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 9
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mitted to them has been conducted in the method prescribed by the Church. Daily prayer is said, with daily examinations in Holy Scripture; fasts and festivals are duly observed, with ser- mons and catechizing on Sundays. All the services are cheer- fully attended by the boys, and, we believe, with much advan- tage." After serving as Rector of Trinity School for about a year, the Reverend Mr. Hubbard left that institution in-1849 to accept a professorship in the University of North Carolina, and the Reverend P. Teller Babbitt succeeded him in his former post. In 1851, the Reverend Mr. Babbitt reported that there were nineteen students at Trinity. He removed in the following year to Florida. With his departure, the brief existence of Trinity School came to an end.
It was in 1844-'45 that Bishop Ives first began to take steps toward the establishment of a mountain mission in Watauga County at a place which he named Valle Crucis. This was a noble conception for the spread of religion and education throughout the mountainous section of the Diocese, theretofore a much neglected field; and, had he confined his religious views strictly to the teachings of the Holy Scriptures and Book of Common Prayer, the undertaking might have met with more success. Even with its early record, whereby it lost the confi- dence of the Church for a time, much good has been accom- plished there. In his address to the Convention of 1844, Bishop Ives alluded to the mountainous section of the State, saying : "Here the destitute begin to perceive and appreciate the eminent appropriateness of our Liturgy to their condition. In many instances they have confessed to me, with tears of gratitude, that its use among them has opened to their minds sources of knowl- edge inconceivableater than anything which they had before enjoyed. Persons, unable to read, have given as a reason for becoming Episcopalians that so much of the Bible is read to them in our services. Our chants, too, have found special favor with them. Through the whole extent of my last visitation in the mountain district, I was accompanied by three of my
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younger clergy, who were sufficiently skilled in chanting to enable them to chant the portions of our service usually per- formed in this way. The effect was in the highest degree favor- able, and the desire of the people to be instructed in this kind of music importunate." Later the Bishop was able to announce that while he was in Watauga Valley (August, 1844), a farm had been purchased and contracts awarded for the erection of buildings for a missionary station. Of this farm tract, one hun- dred acres were under cultivation when the land was purchased. A small grist-mill and tannery were already on the place. The first buildings erected under the auspices of Bishop Ives were a saw-mill, a log kitchen and dining-room, a log dwelling contain- ing four rooms, and a frame building (sixty by twenty feet) with a room at each end for teachers, together with a large hall for school purposes in the centre, all on the ground floor. Over the whole, was a dormitory for boys: All these buildings, said the Bishop, would be ready for use by June, 1845. The objects of the Valle Crusis mission, as set forth by Bishop Ives to the Convention of 1845, were as follows: to extend the gospel throughout a territory, thirty or forty miles in every direction, to a religiously destitute people; to give rudimentary instruction to poor children of the immediate neighborhood on terms which · their parents could afford; to receive into the institution young men of talent from the surrounding country, on condition that they should serve as teachers and catechists for a certain time after graduation, under the direction of the authorities of the mission ; to train boys of talent and merit for either the ministry or subordinate services to the Church; to give theological train- ing to candidates for holy orders; to conduct a general school, both classical and agricultural; and to maintain a model farm, both as an aid in supporting the mission and as a means of instructing the surrounding population in improved agriculture. This was the first school in North Carolina where practical agri- culture was taught. The farm work was under the direction of a young agriculturist from the State of New York. In 1846,
