To the same purpose they spoke in their letter to the Archbishop of York. "This part of America is at length dismembered from the British empire; but, notwithstanding the dissolution of our civil connection with the parent State, we still hope to retain our religious polity, the primitive and evangelical doctrine and discipline, which at the Reformation were restored and established in the Church of England." And then they go on to say that, to complete and perpetuate this polity, "an American Episcopate" must be secured. How clearly the men who used this language shewed that they fully comprehended the position and rights of a National Church; the obedience which "in all things temporal" the Church owes to the powers that are ordained of God; her complete independence and autonomy "in things purely spiritual"; and the great fact that by no political changes was this Church severed from the Church of England or from the historic Church of all the ages, so long as she continued "stedfast in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in the breaking of the bread and the prayers!" The testimonials and letters thus furnished by the clergy of Connecticut were strengthened by similar documents signed by the venerable Leaming and by the rector and the assistant minister of Trinity Church, New York, and others. [Footnote: These testimonials, bearing date April 21, 1783, have misled some persons into the idea that Seabury was elected on that day in New York. This is a mistake easily made if one carelessly glances at the documents, but impossible if the documents are read.] Armed with these testimonials, and bearing a letter from the clergy of Connecticut to the Venerable Society imploring the continuance, at least for a time, of their stipends, the Bishop-elect reached London on the seventh day of July, 1783. And now began the wearisome and wearing delay of all those slowly- passing months, during which the postulant for the Episcopate was hoping against hope for an enabling act of Parliament, under which the bishops of England might proceed to consecrate him to the office of a Bishop in the Church of God.