bunal to which the appeal has been made, will be affected materially by what we may say; but only, as it were, to cast in our ballot on the question of the respondent's guilt, and then to "improve the occasion," as preachers sometimes say, by expounding some of the lessons which it affords, whether for instruction or for admonition.

To the question, then, Is the respondent guilty of the matters affirmed against him by the court of bishops? we answer, He is guilty. No other answer can be given, as the case now stands, without virtually renouncing all dependence upon human testimony. The whole matter, disconnected from the false is sues raised by the ingenuity of professional advocates long exercised in the trade of defending criminals, lies in the narrowest compass. The testimony of the ladies, on whose testimony Bishop Onderdonk was condemned by his brethren, is a phenomenon which can be accounted for, only on one of three suppositions. (1.) It must be supposed that the witnesses committed downright perjury; or (2.) It must be supposed that they were mistaken as to the facts which they asserted; or (3.) Those facts are true. Which of these three explanations is the right one? (1.) Is it to be taken for granted, without one particle of evidence to that effect, that the four ladies, of the very highest respectability, and of the most unimpeachable religious standing, who gave their testimony before that court of bishops, in the most embarrassing circumstances, and under the most rigid cross examination, so clearly and positively, -perjured themselves? Did they declare under oath what they knew to be false? We leave out of view the confirmation which the testimony of the two married ladies may be supposed to receive from the testimony of their husbands, and the confirmation which the testimony of one of them may be supposed to re

ceive from the acknowledgment which Bishop Onderdonk himself made to her husband, in the presence of witnesses. Let all that go for nothing. Let the testimony of the four ladies stand alone, unsupported except as they support each other. The man who deliberately insists upon solving the difficulties of this case, and making Bishop Onderdonk an innocent and injured man, by taking it for granted that these four ladies, two of them the wives of Episcopalian clergymen, and the other two devoted members of the Episcopal church, have committed deliberate perjury against their bishop-must make up his mind to be regarded by the mass of mankind as either a knave or a fool. No; till perjury is proved upon these witnesses, no solution of the case is admissible for a momentno defense of Bishop Onderdonk is less than impudent, which does not proceed upon the assumption that the testimony of these ladies represents their actual belief.

(2.) Is it then to be taken for granted,without evidence, that these ladies were mistaken in their belief of the facts to which they testified? Mistaken! Is there any room for mistake in such a matter? Is it possible for a lady to be mistaken in the belief that a man sitting at her side in a carriage or on a sofa, thrust his hand into her bosom, or committed some similar indecorum? If it is possible that such a thing may have happened once since the foundation of the world, is it possible that four ladies, in the same diocese, have made the same mistake in regard to the same man, and that man the " right reverend father in God," their bishop? He that can believe this, may believe in Jo Smith's golden plates, or Peters' History of Connecticut. Yet this is what the bishops, who voted to acquit their brother Onderdonk, professed to believe.

(3.) There remains no possible supposition for the explanation of

the testimony, but the supposition that the things testified are true.

The only mode of setting aside this conclusion, is boldly to assert that the perjury of the witnesses, or some hallucination by which their senses were deceived, is less incredible than the truth of their testimony. Accordingly, the great argument against the testimony in this case, is the a priori argument, based like Hume's argument against the Christian Scriptures, on the intrinsic incredibility of the things testified. This argument is twofold. First, we have an a priori ar gument from the editor of the Evening Mirror, whose journal may be regarded as representing the highest Trinity church bon ton, and whose opinion on some questions is as authoritative as that of any other man. His argument is to this effect. It is impossible that any man in his senses should be guilty of such an assault upon the modesty of a truly virtuous woman; therefore, we can not believe the testimony of these witnesses without believing that there is no virtue in them.' Any man in his senses! But who says that Bishop Onderdonk was in his senses? Nay, is it not expressly charged upon him that, in one of the instances, he was just enough out of his senses to make all that he did perfectly natural? What if it be supposed that for these fifteen years or more, the Bishop has been habit ually so far under the excitement of wine, that a glass or two more than ordinary was enough to overcome his discretion in one particular, and to bring out the coarse sensuality of his nature? How much can the argument drawn from what a man in his senses would be likely to do, prove in the case of a man of whom it is not known that he was in his senses? Next we have the a priori argument as presented by the editor of the Churchman, who, in his particular line of learning, is about as much of an authority as the editor

