USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > Christ Church in the Revolution : a discourse preached before members of the Society of the Cincinnati, and other patriotic organizations, in Christ Church, Philadelphia, February 21st, 1892 > Part 1
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B.C.
Pa.
CHRIST CHURCH
IN THE
RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY PROVIDENCE, Ri l.
WITHDRAWN FROM RIHS
REVOLUTION.
George Washington.
From the original portrait painted in Philadelphia by Gilbert Stuart for the Marquis of Lansdowne, during the period when Washington was a regular member of the congregation of Christ Church. Engraved by James Titten, A. R. A.
+ CHRIST + CHURCH +
IN THE
REVOLUTION :
A DISCOURSE PREACHED BEFORE MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI, AND OF OTHER PATRIOTIC ORGANIZATIONS, IN
CHRIST CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA,
FEBRUARY 2Ist, 1892,
BY THE RT. REV.
WILLIAM STEVENS PERRY, D.D. Oxon, LL.D., D.C.L.
Bishop of Iowa, and a Chaplain-General of the Society of the Cincinnati.
WITH AN
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
BY THE REV.
C. ELLIS STEVENS, L.L.D., D.C.L.
Rector of the Parish, and Lecturer at St. Stephen's College.
PHILADELPHIA : PRINTED BY REQUEST. 25- 1 1892.
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014
https://archive.org/details/christchurchinre00perr
First Edifice of Christ Church 1695.
From a drawing in the Philadelphia Library.
William III, of England
History.
Christ Church bears unique relation to the American Church and to the nation.
The church had its real origin in the original charter of Pennsylvania. There was a provision in the grant of King `Charles II, to William Penn, in 1681, that if ever twenty people in the colony should petition therefor, they should have the right to organize a Church of England parish, and apply to the Bishop of London for a clergyman. Churchmen early came to outnumber the Quakers; and in 1695, shortly after the foundation of the city of Philadel- phia, a petition was circulated, to which several hundred signatures were attached. The Quaker magistrates arrested the attorney who drew the paper, and several of the signers. But opposition was short-lived. Services were begun, and the first edifice of Christ Church was erected.
Sir William Keith began a custom, long continued, of the association of the Royal Governors with this church ; and a wood carving of the royal arms of the reign of William and Mary, which adorned the state pew of the Governors, is still preserved. William of Orange, himself, was one of the early benefactors of the parish, materially aiding in the support of the clergy ; and in 1709 Queen Anne presented a silver communion service, which, with other ancient silver, has continued in use to our own time.
Governor Sir William Keith.
Member of the Vestry 1717.
9
The present church was begun in 1727, from plans drawn by the Warden, Dr. John Kearsley, who was also architect of the neighboring Independence Hall. Ben- jamin Franklin, who was for several years a member of the Vestry, took an active part in the erection of the spire.
In November, 1739, the famous George Whitefield preached in the church. At the outbreak of the Revolu-
Judge Thomas Graeme.
Warden of the Church.
tion, one of the clergy, the Rev. Dr. Duche, made at Car- penter's Hall the first prayer in the first Congress. And the chime rang a muffled peal at reception of the news of the British blockade of Boston. Later Bishop White became the first Chaplain of Continental Congress, and his portrait hangs among the worthies in Independence Hall .*
The part borne by Christ Church in the Revolution is ably considered by Bishop Perry in the following
* He remained Chaplain of Congress till that body removed to Washington, in 1801.
Gordon
Governor Gordon, who laid the corner stone of the present edifice of Christ Church, April 28, 1727.
11
sermon. On the day of the Declaration of Independ- ence, when the old State House bell had made announce- ment, the chime of this church caught up the story, and while a crowd of citizens gathered below, joyously rang out the birth of the United States. By order of the Vestry, the bust of King George II was taken from the chancel wall. A year later, in June 1777, the crown upon the top of the steeple was struck by lightning and melted .*
Inkitefield
Mrs. Ross, a parishioner, whose pew is still shown, made the first American flag, the stars and stripes, in a house yet standing, within a block of the church. Washington,
* The bells have been immortalized by the poet Longfellow ; whose reference to them in the celebrated final scene of " Evangeline," the reader will recall :
" Distant and soft on her ear fell the chimes from the belfry of Christ Church."
