cept the reaction of controversy with the Methodists. The
tendency of the two parties to opposite poles of dogma was all the
stronger for the fact that on both sides teachers and taught were alike
lacking in liberalizing education. The fact that two by far the most
numerous denominations of Christians in the United States were picketed
thus over against each other in the same regions, as widely differing
from each other in doctrine and organization as the Dominican order from
the Jesuit, and differing somewhat in the same way, is a fact that
invites our regret and disapproval, but at the same time compels us to
remember its compensating advantages.

* * * * *

It is to this period that we trace the head-waters of several important
existing denominations.

At the close of the war the congregation of the "King's Chapel," the
oldest Episcopal church in New England, had been thinned and had lost
its rector in the general migration of leading Tory families to Nova
Scotia. At the restoration of peace it was served in the capacity of lay
reader by Mr. James Freeman, a young graduate of Harvard, who came soon
to be esteemed very highly in love both for his work's sake and for his
own. Being chosen pastor of the church, he was not many months in
finding that many things in the English Prayer-book were irreconcilable
with doubts and convictions concerning the Trinity and related
doctrines, which about this time were widely prevalent among theologians
both in the Church of England and outside of it. In June, 1785, it was
voted in the congregation, by a very large majority, to amend the order
of worship in accordance with these scruples. The changes were in a
direction in which not a few Episcopalians were disposed to move,[224:1]
and the congregation did not hesitate to apply for ordination for their
pastor, first to Bishop Seabury, and afterward, with better hope of
success, to Bishop Provoost. Failing here also, the congregation
proceeded to induct their elect pastor into his office without waiting
further upon bishops; and thus "the first Episcopal church in New
England became the first Unitarian church in America." It was not the
beginning of Unitarianism in America, for this had long been "in the
air." But it was the first distinct organization of it. How rapidly and
powerfully it spread within narrow geographical limits, and how widely
it has affected the course of religious history, must app