" I nuist not omit to inform you that his Excellency, my Lord Cornbury, is pleased to show an unparalleled zeal for the carrying on of that great and glorious design of propagating the faith and settling the Church as well in this as in othere of His Majesty's plantations, thereby rescuing them from the grossest ignorance, stupidity aud obstinacy, and therein righting them in those damnable and dangerous tenets which have been imbued and instilled into their poor, unwary, deluded souls by blind, ignorant and illiterate guides."

It may not be significant, but it is certainly worthy of note, that in the large volume of these letters, laboriously collected by Mr. Bolton, we find so much mention of proi)agating " the faith," and " the Church," and so little of propagating the Gospel, -- so frequent requests for prayer-books and catechisms, and so very few for Bibles.

These reproachful accusations should have been allowed to sleep in oblivion, but when we read in an historical discourse in our day, that it was "this moral condition of things which led to the passage, on the 24tb of March, 1673, of the act entitled, ' An Act for settling a Ministry and raising a maintenance for them, in the city of New York, counties of Westchester, Richmond and Queens,' " a brief statement of the facts, in relation to the passage of this law and its subsequent enforcement, seems proper.

A few months previous to the passage of this act there arrived in New York Benjamin Fletcher, with a commission as Governor (recalled in 1698 to answer numerous charges of mal-administration), and Caleb Heathcote. The Governor came with special instructions to introduce the Book of Common Prayer among the Presbyterians, Huguenots and Dutchmen,