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EPIRUS. 153 EPISCOPAL CHURCH. death a revolution occurred, which was followed about B.C. -'■>(} by the formation of a league, which lasted until u.c. 1U8. Then the Romans, having conquered Macedonia, ravaged the coun- try, destroyed its 70 towns, and united it to their empire. From the close of the fourth century a.I). Epirus formed part of the Byzantine Empire until 1204, when one of the Comneni made him- self independent. His dynasty ruled the country until 1318. After this, confusion and disorder filled the land, until it was seized by the Turks in 1-130. For a time it was in the power of Scan- derbeg (q.v.), but later fell again into the hands of the Turks. The region has been peopled large- lyaincethe fourteenth century by Albanian*. (See ALBANIA.) It now forms part of the Turkish Vilayet of Jahina. The district east of the River Arta was ceded to Greece in 1881. Con- sult: Leake, Travels in Northern Greece (Lon- don, 1835) ; Philippson, Thessalien uitd E pints (Berlin, 1897). EPIS'COPACY. See Bishop; Orders, Holt. EPISCOPAL CHURCH. The body legally known as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America: the legitimate and lineal descendant in that country of the Church of England. It dates as a separate American ecclesiastical body from 1789, in which year it adopted its constitution, in the same city and in the same hall which had witnessed the framing of the Constitution of the United States of America two years before. The elements from which this organization grew were the Church of England parishes which had existed in the Colonies from the settlement of the country down to the War of the Revolution. These had all been under the nominal jurisdic- tion of the Bishop of London, who, however, never visited them, and furnished them with no adequate disciplinary oversight. They had, in con- sequence, grown up without much knowledge of each other and with somewhat different ecclesias- tical traditions. In the South generally the Eng- lish Church was in a measure established by the Government. In Virginia this was so from the be- ginning; in Maryland it became so at an early pe- riod, though at first, under Lord Baltimore, there had been complete religious toleration ; in the Car- olinas and Georgia there was a precedence and leadership which came from the countenance and assistance of the mother Church in England. Gaining strength from these conditions, the Epis- copal churches of the Southern Colonies relied not so much on their inner principles as on their outward privileges. Discipline became very lax, and the temper was Erastian. The distinctive ecclesiastical and theological notes of Anglican- ism were not emphasized. The Colonial churches of Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina came up to the General Conventions of 1785 and 1789 with a somewhat languid zeal and a disposition to minimize rather than enlarge and strengthen the essential and special features of Episcopal government. In New England and the Middle States the tone and temper were different. There was not even a quasi-establishment of the English Church in either. In Massachusetts it had come in as it were at the point of the bayonet. An- dres, the first royal Governor of the Colony, brought it with him into a community which both disliked and dreaded it — disliked what was considered its lax discipline, and dreaded the ecclesiastical tyranny from which the colonists had suffered in the mother country and from which they had escaped in coming to America. In the midst of a community thus minded, the English Church assumed a rigid attitude, both defensive of its rights and somewhat denuncia- tory iii its criticism of its despisers. The churchmanship of its adherents was high and dry, and their political creed was Toryism. Very generally Northern churchmen took the side of the English Government in the Revolution, in contrast with the attitude of the Southern churchmen, which was largely patriotic. In Connecticut the English Church was not introduced from without, but came into existence by a spontaneous movement from within. In 17'-'-' the Rev. Timothy Cutler, rector of Vale College, and Mr. Daniel Brown, his assistant instructor, together with two noted Congrega- tional clergymen, Rev. Samuel Johnson and Rev. James Wetmore, left the Congregational min- istry, went abroad, and were ordained in London. The conspicuous position of these men drew universal attention to their act, which gave rise to a spontaneous movement in the Colony toward the Episcopal regimen. The Church thus pro- duced was very strong in its attachment to its doctrinal and practical system. Not so much, as in Massachusetts, from hatred of dissenters, but rather out of deep love for their own system and sincere conviction of its obligation, Connec- ticut churchmen became the most conservative of all the elements which entered into the national body. In the remaining portion of New Eng- land, as at Portsmouth and Claremont in New Hampshire; at Portland and Gardiner in Maine; and at Narragansett, Newport, Bristol, and Providence in Rhode Island, there were a few churches, but, owing to the ravages of the war, there were in all New England outside of Con- necticut only six Episcopal ministers at the close of the Revolution. The few remaining effective parishes were not of a rigorous type, and were generally characterized by a sense of the pro- priety of worship in the use of the liturgy rather than by a hearty zeal for the principles and purposes of an episcopal government. In the Middle States there were other differ- ences. The English Church was introduced into New York, New Jersey. Pennsylvania, and Dela- ware about the same time, but in different ways. In New York it found a footing in 1664, when the English wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch, but it was not until 1693, under an act of Assem- bly procured by Governor Fletcher, that it began to grow and became a quasi-establishment. Its temper was kindly toward the Dutch Church, which it supplanted as the ruling ecclesiastical influence, but it was stanch in its advocacy of Episcopal principles. In New Jersey the first traces of the Church are found in 1700. But it was in 1702 that two agents of the London 'Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,' Keith and Talbot, visited the Colony, where as yet no Episcopal Church ex- isted. They were very earnest and energetic, and the corner-stone of Saint Mary's Church at Burlington was laid in 1703. The Church from this time was widely disseminated through the Province, and maintained a character of steadfast adherence to the traditions of the