of the Evening Mirror is in his. This argument stated in plain terms is, that it is impossible for a bishop, a man who has been consecrated to the highest order of the hierarchy, a man who has received the Holy Ghost in a direct line of succession from the Apostles, to be guilty of any thing which he chooses to deny. The solemn declaration of a bishop. whose succession is clear, is to outweigh the testimony of all the women in the diocese. The misfortune of this argument is, that it presupposes on the part of those who are to be influenced by it, a belief not only in apostolic succession, but in all the kindred fatuities held in connection with it by the disciples of the Oxford school; while the question of the respondent's guilt is to be decided, not by the votes of men who have sedulously extinguished the little common sense that came to them by nature, and who professing themselves wise have become fools, such as spontaneous nature never produces, but by the common sense of Christendom, and first and chiefly by the common sense of the Christian people in these United States. We dare say there are other bishops beside this respondent, who would like right well to see such a doctrine recognized as law at the tribunal of public opinion;' but it so happens that they can not be accommodated. At the bar of public opinion,' bishops have no special benefit of clergy.' There the testimony that would condemn a priest or a deacon-nay, that which would condemn a mere Calvinistic pastor, or a Wesleyan itinerant, will suffice for the condemnation of the proudest prelate. Unfortunately for those who would assert this doctrine, and for those who need the protection it might afford them, the middle ages have gone by, at least so far as those nations are concerned, that speak our native English language.

We have thus given our opinion, on the question between the court

sus, in eschewing the excessive use of water as a beverage, and taking 'a little wine,' or what seemed to him a little, 'for his stomach's sake'-never failing to offer hot whiskey punch and such potations to his visitors on New Year's day, with a true Knickerbocker zeal for the good old ways-but withal, keeping Lent in its season so ostentatiously, and with so much more than Roman Catholic austerity, as to make that an excuse for not join ing with Bishop Hughes and the Irish in their annual jollification on St. Patrick's day. That there was any dissatisfaction with him in his diocese, save perhaps on the part of a few individuals here and there, whose churchmanship was of a dubious quality that he was regarded by any considerable party in the diocese, as deficient in respect to purity of morals or sanctity of manners, was never reported within the scope of our observation.

In an evil hour for the fortunes of the Bishop, and for the repose' of the diocese, he came under the influence of Dr. Samuel Seabury, the editor of the Churchman, and grandson of that Seabury, who in the infancy of the Anglo-American church was wont to subscribe himself, like a baron bishop of the old world, "Samuel Connecticut and Rhode Island." Whether the ascendency of Dr. Seabury was occasioned, as some have said, by his having been called upon in some instances to prepare the sermons delivered by the bishop, (a proceeding fully warranted by unrebuked precedent in the Anglican church,) or whether it originated simply in the natural influence of an active and restless mind over a mind habitually indolent and inefficient, like the influence of the sub-prior Eustace over the abbot Boniface, or whether it was the result of both these influences combined, is not for us to determine. But whatever was the cause of Dr. Seabury's ascendency, the conse