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much progress was reported at Valle Crusis. Several of the old mills had been replaced with new and improved buildings for the same uses, and a large barn and blacksmith shop had been added, besides other houses. In the classical and agricultural school, twenty-eight pupils had received instruction during the year, nine of these being given instruction and board free of charge. There were also seven candidates for holy orders re- siding there. Upon receipt of this report for 1847, the Com- mittee on the State of the Church, through its chairman, the Reverend Robert Brent Drane, of Wilmington, reported that it deeply sympathized with the Bishop in his wishes, and agreed with him in the expectation of its ultimately becoming a noble and permanent nursery of the Church. In 1846 the Valle Crusis mission suffered a severe blow in the death of its first Rector, , the Reverend William Thurston. Of that faithful servant of God, Bishop Ives "wrote: "As a friend, a presbyter, the Rector of the School at Valle Crusis, and my associate in that self- sacrificing enterprise, his simplicity, and guilelessness, and fidel- ity, and unflinching toil, had not only endeared him to my heart, but also made his loss a severe trial to my faith in the important work (to which I felt myself so urgently called) of spreading the light of life through our mountain wilds." After the death of the Reverend Mr. Thurston, the Reverend Henry H. Prout became head of the mission and the Reverend Jarvis Buxton (son of the Reverend Jarvis B. Buxton) had charge of the school. In time, the Reverend William Glenney French suc- ceeded Mr. Prout as head of the mission. In addition to those already mentioned in connection with Valle Crusis, quite a num- ber of others lived there, at one time or another, who were either then in the sacred ministry or later took holy orders. Among these may be mentioned William R. Gries, William Passmore, George Patterson, Frederick Fitz Gerald, Joseph W. Murphy, Richard Wainwright Barber, Charles T. Bland, William West Skiles, and Thomas F. Davis, Jr. There were probably others also. In the report of the Committee on the State of the Church,
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for 1848, we find the announcement: "It is understood that the religious house at Valle Crusis will henceforth devote its ener- gies to the instruction of candidates, or those who desire to be- come candidates, for holy orders. The importance of this insti- tution to the Diocese is immense, as the nursery of a future min- istry. It appears to possess peculiar advantages for this work, 'not only in the retirement, for the time being, of its students from the distractions of society, and the hardy and useful dis- cipline to which they are inured, but also in the great economy with which the work can be conducted-your Committee being informed that $50 apiece, per annum, may be made to cover all necessary expenses, except those for clothing." By 1849 the mis- sion at Valle Crusis had begun to drift away from the teachings of the Church, and was fast becoming a feeble and undignified imitation of the monastic institutions of the Church of Rome. In October of that year, under the pseudonym of "A Layman of the Protestant Episcopal Church in North Carolina," United States Senator George E. Badger issued a small booklet entitled An Examination of the Doctrines Declared and Powers Claimed by the Right Reverend Bishop Ives, and in this he said:
" He [Bishop Ives] has instituted at Valle Crusis a monastic order. a society within the church, composed of persons bound to him by a vow of celibacy, poverty, and obedience, the form of which the Bishop does not give us in his Pastoral, though he sets out the objects of the society and the duties of the order. He has given to the members as their peculiar dress, 'a black cassock, extending from the throat to the ankles,' answering to that worn by members of the Romish Order of Jesus. Ile allows to be placed on the altar a pyx, in which are reserved the remaining consecrated elements after a communion, a practice used in the Romish Church, but disallowed and forbidden by ours. Again : there is used at Valle Crusis, with the approbation of the Bishop, a little manual of devotion, in which, the Bishop says, were some 'expressions' which, upon being objected to, were by him promptly altered. Now, these 'expressions' were prayers to the Virgin Mary and the Saints; and these prayers the Bishop does not deem wrong in principle, for, in a letter to one of his presbyters, he says: 'I feel bound. however, to say, that while I allow no prayers to the Virgin Mary and Saints, it is not because they are wrong in them- selves, but because they are liable to abuse.'"
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In connection with the Valle Crusis mission it is but just to the clergymen there stationed under Bishop Ives to add that when he abandoned his Church a few years later, not one fol- lowed his example. Their vow of "obedience" did not carry them that far. After the defection of its founder, the above mis- sion was almost deserted for nearly half a century, though the Reverend William West Skiles faithfully labored as a mission- ary in that vicinity until his death, December 8, 1862. The work there was revived, many years later, chiefly through the instrumentality of Bishop Cheshire; but it is at present situ- ated within the Missionary Jurisdiction of Asheville, under Bishop Horner-an enthusiast on religious education-and is now daily doing the work for which it was originally founded. An interesting account of the early work at Valle Crusis, by Mrs. H. H. Prout, will be found in the Messenger of Hope for February, 1909.
