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.
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. God grant that on these foundations it may stand till time shall end!
I protest against the narrow and unhistoric idea that Johnson and those who labored with and after him conformed to the Church of England only because of their convictions touching Holy Orders. No doubt those convictions were a factor, a most important factor, in the change they made. But there was a great deal more involved than that one question. Men who had gone from the dry bones of Ames's Medulla and Wollebius to the "fresh springs" of Hooker and Bull and Pearson, must have found how utterly unlike to the Catholic Faith which they there were taught, were the "distributions and definitions" of that "theoretical divinity" in which they had been trained. It was indeed, as one of them said, "emerging from the glimmer of twilight into the full sunshine of open day." Men who had unlearned their prejudices against "pre-composed forms of prayer" by the study of such books as King's Inventions of Men in the Worship of God and the fifth Book of Hooker's immortal work, and above all of the Book of Common Prayer itself, must have reached another and a loftier ideal of worship than any they had known before. Men who had passed from the narrow, cramped, and often conventional theories of Christian living to which they were accustomed, to the reading of Scott's Christian Life [Footnote: I have often been told, by the late Dr. Jarvis, that Scott's Christian Life was a favorite book with our early clergy, especially with Johnson and Beach.] and the works of Hammond and Ken, had, surely, found something totally different from anything to which they were wonted. The question, as it presented itself to them, took on no narrow shape, ran in no single groove. It covered the Orders, the Faith, the Worship of the Church of God, and it took in with them the ideal of the Christian Life. It was no narrower than that; and they who assume that it was, contradict the conclusions of reason and the testimony of history. The pioneers of our Church were sometimes, in their own days, called by their opponents "covenant-breakers." If, however, they withdrew from covenants entered into by men with each other, it was only that they might attain the fulness of the New Covenant in the Blood of the Incarnate Son of God.
I cannot refrain from quoting here the words of the able author of the History of the Colonial Church. Looking back to the period of which I have been speaking, he says: "The feeling which prevails over every other, at this present moment, and which alone I wish to leave on record, is the feeling of deepest gratitude to those men of Connecticut, who, not from a mere hereditary attachment to the Church of England, or indolent acquiescence in her teachings, but from a deep abiding conviction of the truth that she is a faithful 'Keeper and Witness of Holy Writ,' have 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.