USA > Connecticut > The history of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, Vol. II > Part 3
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The record in the Journal reads : "The Right Rev. Dr. White acted as the officiating Bishop, and the Bishops Provoost and Bass assisted.
1 Dr. Beasley preached at the consecration of Rev. Philander Chase.
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" The act of consecration being completed, the Right Rev. Dr. Jarvis1 was recognized by the Con- vention as the Bishop of Connecticut, and received their congratulations in a very affectionate address delivered by the Rev. Mr. Hubbard, to which Bishop Jarvis returned a very suitable answer. After this, he delivered an excellent charge to the clergy and laity of his Diocese." The Standing Committee, in obedience to instructions, prepared an address of thanks to the consecrating bishops, which, having been read to the Convention and approved, was pre- sented to them with " a gratuity for defraying the expenses " which they had incurred on the occasion. " The gratuity they generously declined accepting, though Dr. Bass was at length prevailed on to accept it." The memorial to the General Assembly for an act of incorporation to establish a fund for the sup- port of the Episcopate, was revived by a new vote, and measures were adopted to increase the endow- ment of the Diocesan Institution at Cheshire.
Thus terminated the interesting ceremonies and proceedings which attended the consecration of the second Bishop of Connecticut. It was a day of anxiety mingled with cheerful prospects, for the still feeble parishes had more to hope for than to enjoy in their present condition. One of the incidental fruits of this occasion was quite unexpected. Both the ser- mon of Dr. Smith and the charge of the Bishop were requested for the press, and the publication of the first of these brought forth a letter from Mr. Blatch- ford - a Congregational divine at Bridgeport - who
1 Yale College conferred upon him the Doctorate at the previous com- mencement.
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conceived himself to be specially called upon to renew the old war against the Church, and to fight over again battles in which his predecessors had won no laurels. The Scotch blood of Dr. Smith was thor- oughly roused by this fresh attempt to spread an alarm among the people, and make them look with an evil eye upon Episcopacy by stigmatizing it with the opprobrious epithet of Popery. Under the pat- ronage, therefore, of his brethren, he published an " Answer to Mr. Blatchford's Letter," extending to about one hundred and fifty pages, and placed in the title this quaint but significant motto, copied from an old volume of the Oxford University : "Verily, these men are like Samson's foxes; they have their heads severed indeed ; the one sort looking toward the Pa- pacy, the other to the Presbytery ; but they are tied together by the tails with firebrands between them, to the injury of the Church."
The " Answer " evinced great familiarity with ec- clesiastical history and a thorough knowledge of the points involved in the discussion. It was written in a fearless spirit, and though it contained playful thrusts at his opponent and rambled over a wide field, it met the general assertions and sophistries of the " Letter," which Dr. Smith said he " would not call A Defence of 'the Validity of Presbyterian Ordination, ' with Strictures on the Sermon delivered at Bishop Jarvis's Consecration ; but The Validity of Lay Ordi- nation Maintained, together with a Pasquinade upon Episcopacy."
At the Annual Convention of 1798, held in Nor- walk, steps were taken to provide for the commence- ment of a fund for the Episcopal Academy at Chesh-
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ire, by ascertaining the grand levy of the Church in Connecticut; and the money formerly collected for the purpose of sending missionaries to the frontiers of the States was voted to be applied to the benefit of the same institution. It was also recommended to the several congregations in the Diocese to " collect annually for the use of the Bishop one half-penny on the pound in such way and manner as to them shall seem most expedient."
The Bishop was still in charge of the parish at Mid- dletown, and this was a measure which looked to his separation from parochial work and exclusive devo- tion to Episcopal duties. His address to the Conven- tion at this time was not printed and there are no con- temporary documents to show his official acts or the extent of his visitations. He began, November 1st, with the consecration of St. John's Church, Waterbury, a new edifice which had been several years in the pro-
cess of erection. But his first ordination, three weeks after the meeting of this Convention and eight months after he had been consecrated, was held in St. John's Church, Bridgeport, when Calvin White was admitted to the order of Deacons and subsequently became an assistant of Dr. Dibblee at Stamford ; and on the 30th of the ensuing September, Bethel Judd and Ezra Bradley were ordained to the same grade of the ministry in St. Peter's Church, Cheshire. Sev- eral parishes in the Diocese were now vacant, and the clergy, scarcely yet beyond a score in number,1 were charged with the oversight of neighboring or distant flocks, and to these they officiated monthly or quar-
1 Rev. Edward Blakeslee died in 1797, and Rev. Philo Perry in 1798, the first aged thirty-one years, and the other forty-six.