John denn
13
Franklin, Robert Morris, Francis Hopkinson and other generals and statesmen of the Revolution, and members of the Convention that framed the Federal Constitution, here prayed to the God of nations, in the critical years that saw the rise of American nationality. The sacred dust of Franklin, Morris and others of our great dead, reposes in the church-yard ; and members of the families of several of these patriots have long been connected with the parish. During his presidency, from 1790 to 1797, General and Mrs. Washington were regular worshippers at the church ; and the " Washington pew " was afterwards voted by the
Part ofa Few
Tur Christ Church used by
Lafayette & Bishop White
Part of the Washington Pew,
Now preserved in the National Museum, Independence Hall.
Vestry to President John Adams .* The Centennial of Independence was here celebrated, July 3d, 1876.
"Thus, from first to last," writes Bishop Perry, " this noble pile has been a centre of patriotic impulses and sacred associations, linking its name, its very being, with
*" When George Washington, the President of the United States, sat in his pew in this Church and William White, the President of the House of Bishops of the United States, ministered in this chancel, there were then seen as worshippers in the same Episcopal service and within these same hallowed walls, the two men, to whom, more than to any other two, the Republic of the United States owed its civil life, and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States its corporate exist- ence."-Bishop Stevens' Centennial Sermon, 1887.
Benjamin Franklin. Member of the Vestry.
15
the country's history. Christ Church shares with old Faneuil Hall (the gift of a churchman to Boston patriots), the proud distinction of being a cradle of the country itself, as it is a cradle of the American Episcopal Church."
The primary convention of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, was held here on Rogation Monday, 1784; and of the first
Martha Washington.
From the Robertson Miniature.
twenty-nine annual conventions, all but one were so held. The Rector, the Rev. Dr. White, was consecrated the first Bishop of Pennsylvania, by the Archbishops of Canter- bury and York and other prelates ; being the first American bishop to receive consecration from the Church of England. He here held his first and many subsequent ordinations, practically using the church as his cathedral ; here, as
- --
16
Presiding Bishop of the American Church, he consecrated many bishops; and before this altar he lies buried. On May 24th, 1884, was held here the Centennial Diocesan Convention.
The American Episcopal Church was organized in this venerable fane-the first General Convention, held in 1 785, under the presidency of Dr. White, here framing the original Constitution of the Church. The second General
Rev. Jacob Duche, D. D.
Convention (1786), met also here; and the third, which completed the Church's fabric, assembled in July and again in September, 1789. At this altar, the Holy Communion, according to the form in the first book of Edward VI., as adapted by Scottish use, was celebrated by Provost Smith, of the University of Pennsylvania, in the presence of the General Convention-which immediately afterward adopted it as our present form of the communion office. Here the
17
first House of Bishops met ; and here was adopted the American Prayer-book .* The Centennial session of the General Convention was here opened, Oct. 3d, 1883, at which time nearly fifty bishops were present in the church. And the Centennial commemoration of the conferring of
Bishop White.
the English Episcopal Succession upon the American Church, was celebrated February 4th, 1887, by simul- taneous services here and at Lambeth Palace.
* The original prayer-book, with MS. alterations, is still preserved in the church.
His Excellency JOHN ADAMS!
From portrait executed in London, 1783.
19
The following bishops have been consecrated in Christ Church : Rt. Rev. Robert Smith, D. D, first Bishop of .. South Carolina, September 13th, 1795 ; Rt. Rev. Edward Bass, D. D., first Bishop of Massachusetts, May 7, 1796; Rt. Rev. Theodore Dehon, D.D., Bishop of South Carolina, October 15th, 1812; Rt. Rev. Nathaniel Bowen, D.D., Bishop of South Carolina, Oct. 8th, 1818 ; Rt. Rev. Henry N. Onderdonk, D. D., Assistant Bishop of Pennsylvania, October 25th, 1827; R+. Rev. James Hervey Otey, D.D.,
House of the Rev. Jacob Duche, D D .*
first Bishop of Tennessee, January 14th, 1834; Rt. Rev. Carlton Chase, D.D., first Bishop of New Hampshire, October 20th, 1844; Rt. Rev. Nicholas Hamner Cobbs, D.D., first Bishop of Alabama, October 20th, 1844; Rt. Rev. Cicero Stevens Hawks, D.D., first Bishop of Mis- souri, October 20th, 1844; Rt. Rev. Alonzo Potter, D D., LL.D., Bishop of Pennsylvania, September 23d, 1845 ; Rt. Rev. Samuel Bowman, D. D., Assistant Bishop of Pennsylvania, August 25th, 1858.
