1789] REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 2/3 



confined. The Archbishop of Canterbury wished it had been fuller, 

 but thought it afforded ground on which to proceed. Yet he afterwards 

 said it would not do; and that the Minister, without a formal requisition 

 from the State, would not suffer the Bill, enabling the Bishop of London 

 to ordain foreign candidates without their taking the oaths, to pass the 

 Commons, if it contained a clause for consecrating American Bishops. 

 And as his Grace did not choose to proceed without parliamentary 

 authority — though if I understood him righ.t, a majority of the Judges 

 and Crown Lawyers were of opinion he might safely do it — I turned 

 my attention to the remains of the old Scots Episcopal Church, whose 

 consecrations I knew were derived from England, and their authority in 

 an ecclesiastical sense, fully equal to the English Bishops. 



But the succession through the English line was preferred by 

 most churchmen in America; and in the establishment of the 

 Church on this great continent all the clergy of the Middle and 

 Southern States were desirous to have it if it could be had. When 

 Dr. White and Dr. Provoost sailed for England to receive conse- 

 cration it was expected, as we have already said, that Dr. Griffith, 

 of Virginia, would accompany them, so that we should then have 

 three Bishops; the number required by a rule of the Church of 

 England — and thought wise by ourselves — to perform any new 

 act of Episcopal consecration; and all three coming through the 

 Church just named. But as we have also said circumstances pre- 

 vented Dr. Griffith going to England, and he then or afterwards 

 finall}' resigned his honors to the Convention of Virginia. 



W'hen, however, Bishops White and Provoost received their 

 consecrations it was understood, though never in terms, that I 

 know of, agreed on, by the English Bishops and by the two per- 

 sons then consecrated, that before any acts of consecration should 

 be performed by these two, Dr. Griffith or some other third person 

 would come from America and be consecrated in England by the 

 English Bishops; ^o that any new Bishop consecrated in America 

 should have as consecrators tJirce Bishops deriving their Episcopal 

 orders through the Anglican line. Indeed in the Convention of 

 1786 the body was barely organized when Dr. Robert Smith, of 

 South Carolina, moved : 



That the clergy present produce their letters of orders or declare by 

 whom they were ordained. 



This motion was aimed at the Rev. Joseph Pilmore, a native of 



iS 



