That so little business was transacted in this session of the convention, may be seen from the journal to have been owing to the adjournment, made for the express purpose of inviting the clergy of Connecticut to meet the convention in September; an object which it was expected would be promoted by the conviction generally prevailing in the convention, that the formerly proposed constitution was inadequate to the situation of this Church, and by the new constitution entered on the journal of this session. On this business, the president of the convention met the committee but once, and interested himself very little; being desirous, that whatever additional powers it might be thought necessary to assign to the bishops, such powers should not lie under the reproach of having been pressed for by one of the number, but be the result of due deliberation, and the free choice of all orders of persons within the Church, and given with a view to her good government.*

advisable, that the line of bishops should be handed down from those who had received their commission from the same source."

It was afterwards supposed, that the sense of the archbishop was fully accomplished by the presence and the assistance of the canonical number of the English line; and the matter was so understood by Bishop Madison. Besides, the question had changed its ground, by the repeal of the laws against the Scottish bishops; and by their reception in their proper character, in England. This happened, after Bishop Madison's visit to that country.

During the session there took place in the house of the author, the decease of the Rev. Dr. Griffith, of Virginia. The respect entertained for him by the convention, appears in the arrangements made for attendance on his funeral as recorded on the journal. He had been much indisposed from the day of his arrival. His death, however, was in one sense sudden, and certainly unexpected to the very able physician who attended him, and with whom he had been in long habits of acquaintance. His disorder was the inflammatory rheumatism, which passed to his head during sleep. The following statement is thought due to the memory of a respectable divine, who had manifested great zeal for the organizing of the Church.

It has been reported, and had weight on some minds in a more recent election to the Episcopacy, that he had been under the necessity of resigning, on account of his having been elected in haste, and without due notice. The contrary is here known, and can be proved by documents in possession. His election was in May, 1786. Some private concerns, and the not being supplied with money, prevented his crossing of the Atlantic, with the two who crossed it in November of that year. In May, 1787, about a year after his election, and about a month after the return of the bishops consecrated in England, there was held a conven tion in Virginia, from the printed journal of which the following is an extract:"Resolved, That the standing committee, without delay, request of the Right Rev. Dr. White, bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Right Rev. Dr. Provoost, bishop of the said Church in the state of New-York, that they, or either of them, admit to consecration the Rev. Dr. Griffith, nominated by the last convention bishop of the Church in this state." The standing committee were the Rev. Dr. Madison, the Rev. Mr. Bracken, the Rev. Mr. Shield, the Hon. John Blair, Mr. Page, of Rosewell, and Mr. Andrews. The prominent applicant to the American bishops was Dr. Madison, who was afterwards bishop. The principle on which the bishops declined compliance, has been set forth in its proper place; being their opinion, that they were pledged to their first obtaining of three bishops from England.

In the second session, the clergy who came from the eastward, besides Bishop Seabury, were two of his presbyters, Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Jarvis, from Connecticut, and Dr. Parker, from Massachusetts. All things now appeared to tend to an happy union.

But a danger arose from an unexpected question, on the very day of the arrival of these gentlemen. The danger was on the score of politics. Some lay members of the convention two of them were known, and perhaps there. were more, having obtained information that Bishop Seabury, who had been chaplain to a British regiment during the war, was now in the receipt of half-pay, entertained scruples in regard to the propriety of admitting him as a member of the convention. One of the gentlemen took the author aside, at a gentleman's house where several of the convention were dining, and stated to him this difficulty. His opinion it is hoped the right one-was, that an ecclesiastical body needed not to be over-righteous, or more so than civil bodies, on such a point-that he knew of no law of the land, which the circumstance relative to a former chaplaincy contradicted-that indeed there was an article in the confederation, then the bond of union of the states, providing that no citizen of theirs should receive any title of nobility from a foreign power; a provision not extending to the receipt of money; which seemed impliedly allowed, indeed, in the guard provided against the other that Bishop Seabury's half-pay was a compensation for former services, and not for any now expected of him-that it did not prevent his being a citizen, with all the rights attached to the character, in Connecticut-and that should he or any person in the like circumstances be returned a member of Congress from that state, he must necessarily be admitted of their body. The gentleman to whom the reasoning was addressed, seemed satisfied, and either from this or from some other cause, the objection was not brought forward. The author very much apprehended, that the contrary would happen, not because of the prejudices of the gentleman who addressed him on the subject, but because of those of another, who had started the difficulty.

On the day succeeding that of the above conversation, the committee was appointed, as stated on the minutes, to confer with the eastern gentlemen, on a plan of union. They met in the evening, and found no difficulty in joining in the report, as made the next day in the convention. The subsequent adoption of the report, with the reservation as

to the negative of the bishops, leads to the remark, that from the sentiments expressed in the debate, there is rea son to believe that the full negative would have been allowed, had not Mr. Andrews, from Virginia, very seriously, and doubtless very sincerely, expressed his apprehension, that it was so far beyond what was expected by the Church in his state, as would cause the measure to be there disowned. The desire that Mr. Andrews had all along shown to effect the union, and the good temper with which he had treated every subject of discussion, gave the greater force to his apprehensions: the consequence of which was, the referring of the subject of the full negative to some subsequent General Convention, to be determined according to instructions from the conventions in the several states. The eastern gentlemen acquiesced, but reluctantly, in this compromise. Had there been no more than their apprehension of laws passing by a majority of four-fifths, after a non-concurrence of the bishops, the extreme improbability of this would-it is thought-have been confessed by them. But the truth is they thought that the frame of ecclesiastical government could hardly be called Episcopal, while such a matter was held out as speculatively possible.*

For the constitution as proposed by the session of July and August, and as acceded to in this session by Bishop Seabury and the presbyters from Connecticut and Boston, see the Appendix, No. 20.