* It was at this house that Franklin conducted his famous kite experiments with electricity.
20
Among the clergy of the parish have been Bishops Welton,* White, Kemper and DeLancey ; Dr. Kemper being the first American Missionary Bishop. Dr. Dorr was elected to and declined the bishopric of Maryland. Among the distinguished clergymen who have served as assistant ministers, was the Rev. William Augustus Muhe- lenberg, D. D., the philanthropist, who organized the first Sisterhood in the American Church, founded St. Luke's Hospital, New York and other institutions of beneficence ; but is, perchance, most widely loved as author of the hymn " I would not live alway."
*Bishop Talbot, (of non-juring consecration) the first Bishop in America, for a time had charge of Christ Church.
Sermon.
+
Texts-II Chronicles, xxix, 5. "Sanctify now yourselves, and sanctify the house of the Lord God of your fathers." Exodus iii, 5. " Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." Acts of the Apos- tles, vii, 33, " Then said the Lord to him : 'Put off thy shoes from thy feet; for the place where thou standest is holy ground.' "
+
In this, " the house of the Lord God of our fathers," we cannot fail to remember that " the place whereon we stand is holy ground." This venerable shrine, dating its build- ing and its opening for sacred uses back to the days when there were no bishops in the land to consecrate our churches, is still hallowed, though the accustomed forms of dedication may have been lacking at the first, and may not yet have been supplied. The very ground covered by this stately pile wherein the remains of our patriot and sainted sires were laid to rest is God's own acre.
These walls, which have echoed the lessons of duty-the duty to God and neighbor, of Christian and citizen alike- are sacred. These pews where the great and good of Church and State have gathered in the past to kneel in prayer for national or individual deliverances and mercies, or to render thanks and praise for blessings vouchsafed to the people and the land, are consecrated. The very fabric, the willing offering of the personal devotion of our fathers, is dedicated, though not by human rites. These stones stand here as they have long stood and will long remain " for a memorial."
-
LAUDEREACH SC
Christ Church.
23
Among the legends attaching to the first church erected on the site, where in after years King Edward, saint and confessor, built the " Collegiate Church, or Abbey of St. Peter's," better known as Westminster Abbey, is one which has its lesson for us who are assembled here. It was on the eve of the day fixed by Melitus, first bishop of London, for the consecration of King Sebert's religious house and church on the Isle of Thorns, that Edric the fisherman, was casting his nets in the Thames. Across the stream, where Lambeth, rich in its episcopal associa- tions of a thousand years, now stands, an unwonted light attracted the fisherman's notice. On rowing to the spot he found a venerable person clad in a garb strange to English eyes, who desired to be ferried over the waters. On landing on the other side the strange visitor proceeded directly to the church. Suddenly the heavens were ill- umined with a wondrous splendor. The Church of Sebert stood out against the sky, clearly defined " without darkness or shadow." The angelic host filled the air, as seen of old by the patriarch's eye, ascending and descend- ing to and from the heavenly home. Sweet odors were borne on the midnight breeze. The church was all aglow with blazing torches and candles, and the consecration rites were duly and solemly performed by the stranger, assisted by other mysterious beings from above. To the awe-struck fisherman was vouchsafed the confidence of the officiant of this midnight function. "I am Peter, keeper of the keys of heaven," said the stranger ; "when Melitus arrives to-morrow, tell him what you have seen and show him the token that I, Saint Peter, have conse- crated my own church of Saint Peter, Westminster, and have anticipated the Bishop of London." Adding a blessing on the fisherman, the Saint and his companions disappeared.
Rol morris.
Treasurer of the Revolution.
25
On the morrow, when bishop and king came at the appointed time for the dedication of the church to St. Peter, Edric met them at the door with the apostle's message. The marks of the consecration were plainly there. One could see " the twelve crosses on the church " and " the walls within and without moistened with holy water." There were "the traces of the oil and (chiefest of the miracles," if we may credit the old-time chronicles, "the droppings of the angelic candles." Astounded, but con- vinced, the bishop retired, we are informed, " satisfied that the dedication had been performed sufficiently-better and in a more saintly fashion than a hundred such as he could have done." The tale we have narrated is told of other shrines in other lands as well. It has, as Dean Stanley, the historian of the Abbey, reminds us, "the merit of containing a lurking protest against the necessity of external benedic- tion for things or persons sacred by their own intrinsic virtue -- a covert declaration of this great Catholic princi- ple, that God's grace is not tied to outward forms." It echoes the emblematic teaching of the heavenly vision revealed to St. Peter's inner sense. " That which God hath cleansed call not thou common."
