1785] REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 223 



Rufus Wilmot Griswold in his "Republican Court; or, American 

 Society in the Days of Washington." The description, in my 

 opinion, is, in the main, so just that, though in part it has sHght 

 relation to our immediate subject, I here present it entire. He is 

 speaking now of Philadelphia, and says: 



At the head of the clergy stood Dr. White, as he was commonly 

 called, the well-known first Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Penn- 

 sylvania. His ecclesiastical character has, in recent times, been greatly 

 mistaken by both the extreme High and the extreme Low divisions of 

 his own denomination. He was what in England would be called a 

 historical low-churchman as distinguished from the ultra school of Laud 

 and Philpotts, but was very far removed from what have been called 

 low-churchmen in this country. Even in his day, when the Episcopal 

 Church was extremely feeble, and concessions and compromises with 

 other denominations were matters to which the temptations were ex- 

 treme, Bishop White defined what he regarded as the just limits of both 

 with a distinctness and precision which have made them their safest 

 limits since. To him and to his moderate views and conciliatory 

 temper we must ascribe the fact that, while the ecclesiastical establish- 

 ment of England and the very name of Bishop had become odious in 

 this country, the Protestant Episcopal Church departed so very little in 

 form, while not departing at all in doctrine, from the Established 

 Church of England. As a preacher he was earnest and persuasive, but 

 he seldom fulminated threats or judgments, and had very decided views 

 of the limits of clerical responsibility. He shrank from no proper 

 responsibility, but he had too high a sense of courtesy and too just a 

 regard for even the most delicate of rights to invade with freedom the 

 atmosphere which every gentleman feels and acknowledges as a proper 

 circle for himself and others. He was the man of his time for his 

 position. His prudence saved what the zeal of others might have lost ; 

 and in the midst of political and ecclesiastical difficulties of the most 

 discouraging kind, he founded that establishment which has grown to 

 be one of the most majestic structures of the religion of the republic. 

 His character will grow larger as the perspective becomes more truly 

 fixed by time, and if it were separated from religious parties, posterity 

 would probably place his name after the names of Washington, Mar- 

 shall and Hamilton alone. He belonged to the same order of men, 

 differing but in the sphere of his action from either. 



It might be inferred from the correspondence between Dr. White 

 and Dr. Smith, already given, that Dr. White in all respects ap- 

 proved of the book. I understand only that, being placed by the 

 convention of 1785 upon the committee to put the book into form 



