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Count Moeurs, a potent and wealthy noble, was governor of Utrecht and Gelderland, and he had already begun to favour the party in Holland which claimed for that Province a legal jurisdiction over the whole ancient episcopate.
As yet the see of Canterbury was the sole archbishopric, and in 678 Archbishop Theodore already known as an organizer of the episcopate was invited to the court of Northumbria. Wise though this action was, it was naturally resented by Wilfrid, who appealed to the Pope the first appeal of the kind ever made by an Englishman and set out himself for Rome.
His mind would wander, and several times he found himself thinking of the dinner he had that evening with his Bishop. He knew that the position of Archdeacon was vacant, and he was fondly hoping that he would be favoured with the appointment. It would be another step, so he mused, up the ecclesiastical ladder leading to the Episcopate.
The exposition and enforcement of Divine truth is not to be confined to those who have received priestly ordination by some outward rite. No man therefore has the right to forbid any preacher from exercising his functions on the ground that his orders are not regular, or because he has not been recognised by an Episcopate, a Presbytery, a Conference, or a Union.
Whether it was that the Abbe Dutheil recognized the impossibility of enlightening the court of Rome and the higher clergy on this point, or that he had consented to sacrifice his own opinions to those of his superiors, it is certain that he remained within the limits of the strictest orthodoxy, being very well aware that any manifestation of his principles at the present time would deprive him of all chance of the episcopate.
As regarded the Archbishop, I replied, that I believed in the substantial accuracy of his statement, that there were not more than two members of the episcopate who could be held to be decided Puseyites; and as regarded the progress of Puseyism, I said, that it had been making great and rapid progress, but that the papal aggression, in my humble opinion, had dealt a somewhat heavy blow to both Popery and Puseyism, that so long as Romanism came begging for toleration, it had found great favour in the eyes of the liberals; but when it came claiming to govern, it had scared away many of its former supporters, who had come to know it better, and that the Protestant feeling which the aggression had evoked on the part of the Court, the Parliament, and the people, had tended to discourage Romanism, and all kindred or identical creeds.
There is still another point that must be taken into account in this connection, to wit, the attitude which the Episcopate has a right to take with respect to any proposed work of liturgical revision.
Ever since 740, in the Episcopate of Cynewulf, criminals were allowed to claim Sanctuary in Durham. When this knocker was sounded, the door was opened, by two porters who had their accommodations always in two little chambers over the door, and for a certain length of time the criminal was under the protection of the Church.
The Crown, as yet, had deemed it unwise to thrust an episcopate upon its dissenting colonies, and, except for a short time before Queen Anne's death, it was to take no interest in the plans for the American episcopate until some forty years later, when the King thought to discern in it some political advantage.
All this is clear enough. But what does not appear is, why a more hearty and earnest effort was not made to secure the needed legislation. No such effort could have been expected from the authorities of the State. They who cared nothing for an Episcopate in America before the War of the Revolution, were not likely to care more for it after the war was ended.
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