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."