day. and the Methodist ministers almost Certainly can- not be brought to acknowledge the obligation of being ordained by our bishops in order to officiate in our churches, we apprehend that there never has been any real probability of bringing the Methodists to a sense ..i the duty and propriety of becoming reunited t.. the church a i whose altars John Wesley always ministered, ami whi.h heal least was never willing to abandon.
( Kving to the pre\ alence of epidemic disease in Phil- adelphia and iis \ ieiniu . the convention of 1795 was hut thinly at tended, and from the same cause no con- vention was held in 1798. A special convention, how- cver.mel in Philadelphia, June 11,1799. Eight states were represented, nineteen clerical and ten lay deputies being present Bishop Seabury, who had .lied in 1796,
PROTESTANT EPISC. CHURCH Gil PROTESTANT EPISC. CHURCH
was succeeded by bishop Jarvis, consecrated Sept. 18, 1797. Dr. E. Smith was made bishop of South Caro- lina in 1795, and Dr. Bass of Massachusetts in 1797. At this convention an attempt was made to obtain its approval of Dr. U. Ogden, bishop elect of New Jersey; but it failed entirely, and Dr. Ogden a few years later joined the Presbyterians. A proposition was made to hold General Convention every rive years; a form of consecration of a church or chapel was set forth ; and seventeen articles were reported and read. These were ordered to be laid over, and printed in the journal. The clergy-list gives seven bishops and two hundred and twelve clergymen. At the convention of 1801, held at Trenton, N. J., Sept. 8, it was announced that bishop Provoost had resigned his jurisdiction as bishop of New York. Under the circumstances it was deemed right to consecrate Dr. Benjamin Moore as his assist- ant, the principle being distinctly stated that bishop Provoost was bishop during his life, and that bishop Moore was simply assistant or coadjutor, competent to all episcopal duty, but still to act in concurrence with bishop Provoost. The principal work of the conven- tion was the final settlement of the question as to arti- cles of religion. The printing of the seventeen arti- cles, in the journal of 1799, produced one good result, viz., showing how difficult it was and would be to agree upon a new set of articles for the Protestant Episcopal Church, and leading the minds of the convention to a ready acceptance of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. It was bishop White's view that these articles were really "the acknowledged faith of the Church" all along, and that the safest and most satisfactory course was to make certain necessary changes, arising out of the actual condition of affairs, and then to adopt the Thirty-nine entire. This was accordingly done, and, as bishop White states, the arti- cles "were adopted by the two houses of convention, without their altering even the obsolete diction in them ; but with notices of such changes as change of situation had rendered necessary." Article VIII was amended by leaving out the Athanasian Creed. Arti- cle XXI, on general councils, was omitted, the reason being given in a note, " because it is partly of a local and civil nature, and is provided for, as to the remain- ing parts of it, in other articles." The XXXVth Arti- cle, on the homilies, was retained, with a note added suspending "the order for the reading of said homilies in churches until revision of them may conveniently be made, for the clearing of them, as well from obsolete words and phrases as from the local references." Arti- cle XXXVI was altered in so far as to set forth that the ordinal of 1792 contained the Church's views and principles on this important point. Article XXXVII in the English Prayer-book was omitted, and a new one substituted, " Of the Power of the Civil Magistrate." The articles as a whole were then ratified by both houses of convention, and they have ever since held their place in the Prayer-book and standards of the Church. Bishop White's remarks, in this connection, deserve to be quoted: "The object kept in view, in all the consultations held, and the determinations formed, was the perpetuating of the Episcopal Church on the ground of the general principles which she had inher- ited from the Church of England ; and of not separating from them, except so far as either local circumstances required, or some very important cause rendered proper. To those acquainted with the system of the Church of England, it must be evident that the object here stated was accomplished on the ratification of the Articles."
3. History of the Protectant Episcopal Church since the beginning of the century. — The standards of the Church having thus been adopted and secured, in the final setting-forth of the Book of Common Prayer, its history and progress since that date are those of a com- pletely organized branch of the Catholic Church. That it did not at once expand itself and cover the land is sad- ly true, and that it has had in later years its times of