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    ; Until the revolution , the Church of England was the established church in all the American colonies . In Maryland and Virginia , where it was . most firmly seated , a sort or modus , or composition for tithes , was assessed by . law , either on the parishes or by the polls ; III Virginia there were , moreover , glebes annexed to the parish churches . In New York there was also a fund taken from the public money ,

    appropriated to the few parishes established there . Throughout New England , Pennsylvania , and the other colonies , if I am not misinformed , though the Church of England was the national church , yet it languished in great infirmity , having no other support than the few rents and voluntary assessments , which now , under a very different regimen , supply adequate resources for all the occasions of an establishment which has no rich and no very poor pastorates .

    * The whole of these vast regions , by a gross ordinance of colonial misrule , were attached to the . London diocese . Most of the incumbents , it may be supposed , those especially supported by tithes , at snch a distance from the diocesan , were supine and licentious . As soon as the revolution put a stop to their stipends , they generally ceased to officiate ; and in Maryland and Virginia , particularly , the Methodists and Baptists stepped into their deserted places . The crisis for the

    Church of England , at this conjuncture , was vital . Several of its ministers at first joined their compatriots for the independence declared ; but few endured unto the end of the struggle . When the enemy were in possession of Philadelphia , then the capital of the country , where Congress sat , and that inimitable assembly was driven to resume its deliberations at the village of Yorktown , they elected for their

    chap-Jain , a clergyman of the Church of England , who had been expelled his home in this city by its capture . Every ingenuous mind will do justice to the predicament in which such an election placed an American pastor of the English church- The cause of independence , to which he was attached , was in ruin ; the government forced from its seat ; the army routed and disheartened ; the country prostrate and nearly subdued by a triumphant enemy in undisputed occupation

    of the capital . The chaplain elected by Congress , under such circumstances , proved worthy of their confidence . Without other attendant , protection , or encouragement , than the consciousness of a good cause , he repaired to the retreat of his country ' s abject fortunes , to offer daily prayers , from the bosom of that immortal assembly which never despaired of them , to the Almighty Providence . The chaplain of Congress , at Yorktown , has been rewarded for those days of trial .

    Already , in the compass of his own life and ministry , he is at the head of the bishoprics into which the ^ American Church of England has since been expanded in the United States , with three hundred and fifty clergymen , about seven hundred churches , a theological seminary , and every other assurance of substantial prosperity . Within his lifetime there was but one , and , at the commencement of his ministry , but

    three , episcopal churches in Philadelphia , and they in jeopardy of the desecration from which they were saved by his patriotic example and pious influence . It would be an unjust and unacceptable homage , however , to . him , not to declare that the intrinsic temperance and resource of popular , government mainly contributed to the preservation of the . English Church in Americawhereit has since advanced fax ¦— i ¦— —¦¦ w ¦ - — _ ..

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    Religion kbithout Taxdtiorii 121

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• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 121., in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/49/