Anglican Minister Research Articles

Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, 1795–1850 (review)

Reviewed by: Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, 1795–1850 Niel Gunson Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, 1795–1850. By Sujit Sivasundaram. Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 244 pp. $80.00 (cloth). Nature and the Godly Empire is an ambitious, ingenious, erudite, and well-written attempt to explain the scientific role of Christian missions featuring the work of the London Missionary Society (LMS) in the southeast Pacific. Sujit Sivasundaram takes as his starting point Richard Drayton's suggestion "that Christian ideologies of man's place in nature lay at the taproot of imperial expansion" (p. 8). The thesis unfolds in six substantial chapters, four devoted to the way in which missionaries "engaged in nature" or used popular science and natural history in their educational and civilizing role, and two in which the promoters of mission "ordered and displayed nature to promote missionary rhetoric." The basic argument is spelled out in a thirteen-page introduction that is essential reading in order to know where Sivasundaram is coming from. The work is highly derivative, drawing on a vast range of secondary sources and critical literature, which has both advantages and disadvantages. Most of his original research relates to the correspondence between Sir Joseph Banks and the Reverend Thomas Haweis, LMS files relating mostly to the Reverend John Williams, and early nineteenth-century [End Page 532] publications such as the Evangelical Magazine, missionary sermons, and reports. The advantage of drawing on the modern critical literature is that Sivasundaram is able to engage in discourse with those writing in related fields. The major disadvantage is that he has absorbed errors and misconceptions perpetrated by other scholars, particularly in the fields of religious history and representational studies. He acknowledges a debt to those Cambridge church historians who see the modern missionary movement as deriving in part from the Enlightenment, a position that is difficult to sustain without forcing or straining the argument.1 Most of Sivasundaram's terms take on esoteric meanings. Science is redefined in the missionary context primarily as natural historical practices, and we are told that "science was indistinguishable from religion or empire" (p. 11). Empire, of course was not the British Empire or the French Empire but, in some respects, the colonialism of the mind, the taming of the Other. Much attention is given to the "theology of nature" as if it was peculiar to the evangelical way of thinking. May I suggest that what is presented as a "theology of nature" is in reality a scriptural way of thinking, and similar examples could be found in Catholic and non-Evangelical Anglican writings. Indeed the Anglican divines William Paley, J. G. Wood, and the founders of the Oxford movement expressed even stronger theologies of nature. Sivasundaram has been persuaded by denominational historians to adopt erroneous views of Evangelical church history. Although his coverage of the origins of the LMS is mostly correct, he fails to recognize that the Society was founded primarily by Calvinistic Methodists and that the "fundamental principle" (deemed to be an ecumenical provision) was necessary because "Whitefield's Methodists" were serving as clergy or pastors within the episcopal, presbyterian, and independent churches. To refer to Thomas Haweis as "an Anglican minister with Methodist sympathies" (p. 101) is like calling John Wesley "an Anglican minister with Methodist sympathies." Many Methodists, both Wesleyan and Calvinist, remained in the Church of England until the 1820s. Sivasundaram treats all those he labels "evangelicals" as if they shared the same views; he seems to suppose that they all read the Evangelical Magazine, that they were all "moderate Calvinists," and that [End Page 533] they all strove for "sanctification." The Evangelical Magazine was the main magazine of the Calvinistic Methodists, but only one of a number of Evangelical periodicals. Many "evangelicals" were hyper-Calvinists and others were Arminians. "Sanctification" was a theological term associated with Wesleyans rather than Calvinists. References to the "Revd William Wilberforce" (pp. 150–151) are surprising in view of that distinguished layman's reputation. Much of the book's novelty draws on the methodology of representation. Because the author is not...

