1785] A'^r. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 225 



I am most sincerely desirous of seeing our Church throughout these 

 States united in one Ecclesiastical Legislature, and I think that any 

 difficulties which have hitherto seemed in the way might be removed by 

 mutual forbearance. If there are any further difficulties than those I 

 allude to, of difference in opinion, they do not exist with me : and I 

 shall be always ready to do what lies in my power to bring all to an 

 agreement. 



In the great opportunities for observation which his chaplaincy 

 to the Congress had given him, he had seen the immense injury 

 which the nation suffered prior to 1789 from the want of an effec- 

 tive general government, and he had seen, too, the immense diffi- 

 culties, arising from local aims and jealousies, of effecting such a 

 government. He saw the same exact two things in the Church, 

 and therefore, in his mind, the first thing to be accomplished, and 

 this even before the consecration of any bishop, was an Union of 

 all the churches. 



He has explained the matter himself* "Certainly," says he, 

 " the different Episcopalian congregations knew of no union before 

 the Revolution except what was the result of the connection 

 which they had in common with the Bishop of London," and he 

 adds : 



The authority of that Bishop being withdrawn, what right had the 

 Episcopalians in any State, or in any part of it, to choose a Bishop for 

 those in any other? And till an union was effected, what is there in 

 Christianity generally, or in the principles of this Church in particular, 

 to hinder them from taking different courses in different places as to all 

 things not necessary to salvation ? which might have produced different 

 liturgies, different articles, episcopacy from different sources, and, in 

 short, very many churches, instead of one extending over the United 

 States ; and this without any ground for schism, or of the invasion of 

 one another's rights. 



When Dr. White looked at South Carolina, he saw a church 

 called Episcopal with what he rightly calls "an opposition to the 

 very principle of episcopacy," and which made it a condition of 

 coming into the church convention of 1785 that no Bishop should 

 be settled in that State.f When he looked at Virginia, he saw a 

 commonwealth whose House of Burgesses, most of whose mem- 

 bers professed to be churchmen, not long before the Revolution 

 thanking different writers who sought to prevent the consecration 



* Memoirs, page 98, 2d edition. \ White's Memoirs, pp. 95, 96. 



15 



