was promptly and nobly spurned. Whitefield, on one of his last visits to this country, had communicated information,' which he had derived from an official source, of the project entertained in England of making in this country the Episcopal the Established Church. Enough was known to excite jealousy and suspicion, and unite all non-Episcopal denominations in resistance to the project. In the Political Register of 1769 is a picture entitled "An attempt to land a bishop in America." The name to be read on the vessel's side is that of Hillsborough, the then Colonial Secretary. The vessel has touched the wharf, but a crowd of earnest people with long poles are pushing her from her moorings. One of the multitude has a book entitled "Sidney on Government," another has a volume of "Locke's Essays," a third, in Quaker garb, has "Barclay's Apology" open before him, while from the lips of a fourth issues a scroll inscribed, "No lords, spiritual or temporal, in New England." Half-way up the shrouds of the vessel is a bishop in his robes, his mitre falling, and a volume of Calvin's works, hurled by one on shore, is about to strike his head. From the bishop's lips issues a scroll, on which is inscribed the nunc dimittis of aged Simeon, while in the foreground is a paper with the words, "Shall they be obliged to maintain a bishop who cannot maintain themselves?" At the same time, a monkey near by is throwing a stone at the bishop. The picture is significant as expressing the popular feeling in opposition to Episcopal projects.

This feeling found prompt and decided expression in the papers of the day. It was at just this period (1766) that a voluntary Episcopal convention of the clergy of New York and New Jersey was held; and by them the petition for bishops, already referred to, was drawn

1 Gordon's America, vol. i.

up to be forwarded to England. Dr. B. Chandler, of Elizabethtown, was requested to write and publish an appeal to the public in favor of the project. The appeal was published in 1767, but was soon ably answered by Dr. Charles Chauncey, of Boston.

The paper controversy had now commenced: by the close of the following year, articles had been published sufficient in number and length to be comprised in two volumes, which were published at New York in 1768. The convention of Congregational, Consociated, and Presbyterian Churches, which began its annual meetings in 1766, had its attention called to the subject. Indeed, the convention itself originated in the general apprehension of the common danger. The opposition was not to bishops vested only with spiritual powers, but to the governmental sanction of an episcopate whose temporal ambition would be thereby inflamed, and which would not be disposed to rest till it enjoyed the prestige and emoluments of an Establishment.

There was, therefore, grave reason for apprehension. The projects of the British ministry were scarcely even disguised. But the Presbyterian Church was not disposed to meet them with tame submission. The spirit of Makemie still lived in the hearts of those upon whom his mantle had fallen. The cause of civil was with them also the cause of religious freedom. They wanted no Establishment, no Episcopal arrogance, no lords spiritual, on this side of the Atlantic. The mere knowledge of the threatened danger tended strongly to unite them almost to a man in opposition.

Equally significant was the attitude of the Episcopal Church. For the most part it was ultra-loyal. It numbered only here and there a clergyman who manifested the least sympathy for the cause of liberty. They "leaned, with very few exceptions, throughout the colonies, to the side of the crown, and in the Middle

and Northern provinces their flocks were chiefly of the same way of thinking." This fact was not without its influence. It reacted upon the minds of the Presbyterians, and made them still more earnest in their efforts and apprehensive in their fears.

Thus was a religious element mingled in the strife. It was not merely a protest against stamped paper and a tax on tea, but it was the cause of civil rights, of conscience, and of religious freedom. It required no little strength of conviction to sustain the patriotism of the country through a seven-years conflict; but what was required was found to exist. The Revolution came, and it found no more steadfast friends and adherents than in the ranks of the Presbyterian Church.

The influence of the war upon the condition and prospects of the Presbyterian Church, throughout the country, was most disastrous. Its members were almost all decided patriots, and its ministers, almost to a man, were accounted arch-rebels. Their well-known views and sympathies made them specially obnoxious to the enemy, and to be known as a Presbyterian was to incur all the odium of a "Whig." It is not strange, therefore, that they should have been the marked victims of hostility, or that they should have been, in many cases, mercilessly molested in property and person.

In initiating the Revolution, and in sustaining the patriotic resistance of their countrymen to illegal tyranny, the ministers of the Presbyterian Church bore a conspicuous and even foremost part. Throughout that most trying and disastrous period through which the Church and country had as yet been called to pass, they proved themselves alike faithful to both. Their conduct fully justified the noble utterance of the Synod of 1775, a few weeks after the first blood was

1 Hildreth, iii. 56.

shed at Lexington. They preached the duty of resisting tyrants. They cheered their people in the dreary periods of the conflict by inspiring lofty trust in the God of nations. Some of them were engaged personally in the army. Some occupied a place in the civil councils. Others were personal sufferers from the vengeance of an exasperated foe, and others, still, sealed their devotion to their country by their blood.1

Among those who advocated the cause of the colonies, and who from the pulpit endeavored to strengthen patriotic zeal by Christian principle, it would be almost invidious to name any; for nearly all were alike guilty in this respect. Dr. Witherspoon, Patrick Allison in Baltimore, William Tennent in Charleston, George Duffield in Philadelphia, John Miller at Dover, James Waddel and John Blair Smith in Virginia, led the way in vindicating from the pulpit the cause of American freedom.

On the fast-day (May 17, 1776) Dr. Witherspoon preached a sermon,-afterward published and dedicated to John Hancock,-in which he entered fully into the great political questions of the day. It manifested his loyal zeal in behalf of his adopted country, and his ability to vindicate her cause. Republished, with notes, in Glasgow, it subjected its author to the odium of a rebel and a traitor. A member of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey, he was elected by that body to the Continental Congress, and took part in defending the project of the Declaration of Independence. During the debate on its adoption, he is reported to have said, "That noble instrument on your table, which secures immortality to its author, should be subscribed this very morning by every pen in this

1 The facts that follow have been derived from very various sources, although most of them are from Sprague's Annals. VOL. I.-16

house. He who will not respond to its accents, and strain every nerve to carry into effect its provisions, is unworthy the name of a freeman. Although these gray hairs must descend into the sepulchre, I would infinitely rather they should descend thither by the hand of the public executioner than desert at this crisis the sacred cause of my country."

John Carmichael preached, at their request, to the militia of the city of Lancaster. The discourse of Miller, of Dover, who was bold in the expression of his patriotic ardor, was especially remarkable. Several days before the Declaration of Independence, he so far anticipated the spirit of that decisive measure as to address his people from that significant text, indicative enough of his own views,-"We have no part in David, nor any inheritance in the son of Jesse: to your tents, O Israel!" Robert Davidson, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, at the commencement of the war, preached before several military companies from the text, "For there fell down many slain, because the war was of God." A fortnight after, it was repeated before the troops at Burlington. Sermons of this stamp were by no means infrequent. Many of the soldiers were Presbyterians, and in the camp sought the privilege of hearing their own pastors, who sometimes, in their anxiety for their spiritual welfare, followed them to the field.

Of John Craighead, pastor of Rocky Spring Church, Pa., it is said that "he fought and preached alternately." At the commencement of the war he raised a company from the members of his charge, and joined Washington's army in New Jersey. His friend Dr. Cooper, of Middle Spring Church, is also said to have been the captain of a company. He preached "before

1 Mr. Craighead was a humorist, and many good jokes are told of him. One day, it is said, going into battle, a cannon-ball