USA > North Carolina > Lives of the bishops of North Carolina from the establishment of the episcopate in that state down to the division of the diocese > Part 11
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"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost-Amen !
THOMAS CHURCH BROWNELL,
Bishop of the Diocese of Connecticut, and Presiding Bishop."
Speaking, many years later, of the above action by the Gen- eral Convention in 1853, the Churchman, in its issue of Janu- ary 15, 1881, said: "None who witnessed it will ever forget the solemn scene in the House of Deputies when, with both Houses standing around and before him, the venerable Presid- ing Bishop Brownell pronounced sentence of deposition on the late Bishop of North Carolina." Three days after the above- quoted sentence of deposition was pronounced, the Reverend Doctor Atkinson was duly consecrated Bishop of North Caro- lina.
When the Diocesan Convention of North Carolina met at Wilmington in 1854, a communication was laid before that body from the Reverend John Murray Forbes (a convert to the Church of Rome, who later returned to the Anglican faith), wherein the writer stated that he had been authorized by Doctor Ives to tender a return of such money as had been advanced beyond the time when he relinquished his Bishopric, this being estimated by him as about $750. Thereupon the President of the Standing Committee was directed to advise Doctor Forbes that the Diocese made no demand upon Doctor Ives for this money, but left the matter for him to act upon as he might deem right; and that the treasurer of the Diocese, Charles T. Haigh, was authorized to receive any sums which might be due it. This seems to have closed the incident, as reports of the treasurer, in the several succeeding years, fail to record the receipt of such money.
If, in the prime of his influence and usefulness, Doctor Ives had suddenly embraced the faith of Rome when no one suspected his fidelity to the Church wherein he held a Bishopric, it would have been considered a great loss to the latter com-
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munion. Coming, as it did, however, after nearly four years of instability and secret evasion on his part, with well-grounded suspicion and distrust on the part of his people, it resulted in benefit rather than injury to the Church from which he took his departure. In the report on the State of the Church in North Carolina, made to the General Convention of 1853, it was said: "It would be difficult to find a single person in North Carolina whose allegiance to the Church has been at all shaken by the apostacy of her late Bishop. On the contrary, it is believed that all members, having been tried, have come forth stronger in the faith and stronger in love to the Church." Three years later a report of the same character, to the Gen- eral Convention of 1856, was made in these words: "The apostacy of the late Bishop produced far less disastrous results than might have been anticipated from the authority of his office and the love and influence which he once personally en- joyed in his Diocese. It is probable, indeed, that his open de- fection, as compared with his former equivocal course, was a relief rather than a blow to the Church, by putting an end to paralyzing fears and jealousies, and restoring confidence and affection among our own household of faith, and on the part of the community towards our entire body. It is not known that a single person in the Diocese has followed the example set them by one once so loved and honored." This report slightly errs in saying that not a single person followed the example of Bishop Ives when he renounced the Anglican com- munion and became a Roman Catholic. His wife took the same step, as did also Mrs. Benjamin Dickens (formerly Miss Ella Eaton) a lady from North Carolina who went to Europe with Bishop and Mrs. Ives. Mrs. Dickens was a half-sister of Attorney-General William Eaton, Jr. After staying in Italy a while she contracted such an aversion for Roman Catholicism that she returned to North Carolina, and -- wishing to go to the antipodes in religious doctrine-joined the Baptists. She remained a Baptist for some time, and later returned to the
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Episcopal Church. Her second husband was Peter Hansborough Bell, former Governor of the State of Texas, who spent his last years at Littleton, North Carolina. Mrs. Bell died in July, 1897, at Littleton, and her funeral services were con- ducted by the Reverend Girard W. Phelps, Rector of Saint Alban's Church.
Mention has already been made of the statement, in 1850, by the physician of Bishop Ives, that his mind had been affected ' by the long attack of fever from which he had suffered, and the Bishop's own statement that some of his past actions were due to "a high state of nervous excitement, arising either from bodily disease or a constitutional infirmity," as well as his belief that he later attained "a more healthy condition of mind and body." In the American Church Review, of April, 1853, was a long account of the Bishop's various inconsistencies be- fore he took final leave of the Church. The editor of that peri- odical expressed the opinion that Bishop Ives was mentally unbalanced, this opinion being based not only upon the Bishop's own actions, but upon the fact that the affection was hereditary in his branch of the Ives family. After stating that the Bishop's own father had drowned himself in a fit of insanity, that one of his father's sisters had been violently insane at times, and other members of the family more or less affected, the editor submitted his article to the inspection of Bishop Ives's own brother (then holding the office of Probate Judge in Walling- ford, Connecticut), and the latter gentleman authorized the publication, along with the article, of a statement from himself as follows :
WALLINGFORD, CONN., Feb. 25th, 1853. To the REV. MR. RICHARDSON,
Editor of the Church Review.
