USA > Pennsylvania > Chronicles of Pennsylvania from the English revolution to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1688-1748, Vol. I > Part 28
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35
The fact that the Anglican clergymen in the colonies were practically out of the Bishop of London's reach, and unworthy men of the cloth resorted thither, and that the laymen could not be confirmed, unless they went to England, induced many, including Talbot as
350
CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
early as 1703, and Bp. Compton, who suggested a suffragan for Virginia in 1707, to favor the appoint- ment of a bishop for America. Abp. Tenison left £1000 towards providing for two bishops there, the interest, until such were consecrated, to be paid to disabled mis- sionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gos- pel. Petitions for a bishop were sent by the Vestry of Christ Church, Philadelphia, in 1718 and 1719, Talbot, who was often holding service there, joining in the lat- ter of these petitions. In about a year after its date, he went to England, and in April, 1721, he obtained an order from the Lord Chancellor for the interest on Tenison's £1000.
Those in power in Church and State not being likely to provide America with any one invested with the spiritual functions of a bishop, Talbot turned to the Non-Jurors, who, without asking permission of Han- overian King or Whig Parliament, were keeping up an episcopal succession. One of their bishops was Ralph Taylor, D.D., consecrated on Jany. 25, 1720-1, in Grey's Inn, in the presence of the Earl of Win- chelsea and others, by Bps. Hawes, Spinckes, and Gandy. Among the priests of this faction was the Rev. Richard Welton, D.D. (Cantab.), formerly Rector of St. Mary's, White Chapel, who was deprived in 1715 for not taking the oath of allegiance to George I. Tal- bot, not holding a position in Great Britain, had not been required to take this oath, although, when an English rector, he must have sworn allegiance to William and Mary. Bp. Taylor now consecrated Wel- ton and Talbot himself, Welton no doubt receiving the laying on of hands first. Rawlinson's manuscript list of consecrations by Non-Jurors (Notes and Queries, 3rd Series, Vol. I, p. 225) says, without date, and in a misleading place in the list: "Ric. Welton D.D. was consecrated by Dr. Taylor alone in a clandestine man- ner. - Talbot, M.A., was consecrated by the same
351
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
person at the same time and as irregularly." The date could scarcely have been later than Oct. 1, 1722, O. S., as Talbot writes from Burlington on Nov. 27, speaking of his six weeks' voyage home. The consecration of these two was disapproved of by Taylor's fellow bishops either before or after it had taken place, and may be described as uncanonical but valid.
Whether either Welton or Talbot ever performed any episcopal function is not proved. The probability is that they administered confirmation, when they could do it in secret, or without attracting much attention, the confirming of a few, who could not otherwise be confirmed, not being likely to be looked upon by those in political or ecclesiastical power as an interference.
Talbot resumed charge of the Burlington church, and on Oct. 23, 1723, was willing, as a member of the con- vention of the clergy "of this province" (Pennsylvania with the Territories) to concur in the removal of Rev. John Urmston from Christ Church, Philadelphia, which Urmston was supplying in the interim following the death of an appointee of the Bishop of London. After- wards Talbot occasionally filled that pulpit. Urmston wrote on June 30, 1724, that, after Talbot had been there about three months, some persons threatened Sir William Keith, the Lieutenant-Governor, that if such a Jacobite were allowed to officiate, they would complain against both him and the Lieutenant-Gov- ernor. So Keith, shutting up the church building, made Talbot leave about the end of February. Urm- ston adds: "Some of his confidants have discovered that he is in orders, as many more rebels are. I have heard of no ordinations he has made as yet." Urmston supposed that Talbot would persuade clergy- men to be reordained by him, in accordance with the opinion of some Jacobites that all ordinations by the bishops who supplanted the Non-Jurors were illegal. Before or a few days after Urmston's letter was
352
CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
written, Welton came to America, bringing probably for Talbot and himself the episcopal seals, with one of which Talbot's widow sealed her will, and the other being found among Welton's effects at his death. A letter from Gov. Keith dated July 24, mentions reports that some of the Non-Juring clergy of the neighbour- hood pretended to the authority and office of bishops, but says that they do not own it, and that he has an- nounced his determination to prosecute all who should attempt "to debauch any of the people with schismati- cal disloyal principles of that nature." Governor Burnet of New Jersey writes on Aug. 3 that Talbot had had the folly to confess that he is a bishop. Rev. Jacob Henderson of Maryland writes on Aug. 16 that Mr. Talbot had arrived two years before, but his epis- copal orders had been kept a great secret until of late, and that, about six weeks before the date of the letter, Dr. Welton had arrived, "as I am credibly informed in the same capacity." Christ Church was reopened for ministrations performed by Welton. Peter Evans, in a letter defending the course of the vestrymen, says that English newspapers had reported that Welton had taken the oaths. Accordingly, the opportunity had been embraced to have services resumed, Welton being asked on July 27 to take charge. In due time, warning from England was sent to the Lieutenant-Governor, who answered, that, as the Vestry was entirely inde- pendent of him, he could not be held responsible, and suggested the desirability of some authority to him, instead of allowing a minister to be admitted by a Vestry without license from the Bishop or an induction. Such provision for worship the Vestry, however, only made in an emergency, and to be superseded by the arrival of the Bishop's appointee three months at least after an incumbent's death. Gov. Keith himself, for the marriage ceremony of his daughter in December, 1724, made use of Welton.
