1785] REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 213 



terious sentences," which Dr. Smith in the sermon that we have 

 already referred to, preached before the Convention of 1785, hopes 

 that " the truths of the Gospel may never be obscured by." The 

 purpose of this cunning device of the Church of England was no 

 doubt good. , It was to keep within that Church those who were 

 nearly Puritans and those who were nearly Papists ; but were not 

 wholly either. The Reformed Episcopal Church — a body of 

 schismatics existing now both in England and America — and the 

 defection to Rome of such men as Wilberforce, Manning and 

 Newman — with the unseceded body of so-called " Ritualists " — a 

 mild form, in their more advanced developments, of Romanists — 

 show that complete success has not attended the well-meant effort. 

 And what food have not such expressions with the very subtle 

 distinctions of some of the Church of England articles, not min- 

 istered for most learned and most curious disputations ; dividing 

 the Church into parties to-day, and never thought of when the 

 day had gone. Where are now the two volumes, engendered in 

 the Church by the 17th article, of ''Comparative Views of the Con 

 trove rsy beiiveen the Calvinists and the Arminians, by William White, 

 D. D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal CJuirch in the Common- 

 iveaWi of Pennsylvania^' published so late as r8i7; one of the 

 most laborious and learned, one of the strongest and most acute, 

 one of the most logical and dispassionate controversial works ever 

 written, and till lately a text-book in the general Theological 

 Seminary of the Church ? Gone — gone — almost as much as the 

 years beyond the flood. Where will be in less than half the time 

 that has elapsed since 18 17 the fiery feuds in England and Amer- 

 ica, and the heated proceedings of some of our late Church Con- 

 ventions, on the subject of the Eucharistic and Sacerdotal party 

 that we have just spoken of and called (improperly enough) the 

 Ritualists ? Gone — gone — to follow them. Both I am ready to 

 concede likely to come back in the encyclicity of those parties, 

 whom our articles and liturgy in their present shape will ever keep 

 alive, but which Dr. Smith, by the Proposed Book, sought to send 

 away for ever from the Church. And by the rejection of a stum- 

 bling-block in the ministration of baptism — a word which though 

 explained by a general Convention, was still a terror to those once 

 thoroughly affrighted — he \\o\x\d, perhaps, have saved from apostacy 

 a portion of the Church which can argue with some plausibility — 



