ference, in the Convention of 1785. The principle expressed being, that there shall be a Bishop in each State, and the immediate inference, that he should be called 'Bishop of the Church in that State.' And this title, thus begun, is the one in use down to our own time.

Now, in the Article referred to, we stated, that we considered this to have been a grievous error, and that it should be amended, as the Church unquestionably has the right and the power to do; that we ought to abolish the territorial title, unknown as it is to all the Church except ourselves, and restore the primitive title, that from Cities. We then went onward and proved, that the difference, although it seemed merely verbal, yet is actually real, in the good it prevents, in the obstacles to progress, to union, to harmony, which it creates. We showed, that the City is the proper position and place for the Episcopate, as being the heart of the country, the center and origin of all circulation of ideas, of money, of population, from whence all these originate and flow outward towards the extremities. And again we showed a returning flood, into the cities, of the rural population. Hence the Cities are the centers of all propagandism, that has for its object a change to be wrought in the whole nation. We showed then, from the nature of the City, that money can be more easily raised in Cities for religious purposes, converts more easily made, fervent and glowing resolves more easily aroused, men more easily obtained, work of all kinds, subsidiary to the great Missionary work, more easily done in Cities. Hence, that from the earliest time, the head and guide and leader of this work, the Bishop, was placed in the City, as in the center and heart of it allthe Bishoprick, the corporate unit of the Church's progress, was placed there, as in the focus of all activity, mental, commercial, military and civil. And from the city, therefore, the Diocese considered as a corporate body, was naturally named. All these advantages manifestly exist at this present time, as any one can see; all are reasons now for the true position, as they were of old.

* In every State there shall be a Bishop duly consecrated and settled, and who shall have acceded to the Articles of this General Ecclesiastical Constitution. He shall be considered as a member of the Convention ex officio.'—(Convention of 1785.)

We illustrated this truth in many ways. We showed, first, that such a position for a Bishop would free the Clergy and the Laity from this hateful party spirit, this interference and control of mere manoeuverers and intriguers and wire-pullers, by making the Bishop the actual head and real leader of the whole Diocese, the guide and director of all its movements. Under the present arrangements, this is utterly impossible; what between the Bishop's absences from the City, and the existence of Societies, Corporations and Committees, and their Presidents, Chairmen and Patrons, necessary to do work which has to be done, and which he has hardly time even to look at. A situation of affairs, in fact, can hardly be conceived, that could give more room for intrigue, and faction, or party wrath and personal spite, than the little whirlpools, currents and eddies, that belong of necessity to such a state of things Ecclesiastical in one of our great Cities. And, the greater the City, the more opportunity for them all. Have not our Bishops felt these thorns, and our Clergy and Laity also?

And yet, what can they expect, when the Bishop has perhaps five, perhaps ten, great Cities under his jurisdiction, in each of which, by the Constitution of the Church, there should be a Bishop, in each of which Church-progress would be vastly aided by the Episcopate. What, but that party leaders, constantly resident, should encroach upon the powers, crawl into the prerogatives, and injure the influence of the Bishop, who being a resident in a population of say one hundred thousand and upwards, leaves the work at his doors and in his hands to officiate, at railroad speed, in six other Cities? In fact, but for this anomalous state of affairs, which the territorial Bishoprick by its nature produces, and the See Bishoprick by its nature excludes, our party troubles would be at an end. One Bishop in one City, would as naturally make peace as one husband in one house. The husband who has one wife, the Bishop who has one Church, has, from the very nature of things, more peace,

*The Church of, or at Ephesus, Antioch, Rome, Corinth, &c., is no single congregation. It is the Corporation, the whole body of Christians, Clergy and Laity in that City, of which the Bishop is the Head. We use this fact as an argument against the Congregationalists; do we not make it null in truth and in deed?

more dignity, more love and loyalty, more influence and control, than he who has ten wives or ten Churches.

.

And this argument, which in this way accounts for a sad fact, we upheld and illustrated by showing, that the natural unit of the Church is the Diocese, which is a natural corporation in a locus marked out for it in space and time; that is the City. The One Bishop, the many Presbyters, the Seven Deacons, and the Laity in one City, are the constituent head, limbs, and body of this corporation. A proposition this is, that is so distinctly manifested in Christian antiquity, that there can be no doubt of it whatsoever. No doubt that Presbyterianism, Congregationalism, and other modern settlements of Church Order and Church government, are mere fragments and disruptions of this original corporation. How much this consideration upholds the arguments in the last paragraph,— how much does it show the source of our troubles, to reflect, that the one head which should give unity and guidance and force to the one body, is taken away from it, and tries to be head of from two to ten bodies more!

