Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1863-10-13

PASTORAL LETTER OF BisnoP HoPKINs Oh
VERMoNT.-During the campaign in Penn.
sylvania the c0pperheads and their allies ex-
tensivey circulated as campaign document
a"Bihle Defence of Slavery" written some
two or three years ago by Bishop Hopkins OF
the diocese of Vermont, and presiding bishop
of the Protestant Episcopal church in the
United States. Bishop Potter and a large
number of the clergy of the diocese OF Penn
sylvania, indignant that the talent and office of
their superior should be degraded to such
baseness, protested against it with as much
earnestness as their sense of propriety would
allow. Bishop Hopkins has again taken up
the cudgel in behalf of his Dulcinea, and
''rampages" right and left without restraint.
He charges his right reverend brother with
''gross insult to his senior" as well as "the
more serious offence of false accusation; :"
and tells him that the chastisement of God is
on the country for its ''daring and impious in
novat0ns."
eve have seen the rise and spread of Mil
lerism, Pantheism, MormOnism and Spiritu-
alism. We have even seen our venerable
Mother Church of England sorely agitated by
the contagious fever of change on the one
hand, towards superstition, and on the other
toward intidel rationalism. And we have
heard the increasing clamor against the Bible,
sometimes from the devotees of geological
spectators, sometimes from the bold deniers
OF miracles and prophecy, and, not the least
upon the list, from the loud-tongued apostles
of anti slavery. We have marked the ora
tors which cry "Down with the Bible if it
maintains the lawfulness of slavery" We
have marveied at the senatorial eloquence
which proclaimed that ait was high time to
have an anti-slavery God and an anti-siavery
Bible" We have heard the constitution OF
our country denounced as "a covenant with
death and hell" We have heard the boosted
determination that the Union shall never be
restored until its provisions for the protection
Of slavery are utterly abolished"
The venerable and afflicted bishop grows
warmer as he proceeds, and closes with the
following anathema against Bishop Potter
and his fellow protestants
II wish you, therefore, to be advertised that
| shall publish, within few months, if gra-
cious Providence should spare my life and
faculties, full demonstration of the truth,
wherein l stand" And shall prove in that
book, by the most unquestionable authorities,
that slaves and shareholders were in the
church from the beginning; that slavery was
held to be consistent with christian principle
by the fathers and councils, and by all protes-
tant divines and commentators, up to the very
close of the last century, and that this fact
was universal among all the churches and
sects throughout the christian world. | shall
contend that our church, which main
tains the primitive rule OF catholic con-
sent and adjures all novelties, is bound
by her very constitution, to hold fast
that only safe and enduring rule, or abandon
her apostolic claims, and descend to the level
of those who are ''driven about by every wind
Of doctrine" And l shall print your ''indig-
nant reprobation," with its list of namep, in
the preface to my book, so that if l can not
give you fame, may ut least do my part to
give you notoriety.