USA > New York > The centennial history of the Protestant Episcopal church in the diocese of New York, 1785-1885 > Part 11
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industrial, has been rapid and demonstrative. Its energies, methods, results, have naturally tended to the surface, and been patent to all eyes. Whatever harvests it has reaped have commanded instant recognition, and have at once been rated at their full value. The latter, on the other hand, be- cause belonging largely to the unseen, the supernatural, has been more gradual and unobtrusive, and every way more dif- ficult to estimate. The popular judgment is never a safe criterion of the scope and momentum of the Church's work. It seeks what it does not find ; it instinctively forgets that a hundred years is one thing for the Nation, and quite another thing for the Kingdom of God. A single generation or even decade, lost to the economies of material wealth and polit- ical development, may be fatal; whereas to the economy of grace it may be only a missing pulse-beat in the wide- sweeping, endless circulation of a Divine organism that counts a thousand years as one day.
In dealing with the growth that with us has multiplied the little one into a thousand, it is not enough to cite statistics, or appeal to outside facts. It is indeed much that we have them abundantly at hand to prove in a tangible way what has been done; but it is of far more moment to be able to show that what growth we have had has consistently embodied and duly exemplified the faith, worship, and discipline which we pro- fess to regard as the glory and strength of our Apostolic and Catholic heritage. It is much that we can point to an increase of nearly 100 per cent. in the last twenty years in our clergy, our confirmations, communicants, contributions, and perma- nent property, and even to a greater advance in the moral and social influence of the Church ; but it is vastly more if we can truly affirm that all this has been accomplished really in Christ's name and in Christ's way. Bulk, numbers, wealth, what the world calls power, are only the shifting, often delu- sive side of progress. Its heart and soul, all that is essen- tially vital in it, are to be found only in loyalty to truth, de- votion to principle, love of souls for whom Christ died, and in the energies which they have awakened and directed. Just this in the main, and stript of its accidents, has been the char-
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acteristic of our growth in the century past. In becoming more catholic, I believe we have not become less evangelical. In learning to encourage and to exercise more liberty of thought and action in all things lawful, we have not learned to value less the claims of all duly constituted authority. In seeking to bring our teaching and work into more effective and intelligent sympathy with all that is best in the spirit of the Nineteenth century, we have not as a whole weakened in our traditional regard for the faith once delivered, nor in our hereditary attachment to the old paths. Nor, still further, have we in our efforts to reconcile Revealed Truth, as em- bodied in the Church's witness, with the advances of modern knowledge, fallen away into temporizing concessions or cow- ardly evasions.
But there is another characteristic of our growth that de- serves mention. In the history of the mother Church there has been one period, one school of thought and work, that towers above every other in sacred learning, ecclesiastical wisdom, and steadfast, intelligent fidelity to the spirit and teaching of the early Church. I refer, need I say, to the men who held sway in the Seventeenth century-men who by what they said and did sounded the battle-cry and marked out the lines to be occupied in after days, and espe- cially in our own in every successful conflict with Rome or Puritanism ; men, I may add, too, who wrought out, as it had not been done before, and as it has not been done since, the principles on which the Church will have to rely again, and perhaps more than ever in the struggles that lie before her. It were idle to call over the roll of those names. They are graven forever on the Church's memory, and are upon the tongues of all who teach, and in the minds of all who study the Catholic faith. Now it is in the mould they cast that our growth on the whole has been shaped, our life built up, our work done; and I say this without forgetting or underrating the contributions made to the Church's progress in this land by other periods or other schools in the past or in our own day. It is our good fortune-nay, it is one proof of the gra- cious over-ruling Providence that has guided our steps-that
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we have been so richly blessed with master-builders, who knew how to adapt the learning and principles of the Seven- teenth century to the circumstances of the Nineteenth. If the Church of England in this age has had her Wordsworth and Hook and Harold Browne, her Wilberforce and Mozley of Oxford, and her Benson of Canterbury, so have we had right among us here the invincible orthodoxy, the resolute energy, the luminous foresight of Hobart, the balanced piety and remarkable practical wisdom of De Lancey, and the strong, clear intellect, the disciplined, carefully massed erudition of Seabury. And how the list might be lengthened from the living as well as the dead who, having wrought wisely and grandly upon the fair temple of our Zion, deserve our grateful remembrance at this hour.
