and without the props of secular power." Whether the English
prelacy did or did not grasp, and acquiesce in, this ideal of a
bishop and his office, I cannot find that they pressed this
objection further.

A second obstacle was thus expressed: "It would be sending a
bishop to Connecticut, which they [the bishops of England] have no
right to do without the consent of the State, and such a bishop
would not be received in Connecticut." The phrase "consent of the
State" is ambiguous. It may refer to the Continental Congress or
to the authorities of the particular State concerned. If, however,
there were any who gave to the phrase the first of these
interpretations, they appear to have speedily abandoned it and to
have adopted the second. Apparently they supposed that the civil
authority in Connecticut might claim the right, and exercise the
power, to forbid a bishop to come within the limits of the State,
and to set him adrift with "the wide world before him where to
choose," a veritable bishop _in partibus_, without home,
habitation, or name. There can be little doubt that these fancies
were pressed by, if they did not originate with, persons belonging
to the so-called "Standing Order" in New England, under the lead
of a prominent minister in Connecticut.

To meet the difficulty, it was stated that a committee of the
Convention of the clergy of Connecticut had consulted with leading
members of both Houses of Assembly touching the "need, the
propriety, or the prudence of an application to government for the
admission of a bishop into the State," and that the result of the
conference showed that no such Act was needed, inasmuch as the
Assembly had already given all needful "legal rights and powers"