The true consecration is from above. God gives it sometimes independently of the ordinary channels or usual instruments of His imparted grace ; and so it comes about that this "house of the Lord God of our fathers " is con- secrated to Him. We stand within these walls on " holy ground." The history of this parish, the annals of this house of the Lord God of our fathers, are those of this commonwealth, this city and the country itself.
As we recall the past of Christ Church-the mother church where we meet to-day-and that of the associated parishes through so many eventful years, we realize the close
26
connection of this now venerable fane with the country's history, especially at the period of our struggle for inde- pendence. The Church Catholic of Christ has ever been found on the side of freedom. The belief in the father- hood of God is akin to the acknowledgment of the brother- hood of man. That body of Christ, of which we are made members by holy baptism, knows no distinction of race or caste. We are members, one of another, and each and all alike of Christ. Freemen in Christ, sharing one with another and all alike the liberty wherewith Christ doth make us free, the Church must ever be found on the side of freedom, stoutly maintaining the rights-inalienable and true-of every man. It was through these uplifting and equalizing influences of the Church that in the dark- est ages of man's history, when irresponsible power and brutish force made might seem as right, the son of the serf, baptised, ordained, consecrated to holy offices, stood forth before the world as the peer of his sovereign, the leader of men, the master of minds, the vicegerent of the unseen, absent Christ.
Magna Charta with all its associations of freedom and human rights was the gift of England's Church, through that Church's primate and by the power he wielded, to the English nation and the English race, Our own country -- its very territory discovered not by Columbus but by Cabot, sailing under England's flag ; settled, too, by the great churchmen and statesmen of Elizabeth's reign, who shared with every loyal Englishman the national hatred of Spain and Rome, and who sought in their schemes of discovery and settlement to found in the western world an English Church and an English Commonwealth-owes its existence, its institutions, all that has made it great and glorious, to its English origin and its English antecedents, shaped and
27
influenced as they were by England's Church. It is well for us to remember as we seek to acquaint us with our country's past, that as a people and as freemen we owe nothing to Spain and Rome.
God gave to the Latin race and to the Latin Christianity its opportunity to develope nationalities and to reproduce the Latin faith and Church under exceptionally favorable circumstances in the new world. To this end, treasure and toil were lavishly bestowed. Fertility of soil, unlimited mineral resources, every agreeable variety of climate, in- vited settlers to an earthly paradise. The Church of Rome entered upon the work of securing the continent for the Latin Church and faith, with an intensity of purpose and abundance of emissaries and the willing support of the constituted authorities at home and on the spot. Nothing was apparently wanting to make these efforts a success.
Far to the North, on shores ice-bound in winter, rocky, sterile and forbidding all the year round, with a rigorous climate and a life struggle for bread facing the settlers from the start, the English Church and State essayed a like work, the founding in the new world of spiritual and political commonwealths, reproducing those at home. We may note and compare the results.
Mexico and the republics of South America are the outcome of the efforts begun by Columbus and the Spanish court and crown four hundred years ago ; furthered then, and ever since, by all the pretensions and powers of the Papacy. We, the people of the United States, gratefully recognize in our place and power among the peoples of the earth, the results of our British ancestry, and the institutions, religious and political, we derive directly from our mother race. The free church in the free state, Magna Charta, the English Constitution ; the English Bill
.
.
Francis Hopkinson
Secretary of Continental Congress, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Warden and Secretary of the Vestry of the Parish.
29
of Rights, the English Common law, the English Bible, the English Book of Common Prayer-these are the elements, the sources, the underlying strength of our national existence, giving us our vantage ground from the beginning as citizens of the great republic of the world.
But Magna Charta is not all that attests the share of England's Church in securing English liberty. We may never lose sight of the names of those who form the very first stoutly maintained on Britain's soil the struggle for independence of alien rule and power, civil or ecclesiastical. There were rebels against Rome, protestors against the papacy long before England threw off Rome's usurped power. There were martyrs to liberty, making glorious the annals of our mother-land from the time when the Britons made their daring though futile efforts for freedom, all along the centuries when constitutional rights took form and shape. We may not forget the stand for freedom taken by the seven bishops whose constancy to their convictions of right made the glorious revolution of 1688 a possibility and a success. We cannot, as American churchmen, forget that the Church's prayers and the presence of the Church's priest consecrated in 1619 the first deliberative assembly of freemen convened on Ameri- can soil, which met in the choir of the church at James- town : where, rather than in the cabin of the Mayflower, when the social compact of the Pilgrim Fathers was signed a year later, it is confessed that the foundation stone of our country's liberties was laid. We cannot, as churchmen, forget that in the vestries of Virginia and Maryland, when resisting the induction of clergymen whom the people had not chosen, but were required by the civil and ecclesiastical law to receive and support, the preliminary struggles of the Revolution took place, and men, church-
30
men such as we are to-day, were trained to prize and labor for civil and ecclesiastical freedom.
