USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > The historical relations of Christ church, Philadelphia, with the province of Pennsylvania; an address delivered at the two hundredth anniversary of Christ church, November 19, 1895 > Part 2
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ates of the College of Philadelphia and received their training from Dr. Smith.
Between the years 1740 and 1756 there was perpetual fear of war and an invasion of this Province by the Indians and French, who had formed what was intended to be a permanent alliance, and had established themselves on the line between Pittsburgh and Lake Erie. The object of the invasion on the part of the French was supposed by many who thought themselves wise, to be part of a systematic scheme to subjugate the English colonists on the borders of the Atlantic, in this and other Provinces ; to make them dependencies of France, and, worse than all, to force, by persecution, the inhabitants to become Roman Catholics. However chimerical all these fears may appear to us now, there is no doubt of the reality of the anxiety and appre- hension which they excited at the time. To the intensity of the desire to make some adequate military preparation to defend themselves, was added the natural dread of con- tending with such a nation as France, when no means of defence had been made ready, as well as a special horror of the practices of the savage and inhuman warfare of the Indians. Those who had now combined against us were the descendants of those whom William Penn on his arrival had found so friendly-the Delawares and the Shawnees, who had been made desperate by the cruel and fraudulent appropriation of their lands by his successors. Gentle as lambs when the white man first came among them, they had become fiends now, as all the accounts of their cruel massacres of the inhabitants clearly showed. The settlers in the territory exposed to tliese ravages called loudly upon the Government for protection and succor. Although the deepest sympathy was expressed on all hands for their unfortunate condition, no troops were sent
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to defend them, owing to the quarrel between the Governor and the Assembly as to the best mode by which the sol- diers and the money for their support should be raised. The Governor, to state the nature of the controversy in a single sentence, urged that a Militia Bill, which should enroll as many of the able-bodied men of the Province as might be needed, should be passed, and that a tax should be levied for their pay and equipment from which the immense private estates of the Proprietaries should be exempted ; while the Assembly contended that the neces- sary force should be raised by a voluntary enlistment, and that loans should be issued to raise money, to be reim- bursed by general taxation, for the maintenance of the troops. For many years this wearisome and profitless struggle continued and nothing was done in the way of defence of the frontier or to avert the threatened danger of invasion. The Governor and the Proprietary party insisted that the refusal to adopt his suggestions was owing to con- scientious scruples on the part of the Quakers about making war, but so untrue was this charge that the Assembly, goaded into action by Braddock's defeat in July, 1755, consented at last to exempt the estates of the Pro- prietaries from taxation, in consideration of a gift by them to the Province of five thousand pounds, and established a chain of forts from the Delaware to the Maryland frontier along the Alleghany Mountains, garrisoned by a body of volunteers, Provincial troops, who for a long time effectu- ally guarded the threatened districts. In this controversy the larger number of the members of this congregation sided with the Proprietary party, having convinced them- selves that no Assembly in which the Quakers had a majority of the votes would, under any circumstances, adopt warlike measures. They went so far on this account
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as to join with the Presbyterians, who had suffered most severely from the Indian raids after Braddock's defeat, in a petition to the Crown, being the third time in which they had made the same application, asking that Quakers should not be permitted hereafter to sit as members of the Assembly. Their action must be attributed to a deep- rooted delusion on the subject, which then prevailed here, and which perhaps the professed principles of the Quakers had done much to foster, and to the natural anxiety which they felt to prevent the possibility of the recurrence of a neglect of the safety of the Province.
But during the years of danger which threatened their safety, when the accounts from the West told of little but of Indian outrages and French victories and marches east- ward, the conduct of this congregation was marked by a manliness and courage and readiness to make sacrifices for the safety of the Province, worthy of all praise as an example, and to which those who succeed them here may point with becoming pride. They were taught from this pulpit the Christian duty of warfare in defending them- selves. Dr. Smith tells us that in this crisis he preached here no less than eight military sermons, as he calls them, and we may be quite sure that in them the duty of defend- ing their lives and their homes from a French and Indian invasion was duly inculcated. We may be also certain from what we know of the membership of Christ Church at that time, that the men on whom the Governor most fully depended at that critical time for the safety of the Province, were to be found among those who gathered here to worship God. The military spirit which prevailed in the congregation was so marked that, in 1758, at the opening of the campaign of that year General Forbes, commander of the army in this Province, could find no
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better means of rousing the military ardor of the inhabi- tants than by asking Dr. Smith to denounce here once more the horrible cruelties which his army was sent to avenge.