SIR: The statements which you have read to me, and which you propose to publish, of a constitutional tendency to mental derange- ment in my father's family, and also of certain facts in proof of such a tendency, I have no hesitation in saying are fully sustained by my own personal knowledge; nor have I any doubts that the conduct of
لغة القسـ
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Bishop Ives, in his late defection to Rome, must be attributed, at least in part, to that same cause, viz. : a hereditary tendency to men- tal derangement, aggravated by disease and by great excitement.
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
EBENEZER H. IVES.
How long Doctor Ives remained in Rome we are unable to say with certainty .. He was there in February, 1854. Later in the same year he published a volume entitled The Trials of a Mind in its Progress to Catholicism. After much argument and many citations to justify the course he had pursued, Doctor Ives says in the conclusion of this work :
"The last year and a half of my episcopate was, I can truly say, the most trying, the most painful period of my life, although one of apparent quietness, official success, and restored confidence. After the immediate effects of my convention in the Spring of 1851 (which, as you will remember, resulted in a reconciliation between myself and the disaffected part of my Diocese) had passed off, and my mind, no longer pressed down by a weight of sore trial, had time to react, it came up at once, and, to my own surprise, to its former level of Catho- lic belief; indeed, it was like waking from a pleasant dream to a frightful reality. I had actually flattered myself into the belief that my doubts had left me, and that I could henceforward act with a quiet conscience on Protestant ground. But, on recovering from the stupefaction of overmuch sorrow, I found myself fearfully deceived ; found that what I had taken for permanent relief of mind was only the momentary insensibility of opiates or exhaustion. When I came again to myself, however, I was visited with reflections which no man need envy. The concessions I had made, in good faith at the time, for the peace of the Church, and, as I had falsely supposed, for my own peace, rose up before me as so many concessions, and cowardly ones too, to the god of this world. So that I can say, with the deepest truth, that the friendliness which greeted me, on my subsequent visi- tation through my diocese, was most unwelcome to my heart. Every kind word of those who had spoken against the truth seemed a rebuke to me, every warm shake of the hand to fall like ice upon my soul. I felt that I had shrunk publicly from the consequences of that truth which God had taught me-felt that I had denied that blessed Master who had graciously revealed Himself to me. But blessed be His name for that grace which moved me to 'weep bitterly.' Persecution for Christ's sake would then have been balm to my wounded conscience. And nothing, I think, but the precarious state of one whom I had vowed to 'keep in sickness as well as health' prevented an earlier avowal of my disquietude and an earlier abandonment of my diocese.
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"For all this suffering, however, God forbid that I should blame any one but myself. Others may have acted according to their con- scientious convictions ; I resisted mine, and on grounds that would not bear the test of calm reflection, and how much less the light of Eternity ! I ought to have known myself better ; ought to have known the way of God's grace and truth better.
"And now, dear brethren, I have only to add, take warning by my sufferings ; take courage by my blessings; take example from Him 'who endureth the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God.' The scenes of earth will soon be past, and we shall then feel the true force of our Lord's words, 'He that forsaketh not all that he hath cannot be my disciple.'
"I have loved you well; I have labored for you earnestly ; and now I feel it to be a privilege, too great for human tongue to express, to be able each day to plead in your behalf the sacrifice of a present God and Savior ; yea, to plead that He may ere long, through the riches of His own mercy and the power of His condescending love, make you partakers of the new and unutterable joy which I now feel, when I declare before God that 'I BELIEVE ONE CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH.'"