We might even venture to assert that it was not at Lex- ington or Concord that the first blood of patriots was shed in the struggle against despotic rule, but it was more than a century and a half before, when, in Bacon's rebellion, the Virginia churchmen gave up their lives in a futile strife for liberty. The investigations of the present day have freed the Church in America from the charge of being inimical to the cause of freedom. Puritan, Presbyterian and Prela- tist united in that struggle which won for us our indepen- dence. Men of various faiths and various races went hand in hand in battling for freedom, uniting in one harmonious whole, all who echoed the cry sounded forth in old St. John's Church, Richmond, from Patrick Henry's lips : " Give me liberty or give me death."
It is in no spirit of detraction that we remember that this sacred structure of the old proprietary times-that this Church and its humbler predecessor, and the existence in this city of Brotherly Love of the worship of our beloved church, are all due not so much to the tolerant views of the peace-loving and purely-living William Penn, but to that charter-clause requiring the toleration of the English establishment, which was inserted in the original patent of Penn, by the direction of the Bishop of London, in whose See the American colonies before the Revolution were legally comprised. Religious liberty in Pennsylvania so far as the Church was concerned, is due to the great prelate, Henry Compton, then filling the See of London.
It was thus that the Church of England secured a foot- ing in Pennsylvania and Christ Church was built. But we need not dwell upon the story of the early days, even of this present building, now for a century and a half devoted
31
to sacred uses. , We are to note, in brief, the connection of Christ Church with the Revolution, giving to this old- time shrine a hallowing, patriot and churchman cannot fail to recognize. With touching simplicity does the Quaker, Christopher Marshall, in his diary, under date of June I, 1774, record as follows: "This being the day when the cruel act for blocking up the harbor of Boston took effect, many of the inhabitants of this city, to express their sym- pathy and to show their concern for their suffering brethren in the common cause of liberty, had their shops shut up, their houses kept close from hurry and business; also the ring of bells at Christ Church was muffled, and rung a solemn peal at intervals from morning till night ; the colors of vessels in the harbor were hoisted at half-mast high ; the several houses of different worship were crowded when divine service was performed, and particular discourses suitable to the occasion were preached." A few days later, as the vestry records show, the ringing of the Christ Church bells on the anniversary day of King Charles II's restora- tion was ordered to be discontinued. The " divinity that doth hedge in a king " was already held in slight respect.
Early in August came by the Charleston packet or by more pretentious craft, the delegates to the Continental Congress from South Carolina ; while the slow, lumbering stages, or private conveyances, brought from New England and New York the patriots who had been chosen by the popular assemblies to consult in this city, as to the country's condition. One by one the delegations were filled and by September 5, all but the North Carolina deputies were on hand. Meeting in Carpenter's Hall, the Hon. Peyton Randolph, a Virginia churchman and a vestryman, was chosen president.
GM
LAJDERRA
Grave of Benjamin Franklin, Christ Church-yard.
33
Of this famous body which shaped and moulded the measures of the successive Congresses of the united colo- nies, the leading men were churchmen : fully two-thirds of those who participated in its deliberations being known to be connected with the Church. We are all familiar with the action of this Congress in inviting the Rev. Jacob Duché, of the united parish of Christ Church and St. Peter's, to open its deliberations with the Church's prayers ; and the solemnity of this occasion and the earn- estness of the appeal to Heaven then made by the repre- sentatives of the united colonies, are well described in the well-known words of the Puritan, John Adams from Mass- achusetts. Tradition points out Washington as kneeling, as the touching and appropriate words of supplication were said by the fervid young priest. But kneeling or standing, there were present at that invocation of Heaven's presence and favor on the American cause, among those of other beliefs, patriot churchmen from New England, New York, New Jersey, from Pennsylvania and from Delaware ; while Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, and at a later date, North Carolina, sent churchmen only to this meeting of the patriots of the land.
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