a person, however contumacious, in civil disabilities or to any extent further than excluding him from the sacraments of the offended church, or from being considered as one of its members. Churches, as corporations, can enforce their by-laws, but their powers as spiritual courts are merely advisary; for the civil authority neither issues nor aids any ecclesiastical process. The constitution recognizes clergymen only for the purpose of declaring them ineligible to civil offices. The act for regulating the fees demandable for the performance of certain enumerated public duties, allows them to take from all voluntary applicants a small fee for registering births, marriages, and funerals-for a search of these registers and a certified extract from them. The same law authorises them to demand five shillings for reading in church every citation from a civil officer, called ordinary, preparatory to the granting letters of administration on the estates of intestate persons. They arc also by law excused from the performance of militia duty or serving on juries. Thus far and no further the constitution and laws of the state notice the clergy. For the solemnization of marriages application is generally made to them; but this is not legally necessary. Marriages with or without licences or publication of the banns by clergymen or justices of the peace, are in law all equally valid; but when contracted are indissoluble. The churches have no authority to grant divorces. Every application to the civil power to legislate on this subject has been unsuccessful. The courts have no jurisdiction. No power exists in the state competent to grant them,

nor can it be otherwise till the legislature pass a law for the purpose.

A brief view of the present state of religion in Carolina will close this chapter.

in

The episcopalians since the revolution labored under peculiar disadvantages. Their church was incomplete without bishops, and their whole body of clergy and laity was incompetent to invest any dividual, or number of individuals, with episcopal powers. This boon could only be obtained through some of the successors of the apostles in the old world. Twelve years, subsequent to the revolution passed away before episcopal ordination could be obtained in South-Carolina*. In the mean time the

To preserve the uninterrupted succession of episcopal ordination, it was necessary either that the american candidates for the ministry should go to european bishops, or that ecclesiastical officers of that high rank should be constituted in the United States. The former was the mode usually adopted before the revolution, and in a few instances after its commencement. Insuperable difficulties opposed its continuance. The laws of England required all candidates for holy orders to take an oath of allegiance to his britannic majesty. This could not be done by the citizens of independent America. The english bishops with great liberality applied for, and obtained an act of parliament, authorising the ordination of clergymen for the United States without their taking an oath of allegiance to his britannic majesty. This afforded only partial relief. An american episcopate was therefore proposed as the only remedy adequate to the exigency. The non-episcopalians before the revolution had opposed this measure, but cheerfully acquiesced in it after that event had placed their rights and liberties beyond all foreign interference. The proposed measure was readily and without difficulty substantially agreed upon by the episcopalians on both sides of the Atlantic, yet many previous arrangements were necessary to give it effect. The english bishops

non-episcopalians, animated with the recovery of their long lost equal rights, proceeded vigorously in organizing churches and extending their forms of worship.

required evidence of the orthodoxy, regularity, and order of the episcopal churches in America, and also of the acquiescence of the civil government of the new formed states in the proposed episcopate. Certificates of the latter were easily obtained. Conventions of the american episcopal clergy and laity were held in several successive years and in different states, which finally agreed upon such alterations of the prayers, forms, and offices of the church as local circumstances and their new political condition required. In these the episcopal church of South-Carolina was represented by the reverend Dr. Purcell, Jacob Read, and Charles Pinckney. The proposed alterations being submitted to the heads of the church in England, were so far approved as to be no obstacle in the way of their consecrating bishops to preside over the american episcopal church. Dr. Provost of New-York, and Dr. White of Philadelphia, were accordingly in 1787 ordained and consecrated bishops of the american episcopal church at the archiepiscopal palace of Lambeth by the arch-bishops of Canterbury and York, and by the bishop of Bath and Wells, and the bishop of Peterborough. Not long after, Dr. Madison of Virginia was ordained and consecrated in England to be a bishop in America. The episcopal church was then for the first time complete in the United States. Three or rather four american clergymen were promoted to the rank of bishops by british episcopal consecration. These jointly were competent to perpetuate their own order, and each of them separately had the power of ordaining priests and deaThe uninterrupted succession was not only preserved, but its unbroken chain was extended across the Atlantic with

cons.

full powers to perpetuate itself. In consequence of these arrangements, the right reverend Robert Smith D. D. was by four bishops, convened in Philadelphia in September 1795, consecrated bishop of the protestant episcopal church in SouthCarolina. He continued in the discharge of the duties of that office till his death in 1801. This was the second consecration

The patronage which the episcopalians enjoyed, under the royal government, made them less able to stand alone after that patronage was withdrawn. Man is a creature of habit. Voluntary contributions for the support of religion had been so long customary with the dissenters, that when the pressure of war was removed they readily resumed their ancient habits; but the case was otherwise with the episcopalians for as their form of worship had for seventy years been in a great measure supported from the public treasury, they were not so immediately impressed with the necessity of advancing their private funds for that purpose.

For these and other reasons the episcopal church languished in South-Carolina for several years after the revolution. Though it maintained a respectable standing in their two ancient houses of worship in Charlestown*, it made for some time but little pro

of a bishop which had taken place in the United States. Since the death of bishop Smith there has been no bishop of his church in South-Carolina. The candidates for holy orders are now under a necessity of repairing to the northern states for ordination.

* Charlestown and Charlestown Neck constituted one parish by the name of St. Phillips till 1731, when a new one named St Michaels to the southward of Broad-street was established by act of assembly. Divine service was first performed in the present church of St. Phillips in the year 1723; and in that of St. Michaels in 1761. On the site of the latter, a church originally called St. Phillips had been previously erected about the year 1690, which was the only episcopal church in SouthCarolina prior to the establishment in 1706. Divine service was performed in St. Phillips church for three fourths of the

gress in the country. Better prospects are now before its members. Experience has convinced them of the propriety of voluntary contributions for the support of religion. Their church is completely organized within the United States. They are no longer confined in the choice of clergymen to strangers for natives of the country, of the purest morals and best education, have with pious zeal entered upon or are preparing themselves for the work of the ministry in such numbers as exceed any thing heretofore known in Carolina. Their long neglected places of worship in the country are repairing, and new ones arc building. Divine service according to the book of common prayer is now regularly performed in Beaufort by the reverend Mr. Hicks; in St. Andrews by the reverend Mr. Mills; in St. Bartholomews by the reverend Mr. Fowler; in St. Johns by the reverend Mr. Gadsden; in St. Thomas by the reverend Mr. Nankeville; at the high hills of Santee by the reverend Mr. Ischudy; and at St. James Santee by the reverend Mr. Mathews. In most of the other parishes where the establishment operated before the revolution, there are episcopal churches, but at present no settled ministers.

The presbyterians were among the first settlers, and were always numerous in Carolina. Their mi

18th century by two rectors: thirty-four years by commissary Garden, and forty-two by bishop Smith. The rev. Dr. Jenkins is the present rector, but being absent, divine service is performed by the rev. Dr. Percy, and the rev. James Dewar Simons. The rev. Nathaniel Bowen is the rector of St. Michaels church.