The death of ex-Bishop Ives occurred in the town of Man- hattanville, New York, on the 13th day of October, 1867. An obituary notice in the New York Herald, re-printed in a Raleigh paper, the Daily Sentinel, several days later (October 18th), says of the closing years of his life:
"After his return to America [from the city of Rome], he became Professor of Rhetoric in St. Joseph Theological Seminary, and lec- tured in the contents of the Sacred Heart and the Sisters of Charity. He also occasionally lectured in public, and served as an active Presi- dent of a Conference of St. Vincent de Paul. About ten years ago he conceived the idea of founding a home in this city for vagrant and orphan children of Catholic parentage; and, having obtained the approval of Archbishop Hughes, set energetically to work to carry out his design. The result of his philanthropic labors was the estab- lishment of the Catholic Male Protectorate and the House of the Holy Angels, two of the most deserving charitable institutions of this State. They were first located in New York, but were afterwards removed to Westchester County, where they are now in operation. Both were under the charge and direction of the Society for the Protection of Destitute Catholic Children, of which the deceased was President from its incorporation till his death. Dr. Ives was a very able gentle. man and eloquent speaker, and his death will be much lamented by our Catholic community and by the public in general."
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About the year 1844, the Reverend Aldert Smedes, D.D., Rector of Saint Mary's School at Raleigh, engaged William Hart to paint a full-length portrait of Bishop Ives. This por- trait (which still hangs in the parlor at Saint Mary's) repre- sents him in the act of administering the rite of confirmation to a class of four girls. Another oil portrait of Ives is in the Catholic Protectory at Westchester, New York. A very hand- some engraving of the Bishop, as he appeared in his younger days, is in the vestry room of Christ Church at Raleigh; still another engraved likeness (much smaller) was made after he renounced Anglicanism, it being labeled "Rt. Rev. L. S. Ives, Ex-Bishop of N. Carolina." The picture last mentioned is reproduced in Bishop Perry's History of the American Episco- pal Church.
One of the sons of the above-mentioned Doctor Smedes was named Ives Smedes in honor of Bishop Ives, and usually was - called by the playful sobriquet of "Bish," in consequence of being the namesake of a Bishop. He was Adjutant of the Seventh North Carolina Regiment in the Confederate Army and fell mortally wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
Among the published works of Bishop Ives were the follow- ing: Humility a Ministerial Qualification (a commencement address, June 28, 1840, to the students of the General Theologi- cal Seminary), 22 pages, New York, 1840; The Introductory Address of the Historical Society of the University of North Carolina (delivered in the chapel of the University, June 5, 1844), 18 pages, Raleigh, 1844; The Struggle of Sense Against Faith (sermon delivered October 2, 1844, before the General Convention in St. Andrew's Church, Philadelphia), 24 pages, Philadelphia, 1844; The Apostles' Doctrine and Fellowship, 190 pages, New York and Philadelphia, 1844; The Obedience of Faith, 161 pages, New York, 1849; The Trials of a Mind in its Progress to Catholicism, 233 pages, New York, Boston, Montreal and London, 1854. In addition to these works, and possibly others, Bishop Ives was the author of a Catechism and
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a Manual of Devotion, which the present writer (not having seen) cannot describe in detail.
The remains of Ex-Bishop Ives are interred in the grounds of the Catholic Protectory, in Westchester County, New York, where a monument, erected to the memory of himself and his wife, contains the following inscription on the face :
Cineribus et Memoria LEVI SILLIMAN IVES, qui quæ circumspicis auctor instituit fautor fovit gnaviter præses primus rexit vixit an LXXI. Obiit XIII Oct. A. D. MDCCCLXVII.
In pace. .
Curatores grat. anim. posuere.
LEVI SILLIMAN IVES.
The other inscriptions are in English, the reverse side of the monument containing these words :
Here repose the remains of L. SILLIMAN IVES, The zealous advocate and first President of the Society for the Protection of Destitute Catholic Children. In obedience to his dying request his body is interred near the children to whose welfare he devoted the last hours of his life.
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His many sacrifices in his Master's service are too well known to need a special record here. May he rest in peace.
On the left side of the tomb this record appears :
LEVI SILLIMAN IVES, LL.D., Born in Meriden, Conn., September 16, 1797. Was Bishop of the Episcopal Church in North Carolina for 21 years. Was received into the Holy Roman Catholic Church in the City of Rome, in the year 1852.
The death of Mrs. Ives occurred a little over four years before that of her husband, and on his monument are inscribed the following lines in memory of her :
REBECCA HOBART, beloved wife of LEVI SILLIMAN IVES. Born, February 6, 1803. Died, August 3, 1863. Was received into the H. R. C. Church in the City of Rome, in the year 1853.
