1803] HEV. VVirLTAM SMITH, D. D. 459 



'as the word is understood in this country, you might as well call 

 me a Turk or a Jew.' "* 



Some men are " high " on some points — " low " on others. 



We have spoken in a note of Bishop Hopkins. From his first 

 entrance into the church he was a devoted reader, lover and ex- 

 positor of the fathers. Those called the apostolic ones I think he 

 could have said by heart. There was not a line of the Origincs 

 Sacra which he could not point to. Never did he find " ancient 

 authors" — by whom are meant the early fathers — to contradict 

 the Bible, whether in its parts new or old; but, on the contrary, 

 found in them the Bible's strong supports. In all the " wrought 

 gold" which decorates the clothing of the daughter of Zion he 

 delighted. The ornaments of the chancel, the dress of the priest- 

 hood, the fragrance of myrrh, aloes and cassia out of the ivory 

 palaces — all these things found interest in his beautiful tastes just 

 as much as did those higher things, in his deeper heart, which 

 make the church "all glorious within." These first are the mat- 

 ters which, in the estimation of many, make the alio, as in their 

 estimation do dislikes of them the basso. But Bishop Hopkins's 

 ecclesiastical views — his views of doctrine, discipline and worship 

 alike — were in many respects very high ; and they were got from 

 the early fathers, as from the Epistles and Gospels. It is not diffi- 

 cult to understand his views, many of which I admire. But it is dif- 

 ficult to assign him to any class of thinkers on the Episcopal bench. 

 Yet a party which was composed of the lowest churchmen that 

 ever were in Pennsylvania, were desirous to make him bishop of 

 its vast diocese, rather than to have Dr. Bird Wilson, the last 

 of men to carry anything but holiness of life into lofty pitch, or 

 than Henry Ustick Onderdonk, the greatest original thinker and 

 logician of the American church, but who, if his tract on Regen- 

 eration expressed his best judgments, which I hardly tliink it did, 

 was more like themselves than like any high expositor in the 

 Church of England. 



* Life of Bishop Hopkins, by one of his sons, second edition, page loi. I know 

 from a person of indubitable authority yet living, and who was present in the conven- 

 tion where Bishop White's declaration is said to have been made, that this statement 

 of Bishop Hopkins's son is strictly accurate; and I have heard it also from another 

 of no less accuracy, who was present, but is now dead. I may add that from my own 

 recollections of what 1 heard from many persons, witnesses of the scenes, the account 

 ol all the proceedings of 1826 and 1827, as given in the Life of Bishop Hopkins, is 

 strictly true. But not the idea that Bishop White voted in 17S6 for his own election. 



