38 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE [l/So 



That your petitioners are sensible of the many urgent civil concerns 

 in which the honorable and worthy Legislatures of this State have been 

 engaged since the great and trying period, and how much wisdom and 

 deliberation are at all times necessary in framing equal laws for the sup- 

 port of religion and learning, and more especially amidst the horrors 

 and confusion of an expensive and unrelenting war. But they are 

 sensible at the same time (and persuaded the Honorable Assembly arc 

 equally sensible) that where religion is left to mourn and droop her 

 head while her sacred ordinances are unsupported, and vice and im- 

 morality gain ground, even war itself will be but feebly carried on ; 

 patriotism will lose its animating principle ; corruption will win its way 

 from the lowest to the highest places ; distress will soon pervade every 

 public measure; our graveyards, the monuments of the piety of our 

 ancestors, running into ruin, will become the reproach of their pos- 

 terity. Nay, more, the great and glorious fabric of public happiness, 

 which we are striving to build up and cement with an immensity of 

 blood and treasure, might be in danger of tumbling into the dust as 

 wanting the stronger cement of virtue and religion, or perhaps would 

 fall an easy prey to some haughty invader. 



Deeply impressed with these momentous considerations, and con- 

 ceiving ourselves fully warranted by our constituents in this applica- 

 tion to your honorable body, having advertised our design without any 

 objection yet notified to us, your petitioners "therefore most earnestly 

 and humbly pray. 



That an act may be passed agreeably to the aforesaid section of the 

 Declaration of Rights, for the support of public religion by an equal 

 assessment and laws, and also to enable the vestry and church wardens 

 of this parish, by rates on the pews from time to time, or otherwise, 

 as your wisdom shall think fit, to repair and uphold the church and 

 chapel and the churchyard and burying-ground of the same. All which 

 your petitioners conceive may be done not only for this parish, but at 

 the same time, if thought best, for any other parish within this State 

 (which it is believed earnestly desires the same), by a single law in a 

 manner perfectly agreeable to the liberty and wishes of every denomi- 

 nation of men, which would be esteemed good Christians and faithful 

 citizens of the State. 



And your petitioners, as bound, shall ever pray, etc. 



On motion, it was resolved that the church formerly known in 

 the province as the Church of England, should now be called "the 

 Protestant Episcopal Church."* 



Dr. Smith has had the credit of having given this name to the 

 church ; but if a statement made by the Rev. James Jones Wilmer be 

 correct, it is apparently without sufficient foundation. In a letter 



