USA > Connecticut > The history of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, Vol. II > Part 25
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This part of the address was referred to a special committee of seven, - four clergymen and three lay- men,-with instructions to confer with the Bishop, and report to the Convention in the afternoon of the same day. The result was adverse to the agitation of the subject. In consideration of the improved health of Dr. Brownell, and of the want of means to sustain an assistant, the committee reported that it was inexpe- dient to proceed to an election ; and the Convention, with entire unanimity, adopted a resolution to this
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effect, and even declined to authorize any measures to provide for the future support of an assistant bishop.
As early as 1821, a movement was made to estab- lish in the Diocese a society to be called the "Society for the Relief of Decayed Clergymen and the Neces- sitous Widows and Orphans of Clergymen." It orig- inated in a Convocation held at Waterbury on the day previous to the Annual Convention of that year, and a constitution for the Society was then presented and discussed, and definite action upon it postponed to a future meeting. Two years later a more voluminous plan, with accompanying forms for bequests, was sub- stituted, which limited relief to "the widows and chil- dren of the clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Connecticut ;" but it was unacceptable to the Con- vocation, and the whole matter was finally dropped, and no earnest efforts again put forth in the direction of this charity until 1845. In that year both orders resumed it, and it was voted " as the sense of the Con- vention, that aged and infirm clergymen, who may be destitute of the means of support have pe- culiar claims upon the sympathies and aid of the Church which they have served." Out of this resolu- tion arose a canon which made it the duty of every parish to contribute annually towards a fund to be applied, under the direction of the Bishop and Stand- ing Committee, for the relief of destitute and disabled clergymen, and of widows of clergymen belonging to the Diocese, who might need pecuniary assistance. The charity commended itself to the generous con- sideration of the parishes, and the fund, besides afford- ing suitable relief in the cases which had arisen, soon accumulated to such an extent that it was deemed
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proper to provide a separate board under the author- ity of the Diocese, for its custody, management, and disbursement. Corporate powers and privileges were, therefore, solicited, and it was chartered by the Gen- eral Assembly in 1855, by the name of " The Trustees of the Aged and Infirm Clergy and Widows' Fund."
But the organization was too late to render assist- ance to the needy among that class of clergymen who bore an important part in sustaining the princi- ples and advancing the prosperity of the Church under the first and second Bishops of Connecticut. The number of these venerable presbyters was rapid- ly diminishing, and the last survivor - Rev. Ashbel Baldwin - of those admitted to Holy Orders by Bishop Seabury, at the first ordination held in the United States, died February, 1846, lacking one month to complete a pilgrimage of eighty-nine years. He was born in Litchfield, of Congregational parents, and graduated at Yale College in 1776, without changing the religious belief in which he had been reared. He held for some time, during the Revolutionary War, the appointment of a quartermaster in the Continental Army, and received a pension from the Government, which was his principal means of support in his latter days.
The story of his conversion to Episcopacy is worth telling. After leaving college, he engaged himself, temporarily, as a private tutor in the family of a gen- tleman on Long Island. The family belonged to the Church of England, and, at that date, where the Epis- copal house of worship was, for any cause, closed on Sunday, it was customary for the stanchest church- men to turn their parlors into chapels, and have the
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regular morning service. Mr. Baldwin, being the edu- cated member of the household, was required to act as the family lay reader, and, ashamed to confess his ignorance of the Prayer Book, he sought the aid and friendship of the gardener, who instructed him in the use of the " Order for Morning Prayer; " and soon his love and admiration of the Liturgy and conversion to the Church followed. Frequent mentions have been made of him in the previous pages of this work ; but it is proper to add that he was a man of more than ordinary talents, ready, cheerful, and the lover of a good joke, in which the clergy of his time often in- dulged. He was small in stature, and walked haltingly in consequence of one leg being shorter than the other, occasioned by an illness in boyhood ; yet he was nimble in his movements and prompt in business. For a quarter of a century, he served the Diocese as Secretary of the Convention, as member of the Stand- ing Committee and delegate to the General Conven- tion, and he was chosen Secretary in the Lower House of the latter body for six triennial sessions, when he declined a reelection. Though not the most careful keeper of records, he was familiar with the forms of ecclesiastical legislation, and understood the details of the organization of the Church and its institutions in Connecticut better, perhaps, than any of his contem- poraries. He was, withal, an attractive reader of the Liturgy and a faithful preacher of the Gospel. His distinct enunciation added much to the force of his clear and instructive discourses, and the educated, as well as the uneducated, heard him with pleasure and profit. On the day of the Annual Convention of 1837, he was at Stratford, and addressed a letter to Bishop
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Brownell, taking an affectionate leave of that body, and resigning to it the only office of trust in its gift which he had continued to hold. The reading of the letter produced a deep feeling in the Convention, and it is given here in full, because it is so characteristic of the man, so chaste, so exquisitely beautiful in its style, and so pathetic in its allusions.
