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DIOCESE OF CONNECTICUT.
SEABURY CENTENARY
DIOCESE OF CONNECTICUT.
REPORT
OF
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES
WITH THE
SERMONS AND ADDRESSES
AT THE
SEABURY CENTENARY,
1883-1885.
WITH AN APPENDIX.
CONTENTS
PREFATORY NOTE
CENTENARY OF BISHOP SEABURY'S ELECTION:
Thanksgiving, Easter-Day, March 25, 1883,
Service at Woodbury, March 27, 1883
Bishop Williams's Address,
Dr. Beardsley's Address,
Diocesan Convention, 1883,
Bishop Williams's Sermon,
CENTENARY OF BISHOP SEABURY'S CONSECRATION:
Diocesan Convention, 1884,
Bishop Williams's Sermon,
Service at Hartford, November 14, 1884,
Dr. Tatlock's Address,
The Bishop's Reply,
Dr. Beardsley's Address,
Mr. Nichols's Address,
Mr. Hart's Address,
Bishop Williams's Address,
Exhibition of Seabury Relics,
CENTENARY OF BISHOP SEABURY'S RETURN:
Diocesan Convention, 1885,
Bishop Williams's Sermon,
Service at Middletown, August 3, 1885,
Bishop Williams's Address,
Dr. Beardsley's Historical Sketch,
APPENDIX--COMMEMORATION AT ABERDEEN, 1884:
Bishop Williams's Sermon,
Presentation of Paten and Chalice,
Presentation of Address and Reply,
Presentation of Pastoral Staff,
Dr. Beardsley's Address,
Address from St. Andrew's Church,
_DEUS, AURIBUS NOSTRIS AUDIVIMUS, PATRES NOSTRI ANNUNTIAVERUNT
NOBIS, OPUS QUOD OPERATUS ES IN DIEBUS EORUM, ET IN DIEBUS
ANTIQUIS._
PREFATORY NOTE.
In his address to the Diocesan Convention of 1881, Bishop Williams
suggested the appointment of a committee to provide for the
appropriate commemoration of the centenary of the election of the
first Bishop of Connecticut in the last week of March, 1783. On
motion of the Rev. Dr. Beardsley, this suggestion was referred to
a committee of three clergymen and two laymen, with the Bishop as
chairman. The Bishop appointed on the committee the Rev. Dr.
Beardsley, the Rev. Samuel F. Jarvis, the Rev. Samuel Hart, the
Hon. F. J. Kingsbury, and the Hon, H. B. Harrison.
At the Convention of 1882, on recommendation of this committee,
the following resolutions were adopted:
_Resolved_, That the Bishop be requested to set forth a
special thanksgiving to be used throughout the Diocese on the one-
hundredth anniversary of the election of Bishop Seabury, March
25th, 1883, being Easter-Day and also the Festival of the
Annunciation. _Resolved_, That a memorial service, with
addresses, be held in St. Paul's Church, Woodbury, on Tuesday in
Easter-week, March 27th, 1883, for which the Bishop be desired to
make the necessary arrangements.
_Resolved_, That the Bishop be further requested to provide
for a commemorative service with an historical discourse at the
opening of the Annual Convention of 1883.
It was also, on motion of the Rev. S. F. Jarvis,
_Resolved_, That a committee consisting of the Bishop, three
priests, and two laymen be appointed,.....to present to the
Diocesan Conventions of 1883 and 1884, if they shall deem it
expedient, a detailed plan or plans for the further special
observances as a Diocese of the centenary commemoration of Dr.
Seabury's Consecration, of the first Convocation summoned by him,
of the first Ordination on this continent, and of any ecclesiastical
events which are specially and historically connected with
this Diocese and which it may be deemed desirable to celebrate.
The committee appointed under this resolution was the same as that
appointed in 1882. In accordance with resolutions recommended by
this committee in 1883 and 1884, the Convention requested the
Bishop to make arrangements for commemorative services on the
fourteenth day of November, 1884, the hundredth anniversary of the
Consecration of Bishop Seabury, and on the third day of August,
1885, the hundredth anniversary of the first ordination held by
him.
The Bishop having delivered an historical discourse at the opening
of the Convention of 1883, commemorative of the election of Bishop
Seabury, on motion of the Rev. Dr. Giesy, the thanks of the
Convention were tendered to him, and he was "respectfully and
earnestly requested" to preach a sermon at the next Convention in
commemoration of Bishop Seabury's Consecration. A like vote was
passed in 1884, desiring the Bishop "to supplement the sermons
delivered at this and the preceding Conventions with a third at
the Convention of 1885, necessary to the historical completion by
the same hand of the centenary commemoration of the Consecration
of the Rev. Samuel Seabury, D.D., as the first Bishop of
Connecticut."
This volume contains a report of the Centenary Commemorative
Services held in accordance with the resolutions, and also the
historical sermons preached by the Bishop at the request of the
Convention. In the Appendix will be found Bishop Williams's sermon
preached at the commemoration in Aberdeen in October, 1884, with
an account of the part which the delegation from Connecticut took
in that commemoration, including the Rev. Dr. Beardsley's paper on
"Seabury as a Bishop."
"NOVI ORBIS APOSTOLI SIT NOMEN PERENNE."
