Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses at the Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885 | Page 7

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