INTRODUCTION. 33 
and all other associations of that denomination acknowledged subordination to 
the classis of Amsterdam, which some times permitted, and other times refused 
powers of ordination. The expenses attending the journeys of candidates for 
ordination to Holland, and the reference of disputes concerning doctrine and 
discipline, to foreign judicatories, induced a portion of the clergy, even at that 
day, to seek a domestic organization. There were also two Protestant Episcopal 
churches which were more independent ; but still the bishop was obliged to go to 
England for orders, before he could exercise his ecclesiastical functions; and 
rectors were required to be instituted and inducted, agreeably to the king’s instruc- 
tions to the governor, and the canonical rights of the bishop of London. The 
presbyterians had one church, and aimed at ecclesiastical independence, but all 
such efforts were defeated by the opposition of the episcopalians ; and to save 
their little edifice and grounds, the former conveyed the glebe in 1730 to the 
moderator of the general assembly of the church of Scotland and others, as a 
committee of that body, and received from it a declaration that “the property 
was held on condition that it should be free and lawful for the presbyterians in 
the city of New-York and its vicinity to convene in the edifice for the worship of 
God in all the parts thereof, and for the dispensation of all the gospel ordinances.” 
Besides these churches, there were a small French church, two German Lutheran 
societies, a Friends’, a Moravian and Anabaptist meeting houses, and an obscure 
synagogue. But the dependence of the church had one advantage. Many of the 
clergy had received a transatlantic education, while this country was destitute of 
proper seminaries, and the reproach of ignorance did not attach to the theological 
profession.* 
One of the most serious obstacles in the way of the revolutionary cause, was 
found in the apprehensions indulged by persons connected with the English esta- 
blished church, that religion, here deprived of the sustaining support of the mother 
country, must languish, and infidelity and vice disappoint the hopes of those who 
* American Gazetteer, 1762, 
Inrr. 5 