Inexpressible Sadness: Sterne's Sermons and the Moral Inadequacies of Politeness in Tristram Shandy

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, has long been established as a work of both refined sensibility and exceptional vulgarity. Since its publication, critics have remarked upon apparent contradiction between the 'indelicacies' of Tristram Shandy and its triumphantly 'pathetic' cameos (Mullan 152). The tension between these two elements is not accidental. In its juxtaposition of low humor and high sentiment, Laurence Sterne's novel not only underlines his negation of claims about a relationship between refinement and moral excellence made by eighteenth-century proponents of polite taste but also consistently argues that moral and philosophical implications of a polite neoclassical aesthetic are inherently at odds with Christian teachings. (1) Sterne's position on immorality of polite taste is well known; in an era in which clergymen could increasingly be enlisted as arbiters of decorum, it is in his position as a clergyman that Sterne mounts an engaged resistance to conflation of polite taste with spirituality. (2) Moreover, a reading of Sterne's Sermons reveals theological and rhetorical bases for challenge mounted by his impolite humor to what is revealed as corrupt in polite society: fact that polite taste has its origins in a refashioned classical antiquity means that polite refinement is not only hypocritical but in profound moral error, eschewing values and beauties of sacred texts in favor of those found in texts of sophisticated pagan origin. Sterne's humor revels in sexual innuendo but hinges upon responses to suffering--sexual frailty, illness, and death--addressable with moral coherence only through Hebrew and early Christian texts that pagan tradition dismisses as inelegant. Vulgarity in Tristram Shandy operates as a criticism of polite culture's inability to address major issues of life even as it points to prurience involved in discreet avoidance of impolite material. The bawdry of this Anglican minister's work is a reminder that English nation's official Christianity is incompatible with polite taste: a too-polite education may stop up all passage to our hearts (Sterne, 4.390). Sterne posits an incompatibility between Christianity and polite fictions of refined sensibility, particularly as each is used to confront pain of mourning; he reconciles this conflict with a sensitivity that, although in often patently impolite taste, is consistent with his faith and is clearly articulated in his theological writings. Christopher Fanning describes Sterne's Sermons as his ars rhetorica (58), underlining importance of looking to Sermons when comparing Sterne's aesthetics to his Anglicanism as manifested in his fiction. The Sermons reveal a revaluing of propriety based on origins of sacred texts: Sterne posits greater perfection--aesthetic and philosophical--of an unflinching and less ornamented style of writing which he argues descends from biblical rather than classical tradition, in which pivotal eighteenth-century concepts of sublime and beautiful play a key role in deciding issues of both aesthetic perception and Christian morality. Sterne's alter ego Parson Yorick articulates a desire to speak point blank to heart (Sterne, 1.377), voicing aims of an aesthetic, articulated in Sermons and played through Tristram Shandy, which recaptures unspeakable, particularly acknowledgement of suffering, for realm of social discourse. (3) Sterne's Sermons establish his distinction between a biblical and a classical aesthetic, his preference for biblical, and clearly articulate his criticism of a polite taste that is morally empty because it lacks divine authority. When suffering is at issue, avoidance of unsettling subject matter can cause social fracture and spiritual atrophy. In contrast, in Sterne's biblical aesthetic, grotesquerie and bodily excesses may become vehicles for sublime. …

When Slide Rules Ruled

The article discusses the slide rule, a computational tool used by engineers before electronic calculators. Topics discussed include the invention of the slide rule by English Anglican minister William Oughtred, how to properly use a slide rule, how long it took for the slide rule to become popular, and the phasing out of the slide rule. INSETS: HOW TO USE A SLIDE RULE;Logarithm Log.

The Religion of William Stukeley

During recent years a new consensus of opinion seems to have grown up concerning the career of the eighteenth-century antiquary William Stukeley: that his ideas underwent no significant alteration in the course of his adult life, and that Stuart Piggott's famous characterization of Stukeley — that he changed from an objective field archaeologist into a religious crank — was completely wrong. While there is much to commend this revisionist approach, it also presents certain difficulties. It fails to account for the apparent speed and drama of Stukeley's decision to seek ordination as an Anglican minister, or for pronounced differences in emphasis and tone between his earlier and later writings, and it fails to address some important textual difficulties in the dating and interpretation of his manuscript works. This paper is intended to address those problems. It examines the changes in his religious attitudes, and their implications for his scholarship, over the six decades in which he carried out antiquarian researches. In the process, it is intended to make a contribution to the cultural history of the eighteenth century, and also to the early story of the discipline of archaeology.

