1789] REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 259 



service, was objected to as calculated to break their connection, 

 especially of such as were prophetical. Some thought the verbal 

 alterations too numerous ; and there were not a few, to whom 

 nearly every word in the book was endeared by so many affecting 

 associations that they desired no change whatever, but what the 

 Revolution made imperative, and what in regard to a very few 

 passages a change in modes of speaking seemed to make decorous. 

 This part of the matter is set forth with so much force in a let- 

 ter of Bishop Seabury to Bishop White, written in June, 1789, 

 that I cannot forbear to quote it at large:* 



Was it not that it would run this letter to an unreasonable length, I 

 would take the liberty to mention at large the objections that have been 

 here made to the Prayer Book published at Philadelphia. I will con- 

 fine myself to a few, and even these I should not mention but from a 

 hope they will be obviated by your Convention. 



The mutilating the psalms is supposed to be an unwarrantable liberty, 

 and such as was never before taken with Holy Scriptures by any Church. 

 It destroys that beautiful chain of prophecy that runs through them, and 

 turns their application from Messiah and the Church to the temporal 

 state and concerns of individuals. 



By discarding the word Absolution, and making no mention of Re- 

 generation in Baptism, you appear to give up those points, and to open 

 the door to error and delusion. 



The excluding of the Nicene and Athanasian Creed has alarmed the 

 steady friends of our Church, lest the doctrine of Christ's divinity 

 should go out with them. If the doctrine of those creeds be offensive, 

 we are sorry for it, and shall hold ourselves so much the more bound to 

 retain them. If what are called the damnatory clauses in the latter be 

 the objection, cannot these clauses be supported by Scripture? Whether 

 they can or cannot, why not discard those clauses, and retain the doc- 

 trinal part of the creed? 



The leaving out the descent into Hell from the Apostles' Creed seems 

 to be of dangerous consequence. Have we a right to alter the analogy 

 of faith handed down to us by the Holy Catholic Church ? And if we 

 do alter it, how will it appear that we are the same Church which sub- 

 sisted in primitive times? The article of the descent, I suppose, was put 

 into tlie Creed to ascertain Christ's perfect humanity, that he has a 

 human soul, in opposition to those heretics who denied it, and affirmed 

 that his body was actuated by the divinity. For if when he died, and 

 his body was laid in the grave his soul went to the receptacle of de- 

 parted spirits, then he had a human soul as well as body, and was very 

 and perfect man. 



"" See Perry's " Half Century of Legislation," Vol. III., page 386. 