353
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
Talbot had been reported by Urmston to have put on episcopal robes, and to have demanded obedience from the other clergy, perhaps on the occasion of the convention which agreed to the removal of Urmston, but Talbot, writing on July 2, 1725, to the Bishop of London, denied exercising jurisdiction over the mis- sionaries, and declared that he could prove his inno- cence by a thousand persons. He was not disturbed, and is stated to have taken the required oath before long.
Welton did not fare so well. A writ of privy seal was sent over to Lieutenant-Governor Keith command- ing Welton on his allegiance to return forthwith to England. The notice was served in January, 1725-6, and Welton started, about March 1, on what was often at that period the only way of reaching London, viz: taking a vessel bound directly for Lisbon. While at Lisbon, he died of dropsy in August, 1726, refusing to join in the communion service with the English clergy- men there.
To supply the want of sufficient foundation for ec- elesiastical jurisdiction by the Bishop of London over America, Bp. Gibson, on Feb. 9 in the 13th year of George I's reign, obtained a royal patent conferring certain powers upon himself during royal pleasure. This was expressly revoked by a patent from George II dated Apr. 29 in the 1st year of his reign (1728), whereby visitatorial power over colonial churches whose service was according to the English liturgy and the right to inflict ecclesiastical punishments, subject to appeal, upon the ministers of such churches, and upon colonial presbyters and deacons in English orders, was conferred upon Bp. Gibson personally, to be exercised by commissaries by him appointed and removed.
There were several districts of the civilized part of Pennsylvania to which the services of the Church were extended, chiefly by ministers stationed at places before
23
354
CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
mentioned, often many miles away, during the period from 1700 to 1748, and to those days is traced the col- lecting of the congregations of St. Peter's in Great Valley, St. Thomas's at Whitemarsh, St. James's at Perkiomen, St. Mary's at Warwick, St. Martin's at Chichester, St. John's at Concord, Bangor (Church- town) in Lancaster Co., and St. John's, Pequea (Com- passville). Some details will be found with a reprint of valuable documents in the edition very recently issued of Henry Pleasants's History of Old St. David's Church Radnor. The present edifice of St. Peter's (East Whiteland Township, Chester Co.) in the Great Valley was built in 1744. We are not concerned with the churches and mission stations of Delaware, which, however, multiplied very early, owing somewhat to the non-Quaker predilection of the original settlers.
The lot on which the overcrowded house of worship for Christ Church in Philadelphia was standing, was enlarged by the purchase of ground adjoining on the north by Robert Assheton, Dr. John Kearsley, and Samuel Hasell by deed of July 19, 1725, and, on April 27, 1727, the corner-stone of a western addition to the building was laid by Lieutenant-Governor Gordon. Eventually, about 1738, the whole was embraced in the present symmetrical structure except the steeple, the latter being completed some years later. The main structure, even if not absolutely finished, was in use some time before Whitefield's first visit.