Introduction to Dorothy L. Sayers's "Are Women Human?" from Unpopular Opinions: Twenty-One Essays

Perhaps due to a youthful obsession with Nancy Drew, it wasn't until my first semester of graduate school that I considered the mystery novel to be anything other than a pleasant but forgotten pastime. But one day in class, and in a tone that made it seem as though it were common knowledge, a theology professor mentioned that theologians tended to like really good mystery stories. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, but since a theologian was what I hoped to be, I decided that perhaps I ought to read one. That very [End Page 158] afternoon, I went to the university library and by some stroke of good fortune, found a shelf full of the work of Dorothy L. Sayers. I had heard of Sayers years before in connection with the PBS television series The Nine Tailors. So, I picked up that volume first—I think more out of a fond association with Alastair Cooke's eloquent commentary on the doings of the hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, than because I remembered any details of the plot. I found Wimsey entrancing and entered into his gentlemanly, Victorianesque approach to solving murders with fascination. He was erudite and elegant, possessing a depth of refinement and a breadth of knowledge that left me longing for the graceful living of an earlier time. I developed an insatiable appetite for more of his adventures and hungrily read all thirteen of them, from the moment of his creation in Whose Body? (1923) to the final novel in the series, Busman's Honeymoon (1937), in which Sayers finally marries Peter off to Harriet Vane, a young detective novelist he met in an earlier novel (Strong Poison, 1930) while trying to solve the mystery of who had killed her lover. When I finished the series, I found myself at a loss. I was torn. I felt I simply had to have another novel to read; it relaxed my brain at the end of a stressful day of classes and study. But I could not ignore the shelf in the library where several other volumes of Sayers's work silently waited. Somewhat reluctantly, I resigned myself to my addiction and returned to the familiar aisle like a horse trotting back to the barn. I reached for a book of essays: "Hmm, Unpopular Opinions."1 The title certainly had some appeal, suggesting a fearless analysis and a certain contrariness, not unlike Lord Peter's own inimitable style. I opened the volume, and instead of Dorothy Sayers the mystery writer, I encountered Dorothy Sayers the theologian. Dorothy L. Sayers was born in June 1893 at Oxford, the only child of an Anglican minister. Unusually gifted, she could speak and read Latin by the age of seven, learned French from her governess, and published her first book, a volume of verse, at twenty-three. She studied medieval literature and modern languages, earning a master's [End Page 159] degree in 1915, one of the first women to be granted a degree from Oxford University. A devout Anglican, she numbered C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and Father Ronald Knox among her friends and associates. While she is best known for her detective stories, Sayers devoted the last twenty years of her life to other genres.2 She wrote and scripted radio plays, primarily religious dramas, for the BBC. She considered doctrinal questions (The Mind of the Maker, 1941) and reflected on Christian living and belief (Creed or Chaos? 1947). She was a skilled translator, producing translations of Tristan in Brittany and the Song of Roland from the medieval French. She also has to her credit several works on Dante, including an acclaimed translation of The Divine Comedy. She wrote critical essays on a variety of topics. Dorothy Sayers was a remarkable woman—in a sense, ahead...

Review article: the sociology of dying, death and bereavement.

Cobb, M., 'The Dying Soul: Spiritual Care at the End of Life' (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001 £16.99 (pbk) vii + 145pp) Currer, C., 'Responding to Grief: Dying, Bereavement and Social Care' (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001 £14.50 (pbk) v + 181pp) Field, D., Clark, D., Corner, J. and Davis, C. (eds), 'Researching Palliative Care' (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001 £22.50 (pbk) vii + 198pp) Hockey, J., Katz, J. and Small, N. (eds), 'Grief, Mourning and Death Ritual' (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001 £19.99 (pbk) vii + 286pp) McNamara, B., 'Fragile Lives: Death, Dying and Care' (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001 £17.99 (pbk) v + 165pp) Seymour, J., 'Critical Moments – Death and Dying in Intensive Care' (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001 £17.99 (pbk) xiii + 185pp) The sociological study of dying, death and bereavement is a relatively recent field of research interest. In 1958, Faunce and Fulton wrote a paper entitled ‘the sociology of death: a neglected area of research’, their argument being that the lack of sociological research in this area was probably attributable to a wider reluctance within society to contemplate dying and death. However, despite Walter’s (1993) claim that (with the exception of medical sociology) British sociologists had been notably quiet in this topic, it would seem from the research literature that the number of sociologists researching in the area of dying, death and bereavement has increased significantly, particularly in the last 10 to 15 years. The aim of this review is to outline the work that sociologists have conducted with regard to dying, death and bereavement. Within this discussion, I locate and review the six books listed above, ending by reflecting on what sociological research related to dying, death and bereavement might explore in the future. Reviewing the work of sociologists in this field is no small task given the diversity of research that has been, and continues to be, conducted. Indeed, it is testament to the wealth of material published by social scientists that I have such a broad range of books to review. The six books cover topics that include the experiences of dying and death in the high-tech world of Intensive Therapy Units (ITUs), a reflection on the difficulties of providing ‘spiritual’ care, and an edited collection introducing the research methods used within palliative care research.

