USA > New Jersey > Memorial of the centennial of the organization of the church in the state of New Jersey > Part 2
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* "Such are the defects of duty, love, esteem, and union mutually between ministers and people, that it can be truly said they have preachers rather than pastors in these parts."-Virginia Hist. Collections, p. 332. " The gentlemen of the General Assembly are averse from doing anything for the encouragement of the clergy," p. 310.
+ Wilberforce, ch. iv. : " The lack of clergy led to the general employ- ment of lay-readers, and it happened frequently that the benefice was kept unfilled in order to prolong the more acceptable services of the unordained reader."
# Anderson's History of the Church in the Colonies, vol. ii., p. 351.
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thirds of the preachers are the leaden lay priests of the ves- tries' ordination, and are both a shame and a grief to the rightly-ordained clergy."
As the social condition of the provinces became more settled and orderly, many of these evils were greatly dimin- ished, but their influence continued to affect those portions of the Church where they had prevailed, more or less strongly, throughout the entire colonial period.
We have seen that the churches in the northern provinces were utterly unlike those of the south in their external rela- tions ; this was accompanied by an equally marked difference in their internal character and tendencies. The clergy in the northern churches had been sent out, and were wholly, or in large part, maintained by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Some of them had come at the request of the small bands of loving Churchmen scattered here and there in the midst of hostile Quakers or Puritans ; others had been appointed as missionaries to portions of the country which were without any religious teaching, and in some instances in almost heathenish spiritual destitution.
The men thus employed were under the immediate eye and control of the society, were in constant relations, by reports and correspondence, with the officers and bishops of the home association, and, from the very necessities of their position, must have been generally such men as were able, both from their character and acquirements, to present the Church in favorable contrast to those around them, else they would not continue long to maintain any place or influence at all in the community. As another consequence also of their position, they were mostly very strong in their churchmanship,
The letters in the Virginia Historical Collections abound with complaints by the clergy of insults, annoyances, and even personal violence from par- ishioners, and sometimes from the governors and other persons high in authority in the colony.
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and regarded the presence and action of a resident bishop as not only a necessity for the unity and effective government of the Church, but as a vitally essential element of its organiza- tion as a branch of the Catholic Church on the American con- tinent.
The province of New Jersey was among the first which came under the influence of the ministers of the Propagation Society, and its condition at the beginning of the eighteenth century shows a lamentable need for the work of their mission- aries. Its people were regarded by the English authorities * as among the most unruly and defiant of royal control of any in the colonies, and they seem to have been equally unre- strained by religion or morality.
Colonel Lewis Morris, afterward governor of the colony, writes of West Jersey to the Bishop of London, in 1700: + " They have a very debaucht youth in that province, and very ignorant ;" and, speaking of Pennsylvania, he says : "The youth of that country are like those of the neighboring prov- ince, very debaucht and ignorant." He reports also of the condition of a more northern part of the colony : # " There is no such thing as church or religion among them ; they are perhaps the mnost ignorant and wicked people in the world." One of the missionaries of the society writes home a couple of years later,§ in 1702, and says : " There is not one Church of England yet in either West or East Jersey, the more is the pity ; and, except in two or three towns, there is no face of any public worship of any sort, but people live very mean,
New Jersey Colonial Documents. Sussex Centennial : Address of. Rev. J. F. Tuttle. Address of Benjamin B. Edsall.
+ Discourse of Rev. J. F. Tuttle at the Sussex Centennial, 1853, p. 80. Another writer " represents them to the home government as being without law and gospel, having neither judge nor priest," p. 77.
# History of Christ Church, Shrewsbury, Journal New Jersey Conven- tion, 1847, p. 39.
§ Memorial of Rev. Mr. Keith, in Rev. Dr. George Morgan Hills' History of the Church in Burlington, p. 19 ..
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like Indians." And a short time after this another missionary reports to the secretary of the society : * " Nova Cæserea, or New Jersey, has been most unhappy ; there is not, nor ever was, an orthodox minister settled among them." "All sorts of heathens and heretics superabound in these parts. Africa has not more monsters than America."
