1785] REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 23 1 



Nevertheless, he was not incHned to see the old Prayer Book 

 reduced to the dead level of modern American low churchmen. 

 By an accident apparently, the Convention had obliterated all the 

 Saints' days. In writing to Dr. White, he says : 



Your idea of suiting the lessons to the several seasons of the ecclesi- 

 astical year agrees perfectly with mine. ... As to the general Calendar 

 I apprehend the Committee has power to alter it as the Convention 

 judged proper to omit the Saints' days. I would be for retaining, 

 however, the names of a few, such as Lady Day, Michaelmas, All Saints, 

 with the Apostles' Days, St. Stephen s and Innocents. These three last 

 being Scripture festivals should not be omitted, I mean a commemora- 

 tion of Scriptural persons and martyrs. All Saints of more modern date 

 should be expunged." 



I have gone thus at large into the history of the Proposed Book 

 and of the parts which different people had in its composition, be- 

 cause of the great ignorance prevailing and of the gross misrepre- 

 sentations made on the subject. How completely all the great, 

 essential doctrines of the Church of England are presented in it, 

 and how little ground the preachers of the so-styled Reformed 

 Episcopal CJmrcli, who have referred -to it as justifying their schism, 

 have had for their reference to it, will appear sufficiently in these 

 pages. 



In addition to his great labor in the matter of the Proposed 

 Book, Dr. Smith was chairman of the two other principal com- 

 mittees appointed by the convention of 1785; one of them being 

 to prepare a draft, the form of an Ecclesiastical Constitution 

 for the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of 

 America; the other for preparing and reporting a plan for ob- 

 taining the consecration of Bishops, together with an Address to 

 the Most Reverend the Archbishops and the Right Reverend the 

 Bishops of the Church of England for that purpose. 



We may reasonably infer, too, that, perhaps, with some reduction of force, it might 

 have, expressed the views of Bishop White, who, in his charge of 1S31, after saying 

 that, in his view, a Bishop should not be made to take full charge of any parish, and 

 that a third part of the parochial duty of any church of which a Bishop was Rector 

 should be performed by an assistant, says : 



" But when there are taken into the account our rapidly increasing population with 

 which we may hope for a proportionate increase of our Church, it cannot be useless 

 to keep in view a ?natured system of a Iiigher grade than our present provisions, and 

 to be accomplished by degrees, although the full accomplishment be so distant that the 

 youngest among us may not be expected to witness it, while they may subserve it by 

 incipient measures." 