CENTENARY COMMEMORATION
OF THE ELECTION OF BISHOP SEABURY.
1883.
THE REV. SAMUEL SEABURY, D.D. WAS ELECTED FIRST BISHOP OF
CONNECTICUT AT WOODBURY, MARCH 25, 1783.
The one-hundredth anniversary of the election of Bishop Seabury
fell on Easter-Day (being also the Festival of the Annunciation),
1883. In accordance with the request of the Diocesan Convention,
the Bishop set forth the following special Thanksgiving to be used
throughout the Diocese, immediately after the General Thanksgiving
at Morning and Evening Prayer on that day:
ALMIGHTY GOD, Who by Thy Holy Spirit hast appointed divers orders
of ministers in Thy Church, we give unto Thee high praise and
hearty thanks, that Thou didst put it into the hearts of our
fathers and brethren to elect, on this day, to the work and
ministry of a Bishop in Thy Church, Thy servant, to whom the
charge of this Diocese was first committed; and that Thou didst so
replenish him with the truth of Thy doctrine and endue him with
innocency of life, that he was enabled, both by word and deed,
faithfully to serve Thee in this office, to the glory of Thy name,
and the edifying and well-governing of Thy Church. For this so
great mercy, and for ail the blessings which, in Thy good
Providence, it brought to this portion of the flock of Christ, we
offer unto Thee our unfeigned thanks, through Jesus Christ our
Lord, to Whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and
glory, world without end. _Amen_.
On Tuesday in Easter-Week, March 27th (the day of the week on
which the Festival of the Annunciation fell in 1783), a
commemorative service was held in St. Paul's Church, Woodbury, at
11 o'clock A.M. The Bishop began the Communion-service, the Rev.
S. O. Seymour of Litchfield reading the Epistle, and the Rev. E.
E. Beardsley, D.D., LL.D., of New Haven reading the Gospel. After
the Nicene Creed, a part of the 99th hymn in the old Prayer-Book
collection was sung; and the Bishop then made an address based on
the closing words of the Epistle: "I work a work in your days, a
work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it
unto you."
The Bishop spoke of the faith and the courage which inspired the
clergymen who met a hundred years ago in that quiet village to
elect the first bishop of Connecticut. They felt that they owed a
sacred duty to God; and, not stopping to speculate upon the needs
of some imaginary Church of the future, they did what was
specially needed for the welfare of the Church in their own day.
At the beginning of the war of independence there had been twenty
missionaries of the mother Church of England laboring in the
colony. They were in great part supported by the Venerable Society
in England, and they were under oaths of loyalty to the Crown; it
was not strange, therefore, that their sympathies were not on the
popular side. They were obliged to suffer great hardships; and the
end of the war found the Church in Connecticut in a very depressed
condition, with the clergy and people scattered and some of the
parishes quite broken up. Fourteen clergymen were left, and of
these ten met in the study of the Rev. John Rutgers Marshall on
the Festival of the Annunciation in 1783, to take counsel as to
what was to be done. Peace had not been proclaimed, but it was
known that the war was at an end; and the circumstances of the
times were such that they thought it necessary to take action at
as early a day as possible. And they instructed their candidate
that if he should fail to obtain consecration in England, he
should seek it at the hands of the bishops of the disestablished
church of Scotland.
Men had very real thoughts about Holy Orders then, when they were
obliged to cross the ocean for what they believed to be valid
ordination, and when one man out of every five who sought
ordination in England lost his life from shipwreck or disease. The
results of their faithfulness have been far greater and more wide-
reaching than they could have imagined. They would not have
believed it possible that at the end of a century there would be
in Connecticut nearly two hundred clergymen and twenty-two
thousand communicants, the Book of Common Prayer being used by
devout congregations throughout the limits of the State; and that
not only would this Diocese bear witness to God's blessing on
their faithfulness, but that there would be a united and
prosperous Church throughout the land, owing to them much of its
unity and prosperity. The lesson which we learn from them is that
Christ's work is to be done in Christ's own way, and that, thus
done, it will certainly abide.
The Rev. Dr. Beardsley, after a brief introduction, added
substantially as follows:
It is very evident that the clergy who met here on the Festival of
the Annunciation, 1783, were full of earnestness and the spirit of
self-sacrifice in their efforts to organize the Episcopal Church
in Connecticut and provide for her completeness and continuance
under a changed form of civil government. The seven years'
struggle of the Thirteen Colonies for independence of the power of
Great Britain was ended, and the poor people exhausted on every
side, were at a loss to know what methods should be adopted to
rise from their depression and recover in any degree their former
prosperity. The Missionaries of the Church of England--of whom
fourteen were left in Connecticut at the close of the Revolutionary
War--- had been aided by stipends from the Venerable Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, but
these stipends, by the Constitution of the Society, ceased when
the separation finally took place. Of the fourteen Missionaries,
all save two [Footnote: The Rev. John Rutgers Marshall was born in
the city of New York, 1743, was an alumnus of Columbia College,
ordained 1771, and died 1789. The Rev. Daniel Fogg was a native of
New Hampshire, a graduate of Harvard College, ordained 1770, and
died 1815.]
