of public affairs they judged it their duty to appoint a day of "solemn fasting, humiliation, and prayer," to be "carefully and religiously observed" by all the congregations under their care. Anticipating a similar appointment by "the Continental Congress, now sitting," they directed that if not more than four weeks distant from it, it should supersede their own.

The measure then unusual-of a pastoral letter, was adopted. Witherspoon, Rodgers, and Caldwell were the leading members of the committee appointed to draw it up. It bore throughout the stamp of their deep feeling and patriotic as well as religious zeal. It noticed the threatening aspect of public affairs and the apprehended horrors of a civil war, and, in view of these things, recognized the Synod's duty of addressing the numerous congregations under its care "at this important crisis." In a tone that must have sounded in strange contrast with the echoes of war, it pressed home upon the attention of all, the great truths of God's sovereignty and providence, and personal duty in relation to the claims of gospel repentance, faith, and obedience.

The letter then proceeds to express the views of the Synod, which they declare they "do not wish to conceal, as men and citizens." It urges loyalty to the king, but union on the part of the colonies: mutual charity and esteem among members of different religious denominations: vigilance in regard to social government and morals: reformation of manners: religious discipline: the careful securing of the rights of conscience by the magistrates; personal honesty and integrity; humanity and mercy, especially among such as should be called to the field. "That man will fight most bravely," they say, "who never fights till it is necessary, and who ceases to fight as soon as the necessity is over."

Such was the spirit of this noble letter. Five hundred copies of it were to be printed and circulated at the Synod's expense. Thus they were scattered abroad throughout all the congregations, contributing in no small measure to kindle and sustain the patriotic zeal of the country. The Presbyterian Church, by the act. of its highest judicatory, thus took its stand at Philadelphia by the side of the American Congress then in session, and its influence was felt in a most decisive manner throughout the bounds of the Church.

CHAPTER X.

THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR AND THE REORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH. 1775-1788.

THERE were some very obvious reasons why the Presbyterian Church in this country should take the noble stand it did, at the critical moment when the people were called to choose between resistance and submission to arbitrary power. The same reasons also were valid when the question of national independence was to be met.

The history, traditions, and sympathies of the Church, -the principles upon which its very existence was based, -the nature of its system, combining liberty with law, -the aims which it stood pledged to cherish, as well as the dangers which it had to fear in case an arbitrary system was to triumph and be established by the power of the sword,-contributed to unite the members and friends of the Church, almost as one man, in the patriotic cause. Its constituent elements, it is true, had been drawn from sources widely diverse; yet each

brought with it traditionary memories, cherished with sacred fondness, which were singularly harmonious in their nature and bearing. Within its fold were men whose ancestors had resisted the Spanish tyrant, even to the death, on the dikes of Holland,—some who had listened in childhood to the story of what their ancestors, driven into exile by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had suffered less than a century previous,some whose parents had wandered houseless in Scottish glens, or who had indignantly witnessed the despotic attempt to impose Episcopacy on Scotland,-not a few who must have seen and heard the heroes of Londonderry or Enniskillen, and hundreds, if not thousands, who might proudly boast that in their veins. flowed the blood of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England. Each had some treasured memory of the past, some ancestral association, which he cherished as a pledge of unswerving fidelity to the cause of civil and religious freedom.

The date of the foundation of the Church in this country, moreover, was significant. It seemed born just in time to inherit the legacy of the noblest spirits, the persecuted heroes of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Continent. When Makemie first landed on these shores, a majority, possibly, of the two thousand Non-Conformists of 1662 still survived. Baxter had just been fined nearly two hundred pounds for preaching within five miles of a corporation, and was now writing his New Testament Paraphrase, for which the vengeance of Jeffries was soon to sentence him to a two-years imprisonment. Owen, sinking under his gigantic labors, was feeling even yet the bitterness of the intolerance that sought to identify him with the conspirators of the Rye-House Plot. Manton, silenced in the pulpit, was calmly waiting the summons to a higher service. Bates, who might have had "any bish

opric in the kingdom" if he would but conform, was in a green old age, busy with his elegant pen. Calamy, of London, whose father for preaching had been sent to Newgate, and whose son, now a boy of twelve years, was to be the historian of the heroes of Non-Conformity,was looking eagerly toward the New World, to learn what welcome the exiled for conscience' sake found upon its shores; and to him, with his friends in the great metropolis, Makemie himself was to turn for sympathy and aid in his arduous task. Indeed, in the early history of the Presbyterian Church, every vessel that passed from the Old World to the New might have borne with it some story of persecuted faith, some illustration of religious intolerance, to make the voluntary exile for conscience' sake pledge himself anew to the cause for which he, as well as his fathers, had suffered. Then came the grievous hardships to which for successive generations "Dissenters" had been subjected in Virginia, the establishment of the Episcopal Church in the Carolinas, the fines and imprisonment of Makemie in New York, and the bigoted jealousy which up to the very moment of the Declaration of Independence denied the Presbyterians of that city a charter of incorporation, to confirm, even by the exasperations of wrong, the fidelity of the Church to the principles upon which, by New Testament authority, it had been

established.

And yet-in spite of temporary grievances, now fast passing away-Presbyterians loved, and had good reason to love, this land of their nativity or adoption. Here were no cumbrous hierarchies, no prescriptive rights of nobility or primogeniture, no courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, no obtrusive and impertinent interferences, save in a few instances, with freedom of worship, or the enjoyment of civil and religious rights. Here were institutions which, if left

undisturbed, came nearer than any others on the globe to realizing the ideal of a free and liberal government. Here the citizen might hope to enjoy for himself, and transmit to his children, the blessings of equal laws and constitutional freedom. Here was a treasure, therefore, worthy to be esteemed above all price,-a treasure not to be surrendered to the arrogant claims and encroachments of the British ministry, or to be yielded to the terror even of invading armies. Nor did it need any remarkable sagacity to perceive that the mischief to be dreaded was involved in the very principle on which encroachment was based. Let that principle be yielded, and no limit could be set to the arrogance that demanded the first concession. One right after another might be wrenched away, and religious liberty would not long survive the loss of civil privilege.

With the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches of the land, this consideration had great weight. They knew that there were among them many whose work was to spy out their liberties and send back sinister reports across the ocean. They were well aware that upon them were the eyes of men to whom the trappings and forms of Episcopacy were as delicious as the leeks and onions of Egypt to the Israelites in the desert. They knew that with thousands on both sides of the ocean it was a favorite project to cement the unity of the empire by the introduction and establishment in this country of diocesan bishops. Not that they envied "the Episcopal churches the privileges of a bishop, for the purposes of ordination, confirmation, and inspecting the morals of the clergy;"" not that they would deny to others the rights or privileges which

1 Language employed in reference to the subject,-Minutes of the convention of delegates from the Synod and Connecticut Association, p. 13.