To this source as much as, I think more than any other, is to be traced that deep, strong, always discernible drift in our corporate ecclesiastical life which has fashioned, as with the force and certainty of an instinct, our higher thinking as well as our practical policy. Hence, more than from anywhere else, save the Spirit of God, has arisen, I believe, the influ- ence-I had almost called it the inspiration, the counsel of wisdom, the power of a sound mind-which has kept us in the ways of truth, soberness, and moderation; saved us from dangerous, perhaps fatal aberrations in these times of tumult and upheaval when so much of Christendom has dragged its anchors and floated off into ultramontane corruptions or sec- tarian dilutions of the faith. Our history, then, in the century now closed, has been what it is with most things in it that give us joy to-day because it has reproduced in large measure, and wisely applied under the greatly changed circumstances of this age, the theological and ecclesiastical principles pushed to the front in the Seventeenth century ; and this not because these principles had their birth in that century, or were in any sense its exclusive property, but because they are funda- mental to the faith and order of the Body of Christ in all the ages of its life from first to last.
And now let me speak briefly of the future. The past is of moment to us chiefly as it bears on what we are to be and
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to do. I may not indulge in speculative suggestions or in- quiries, nor outline ideals, nor discuss possibilities, however inspiring may be their contemplation. It is the test of life that it begets more life. It is the quality of work that it creates the demand for more work. It is the characteristic of Christian responsibility that it knows no limit short of the universal spread of the Gospel of Christ and the salvation of all to whom it was sent. And yet the occasion must confine our view to life, work, duty, as they present themselves within the five Dioceses-the mother and the four daugh- ters-represented here to-night.
Keeping in mind the common aim of the Catholic Church, I would speak of what is specially required of us for the furtherance of that aim, and generally, of interests that, for the present, seem to dominate all others in the fields com- mitted to our charge. We want more and better schools for the training of the young-schools that without antagonizing the State will enable us to counteract the perilous tendencies of an exclusively secular training. We want better equipped and more effectively administered institutions for the higher Academic and Theological education. We want more concert of action in promoting a Church literature that shall suitably stimulate and express our best thought and scholarship. We want more wisely planned or more vigorously pushed methods of Church extension and aggressive Missionary activity that shall put us fairly abreast of the increasing multitudes of the indifferent and irreligious. We want a sounder, more intense organic life ; a more sympathetic, compact, energetic fellow- ship among these five Dioceses, that shall help to cure not only the individualism of individuals, or the individualism of parishes, but that still worse disease that seems to be growing upon us-the individualism of the Dioceses themselves, the divinely ordered units and pivots of ecclesiastical progress. I may not discuss generally the ways and means for meeting these wants. It is enough that I allude to one instrumentality now dormant among us, but duly authorized and easily within our reach. I believe the day is upon us when a closer federa- tion and union of these dioceses is demanded. I believe
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that they ought to be drawn together and held together for common work by a more vital bond than now exists, call it Federate Council, or Provincial Council, or anything else you please. We want the reality, whatever name it bears. We want the added force, the greater concentration of motive power, whatever the form it may take. And I believe further that both policy and duty should lead us to encourage this venerable and beloved mother Diocese to take the lead to which she is, on every ground, entitled in a movement of this kind.
Standing now amid the evening shadows of this centennial day, and facing the dawn of another century, God give us the wisdom to be as men of understanding rightly discerning the signs of the times, and with it the grace and strength so to quit ourselves in this our day and generation as that those who shall stand in our places in obedience to a call such as has brought us here to-night, shall be able to say of us that we were not faithless to the heritage entrusted to us, nor al- together unprofitable servants in the vineyard of our Lord and our Christ.
SKETCHES OF THE BISHOPS.
THE FIRST BISHOP OF NEW YORK.
What he undertook was to be admired as glorious ; what he performed, to be commended as profitable ; and wherein he failed is to be excused as pardon- able .- THOMAS FULLER.
