Episcopacy in America.
The
Church and state in
England worked in concert in forging fetters for the
English-American colonists.
The Church of
England was early made a state establishment in the colony of
Virginia, but elsewhere the free spirit of the people kept episcopacy at bay, for they remembered how much they had suffered at the hands of the Church of England.
On the accession of George III.
and the administration of the
Earl of
Bute, among the reforms in the colonies contemplated and proposed by the ministry was the curtailment or destruction of the
Puritan and Dissenting influence in the provinces, which seemed inimical to monarchy, and to make the ritual of the Anglican Church the state mode of worship.
As early as 1748
Dr. Seeker,
Archbishop of
Canterbury, had proposed the establishment of episcopacy in
America, and overtures were made to several eminent
Puritan divines to accept the leadership, but they all declined it. A royalist churchman in
Connecticut, in 1760, in a letter to
Dr. Secker, and to the
Earl of
Halifax, then at the head of the board of trade and plantations, urged the necessity of providing two or three bishops for the colonies, the support of the
Church, and a method for repressing the rampant republicanism of the people.
“The rights of the clergy and the authority of the
King,” said the
Bishop of
London, “must stand or fall together.”
The Anglican Church then had many adherents in all the colonies, who naturally desired its ascendency; but the great mass of the people looked upon that Church as an ally of the state in acts of oppression, and earnestly opposed it. They well knew that if Parliament could create dioceses and appoint bishops, they would establish tithes and crush out dissent as heresy.
For years controversy in the colonies on this topic was warm, and sometimes acrimonious.
Essays for and against episcopacy appeared in abundance.
The
Bishop of
Llandaff, in a sermon preached before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, in which he advocated the necessity of establishing episcopacy in
America, heaped abuse without stint upon the colonists.
“Upon the adventurers themselves,” he said, “what reproach could he cast heavier than they deserve?
who, with their native soil, abandoned their native manners and religion.
and ere long were found, in many parts, living without remembrance or knowledge of God, without any divine worship, in dissolute wickedness and the most brutal
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profligacy of manners.”
He charged them with having become “infidels and barbarians” ; and the prelate concluded that the only remedy for the great evil was to be found in a Church establishment.
His recommendations were urged with zeal by churchmen in the colonies.
The Dissenters were aroused.
They observed in the bishop's sermon the old persecuting spirit of the
Church, and visions of
Laud and the
Star Chamber disturbed them.
Eminent writers in
America entered the lists in opposition to him. Among others,
William Livingston, whose famous letter to the bishop, issued in pamphlet form, refuted the charges of that dignitary so completely that they were not repeated.
The theological controversy ceased when the vital question of resistance to the oppressive power of both Church and state was brought to a final issue.
The first English bishop within the domains of the
American republic was
Samuel Seabury (q. v.), of
Connecticut, who was consecrated by three bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church, Nov. 14, 1784.
Efforts were early made by the
English to supplant the Dutch Church as the prevailing religious organization in New York.
The act of the Assembly procured by
Governor Fletcher, though broad in its scope, was destined for that purpose.
Under that act Trinity Church was organized, and
Fletcher tried to obtain authority to appoint all the ministers, but the Assembly successfully resisted his designs.
In 1695
Rev. John Miller, in a long letter to the
Bishop of
London on the condition of religion and morals, drew a gloomy picture of the state of society in the
city of New York, and earnestly recommended as a remedy for all these social evils “to send over a bishop to the province of New York duly qualified as suffragan” to the
Bishop of
London, and five or six young ministers, with Bibles and prayer-books; to unite New York,
New Jersey,
Connecticut, and
Rhode Island into one province; and the bishop to be appointed governor, at a salary of $7,200, his Majesty to give him the
King's Farm of 30 acres, in New York, as a seat for himself and his successors.
When
Sir Edward Hyde (afterwards Lord Cornbury) became governor of the combined provinces of New York and
New Jersey, in 1702, even violent efforts were used to make the liturgy and ritual of the
Church of
England the state system of worship.
He denied the right of preachers or schoolmasters to exercise their functions in the province without a bishop's license; and when the corporation of New York resolved to establish a grammar-school, the
Bishop of
London was requested to send over a teacher.
In violation of his positive instructions, the governor began a systematic persecution of all religious denominations dissenting from the practices of the
Church of
England.
This conduct reacted disastrously to Trinity Church, which, until the province was rid of Cornbury, had a very feeble growth.
Puritan austerity had extended to a large class of intelligent free-thinkers and doubters in
New England, and they felt inclined to turn towards the freer, more orderly, and dignified Church of England.
The rich and polite preferred a mode of worship which seemed to bring them into sympathy with the
English aristocracy, and there were many who delighted in the modest ceremonies of the church.
Nor were these influences confined to laymen.
There were studious and aspiring men among the ministers to whom the idea of apostolic succession had charms; and they yearned for freedom from the obstinate turbulence of stiff-necked church-members, who, in theory, were the spiritual equals of the pastors, whom, to manage, it was necessary to humor and to suit.
These ideas found expression in an unexpected quarter.
Timothy Cutler, a minister of learning and great ability, was rector of Yale College in 1719.
To the surprise and alarm of the people of
New England,
Mr. Cutler, with the tutor of the college and two ministers in the neighborhood, took occasion, on Commencement Day, 1722, to avow their conversion to Episcopacy.
Cutler was at once “excused” from all further service in the colege, and provision was made for all future rectors to give satisfactory evidence of “soundness of their faith in opposition to Arminian and prelatical corruptions.”
Weaker ones engaged in the revolt halted, but others persisted.
Cutler became rector of a new Episcopal church in
Boston, and the
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dismissed ministers were maintained as missionaries by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.
This secession from the
Church resting on the
Saybrook platform (q. v.), made the ministers of
Massachusetts keen-eyed in the detection of signs of defection.
John Checkly (afterwards ordained an Episcopal missionary) published
Leslie's
Short and easy method with Deists, with an appendix by himself, in which Episcopal ordination was insisted upon as necessary to constitute a Christian minister.
The authorities in
Boston were offended.
Checkly was tried on a charge that the publication tended “to bring into contempt and infamy the ministers of the holy Gospel established by law within his Majesty's province of
Massachusetts.”
For this offence Checkly was found guilty and fined £50.
See
Protestant Episcopal Church. 