The full list includes the Rev. Messrs. Samuel Andrews of
Wallingford, Gideon Bostwick of Great Barrington (reckoned
ecclesiastically as in Connecticut), Richard Samuel Clarke of New
Milford, Ebenezer Dibblee of Stamford, Daniel Fogg of Brooklyn,
Bela Hubbard of New Haven, Abraham Jarvis of Middletown, Richard
Mansfield of Derby, John Rutgers Marshall of Woodbury, Christopher
Newton of Ripton, James Nichols of Plymouth. James Scovill of
Waterbury, John Tyler of Norwich, and Roger Viets of Simsbury. ]
were born in the Colony of Connecticut, and all had been compelled
to cross the ocean to obtain Holy Orders--there being no bishop in
this country--though the boon had often been solicited from the
English Church and as often denied. The trammels of State alliance
and the policy of preferring political expediency to religious
right prevented the authorities from venturing upon a spiritual
act and granting the prayer of the petitioners. The clergy had
ministered to their flocks all along in the face of intolerance
and bitter opposition from the Puritan body, and the war for
independence had subjected them to peculiar trials and reduced
them to the verge of ruin. But, without thinking of themselves, or
how they should be supported in the broken and disastrous
condition of their cures, their first effort or chief anxiety was
to provide for the now entirely headless Church; and so in Mid-
Lent, on the Festival of the Annunciation, March 25th, one hundred
years ago, ten of the fourteen clergy remaining in Connecticut
quietly assembled in this place, and, after careful, and, we must
believe, the most prayerful deliberation, they selected two
persons--the Rev. Jeremiah Leaming being the first choice, and
then the Rev. Samuel Seabury--as suitable, either of them, to go
to England and obtain, if possible, Episcopal consecration. It was
a secret meeting so far as giving any public notice of it was
concerned, and it was confined to the clergy, perhaps, among other
reasons, for fear of reviving the former opposition on this side
to an American Episcopate, and thus of defeating their plan to
complete the organization of the Church and secure its inherent
perpetuity in this country. The times were troubled, and the
establishment of peace with a foreign power did not necessarily
produce tranquillity and happiness at home. Mischiefs and
jealousies still lingered with those who had contended for
liberty, and the chief Protestant sects, which have all erected
their banners and had their camping-ground in the Church of
England, were ready to welcome her weakness and overthrow because
her priests and her people, for the most part, had been on the
side of the Crown during the long struggle for independence. But
it is not possible to destroy what God holds in His hand. The
passions of men work vast evil till, in calmer moments, they
subside and a better light shines through their principles and
their actions.
The outcome of the meeting at Woodbury, after many hindrances and
perplexities, was the consecration by the non-juring Bishops of
the Church of Scotland of the Rev. SAMUEL SEABURY as the first
Bishop of Connecticut and of the Episcopal Church in the United
States. We owe to this consecration some of the best features of
our Book of Common Prayer. We owe to it the compactness and unity
of our great American Communion, and surely it was well to have
what we used on Sunday last--a form of thanksgiving for this our
hundredth anniversary of the election of Bishop Seabury that God
did "so replenish him with the truth of His doctrine and endue him
with innocency of life that he was enabled, both by word and deed,
faithfully to serve Him in the office of a bishop to the glory of
His name and the edifying and well-governing of His Church."
The Bishop then proceeded with the office of the Holy Communion,
being assisted in the service by the Rev. Professor Hart of
Trinity College, and in the administration to the clergy and a
large number of the laity by the Rev. Dr. Beardsley, the Rev. T.
B. Fogg of Brooklyn, and the Rev. J. F. George, rector of the
parish. Before the benediction, the Bishop read the special
thanksgiving set forth for Easter-Day.
After the service the clergy and other visitors were hospitably
entertained by the ladies of St. Paul's parish in the house in
which the Rev. J. R. Marshall lived in 1783, and in the very room
in which the ten clergymen met to elect the first Bishop of
Connecticut.
The following is a list of the clergymen who were present:
The Rt. Rev. the Bishop; the Rev. Dr. E. E. Beardsley, New Haven;
the Rev. Messrs. H. A. Adams, Wethersfield; R. R. M. Converse,
Waterbury; W. C. Cooley, Roxbury; T. B. Fogg, Brooklyn; J. F.
George, Woodbury; Prof. Samuel Hart, Hartford; J. G. Jacocks, New
Haven; E. S. Lines, New Haven; R. W. Micou, Waterbury; S. O.
Seymour, Litchfield; James Stoddard, Watertown; Hiram Stone,
Bantam Falls; Elisha Whittlesey, Hartford; Alex. Mackay-Smith, New
York City.
On the twelfth day of June, 1883, the annual Convention of the
Diocese met in Trinity Church, New Haven. The opening service was
made a formal commemoration of the election of Bishop Seabury.
