The Express.
London, England, 1848-10-26 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

A Friday of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Ameri,a.
By SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP or OXFORD. Second edition.

It would be difficult to find a more complete con-
demnation of the church of England than is con-
tained in the pages of this volume. The facts brought
together by the Bishop prove most undeniably that
from the time of the that colonisation of America
until the revolution the church of England was, either
from want of zeal amongst its dignitaries, or want
of expansion in its sys'em, or too intimate
a connexion with the state, or too great an
indulgence in party politics, utterly. without
power or will to provide for the due extension or per-
petuation of its doctrine and discipline in that con-
tinent. These conclusions arc honestly, and without
any attempt to shirk them, brought forward by his
lordship. From MSS. letters in the Fulham library,
written by members of the church in America ; from
the letters of Bishop Berkeley, who went to the new
world purposely to endeavour to supply some of the
wants which neglect had occasioned, from sermons,
pamphlets, and histories, the Bishop of Oxford
has proved that no religious society ever failed
so thoroughly in establishing their faith in a
country u the church of England has failed
in America. The author admits this fact to its
fullest extent, and supplies his hearers with plentiful
data on which they may found conclusions. One
instance will suffice. At the beginning of the
eighteenth century the following, as appears from
contemporary documents, was the state of the church
in the colonies :

In South Carolina there were 7,000 BOW!., besides negroes
and Indians, living without any minister of the church, and
above half the people living regardless of any religion. In
North Carolina above 5,000 souls without any miouter, any
administrations used, no public worship celebrated, neither
the children baptised, nor the dead buried in any
Christian form. Virginia contained above 40,000
souls, divided into 40 parishes, but wanting near half
the number et clergymen requisite. Maryland con-
tained above 25,000 divided into twenty-six parishes, but
wanting near half the number of ministers requisite. In
Pennsylvania (says Colonel Heatheote) there are at lent
20,000 seals, of which not above 700 inquest the church ;
slid there are not more than 250 communicants. In New
York government we have 30,000 souls at least, of which
I about 1,200 fragment the church, and we have about 450
communicants. In Connecticut there are about 30,600 souls,
of which, when they have a minister among them, about 150
frequent the cherub sad there are 35 communicants. In
Rhode Inland andlNaivagensett there are about 10,000 souls, of
which about 160 frequent the church, and there are 30 com-
municants. In Boston and Piscataway there are about
80,000 souls, of which about 600 frequent the church and 120
the sacrament. This is the true though melancholy state of
our church in North America.

The Bishop's remarks upon a statement similar to
this in another part of the volume lead to his own
explanation of the canoes of this shortcoming :
Some general cause there must have been for such a state
of things. The power of Christ's truth could not be worn
out. That church wbloh bad hitherto subdued all people,
rude or polished, against whom she had gone forth, bad she
lost her empire over men's hearts ? She who had conquered
the conquerors of the great Roman empire, and gathered
one and another of the hordes of Gothio and Teutonic
blood—who had invaded her dominion into the faith and
hops of the people whom they wanquered—she seemed in
the west not only to have lest her subduing might, but
to be powerless even te retain her hold upon her own. It is
not very difficult to find the cause for this great difference.
Her planting in America had been after a new and unknown
manner. Heretofore the great aim of her founders in any
country had been to make her truly indigenous—to repro-
duce her out of the people amongst whom she had come.
For this end she was sent forth complete—a living germ,
with all the powers of reproduction in herself. To this, as
the greatest work of Christians, the boldest and truest hearts
were summoned ; and he who won and held a bind of con-
verts to her Lord was consecrated bishop of the church
amongst them, if he went not out in that holy
character. Thus he could at once ordain new pastors
and evangelists from amoegat his converts. . . Such was
the equipment of Pothinus of old when with Irenicus as his
deacon he went from Asia to sow amongst the Gauls the
seed of the kingdom, and the church of Lyons was his glo-
rious harvest. So Boniface went cut from this land of ours
to become the apostle of Germany. But wholly unlike this
was our equipment of the church. in America. We sent out
individual teachers with no common bond ,1 visible unity,
no directing head, no power of ordaining ; we maintained
them there like the garrison of a foreign church, and the con-
sequence wsa, what might have been foretold, the church
languished and almost passed many.
Strange as it may seem, then, the cause of the ad-
mitted utter failure of the church of England in
America was the scant of a bishop. It had its endow-
ments, in some of the colonies at least, like the
church in the mother country—its churches were
built, its doctrines were professed, by those in autho-
rity ; but it could make no way, because it bad no
bishop. " Ilinc Hite lachrymte." From this cause
proceeded all the complaints wafted across the At-
lantic, and which are now buried amongst the manu-
script lumber at Fulham, waiting to be disinterred by
diligent seekers after a truth or a theory, like the
Bishop of Oxford. The bishop, it most be remarked,
has constructed a theory out of these materials, and
handles it with all the skill of a practised disputant.
The use he has made of this discovery requires a few
remarks.
In the first place, assuming that this want of a
bishop is the true cause of the utter inefficiency of
the church in America before the revolution, to what'
' injurious conclusions are we led as to the value, in a
ssiritual point of view, of the two remaining orders
r o-y- -
the church ministry—the priesthood and the diaco-
. nate ! The most important results have been obtained

