be brought to understand. The idea of the officer of State,
invested with civil powers and functions, was the vision that
disturbed more minds than we can readily imagine now. Says the
elder Adams, writing in 1815: "Where is the man to be found who
will believe... that the apprehension of Episcopacy contributed,
fifty years ago, as much as any other cause, to arouse the
attention, not only of the inquiring mind, but of the common
people, and urge them to close thinking on the constitutional
authority of Parliament over the colonies?" [Footnote: All parties
agreed that bishops could be sent out only under an act of
Parliament; and there seems to have been no doubt that by such an
act they would be divested of all civil powers and functions. But
it was said, that such an act could be at any time repealed; and
if it were repealed, then, under the common law of England,
bishops in the colonies might hold their courts, and exercise such
functions as were ordinarily exercised by them in the mother
country. The danger may have been largely imaginary; but it was
certainly within the limits of possibility, and must, in all
candor, be fairly considered.]

Under all the circumstances, then, it is no wonder that when the
War of the Revolution ended, and the question came to the minds of
thoughtful churchmen how the Church should strengthen "the things
that remained that were ready to die," their first thought should
have been for the Episcopate. The Faith of the Universal Church
they had in the historic Creeds. Its Worship was preserved for
them in the Book of Common Prayer, But how to provide for the
perpetuation of the "Doctrine and Sacraments and the Discipline of
Christ as the Lord had commanded and as this Church had received
the same," that was the great practical pressing question with