PROTESTANT
494
PROTESTANT
and the class of men willing to undertake the work of
the ministry so inferior that very little could be done.
Even the efforts of the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel proved of very little effect in the South,
though in Pennsylvania, New York, and New
Jersey it bore much better fruit. But, while the
Anglican Church was sunk in spiritual and intellec-
tual lethargy in the South, and while it had a rather
attenuated existence in the Middle states, an event
occurred in New England in 1722 which was of the
greatest promise for the future of Anglicanism, and
which shook Congregationalism in New England
to its very foundations. Timothy Cutler, the rector
of Yale College, with six other Congregational minis-
ters, all men of learning and piety, announced to their
brethren in the Congregational ministry of Connecti-
cut that they could no longer remain out of visible
communion with an Episcopal Church: that some
of them doubted of the validity, while others were
persuaded of the invalidity, of Presbyterian ordina-
tions. Three of them were subsequently persuaded
to remain in the Congregational ministry, the rest
becoming Episcopalians, and three of them, Messrs.
Cutler, Johnson, and Brown, were ordained to the
ministry of the Anglican Church.
During the period of the Revolution the Church of England in America suffered greatly in the estimation of Americans by its strong attachment to the cause of the British Crown. But there were not wanting both clergymen and laymen most eminent in their loyalty to the cause of the colonies and in the patriotic sacrifices which they made to the cause of independence. Among the clergy two such men were Mr. White, an assistant of Christ Church, Phila- delphia, and Mr. Provost, assistant of Trinity Church, New York. The rectors of these churches being Tories, these gentlemen subsequently succeeded them in the pastorate of their respective parishes. At the close of the war. Episcopalians, as they were already commonly called, realized that, if they were to play any part in the national life, their church must have a national organization. The greatest obstacle to this organization was the obtaining of bishops to carry on a national hierarchy. In Connecticut, where those who had gone into the Episcopal Church had not only read themselves into a belief in the necessity of Episcopacy, but had also adopted many other tenets of the Caroline divines, a bishop was con- sidered of absolute necessity, and, accordingly, the clergy of that state elected the Rev. Samuel Seabury and requested him to go abroad and ob- tain the episcopal character.
It was found impossible to obtain the episcopate in England, owing to the fact that the bishops there could not by law consecrate any man who would not take the oath of allegiance, and, although dur- ing the War of the Revolution, Seabury had been widely known for his Tory sympathies, it would have been impossible for him to return to America if he had received consecration as a British subject. Upon the refusal of the English bishops to confer the episcopate, he proceeded to Scotland, where, after prolonged negotiations, the Nonjuring bishops con- .sented to confer the episcopal character upon him. These bishops were the remnant of the Episcopal Church which the Stuarts had so ardently desired to set up in Scotland, and which had lost the pro- tection of the State, together with all its endowments, by its fidelity to James II. Their religious prin- ciples were looked upon by Scotch Presbyterians as scarcely less obnoxious than those of Rinnan Catholics and polilically they were consiilereil (|uitc as ihuiger- OUS. They were indeed cxcfcdiiigly High ("hurch- nien, and li;iil made such alterations in the liturgy as brought llieir doctrine of the Holy Eucharist very near to that of the Catholic Church. They had even been known to use chrism in confirmation, and they
were strong believers in the sacerdotal character
of the Christian ministry and in the necessity of
Apostolic succession and episcopal ordination. Dr.
Seabury was consecrated by them in 1784, and,
being of very similar theological opinions himself,
he signed a concordat immediately after his con-
secration, whereby he agreed to do his utmost to
introduce the liturgical and doctrinal peculiarities
of the Nonjurors into Connecticut. Upon his return
to his own state he proceeded to organize and govern
his diocese very much as a Catholic bishop would do;
he excluded the laity from all deliberations and ec-
clesiastical councils and, as much as he could, from
all control of ecclesiastical affairs.
But if sacerdotalism was triimaphant in Connecti- cut, a very different view was taken in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Dr. White, now rector of Christ Church, and a doctor of divinity, believed that if the Episcopal Church was ever to live and grow in America it must assent to, and adopt as far as possible the principle of representative govern- ment. He would have been willing to go on without the episcopate until such time as it could have been obtained from England, and in the meantime to ordain candidates to the ministry by means of Pres- byterian ordination, with the proviso, however, that upon the obtaining of a bishop these gentlemen were to be conditionally re-ordained. This last sugges- tion, however, found little favour among Episcopa- lians, and at last, after considerable difficulty, an act was passed in Parliament whereby the English bish- ops were empowered to confer the episcopate upon men who were not subject to the IBritish Crown. Accordingly, Dr. Wliite, being elected Bishop of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Provost, Bishop of New York, proceeded to England and received consecration at the hands of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Moore, on Septuagesima Sunday, 1787; but upon their return to America, although there were now three bishops in the United States, there were so many differences between the Connecticut church- men and those of the Middle and Southern states, especially with regard to the presence of laymen in ecclesiastical councils, that it was not until 1789 that a union was effected. Even after that date, when Dr. Madison was elected by Virginia to be its bishop, he proceeded to England for his consecration because Bishop Provost, of New York, refused to act in conjunction with the Bishop of Connecticut. The union, however, was finally cemented in 1792, when Dr. Claggert being elected Bishop of Mary- land, and there being three bishops in the country of the Anglican line exclusive of Dr. Seabury, the Bishop of New York withdrew his objections as far as to allow Dr. Seabury to make a foiui;h. If Dr. Seabury had not been invited to take part in the con- secration of Dr. Claggert, a schism between Con- necticut and the rest of the country would have been the immediate result.
Almost from the very beginning of its independent life the tendencies which have shown themselves in the three parties in the Episcopal Church of the present day were not only evident, but were even em- bodied in the members of the Episcopate. Bishop Provost, of New York, represented the rationalistic temper of the eighteenth century, which has eventu- ated in what is called the Broad Church Party. Bishop White represented the Evangelical Party, with ita belief in the desirability rather than the necessity of .\postolic succession and its desire to fraternize a,s nearly as po.-isible with the other progeny of the Kcfiinnatiim. Bishop Seabury, on the other hand, ri'iin-si'ntcd the Iraiiilional High Church position, intellectual rather than emotional, and laying more stress u[)on the outward ecclesiastical organization of the Church than upon emotional religion. Thia school has played a very important part in the his-
