by law in New England-the more than inquisitorial despotism which proscribed the Church and its doctrines, as in Massachusetts-the fines and imprisonments inflicted on all who maintained the doctrines and celebrated the solemnities of the Church -all these things are tolerably well known to our readers. The northern settlements were almost entirely colonized by professors of every form of false doctrine; in Maryland and Virginia alone, was the Church established, and in such a way that perhaps this, as we have already hinted, was not the least important element in its fall. The very loyalty of Virginia infested it with Erastianism; the most extraordinary and stringent laws† against nonconformity, first put forth by Sir Thomas White, in 1611, and partially re-enacted by Sir John Hervey, in 1629, had their share in the spiritual destitution of the colony. The facts that Maryland was settled by Romanists, and that the lords proprietors of the Baltimore family, were, up to 1715, of that communion, were against the growth of the English Church; and the influx of dissenters into the southern states in the seventeenth century, with the low standard of acquirements and character which the established Clergy maintained, are quite enough to account for any amount of evil.

And it ought to be noticed that the settlement of an American Episcopate was opposed by almost every interest. By the American Clergy of the lower class, too often, it is to be feared, lest the presence of any authorized superior should disclose their own disorders; by the people, in whose minds the Episcopate was inseparable from the execution of Sir Thomas Smith's High Commission given in the last note; by the government at home, who thought Bishops must not be made too cheap, which feeling was not altogether perhaps absent from the English bench; by the American Governors, who had been accustomed to lord it in a most extraordinary way over the Church as Governors, and with exactions even yet more peculiar when there was a settled aristocratic proprietor, such as the Baltimores of Maryland.

"Maryland was brought under an anomalous mixed kind of jurisdiction, in which the respective rights of the Baron of Baltimore and the Bishop of

* Not only did Virginia make a vigorous resistance to the authority of Cromwell, but it became a refuge for the Royalists-of the "Cavaliero Wildrake "cast too oftenand it is remarkable that Charles II. was proclaimed at Jameston, by Sir William Berkeley, in 1659-sixteen months before the Restoration of the 29th of May.

For cursing and swearing, death on proof of the third offence-for unworthy demeanour to any minister of the Gospel, to be whipt three times-for not attending the service duly twice a day upon the working-daies, for the first offence, loss of his or her day's allowance-for the second, a whipping-for the third, six months in the galleys-on Sundays for neglecting Church, death for the third offence-for not attending catechetical instruction for the first time of refusal, to be whipt once-for the second, to be whipt twice-for the third, to be whipt every day; "and vpon the Sabboth when the minister shall catechise, and of him demande any question concerning his faith and knowledge, he shall not refvse to make answer upon the same perill." These laws were never, it seems, acted upon.

London were never accurately defined. Theoretically the Bishop of London was the diocesan spiriar jurisdiction, therefore, including the important particulars of discipline, belonged to him, and the clergy had all been long accustomed so to think. But they were embarrassed because they found that jurisdiction was, in some mode or other, in the hands of the proprietor also. Now they saw the Bishop consulting Lord Baltimore, and now his lordship was consulting the Bishop. Delegated ecclesiastical power was ungraciously received by the laity, and met with but little recognition and less respect in the person of the Commissary. At one moment the proprietor would write and inform the clergy that he valued the Church; and at another they would find the Governor representing this same proprietor, opposed to the clergy, forbidding them to assemble in convocation, crippling the efforts of the Commissary to administer wholesome discipline, and aiding the foes of the Church in the legislature. They were distracted by a divided allegiance, for they knew not where, and to what extent, ecclesiastical power existed. Thus Lord Baltimore presented to a living the Bishop of London licensed: the Governor inducted if the incumbent did wrong the Commissary tried him: and when convicted, no power punished him: for, after induction, the proprietor could not remove him : and the Bishop of London, nominally his diocesan, could neither give nor take away the meanest living in the province. The common want of a Bishop, so sensibly felt, and earnestly represented, from time to time, by the Colonies, was nowhere more felt than in Maryland. Had a Bishop been present, the conflicting rights of the proprietor and Bishop of London would have been quietly conceded to an ecclesiastical superior on the spot; crime in the clergy would have been punished, and even the proprietor would soon have found it to be his interest to sustain the Bishop. It is not wonderful that when it was the fashion to send to the Colonies the refuse of the English clergy-insomuch that our wonder is less that the Church in many places did not grow, than that it was not utterly extinguished-that the clergy should exhibit but a sad example to their parishioners. It was natural that the laity should feel aggrieved by the imposition on them of inducted clergymen who were a disgrace to the Church, and yet were irrevocably fastened to it. They saw no remedy but to legislate directly against the clergy: this exasperated the latter, but it had been wiser if both had united in making a loud and ceaseless appeal for a Bishop."-Hawks' Maryland, pp. 189–192.

