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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,

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,

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:

It was also, on motion of the Rev. S. F. Jarvis,

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.

The one-hundredth anniversary of the election of Bishop Seabury fell on Easter-Day , 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:

On Tuesday in Easter-Week, March 27th , 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:

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 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 , 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 was read by the Rev. Edwin Harwood, D.D., Rector of Trinity Church, and the Gospel , 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 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. 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.

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!

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 --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. 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." 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.

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 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"; 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?"

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.

"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 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."

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." 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."

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