A movement on somewhat the same general principle as Pietism among the Lutherans, which will be spoken of in connection with the German immigration, started within the Church of England in the reign of George II. The nickname "Methodists" given to certain young men, because, in their religious fervor, they undertook to live by rule and method, was accepted by them, and has been retained by their followers in other ideas, inappropriate or insufficient as is the designation. The
355
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
separation organically of those so called from the Church of which the Wesleys and Whitefield were priests, did not take place during the time of this his- tory; so there are only to be noted the labors of White- field in the region so closely associated with two other great leaders in their respective denominations, Penn and Zinzendorf. Whitefield's leadership, strong enough to establish an opposition to John Wesley, differed from that of Penn and Zinzendorf in the absence of any ad- vantages of birth to help Whitefield. His Life by Rev. L. Tyerman is authority for most of the following account. George Whitefield was born on Dec. 16, 1714, at Gloucester, England, and entered at Oxford in 1732. As an undergraduate, he joined, becoming the most youthful member, the "Holy Club," as others at the University laughingly styled the coterie gathered by Charles Wesley for acts of devotion, such as receiving the communion every week, and for acts of charity. Whitefield was impressed by the book The Life of God in the Soul of Man with the essential need of the new birth, defined to be the vital union with Christ in the heart. Whitefield "experienced that assurance which comes in conversion" about June, 1735, which was several years before the Wesleys experienced it, and he soon became fully persuaded that justification is by faith only, although that doctrine took a small place in his earliest sermons. Whitefield was made deacon by the Bishop of Gloucester on Sunday, June 20, 1736, about two weeks before graduation as B.A., and at- tracted attention even by his first sermon, and, while a deacon, drew crowds in London and Bristol, people in the latter city hanging upon the rails of the organ loft, and climbing on the leads of the church. Whitefield had spent several months as a missionary in the new colony of Georgia, and been ordained priest at Oxford on Sunday, Jany. 14, 1738-9, by the aforesaid Bishop of Gloucester, acting for Bp. Secker of Oxford, and was
356
CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
on the way a second time to Georgia when he first visited Pennsylvania. He had become the foremost exponent of the views of the Methodists. When the strange effect upon some whom he had moved, the doo- trines themselves, and the expressions in his published journals had made the clergy of any place withhold the use of their churches, Whitefield had preached in fields and parks, often to twenty thousand persons, and at least once to thirty thousand; but just before his embarkation for this visit to America, those who ap- peared in print against him or the excitement which he promoted, were joined by Bishop Gibson.
Whitefield and his friend William Seward arrived in Philadelphia in the evening of Friday, Nov. 2, 1739, on horseback from Lewes, where they had left the ship. The attitude of Bp. Gibson, if it was then known in the colonies, did not prevent his Commissary for Pennsyl- vania, Rev. Dr. Archibald Cummings, Rector of Christ Church, from receiving Whitefield with civility, nor the people from wishing to hear him. He read prayers, and assisted in the administration of the communion at Christ Church in the morning of the following Sun- day, and preached there that afternoon and every day for the rest of that week with increasing congregations, and also in the afternoon of the second Sunday. He dined at Thomas Penn's and at both church wardens', was often visited by the Presbyterian minister, by the Baptist minister, and by Quakers, and twice preached at six in the evening from the court house stairs to several thousand persons. After a trip to New York, Whitefield preached in the yard of Rev. William Ten- nent's church on the Neshaminy to about three thou- sand, and from the porch window of the Presbyterian church at Abington, and again several times in Christ Church. On one of the last mentioned occasions, Sun- day morning, Nov. 25, after his sermon, the Rev. Richard Peters, Secretary of the Province, who had
357
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
retired from the work of the ministry, "exclaimed with a loud voice 'That there was no such term as imputed righteousness in Holy Scripture; that such a doctrine put a stop to all goodness; and that we were to be judged for our good works and obedience, and were commanded to do and live.' " When he had ended, Whitefield says: "I denied his first proposition, and brought a text to prove that 'imputed righteousness' was a scriptural expression, but, thinking the church an improper place for disputation, I said no more at the time. In the afternoon, however, I discoursed upon the words 'The Lord our Righteousness.' "'
When Whitefield was to preach his farewell sermon, in the afternoon of Wednesday Nov. 28, the church not being large enough for those expected, he adjourned to the fields, and preached to ten thousand. The next day, people wept at his door when he departed; twenty gentlemen on horseback accompanied him out of town, and were joined by others, until there were two hun- dred. At Chester, the minister secured a balcony for him, the church being too small, the court adjourned, and Whitefield spoke to five thousand, of whom about one fifth had come from Philadelphia. Crowds as large in proportion heard him in the Lower Counties.