Morning Prayer was begun by the Rev. Samuel Fermor Jarvis, Rector
of Trinity Church, Brooklyn, grandson of the Rev. Abraham Jarvis
who was Secretary of the Convention in 1783 and afterwards the
second Bishop of the Diocese; the First Lesson (Isaiah lxi.) was
read by the Rev. George Dowdall Johnson, of the Diocese of New
York, great-grandson of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson, "the Father
of Episcopacy in Connecticut"; the Second Lesson (Ephesians iv. to
verse 17), by the Rev. Thomas Brinley Fogg of Brooklyn, grandson
of the Rev. Daniel Fogg who was one of the electors of Bishop
Seabury; and the Nicene Creed and the Prayers, including a special
Thanksgiving, by the Rev. Samuel Hart, Seabury Professor in
Trinity College, great-great-great-grandson of one of the five who
with Johnson and Cutler signed the paper touching their
ordination, which was presented to the "Fathers and Brethren" in
the Library of Yale College on the thirteenth day of September,
1722. The Bishop began the office of the Holy Communion, using the
Collect for St. Simon and St. Jude's Day; the Epistle (that for
St. Matthew's Day) was read by the Rev. Edwin Harwood, D.D.,
Rector of Trinity Church, and the Gospel (that for St. Barnabas's
Day), by the Rev. E. E. Beardsley, D.D., LL.D., Rector of St.
Thomas's Church, New Haven, Historian of the Diocese and
Biographer of its first Bishop. The Sermon was preached by Bishop
Williams, as follows:
MEN FOR THE TIMES. I. CHRON. xii. 32.
Men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought
to do.
I know no better words than these to give direction to our
thoughts in the service of this day. It is a service of deepest
thankfulness and of most sacred memories. It takes us back over
the years of a century. It brings to our remembrance the story of
the more than threescore previous years which led up to the event
that we commemorate. It awakens hope and trust for a coming and
unknown future. It binds those memories of the past and those
hopes for the future into one living body of thanksgiving, which,
for all who have gone before us, for ourselves, and for those who
are to follow us, must find utterance in the words of the
Psalmist: "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name
give the praise, for Thy loving mercy and for Thy truth's sake."
Go back with me, brethren, in your thoughts, to the beginning of
the century the close of which we commemorate. It is the Festival
of the Annunciation in 1783; and we find ourselves in an inland
village of what was, ere long, to become the Diocese of
Connecticut, the village of Woodbury. It was not then the village
of our time, the long street of which, with its venerable elms and
well-kept homesteads, nestles beneath the craggy heights that
overlook it, or spreads out in peaceful loveliness towards stream
and valley. Things were on a smaller scale then, rougher and ruder
than they now are. One house, at least, still stands that was
standing then; and if we enter it we shall find ourselves in the
"glebe-house" which is the abode of the missionary of the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel, and in the presence of ten of
the fourteen clergy of Connecticut who were ministering in their
cures at the close of the War of the Revolution. Neither history
nor tradition has preserved to us all the names of these true-
hearted men. We know, however, from written records, that
Marshall, in whose house they met, Jarvis of Middletown, who was
their secretary, and Fogg of Brooklyn, whose correspondence tells
us what we should not otherwise have known, were among them.
[Footnote: It is more than probable, I think, that Mansfield of
Derby, Hubbard of New Haven, Newton of Ripton, Scovill of
Waterbury, Clark of New Milford, Andrews of Wallingford, and Tyler
of Norwich were also present.] Beyond these we are left to
conjecture.
We may imagine, though we can never fully enter into, the deep
anxiety of the hour, with all its doubts and fears so far
surpassing its hopes and encouragements. We remember how they felt
themselves compelled to meet in the utmost secrecy, not, as has
been sometimes unworthily intimated, because they feared their own
people, but because they knew not what interference might befall
them from the powers that were should their purpose be made known.
We think of them as, on that Festival of the Incarnation, they
knelt down in an isolation and desolation of which we can have no
knowledge, to implore the guidance of the Heavenly Wisdom in their
counsels and efforts for that Divine Institution which, because of
the Incarnation, is the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ. We
recognize what a venture of faith they were about to make in
sending one forth to seek consecration to the Episcopate, that so
he might discharge the office of the Bishop in the Church of God
to a flock weak and despised, "scattered and peeled"; and what a
greater venture of faith he would make who should go forth on that
errand, so doubtful and uncertain. We picture to ourselves all the
conditions of difficulty and discouragement by which they were
surrounded. We remember that the story of succeeding years,
familiar as household words to us, was hidden from them in the
darkness that veiled an unknown future. We know that they could
not even have dreamed of all that was to come out of that day's
doings. We think of all these things and many others, which I will
not attempt even to suggest, leaving it to your own thoughts to
fill out details that are omitted, and the one conclusion to which
all our thoughts and all our ponderings must bring us is, that
those ten men of whom the great world knew nothing then, of whom
it takes no thought now, were, nevertheless, "men that had
understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do."
The two events round which all the memories, the associations, the
details, of this and next year's commemorations group themselves,
are the election of our first Bishop in 1783, and his consecration
at Aberdeen in 1784. It seems to be my duty, to-day, to limit
myself strictly to the first of these; to what led up to it and to
the event itself; leaving it to whoever shall preach the sermon of
next year to speak of what followed the election, of the
consecration itself, and of its outcomes for this Church.
It seems a narrow field--that to which I find myself limited--but,
unless I am greatly deceived, it presents to us topics which will
deserve careful consideration.
First, then, let me say something of what led up to the election
of 1783. In doing so I must go back to the _primordia_ of the
Church in this Diocese.