Judged by the results of his ministry, Bishop Ives should always be remembered with kindness by members of the Episco- pal Church. ITis labors brought hundreds into that church ; and, when he left it, two women went with him-one his wife, and the other a temporary convert who afterwards came back to the communion she had left, after spending a while with the Baptists on the way.
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In view of the fact that it was not intended for humor, one of the most amusing passages which the present writer has ever seen in print is an account of the defection of Bishop Ives in a Roman Catholic history entitled Catholicity in the Caro- linas and Georgia, by the Reverend J. J. O'Connell, O.S.B. That work gravely states: "The return of Dr. Ives to the Church was the most stunning blow that Protestantism ever received in America. The manly step unsettled the faith of many, if they had any. The institution never recovered from the shock; it was the prophecy of its dissolution. When a man of Dr. Ives's social standing, conceded abilities, blameless life and learning, the pride of the aristocratic Anglican Church and the foremost man among its hierarchy, laid down the in- signia of a usurped office at the feet of the successor of St. Peter, a blow was dealt at the head of the decaying fabric that felled it to the ground like the idol in the temple of the Philis- tines." Overlooking the reference to the Anglican Church as a "decaying fabric" (as such language is hardly worth noticing) one may well stand appalled at "the most stunning blow that Protestantism ever received in America" when Bishop Ives "unsettled the faith of many" by carrying under his leadership to the Church of Rome a vast multitude consisting of his wife and Mrs. Dickens, the latter half of which aforementioned multitude afterwards returned to the Church which she had left.
Though unable to make the Pope an offering in the shape of converts, Bishop Ives seemed determined not to take leave of the Vatican without depositing therein some memorial of his sub- mission to papal authority ; so he presented to the Holy Father en episcopal signet-ring and his surplice. These relics of the former Bishop are still proudly preserved in Rome, to keep in remembrance the return, to the true fold, of a wanderer from the flock of Saint Peter.
In conclusion we may say that out of the defection of Bishop Ives there grew indirectly one of the greatest blessings which
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ever came to the Diocese of North Carolina-in fact, to the whole American Church-for to his vacated chair was elected Thomas Atkinson, the best beloved Bishop who ever presided over the Church in North Carolina, and to whom the Church throughout the nation largely owes the fact that it was not rent in twain by the sectional controversies which grew out of the War between the States. When Bishop Atkinson had reached the age of sixty-five, and the Diocese of North Carolina had so grown under his wise and benign leadership as to require the aid of an Assistant Bishop in carrying on his good work, the Reverend Doctor Lyman was chosen for that purpose in 1873; and, at his consecration, a sermon was preached by the Right Reverend Henry Champlin Lay, Bishop of Easton, who (during the course of his remarks) referred to Bishop Ives in terms with which we may well close this sketch: "He departed, but without a following, and the Diocese rallied from the blow; and, to its honor, gave its undiminished confidence to his suc- cessor in the deserted chair. None has a word or thought of bitterness as he thinks of the stranger grave where now repose the relics of one whom North Carolina would once have duti- fully enshrined-the bones of the man of God still honored for many a 'saying which he cried in the word of the Lord,' in his best days, against sin and folly. We respect 'the trials of a mind,' disordered, we know not how much, in its hidden ma- chinery. We forgive the attempted injury, and his good we bury not with his bones."
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Bishop Atkinson.
THOMAS ATKINSON THIRD BISHOP OF NORTH CAROLINA
THOMAS ATKINSON,
THIRD BISHOP OF NORTH CAROLINA.
