Religious Freedom Act, by which the Church of England was disestablished and all parish rates abolished, and still more, all religious tests were done away with. In this last respect Virginia came to the front among all the American states, as Massachusetts had come to the front in the abolition of negro slavery. Nearly all the states still imposed religious tests upon civil office-holders, from simply declaring a general belief in the infallibleness of the Bible to accepting the doctrine of the Trinity. The Virginia statute, which declared that "opinion in matters of religion shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect civil capacities," was translated into French and Italian, and was widely read and commented on in Europe. It is the historian's unpleasant duty to add that the victory thus happily won was ungenerously followed up. Theological and political odium combined to overwhelm the Episcopal church in Virginia. The persecuted became persecutors. It was contended that the property of the church, having been largely created by unjustifiable taxation, ought to be forfeited. In 1802 its parsonages and glebe lands were sold, its parishes wiped out, and its clergy left without a calling. "A reckless sensualist," said Dr. Hawks, "administered the morning dram to his guests from the silver cup" used in the communion service. But in all this there is a manifest historic lesson. That it should have been possible thus to deal with the Episcopal church in Virginia shows forcibly the moribund condition into which it had been brought through dependence upon the extraneous aid of a political sovereignty from which the people of Virginia were severing their allegiance. The lesson is most vividly enhanced by the contrast with the church of South Carolina which, rooted in its own soil, was quite able to stand alone when government aid was withdrawn. In Virginia the church in which George Washington was reared had so nearly vanished by the year 1830 that Chief Justice Marshall said it was folly to dream of reviving so dead a thing. Nevertheless, under the noble ministration of its great bishop, William Meade, the Episcopal church in Virginia, no longer relying upon state aid, but trusting in the divine persuasive power of spiritual truth, was even then entering upon a new life and beginning to exercise a most wholesome influence. [Sidenote: Mason Weems and Samuel Seabury.] [Sidenote: November 14, 1784.]