The Americans Resolve to Resist: Episcopacy and Anglican

For more than an hour Otis harangued the Assembly with words similar to these in meaning and intensity of expression. Even the "Sons of Liberty" trembled lest he should tread upon the domain of treason. The House refused to rescind, passed resolutions denunciatory of this attempt to arrest free discussion and expressions of opinion, and then sent a letter to the governor informing him of their action. "If the votes of this House," they said, "are to be controlled by direction of a minister, we have left us but a vain semblance of liberty. We have now only to inform you that this House have voted not to rescind, and that, in a division on the question, there were ninety-two years and seventeen nays." The seventeen "rescinders" became objects of public contempt. The governor was irritated by the "insolent letter," and proceeded to dissolve the Assembly; but before the act was accomplished that body had prepared a list of serious accusations against him, and a petition to the king praying for his removal. Massachusetts felt strong in the assurances of sympathy and support received from the other colonies.

We have hinted that the Church and State in England worked in concert for the enslavement of the Americans. So early as 1748, Dr. Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury, had proposed the establishment of Episcopacy in America, and overtures were made to several eminent Puritan divines to accept the mitre, but they all declined it. It was known that among other reforms in the colonies, proposed by the ministry at the beginning of the reign of George the Third, was the curtailment or destruction of the Puritan, or Dissenting influence in the provinces, and to make the ritual of the Anglican Church the State mode of worship. This movement was made as secretly as possible, but it could not be wholly concealed. Rev. George Whitefield said to Dr. Langdon, a Puritan divine at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, "I can't, in conscience, leave this town without acquainting you with a secret. My heart bleeds for America. O poor New England! There is a deep-laid plot against both your civil and religious liberties, and they will be lost. Your golden days are at an end. You have nothing but trouble before you. My information comes from the best authority in Great Britain. I was allowed to speak of the affair in general, but enjoined not to mention particulars. Your liberties will be lost."

Remembering the aspect of Episcopacy or rather of the Anglican Church in the early colonial days, the Americans had ever looked upon that Church as a partner of the State in its acts of oppression, and they feared its power. They well knew that if Parliament could create dioceses and appoint bishops, they would establish tithes and crush out dissent as a heresy. For years controversy on the subject was very warm and sometimes acrimonious in this country. The Anglican Church had many adherents in nearly all the colonies, and they naturally desired its ascendency. Essays by able writers appeared in pamphlets and sometimes in newspapers for and against Episcopacy. Among those of its opponents, none held a more trenchant pen than William Livingston, just mentioned. Dr. Ewer, Lord Bishop of Llandaff, had preached a sermon before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, in which he recommended the scheme for establishing Episcopacy in America, and heaped abuse upon the colonists, who were mostly Dissenters. "Upon the adventurers themselves," he said, "what reproach could be cast heavier than they deserved? Who, with their native soil abandoned their native manners and religion, and ere long were found in many parts living without remembrance or knowledge of God, without any divine worship, in dissolute wickedness and the most brutal profligacy of manners. Instead of civilizing and converting barbarious infidels, as they undertook to do, they became, themselves, infidels and barbarians." With this view of the state of religion in the colonies, the prelate concluded that the only remedy for the great evil was to be found in a church establishment. His recommendations were laid hold of with a firm grasp by churchmen in this country, and urged with zeal. Dr. Chandler of Elizabethtown, in New Jersey, published "An Appeal to the Public in behalf of the Church of England" - an able and moderate performance. Men of less note followed, and echoed the sentiments of the worthy rector.