" REV. AND DEAR SIR: I was much pleased to learn that the Convention would be holden in New Haven this summer ; as my present stay would be so near, that I might possibly be able once more to meet with my brethren. I had made arrangements to do so. But in that I am much disappointed, as the weather is such that I dare not venture abroad. The least cold affects my eyes immediately and produces much pain. In addition to an earnest desire once more to meet my clerical and lay brethren, I wished to be pres- ent at this annual meeting, for the purpose of resign- ing my office of Trustee of the Episcopal Academy. I was made one of the Trustees of that Institution at its first organization, and for many years I never failed to attend its meetings; but, for several years past, my health has been so bad, that it has not been in my power to attend to any of its concerns. Will you have the goodness, sir, to present me very affec- tionately to the members of the Convention, and re- quest them to accept my resignation ?
" My dear sir, when I first entered the Church, its condition was not very flattering. Surrounded by enemies on every side and opposed with much viru- lence, her safety and even her very existence were, at times, somewhat questionable ; but by the united and zealous exertions of the clergy, attended by the bless-
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ings of her great Founder, she has been preserved in safety through every storm, and now presents herself with astonishment to every beholder, not as a grain of mustard seed, but as a beautiful tree, spreading its salubrious branches over our whole country. The Church, by a strict adherence to its ancient land- marks, its priesthood, its liturgy, and its government, has been preserved from those schisms which seem to threaten the peace of a very respectable body of Christians in our country. May the same unanimity and zeal which animated our fathers still be preserved in the Church. My days of pilgrimage, I know, are almost closed, and I can do no more than to be in readiness, by the grace of God, to leave the Church militant in peace. May I be permitted, sir, to ask the prayers of my Bishop and his clergy, that my last days may be happy.
" That your present meeting may eventuate in much good to the Church, is the sincere wish and fervent prayer of your friend and brother in Christ." 1
Four new parishes were admitted into union with the Convention in 1845, but two of them were only developments into independency of the congrega- tions which had worshipped in St. Paul's Chapel, New Haven, and St. Thomas's Chapel, Bethel. Dr. Cros- well, the Rector of Trinity Parish, did not take the same view about permitting St. Paul's Chapel to sep- arate from the mother church, which was entertained by the majority of his parishioners. He regarded the movement as a "suicidal measure," and would have preferred that those who advocated it the most strong- ly, should unite in a new organization and proceed to 1 MS. Letter.
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the erection of another house of worship. It was the natural feeling of an aged pastor. He desired to re- tain his cure unbroken to the last; and those who joined him in opposition to the proposed scheme, were governed more by a regard to his wishes than by a conviction that the time had not yet come for a separation. The new parish started at once upon a career of vigorous prosperity, - not being under the necessity of waiting to gather a congregation and to become consolidated and self-reliant. The church was remodelled, and extensive alterations made in it, at a cost of several thousand dollars, before the first Rec- tor, Rev. Samuel Cooke, removed to New Haven to enter upon his duties.