It was in the Winter of 1848-'49 that the religious practices of Bishop Ives began to be at variance with the Church in which he held office; but, time and again, he made point-blank denials when charged with fostering doctrines which he after- wards admitted to have held "for years" before he openly pro- fessed himself a Roman Catholic. In the early Spring of 1848 he had been prostrated by a dangerous attack of fever, and for many weeks he was confined to his bed at the home of Josiah Collins, of Edenton. This illness prevented his at- tendance upon the Diocesan Convention which assembled in Wilmington during the month of May, and he spent the Sum- mer recuperating, not being able (as he tells us in his journal) to resume his duties until the first of the following September. Among the papers submitted to a committee which effected a temporary reconciliation between the Bishop and his Diocese in 1850-'51 (after his retraction or denial of all past teachings not authorized by his Church) was a letter from an Edenton physician, Doctor Matthew Page, tending to show that the above-mentioned attack of fever had to some extent affected
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the Bishop's mind. To the same effect was other testimony. including that of Mr. Collins, at whose home the Bishop's il !- ness had occurred. Said the committee's report to the Diocesan Convention of 1851: "In addition to Dr. Page's letter, they [the committee] have before them statements tending to show that the Bishop has for several years past been in a state of mental excitement which has impaired his memory and rendered quite uncertain the determinations of his judgment. An oral statement, quite in detail, but which the Committee have no: had time to reduce to writing, was also made by Josiah Col- lins, Esq., to show that the Bishop's mind has been, for several years past, from an attack of fever, singularly affected, so as to impair his judgment and enfeeble his memory, while other powers of the mind have been rather exalted-a state of mind well calculated to mislead its subject, and at the same time to expose him to gross misconceptions on the part of others." Accompanying this report-indeed a part of it-was a signed statement by the Bishop, retracting about every religious dogma he had ever advocated which was not sustained by the teachings of the Episcopal Church. Later reference will be made to this paper. The denials and retractions by Bishop Ives of facts, which he afterwards admitted to have been true, began in 1848 and ended in December, 1852, when he openly avowed his conversion to the Church of Rome. Had he made no concealment of his change of mind at the time it first took place, openly embracing the faith of his new choice, instead of attempting to establish usages in the Church which were altogether repugnant to its laws-laws he was pledged as Bisher to support-it would have been far better than was the vacillat- ing course he pursued during the last four years of his Episco- pate. He had as perfect a right to leave the Episcopal Church as he had formerly had to enter it when he aban- doned Presbyterianism in his youth; indeed, it was not only a right but a duty, under the existing circumstances. Had he lived at a later period he might have profited by the advice of
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the great Bishop of Alabama, Richard Hooker Wilmer, who said: "If you don't like the 'Reformed Church' the 'unre- formed' Church has its doors open to receive you. Go home ! In the name of truth, sincerity and decency, so far as in you lies, be what you purport to be. Use the language of the Bible, and of your mother the Church, and speak not in dubious and long since discarded phraseology of 'masses,' etc."