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terly according as their convenience would admit, or according to the more pressing demands of the par- ish to which their services were first due. Trinity Church, New Haven, in voting a salary to the Rector at the Easter meeting of 1797, allowed him leave of absence seven Sundays in the year, that he might officiate in West Haven, on condition, however, that the Church in that place paid to the Vestry of Trin- ity Parish the sum of fifty dollars for his services. This arrangement continued for quite a period, but as the vote shows, the leave of absence was not so much for the benefit of the Rector as for the relief of the parish in New Haven.
The adversaries of Episcopacy saw her feebleness, and were proud to compare their own prosperous communion and full-fed pastors with the weaker body which preferred to worship God in a Liturgy and al- ways steadfastly believed in the Scriptural character of a threefold ministry. Bishop Jarvis was familiar with the political and ecclesiastical history of Con- necticut, and understood well the nature of the high office to which he had been raised. He had all the learning, and dignity, and firmness of his predecessor, but unlike him, he was indisposed to be active ; and he had not the same power to attract popular atten- tion and to make his ministrations felt as he pursued the noiseless round of his Episcopal duties. An asth- matic difficulty which had troubled him from early life and increased upon him with advancing years, made him a poor traveller, and it is no wonder, if the Church afterwards partook in some degree of the in- voluntary lethargy which crept upon her new over- seer.
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But the clergy were too fresh yet in the recollec- tion of the severe trials through which they had passed to be otherwise than vigilant, and therefore every care was taken, not only to maintain with firm- ness their distinct religious faith, but to guard against the encroachments of error and the progress of scep- tical philosophy. The strong sympathy which un- happily, and on no rational grounds, prevailed in this country towards those who were leaders in the late French Revolution, as well as towards the Revolution itself, had prepared many to become the miserable dupes of their principles and declarations. "Of the immeasurable evils, under which France and her neigh- bors agonized, infidelity was the genuine source - the Vesuvius, from whose mouth issued those rivers of destruction which deluged and ruined all things in their way. It was seen that man, unrestrained by law and religion, is a mere beast of prey ; that licen- tiousness, although adorned with the graceful name of liberty, is yet the spring of continual alarm, bond- age, and misery ; and that the restraints imposed by equitable laws, and by the religion of the Scriptures, were far less burthensome and distressing than the boasted freedom of infidels." 1
Upon the accession of the elder Adams to the Pres- idency of the United States, the clergy of Connecticut sent him an address, expressive of their attachment to the government of their country and their approbation of the measures adopted by the constituted authorities thereof ; and it shows how much they were alive to all flagrant assaults upon revealed truth that, at a pre-
1 Pres. Dwight's Discourse on Events of the Last Century, January 7, 1801, p. 33.
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vious Convocation, they directed a letter of thanks to be addressed also to Dr. Watson, the learned Bishop of Landaff, for his noble " Apology for the Bible" in answer to Thomas Paine's " Age of Reason." "Happy are we," said they in this letter, " to find that your ex- cellent defence has in a good degree strengthened the faithful, confirmed the doubtful, roused the indifferent, and silenced the gainsayer. And we have reason to believe that it will, by the blessing of God, be a means of checking that spirit of infidelity among us which has produced such horrid scenes in a powerful nation of Europe." 1
But the pen of the Bishop of Landaff2 was not the only one whose influence in vindicating the truth of Christianity was felt in this country. "A Short and Easy Method with the Deists," by Charles Leslie, hav- ing been widely circulated, furnished churchmen with ready reasons for the support of their faith. "That was a great man," said Wm. Jones of Nayland writing to Dr. Bowden,3 " and one of the great pat- terns from whom I learned controversial divinity in my early years. I desired a bookseller of London to lay hold of as many copies of his works as he could find ; foreseeing that they would be called for. ' Ah sir,' said he, 'I could have got you a hundred copies a year ago; but the price was fallen so low, that they are now gone for waste paper.' They are among many other things disregarded by the world, which will, nevertheless, survive the fire of the last day."