A week after the adjournment of the Convention in 1845, St. James's Church, Fair Haven, built of brown stone, quarried in the vicinity, was consecrated ; and also, at later dates, new churches of wood in the ancient parishes of Northford and Wallingford, - all of such appropriateness and ample dimensions, that the Bishop, in speaking of them in his annual address for the next year, was led to " congratulate the Dio- cese on the greatly improved style of church archi- tecture which had been manifested within the last few years." Edifices of stone at Canaan, and in the new parish at Broad Brook, and another constructed of wood to take the place of the old church at Tashua, which had been standing for upwards of half a cen- tury, were added to the list of consecrated churches in the Diocese, not many months afterwards. Grace Church, Long Hill, - where a house of worship was begun in 1836, - continued, for ten years, a part of the parish at Tashua, when it was admitted into union
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with the Convention as a separate organization. At Nichols's Farms, another village in the town of Trum- bull, a new parish was formed, and a new wooden church built in 1848. The era of a better order of ecclesiastical architecture had, indeed, now com- menced. The improved taste of the day called for more beauty and fitness of expression in the house of God, and, instead of leaving it to builders to be guided by their own fancy, or to follow the model of the old structures, skilled and professional architects were em- ployed to furnish designs for new churches, and to have a general oversight of their erection. A spa- cious and elaborate edifice, with a chapel annexed, built of granite from the neighboring hills, was begun by St. John's Parish, Waterbury, in the spring of 1846, and finished and consecrated in the second week of January, 1848. The growth of the town and of the congregation in numbers and wealth, called for this generous outlay, and it was cheerfully met by a peo- ple who have since been liberal in good deeds, and un- ceasing in their support of missions at home and abroad.
But two new churches of freestone, to be " more artistic and imposing than that at Waterbury," were already started, one in Norwich, and the other in New London. The plans were obtained from a New York architect,1 and as these churches, when completed, were the most costly in the Diocese, so they were really the first into which the deep chancels and a high degree of decoration and adornment were intro- duced. The arrangements for conducting Divine ser- vice were made with an eye to the comfort and con- 1 Mr. Richard Upjohn.
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venience of the officiating clergy, and the position of the Lord's Table and the whole sacrarium were in- tended to impress Christian worshippers with greater reverence for the seat of the Eucharistical feast. Other parishes, with less wealth, could not but admire these noble specimens of a better style of architecture, but, in attempting to build anew, they shrunk from in- curring such expense, and were content to sacrifice ornament and some of the accessories of divine wor- ship in order to gain churches with an equal number of sittings.
The taste, however, for pointed windows, and the early English style, was extending everywhere, and building committees in the smallest parishes caught its influence and proceeded accordingly. A church of unhewn granite for the new parish at Stonington, was begun in the spring of 1848, and the corner-stone of another and a more spacious one, to be built of free- stone, was laid in the ancient parish at Meriden on the 8th of June in the same year.1 In this year also, the congregation at New Britain had prospered so much as to build a church, " capacious in its dimen- sions and distinguished for the good taste of its archi-
1 " The church was consecrated by the Rt. Rev. Bishop Brownell on the 6th of February, 1850, and continued to be used for public worship until Trinity Sunday, 1866. The increase of the population in the western and northern parts of the town, and the necessity of providing additional ac- commodations for the parish, have rendered necessary the erection of an- other and a larger edifice. . . The corner-stone of this third house of worship for the parish of St. Andrew's Church, is laid this 8th day of August, 1866, by the Rt. Rev'd Father in God, John Williams, D. D., Bishop of the Diocese." - Extract from the Historical Sketch, MS., read by the Rector, Rev. G. H. Deshon, at the ceremony of laying the stone.
The second church was taken down, and the stone used in building the third, an edifice of much architectural beauty, from designs by Mr. Henry Dudley of New York. It was consecrated November 7th, 1867.
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tectural arrangements ;" and about the same time, mainly through the missionary exertions of the clergy in Litchfield County, a parish was organized at Win- sted and a house of worship erected.
This outward growth of the Diocese was not unac- companied by signs of the calm and pure ardor of in- creasing piety. The comfort and the power of Chris- tianity were visible in the lives of those who had been " added to the Church," and the clergy and the " con- gregations committed to their charge " evinced, with every revolving year, a deeper interest in the spread of the knowledge which makes men " wise unto salva- tion." The evil, however, of clerical changes still con- tinued, and the Bishop, in his address to the Annual Convention of 1848, said : " It is almost the only dis- couraging circumstance in the condition of the Dio- cese, that, during the past year, these changes have been more numerous than usual." Nine clergymen had removed from it with letters dimissory, and six had been received. Another prominent and accom- plished presbyter had been fixed upon for a higher position in the Church, and his separation from his parish necessarily followed.