The missionaries above referred to were Rev. George Keith, who was the first + missionary appointed by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the Rev. John Talbot. They began their labors here together in 1702, and were the planters and first master builders of the Church in New Jersey. Mr. Talbot soon became settled in Burlington as its first rector, and on March 25th, 1703, laid the corner-stone, } and commenced the building of the old Church of St. Mary in that town.
He was from the beginning of his work continuously urgent to have a bishop sent out to the colonies, and at length, in his profound conviction of the necessity for some episcopal ministration in this country, he received consecration himself as bishop at the hands of the Non-Jurors § in England. The act was unwise, nor could he ever make any effective use of his office in the colonies ; but in his personal influence and untiring, self-denying work, he has earned the gratitude of the Church in this State for all after-time, and fully merits the praise of the late Dr. Hawks "that the society never had, at least in our view, a more honest, fearless, and laborious mis- sionary." |
Rev. George Keith had been in early life a stanch defender of an orthodox theology among the Quakers, but in 1700 was ordained to the ministry by the Bishop of Lon- don, and by his zeal and indefatigable labors not only es-
* Rev. John Talbot, in Hills' History of the Church in Burlington, p. 54.
+ Hills, p. 20.
¿ Hills' History of the Church in Burlington, pp. 33, 36, 429.
§ Hills, p. 168. Wilberforce, p. 123. Anderson, vol. iii., p. 240.
| Quoted in Hills' History of the Church in Burlington, p. 212.
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tablished the Church in many places in New Jersey, but left with it his impress in that clear and earnest churchmanship which it has continued, through all the varied phases of its history, to retain.
The clergy of the Church in New Jersey thus, under the influence of the Propagation Society and in common with those of all the northern provinces, were zealous for the estab- lishment among them of a colonial or suffragan bishop. And so urgent was the need for one in every portion of the coun- try, that scarcely a packet left America that did not carry out, from both the north and the south, earnest and powerful appeals for the settlement of a bishop, or some provision for the personal exercise of episcopal authority in one or another of the colonies.
It would seem, on a mere statement of the condition and necessities of the colonial churches, that a claim so reasonable, so inherent in the very constitution of the Church, should have been immediately granted ; and yet so complex were the rela- tions and interests of the several parties, that the obstacles in the way of an American episcopate before the independence of the States were practically insuperable ; and, strangely enough, the difficulties came, equally from the mother country and the colonies, from the position of the Churchmen and the feelings of those opposed to the Church.
The American provinces had scarcely begun their history as permanent communities when the feuds of the Long Parlia- ment, followed by the domination of Cromwell, rendered any favor to the Church in the New World utterly hopeless. The Church in England was itself deprived of its place and all its privileges, and the most it could expect in any colony was to be allowed toleration at the pleasure and will of the hostile home government.
After the Restoration Charles II. and James II. were both really Papists, and were persistently opposed to any measures that might enable the Anglican bishops to act more effectively as a restraint upon them. Hence they would not
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even listen to the establishment of an episcopate in the now growing colonies, as its prelates, being farther removed from the royal coercion, might readily become more defiant than even the dissatisfied bishops at home threatened to be.
The sympathies of William of Orange were really more with the Dissenters than with the Church ; the English bishops during his reign-as, in fact, through * the entire colonial period-would very gladly have sent out one or more bishops to the American provinces ; but, bound as they were by the laws of the realm, they had no power whatever to appoint and give jurisdiction to a bishop in any part, either abroad or at home, of the British dominions. This could be done only under an act of the Parliament and approved by the king, and neither king nor Parliament cared to establish an episcopate in the colonies at a time when it was very uncertain if the bulk of the House of Bishops might not cast the weight of their great place and authority on the side of the Stuarts, as a considerable number of them were eventually led to do.