No sooner had the convention divided into two houses, than an incident happened in the House of Clerical and Lay Deputies, which had an unpropitious influence on all that followed; and as the result of the deliberations of both houses was, in many points, owing to this incident, occasion is taken to relate it, on recollection, after having been an hearer in the House of Clerical and Lay Deputies at the time.

The case of Mr. Andrews, of Virginia, is a strong proof of the laxity in regard tò due order and discipline, under which it was necessary to begin the organization of the Church. He was a first cousin of the Rev. Dr. Andrews, with whom and with the author he had been a student in the college of Philadelphia. At the time in question, he was a professor in the college of Williamsburg, in Virginia. Although in priests' orders, he had discontinued his ministry, and acted in some civil employments of responsibility, with reputation. He was a very sensible and a very amiable man, in his temper and deportment. He had, doubtless, in some way reconciled his departure from the clerical character, with a sincere desire of settling the concerns of the Church, and of contributing his best endeavours to that effect. Certain it is, that they were directed, not to the pulling down, but to the building up of the Church, the ministry of which he had forsaken. Probably he was the easier reconciled to this measure, by the almost total prostration of the Church in Virginia during the war of the revolution.

In the appointment of committees on the different departements of the Book of Common Prayer, Dr. Parker proposed that the English book should be the ground of the proceedings held, without any reference to that set out and proposed in 1785. This was objected to by some, who contended, that a liturgy ought to be formed, without reference to any existing book, although with liberty to take from any, whatever the convention should think fit. The issue of the debate, was the wording of the resolves as they stand on the journal, in which the different committees are appointed, to prepare a morning and evening prayer-to prepare a litany-to prepare a communion service-and the same, in regard to the other departments, instead of its being said— to alter the said services; which had been the language in 1785.

This was very unreasonable; because the different congregations of the Church were always understood to be possessed of a liturgy, before the consecration of her bishops, or the existence of her conventions. It would have been thought a strange doctrine in any of the clergy, had they pretended that they were released from all obligation to the use of the Book of Common Prayer, by the revolution. It is true, that Dr. Parker had carried the matter too far, in speaking of the proposed book, as a form of which they could know nothing, considering that it had been proposed by a preceding convention from a majority of the states. It was particularly wondered at in Dr. Parker, by those who knew that he had used the book in his own church at Boston. But as the doctor, during the preceding part of the session, had been looked to for the opening of the sentiments of the clergy present from Connecticut, who had said but little all along, and evidently depended on him, to press the points which they had most at heart, it is probable, that in this instance, he accommodated more than was either necessary or well considered, to make matters agreeable to their minds. The direct course would have been, to have taken the English liturgy, as that in which some alterations were contemplated; and with it, the other as a proposal, agreeably to what was expressed in the title page. Certain it is, that the extreme proposed tended very much to the opposite extreme, which took effect-an evident implication in all the proceedings of the house, that there were no forms of prayer, no offices, and no rubrics, until they should be formed by the convention now assembled. Every one must perceive, that this abridged the species of

negative, lodged with the House of Bishops. For if, in any branch of the liturgy, they should be disposed to be tenacious in any point, which should be a deviation from the English book, the consequence must be, not that the prayer, or whatever else it were, remained as before, but that no such matter were to be inserted. This, in some instances, would have operated to the extent of excluding a whole office of the Church, if the negative of the bishops had been insisted on. They did not carry their right so far, but they reasoned and expostulated on the point, with several of the gentlemen, to no purpose. They would not allow that there was any book of authority in existence: a mode of proceeding, in which they have acted differently from the conventions before and after them: who have recognized the contrary principle when any matter occurred to which it was applicable. If that adopted by the majority of the House of Clerical and Lay Deputies had been acted on by the clergy and by the individual congregations, on the taking place of the civil revolution, it would have torn the Church to pieces. On the contrary, the idea had prevailed, that although the civil part of the institution was destroyed, and each Christian minister lay under the necessity to discharge the scriptural duty of praying for his civil rulers according to his individual discretion; the rest of the service remained entire, on the ground of antecedent obligation.

The forms of proceeding in the House of Bishops, consisting of two only-Bishop Provoost, although absent, being considered as making up the constitutional number→ were soon settled. They were drafted by the author, and he seized the opportunity of preventing all discussions at any time-for this he hoped for as the effect-on the point of precedency; by resting the matter on the seniority of Episcopal consecration: which, of course, made Bishop Seabury the president of the house. This regulation, was agreeable to the judgment of the author; which is not altered, although a different principle was adopted at the next convention, and acted on for a time. The only plausible objection heard to the other-which, however, lies equally against that afterward adopted-is the possible case of the presidency's devolving on a bishop, who may be disqualified for the duties of it, by mental or by bodily infirmities. But in this case, a vice-president, or a president pro tempore, might be appointed.

The principal act of this session was the preparing of the Book of Common Prayer, as now the established liturgy