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Under favor of Royal Governors, with the known approval of George III.
himself, they appear to have aimed at establishing their Church in
America, under American Bishops, in such a position as should destroy
the preponderance of Congregationalism. There were those, on both sides
of the Atlantic, who looked to such an establishment as a counterpoise to
the restless agitations of American patriots for political liberty. Thus,
Dr. Johnson could write to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the year
1 764, when one of his own name and blood, as we shall see, was about to
argue earnestly against the obligation of passive obedience to arbitrary
power, that
" Episcopacy is really necessary towards the better securing our dependence, as
well as many other good political purposes ;" "
and in 1763 had written to the same dignitary
" Is there then nothing more that can be done either for obtaining Bishops or
demolishing these pernicious charter governments, and reducing them all to one form
in immediate dependence on the King? I cannot help calling them pernicious, for
they are indeed so, as well for the best good of the people themselves as for the interests
of true religion ;" "
and the Archbishop wrote to Dr. Johnson, in 1766, that the King was
" thoroughly sensible that the Episcopalians are his best friends in America." "
iVIoreover, Dr. Johnson's foreign correspondence distinctly reflects
the theory that the Anglican Church might be established in America by
virtue of an extension to the colonies of the principle of royal supremacy
in ecclesiastical as well as civil affairs.^
" Id., p. 295.
" Id., p. 304.
" Id., p. 279.
'* A recent writer on Religious Tests in Provincial Pennsylvania says : " There was indeed always
a large party in England which maintained, up to the time of the Revolution, that the principle of Royal
or Parliamentary supremacy was equally applicable to ecclesiastical as to civil affairs in the Colonies.
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