Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses Part 1

Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885.

by Diocese Of Connecticut.

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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d; 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 circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d'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 Const.i.tution 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 pet.i.tioners. 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 a.s.sembled 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 G.o.d holds in His hand. The pa.s.sions 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sisted 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. Jac.o.c.ks, 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 surpa.s.sing 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 Inst.i.tution 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sociations, 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. G.o.d grant that on these foundations it may stand till time shall end!