If Queen Anne had lived long enough it is probable she would have endeavored to institute some mode of episcopal supervision over the churches in America. So near did the accomplishment of this purpose seem at one time to be, that a fund to the amount of £4700 was subscribed in England and placed in the hands of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel + for the support of a bishop in the colonies, and the
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* The position and feelings of the English bishops are very fairly rep- resented in a remarkable correspondence of one of the bishops of London with the celebrated Dr. Doddridge on the subject of the oppression of Dis- senters in Virginia. The bishop says, speaking of the condition of the Church in the colonies : " Sure I am that the care of it is improperly lodged ; for a bishop to live at one end of the world and his people at another must make the office of a bishop very uncomfortable to him, and in a great meas- ure useless to the people. And I applied to the king as soon as I was Bishop of London for two or three bishops for the plantations, to reside there, but found so many obstacles that it could not be done."
+ Reply to the plea of Rev. Dr. Chandler, of New Jersey, for a bishop in the colonies, by the Rev. Dr. Chauncy, of Boston, p. 104 ; he gives the
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most elegant and spacious mansion in the northern provinces, described in * the quaint history of that time as "the great and stately palace of John Tateham, at the town of Burling- ton in New Jersey," was purchased, under the direction of the society, and preparations were made by its order to have Burlington become the residence and see of the first Anglican bishop in America.
But even Queen Anne, with all her desire for the welfare of the Church and the extension of its influence throughout the provinces, was so fearful of any kind of independent thinking or acting among the colonists, that in the very in- structions + in which she provides most admirably for the efficiency of the ministry and for the regular services of the Church in New Jersey, she also ordains that, " as great incon- veniences may arise by the liberty of printing in our said province, you are hereby to provide, by all necessary orders, that no person keep any press for printing, nor that any book, pamphlet, or other matter whatsoever be printed without our special leave and license first obtained."
Besides the difficulties we have thus seen in the way of an American episcopate from the "home authorities," on political grounds, there were others equally great in the condi- tions of the colonists. The mass of the people in the northern provinces were Dissenters ; and whatever differences they had among themselves, they were all at one in bitter hostility to any institution that could give vitality and effectiveness to the hated Church of England in the provinces. Not only so, but there was an almost universal distrust and fear of the intro- duction of an English bishop among the laymen of the Church
names and amounts of the contributors to this fund. As stated by him, these were : "Archbishop Tennison, £1000; Sir Jonathan Trelawney, £1000; Lady Elizabeth Hastings, £500; Bishop Butler, £500; Bishop Ben- son, £200 ; Bishop Osbaldaston, £500; and Mr. Fisher, £1000," p. 104. This book of Dr. Chauncey throws much light on the feelings of that time, 1768. * Hills' History, etc., pp. 17, 106, 136.
+ Ibid. p. 26.
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itself. Bishop White said,* in reference to this feeling : " There cannot be produced an instance of laymen in America, unless in the very infancy of the settlements, soliciting the in- troduction of a bishop. It was probably by a great majority of them thought an hazardous experiment." There was at that time practically no conception of a bishop of the Church of England, as we now regard the bishop, as merely the spiritual head and the centre of unity of the Church. He was and had always been in England a high dignitary in the government, living in lordly state, having a special mode of jurisdiction of his own, needing vast incomes and a pompous retinue to maintain his position. The American t mind, of all forms of religious opinion, recoiled from this ; it was wholly alien to all they had come to America to obtain ; and, unfor- tunately, the measures taken or proposed by those who were most urgent for the colonial episcopate seemed greatly to favor the opinion that such was to be the position of a bishop in the provinces. Very early in the history of the settlements Arch- bishop Laud had " desired to send a bishop to New England to coerce the Puritans there to submission to the Church of England for their better government, and to lack him with some force to compel, if he were not able otherwise to per- suade, to obedience." ¿ And the purchase at a later date of the " palace at Burlington," with the provision of a fund,
* Journals of the first fifty years, vol. iii., p. 426. It is certain, how- ever, that such application was made by some of the laymen, as we find Colonel Lewis Morris, of New Jersey, addressing a memorial to the Bishop of London in 1700, asking for the establishment of a bishop in that province (Sussex Centennial, p. 79) ; and Bishop White partially qualifies his own statement in a note : "If there has been any it must have been so few as rather to corroborate than weaken the sentiment conveyed," which is essentially the fact.
