especially steadfast and correct, that the first distinct motion for completing the church organism by obtaining a bishop was put forth. This object was the one most beset with difficulties, having to face apathy abroad and turn its back on distrust and enmity at home. It was felt, however, to be a matter of life or death to the church. The body and the members were both preserved, though in disabled condition; but the head must be added, and at once, or the church could neither run nor walk, but must limp impotently among its adversaries, whose polity was complete, and whose patriotism was astir with hatred of both the English state and the English Church. Such was the general situation. ACTION IN PENNSYLVANIA. The first suggestion of a plan for resuscitating the Episcopal churches and binding them together into some sort of unity emanated from the Rev. William White, presbyter of Pennsylvania, and rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia. In the summer of 1782, after active hostilities had ceased, but before independence had been acknowledged or peace declared, he published anonymously a pamphlet entitled "The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States Considered." 1 This publication was prepared just at the 1 The document is given in " Half-century of Legislation of the American Church," Perry, vol. iii., p. 421. Dr. White himself gave this account of it in a charge which he delivered to his clergy in 1832, forty-five years after he |