|
|
We persuade ourselves from the assurances we have hereto-
fore had the Honour to receive from your Excellency and
which we do and shall ever gratefully remember, that you will
not withhold it. One Instance there is in which we conceive
it is much in your Power to promote the Cause, and that is by
co-operating with us in our Application to our Brethren of the
Clergy in Virginia, by recommending it strongly to the Atten-
tion and Countenance of Lord Bottetourt.
We are not so sanguine as to flatter ourselves with the Hope
either of immediate or certain Success from this our Appli-
cation, but should we after all finally fail, which we pray
Heaven to avert ! We shall comfort ourselves with the reflec-
tion that even to fail is less reproachful than never to attempt
it at all.
We are Sir, with infinite Respect
Your Excellency's most Obedient
and faithful humble Servants
Signed by Order
Robert Read, Secretary
My Lord
Bound as we are by every tie of Gratitude to promote your
Lordship's interest and the Welfare of this Province which
we have ever considered as inseparable, and in which our
own is involved, we cannot with indifference behold Measures
pursued, which we apprehend to have a manifest tendency to
endanger interests so deservedly dear to us. Upon a proper
degree of Influence and Authority with the People will the use-
fulness of the Clergy of any Country depend. When that
Authority and Influence fail either thro' their own Misconduct
|
Lib. C. B.
No. 30
|
|
|
|
or the want of due countenance and support from the Civil
Government, from that instant will the usefulness of the
Clergy proportionably fail, and more especially so, and in the
End totally Cease, if Laws shall happen at any time to be so
injudiciously framed as even to tempt the People committed
to their guidance and instruction, instead of encouragement
to shew them every possible discouragement, On the other
hand still more destructive of their usefulness will their own
misconduct and a disregard of the Duties of their Functions
prove. Happy is it for that People where a due regard to their
own Character in the Clergy and a Judicious discipline unite
to render them respectable and consequently useful. Such we
trust your Lordship will be led both by Education and Judg-
ment to consider the Episcopal Jurisdiction in the Church of
England to be. Without some discipline no Church hath or
can Subsist, and such is the Crisis at which Affairs have here
arrived that according to our Judgment that venerable disci-
pline which hath prevailed in all Christian Nations and coeval
|
p. 120
|
|