In the great contest between the Clergy and State of Maryland, in 1726, that object was almost attained. The Clergy, seeing that nothing short of it could prevent the ruin of the Maryland Church, with unprecedented earnestness implored the Bishop of London for a Bishop; and, in reply to this appeal, Bishop Gibson actually invited a Mr. Colebatch to London to receive consecration as a Suffragan: whether the Bishop had secured the consent of the Crown does not appear; but the whole measure was rendered abortive by the Colonists serving Colebatch with a writ of ne exeat regno! And, after this, in the Reports of the Society for Propagating the Gospel, we find Mr. Bacon writing

"Infidelity has indeed arrived to an amazing and shocking growth in these parts; it is hard to say whether it is more owing to the ignorance of the common people, or the misconduct of too many of the Clergy."—1740.

In the friendly bosom of the Society the "faithful among the faithless" of the Clergy alone found sympathy. Bishop Gibson, in the later years of his life, after having quarrelled with Lord

Baltimore, neglected the Colonial Church; and his successor, Sherlock, seems to have taken up the strange notion that America would be most likely to obtain Bishops if the Bishop of London refused to have anything to do with it.

These efforts were not confined to the southern states; and, in 1763, the celebrated Dr. Chandler, himself a convert from Congregationalism in early life, pleaded so successfully the cause of the Church, that, in a few years, throughout the New England States, a general application for the Episcopate was made.

"New York and New Jersey, with the occasional aid of Connecticut, were conspicuous in these solicitations. They spared no efforts to get up an unanimous appeal to the Church of the mother [or rather step-mother] country; the Clergy of these states formed a convention, with Seabury, afterwards first Bishop, for its secretary, and despatched two of their members to secure the operation of the southern Churchmen in procuring an American Episcopate."-Hawks' Virginia, p. 126.

To this appeal the Maryland Clergy responded, by drawing up addresses to the King, to the Archbishop, the Bishop of London, and Lord Baltimore, praying for a Bishop. What reply it received from, or whether it was ever forwarded to, the three former, we are not informed; but the latter coolly told the Clergy that "all the livings in Maryland were his donations, and therefore stood in no need of Episcopal supervision." (Hawks' Maryland, p. 257.) But it was soon found that the question of the Episcopate was now out of date; the time had gone by; the fingers were on the wall. Schism out of the Church, and profligacy standing at its altars; rebellion nurtured by dissent; neglect at home, and sin, moral and spiritual, in the Colonies, had filled the cup of vengeance; two centuries of wickedness had sown the wind, and civil war was the whirlwind. American Revolution had begun before Bunker's Hill.

The

Thus, as early as 1771, the significant answer of the Virginian Clergy to the New Jersey Mission, showed that even the minds of the Clergy were possessed with the notion that the Episcopate would only link the Colonies more closely to that mother-country, with which political ties were completely, for all practical purposes, already broken. At this time Commissary Cann summoned the one hundred Clergy of Virginia to address the King on the subject of a Bishop; so few attended the summons that it was felt that so small a meeting could not assume the authority of a Convention. On a second summons still fewer met-only twelve in number; and when the proposal was laid before this scanty assembly it was rejected; and four of the most active clerical opponents of the plan actually received an unanimous vote of thanks from the legislature for their rejection of a Bishop, which they had embodied in a protest, delivered to the Convention, in which, amongst other reasons, they argued against the appointment,

"Because the establishment of an American Episcopate, at this time, would tend greatly to weaken the connexion between the mother-country and her Colonies, to continue their present unhappy disputes, to infuse jealousies and fears into the minds of Protestant Dissenters," &c-Hawks' Virginia, p. 128.