1 MS. original draught.
3 MS. letter, February 28, 1799.
2 Now spelled Llandaff.
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CHAPTER II.
REMOVAL OF BISHOP JARVIS TO CHESHIRE; ADOPTION OF AN OF- FICE OF INSTITUTION; AND EFFORTS TO ENDOW THE EPISCO- PATE.
A. D. 1799-1804.
IN the autumn of 1799, Bishop Jarvis resigned his parish at Middletown and removed to Cheshire. He had already placed his son at the Academy under the care of Dr. Bowden, but the hopes and affections of the parents were so bound up in this child of their old age that the thought of continued separation from him was not to be endured. It formed an additional motive for his change of residence that the Institu- tion was acquiring, in the eyes of the Church, reputa- tion and influence as a nursery of learning, and he perceived the obvious propriety of being near to watch its infant progress and support its ecclesiasti- cal character. Accordingly he built for himself a suitable house in Cheshire, and the village so beauti- ful and attractive by nature became, for a time, the general centre of diocesan interests.
The Academy prospered under the management of its scholarly Principal, and not only were contribu- tions for its benefit obtained from New York, but the Annual Convention of 1799, held in Stratfield, de- clared it to be the duty of each clergyman in the Diocese, together with some respectable layman in
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his parish, to visit by a specified day as many of the parishioners as possible and solicit "individual dona- tions from them for the use of the Episcopal Acad- emy." The vacant churches were not overlooked in this attempt to raise money, for the Standing Com- mittee was directed to communicate with them and invite their cooperation. The same Convention voted also that "one or more agents be appointed by the Trustees .. to go to Europe for the purpose of solicit- ing donations," as soon as there should be unappro- priated funds sufficient to defray the expenses of such a mission ; and the very next year, steps were taken to ascertain, according to the grand list, the quota that each parish must pay in order to secure the sum of seven hundred dollars - that sum being desig- nated as necessary to support the agent. The mis- sion contemplated never was undertaken, but these votes indicate the zeal and earnestness of the church- men of Connecticut seventy years ago, in the matter of Christian and classical education ..
The clergy had not lost sight of a revision of the Articles, and in this respect they went beyond their first Bishop, who was inclined to doubt the necessity of them or "rather to believe that their object might be accomplished through the medium of the Liturgy." At a Convocation held in August, 1798, Dr. Smith and the Rev. Messrs. Shelton and Baldwin were appointed "a Committee to frame Articles of Religion," to be laid before a future meeting ; but the whole sub- ject was taken out of their hands by the action of the General Convention in 1799, - action which was pressed upon that body at the instance of the delegates from Connecticut, and in consequence of
·
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instructions which they had received from the Dio- cese. The final consideration of the matter was re- ferred to the next General Convention and resulted in the adoption of the doctrinal system of the Church as embodied in our present Articles of Religion.
Ebenezer Dibblee, whose name had stood on the list of the clergy in charge of the parish at Stamford fifty-one years, went to his rest in 1799; and the people, who loved him so well and whom he had served so faithfully, were unfortunate in the choice of a successor, and became involved in a trouble which, as will be seen hereafter, not only produced division and contention among them, but alienated them for a time from the ecclesiastical authority of the Diocese. The good instructions of the past were forgotten in the heats of passion, and the breach, small at first, was widened under the schemes and dexterous management of a bad leader.
Hitherto there had been no canons for the regula- tion of the clergy in Connecticut, but a special com- mittee, previously appointed, reported to the Conven- tion of 1799 a code, which, after due consideration and sundry amendments, was adopted and “ ordered to be engrossed on the minutes." These Canons are remarkable for their comprehensive brevity, and they were first printed without any headings and distin- guished merely by the numbers. Among them are directions of this sort.
" The clergy shall pay strict regard to the Rubrics of the Church and shall neither alter nor mutilate the service otherwise than they are by the Rubrics permitted.
