Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses at the Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885 | Page 8

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repealed; and if it were repealed, then, under the common law of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