Sexual revolution in early America

In 1695, John Miller, a clergyman traveling through New York, found it appalling that so many couples lived together without ever being married and that no one viewed ante-nuptial fornication as anything scandalous or sinful. Charles Woodmason, an Anglican minister in South Carolina in 1766, described the region as a stage of debauchery in which polygamy was very common, concubinage general, and bastardy no disrepute. These depictions of colonial North America's sexual culture sharply contradict the stereotype of Puritanical abstinence that persists in the popular imagination. In Sexual Revolution in Early America, Richard Godbeer boldly overturns conventional wisdom about the sexual values and customs of colonial Americans. His eye-opening historical account spans two centuries and most of British North America, from New England to the Caribbean, exploring the social, political, and legal dynamics that shaped a diverse sexual culture. Drawing on exhaustive research into diaries, letters, and other private papers, as well as legal records and official documents, Godbeer's absorbing narrative uncovers a persistent struggle between the moral authorities and the widespread expression of popular customs and individual urges. Godbeer begins with a discussion of the complex attitude that the Puritans had toward sexuality. For example, although believing that sex could be morally corrupting, they also considered it to be such an essential element of a healthy marriage that they excommunicated those who denied conjugal fellowship to their spouses. He next examines the ways in which race and class affected the debate about sexual mores, from anxieties about Anglo-Indian sexual relations to the sense of sexual entitlement that planters held over their African slaves. He concludes by detailing the fundamental shift in sexual culture during the eighteenth century towards the acceptance of a more individualistic concept of sexual desire and fulfillment. Today's moral critics, in their attempts to convince Americans of the social and spiritual consequences of unregulated sexual behavior, often harken back to a more innocent age; as this groundbreaking work makes clear, America's sexual culture has always been rich, vibrant, and contentious.

Encounters with the Enemy? Academic Readings of Missionary Narratives on Melanesians

“Western” societies today are by and large post-Christian, in the sense that many people do not seriously identify with a religious denomination or sect, major public discourses—particularly academic ones—are secular, and Christian institutions and values are no longer naturalized in public politics.My secular sense that Australia is among the most secular societies in a largely secular “Western” world is evidently shared by committed Christians. A leading Anglican minister refers to Sydney as “a godless city” and differentiates “our Christian counter-culture” from “the world's culture” (Age Good Weekend [Melbourne], 22 Aug. 1998:12). In the United States, confrontation and competition from a host of born-again contenders can force post-Christian religious indifference into quasi-fundamentalist rivalry for the moral and political high ground, but mainstream academic discourses remain as resolutely secular as they have been at least since World War I. Given that this period has seen the heyday of anthropology's disciplinary professionalization,George Stocking locates anthropology's “classical” period from about 1920 to about 1965 (1992:93–4). it is not surprising that its dominant orientations have often been unreflectively sociopolitical, even though its usual proclaimed objects of study were, until relatively recently, putatively “traditional” “societies” with “cultures” aptly categorized as “religious.”

J. F. Colls, M. A. Gathercole, and Utilitarianism Unmasked: A Neglected Episode in the Anglican Response to Bentham

At the beginning of 1844, the Revd John Flowerdew Colls, Anglican minister of Duke Street Chapel, St James's Park, London, published Utilitarianism unmasked, a vitriolic attack on Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the philosopher, jurisprudent, and advocate of reform. ‘The writer's main object’, the advertisement which prefaces the work grandiloquently announces, ‘has been to expose, in all its naked deformity, the hollowness and deceitfulness of the so-much-vaunted principle falsely called the Greatest happiness principle’, which formed the basis of Bentham's philosophical system. But apart from a few desultory remarks on utilitarianism – such as a belaboured attempt to connect it with Robert Owen's socialism (p. 33) – Colls devoted his energies to undermining Bentham's ideas by pouring scorn and ridicule on Bentham himself.

