Note 148:1 — Chapter X

It is a subject of unceasing lament on the part of historians of the American Episcopal Church that the mother church, all through the colonial days, should have obstinately refused to the daughter the gift of the episcopate. There is no denying the grave disadvantages thus inflicted. But it admits of doubt whether such bishops, with such conditions, as would have been conceded by the English church of the eighteenth century, would, after all, have been so very precious a boon. We shrink from the imputation upon the colonial church of Maryland and Virginia which is implied in suggesting that it would have been considerably improved by gaining the disciplinary purity of the English church of the Georgian era. The long fight in Virginia, culminating in Patrick Henry's speech in the Parsons' Case, so far Americanized the Episcopal Church as to make sure that no unwelcome minister was ever to be forced from outside on one of its parishes. After the Revolution it became possible to set up the episcopate also on American principles. Those who are burdened with regret over the long delay of the American Protestant episcopate may find no small consolation in pondering the question, what kind of an outfit of bishops, with canons attached, might have been hoped for from Sir Robert Walpole or Lord Bute? On the whole, at this point the American Episcopal Church is in the habit of pitying itself too much. It has something to be thankful for.