like the Master Himself before He suffered, "with desire I desired to eat this passover." I anxiously debated with myself, whether I might hope to find a Presbyterian minister to give me "that Bread and that Cup." But as I felt myself too feeble to run the risk of refusal and perhaps rebuke, I requested an Episcopal clergyman to break to me the heavenly Bread: and richly did I enjoy the Blessed Sacrament; for, as the wounds of the Sacrifice lay open before me, I thought that I could read more clearly than ever the great mystery that my sins were covered. The withholding the Sacraments from the sick and dying, like the denying of Baptism to infants, is one of those crying wrongs and cruelties, which Popery in its blackest night has never dared to adopt among her penalties, and which it was reserved for Calvinism's heart to invent and Calvinism's hand to execute. Yet Calvinism, that has stolen its inheritance from the babe in its cradle, and practised robbery upon the dying, and pushed its sacrilege to the grave: has the courage and the art to raise in the crowd the cry of "illiberality" and "intolerance!" For myself, O my merciful Maker, let me die in a communion, that, when the chariot is at the door, and the appointed hour is striking, and the impatient steeds are waiting to convey me, will not withhold from me the traveller's Bread. O, in that hour, ye, my surviving friends, gather around me a company of the Catholic-hearted, to whom I may say: "Brothers, with desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. As for you, ye shall drink it again: but for me, I shall drink no more of this fruit of The Vine, until the day when I shall drink it new with you in the Kingdom of God."

CHAPTER XVII.

POPULAR LIBERTY.

I HAD often heard that Episcopacy was unfriendly to the just principles of human liberty. And I am free to say, "If it was so, it was a grievous fault." I should despise the religion that despised the poor. I should tread beneath my feet the faith that trampled under foot the rights of men. I am enthusiastic enough to ask,

"Has earth a clod,

Its Maker meant not should be trod
By man, the image of his God,

Erect and free?"

I looked therefore into the matter with no little jealousy, and, as the result of the most patient inquiry, must say, that I believe Episcopacy to be the true and tried friend of human liberty, and, in this land preeminently, the great bulwark now, and the main hope hereafter, of REPUBLICAN FREEDOM.

The charge that Episcopacy is anti-Republican and illib eral, has been of late years reiterated with new warmth by some who personally loved me once; and if I, who loved them in return, choose to place that church, to which my pure convictions have conducted me, on its defence before "the public," to which it has been cited by three of my

classmates and by yet another of my bosom friends: I only pray my Maker that, in setting impartial truth before them, they may perceive in me one who loves them still.

There were two aspects under which I found it necessary to examine the subject: the civil and the religious; as there were two positions from which I could examine it with advantage: its theory, and its history.

By the light of other minds I came to see, in spite of all my prejudices, that the constitution of the Episcopal Church embodies the essential elements of the received definitions of political liberty. It is a maxim of English law, that "there is no liberty where the judicial power is not separated from the legislative and executive." According to President Jef ferson, "the concentration of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers in the same hands, is precisely the definition of tyranny." "No political truth," says Chief Justice Marshall, is of greater intrinsic value, than that the legislative, judicial, and executive departments should be kept separated and distinct; the accumulation of these powers in the same hands, whether of a few or of many, may be pronounced to be the very definition of tyranny." Accordingly, the Constitutions of the several States declare in effect, with that of Maryland, that "the legislative, executive, and judiciary powers shall be for ever separate and distinct;" so that, in the words of my own native Virginia, "neither shall exercise the powers properly belonging to the other, nor shall any person exercise the powers of more than one of them, at the same time." "No person," declares Kentucky, "or collection of persons, being of one of these departments, shall exercise any power properly belonging to either of the others." My author, to whom I owe these quotations, furnishes some others; but these suffice; and we may crown them with the farewell words of Washington, urging on the people of the United States "the necessity of reciprocal checks in the exer

cise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasion by the others. The consolidation of these powers in one," says Washington, at once the General, the Statesman, and the Churchman, "whatever the form of government, is a real despotism."

Now if these definitions had been framed expressly to exhibit the great fundamental principles in the structure of the Episcopal Church, they could hardly have done it more exactly. As far as things temporal and things spiritual may coincide, the lines of coincidence are strikingly exact. The fact will bear investigation, that, right or wrong, the Episcopacy of America is, with almost mathematical exactness, after the model of the Republic, with the more democratic provision that, whereas a President may veto an act approved by both houses of Congress, the veto power in Episcopacy can be exercised only by a majority of the Bishops. A Bishop can no more enact a law, than may a Governor. The entire college of Bishops is as powerless to do it, as would be a college of State Governors. A Convention, whether of a diocese or of the whole confederacy, can no more try a cause or act judicially, than a Legislature or a Congress. Throughout the Church the three powers are kept carefully and for ever distinct. And it is to be remembered, that the same separation of powers existed to a most wholesome extent in the Ancient Church, until the encroachments of the Papacy, taking advantage of dissensions or supineness in the churches around her, made vigorous and successful efforts to centralize them in the chair of St. Peter; a consolidation, against which the West protested long, and the whole East protested, and still successfully protests, as incompatible with the ancient liberties of the primitive Episcopal Church. And Popery is not the less a despotism because it is electivé.

We do then allege, that according to the definitions by

Washington, Jefferson, and Marshall, the essence of despotism is covered up under the forms of Presbyterianism. Take first the purest form of Old School Presbyterianism. Its judicial act of 1837, separating from its communion sixty thousand communicants, was devised and consummated, under the pressure of high excitement, by the "collection of persons" known as the "General Assembly,"-at once Legislature, Judiciary, and Executive-from whose decision there is no appeal. There is but one Being in the universe to be trusted with such power: and even in the bosom of God, we have an Advocate with the Father; also the Holy Ghost the Comforter.

Take next the Methodists. The laity have neither representation nor voice in any of their legislative, judicial, or deliberative bodies. The preachers are as supreme as the priests ever were in the Papal communion. They hold the purse. They hold the sword. Let a man absent himself from the confessional of the class-meeting, without accounting for it, and see how the preacher's hand will straight lay hold on judgment! Let any member not pay his Peter-pence, or quota to the funds, and right soon will the cords of discipline find him. There is no escape! From the meanest member to the college-president, under the hierarchy of classleaders, exhorters, local preachers, and circuit-preachers, the laity are under a surveillance unknown to any thing on earth, except the Inquisition. Scarcely may a female wear a ring upon her hand, a ringlet in her hair, or a bow upon her сар, without the censure of her lords spiritual. A congregation may humbly petition the so-called bishops in the matter, but have no more power to elect their pastor, than the writer or the reader of this narrative to elect one for them. Neither can a pastor go where he himself may wish, or remain with a flock ever so devoted to his person, for more than two years at a time-except by a rare "indulgence." The so-called