" The clergy shall pay due attention to their dress VOL. II. 2
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and shall deviate as little as possible in this respect from clerical propriety.
" All persons belonging to this State, who intend to apply to the Bishop for Holy Orders, shall make known to him their intention in writing twelve months before such application.
" Every clergyman settled in this State shall, on the next Sunday after Easter in every year, preach a sermon to his congregation on the duties which are peculiarly Episcopal; and in which he shall lay before his people the propriety and necessity of supporting the Episcopal office with becoming dignity."
Twenty years passed away before any attempt was made to amend or revise this simple code. It is true at a Convocation held in Derby on the 20th of No- vember, 1799 -when "the new church" in that place was consecrated, - the Bishop and four of his presbyters were empowered to frame "a Canon to regulate clerical attendance upon State Conventions and Convocations ; and also to address certain clergy- men in the Diocese upon the subject of their neglect of those clerical meetings." But the vote resulted in no recorded action and the subsequent legislation of the Church was directed to other and more important matters.
In this year and at this Convocation an Office for inducting clergymen into vacant parishes or churches, prepared by the Rev. Dr. Smith at the request of the Annual Convention, after having been "examined, paragraph by paragraph," was approved and ordered to be printed without delay, and the Bishop was de- sired to transmit copies of it to the several bishops in the United States and to the standing committees
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of those States in which there were no bishops. The object of giving it this circulation was to open the way for its adoption and use by the Church at large, and it was first prescribed by the General Conven- tion of 1804; and a section of the Canon then passed in reference to it declared, that no clergyman hereaf- ter elected into any parish or church should be con- sidered as a regularly admitted and settled parochial minister in any Diocese or State until he had been inducted according to this Office. The Diocese of Connecticut, at its Annual Convention three months before, had formally adopted it as approved by the Bishop and Clergy in Convocation. It was set forth with alterations by the General Convention in 1808, - the title changed from "Induction " 1 to "Institu- tion," and its use made to depend upon recommenda- tion and not upon requisition. On comparing the present Office in the Book of Common Prayer with the first printed copy, they are found to be so nearly alike as to give to Connecticut the whole credit of providing for the Church a service which, however much it may be neglected in these days, was intended to impress upon the pastor and his people their inti- mate, mutual, and solemn relations to each other.
The laity now began to receive accessions of prom- inent men from the standing order, and their dele- gates to the Annual Conventions regularly outnum- bered the clergy. The parishes, at the commence- ment of the century, having recovered, in a measure, from the disastrous effects of the Revolutionary War,
1 Induction is that act by which a clergyman is vested with the tempo- ralities of a living: Institution is the act of committing to his charge the care of souls.
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had increased to sixty-three, though the number of clergymen was scarcely greater than before the Inde- pendence of the Colonies. Two persons applied to be received as candidates for Holy Orders, in 1801, and were rejected by the Convocation ; and two in the Dia- conate - Caleb Childs and Ezra Bradley - were de- graded from the ministry. The final vote to degrade the latter was passed by the Convocation in 1804, when twenty clergymen, including the Bishop, were present. Mr. Childs, besides his doctrinal errors, was charged with being "guilty of immoralities and vices injurious to Christianity and disgraceful to the charac- ter of a clergyman," and the sentence of degradation pronounced upon him was ordered to be read in the churches of Stamford, Norwalk, and New Canaan.
The Annual Convention of that year met at New- town, and to render the opening services more impos- ing, a procession formed by its members, - the clergy in their gowns, - moved from the house of the Rec- tor, the Rev. Mr. Burhans, to the Episcopal Church, attended by a band of music. The example of that occasion was observed for many years afterwards, with the omission of the musical accompaniment. Gama- liel Thatcher was at the time advanced to the priest- hood, and a lay delegate from the Episcopal congre- gation in Salisbury, appeared with a vote of that par- ish " adopting the Constitution of the Protestant Epis- copal Church of this Diocese." Four of the clergy, Ashbel Baldwin, Philo Shelton, Tillotson Bronson, and Evan Rogers, and two of the laity, James Clark of Danbury and Nathaniel Perry of Woodbury, were chosen as delegates to the General Convention soon to assemble in Trenton, and a collection to defray
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their expenses was ordered to be made in the several parishes of the Diocese in the ensuing month, and the amounts received to be transmitted to the Rev. Mr. Baldwin. Clark attended with three of the clerical delegates, and he neutralized their affirmative in that body on a proposition to enact a Canon in the follow- ing words : "No lay deputy shall be admitted as a member of this House who shall not have been a communicant of the Protestant Episcopal Church for at least one year previous to his appointment." More than half a century elapsed before the substance of what the Church then refused to adopt was finally agreed to and ratified by the General Convention, and made an essential part of the Constitution originally accepted for the government of the Protestant Epis- copal Church in the United States of America.
