copal Church in the United States
of America. During the interval between the issue of the Declaration
of Independence and the Ratification of the Constitution of the
United States, the people in this country who had been brought
up in the communion of the Church of England found themselves
ecclesiastically in a very delicate position indeed. As colonists
they had been canonically under the spiritual jurisdiction of the
Bishop of London, a somewhat remote diocesan. But with this
Episcopal bond broken and no new one formed, they seemed to be
in a peculiar sense adrift. It does not fall to me to narrate
the steps that led to the final establishment of the episcopacy
upon a sure foundation, nor yet to trace the process through which
the Church's legislative system came gradually to its completion.
Our interest is a liturgical one, and our subject matter the
evolution of the Prayer Book. I say nothing, therefore, of other
matters that were debated in the Convention of 1789, but shall
propose instead that we confine ourselves to what was said and
done about the Prayer Book. In order, however, fully to appreciate
the situation we must go back a little. In a half-formal and
half-informal fashion there had come into existence, four years
before this Convention of 1789 assembled, an American Liturgy now
known by the name of _The Proposed Book_. It had been compiled on
the basis of the English Prayer Book by a Committee of three
eminent clergymen, Dr. White of Pennsylvania, Dr. William Smith
of Maryland, and Dr. Wharton of Delaware. Precisely what measure
of acceptance this book enjoyed, or to what extent it came actually
into use, are difficult, perhaps hopeless questions.

What we know for certain is that the public opinion of the greater
number of Churchmen rejected it as inadequate and unsatisfactory.
In the Convention of 1789 The Proposed Book does not seem to have
been seriously considered in open debate at all, though doubtless
there was much talk about it, much controversy over its merits and
demerits at Philadelphia dinner-tables and elsewhere while the
session was in progress.

The truth is, the changes set forth in _The Proposed Book_ were
too sweeping to commend themselves to the sober second-thought of
men whose blood still showed the tincture of English conservatism.
Possibly also some old flames of Tory resentment were rekindled,
here and there, by the prominence given in the book to a form of
public thanksgivi