Justice Marshall said it was folly to dream of reviving so dead a
thing. Nevertheless, under the noble ministration of its great bishop,
William Meade, the Episcopal church in Virginia, no longer relying upon
state aid, but trusting in the divine persuasive power of spiritual
truth, was even then entering upon a new life and beginning to exercise
a most wholesome influence.

[Sidenote: Mason Weems and Samuel Seabury.]

[Sidenote: November 14, 1784.]

The separation of the English church in America from the English crown
was the occasion of a curious difficulty with regard to the ordination
of bishops. Until after the Revolution there were no bishops of that
church in America, and between 1783 and 1785 it was not clear how
candidates for holy orders could receive the necessary consecration. In
1784 a young divinity student from Maryland, named Mason Weems, who had
been studying for some time in England, applied to the Bishop of London
for admission to holy orders, but was rudely refused. Weems then had
recourse to Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, author of the famous reply to
Gibbon. Watson treated him kindly and advised him to get a letter of
recommendation from the governor of Maryland, but after this had been
obtained he referred him to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said that
nothing could be done without the consent of Parliament. As the law
stood, no one could be admitted into the ranks of the English clergy
without taking the oath of allegiance and acknowledging the king of
England as the head of the church. Weems then wrote to John Adams at the
Hague, and to Franklin at Paris, to see if there were any Protestant
bishops on the Continent from whom he could obtain consecration. A
rather amusing diplomatic correspondence ensued, and finally the king of
Denmark, after taking theological advice, kindly offered the services of
a Danish bishop, who was to perform the ceremony in Latin. Weems does
not seem to have availed himself of this permission, probably because
the question soon reached a more satisfactory solution.[2] About the
same time the Episcopal church in Connecticut sent one of its ministers,
Samuel Seabury of New London, to England, to be ordained as bishop. The
oaths of allegiance and supremacy stood as much in the way of the
learned and famous minister as in that of the young and obscure student.
Seabury accordingly appealed to the non-juring Jacobite bishops of the
Episcopal church of Scotland, and at