"The Orders of the Dreamed": George Nelson on Cree and Northern Ojibwa Religion and Myth, 1823

Among Anglo-Canadian fur traders of the early nineteenth century, George Nelson stands out for his interest in the life and ways of the native people he encountered. In 1823 Nelson was serving as a HudsonAEs Bay Company clerk in charge of the post at Lac la Ronge, an outpost of Ile a la Crosse in northeastern Saskatchewan. During that time he kept a letter-journal, addressed to his father, in which he related his observations of Cree and Northern Ojibwa religion and myth. This document is reproduced here for the first time. The letter journal gives a more detailed portrayal of Algonquian religion than any other source before the twentieth century. In it Nelson described the characteristics of individual spirit beings, the use of the oshaking tento to facilitate communication between human and spirits, the significance of dreams, religious aspects of medicine, and cosmogonic mythology. The introduction by Brown and Brightman describes NelsonAEs career in the fur trade and explains the influences affecting his perception and understanding of Native religions. They also provide a comparative summary of Subarctic Algonquian religion, with emphasis on the beliefs and practices described by Nelson. Stan Cuthand, a Cree Anglican minister, author, and language instructor, who lived in Lac la Ronge in the 1940s, adds a commentary relating NelsonAEs writing to his own knowledge of Cree religion in Saskatchewan. Emma LaRoque, an author and instructor in Native Studies, presents a Native scholarAEs perspective on the ethics of publishing historical documents.

“Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch”: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry

I WOULD ADVISE YOU when You do fight Not to act like Tygers and Bears as these Virginians do-Biting one anothers Lips and Noses off, and gowging one anotherthat is, thrusting out one anothers Eyes, and kicking one another on the Cods, to the Great damage of many a Poor Woman.' Thus, Charles Woodmason, an itinerant Anglican minister born of English gentry stock, described the brutal form of combat he found in the Virginia backcountry shortly before the American Revolution. Although historians are more likely to study people thinking, governing, worshiping, or working, how men fight-who participates, who observes, which rules are followed, what is at stake, what tactics are allowed-reveals much about past cultures and societies. The evolution of southern backwoods brawling from the late eighteenth century through the antebellum era can be reconstructed from oral traditions and travelers' accounts. As in most cultural history, broad patterns and uneven trends rather than specific dates mark the way. The sources are often problematic and must be used with care; some speculation is required. But the lives of common people cannot be ignored merely because they leave few records. To feel for a feller's eyestrings and make him tell the news was not just mayhem but an act freighted with significance for both social and cultural history.2

Donne’s Catholicism: I

Over fifty years ago, Louise Imogen Guiney wrote: ‘Someone, firstin the field, should write a little book, which should be a scientific andauthentic study of Dr John Donne as a Catholic’. As Guiney pointed out, Donne’s Catholicism, even when he had ceased to practice it actively, and even after he became an Anglican minister, was a continuous influence on his life and writings. However, Donne’s biographers, those before and those since Guiney, have paid scant attention to Donne’s Catholicism, tending rather to see his life as a paradoxical development fromlibertine scepticism to Protestant fideism. Between these extremes, Donne’s religious development has usually been described in terms of riddles and contradictions, with no more than passing reference to its relativelyclear involvement in the spiritual conflict through which Catholicism was repressed in Tudor and Stuart English society. The most influential proponent of this paradoxical interpretation has undoubtedly been Izaak Walton, Donne’s friend, who inexplicably likened Donne’s rather protracted Anglican conversion to the comparatively spontaneous conversion of St Augustine. Augustus Jessopp later repeated Walton’s fundamental idea, that Donne had clean rejected Catholicism at about twenty, even though Jessopp observed that Donne was suspected by his father-in-law of Catholic sympathies as late as 1602. Edmund Gosse was the first of Donne’s biographers to acknowledge the weight of evidence illustrating Donne’s persistent Catholic sympathies; Gosse nevertheless concluded that Donne’s Catholicism had been easily corrupted in the worldly atmosphere of London in the 1590’s, that he had grown sceptical of religion altogether,and that he lapsed thereafter only occasionally into fits of Catholic religion. Very little evidence of this supposed libertine scepticism can be found. Donne was far from sharing the extraordinary sceptical atheism rumoured of Raleigh or Marlowe, and the theory that he even leaned in this directionhas little support other than weak inference from the cynical tone of some of his writings. On the contrary, Donne seems to have shared the common assumption of his time, and the main lesson of his Catholic education, that there is one true religion. But his biographers have persistently seen him (mechanically mentioning his Catholic background) as a profane writer of ‘conceited verses’ converted by saving grace into an Anglican preacher.