+ Chauncy's reply to Chandler, p. 108 : " May we never have a clergy for whom fine seats must be provided and funds established to bring an income suited for a kingdom of this world more than for one which is purely spiritual."
# Anderson's Church in the Colonies, vol. i., p. 401.
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readily magnified far beyond its actual amount, were con- stantly referred to * as certain proof of the high state the ex- pected bishop would assume.
But there were still other objections, and yet more fatal. The only power that could, in the then condition of the law, establish an episcopate in America, was an act of Parliament, and the one point on which well-nigh the whole of the Ameri- can people were a unit was in resisting all claims + of the Parliament to exercise any local authority over the affairs of either State or Church in any of the colonies. Hence the opposition of the people in every section, Churchmen equally with Dissenters, to the sending over a Parliamentary bishop, was strong and openly pronounced. In Virginia, just before the outbreak of the war, a meeting of the clergy was called by the " commissary" to ask for the appointment of a bishop. Only twelve of the whole number -- nearly one hundred- came, and four of these opposed the proposition. The Gen- eral Assembly of the province, on learning their action, although its members were almost entirely Episcopalians, passed a vote of thanks unanimously to the four "for their wise and well-timed opposition to the pernicious project of introducing an American bishop." #
And John Adams says, in reference to this feeling of the
* Chauncy's reply to Chandler, p. 105 : "Such provision must be made for him that he may appear in all the grandeur of a bishop in Eng- land."
+ " Representations were sent to England that nineteen twentieths of the Americans are utterly against sending them a bishop, and even if sent with only spiritual power, would cause more dangerous disturbances than even the Stamp Act itself, so that the ministry would not even give the archbishop any attention about it."-Life of Rev. Dr. Johnson, p. 325.
¿ Wilberforce's History, etc., ch. iv., pp. 129, 130. In 1769 Rev. Mr. Boucher's sermon, quoted in Wilberforce, declared : " Till now the opposi- tion to an American episcopate has been confined chiefly to the demagogues and independents of the New England provinces, but now it is espoused with warmth by the people of Virginia. We see professed Churchmen fight- ing the battles of Dissenters, and our worst enemies are now literally those of our own household."
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people : " The apprehension of episcopacy contributed as much as any other cause to arouse the attention and lead to close thinking on the authority of Parliament over the col- onies ; this was a fact as certain as any other in the history of the country. ... The line of reasoning was : If Parliament can erect dioceses and appoint bishops, they may introduce the whole hierarchy, establish tithes, forbid Dissenters, make schism heresy, and impose penalties extending to life and limb, as well as to liberty and property."
Had there been any adequate political advantage from the establishing of an episcopate in the provinces, the English Government might have disregarded these feelings of the colonists ; but the certainly bad effects of the measure were too dangerous to call for such an additional violence to the convic- tions of the people without any corresponding gain. And the war of the Revolution found the Church of England in America little more than a multitude of separate congregations scattered, in varying proportions, through the several prov- inces, without a common head, without any authoritative discipline, universally distrusted in its political relations by the mass of the people, deprived of the very organization which it had been taught was vital to the continuance of an apostolic Church, and upheld only by the inherent divineness of its principles, the devoted love of the few laymen who still clung to its honored form of worship, and the self-denying services of the handful of its clergy who were willing, from conviction or personal regard for the souls of their little flocks, to cast their lot in with the rebellious colonists, and yield for the time to a separation from the Mother Church of their ordination and their allegiance in the ministry.
So many of the ministers left their parishes, or were driven out by the people in the progress of the war, t that "in many of the northern colonies there was not one church remaining
* Life and Letters of John Adams, vol. x., p. 185.
+ Wilberforce's History, p. 133.
