, into continually growing conspicuousness and
strength. Neither of them was implicated in that great debate involving
the fundamental principles of the kingdom of heaven,--the principles of
righteousness and love to men,--by which other parts of the church had
been agitated and sometimes divided. Whether to their discredit or to
their honor, it is part of history that neither the Protestant Episcopal
Church nor the Roman Catholic Church took any important part, either
corporately or through its representative men, in the agonizing struggle
of the American church to maintain justice and humanity in public law
and policy. But standing thus aloof from the great ethical questions
that agitated the conscience of the nation, they were both of them
disturbed by controversies internal or external, which demand mention at
least in this chapter.

The beginning of the resuscitation of the Protestant Episcopal Church
from the dead-and-alive condition in which it had so long been
languishing is dated from the year 1811.[304:1] This year was marked by
the accession to the episcopate of two eminent men, representing two
strongly divergent parties in that church--Bishop Griswold, of
Massachusetts, Evangelical, and Bishop Hobart, of New York,
High-churchman. A quorum of three bishops having been gotten together,
not without great difficulty, the two were consecrated in Trinity
Church, New York, May 29, 1811.

The time was opportune and the conjuncture of circumstances singularly
favorable. The stigma of Toryism, which had marked the church from long
before the War of Independence, was now more than erased. In New England
the Episcopal Church was of necessity committed to that political party
which favored the abolition of the privileges of the standing order; and
this was the anti-English party, which, under the lead of Jefferson, was
fast forcing the country into war with England. The Episcopalians were
now in a position to retort the charge of disloyalty under which they
had not unjustly suffered. At the same time their church lost nothing of
the social prestige incidental to its relation to the established Church
of England. Politicians of the Democratic party, including some men of
well-deserved credit and influence, naturally attached themselves to a
religious party having many points of congeniality.[305:1]

In another sense, also, the time was opportune for an advance of the
Episcopal Church. In the person of Bishop Hobart it