1789] REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 295 



"bettering the example," — so far as making a worse result is con- 

 sistent with the meaning of the phrase — an opposite class in the 

 Church have committed pretty much the same violence on the 

 Book; fraudulently embellishing tlicir proceedings with various 

 sorts of Romish ceremonial and infusing through the whole so 

 considerable a quantity of Romish doctrine and discipline, that 

 if Rip Van Winkle was a Churchman, and, after his long sleep, 

 happened to go into some of the Protestant Episcopal Churches 

 of New York called " Ritualistic," he certainly would 'never believe 

 in what sort of a Church he was. He would look amazed, in- 

 deed, when he was told that this was the exact Church of Samuel 

 Provoost, and Benjamin Moore, and John Henry Hobart, and 

 Benjamin Tredwell Onderdonk, and Jonathan Mayhew Wainright; 

 and be very apt to doubt when he was really yet awake and in his 

 right senses at all. 



Then to come to people very different indeed from the two 

 parties, one of whom would carry the Church to the Methodists 

 and the other to Rome, did not the House of Bishops itself, in the 

 General Convention of 1826, almost, if not altogether, unanimously 

 agree to reform the Book in a most sweeping way — to leave out 

 on all days, but on those especially appointed for humiliation, the 

 whole Litany; to allow two alterations in the office for Confirma- 

 tion; to allow alteration, at the minister's discretion, upon what 

 are called "prayer days" in the lessons; to give to the minister 

 on all days a permission, both in the morning and evening ser- 

 vices, to exercise discretion as to the number of Psalms and to the 

 portions of lessons; provided only in regard to each lesson that 

 there be at least fifteen verses. This was bringing things back 

 again in some respects to the Proposed Book ; and if we may 

 credit, as I rather think we may, the statement made in that en- 

 tertaining and instructive " Life of the First Bishop of Vermont" 

 (at the time that I am speaking Rector of Trinity Church, Pitts- 

 burgh, Pennsylvania), by his son, the Rev. John Henry Hopkins, 

 it was only through the ready powers of debate of that remark- 

 able first-named person — in whom legal knowledge, powers of 

 argument and the resources of sarcasm were united in a high 

 degree as in a rare conjunction — that the thing was defeated by 

 the negative of the House of Clerical and Lay Deputies. 



Still, I am not insensible to the great value of the Prayer Book 



