RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Conversion Oonwell
one suddenly and freely identifies himself with God. Such sudden experiences are due in part to a pronounced sensibility with tendency to automatisms and suggestibility of the passive type. The change is often accompanied with a greater or less degree of emotional and physical disturbance. (3) Conversion as a gradual experience is more commonly true of those in whom the rational or volitional powers predominate: the judgment is progressively convinced, and the will is as the judgment. These various types of conversion are primarily not of religious, but of psychological significance. The essential reality is the beginning of an identification with God and with the ideal unity of personal beings. The action of the spirit of God is presupposed. The literature of the subject is growing, and the following works may be consulted: E. D. Starbuck, Psychology of Religion, New York, 1899; G. A. Coe, The Spiritual Life, ib. 1900; idem, Education in Religion and Morals, ib. 1904; W James, Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 189-258, ib. 1902 ; J. B. Pratt, Psychology of Religious Belief, pp. 191- 261, ib. 1907; Leuba, in American Journal of Psychology, vii (1896), 309 sqq.; G. S. Hall, Adolescence, New York, 1904. C. A. B.
CONVOCATION: In the Church of England, a deliberative assembly of the bishops and clergy of each province under their respective metropolitans for the discussion of ecclesiastical affairs. In the plan devised by Edward I. for a national assembly (1283), the clerical estate was to be represented by its proctors as were the counties by their knights and the towns by their burgesses. But the clergy preferred to be an estate apart, taxing itself separately. It was brought completely under royal control by Henry VIII. in 1635, Cromwell, a layman, presiding for the king as vicar-general. The privilege of taxing itself was definitely taken from the clerical order in 1664 and settled in the House of Commons, in which clergymen were not allowed to sit, though they were in a sense represented by the bishops in the House of Lords. Convocation continued to exist until the attacks of the Highchurch and Tory parsons on the liberal bishops came to a head in the Bangorian controversy (see HoADLY, Benjamin), when the Convocation of Canterbury was prorogued in 1717, and the license of the crown necessary to enable it to proceed to business was no longer granted. It met from time to time as a matter of form, but its life was practically dormant until in the middle of the nineteenth century a movement was set on foot by Bishop Wilberforce and Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter for its revival. Its recovery of deliberative powers took place in 1861, since which time it has met regularly, concurrently with the sessions of Parliament, to discuss and advise on ecclesiastical affairs, though shorn of its ancient powers. It consists of two houses, the upper containing the bishops of the province, the lower the deans, archdeacons, and representatives of the cathedral and parochial clergy; the archbishop presides in the upper house, an elected prolocutor in the lower. In recent years a house of laymen has also been created, which, though not technically a part of Convocation, ex-
ercises by its debates a concurrent influence. The term convocation is applied in some dioceses of the American Episcopal Church to the annual legislative assembly, and more frequently to gatherings of clergy and laity, usually for missionary purposes. Bibliography: J. H. Blunt, Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology, pp. 152-158, London, 1870 (a summary of the history); J. Overall, The Convocation Book of 1606, commonly called Bishop Overall's Convocation Book, in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, Oxford, 1844; W. Kennet, A Compleat Hist, of Convocations, 1366-1689, London, 1730; T. H. Fellows, Convocation: its Origin, Progress and Authority, ib. 1852; T. Lathbury, Hist, of the Convocation of the Church of England, ib. 1853.
CONVULSIONISTS. See Jansen, Cornelius, Jansenism.
CONWAY, MONCURE DANIEL:^ Liberal; b. at Middleton Farm, Stafford Co., Va., Mar. 17, 1832; d. in Paris Nov. 15, 1907. Educated at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa. (B.A., 1849), and Harvard Divinity School (B.D., 1854), after having studied law (1849-50). He was first a minister of the Methodist Church in Maryland (1850-53), then of the Unitarian Church in Washington, D. C. (1854-57), the First Congregational (Unitarian) Church, Cincinnati, O. (1857-62), and the South Place Chapel, London (1863-85 and 1892-97).
Conway was active in the movement for the emancipation of the slaves, a fact which compelled him to retire from Washington, and subsequently led him to go to England to explain the attitude of the North in the Civil War. He edited the Dial at Cincinnati and later the Boston Commonwealth ; while in London he was on the staff of the Daily News and the Pall Mall Gazette. He edited many works of English literature, of which the most noteworthy are The Sacred Anthology (New York, 1876) and The Writings of Thomas Paine (4 vols., 1894-95), and produced many books, of which these having religious interest may be mentioned: Tracts for To-Day (Cincinnati, O., 1857); The Earthward Pilgrimage (New York, 1870); Idols and Ideals (1877); Demonology and Devil Lore (2 vols., 1879); The Wandering Jew (1881); Thomas Carlyle (1881); Emerson, at Home and Abroad (Boston, 1883); Farewell Discourses (1884); Life of Thomas Paine (2 vols., 1892); Solomon and Solomonic Literature (Chicago, 1890); Autobiography (2 vols., New York, 1904); and My Journey to the Wise Men of the East (Boston, 1906).
CON WELL, RUSSELL HERMAN: Baptist; b. at Worthington, Mass., Feb. 15, 1842. He entered the law school at Yale in 1860, but interrupted his studies on the outbreak of the Civil War and served in the Union Army as captain of infantry, being promoted lieutenant-colonel in 1865. He then resumed his studies at Albany University (B.A., 1866), practised law in Minneapolis 1865-67, and was immigration agent of Minnesota to Germany
1867- 68. He was foreign correspondent of the New York Tribune and the Boston Traveler in
1868- 70, and after his return to the United States practised law in Boston untU 1879. He was ordained to the Baptist ministry in 1879 and for ten years (1881-91) was pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Philadelphia, and since 1891 of the Baptist Temple there. In 1888 he founded Temple College, of
Conytoeare Cooper