the Convention at Williamsburg, with no dissenting voice, adopted their celebrated Declaration of Rights, of which the Sixteenth Article asserted the doctrine of Religious Liberty with eloquence and precision. The original draft contained a pronouncement in favour of Toleration; but that equivocal word was expunged at the instance of James Madison, afterwards the fourth President of the United States. Toleration, (Madison argued,) belonged to a community where there was an established church, and where a limited freedom of worship was conceded by grace, and not of right. At the very moment when that Sixteenth Article was under discussion before the Convention, the Virginian Baptists, whose preachers, up to a very recent date, had been in and out of prison as criminals, were carrying round for signature a petition praying that they might "be allowed to worship God in their own way, without interruption." So suddenly had the air in the Old Dominion been cleared and purified by the explosion of gunpowder; and so decisively had the public mind judged and condemned the existing system of ecclesiastical predominance, even before there had been time to abrogate it by law. The Virginian Convention could only proceed by Resolution; but halfway through 1776 it ceased to sit, and the first State Legislature was duly elected and assembled under the terms of the new Constitution. An Act was at once passed relieving Dissenters from Church-taxes; and another Statute suspended the payment of salaries to the Established clergy. That provisional arrangement was confirmed and perpetuated by a succession of enactments, which finally culminated in a famous law, the model of its kind, entitled "An Act for establishing Religious Freedom in the State of Virginia."

Virginia's example was more or less speedily followed by all the provinces. When the Revolution began, missionaries of the Propagation Society, in certain counties of Delaware, told all, who wished to listen, that the political agitation against the Royal Government had

been deliberately planned by Presbyterians with the object of getting their own religion established; that it originated in New England; and that it was fostered and abetted by the Presbyterians in every colony.1 The event triumphantly refuted that idle and gratuitous calumny. Whatever questionable maxim might thereafter come to be adopted by Americans in their secular politics, the sons of the Puritans had not fought the war in order that religious endowments and privileges might be spoil for the victors. The Church of England was disestablished in the Southern Plantations not from greed or malice, but on principle; and the predominant Churches in the North applied that principle consistently, unsparingly, and honestly to themselves. So great a sacrifice was not made everywhere at once, nor without searching of heart, nor, (in some instances,) without keen regret; but within the second generation after the Declaration of Independence the last vestige of connection between Church and State had ceased to exist in every province of the Union. Long before that period arrived, the collective will of the American people had been announced in language which there was no mistaking. The Federal Constitution of 1787 was the work of men among whom there were some very brilliant and profuse orators; but they did not seek to display their gifts in the treatment of a theme which can dispense with the aid of rhetoric. They thought it enough to enact, first, that no Religious Test should ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, under the United States; and, then, that Congress should make no law respecting an Establishment of Religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Those were few and simple words; but they covered the whole ground of the most universal, and the most vital, of all controversies. Thus it came about that America, (as one of her historians proudly notes,) from the very commencement of her national life ordained throughout the land full liberty of mind, conscience, and worship, and explicitly forbade any unwar1 John Adams to Thomas McKean; Philadelphia, 15 November, 1815.

ranted intrusion of human authority into realms where the Divine sovereignty should alone hold sway.1

Americans are firmly persuaded that a great service was rendered to the cause of true religion when all their Churches were directed into the paths of independence, self-reliance, and perfect equality before the law. That belief has been shared by a deeply read and widely observant writer who was not an American. De Tocqueville said that he knew of no nation in the whole world where religion retained a stronger influence than in the United States; for, by regulating domestic life, it regulated the Commonwealth, and was the most important among the institutions of the country. The truth of that remark may be disputable; or, at least, it has been disputed; but it is an historical fact that religious equality made for peace and mutual charity between Church and Church in the United States all through the first century of their federal existence. During that extended period, (whatever may be the case now, or hereafter,) matters of religion were entirely removed from the political arena, and were arranged, with no opposition, and very little adverse comment, on the part of the outside public, — by the governing powers of that sect or denomination which on each occasion was specially and solely concerned.

