1789] J^EV. WILLIAM SMI III, D. D. 257 



Those churches were disinclined to have the laity have any vote in 

 the councils of the Church; and as for any conventions in which 

 the Episcopal order was not represented, undertaking to remodel 

 and to settle anew its liturgy — in many cases the exponents of its 

 doctrines — even though at the time the Episcopal order did not 

 exist among us, and it was uncertain how soon exactly we would 

 get it — the idea struck them as only short of impious. They con- 

 sidered that in attempting to organize the Church before a head 

 had been obtained, the Convention of 1784 had begun and those 

 of 1785 and 1786 had been working at the wrong end; that with- 

 out a Bishop the churches resembled the scattered limbs of a 

 body without any common centre of union or principle to animate 

 the whole. An Episcopate according to their idea was necessary 

 to direct their motions and by a delegated authority to claim 

 their assent. They held to the constant application and under 

 every circumstance, of the maxim — true no doubt in the abstract 

 and the general — Sine Episcopo, nulla est Ecclcsia. 



However unexceptional in itself, then, the Proposed Book might 

 hav^e been regarded by them, they resiled from it as coming from 

 a wrong source; just as they would from the Prayer Book made 

 by a heretic or an infidel. An eccentric English nobleman, assisted 

 by Dr. Franklin, had in fact made a Prayer Book — which in 

 some respects the Proposed Book followed, and which some 

 persons professed to like exceedingly. But would the Church 

 accept a liturgy from such a source? Assuredly not. There 

 were laymen in the Conventions of 1784, 1785 and 1786, whose 

 faith in particular parts of the Church's teaching was as question- 

 .able as was Dr. Franklin's in those points and in many more of it. 

 The Church was then to be governed only as it was governed 

 in ancient times; by its clergy, the Episcopi beir.j in the highest 

 seats, and where they could overlook the whole. And this view 

 — which had great force in it — was not the view of the New Eng- 

 land clergy alone. It had advocates, in the Middle States, and 

 nowhere a more sincere and powerful advocate than in Nev/ 

 Jersey, where Thomas Bradbury Chandler, D. D., who, long before 

 the Revolution, had been endeavoring to have an Episcopate in 

 America, and had been battling in opposition to the great Pres- 

 byterian, Dr. Chauncy, was acting only in consistency with his 

 long maintained view. No doubt, too, the pamphlet of Dr.. 

 17 