It ought never to be forgotten that the first missionary--if I
may so speak--of our Church in Connecticut was the Book of Common
Prayer. Keith and Talbot had, indeed, preached at New London in
1702. Muirson had organized the few churchmen at Stratford into a
parish in 1707. Different clergymen had, from time to time,
through the watchful care of Caleb Heathcote--a name that we ought
never to forget--ministered to that little band in their sore
trials and vexations. One, Francis Phillips, had come to them and,
after six months of neglect and carelessness, departed, leaving
only confusion behind him. But long before anything like permanent
ministration was begun at Stratford by George Pigot on Trinity
Sunday in 1722, Samuel Johnson at Guilford had been diligently
studying the Book of Common Prayer put into his hands by Smithson--
another name never to be forgotten--and in those studies we
find, it seems to me, the true beginnings of what was to become
the Diocese of Connecticut. The old Faith enshrined in the
historic creeds of the Prayer-Book; the law and life of worship
embodied in its formularies, all leading up to and centering in
the highest act of Christian worship, the Holy Eucharist; its
ideal of the Christian life taught in its Catechism and carried
out in all its offices from baptism to burial; on these
foundations, no broader and no narrower, was our Church here built
up. God grant that on these foundations it may stand till time
shall end!
I protest against the narrow and unhistoric idea that Johnson and
those who labored with and after him conformed to the Church of
England only because of their convictions touching Holy Orders. No
doubt those convictions were a factor, a most important factor, in
the change they made. But there was a great deal more involved
than that one question. Men who had gone from the dry bones of
Ames's Medulla and Wollebius to the "fresh springs" of Hooker and
Bull and Pearson, must have found how utterly unlike to the
Catholic Faith which they there were taught, were the "distributions
and definitions" of that "theoretical divinity" in which they had
been trained. It was indeed, as one of them said, "emerging
from the glimmer of twilight into the full sunshine of open day."
Men who had unlearned their prejudices against "pre-composed
forms of prayer" by the study of such books as King's _Inventions
of Men in the Worship of God_ and the fifth Book of Hooker's
immortal work, and above all of the Book of Common Prayer
itself, must have reached another and a loftier ideal of
worship than any they had known before. Men who had passed from
the narrow, cramped, and often conventional theories of Christian
living to which they were accustomed, to the reading of Scott's
_Christian Life_ [Footnote: I have often been told, by the
late Dr. Jarvis, that Scott's _Christian Life_ was a favorite
book with our early clergy, especially with Johnson and Beach.]
and the works of Hammond and Ken, had, surely, found something
totally different from anything to which they were wonted. The
question, as it presented itself to them, took on no narrow shape,
ran in no single groove. It covered the Orders, the Faith, the
Worship of the Church of God, and it took in with them the ideal
of the Christian Life. It was no narrower than that; and they who
assume that it was, contradict the conclusions of reason and the
testimony of history. The pioneers of our Church were sometimes,
in their own days, called by their opponents "covenant-breakers."
If, however, they withdrew from covenants entered into by men with
each other, it was only that they might attain the fulness of the
New Covenant in the Blood of the Incarnate Son of God.
I cannot refrain from quoting here the words of the able author of
the _History of the Colonial Church_. Looking back to the
period of which I have been speaking, he says: "The feeling which
prevails over every other, at this present moment, and which alone
I wish to leave on record, is the feeling of deepest gratitude to
those men of Connecticut, who, not from a mere hereditary
attachment to the Church of England, or indolent acquiescence in
her teachings, but from a deep abiding conviction of the truth
that she is a faithful 'Keeper and Witness of Holy Writ,' have
shown to her ministers in every age and country, "the way in which
they can best promote the glory of their Heavenly Master's name,
and enlarge the borders of His Kingdom." [Footnote: Anderson's
_History of the Colonial Church_, iii. 444.]
While, however, the question of ordination was only one out of
many things that drew our fathers and pioneers back to the Church
from which their fathers had gone out, it must, from the very
exigencies of the case, have come into great and constant
prominence. It could not be otherwise. The relations of our
missionaries to the Bishop of London--who had, by what may almost
be called an accident, acquired jurisdiction over English
congregations outside of England [Footnote: It was obtained by
Laud in 1634; see Anderson, i. 410.]--was little more than
nominal. There could be no "well-governing of the Church." If
Orders were sought, "the dangers of the sea, sickness, and the
violence of enemies" must be incurred, and one in every five that
went out sacrificed his life in the attempt to obtain his
ministerial commission. Confirmation was an impossibility; and our
clergy and people were taunted with the solemn mockery--for it was
hardly less--of reading the direction to bring baptized children
to the bishop when there was no bishop to whom they could be
brought.
That there was no bishop in America was not due to our clergy or
people here. [Footnote: Possibly Virginia and Maryland are to be
excepted.] The reason must be sought elsewhere. In the second year
of its existence, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
had entertained the idea of sending a Suffragan to America; and,
even then, the bishops of Scotland "were regarded as the channel
through which that assistance could most readily be obtained."
[Footnote: Anderson, iii. 36.] The project came to no result. If
there is any truth in the tradition that, had it been carried out,
Dean Swift would have been sent as Bishop of Virginia, we may be
thankful that it failed.