The Rev. George Burgess, D. D., was elected Bishop of Maine and consecrated in Christ Church, Hartford, of which he had been the Rector for thirteen years, on the 31st of October, 1847, the Rt. Rev. Philander Chase of Illinois, being the senior and Presiding Bish- op in the United States, and acting as the consecrator on this occasion.
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CHAPTER XXV.
MISSIONARY AND CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS; CONVENTION AT NEW LONDON; ADDRESS OF THE BISHOP AND TENDENCIES TO ROMANISM.
A. D. 1848 - 1851.
THE progress of the Church in Connecticut was shown by the increasing contributions for missionary and charitable purposes. These, as reported from sixty parishes in 1848, amounted to upwards of ten thousand dollars, which was a great advance from the condition and feeling of the Diocese half a century before, when it was voted in convention "that the money formerly collected for the purpose of sending missionaries to the frontiers of the States be applied to the benefit of the Episcopal Academy." The im- pulse given to the missionary cause by the General Convention of 1835, and the new agencies then in- augurated, had helped to produce this improvement. But another reason is to be assigned for the change. Many of the parishes, from being weak and dependent, had now become strong, self-supporting, and able to contribute to outside objects; and with the enlarge- ment of their prosperity came also an increase in the number and urgency of appeals from abroad for Chris- tian sympathy and assistance. The duty of greater efforts for the support of Diocesan Missions, was pressed upon the attention of the Convention from VOL. II. 23
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year to year by the Bishop, and if there had not been extensive portions of the State where the services of our Church were yet to be established, the appeals of the " Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society" would have met with a more generous consideration.
In 1S49, eighty-one towns and villages within the Diocese had no houses of Episcopal worship, and no stated ministrations from Episcopal clergymen, and one-half of these localities lay east of the Connecticut River, where the Church is still numerically weak. Something was done by the Convention of that year to awaken more interest in Diocesan Missions, and a large committee, previously appointed, of which the Bishop was chairman, in reporting on their state, and the means of their future support, said : -
" The strength of the Diocese is such, both in num- bers and in pecuniary ability, that it must always be competent to take possession of every new point to which the way is opened for the introduction of the Church. In view of this truth, we cannot look at the unoccupied ground which is white with the waving harvest, without feeling that we have been, and still are sinfully slothful ; that, as a people, we are in this, guilty of neglect before the God of the Church. It is certainly not to our credit that in a Diocese so old as this, and of such limited extent, the Church should be so partially known as it is."
The Annual Convention of 1850 met at New Lon- don on the festival of St. Barnabas, and seventy-nine clergymen and fifty-six lay delegates were present. There is no record that a similar meeting had ever been held in the same place, though New London was the residence of Bishop Seabury, and the scene of his
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latest parochial labors. The convenience of both clergy and laity had called for the selection of more central or more accessible towns in which to hold the annual conventions, and complaint was sometimes made, if the Bishop, who had the power of "deter- mining " upon the place of meeting, chose an extreme part of the Diocese. But this was an extraordinary occasion, and the Diocesan Council was not its only attraction. The "holy and beautiful house" which had been erected by the ancient parish of St. James, and which contained, in one of the divisions of the chancel, the remains of the first Bishop of Connecti- cut, and a monument to his memory, was now to be consecrated. The usual services before convention, and at the consecration, were blended together, and the sermon was preached by the Rev. John Williams, D. D., then President of Trinity College, having been elected to that position on the retirement of Dr. Tot- ten in 1848. The sermon, which was upon the doc- trine of the Holy Trinity, was published by order of the Convention and distributed with the Journal. It contained appropriate references to Bishop Seabury, and cited the memorable statement that, near the close of his ministry, he spoke often and earnestly to his clergy and people upon that mighty mystery of the faith which, he appeared to foresee, would one day be extensively corrupted and denied in New Eng- land.2
Trinity Church, Norwich, which had possessed itself of the edifice formerly occupied by the mother parish in that city, and Trinity Church, Ansonia, were new parochial organizations received into union with the
