episcopal
_jurisdiction_, could hardly issue the necessary mandate for the
consecration of a bishop to a see outside the realm (see BISHOP).
The Scottish bishops, however, being hampered by no such legal
restrictions, were more amenable; and on the 11th of November 1784
Seabury was consecrated by them to the see of Connecticut. In 1786,
on the initiative of the archbishop, the legal difficulties in England
were removed by the act for the consecration of bishops abroad; and,
on being satisfied as to the orthodoxy of the church in America and
the nature of certain liturgical changes in contemplation, the two
English archbishops proceeded, on the 14th of February 1787,
to consecrate William White and Samuel Prevoost to the sees of
Pennsylvania and New York (see PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH).

This act had a significance beyond the fact that it established in the
United States of America a flourishing church, which, while completely
loyal to its own country, is bound by special ties to the religious
life of England. It marked the emergence of the Church of England from
that insularity to which what may be called the territorial principles
of the Reformation had condemned her. The change was slow, and it is
not yet by any means complete.

Since the Church of England, whatever her attitude towards the
traditional Catholic doctrines, never disputed the validity of
Catholic orders whether Roman or Orthodox, nor the jurisdiction of
Catholic bishops in foreign countries, the expansion of the Anglican
Church has been in no sense conceived as a Protestant aggressive
movement against Rome. Occasional exceptions, such as the consecration
by Archbishop Plunket of Dublin of a bishop for the reformed church in
Spain, raised so strong a protest as to prove the rule. In the main,
then, the expansion of the Anglican Church has followed that of the
British empire, or, as in America, of its daughter states; its claim,
so far as rights of jurisdiction are concerned, is to be the Church
of England and the English race, while recognizing its special duties
towards the non-Christian populations subject to the empire or brought
within the reach of its influence. As against the Church of Rome, with
its system of rigid centralization, the Anglican Church represents the
principle of local autonomy, which it holds to be once more primitive
and more catholic. In this respect the Anglican communion has
developed on the lines defined in her articles a