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Presbyterianism and the American Revolution in the Middle Colonies1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
After the Revolution, Thomas Jones, an embittered loyalist exile, identified the culprits he deemed responsible for the rebellion in New York: the Whig “triumvirate” of Presbyterians—William Livingston, William Smith, and John Morin Scott. Jones averred that in the Independent Reflector (1752–53) and Watch Tower (1754–55), which they authored, “the established Church was abused, Monarchy derided, Episcopacy reprobated, and republicanism held up, as the best existing form of government.” The three wrote “with a rancor, a malevolence, and an acrimony, not to be equaled but by the descendants of those presbyterian and repulblican fanatics, whose ancestors had in the preceding century brought their Sovereign to the block, subverted the best constitution in the world, and upon its ruins erected presbyterianism, republicanism, and hypocrisy.”
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References
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