It was renewed from time to time, from the reign of Queen Anne to
that of George III., but always without result. Petition after
petition, appeal after appeal was sent from America; the
Episcopate of England was implored to secure the appointment of
"one or more resident bishops in the colonies, for the exercise of
offices purely episcopal--offices to which the members of the
Church of England have an undoubted claim, and from which they
cannot be precluded without manifest injustice and oppression."
[Footnote: Bishop Lowth, _Sermon before the Venerable Society_.]
The colonial churchmen found, indeed, some zealous friends
in the English Episcopate; and one's heart warms as one reads
the names of Sharpe and Berkeley and Butler, of Gibson and
Sherlock and Seeker. But I fear it might be truly said of the
majority of the bishops of England in those days, "that they
thought more of the Acts of Parliament than they did of the Acts
of the Apostles."
From Parliament or the English Ministry nothing could be hoped, so
long as Sir Robert Walpole or the Duke of Newcastle controlled the
action of the State; the name of the first of whom is the synonyme
of private profligacy and public faithlessness, while of the
latter an English historian [Footnote: Lord Macaulay. Nor was
much, if any, more to be hoped for from Pitt, afterwards first
Earl of Chatham.] has said that his selfish ambition "was so
intense a passion, that it supplied the place of talents and
inspired even fatuity with cunning." Not under such auspices was
the Episcopate to be given to America.
To these causes of failure must, doubtless, be added the
opposition of the dominant religious bodies in the colonies. But
here it must, I think, in all fairness be said, that this
opposition was largely due to the fear that, were bishops sent to
America, they would, somehow and at some time, be "invested with a
power of erecting courts to take cognizance of all affairs
testamentary and matrimonial, and to enquire into and punish all
offences of scandal"; [Footnote: See _Minutes of Convention of
Delegates from the Synod of New York and Philadelphia and from the
Associations of Connecticut, held annually from 1766 to 1775
inclusive_ (Hartford, 1843). It is now a rare pamphlet, but
very valuable for its revelations touching men and measures.] in
other words, that they would be, or would become, officers of the
State as well as bishops in the Church. No such purpose, it is
almost needless to say, was in the minds of those who sought the
establishment of a colonial Episcopate. All they desired was a
bishop or bishops invested with those powers--and no others--
which were recognized in "Holy Scripture and the ancient Canons."
But this was just what some would not, and many others could not,
be brought to understand. The idea of the officer of State,
invested with civil powers and functions, was the vision that
disturbed more minds than we can readily imagine now. Says the
elder Adams, writing in 1815: "Where is the man to be found who
will believe... that the apprehension of Episcopacy contributed,
fifty years ago, as much as any other cause, to arouse the
attention, not only of the inquiring mind, but of the common
people, and urge them to close thinking on the constitutional
authority of Parliament over the colonies?" [Footnote: All parties
agreed that bishops could be sent out only under an act of
Parliament; and there seems to have been no doubt that by such an
act they would be divested of all civil powers and functions. But
it was said, that such an act could be at any time repealed; and
if it were repealed, then, under the common law of England,
bishops in the colonies might hold their courts, and exercise such
functions as were ordinarily exercised by them in the mother
country. The danger may have been largely imaginary; but it was
certainly within the limits of possibility, and must, in all
candor, be fairly considered.]
Under all the circumstances, then, it is no wonder that when the
War of the Revolution ended, and the question came to the minds of
thoughtful churchmen how the Church should strengthen "the things
that remained that were ready to die," their first thought should
have been for the Episcopate. The Faith of the Universal Church
they had in the historic Creeds. Its Worship was preserved for
them in the Book of Common Prayer, But how to provide for the
perpetuation of the "Doctrine and Sacraments and the Discipline of
Christ as the Lord had commanded and as this Church had received
the same," that was the great practical pressing question with
which they were brought face to face. Ordination, Confirmation,
and the government of the Church must of need be secured. Nor can
we greatly wonder if what no entreaties had been able to obtain
while the colonies were a part of the British Empire, seemed now
to many an almost hopeless undertaking. The surrender at Yorktown
in 1781 was to many American churchmen the death-blow to their
hopes for an American Episcopate. There were men enough to see the
difficulties and discouragements, to talk and write and speculate
about them; but where should those men be found who would grapple
with them, and by grappling with them overcome them? I answer,
they were found in those ten clergymen who met at Woodbury in
1783, "Men that had understanding of the times." And is it not
always somewhat after this sort, when any great step is to be
taken, and there are manifold difficulties in the way? Do not men
dwell on the difficulties, and exaggerate the dangers, and suggest
expedients and makeshifts, till some one, without fuss or noise,
takes the step, and lo! the mountain has been levelled and the way
lies open? Depend upon it, there is a wealth of wisdom in these
simple lines:
"From an old English parsonage down by the sea, There came in the
twilight a message to me; Its quaint Saxon legend deeply engraven,
Hath, as it seems to me, teaching from heaven; And all through the
hours the quiet words ring, Like a low inspiration: 'Doe the nexte
thynge.'"
And what the next thing was for this Church when these western
colonies became a nation, we have already seen.