The Clergy were for the most part loyal, though some of them were violent and some consistent partisans of the popular cause. Such were Bp. Madison, Bp. White, and others on the one side; and on the other, the Rev. Mr. Muhlenberg, "who relinquished his spiritual charge, accepted a commission as a colonel in the colonial army, raised his own parishioners [against his King], and retired from the service as a brigadier-general;" and the Rev. Mr. Thruston, (the man's name savours of belligerency) who bore arms also as a colonel, mindful of the noble example of Odo, Bp. of Baieux, and Bp. Compton, who rode at the head of a troop of horse for Church-principles and the Orange Revolution of 1688. About one-third took part against the Crown; but the loyalty of the remainder made them especial objects of persecution; and it seems like reading the old history of our civil war, to be told of the Clergy of one state, Virginia, reduced, in the eight years of Revolution, from one hundred to twenty-eight-of roofless churches-desecrated chancels-the priests starved, scourged, and hunted down, or saying the service with "pistols concealed under the surplice;" and if in the Cromwell rebellion Will Dowsing had an American counterpart in one Claiborne-a felon convict, who was employed in the holy "work of rooting out the abominations of popery and prelacy in Maryland"-the atrocities of the Transatlantic Reformers and Revolutionists of the eighteenth century, where "chalices are used for morning-drams and marble fonts for horse-troughs," (Hawks' Virginia, p. 236,) are not exceeded by the malignity and devilish malice of any reformers and rebels in the world. Never did a wilder storm sweep over any part of the Lord's vineyard: Gebal and Ammon and Amalek, the quiet malignity of the Quakers, the open violence of the Baptist, the old Puritan and covenant spirit of the Congregationalist, all were armed against the Church; and it was but the earnest prayer and prevailing intercession of such men as Jonathan Bouchier that, as we have told the fall, we shall have to tell the more extraordinary revival of the Church. Well might he and such as he say—

"Why hast Thou then broken down her hedge: that all they that go by pluck off her grapes?

"The wild boar out of the wood doth root it up and the wild beasts of the field devour it.

"Turn Thee again, thou God of hosts, look down from heaven: behold, and visit this vine;

"And the place of the vineyard that Thy right hand hath planted: and the branch that Thou madest so strong for Thyself."-Ps. lxxx.

(To be continued.)

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Charge of H. E. Manning, Archdeacon of Chichester. London: Murray. 1843.

Charge of R. J. Wilberforce, Archdeacon of the East Riding. London Burns. 1843.

Statements by, and Communications to, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the Society for the supply of Additional Curates.

THE Bishop of Tasmania is only one among many of our Colonial Bishops who has cures with stipends attached to them, and can find no one to accept them. At this time he is in want of seven priests, and is able to offer 2007. per annum to each for his support. Neither is it abroad alone that this difficulty of finding a due supply of well-qualified applicants for the office of the ministry is experienced. Most of our readers will remember, each some one or more poor cures, in his own immediate neighbourhood, which have waited long, or are still waiting, for any person fit to undertake them. At this moment we have in our eye the assistant-curacy of an agricultural parish, the stipend of which is 60%., the population under 900, for which the Bishop of London is unable to find any person qualified for, and desirous of, being ordained upon it as a title. This is only one case out of hundreds, although to us a peculiarly startling one; because there are not required, in this case, those sacrifices of strength and of taste, in the high sense of the word, which are often attached to a poor curacy. The reports, however, of the Societies above-mentioned, which are full of most painful statements of demands uncomplied with, furnish, perhaps, a stronger proof of the melancholy fact, that we have not, as yet, the men to do the work which must be done.

The Societies complain continually that they have not the pecuniary means to relieve the cases of spiritual destitution which are brought before them; but how is it that these means are so universally required? Are there no persons who study law without a hope or intention of living by it? Are there no men who give up their lives and fortunes to scientific pursuits for science's sake? Are there not hundreds of young men of energy and enthusiasm, who fritter away those energies, and that zeal, without an object in life towards which to bend them? Whilst these are to be found, so long the complaint of the Church, if truly read, is this, that she wants not wealth so much as men; that she seeks the energies of her children rather than their possessions. The Additional Curates' Fund has fifty applications from a single county; and wants both money and men. "Not walls, but men, are cities," is an eternal truth, and one which, in its universal application, it were well to remember.

"Let the Church," says Archdeacon Manning, "enter upon the field of its spiritual warfare in apostolic poverty, so it be with apostolic zeal. What she needs, at this crisis of her trial, is not acts of legislature, and grants of money, but living men, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith, wise in the truth, gentle in ruling, makers of peace; sons of consolation, kindled with charity, choosing, above all earthly boons, to spend and to be spent for the souls for whom Christ died."-Charge, 1843.