uide to the Church, Burton's
Early English Church, the Church Dictionaries of Rev. Dr Hook and Rev. Mr.
Staunton, Bishop Onderdonk's Episcopacy Examined and Reexamined, and other
similar works.

Historical Notice Of The Church In The United States.

Though the greater proportion of the early emigrants to this Country were
opposed to the form of religious worship established in the Mother
Country, some of them were devoted adherents of that establishment, and
Episcopal churches existed, of course, in several of the Colonies, at an
early period, although, from the opposition made to them by the other
emigrants, and from other causes, the number was not so considerable as
might have been expected under different circumstances. At the
commencement of the Revolutionary War, there were not more than eighty
parochial clergymen North and East of Maryland; and these, with the
exception of those in the towns of Boston and Newport, and the cities of
New York and Philadelphia, derived the principal part of their support
from England, through the "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts," an old and venerable Institution, yet in existence, and
still zealously engaged in spreading the Gospel to the utmost parts of the
earth. In Maryland and Virginia, the members of the Church were much more
numerous, than in the other parts of the Country, and the clergy were
supported by a legal establishment.

The distance of this from the Mother Country, and the consequent
separation of the members of the Church from their parent stock, which
rendered them dependent for the ministry upon emigrations from England, or
obliged them to send candidates to that Country, for Holy Orders, operated
as a serious obstacle to the increase of the Church here. All the clergy
of this Country were attached to the diocese of the Bishop of London, who
thus became the only bond of union between them; but his authority could
not be effectually exerted, at such a distance, in those cases where it
was most needed; and, for these and other reasons, several efforts were
made by the clergy to obtain an American Episcopate. But the jealousy with
which such a measure was regarded by other denominations, and the great
opposition with which it consequently met, prevented the accomplishment of
the design. When, however, the tie, which had thus bound the members of
the Church together in one communion, had been severed, by the
independence of the Un