SAMUEL PROVOOST, the first Bishop of the Diocese of New York, and the third (possibly the second) of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America-Seabury, of Connecticut, being the first-was born in the city of New York, 26th February, 1742. He was the eldest son of John and Eve Rutgers Pro- voost. His ancestors were Huguenots," who had first settled in New Amsterdam in 1638. Young Provoost was one of the seven graduates of King's, now Columbia College, at its
Varne Provoso
first commencement in 1758, carrying off the honors, although the youngest of his class.t In the summer of 1761 he sailed for England, and in November of the same year entered St. Peter's College, Cambridge. He soon became a favorite with the master, Dr. Edmund Law, afterward Bishop of Carlisle, and the father of Lord Ellenborough, and two English bish- ops. John Provoost being an opulent merchant, his son en- joyed, in addition to a liberal allowance, the advantage of an expensive tutor in the person of Dr. John Jebb, a man of pro- found learning, and a zealous advocate of civil and religious
* Some of the early settlers at Quebec bearing the name Prevost and Provost, were from St. Aubin, in Bretagne, Rouen, in Normandy, and from Paris .- Tan- quay's Dictionaire Généalogique des Familles Canadiennes.
+ His classmates were the Rev. Joshua Bloomer, Judge Isaac Ogden, of the Supreme Court of Canada ; Joseph Reade, of New Jersey, Master in Chancery; Rudolph Ritzema, Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army; Col. Philip Van Cort- landt, of the American Service, and Samuel Verplanck, one of the Governors of King's College.
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liberty, with whom he corresponded till the doctor's death in 1786. In February, 1766, Mr. Provoost was admitted to the order of deacon at the Chapel Royal of St. James Palace, Westminster, by Dr. Richard Terrick, Bishop of London. During the month of March he was ordained at the King's Chapel, Whitehall, by Dr. Edmund Kean, Bishop of Chester. In St. Mary's Church, Cambridge, he married, on June 8th of the same year (1766), Maria, daughter of Thomas Bous- field, a rich Irish banker, residing on his beautiful estate of Lake Lands, near Cork, and the sister of his favorite class- mate .* The young clergyman with his attractive and accom- plished wife sailed in September for New York, and in De- cember he became an assistant minister of Trinity Church, which then embraced St. George's and St. Paul's, the Rev. Samuel Auchmuty, rector, the Rev. John Ogilvie, and the Rev. Charles Inglis, assistant ministers. During the summer of 1769, Mr. and Mrs. Provoost visited Mrs. Bousfield and her son on her estate in Ireland, and spent some months in England, and on the Continent.
Some time previous to the commencement of the Revo- lutionary War, Mr. Provoost's connection with Trinity Church was dissolved.} The reasons assigned for the severance of this connection were, first, that a portion of the congrega- tion charged him with not being sufficiently evangelical in his preaching; and, second, that his patriotic views of the then approaching contest with the mother-country were not in accord with those of a majority of the parish. Before the spring of 1774, Mr. Provoost purchased a small place in Dutchess, now Columbia County, adjacent to the estate of his friends, Walter and Robert Cambridge Livingston, who had been fellow-students with him in the English University,
* Provoost's brother-in-law, Benjamin Bousfield, afterward a member of the Irish Parliament, wrote an able reply to Edmund Burke's celebrated work on the French Revolution, which was published in London in 1791.
Dr. Berrian and other writers are wrong in giving the year 1770 as the date of this event. From endorsements on MS. sermons submitted to the writer, it ap- pears that Provoost was preaching regularly in the parish church and chapels as late as the month of December, 1771. It is probable that the connection was continued beyond this date, possibly as late as the beginning of 1774.
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and removed there with his family. At East Camp, as his rural retreat was called, the patriot preacher occupied him- self with literary pursuits, and with the cultivation of his farm and garden. He was an ardent disciple of the Swedish Lin- næus, and he possessed, for that period, a large and valuable library. Provoost was, perhaps, the earliest of American biblio- philes. Among his beloved books were several magnificent Baskervilles, numerous volumes of sermons, and other writ- ings of English bishops, including the scarce octavo edition of the poems of the eccentric Richard Corbet, of whom Pro- voost related many amusing anecdotes; a rare Venetian illus- trated Dante of 1547; Rapin's England, in five noble folios ; a collection of Americana and Elzeviriana, and not a few incunabula, including a Sweynheym and Pannartz imprint of 1470. These were chiefly purchased while a student at Cambridge, and con- tained his armorial book-plate, with his name engraved, Sam- uel Provost. It was not until 1769 that he adopted the ad- ditional letter which appears in his later book-plate and sig- PRO B natures.