The Episcopalians in Hartford, whose misfortunes before the Revolution had led them to suspend the work of building for themselves a house of worship, resumed it again in 1793, but without a resident rec- tor the enterprise progressed slowly towards comple- tion. On the 10th of November, 1801, the Bishop and fifteen clergymen assembled in Convocation at Hartford, and the next day Christ Church was conse- crated, and the Rev. Menzies Rayner, who had been recently called from Elizabethtown, New Jersey, was duly inducted into the Rectorship of the parish. It was one of the first occasions, if not the very first, on which the new Office of Institution was used in Con- necticut, and joined with the services of consecration, it made the ceremonies of the day doubly impressive, and such as must have long been remembered. Ash- bel Baldwin, then in the vigor of manhood and the
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prime of his usefulness, preached the sermon. A month later the Rev. Joseph Warren was instituted into the Rectorship of Christ Church, Middletown. Mr. Rayner preached the sermon.
One eminent presbyter, who had borne an active and influential part in the councils of the Diocese from its organization, was now about to withdraw and enter upon another field of labor. The Rev. Dr. Bowden, who for nearly six years had been at the head of the Episcopal Academy and had seen it grow into a chartered Institution,1 with considerable funds and "generally about sixty students in a course of education," resigned his office of Principal on the 29th of March, 1802, and accepted the more comfor- table position of Professor of Moral Philosophy and Belles-Lettres in Columbia College, New York. A spe- cial Convention was held in Cheshire two weeks after- wards to receive his resignation and elect a successor. The choice fell unanimously upon the Rev. Dr. Wil- liam Smith, who was at that time conducting a Gram- mar School in New York, having relinquished St. Paul's Church, Norwalk, in the autumn of 1800, in consequence of an unhappy disagreement which arose between him and the people in regard to the permanency of a settlement. The change brought back to the Diocese an energetic, ardent, and impul- sive presbyter, but it took away one whom the clergy greatly loved and revered, who was a wise and dispas- sionate counsellor, and whose scholarly pen could always be trusted, whether employed in defending the Church or in speaking for his brethren. Dr. Bow- den, besides his classic and patristic knowledge, was
1 It was incorporated at the May session of the General Assembly, 1801.
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well read in English theology and familiar with those publications of his time best calculated to encourage correct principles and sound Christian learning. He was the first to introduce into this country Daubeny's " Guide to the Church," and in a letter to the author, written at the instance of the clergy of Connecticut in the summer of 1801, and before any thought of changing his location had been entertained, he said, -" we are determined that it shall be a standard book for all our candidates for holy orders. Clergy- men brought up at the feet of Leslie, Horne, Jones, and Daubeny, will not fail to be orthodox in their faith, pure in their lives, and zealous to promote the kingdom of Christ."
The proper support of the Episcopate had been a subject of consideration by the Convention and by the laity in the principal parishes from an early date in the administration of Bishop Seabury. The memorial to the Legislature for a charter heretofore several times mentioned, was granted in 1799; but so scattered were the corporators or so indifferent to their trust, that no meeting to organize was held - though do- nations were awaiting their action - until the last day of November, 1803. In the meantime, the Con- vention by special resolves had endeavored to “stir up their pure minds by way of remembrance," and three of the memorialists had applied to the General Assembly at the October session of that year for an addition to their number of two clergymen and two laymen, centrally located. The application was granted, and after an organization should be com- pleted, five of the Board with the "president or chairman," were empowered to form a quorum. The
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