1786] REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 1 85 



pretended that the Church was to be demolished, and Presbytery set up. The trumpet 

 of sedition was sounded as usual from the pulpits. The Universities took fire, and 

 began to declare against the commission and against all who promoted it, as men who 

 intended to undermine the Church. So that it was very visible that the temper of men 

 was not cool or calm enough to encourage the further prosecution of this great and 

 good design, which would have been so much to the improvement of our public wor- 

 ship, to the interest of the Protestant religion, and to the honor of the Church of Eng- 

 land : and thus it was defeated by the turbulency and restless spirit of ignorant and 

 factious and evil-minded men. Why it has not been resumed in the days of more 

 knowledge, more candor and Christian charity, is a question which many good men 

 have often asked with seriousness and zeal, buP which no great men, upon which it 

 lies to do it, I believe, have ever answered. 



I say that if I had adverted to this paragraph in time, I should prob- 

 ably have inserted it at large instead of the few general lines which I 

 have quoted in the two last lines of the foregoing page, and the first 

 line of this; or have thrown it in a note at the bottom as now proposed. 

 Had it stood in the body of the preface, it would come in very well; 

 for after Dr. Warner's words, "which no great men, upon whom it lies 

 to do it, I believe, have ever answered," the next paragraph of our 

 preface beginning, "But uiJien in course of his divine Providence, etc.,''^ 

 would just as well have followed, as it does the few words I have said 

 on the subject. But I submit wholly to you, whether it may be proper 

 now to insert it by way of note, or in the body, or to leave the preface 

 just as it is v/ithout entering more particularly into the reasons of the 

 miscarriage at the Revolution in England. I would not wish to draw 

 any opposition to what has been done in our Church; and yet I fear 

 the quotation above from Dr. Warner will yet be necessary (though it 

 maybe left out for the present,) to show, if any opposition arises among 

 us, it will be from the same principles as that in England, a dislike to 

 our American Revolution. I v/ould not ascribe the opposition or rather 

 disapprobation which I find in some of my friends to this principle, 

 because I believe they are well satisfied with what Providence has per- 

 mitted to take place respecting American independency; but they 

 object strongly to setting the State so much above the Church, for which 

 you bear much of the blame on account of your old pamphlet,* and 



* " The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States considered, etc.," a tract 

 misunderstood at the time and very unjustifiably used by certain low Churchmen since. 

 Dr. White took pains in a note to his charge of 1S07, to put himself right by showing 

 that at the time he wrote the tract the Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania — so far as 

 the events of the Revolutionary War could be anticipated — was in danger of annihila- 

 tion, if we had to waii for consecration by the English 'Bishops. The moment that 

 there came a prospect of peace he called in and destroyed all copies of the tract that 

 he could easily procure. He also left a manuscript produced, in fac simile quite lately, 

 by his great-grandson, Mr. T. \\. Montgomery — a gentleman, I may add, to whom our 

 Church is much indebted for illustrations of its history — in which he again vindicates 

 l;iimself against the ideas which some low churchman, by reprinting his tract, sought 



