has
lost much influence, and made many enemies, by the step he then took.
The very same feeling which has raised the cry of aristocracy against
every gentleman who dwells in sufficiently near contact with the masses
to distinguish his habits from those around him; which induces the
eastern emigrant, who comes from a state of society where there are no
landlords, to fancy those he finds here ought to be pulled down, because
he is not a landlord himself; which enables the legislator to stand up
in his place, and unblushingly talk about feudal usages, at the very
instant he is demonstrating that equal rights are denied to those he
would fain stigmatize as feudal lords, has extended to religion, and the
church of which Mr. Warren was a minister, is very generally accused of
being aristocratic, too! This charge is brought because it has claims
which other churches affect to renounce and reject as forming no part of
the faith; but the last cannot remain easy under their own decisions;
and while they shout, and sing that they have found "a church without a
bishop," they hate the church that has a bishop, because it has
something they do not possess themselves, instead of pitying its deluded
members, if they believe them wrong. This will not be admitted
generally, but it is nevertheless true; and betrays itself in a hundred
ways. It is seen in the attempt to _call_ their own priests bishops, in
the feeling so manifest whenever a cry can be raised against their
existence, and in the _general_ character of these theological rallies,
whenever they do occur.

For one, I see a close analogy between my own church, as it exists in
this country, and comparing it with that from which it sprung, and to
those which surround it, and the true political circumstances of the two
hemispheres. In discarding a vast amount of surplusage, in reducing the
orders of the ministry, in practice, as well as in theory, to their
primitive number ... three and in rejecting all connection with the
State, the American branch of the Episcopal Church has assumed the
position it was desirous to fill; restoring, as near as may be, the
simplicity of the apostolical ages, while it does not disregard the
precepts and practices of the apostles themselves. It has not set itself
above antiquity and authority, but merely endeavoured to sustain them,
without the encumbrances of more modern abuses. Thus, too, has it been
in political things. No attempt has been made to c