New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1885-04-20
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
rpp AMERICAN EPISCOPAL CHURCH.

THE AMERICAN EPISCOPAL CHURCH.
CHURCH 15s7-1ss3. BY WILLIAM STEVENS Perry
D. D. LII d. Bishop Of Iowa In Two volumes o HT,.
The Planting and Growth OF the American COLO
NAL Church. l5S7-l7s3. Alto. Pr. Xxx, 600. James
X. Osgood Co.
This elaborate and sumptuous work comprehends
something more than an ecclesiastical history OF
the organization to which it refers and something
more than is necessarily sgnified by It's tltle.
Bishop Perry is we'll known as learned student OF
early American history, and he has here employed
his exceptional accomplishments III the Illustration
of many obscure chapters of the past
which belong quite as much to the
romance of primitive colonial adventure
as TO the story of religious enterprise Inc
minuteness the freshness and the fruitfulness OF
his researches apparent everywhere. lie mas
made ample use of a multitude OF recent mono
graphs collections of historical societies. and other
special publications, which have not been con-
shifted by previous authors of either the religious
or the secular history of the United States; he mas
Investigated interesting manuscript materials,
particularly in the Lambeth Library and the
library of the Bishop of London and he has made
dlligent examination of rare tracts, records, ETC.,
ETC.; so that the work is virtually an original con-
tribution to American history The connection be-
tween the general subject and the story OF
the Protestant Episcopal Church Is obvious.
Bishop Perry starts from the position
that the Church of England was intimately
associated from the very beginning, with the pro-
iects of discovery aud colonization on this CONT
nent and that the State and the Church grew up
together among us from the first" 1t is true that
the religious aspect of most of the early adventures
was extremely vague and that. although chap
lalns sometimes accompanied the fleets, ana Plous
professions according to the universal fashion of
Iol fba nta an1p ri
most of the pioneers thought of other things than
building up church. Still the English Church. at
the end of the sixteenth century. too Important
a part of the English Government to be quite neg
lected in any scheme of English enterprise con-
Quoted under the royal authority Even the free
bOoting maritime expeditions which sailed
the Spanish main, sacking cities. pllaglng
galleons. cutting threats, spreading the iaDle OF
England's queen and the faith of Englands re-
formed church" and our good bishop suggests
"taking somew hat from the Injuries of the pam
pered priests" even these expeditions were fur
nished with chapaius The Reverend Thomas
Fletcher, who sailed with Sir Francis Drake to the
northwest coast, was :" the first in English orders
who ministered the word and sacrameuts within
the territory of the United States" The con-
yenent and fit harbor " on whose shores he held
service in 1879 was perhaps the Bay of San Fran
cisco. There was a clergyman in the fieet which
carried Raeigh's lost colony" to the North Caro-
lima coast in 1885, but it is not known that he re-
NAMED there The real beginning of the Episcopal
Church IN America should probably be dated from
the landing of the Virginia coonists under New
port, John Smith and their associates in 1907.
The Rev. Robert Hunt was the preacher" of this
expedition man of character and an important
parsonage in the enterprise. While this plantation
was forming under the auspices of the London
Company, the Plymouth Company, whose pro-
moters included Lord Chief Justice Sir John Pop
ham, the Rev. Richard Hakluyt, Sir Ferdlnando
Gorges and Raleigh Gilbert, sent out colony to
the coast of Maine, which in August, 1907. few
months after Viewpoints arrival in the Chesapeake,
made a settlement at the mouth of the Sagadahoc
Kenuebec), with George Popham. brother of the
Chief Justice. as its president and
the Rev. Richard Seymour probably
a great grandson of the Lord Protector Somersetl,
as its minister. The Church of England was for
mally established by the laws of this colony, and
every other worship was forbidden. The colony
was abandoned, however the next year. Never
theless short as was their residence on the bleak
coast of Maine, the of Pophanfs colony " laid
the foundations of Church and State at the North"
says Bishop Perry, "a year before the men of Ley
den signed their solemn compact in the cabin OF
the Mayflower in Plymouth harbor. and began on a
soil to which they had no claim. and without
minister OF their own lallI, Une civil anu
history of Puritan New-England" This sentence
embraces an odd slip of the pen. The Sagadahoc
venture preceded the voyage of the Mayhower not
by ga year" but by thirteen years.
The story of the relations between the Puritan
and Pilgrim settlers Of New-Ergland and the scat
tered adherents of the established church-incud
ing few more or less unemployed clergymen-
whom the separatlsts found within their jursdlc-
ton, is told with care and minuteDess. This pOr-
ton of the work invites controversy, not so much
by the statements the text proper as by the tone
of an accompanying monograph from thep pen of the
Reverend DIR. Thomas Winthrop Cot, which is
obligatory in the very highest degree Unques-
tioDaby the Puritans were iDtolerant; they had no
intention of founding a commonwealth upon the
principle of religious equality which their descend
ants recognize as the basis of just social system;
but neither had the EpiscOpalians any such lnten-
tlep liberation was not regarded as a virtue that
age Church and State. Bishop Perry observes
were set up together; and wherever they stood to-
gether they prohibited dissent. The severity of
the restrictive measures differed with the differing
circumstances of times and places, but the right
and duty of the State TO maintain what it believed
to be the true religion and to suppress or exclude
heresy was generally taken for granted Bishop
Perry is quite frank in his treatment OF this sub
ject. The purpose of the Church of England colo
nists he holds was not only to extend the English
empire but 10 extend the English church. When
Lord De la Wars company was about starting for
Virginia William Crashaw father of the poet
preached before them at the Temple Church SER
mon which Bishop Perry warmly conmends.
"The preacher" he remarks, was far-seo-
ing Earnestly does he deprecate the allowance
of any Papists, Brownists,' and factions Separa-
tists'-then beginning to excite notice and alarm at
home-amoug these founders of q daughter Church
of England in New World" The Laws Divine,
Moral and Martial" promulgated in Virginia in
1910 made attendance upon the services of the es-