"My Lords,

"These Episcopalians take a distinction, and it is a just distinction, between a purely spiritual, and a political Episcopacy. A political Episcopacy belongs to an established Church, and has no existence out of an establishment. This sort of Episcopacy was necessarily unknown in the world, before the time of Constantine. But in all the preceding ages there was a pure spiritual Episcopacy, an order of men set apart to inspect and manage the spiritual affairs of the Church, as a society in itself totally unconnected with civil government. Now, my Lords, these Scotch Episcopalians think, that when their Church was cast off by the State at the Revolution, their Church in this discarded, divided state, reverted to that which had been the condition of every Church in Christendom, before the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire, by Constantine the Great:-that losing all their political capacity, they retained, however, the authority of the pure spiritual Episcopacy within the Church itself; and that is the sort of Episcopacy to which they now pretend: and I, as a Churchman, have respect for that pretension." This opinion entertained by Bishop Horsley was exactly the same as that of Bishop Horne, mentioned by Mr. Jones in his Life of that venerable Prelate, 2d edit. p. 149, et subs. " for he had considered that there is such a thing as a pure and primitive Constitution of the Church of Christ, when viewed apart from those appendages of worldly power and worldly protection, which are sometimes mistaken, as if they were as essential to the being of the Church, as they are useful to its sustentation *."

* That most excellent man, Bishop Horne, anxious as he was for the interests of the Scotch Episcopal Church, did not live to see the relief granted; for, to the inex

I was anxious to give the reader some account of the opinion entertained by two such eminent prelates, upon the subject of which I have been led to treat; because it accords so exactly with the sentiments of the extraordinary layman, whose life and opinions are now under consideration, as appears from his Essay on the Church, mentioned above: because it is of importance that every man who regards the Church of which he is a member, should understand the foundations upon which it rests; and because it must be a matter of curiosity to men of education and reading to know something of a Church, of whose existence they may never have heard before; and to whose future welfare and happiness they may have an opportunity of contributing, as they will find by the subsequent part of this narrative.

Even Mr. Stevens, who, in his labours that I have just mentioned, and in what he afterwards contributed, was one of her best benefactors, did not know that there was an Episcopal Church remaining in Scotland, till the affair of the consecration of Bishop Seabury, of Connecticut, with whom he was well acquainted, and who was of unblemished reputation and eminent parts, led him to know that there was such a remnant of pure Episcopacy in the northern part of Britain *.

pressible loss of the Church, he departed this life on the 17th of January, 1792; but the Bill for the Relief of the Scottish Episcopalians did not pass into a law till the month of June following.

* If the reader would wish to know more of the History of the Scotch Episcopal Church up to the time of the repeal of the Penal Statutes, let him consult the Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, in two volumes, by the Rev. John Skinner, father of the worthy Bishop of Aberdeen, the Primus Scotia Episcopus.-This worthy prelate, to whom the second edition of these Memoirs was dedicated, himself

F

In the year 1794, and to the time of his death, Mr. Stevens continued to be an annual contributor to a Fund for the Relief of the Widows and Orphans of the Episcopal Clergy in Scotland: giving £20 the first year, and ten guineas every year after, and collecting from three or four other friends five guineas each annually.

It is remarkable that the last great labour of love, in which this faithful servant of his blessed Master engaged himself, was in the service of that depressed portion of the Christian Church; the circumstances of which I am now about to relate. One of the unhappy consequences of the penal laws was, that men of seriously disposed minds of the Episcopal persuasion, who were unwilling to subject themselves to the penalties inflicted on those laymen, who should attend the meetinghouses of the non-juring Clergy, resorted to a plan, so irregular and anomalous, that nothing could justify but the peculiar circumstances of the case. Clergymen ordained in the Churches of England and Ireland were invited to open chapels in Edinburgh and the populous districts of Scotland, where

departed this life on the 13th day of July, 1816, in the seventy-third year of his age, having been a Bishop of the Scotch Church thirty-four years, and of that period twentyeight years the Primus. The author knew him long and intimately, and kept up a regular correspondence with him. During his Episcopate, the Church emerged from that obscurity in which she had so long been concealed; she was then acknowledged, as a Sister Church, by the venerable hierarchy of the Church of England; the Bishop himself, who presided over her interests, was universally respected and beloved, and was surpassed by no man of his own order, in any Church, in primitive simplicity of manners, soundness of doctrine, or sanctity of life. He was succeeded, as Bishop of the district of Aberdeen, by his youngest son, the Rev. W. Skinner, D.D. of the University of Oxford.

divine service was solemnized, according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England. They would not submit to the jurisdiction of the Scottish Bishops-the Prelates of England and Ireland could exercise no jurisdiction over them in Scotland; and although, by being duly ordained, these Clergymen could administer the Sacraments, and perform all the other functions of the priesthood; yet all Episcopal offices were wanting-their chapels were unconsecrated; the children of their congregations were unconfirmed; and this absurdity and contradiction occurred, that they were Episcopalians, without the superintendence of an Episcopus.

These gentlemen themselves felt the absurdity as well as the wants of their situation; and rather than yield to the lawful and spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishops, within whose districts the Providence of God had placed them, they were even desirous of violating the Act of Union between England and Scotland, in order to supply the defect which they so sensibly experienced. It is related in the life of Bishop Horne, and I remember the fact, that a Clergyman of Scotland, who had received English ordination, applied to his Lordship, wishing to be considered as under the jurisdiction of some English Bishop. But the venerable Prelate gave no countenance to the proposal, and advised the applicant to acknowledge the Bishop of the Diocese in which he lived, who, his Lordship knew, would be ready to receive him into communion, and require nothing of him but what was necessary to maintain the order and unity of a Christian Church: assuring him at the same time, that if he were a private Clergyman, he should feel himself happy to be under the authority of such a Bishop.

It might have been expected when the penal laws were repealed; and when the laity were no longer subject to severe disabilities, and when every

Clergyman of the Episcopal Church had the op portunity of free and perfect toleration, that this Schism would have been immediately healed: especially as the Bishops of the Scottish Church addressed a pastoral letter to the English and Irish ordained clergy, who officiated in Scotland, inviting, and offering to receive them into full communion, and to give them the right-hand of Christian fellowship. These gentlemen, as a further excuse, replied, that as the Episcopal Church of Scotland had no Confessional, they had given no proof that their doctrines, as they pretended, were the same as those of the Church of England. Accordingly the Bishops held a convocation in October, 1804, in which it was unanimously resolved, to adopt and subscribe the thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, as their Confessional, and to use them as such in all future times, the Bishops entering it in their Diocesan Registers, as an established rule, not to confer orders on any one, who shall not subscribe those Articles in the same manner.

Immediately upon this highly proper and important step, one of the most eminent of the English ordained Clergy, officiating at Edinburgh, a Doctor in Divinity of the University of Oxford, of great piety, learning, and exemplary life, immediately published a short, but most able statement to his congregation, of the motives upon which he acted in submitting himself to the jurisdiction of the Episcopal College, to which he argued there could now be no possible objection, inasmuch as the Episcopal Church of Scotland is a true Church, in which the pure word of God is preached and the Sacraments are administered, according to Christ's ordinance; as the doctrine of the Episcopal Churches of England, Ireland, and Scotland is the same; and as the Apostolical succession is the same with that of the Church of England, the preşent governors of the Scotch Episcopal Church de