had now a bold,
energetic, and able representative of principles hitherto not much in
favor in America--the thoroughgoing High-church principles of Archbishop
Laud. Before this time the Episcopal Church had had very little to
contribute by way of enriching the diversity of the American sects. It
was simply the feeblest of the communions bearing the common family
traits of the Great Awakening, with the not unimportant _differentia_ of
its settled ritual of worship and its traditions of order and decorum.
But when Bishop Hobart put the trumpet to his lips and prepared himself
to sound, the public heard a very different note, and no uncertain one.
The church (meaning his own fragment of the church) the one channel of
saving grace; the vehicles of that grace, the sacraments, valid only
when ministered by a priesthood with the right pedigree of ordination;
submission to the constituted authorities of the church absolutely
unlimited, except by clear divine requirements; abstinence from
prayer-meetings; firm opposition to revivals of religion; refusal of all
cooeperation with Christians outside of his own sect in endeavors for the
general advancement of religion--such were some of the principles and
duties inculcated by this bishop of the new era as of binding
force.[306:1] The courage of this attitude was splendid and captivating.
It requires, even at the present time, not a little force of conviction
to sustain one in publicly enunciating such views; but at the time of
the accession of Hobart, when the Episcopal Church was just beginning to
lift up its head out of the dust of despair, it needed the heroism of a
martyr. It was not only the vast multitude of American Christians
outside of the Episcopal Church, comprising almost all the learning, the
evangelistic zeal, and the charitable activity and self-denial of the
American church of that time, that heard these unwonted pretensions with
indignation or with ridicule; in the Episcopal Church itself they were
disclaimed, scouted, and denounced with (if possible) greater
indignation still. But the new party had elements of growth for which
its adversaries did not sufficiently reckon. The experience of other
orders in the church confirms this principle: that steady persistence
and iteration in assuring any body of believers that they are in some
special sense the favorites of Heaven, and in assuring any body of
clergy that they are endued from on high with some special and
except