The family of Atkinson-itself one of distinction, and con- nected by blood and marriage with many of the South's best people in this and past generations-had its origin in the shire of Cumberland on the northern border of England. There was born Roger Atkinson, who left his native country and settled in Virginia about the year 1745. In 1762, when Petersburg was enlarged, he was one of the commissioners of that town. For many years he served as magistrate, then a post of high honor and dignity. He also filled with fidelity and zeal the posi- tion of vestryman of Bristol Parish from December 8, 1760, until his resignation on November 1, 1784. It is an interesting coincidence that he was elected vestryman to succeed Hugh Miller, maternal grand-father of Bishop Ravenscroft. The Atkinson family's principal place of worship was Blandford Church, at Petersburg, one of the most historic religious edifices in the Old Dominion. To Roger Atkinson personally, Bishop Meade refers as "an old vestryman and staunch friend of the Church." Another writer tells us that Roger Atkinson was a member of the first Revolutionary convention, held in May, 1769, at the house of Anthony Hay, in Williamsburg, Vir- ginia; and, a year later, was one of the eighty-eight patriotic gentlemen who signed the non-importation agreement at the Raleigh Tavern in that town. The Atkinson estate was called Mansfield, and it was located in the county of Dinwiddie, not far from Petersburg, the county-seat. On April 21, 1753, Roger Atkinson was married to Anne Pleasants (a lady whose parents were members of the Society of Friends), and to this union were born six children. One of these, Robert Atkinson, was born on the 23d of October, 1771, and married Mary Tabb Mayo, a member of one of Virginia's old colonial families. He was the father of eleven children, one of whom was the
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Right Reverend Thomas Atkinson, our present subject. Allud- ing to the family of Bishop Atkinson, in a memorial sermon delivered shortly after his death, Bishop Lay said :
"His parents were Church of England people : they lived and died in our communion. But in their day the Church was at its lowest point of coldness and indifference. There were some able and earnest men of the Presbyterian Church, especially Dr. John H. Rice and Dr. Benjamin H. Rice, who labored with much success in Southern Virginia in awakening men to religious earnestness. The Atkinsons, while they adhered to the parish church, and there frequented the Holy Communion three times a year, came under the influence of these ministers, and were largely guided by them in their spiritual life. Bishop Atkinson was baptized in the Episcopal Church: some of the children, later born, received baptism at the hands of Presby. terian ministers, and thus the family became divided. The Bishop and two of his brothers remained in the Church of their fathers: while three of the brothers, of whom two survive, took Presbyterian orders, and have been beloved and efficient ministers in that com- munion. The sisters are divided in like manner in their ecclesiastical relations. . . It could not but be a pain and grief to all mem- bers of the family that, in anything which effected their religious life, there should be difference of opinion. But no shadow ever came, by reason of such difference, over the peace and happiness of their homes. I doubt whether in all the land could be found a large family of brothers and sisters so devoted to each other, so delighting in each other's company, so sympathizing in each other's joys and sorrows, so ready to seek fraternal advice, so free to utter all their minds on all subjects at each other's fireside, kindly and courteously but without reserve."
The Presbyterian clergymen, to whom Bishop Lay refers in the above-quoted extract as brothers of Bishop Atkinson, were the Reverend William Mayo Atkinson, the Reverend John Mayo Pleasants Atkinson (President of Hampden-Sidney Col- lege, who commanded a detachment of his students in the Con- federate Army), and the Reverend Joseph Mayo Atkinson. The last named gentleman settled in North Carolina and spent his closing years in Raleigh, where he was greatly beloved and ven- erated. Lucy Fitzhugh Atkinson, sister of the Bishop, married the Reverend Chuchill J. Gibson, D.D., and was mother of the Right Reverend Robert Atkinson Gibson, Bishop of Virginia.
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The above-mentioned Bishop Lay was closely connected by marriage with Bishop Atkinson, having married his niece, Elizabeth Withers Atkinson, daughter of Roger B. Atkinson.
For a genealogy of the Atkinson family, more in detail than the limits of the present sketch will allow, we refer the reader to a work by the Reverend Philip Slaughter, entitled A History of Bristol Parish.
The Right Reverend THOMAS ATKINSON, D. D., LL. D. (Cantab.), third Bishop of North Carolina and fifty-eighth in the succession of the American Episcopate, was born on his father's estate, Mansfield, near Petersburg, in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, on the 6th of August, 1807. After due prepa- ration in local schools he became a student at Yale. While at this institution a number of his college-mates, indulging in boyish dissipation, went on a spree; and, becoming boisterous, raised some disturbance, though no mischief of a serious nature was perpetrated. Young Atkinson was not connected with this outbreak in any way, though all of the participants therein were known to him. On being summoned before the faculty, he was ordered to divulge their names, and this he respectfully but firmly refused to do, saying he did not deem it consistent with honor to act the part of a spy or informer. He was then given his choice between making known the names of the of- fenders or leaving college. He chose the latter alternative -- which, it may be added, met with the entire approbation of his parents. Late in life, while referring to the matter, Bishop Atkinson said he had never seen cause to regret the action he took on that occasion.
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