length was duly ordained at
Aberdeen as bishop of the diocese of Connecticut. While Seabury was in
England, the churches in the various states chose delegates to a
general convention, which framed a constitution for the "Protestant
Episcopal Church of the United States of America." Advowsons were
abolished, some parts of the liturgy were dropped, and the tenure of
ministers, even of bishops, was to be during good behaviour. At the same
time a friendly letter was sent to the bishops of England, urging them
to secure, if possible, an act of Parliament whereby American clergymen
might be ordained without taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy.
Such an act was obtained without much difficulty, and three American
bishops were accordingly consecrated in due form. The peculiar
ordination of Seabury was also recognized as valid by the general
convention, and thus the Episcopal church in America was fairly started
on its independent career.

[Sidenote: Francis Asbury and the Methodists.]

This foundation of a separate episcopacy west of the Atlantic was
accompanied by the further separation of the Methodists as a distinct
religious society. Although John Wesley regarded the notion of an
apostolical succession as superstitious, he had made no attempt to
separate his followers from the national church. He translated the
titles of "bishop" and "priest" from Greek into Latin and English,
calling them "superintendent" and "elder," but he did not deny the
king's headship. Meanwhile during the long period of his preaching there
had begun to grow up a Methodist church in America. George Whitefield
had come over and preached in Georgia in 1737, and in Massachusetts in
1744, where he encountered much opposition on the part of the Puritan
clergy. But the first Methodist church in America was founded in the
city of New York in 1766. In 1772 Wesley sent over Francis Asbury, a man
of shrewd sense and deep religious feeling, to act as his assistant and
representative in this country. At that time there were not more than a
thousand Methodists, with six preachers, and all these were in the
middle and southern colonies; but within five years, largely owing to
the zeal and eloquence of Asbury, these numbers had increased sevenfold.
At the end of the war, seeing the American Methodists cut loose from the
English establishment, Wesley in his own house at Bristol, with the aid
of two presbyters, proceeded to ordain ministers enough to make a