We shall now give a detailed account of the various stages of controversy through which Bishop Ives and the Church passed between the years 1848 and 1852. As has already been stated, after some months spent in recuperating from the fever, he had sufficiently recovered by September, 1848, to resume his duties. Following that time, vague rumors were afloat as to practices authorized and advocated by him, especially at Valle Crusis. By the time winter had passed and the month for holding the Diocesan Convention had arrived (May, 1849), the Committee on the State of the Church reported to that conven- tion, in part, as follows: "While the Committee find much cause of thankfulness to God for these manifestations of the Church's increase, they deplore the existence among its mem- bers of great agitation and alarm, arising from the impression that doctrines have been preached not in accordance with the Liturgy and Articles of this Church, and that ceremonies and practices have been introduced, either unauthorized by the cus- toms of this Church or in plain violation of its rubrics." The Bishop was confined to his bed by sickness when this committee made its report, but lost no time in sending to the Convention a written communication, which was read before that body by the Reverend Cameron F. McRae, as follows :
BRETHREN OF THE CLERGY : In the report on the State of the Church. made by- members of your order, reference is made to excitement in the Diocese, growing out of the idea that doctrines are promulged and practices encouraged among us, more or less repugnant to the author- ized doctrines and usages of our branch of the Church, As these doc- trines and practices are not specified, your Bishop can address you only in general terms. But he does, by way of charge, hereby address
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you and authorize you, when you return to your several parishes, to. assure your people that no efforts shall be wanting on his part, so, long as God may give him jurisdiction in North Carolina, to hinder the inculcation of any doctrine or the introduction of any practice -- come from whatever quarter it may-not in strict accordance with the Liturgy of our Church, as illustrated and defined by those stand- ards of interpretation authorized by the Church itself.
In respect to a particular question which has agitated the Diocese of late, the question of auricular confession, I may here express my conviction that the Book of Common Prayer, our standard of Dor- trine, Discipline, and Worship, does not authorize any clergyman of this Church to teach or enforce such confession as necessary to salva- tion ; and that the only confession that it authorizes is the voluntary confession of the penitent in accordance with the exhortation in the office for the Holy Communion.
L. SILLIMAN IVES, Bishop of North Carolina.
This denial was explicit, to- say the least, and peace reigned once more-but only for a while. A few months later (Augus; 8, 1849), while at Valle Crusis, Bishop Ives issued a pastoral letter of eighty pages to the Church in North Carolina, saying. among other things, that the disclaimer on his part, as given above, was dictated from a bed of sickness, his condition not admitting of his "writing or even thinking intensely" (italie- in original), and he now considered it humiliating to have given this unnecessary assurance of his fidelity to "our branch of the one Catholic Church." Of the Convention's right to express its sentiments concerning his teachings he declarei that : "No convention, constituted as our conventions are, has a right to determine what is or should be the faith, or practice under the faith, of a diocese. Whatever man, there- fore, or body of men, take upon themselves the power of di . tation, or control, or, under any form, the chief direction. in regard to the doctrine, discipline and worship of this diocese. or any part of this diocese, are guilty of arrogating power: committed solely to my hands, assuming a trust for which 1 alone am made responsible, and resisting the authority of Christ and the functions of the Holy Ghost with which I only am invested. They do more than this if they be clergymen ---
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they violate their own solemn vows of fidelity and submission." He also intimates that the clergy of the former Convention deserved to be deposed for the "crime of conspiracy" against a Bishop, as the law was given for such cases by the eighteenth canon of the Council of Chalcedon. In the course of this pas- toral Bishop Ives refers to the clerical body under him at Valle Crusis, the "Order of the Holy Cross," and sets forth extracts from the constitution of that organization. There was another clerical order, in New York-probably the "Ecclesi- ologists," though he does not so designate it-whose members, he said, had come to him, after the General Convention of 1847, for Episcopal guidance, wishing to be transferred to North Carolina. To these youthful clergymen he had said in substance: "Young gentlemen, if you come to me as faithful sons of our branch of the Church, asking my spiritual counsel and guidance, I will receive you, and do all in my power to encourage and strengthen your Catholic views and desires, so far as they are in agreement with our Liturgy, fairly interpreted by the Creeds and Councils of the primitive Church. But if you have any views beyond our Church, and hope to be counte- nanced in them by me, I must, at once, undeceive you by de- clining any further interview." The Bishop adds: "They all declared their fidelity to our branch of the Church, and I con- sented to receive them :?? Bishop Ives dwells, in this pastoral, upon the doctrines of auricular confession, private absolution, the "real presence" in the Eucharist (some months later denying that he meant transubstantiation thereby), prayers for the dead and invocation to saints-all of which practices he ap- proves, fortifying his assertions with various authorities. Though he lived nearly a score of years longer, the Bishop thought his earthly carcer was drawing to a close when this letter was written for, in the course of it, he said: "This is my last address to a convention of this Diocese-of which, frequently recurring disease gives timely notice."