Earliest and foremost among the ecclesiastical problems which were quietly, and permanently, solved was the long-vexed question of American bishops. With characteristic energy and boldness John Wesley was the first in a field where all were now at liberty to tread. The American Methodists had increased, during the ten years of the Revolutionary struggle, from two thousand to fifteen thousand; and their preachers were counted by scores and hundreds. Hardly any of those preachers, however, were clergymen; for during the war it was too dangerous, and for such humble people it had always been too expensive, to go in quest of ordination across the Atlantic. Fit candidates, indeed, were not wanting in England who would promise to sail 1 Mr. Sandford Cobb's History of Religious Liberty; pages 5 and 509.

PT. II.-VOL. II.

Y

for the Western Continent after having been admitted to orders; but the English bishops did not care to combat the spiritual desolation of America, which in their sermons they were accustomed to deplore, by the aid of any such auxiliaries. Wesley himself entreated Doctor Lowth, the Bishop of London, to ordain one of these Methodist preachers; but his application was refused. "Your Lordship observes," (so Wesley wrote back,) "that there are three ministers in that country already. True, my Lord: but what are three to watch over the souls in that extensive country? Will your Lordship permit me to speak freely?" And then, without waiting for that permission, Wesley proceeded to remonstrate with the bishop for approving candidates who possessed a smattering of the classics, and who had mastered a few trite points in the science of divinity, while he never enquired whether they loved God or the world, and whether they had any real desire to save their own souls, and the souls of others. "But your Lordship did see good to ordain, and send to America, other persons who knew something of Greek and Latin, but knew no more of saving souls than of catching whales."

John Wesley was not the man to accept a rebuff, which at the same time was an almost fatal blow to the cause whereon the labours of his life had been spent. If his ecclesiastical superiors would not come to the rescue, he was himself, in the last resort, prepared with a remedy. So far back as the year 1761 he had emitted an opinion that a belief in the exclusive validity of Episcopal ordination was an entire mistake. He called himself, in so many words, a High Churchman; but he was far from orthodox on the doctrine of the Apostolic Succession. Perhaps he thought that the chain of continuity had been already severed; perhaps he doubted whether it was worth preserving intact; and he accordingly resolved to look around, on his own account, for some one endowed with the qualifications required of a bishop in the First Epistle to Timothy. He found what he wanted in Doctor Thomas Coke. That able and

devoted, though not unambitious, divine had once been a Gentleman Commoner at Oxford, and subsequently held a benefice in the West of England. There he had sought out John Wesley, and confided to him a doubt whether clergymen were justified in limiting their administrations to a single congregation. "Go out, Brother!" answered Wesley. "Go out and preach the gospel to all the world!" The time had now arrived when a notable effect was given to this solemn injunction. In the autumn of 1784, at Bristol, in a private room, Wesley laid his hands upon the head of his friend, and set him apart as an overseer of the Methodist Churches in America, with a commission to ordain proper persons to the ministry. With Thomas Coke was associated Francis Asbury, who had been the pioneer of Methodism in America; a man who did not seek, and who had led a life which was above, worldly praise. Wesley called his two delegates by the name of superintendents; but they exercised Episcopal functions, and they speedily assumed the Episcopal title; for in May 1787 they addressed to the President of the United States a Memorial commencing with the words, "We the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church." 1

Coke and Asbury soon had colleagues in their dignified office, and many colleagues; for their Church increased in numbers, wealth, and repute with extraordinary rapidity. The Roman Catholics in the States were erelong provided with Bishops, and Archbishops, and, (in the fullness of time,) a Cardinal; but no ecclesiastical body gained so much by the establishment of Religious Liberty and Equality as the Church which had been entitled the Church of England so long as the English connection lasted.2 Up to the Revolution the members of that body had been Episcopalians without

1 Tyerman's Life and Times of John Wesley; Vol. III., pages 214, and 433 to 437. Pages 249 and 250 contain a sketch of Francis Asbury's career; a record which is the more valuable because that high-minded, and, (in this respect especially,) exemplary man forbade any biography of himself to be published; -an order which was not disobeyed.

2 Dean Tucker of Gloucester had foretold that result thirteen years