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open. In Pennsylvania one only was left, under the ministry of Dr. White ; Virginia had entered on the war with one hundred and sixty-four churches and chapels and ninety-one clergy ; at its close ninety-five parishes were extinct or for- saken, and only twenty-eight ministers remained within its limits." There were but five left in Massachusetts,* one in New Hampshire ; two lay readers but no clergymen in Rhode Island, and the Rev. Dr. Abraham Beach, the zealous and able rector of Christ Church, New Brunswick, was the only ininister by + whom the regular services of the Church were maintained in either of the provinces of New Jersey.
As we look back to those dark days of weakness and dis- aster, the Church of the nation, as well as the Church in our own State, may well exclaim, " With my staff alone I passed over this Jordan."
Immediately on the conclusion of peace the minds of the clergy in the Church of the several States, in connection with the more prominent laymen, began to inquire into the best mode of providing for the new condition of affairs. The position of the churches in America at this time was in many things wholly unique ; for the first time since the union of the Church with the imperial government under Constantine, a group of independent churches had the possibility, or rather were forced to the necessity, of acting wholly for themselves and of providing the needed requirements, whether to con- tinue as self-governing and independent branches of the Catholic Church in each of the States where they were placed, or to unite in the organization of one common National Church ; but in either case without, on the one hand, a sub- jection to the political supremacy of the State, or, on the other, a claim to the domination of the civil government by the intrusive authority of the Church. They had, besides, to
* Rev. Dr. Parker, in Journals of Fifty Years, vol. iii., p. 58.
+ Sermon by Rev. Dr. Langford before New Jersey Convention, 1884. History of Christ Church, New Brunswick, by Rev. Dr. Stubbs.
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deal with relations of ministers and people, of bishops and their jurisdiction, such as had not been known in any part of Christendom for fifteen hundred years. They were poor and few in number, and with no hope of aid or sympathy from any other portion of the Church elsewhere, or any favor from the " person in authority or the legislative bodies in any of the States." Nor had they any special fitness in their own conditions. They had no training or experience for their new responsibilities ; no Anglican precedents on which to build ; they were unpopular and frequently disliked by the great body of the people in almost every section of the country. And now, when called to the mighty work of laying the foundation of the Church of the future in America, they were, from the previous conditions of their colonial history, radically, and at first it seemed irreconcilably, divided as to the wise or even safe provisions for their permanent organization, whether as self-governing, independent branches of the Church in the several States, or in their union as constituent members of the one Church of the United States.
One of these parties held now, as before the war, that no portion of the Church could, as a fundamental principle, take any formal action, either on questions concerning its liturgy or matters of ecclesiastical organization, without the completion of the apostolic order and the co-operation of a bishop.
The other, still feeling a distrust of an unlimited episco- pal authority, if there were not some adequate restrictions placed upon it in advance, determined that they would first establish such conditions as they deemed advisable, settling the standards of doctrine, ordaining the offices of worship, de- fining what should be the duties, responsibilities, and restraints of the episcopate, and then proceed to obtain a bishop who would come to his position on the basis and under the limita- tions thus prepared for him.
The Church in Connecticut had always held the first of these views, and immediately on the declaration of peace sent
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the Rev. Dr. Seabury to England to obtain for himself there, or elsewhere, the consecration which would enable them to proceed at once, in their permanent organization and work, as a complete and fully authorized branch of the Catholic Church.
There was, however, a very general feeling in the other States that the matter of paramount importance was some mode of bringing the separate churches, at the earliest day possible, into a national unity and co-operation. The senti- ment in New Jersey was cordially at one with the principles of the clergy in Connecticut ; but so urgent seemed the neces- sity of uniting these scattered weak fragments of churches under some common headship of union and action, that the Rev. Dr. Beach, then, as always, wise and far-seeing, was willing for the time to waive the questions of detail, and to endeavor as the matter of first importance to unite the several churches in one common organization, and to obtain the Episcopal succession by their united action, and in a correspondence with Rev. Dr. White, of Philadelphia, he proposed to have a meeting in this parish on May 11th, 1784, which should consider how * " to introduce order and uni- formity in the Church in this country, and provide for a suc- cession in the ministry." And it was in accordance with these suggestions that the meetings of May + and October, 1784, out of which grew both the National and State Primary Con- ventions of 1785, were finally decided on and held.
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