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The doctrines declared and powers claimed by Bishop Ives, in the above pastoral, brought forth a shower of pamphlets in reply. Mention has already been made of Senator Badger's monograph. Another, entitled Auricular Confession, was put forth by the Reverend Francis L. Hawks, D.D., who wrote under the pseudonym of "A Protestant Episcopalian," and who incidentally mentioned that he had studied for holy orders under Bishop Ravenscroft, whom Ives had cited in support of some of his contentions. Doctor Hawks said that he knew from Ravenscroft's own lips that he held in abhorrence the Romish contentions as to transubstantiation, auricular confession, etc. The learned divine and historiographer, Reverend Samuel Farmer Jarvis, D.D., "with the approbation of the Bishop of Connecticut," also answered in a pamphlet called A Voice from Connecticut. The Reverend John H. Hanson, of Weddington, New York, issued a tract called The Doctrine of Repentance, in which he took issue with Bishop Ives. Another brief work, Puseyite Developments or Notices of the New York Ecclesiolo- gists, by a layman, was published about the society of "Ecclesi- ologists" and "dedicated to their patron, the Right Rev. Bishop Ives, of North Carolina." The Reverend Richard Sharpe Mason, D.D., Rector of Christ Church in Raleigh, who had been chairman of the Committee on the State of the Church, on whose report the Convention at Salisbury had acted, also went into print with A Letter to the Bishop of North Carolina, in which-after defending the Convention's course, and exposing the past inconsistencies of Bishop Ives, and his numerous eva- sions-he begged him to be more open in future dealings with his Diocese. "Let me beseech you," he said, "to remove, if possible, our doubts and difficulties; to speak so clearly and fully that hereafter we cannot mistake you." Senator Badger prefaced his remarks by saying :
"If the Protestant Episcopal Church be, as its enemies have often said, but a disguised form of Romanism; if our Bishop be alone responsible for the doctrine, discipline, and worship of his diocese.
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and therefore should have sole authority over what he is alone responsible for ; if he have, as a consequence of this authority and responsibility, a right to require from his diocese implicit submission to any doctrine he may think proper to teach-a right to introduce amongst us ceremonies and practices not only unknown here, not only unknown throughout the Church in the United States, but 'wholly unauthorized by the customs of the church as established by the English reformation'; if the clergy and laity, assembled in diocesan convention, have nothing to do with the doctrines thus taught and the practices thus introduced-can institute no inquiry, and can ex- press no opinion respecting them; if he may set forth at one time teachings different from and opposed to the teachings set forth by him at another, and the members of the church must follow all his fluctuations of doctrine even as the obedient vane follows the shift- ings of the wind; if, in one word, our Bishop be within his diocese a spiritual lord and master over God's heritage, and have papal suprem- acy over us, then it is high time that our actual state and condition should be known; and, if these things be not so, then it is high time that the church at large should be disabused, and we vindicated from the suspicion of admitting such exorbitant claims, and bowing down in such degrading submission,"
In addition to the above pamphlets, one was published in New York to uphold the views set forth by Bishop Ives, this being entitled The Voice of the Anglican Church on Confession, and it was said that the Bishop himself had a hand in its prepa- ration. To this came a reply called The Voice of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States on Confession. This reply, speaking of the first mentioned publication, stated: "One of the Bishops of our Church is reputed to be the editor, and it is said to be the precursor of several discourses which are soon to emanate from the same quarter in favor of Auricular Con- fession."
In a case of differences in opinion it is somewhere written: "Let's quarrel about these matters; it will make us better friends, seeing that we shall know each other's thoughts and rights." And even so it seemed, after Bishop Ives had relieved his feel- ings in his pastoral letter, and after his opponents had relieved theirs through the numerous pamphlets above alluded to; for, when the Diocesan Convention of North Carolina met in Eliza- beth City, May 29-June 3, 1850, the Bishop, in his address, VIII
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