The Declaration marked a crisis alike in the forum and for the people. It was read to Washington's army, and drew wild plaudits from officers and from the ranks. As rapidly as panting couriers could disperse it over the country it was formally received with parade and observance, and read in town and village. It gave life and inspiration for every successive measure to turn a purpose into an accomplished fact.[669] Many of our writers, in tracing the working of the various opinions which aided in fostering the spirit of independence, have found reason to ascribe much influence to strong religious animosities, especially to hostility to the state religion of England. It might perhaps be difficult to trace sharply and directly through all the colonies any lines of division of this character attributable to such an agency, as distinct and positive as those which manifested themselves in secular affairs, but there can be no question that sectarian influences had an important part in the animosities of the time. It would have been but natural that in this matter the line between the loyal and the disloyal should have been drawn between the English Church and the dissenters, who were the vast majority of the colonists; but this rule was by no means without many marked exceptions. All the Episcopal ministers officiating in the colonies had received ordination in England. Their oath bound them to loyalty. Most of them, too, in the northern provinces, were pensioners of an English missionary society. The test applied to them when the spirit of rebellion was strengthening was whether they would read or omit in their services the prayers for the king. It stood little for them to plead in their defence their oath and their dependence on a foreign fund. Such a plea was a poor one, as being strictly personal and selfish, born of a love of ease and of a cringing spirit. Some of them left their pulpits, and maintained a discreet silence. Those who insisted upon fulfilling all the pledges and duties of their office were in many cases roughly handled. It is to be considered, however, that so far as sectarianism in religion would alienate the colonies from Great Britain, it could not have been a prime agent in the case, for then it would have alienated them from each other, to which result it did not avail. The Tory refugee Judge Jones uses the terms Presbyterians and Episcopalians as almost synonymous with the terms rebels and loyalists. But this was by no means true.[670] The leading patriot John Jay, with many others from his province, was an Episcopalian. The Episcopalians of Virginia, of Maryland, and of the Carolinas were as stiffly opposed to the importation here of English prelates as were the Congregationalists of New England. The Tory Galloway[671] traced our rebellious spirit to the same source as that of the English civil war, viz., to Puritanism. He wrote: "The disaffection is confined to two sets of dissenters,