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quences were unhappy for Bishop Onderdonk. Under the guidance of his fidus Achates, the Bishop, not satisfied with the position which he had always held as one of the old Arminian high church party-a position which, as Bishop Hobart's immediate successor, he might have held unmolested till his death-fell in with the new extravagances and fooleries set forth at Oxford, and made himself a far more conspicuous and important personage than he would ever have become in any other way. He became, under Dr. Seabury's tutelage, what his own talents and his own activity of mind would never have made him, the most prominent individual in the movement to unprotestantize" the Protestant Episcopal church. The unexpected energy with which he acted in respect to the ordination of Carey, together with the insolence of some subsequent proceedings of his, in the convention of his diocese in 1843, fixed upon him the close attention of the entire Episcopal church from Maine to Florida; and it became necessary for him as the acknowledged leader of a great ecclesiastical and religious movement, to have such a character as would bear a pretty rigid scrutiny. The question was naturally asked, What sort of a man is this Bishop of New York? What sort of a man is this ordainer of men who agree with the council of Trent for substance? What sort of a man is this bishop against whose official acts such ministers as Drs. Smith and Anthon, are constrained to make a formal protest in the presence of a worshiping assembly, and to the interruption of a solemn religious service? What sort of a man is this dignitary who claims a divine right to decide questions of order, in a deliberative assembly, without appeal? When thousands of minds, in various pla ces, and in all sorts of positions, are wide awake upon the same inquiry, some of them will strike upon some

thing that leads to a discovery. Thus it began to be understood among devout Episcopalians in distant parts of the country, that the great leader of the Catholicity move. ment in their church was somewhat defective in respect to personal sanctity. One instance of misconduct, and another, began to be spoken of. Individuals who had long carried in their bosoms the painful knowledge of facts, which they could not reveal but under the certainty of being disgraced as calumniators of a bishop, began to find that other individuals were the depositaries of similar secrets. Thus the facts which form the basis of the recent proceedings, began to be developed, and the testimony by which those facts are proved, began to be accessible. None of those facts is of a later date than the memorable Carey ordination. All of them, buried before in a profound and fearful secrecy, have been brought to light by the blaze of excitement and inquiry which that event occasioned throughout the Episcopal church.

To us then it appears palpable, without any other evidence than that which is afforded by the first aspect of the proceedings, that if Dr. Seabury had not inoculated his bishop with his own rabid zeal for protestantizing the church and restoring the forms and principles of Medieval Christianity, the repose of the diocese would not have been so terribly disturbed as it has been by this trial, and the Bishop might have gone on quietly in his functions till death had removed him from the scene, or at least till some such accident as befell his brother of Pennsylvania, had compelled him to resign on account of his health. In this sense, the suspended bishop may be pronounced a martyr to his principles.

Of course it is not to be understood that we believe one word, of all that is said in some of these pamphlets, about a conspiracy. Vol. III.

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That there have been consultations, inquiries and arrangements, preliminary to the commencement of the prosecution, is admitted on all sides. Indeed, without such preliminary proceedings no offender ever could be

prosecuted. Bishop Onderdonk's complaints on this subject are not at all surprising. Let them go for what they are worth. Where is the culprit to be found, convicted, but refusing to acknowledge his guilt, who does not complain that he is the victim of a conspiracy? If such arrangements and inquiries as were used in this instance for the development and ascertainment of the facts, are to be condemned as a wicked conspiracy, the idea of discipline in the church, or of punishment in the state, may be abandoned at once, for what crime is there which, under such conditions, must not go "unwhipped of justice?"

The dishonor which the fall of Bishop Onderdonk has brought upon religion, and the degree of that dishonor, is a legitimate topic of remark. In one view it can not be denied that the offenses of this man, and the necessary exposure of his offenses, are a dishonor to religion. This man is, we can not yet say was, a clergyman in a communion often spoken of as evangelical, and in some portions of which there is known to be a decided tone of evangelical piety. He is a dignitary in a church which, in its articles, professes for the most part the distinctive truths of spiritual Christianity. He occupies a most conspicuous station, a station too elevated in power and pomp for any man to occupy as a minister of the word of Christ. That station, that church, that work of the Christian ministry, he has exposed to the scoffs of the profane. Over the disgusting details of his misconduct, many an eye has gloated with inward satisfaction at the thought that this might be represented, in the haunts of ribaldry, as a specimen of Christianity and of the