1 Vide vol. i. pp. 440, 441. 2 Vol. i. p. 432.
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Convention at this session. St. Thomas's Church, New Haven, had been admitted two years earlier, and, hav- ing erected a commodious chapel, the parish was be- ginning to exhibit signs of a vigorous prosperity. The Bishop, glancing in his annual address at the progress of the Diocese, said : -
" We have witnessed no sudden and remarkable changes ; but a steady increase in numbers, strength, and vitality, has marked our course during the thirty years that I have been permitted to minister amongst you. I know of no serious difficulties in any of our parishes, and the unity of sentiment, and harmony of feeling, which have so long characterized the clergy of the Diocese, were never more happily exemplified than at the present time."
But he could not take the same cheering view of every part of our communion. Some unhappy fruits had sprung from the theological movement in Eng- land, and the fears of intelligent churchmen were not a little excited by the appearance of " Romish tenden- cies " among certain individuals who occupied posi- tions of influence and importance in the Church. Towards the end of the year 1849, the Rev. Dr. Jarvis, with the approbation of his Diocesan, pub- lished a pamphlet of nearly fifty pages, which he en- titled " A Voice from Connecticut, occasioned by the late Pastoral Letter of the Bishop of North Carolina," and in which he discussed very ably and learnedly " the power of priestly absolution, and the limits within which it must be exercised." It was addressed to Dr. Ives, whose "Pastoral Letter" had called it forth, and whose self-contradictions and doctrinal un- soundness, as manifested on several recent occasions,
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had given pain to his warmest friends, both in and out of his Diocese.
But prior to this, the alarm had been sounded, and editorial articles, evidently written with a full knowl- edge of facts, appeared in the Church periodical of Connecticut, stating that there existed a " Romanizing clique " in the city of New York, which was not only disloyal to the Anglican Church and its standard theology, but encouraged a practical reception of Popish standards of doctrine and discipline. The arti- cles were sharp, and intended to attract attention and challenge replies. One of them closed with the warn- ing -- "Let churchmen be on their guard, and give the first symptom of this kind of Jesuitism its im- mediate and merited rebuke. We venture to promise it such a reception if it intrudes into the Diocese of Connecticut. We love our Prayer-books here with a loyal and virgin love." Attempts to justify or explain away the movements of the Romanizers were unsuc- cessful, and the progress of events showed that there was too much reason for the alarm which had been given. The principal part of the address of Bishop Brownell to the Convention of 1850, was occupied with the subject, and because his counsels are highly salutary and applicable to the times in which we live, as to all times, no apology need be offered for allow- ing them to fill up the remainder of this chapter. With the accompanying action of the Convention, they form an important passage in the history of the Diocese.
" In our parent country, excitements and dissen- sions prevail; and there have been some defections from the faith of the Church. A few such defections
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have also occurred in our country. But though these defections are much to be deplored, I see nothing in them to occasion serious alarm, in regard to the gen- eral soundness of the Church. The number of the apostates is small and insignificant, in comparison with the great body of churchmen who maintain . their integrity. 'They went out from us, because they were not of us.' We may regret their secession, on their own account ; but we may be well satisfied that they have placed themselves in a position where their real sentiments are known, and where they can no longer expect to corrupt and betray their brethren under false pretences. If their defection has been oc- casioned by conscientious conviction, however errone- ous such conviction may be, we may respect and pray for them ; but we cannot exercise the same charity to- wards those who would seek to Romanize the Church, while they remain within her pale. This is nothing less than treachery ; and the clergyman who would persist in such a course, is false to his vows. Every clergyman, at his Ordination, solemnly engages to conform to the doctrine, as well as worship, of the Protestant Episcopal Church ; and he promises, more- over, so to minister that doctrine, 'as this Church hath received the same.' He well knows what the Church expects from him, when she exacts these vows; and if he takes them, or acts under them, with a mental res- ervation, and resorts to the subterfuge of giving his own private interpretation to the doctrines of the Church, he is justly chargeable with treachery and falsehood. If he begins to doubt the catholicity of the Church in which he ministers, or the soundness of her faith, let him, as an honest man, suspend his min-
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