in America and in other places, by minietas of
various a.enminations acting under a aecse of their

responsibility to no one but their Maker. Each
minister has laboured in the sphere assigned him, and
has owed the greatness of the result produced to his
own efforts alone, and nothing to the system of
which he was a part. In the Church of
England alone this cannot be achieved. Is
the holiness of the priests utterly unpro-
ductive, runleas a bishop is on the spot; to
communicate some mysterious energy to it ? (Jr is it
the fact that no holiness is to be expected from priests
unless it is drawn oat by the rays from the bishop's
countenacce? There is nothing esteemed essential to
salvation in the English church which cannot be
performed as well by a simple priest as by a bishop.
The priest administers the sacraments, preaches, and
gives consolation to the sick. He has all power to
perform everything necessary for the completion of
ministerial duty : how is it, then, that his efforts are
palsied without the presence of a bishop ? This is a
mystery which Bishop Wilberforce does not attempt
to solve. It is one, however, which involves a fearful
charge against the English church.
Again, assuming once more the bishop's theory
to be true, how is it the want was never supplied ?
What a terrible reproach is it to the ministers of the
Church of England in America, that they continued
to exercise their functions sleepily, without ever
themselves making a hearty united appeal to the
church of the mother country, or persuading 'their
flocks of the necessity of a bishop to the perfection of
the church ! The laity were even hostile to the intro-
duction of an American bishop.
When (says OUT author) the Virginian clergy, who might
naturally be thought moat ready to unite in this appeal (for
a bishop) were called together by their commimary in April,
1771, for its considerauon, so few appeared in council
that the question was postponed. A second summons
brought no more then twelve, a majority of whom, after one
opposite decision, agreed to an appeal to the King in favour
of an American episcopate. But against this vote two at first,
and ultimatey four out of the twelve protested publicly:
and such wls the feeling of the laity that these four receivol
the um/Ili:arms thanks of the lower branch of the Virginian
house of legislature for " their wise and well• timed opposi-
tion to the pernicious project for introducing an American
bishop."
But leaving the American clergy burdened with
the proper weight of reprobation fur having neither
bestirred themselves to procure a bishop, nor
impressed the laity with a due estimation of
the value of an episcopate, and giving them
the benefit at the same time of the excuse, founded
upon the fact of their not being blessed with the pre-
sence of a bishop, and therefore necessarily unac-
quainted with the whole extent of their lees, what are
we to think of the conduct of the church at home?
How comes it that here, where the church system wee
in full operation, where a full staff of bishops, priests,
and deacons were displaying the perfect organisation
of the English church, no effort worthy of mention
was ever made to complete the American church,
which was :eft for 200 years without the seal of per-
fection? Can it be that the English clergy were never
thoroughly persuaded themselves of the value of an
episcopate ? If they were, in it conceivable that
they would have remained pass ve for so long a period,
while their brethren in the most important colonies
of the crown were without bishops? How was it that,
when the state of spiritual destitution in the colonies
had led, in the beginning of the eighteenth century,
to the foundation of the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel, the conduc:ors of the opemtiens of the
society never thought of administering to the wants
of the colonies by institatirg bishoprics, but contented
themselves with sending missionaries ? How can we
explain all this but by the supposition that neither in
America nor in England was the episcopate ever
looked upon as necessary to the constitution of tha
church, except for the performance of the two func-
tions of ordination and confirmation, which custom
had assigned to it.
We rise from the perusal of this treatise with the
conviction that his lordship's real object in writing it
was not so much to afford his readers a correct por-
traiture of the fortunes of the episcopal chinch in
America, as to insinuate an argument to prove the
paramount importance of preserving the ancient con-
stitution of the church. This constitution is called
" the divinely appointed organisation—the channel of
God's living grace—the external organisation which
had been framed by the Lord specially to foster the
religious sympathies of men." We are desired to
look upon the evils of the " great rebellion" as prov-
ing " how short-Sced and uncertain is the growth of
personal religion when taken from the shelter and
protection of the church." To prove his cue, the
author has taken in hand the history of the American
episcopal church, because he finds that as
long es there were no American bishop.
the church produced no good fruit, and
that even after the revolution when bishop.
were appointed the church flourished. But in the
ardour et controversy his lordship forgets that the
American church was without bishops, simply be-
cause she never thought it worth while to make much
stir to obtain them, and because the mother church,
suffering under a plethora of episcopacy, considered
that the colonial church would be neither the better
nor the worse for the gift of an episcopate. He for-
gets that to establish a minor point in favour of the
institution of bishops, he is obliged to confess that for
200 years there never was a church so devoid of all
spiritual life as the Church of England, with the best
endowed episcopal staff in the world. He forgets that
these bishops systematically repressed every living
movement in the church, and that earnest
Christianity was forced to seek for shelter out of the
pale of the episcopal church. He forgets that John
Wesley was driven into schism by the bishops, and
that the methodists would not now be reckoned by
hundreds of thousands had there been no intolerant
episcopacy. As an argument, therefore, in favour of
episcopal institutions, we must look upon the book an
an utter failure: as a most interesting account of a
portion of history very little known, we can heartily
recommend it. His lordship's facts are more power-
ful than his arguments, and his easy and native' style
is better than both.