Anglicans in Connecticut, 1725-1750: The Conversion of the Missionaries

T HE man who headed the Anglican Church in Connecticut during the early eighteenth century was Samuel Johnson, a colonist who had been born in Guilford, Connecticut, raised as a devout Puritan, educated at Yale, and in 1722 had converted to Anglicanism.' For several years Johnson was the only Anglican minister in the colony, but he was eventually joined by the converts he recruited from his alma mater and by missionaries from England. Even at the peak of their strength, however, the Anglican clergy were greatly outnumbered by the Puritan ministers. And throughout the eighteenth century, the ministers and members of the Anglican Church retained their minority status in a colony recognized as the heartland of New England Puritanism.2 Johnson soon realized that the policies of the Church of England required modification if they were to take root in Connecticut. The irony of the Anglicans' situation lay in the fact that they constituted a minority sect, the position traditionally associated with English Dissenters. Johnson and his Anglican allies soon realized that the strength of the argument for an established Church, an argument that formed the bedrock of English Episcopacy, depended less on the biblical sanction for Episcopacy than on the social context in which the Church existed. In Connecticut the Puritan churches were

The Non-Existent Controversy: Puritan and Anglican Attitudes on Work and Wealth, 1600-1640

George Herbert was a devotional poet in the early part of the seventeenth century; he was also an Anglican minister. Like his friends, John Donne and Lancelot Andrewes, he loved the Church of England, and his faith was a source of creativity. In the later part of his life Herbert had a hobby; he liked to collect simple proverbs. Herbert's sayings, which he published as Outlandish Proverbs, had little to do with religion. Compared with the themes of his poetry, in fact, they were surprisingly secular.

John Dickinson on Church and State

ON MARCH 24, I768, there began in the Pennsylvania Journal; and the Weekly Advertiser a series of twenty-one weekly essays entitled Centinel,1 in opposition to Anglican proposals for an American episcopate. Numbers six, seven, eight, and sixteen bore the signature A. B., and there is convincing evidence that at least three of these are the work of John Dickinson,2 who had recently become famous throughout the colonies as the author of the Farmer's Letters. Several contemporaries spoke of Dickinson, either positively or tentatively, as one of the authors of Centinel, although no particular numbers were identified as his. The first three letters by A. B. appeared on April 28, May 5, and May 12. In the June 6 issue of Parker's New-York Gazette; or, the Weekly Post-Boy the Kick for the Whipper, an anti-episcopate series, contained the following statement: . . even that Whig, that champion for liberty, the FARMER himself, is one of the best writers against an American Episcopate. This may have been written by William Livingston, the leader of the anti-Anglican movement in New York, for he had evidently corresponded with the authors of Centinel.3 Others, perhaps inspired by the Kick for the Whipper remark, spoke of Dickinson as an author of Centinel. Thomas Bradbury Chandler, the New Jersey Anglican minister whose Appeal to the Puiblic in Behalf of the Church of England in America4 had started the newspaper controversy, was one of these. On June 24, I768, Chandler informed his English superiors of Centinel 'The first nineteen numbers appeared between March 24 and July 28, I768. Two final numbers were published on Nov. 24 and Dec. 8, I768. 2 Only the first three of the A. B. letters are given hereinafter. The fourth, dated July 7, 1768, is professedly by the same author. It is omitted because it is not only the poorest of the four, but is almost completely lacking in any of the characteristics that identify the others as Dickinson's. 'Livingston, in a letter to Samuel Cooper of Boston, March 26, I768, urged that the Massachusetts Congregationalists begin to agitate against the proposed episcopate, and added: number of gentlemen will shortly open the ball in Philadelphia (Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., A Memoir of the Life of William Livingston, New York, I833, pp. I36-I37). 4New York, 1767.