Maverick
While in the en- joyment of his books Sam Provoost. and flowers and farm, and finding happiness in the society of his growing family and his friends, the Livingstons, and far away from "the clangor of resounding arms," Mr. Provoost occasionally filled the pulpits of some of the churches then existing in that part
9
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of the diocese-at Albany, Catskill, Hudson, and Pough- keepsie. At the latter place, he preached the consecra- tion sermon at Christ Church, the Rev. Mr. Beardsley, rec- tor, on Christmas Day, 1774. In the following year, among his literary recreations was the translation of favorite hymns in Latin, French, German, and Italian ; also the preparation of an exhaustive index to the elaborate Historia Plantarum of John Baushin, whom he styles the "prince of botanists" on a fly-leaf of the first volume of this work, purchased while at Cambridge University in 1766. To the year 1776 also belong the passages appended below, which are written on the last leaf of a sermon that would seem to have been delivered in St. Peter's Church, Albany .* In a hitherto unpublished
* In times of impending Calamity and distress, when the liberties of America are imminently endangered by the secret machinations and open assaults of an insidious and vindictive administration, it becomes the indispensable duty of these hitherto free and happy Colonies, with true penitence of heart, and the most reverent Devotion, publicly to acknowledge the over-ruling providence of God; to confess and deplore our offences against him, and to supplicate his inter- position for averting the threaten'd danger, and prospering our strenuous efforts in the Cause of Freedom, Virtue, and Posterity.
The Congress, therefore, considering the warlike preparations of the British ministry to subvert our invaluable rights and privileges, and to reduce us by fire and sword, by the savages of the wilderness, and our own domestics, to the most abject and ignominious Bondage : desirous at the same time to have people of all ranks and degrees, duly impressed with a Solemn sense of God's superintend- ing Providence, and of their duty devoutly to rely, in all their lawful enterprises on his aid and direction : Do earnestly recommend, that friday, the seventeenth Day of May next, be observed by the said Colonies, as a day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer; that we may with united hearts confess and bewail, our mani- fold sins and Transgressions, and by a Sincere repentance and amendment of Life, appease his righteous Displeasure and thro' the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon & forgiveness. Humbly imploring his assist- ance to frustrate the Cruel purposes of our unnatural Enemies; and by inclining their hearts to justice and benevolence, prevent the farther effusion of kindred blood. But if continuing deaf to the voice of reason and humanity, and inflexibly bent on Desolation and war, they constrain us to repel their hostile invasions by open resistance, that it may please the Lord of Hosts, the God of Armies, to animate our officers and Soldiers with invincible fortitude; to guard and protect them in the day of Battle, and to crown the Continental arms by sea and land with victory and Success. Earnestly beseeching him to bless our Civil rulers and the representatives of the People, in their Several Assemblies and Conventions; to preserve and strengthen their union, to inspire them with an ardent and dis-
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letter, without date, addressed to his brother-in-law, Bous- field, the patriot preacher wrote one hundred and eleven years ago: "I received with pleasure the books you sent me by Captain Lawrence. They afford me the most agreeable amusement in my Country retirement. Dalrymple has set the period he treats of in a clearer light than any person before him, and made some most interesting discoveries un- known to previous historians. Lord Chesterfield had always the character of one of the politest writers and best-bred per- sons of the age. His letters show him, at the same time, the tenderest of fathers and most amiable of men.
