258 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE [l/Sp 



White, the President of the Convention of 1785, wliich had 

 framed the Proposed Book, did greatly alarm even th(xse who 

 could be called no more than conservative churchmen.''' Our 

 means of intercourse in that day were few, and information 

 traveled slowly. As the true history of the publication became 

 known, the fears, so far as they arose from any views of Bishop 

 White — than whom the land never had any truer churchman, if 

 Ave may take Hooker as an exponent of what a churchman is — 

 departed. 



The Proposed Book was, however, open to some objections in 

 their nature intrinsical. While no heterodoxy was alleged against 

 the book it is perhaps the fact that some true doctrines were left 

 rather unguarded, and that some of the offices were so far lowered 

 as that, in a measure, they would lose their influence. The omis- 

 sions of particular psalms or parts of psalms as undesirable to be 

 read was regarded by some as treating the Scriptures irreverently; 

 and the uniting of different psalms into one portion for each daily 



•5'- " The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States Considered." Dr. 

 Stevens Perry — to whose labors in advance of me, in the department of our Church 

 history, I have already, as I must here again, express my acknowledgments for much 

 that constitutes the value of my book, and to whose gracious and real aid many authors 

 besides myself, as I know, acknowledge their obligations — has reprinted this pam- 

 ]5ldet in the third volume of his truly useful " Half Century of the Legislation of the 

 American Church." Having made in that work many explanations of things in the 

 volume by reprinting large passages from Bishop White's writings, he has made, in my 

 opinion, an omission (unavoidable, perhaps, from the size and cost of his book) and 

 clone injustice (unintentional, I am sure, if it does do injustice) to Bishop White, in not 

 reprinting after or before " The Case of the Episcopal Churches," etc., the Bishop's 

 history of the circumstances under which that pamphlet was issued, a history to which 

 we have already alluded (see supra, pages 185, 1S6) as twice — we might have said 

 thrice — made by the Bishop, with an emphasis — brought about by the misrepresenta- 

 tions of low churchmen in regard to his opinions — which disarms it of harm as any 

 expression of opinion on Church polity; a harm which Dr. Perry's publication in an 

 unexplained form perhaps tends and will assist to perpetuate. I assume, of course, 

 that so learned a writer upon the history of the American Church and who seems to 

 have been in close intimacy with the present diocesan of Pennsylvania, was not igno- 

 rant of the A]ipendix to Bishop White's charge of 1S07 to the clergy of Pennsylvania; 

 'though in this I may be mistake:^. Bishop White — who was the most modest of men, 

 and as little as any man who ever lived, thought of his own fame either during life or 

 posthumously — took no pains to preserve for consultation, by either his contemporaries 

 or those who should come after him,liis own sermons and fugitive pieces. The Phila- 

 delphia Library Company — where most Philadelphians deposit their own writings, at 

 least — has scarce any of these pieces. The charge of 1807 is what Bibliophiles call 

 '• rare," and possibly may be absent from even the large and, as I suppose, generally 

 coiiiplcte collections of Dr. Perry. See Appendix No. IV. 