He was energetically philanthropic as well as, we may say, violently religious. His main purpose in going back to Georgia after his first visit there, and the object of all his begging sermons in England in 1739, and in Pennsylvania in 1739 and 1740, was to carry on a house for the care of poor orphans in Savannah. To buy provisions for this, he had come by way of Philadelphia on his second trip to America. He had received about forty orphans under his care, and, on the five hundred acres donated by the Trustees of the Colony, had started the main building before he came back to Philadelphia. He had favored the allow- ing of slavery as the only means of developing the
358
CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
colony, but, at the end of 1739, he had seen the miseries of the slaves in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and he printed a letter to the in- habitants of those colonies, telling them that he thought that God had a quarrel with them for their cruelty to the negroes. The question of the lawfulness of buying slaves was passed over, but it was declared a sin to use them worse than brutes, not only in the barbarity with which they were punished, but in not giving them convenient food to eat or proper raiment, and in oblig- ing them to grind the corn for themselves after a day's work. Whitefield said that he prayed God that the slaves might never get the upper hand, yet, should such a thing be permitted by Providence, "all good men must acknowledge the judgment would be just."
The effect of Whitefield upon the Presbyterians will be noted in the chapter upon the Irish and their Kirk.
The Anglicans of Philadelphia had been divided for several years between the friends of Peters and the Rector respectively, only dissuasion by Peters himself preventing the building of a separate church for him. His action towards Whitefield discrediting the latter, as it did somewhat, and stemming the general assent to his teaching, aroused against the plucky interrupter an "evangelical" party. However, the Rector came to the side inimical to Whitefield, after the latter, during the few months before his return, reiterated and vindi- cated in print his remark, originally made privately by John Wesley, that " Archbishop Tillotson knew no more about true Chrisianity than Mahomet." So the Rector refused Whitefield the use of Christ Church, when, on coming back, he asked for it.
After ten days' voyage in a sloop bought by White- field and Seward, they and a number of Moravians ar- rived at New Castle from Savannah. On Sunday, April 13, 1740, the day of or day after landing, Whitefield preached in the church, the Rector being ill. It being
359
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
made known that he would preach there in the after- noon also, the Presbyterian minister at White Clay Creek, or Christiana Bridge, gave up his second meet- ing for worship, and, with two hundred others, rode to New Castle and heard Whitefield. The next day, Whitefield preached at Wilmington from the balcony of the house where he lodged, to three thousand people. In Philadelphia, a platform was erected for him on Society Hill (near Front and Lombard), and there or at the court house he preached to from five to fifteen thousand persons daily, except when preaching out of town.
Whitefield undertook to found in Pennsylvania a school for negroes, and with it a settlement for persons converted in England by his preaching, and subjected to annoyance on that account. For a site, an agreement was made on April 22, 1740,-Reichel gives the date in new style as May 3-with William Allen to buy from him for 22001. 5000 acres at the Forks of the Delaware, title to be made to Whitefield, and then assigned to Seward, who had some fortune, as security for Seward's advancing the money. Two days afterwards, Whitefield preached in the morning at the German set- tlement on the Skippack Creek to about five thousand persons, and in the evening, after riding twelve miles to Henry Antes's, to about three thousand, the Mo- ravian Böhler following with an address in German. On that day, Whitefield offered to hire as builders the Moravians who had arrived from Savannah on the sloop with him. The ground being visited, the Mo- ravians, by the cast of the lot, according to their custom, felt directed to engage. Seward, on April 28, left Philadelphia for England, partly to convert some securities into cash, and also to solicit contributions. He was hit on the head at Caerleon, Wales, and died a few days later, Oct. 22, 1740. On Sunday, May 11, Whitefield went twice to Christ Church, Philadelphia,
360
CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
and there heard himself taken to task by the preacher; and, in the afternoon, Whitefield preached as a farewell to nearly twenty thousand hearers. After preaching in New Castle and Chester County, he sailed to Savannah.