" I suppose you interest yourself somewhat in the fate of this Country, and am therefore sorry that my distance from town and the uncertainty of opportunities for Ireland puts it out of my power to write anything that you will not be ac- quainted with when you receive my letters. The late ini- quitous acts of Parliament, and the sanguinary measures adopted to enforce them have induced the various Provinces to unite firmly for their common defence. Each Province has its separate Congress intended to enforce resolves, and to be subject to the control of the Grand Continental Con- gress, which sits at Philadelphia. An Association has been
interested love of their Country; to give wisdom and stability to their Councils ; and direct them to the most efficacious measures for establishing the rights of America, on the most honourable and permanent basis-that he would be gra- ciously pleased to bless all the people of these Colonies, with health and plenty, and grant that a Spirit of incorruptible patriotism and of pure and undefiled religion may universally prevail ; and this Continent be speedily restored to the blessing of Peace and Liberty, and enabled to transmit them inviolate to the latest posterity .- and it is recommended to Christians of all denominations, to assemble for public worship, and abstain from servile labour on the said Day .- Congress
march 16. 1776.
May that being who is powerful to save, and in whose hands is the fate of nations, look down with an eye of tender pity and Compassion upon the whole of the united Colonies,-may he continue to smile upon their Councils and Arms, and crown them with success, whilst employed in the Cause of Virtue and of mankind-may every part of this wide-extended continent, thro' his divine favour, be restored to more than their former lustre, and once happy state, and have peace, liberty, and safety, secured upon a Solid, permanent and lasting foundation.
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formed, and signed by an incredible number of people, to support the measures of these various Congresses, never to submit to Slavery, but to venture our lives and property in defence of our Liberty and Country. Gentlemen of ap- proved abilities are appointed to take command of our forces. As Colonel Hall has, I think, served in America and may be able to give you their characters, I shall mention a few of them. Colonel Washington, a Virginia gentleman of considerable property and respectability who behaved very gallantly in many engagements of the last war, is ap- pointed commander-in-chief of our army. Colonel Lee has given up his half pay and accepted a commission as Major- General in the American Service. Horatio Gates, formerly, I think, a Major in the English Army, is appointed Adjutant- General. Captain Montgomery, an Irishman, brother of the Countess of Raneleigh, and our near neighbor in the country, is made a Brigadier-General, and Fleming, formerly adjutant of the Sixteenth Regiment which was quartered a few years ago at Cork, is a Lieutenant-Colonel. The other general officers are mostly of the country.
"There are so many thousands in this wide extended con- tinent determined not to survive the loss of their liberties, that there is little probability the English will get the better in this impolitic contest, the outcome of which, I think they have greater reason to fear than the Americans, for our num- bers increase so rapidly and our Country supplies us so fast, that we must naturally rise superior in the end over any present difficulties, whereas if England once sinks, she will find it difficult, if not impossible, to emerge again.
" General Gage has had two engagements with the people of New England in which his men were so roughly handled that they have thought proper to remain quiet for some weeks past. It is reported that there were about a thousand officers and soldiers killed in the last engagement, in which the loss of the Provincials was inconsiderable."
Mr. Provoost was proposed as a delegate to the Provincial Congress, which he declined, as also an invitation to become Chaplain of the Convention which met in 1777, and framed
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the Constitution of the State of New York. About the same period he deemed it in no wise derogatory to, or inconsistent with, his clerical character to bear arms against the enemies of his country. After the British burned Esopus on the Hudson, he joined his neighbors, the Livingstons and others, in their pursuit. Mr. Provoost was also proffered, in 1777, the rectorship of St. Michael's Church, Charleston, S. C., and in 1782, that of King's Chapel, Boston, where his patriotic prin- ciples and practice were strong recommendations, but he de- clined both calls, on the ground that he was unwilling to avail himself of his politics for acting toward his brethren who differed from him, in a manner that might be imputed to mercenary views, and an ungenerous desire of rising on their ruin.
In another undated letter, addressed to a friend in New York and written about the close of the war, Mr. Provoost says, "As you sometimes amuse yourself with the different systems of theologists, I recommend to your perusal Dr. Law's Theory of Religion, which contains many judicious ob- servations, and is written with a freedom and impartiality which I wish was more common than it is among divines of all professions. The theory (that we are in a progressive state and that we have advanced in religious knowledge in proportion to our improvements in the arts and sciences) is a very pleasing one, and except a few retrogrations which he accounts for ingeniously enough, very well supported. The work, I think, merits being more known than it is in our American world. But perhaps the very great obligations I am under to its author may make me partial in its favor.
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