Again we showed, that this great evil being taken away, and its Bishop given back to the City, which this scheme has deprived it of, the presence among us of a venerable man, recognized by all the Clergy as uplifted above them by his Apostolic dignity and Apostolic position, and therefore raised far above the envy and jealousy which are the fruits of Parity,―a spiritual Father among his spiritual children, would directly tend to create among them peace and mutual love and respect. It would give to their actions, Missionary and Parochial, an unity and harmony which by no means now exist. Their Bishop would be, as it were, the great central wheel, the driving power of all the Missionary and Church work among the population of that City, and the region adjoining. Unity of work and action, strength and smoothness of movement, uniformity and steadiness; all these are the natural result of one governing and guiding head in its proper and peculiar position. How many weak Churches would now have been alive and prosperous, but that they were left to stagger on in their feebleness, because their Bishop knew next to nothing of them; 1*

VOL. XIV.-NO. I.

because, although he lived within twenty miles of them, in a huge City, requiring of itself all his cares, he had to travel off five hundred miles, to other huge Cities! How many hopeful enterprize have had no help, because all they could get from an overburthened man was merely kind words from a kindly heart, neither time, nor supervision, nor government, nor aid! We are spilling out at least half as much as we are pouring in. Only in the Cities are the fruits of our labor prevented from being lost. In the country parts, save when population is very dense, this territorial Bishoprick is wasting away the number of the baptized and confirmed and communicants.

We proceeded, farther than this, to manifest another advantage, of which a vestige does not exist among us at the present time; that is, the natural springing forth from the See Bishoprick of an arrangement like that of the old Provinces of the Primitive Church. We showed, that the State would necessarily represent these. In New York, for instance, there being ten or fifteen Bishopricks and Bishops, easily and naturally they would conclude to meet together upon Church affairs, which might concern peculiarly the Church in that State. Here at once would come into existence a State Council, corresponding to the old Provincial Council.

In these councils we see many benefits, the solution of many problems. An University in each State,* a fully endowed, distinctly religious, amply supported University, with Students in abundance, because upheld by the energies of twelve or fifteen Bishops and Dioceses, guiding the wealth, the population, the Students of the whole State in that direction. Could not the wealth, the population, the benevolence of the Church in the State of New York effect this at this very present time, if the Church in that State had fifteen Bishops, or ten, or six, each settled in a City, all meeting together in council, and all trustees, with a certain pro rata number of their several Clergy

* Of course our readers will see at once we do not suppose such cases as that of Rhode Island and Delaware. These, as States, are exceptional. But the vast majority of the States would unquestionably bear in time such fruit, under the See Bishoprick, and be bettered by it.

and Laity, of one great Institution, belonging to the Church in the whole State? No doubt of it at all.

Again if the General Theological Seminary, instead of being on the basis it is, where the word 'General' means in effect that which no one in particular cares anything about; or if, instead of being or becoming the Seminary of a Diocese, as it is likely to be, which implies a machine too large, and affording a supply too large by far for the demands of one Diocese, it were made "the General Theological Seminary of the Church in the State of New York." The word General,' originally was intended to mean the Seminary to which all the students and candidates of the whole Church were to come. This interpretation is completely refuted and annulled by that old personage, Time, who 'opinionum commenta delet, naturæ judicia confirmat.'* If its basis were made the State of NewYork and all the Dioceses therein, taking thus a different basis from the imagined and intended Universal Seminary, the proposed Diocesan Seminary-if it were 'General' as admitting on equal grounds to all its emoluments, candidates from all Dioceses in the Union in general, sending its Clergy graduates freely to all States in the Union, and lastly, teaching the doctrines of the Church in general-could not such a Seminary exist and grow upon the same basis as the University of the Church in the whole State? And if we added to this the Presidency of a Bishop whose See should be the length and breadth of the Seminary grounds, his Presbyters the Professors, his Deacons the Tutors, we should have our Theological Education on such a basis it has not hitherto been upon. This last matter, that the head of a Theological Seminary ought to be in Bishop's Orders, is no new thing, but one very old indeed in the Church. The General Theological Seminary of the Russian Empire at this day has a Bishop for its President.†

Take Training Schools, in the same way the same arguments. will apply. In fact, the Episcopate in the City originates Church education in that City, and then the See Episcopate meeting in the Provincial or State Council creates, upholds, supports general Education, Universities, General Theological

* Bacon. Gregory Boulgakoff, Bishop of Vinnitza, (Titular.)