The need of some decided and vigorous action was made more obvious
by the fact that one of those makeshifts, just alluded to, by
which difficulties are evaded and not met, had been proposed in
the emergency, and was not unlikely to be adopted. In the summer
of 1782 a pamphlet had been published in Philadelphia, the author
of which, impressed with "the impossibility and present
undesirableness of attempting to obtain the Episcopate from
England," proposed "the combining of the clergy and of representatives
of the congregations in convenient districts with a representative
body of the whole." This representative body was to issue
"a declaration approving of Episcopacy, and professing a
determination to possess the succession when it could be
obtained"; but, meantime, permanent presidents were to be elected
from among the clergy with powers of supervision and ordination.
"An exigence of necessity" was pleaded in justification of this
extraordinary proposition.
On what possible ground an "exigence of necessity" could be
asserted or assumed when no attempt to obtain the Episcopate had
been made, it is very difficult to see. How completely is the
fallacy and unwisdom of the assumption exposed by the clear,
straightforward words of the reply sent from Woodbury on that
memorable twenty-fifth of March: "Could necessity warrant a
deviation from the law of Christ and the immemorial usage of the
Church, yet what necessity can we plead? Can we plead necessity
with any propriety till we have been rejected? We conceive the
present to be a more favorable opportunity for the introduction of
bishops than this country has before seen. However dangerous
bishops might have been thought to the civil rights of these
States, this danger has now vanished, for such superiors will have
no civil authority. They will be purely ecclesiastics... equally
under the control of civil law with other clergymen; no danger,
then, can now be feared from bishops but such as may be feared
from presbyters." And then they further say, how wisely! "Should
we consent to a temporary departure from Episcopacy, there would
be very little propriety in asking for it afterwards, and as
little reason ever to expect it in America."
The men who wrote those words grasped the real exigency as they
who spoke loudest about exigencies and impossibilities did not.
They foresaw, moreover, with the intuition of true wisdom, the
danger of resorting to the temporary expedient that had been
proposed. For, in truth, all history proves that such expedients
and makeshifts always exhibit a tendency to become permanent, and
very soon challenge for themselves a character, as legitimate and
ultimate, which is not claimed for them when they are adopted.
Then that thing, whatever it may be, to which they profess to lead
men up, drops out of sight, and they themselves fill the field of
vision. Had the plan of the Philadelphia pamphlet been adopted,
such I fully believe, such the clergy of Woodbury believed, must
inevitably have been the result. That it was not adopted, that the
dangers inherent in it were avoided, was largely owing to the
action of the day which we commemorate.
In what simplicity and godly sincerity of heart they took the step
that lay right before them, met the difficulty from which others
shrank, did "the next thing," and, therefore, wrought for a
marvellous future! Says a thoughtful writer: [Footnote: Aubrey de
Vere, _Sketches in Greece and Turkey_.] "Men of ambitious
imaginations retire into their study and devise some _magnum
opus_ which, like the world itself, is to be created out of
nothing, and to hang self-balanced on its own centre; after much
puffing, however, the world which they produce is apt to turn out
but a well-sized bubble. Men of another order labor but to provide
for some practical need; and their work, humble, perhaps
occasional, in its design, is found to contain the elements that
make human toils indestructible."
It was fortunate for all who were to come after them that those
men of whom I speak were no dreamers or _doctrinaires_, and
rode no "half-saddled hobbies" of their own construction. They did
not undertake to formulate a creed adapted to the wants of the
American mind and the demands of the eighteenth century; they had
that which was for every mind and all time, in the One "Faith once
delivered to the Saints." They did not attempt to compose a
Liturgy or Forms for Sacred Rites and Services; these they also
had, capable (doubtless) of adaptation and change "according to
the diversity of countries, times, and men's manners," but still
complete for all purposes of worship or ministration, being,
indeed, the growth of all the Christian ages. They did not set
themselves to create a new Church, or even to reason out just what
might possibly be dispensed with here or omitted there because of
"the present distress"; all they had to do, in that little
secluded room where they were assembled, was to provide what was
lacking in that organization which they had received; even as in
that secluded "upper room" in Jerusalem where the eleven were
assembled with the disciples, the vacant place in the Apostolate
was filled up in anticipation of the mighty Pentecostal gift. And
because they were humble enough, and therefore wise enough, to do
just what they did, they "builded better than they knew"; builded
on that only foundation that can be laid, even Jesus Christ;
builded, also, as "wise master-builders," not with the "wood, hay,
stubble" of man's gathering, but with the "gold, silver, precious
stones" of the "New Jerusalem that cometh down from heaven."
There is another thought that ought not be passed by. Says an old
Father, speaking of the Episcopate: "_Nomen oneris non honoris";
"It is the name of a burden rather than of an honor." So here, the
question was not, To whom shall we give the honor? but, Who can
best take up and bear the burden? And what a burden it was! The
wearisome quest for consecration, sure to be protracted and
doubtful as to its result; the insufficient provision--if indeed
any provision at all was made--for the maintenance of the bishop-
elect during the period of his anxious waiting; [Footnote: Bishop
Seabury wrote under date of Jan. 5, 1785: "Two years' absence from
my family, and expenses of residence here, have more than expended
all I had."] the return, if unsuccessful, with the certainty of
being told that another might have succeeded where he had failed;
if successful, with the alternative certainty of coming to a weak
and despised Church, poor in this world's goods and "everywhere
spoken against"; the life-long struggle with its tremendous
uncertainties; surely, he who should undertake the burden of these
things and many more besides, would need not only the "_robur et
aes triplex circa pectus_" of the heathen poet, but the faith
that "could remove mountains" also. Who was to be the man?