After he left, his friends designed a meeting-house for him to preach in, and a school for poor children to be carried on within it. He seems, from two letters written on July 18 from Charleston, to have first heard of this on that day or the night before. One letter is to Mr. I. R. (James Read?), and thanks him for going with friends E- - and B- - -(perhaps Böhler) to Nazareth, and says later on: "I thank my dear friends for their zeal in building a house, but desire it may not have any particular name or be put to any particular use till my return to Philadelphia. I wish them good luck in the name of the Lord." A foot note to the collection of Whitefield's Works, published in 1771, says that the building "is now the College of Philadel- phia." The other letter speaks of private letters re- ceived from Philadelphia the night before or that morn- ing, and says: "Philadelphia people are building a house for me to preach in one hundred and six feet long and seventy-four feet wide." An advertisement, dated July, 1740, appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper. After saying that the Almighty had now disposed many Christians to lay aside bigotry and party zeal, and unite their endeavors to promote the interest of the kingdom of Jesus, the advertisement proceeds: "With this view it hath been thought proper to erect a large building for a charity school for the instruction of poor children gratis in useful literature and the knowledge of the Christian Religion and also for a house of public worship the houses of this place being insufficient to contain the great numbers who convene on such occa- sions, and it being impracticable to meet in the open air at all times of the year because of the inclemency of the weather. It is agreed that the use of the afore-
361
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
said school and house of religious worship be under the direction of certain trustees viz: [they were not named] and other persons to be appointed by them [with provision that, upon death of any, the majority of the survivors should fill the vacancy] which trustees before named and hereafter to be chosen are from time to time to appoint fit and able school masters and mistresses and introduce such Protestant ministers as they judge to be sound in principle, acquainted with experimental religion in their own hearts and faithful in their practise without regard to those distinctions or different sentiments in lesser matters which have unhappily divided real Christians. The build- ing is actually begun under the direction of [not named] and the foundation laid on a lot of ground late of Jonathan Price and Mary his wife (who have gener- ously contributed) situate near Mulberry Street in the City of Philada., where materials for the building will be received as also subscriptions for money and work taken in by the underwritten persons. Philada July 1740." Jonathan Price and Mary his wife conveyed by deed of Sep. 15, 1740, a lot on the west side of Delaware Fourth Street, 100 ft. south of Mulberry (Arch), 150 ft. front by 198 ft. deep to Edmond Woolley, carpenter, John Coats, bricklayer, John Howell, mariner, and William Price, carpenter: and these and other friends of Whitefield built on it the hall one hundred feet long and seventy feet wide. The roof was not yet on, when the first sermon resounded there. This was preached by Whitefield on Sunday, Nov. 9. By deed of Nov. 14, Woolley, Coats, Howell, and Price covenated to stand seized for Whitefield, Seward (whose death was not then known in America), John Stephen Benezet of Phila., merchant, James Read of Phila., gent., Thomas Noble of New York, merchant, Samuel Hazard of New York, merchant, Robert East- burne of Phila., blacksmith, Edward Evans of Phila.,
362
CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
cordwainer, and Charles Brockden, the Recorder of Deeds of Phila. Co., and for the survivor in fee, they to have power to appoint new trustees, in trust sub- stantially as stated in the advertisement, and to convey as directed by a majority of the trustees. The school was not started by these projectors, probably because Whitefield soon found himself heavily in debt for his Orphan House in Georgia, and obliged to confine him- self, in appealing for money, to that or some other pressing object, while Christ Church seems to have been spurred on in the matter of its parochial school. On 6mo. 8, 1747, Woolley and Coats petitioned the As- sembly of the Province asking that, as the school was part of the purpose of the said building, and the trust had failed, the building be sold, and the subscriptions paid back. In 1749, by direction of a majority of the surviving trustees, whose action met with Whitefield's approval, Woolley and Coats conveyed the building and lot for 775l. 18s. 11d. 3far., with which to pay off certain advances, to James Logan and others, who are usually denominated the founders of the University of Penn- sylvania, to be used as a free school for the instruction of children in useful literature and the Christian re- ligion, with the right to establish a seminary of the languages, arts, and sciences, and as a place of worship wherein Mr. Whitefield should be allowed to preach whenever he was in the city, and so desired, and the trustees should introduce such preachers to teach the word of God as should subscribe to the articles of re- ligion appended to the deed of conveyance; which articles declare belief in the Trinity, the Atonement, and Justification by Faith, and end in affirming the IXth, Xth, XIth, XIIth, XIIIth, and XVIIth Articles of the Church of England "as explained by the Cal- vinists in their literal and grammatical sense." Thus the College of Philadelphia, afterwards the University,
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.