"All eyes were turned to the venerable Jeremiah Leaming, who had
defended the Church with his pen, and suffered for her in mind,
body, and estate," and he was the first choice of the clergy at
Woodbury. It was felt, however, that his acceptance was doubtful,
and the difficulties which might prevent it were fully recognized.
The original draught of the letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury
places the election and the recognition of the difficulties
attending it beyond all doubt, by a passage, which, when Leaming
declined the undertaking, was, of course, omitted. These are the
words: "His age and infirmities, we confess, were objections on
his part we felt the force of. His yielding to our desires, to
encounter the fatigues and dangers of such a voyage, which (free
from all motives for personal ambition, for which in our situation
there is very little temptation) nothing but a zeal almost
primitive would lead him to do, much the more endears him to us.
He is indeed a tried servant of the Church, and bears about him in
a degree the marks of a Confessor." [Footnote: That Leaming was
the first choice of the clergy at Woodbury has been questioned.
But three things put it beyond doubt: (1) The original letter
quoted in the text; (2) Bishop Jarvis's sermon, preached before a
Special Convention, May 5, 1796, called to elect a successor to
Bishop Seabury, in which the fact is distinctly asserted; (3)
Bishop Seabury's letter to Dr. Morice, Secretary of the Venerable
Society, under date Feb. 27, 1785, which, when read in the light
thrown on it by the original letter and the sermon, can admit of
only one interpretation.]
Leaming was not there to speak for himself; and the contingency of
his declining to accept the burden was too pressing not to be
provided against. Wherefore another was designated, one whose name
is forever shrined in the deep love and reverence of this Diocese,
and held in grateful remembrance in this Church, the Rev. Dr.
Samuel Seabury. Who doubts that in this two-fold designation
earnest prayer was made to Him "Who knoweth the hearts of all
men"? Who doubts that though no lots were cast, it was left to the
ordering of Providence to "show whether of those two the Lord had
chosen"? That ordering, as we all know, laid the burden upon
Seabury. The brave step was taken, the venture of faith was made.
God provided the man to assume the weighty charge; and for that
and all that came of it, we offer him to-day "high laud and hearty
thanks."
The same wise and prudent forecast which provided against one
possible contingency provided also against another, and in its
provision exhibited a truer comprehension of what the Church of
Christ, as a spiritual Kingdom, really was than any statesman and
many prelates in England seem to have then attained. Says one who
was present at Woodbury, writing to a friend who became the second
Bishop of Massachusetts: "We clergy have even gone so far as to
instruct Dr. Seabury, if none of the regular bishops of the Church
of England will ordain him, to go down to Scotland and receive
ordination from a non-juring bishop." [Footnote: Letter of the
Rev. Daniel Fogg to the Rev. Samuel Parker; _Connecticut Church
Documents,_ ii. 213.] I am in no wise concerned to deny that
the thought of applying to the Scottish bishops may have been an
entirely original thought in the mind of more than one person in
England in the years 1783 and 1784. But there can be no doubt--for
the fact is proved, not by unwritten reminiscences after a lapse
of years, but by contemporary documents--that this purpose was in
the minds of our clergy long before it could have been conceived
in England; before, indeed, it was known there that Seabury would
seek consecration at the hands of the English prelacy.
The line and limits which I have prescribed to myself in this
discourse forbid me to speak as I fain would speak of my great
predecessor. That privilege will belong to the preacher of next
year. But I may say, and say it with all reverence, that if ever
in our eventful history the guiding hand of God appears, it seems
to me to manifest itself in the election of our first bishop.
Doubtless brave men lived before Agamemnon, but Agamemnon was not
the less brave for that. Doubtless there were strong men and true
men here before Seabury--had there not been, there would have
been no place for him--but there was none stronger and none truer
than himself. He was misrepresented by some and misunderstood by
others in his lifetime. He has been misunderstood and misrepresented
since. But all that is over. Thanks to his careful biographer
and to his own unstudied revelations of himself, men know
him better now. The voice of detraction is silent, and there
are none to contradict us when we say of him: "His body is buried
in peace, but his name liveth forevermore."
My brethren, we shall have lingered to little purpose among these
memories of the past, unless we take away with us something for
the present hour with its duties and responsibilities. Two
thoughts seem to me to rise prominently to view from the survey we
have been making; two voices speak to us from those past years.
First we learn the lesson--it has already been spoken of--that
only by the true-hearted and faithful discharge of the lowly duty,
can we rise up to, or make real, the lofty aim. Said pious George
Herbert:
"Pitch thy behaviour low, thy projects high, So shalt thou humble
and magnanimous be."
The roots and foundations of all great things, in nature or in the
buildings that man rears, lie underground and out of sight.
Thoughtless gazers may think little of them; but no towering oak,
no stately temple, can stand without them. Above all, in the
Church of God, he who works on any other rule than this will lose
his labor, it may be will lose himself, and find written at last
over his most cherished plans the woeful words: "All is vanity."