During the eventful years (1740-1756) in which the Province was forced to defend itself from the incursions of the Indians to the westward, none of the inhabitants who formed social organizations were more zealous and steady in upholding the hands of those to whom were committed the safety, honor and welfare of the people of this Prov- ince, than the members of this congregation. Opinions might differ, and doubtless often did, among them in regard to the righteousness of the conduct of the agents of the Government in their treatment of the Indians, but when these savages determined to wreak their vengeance by an indiscriminate slaughter of the inhabitants, the law which Churchmen invoked was that of self-defence. At that time the members of Christ Church succored the distressed inhabitants west of the Susquehanna by timely gifts, and they urged the immediate necessity of raising money and men to protect them, profiting by the lessons which they had learned, as I have stated, from this pulpit as to the clear duty of the citizen and the Christian. At that time the special interest which the inembers of this Church could feel as Episcopalians in the sufferings of those exposed to Indian assaults was centered in a feeble mission of the Venerable Society, of which the headquarters were at Carlisle. But the sympathy exhibited by them in this city for the victims of savage cruelty was not bounded by any such narrow frontier. Judging from the names attached to a petition to the Crown in 1756, praying that hereafter no non-resistant Quaker should be permitted to hold a seat in the Assembly, the members of this congre-
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gation were the most determined of those who were willing to undergo any revolutionary change in government which would guarantee that the white population of the Province should be duly protected.
There were many officers, members and pew-holders in Christ Church in the regiments raised by the government of the Province for service during the French and Indian wars. General James Irvine, who was a prominent mem- ber of this congregation, and is traditionally remembered from his always appearing clad in mourning on Good Friday, began his military career as an officer in Bouquet's expedition for the recapture of Fort Duquesne, and was during the Revolution an officer of high rank in the Pennsylvania Line. Among others, we find the well- known names of Colonels Thomas Lawrence, Edward Jones and Turbutt Francis; of Lieut .- Colonels Thomas Yorke and James Coultas; of Major Samuel McCall ; of Captain Thomas Bond; of Lieutenants Lynford Lardner, William Bingham, Atwood Shute, James Claypoole and Plunket Fleeson.
It is not to be forgotten that the social position of many of the members of this Parish (the united Churches of Christ and St. Peter's) gave them an influence out of all proportion with their numbers. It is true, of course, that in the Provincial era the laymen of this Church were, generally speaking, of the Proprietary party, and had sup- ported the war measures of that party; but when they found that the government of the Province had become that of a deputy, without whose consent no legislation could be enacted, and who was bound in his acts to obey the instructions of the Proprietaries in England, and who was in no way responsible to the people of the Province for them, they joined with other parties in the Assembly
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in unanimously declaring, in 1763, that pretensions such as these were as dangerous to the prerogatives of the Crown as they were to the liberties of the people. Pro- prietary men as they were supposed to be, they had no hesitation in praying the King, for the fourth time, with Dr. Franklin, in 1764, that he would resume the governi- ment of the Province and that the Proprietary system should be abolished.
The signs of the times became more portentous after the enactment of the Stamp Act of 1765, and it soon became ap- parent that there would be as much opposition here on the part of the Churchmen to Imperial misgovernment, as there had been to the arbitrary pretensions of the Governors. Indeed, it is hardly worth proving that during these perilous times all classes of people in Pennsylvania, resist- ants and non-resistants alike, protested against the Minis- terial measures. The members of this congregation, in common with their fellow-citizens of other beliefs, remon- strated against the Stamp Act and the Tea Act, as well as against the Boston Port Bill and other measures intended to punish the town of Boston ; they all signed the Non- importation and the Non-exportation Agreements ; they all petitioned the Crown to guarantee the right of self-govern- ment ; they determined to maintain the fundamental rights of the colonies; they warned the Ministry that armed resistance would be made to further encroachments, and they did not hesitate to vote for raising men and money for the defence of the Province after the battle of Lexington. Yet with all this, they never ceased to hope that some peaceful settlement of the dispute might be made and that no violent separation from the Mother Country would take place. As the crisis of the Revolution approached, the opinions held by the congregation as to the course they
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would take, are best expressed in the letter of their clergy to the Bishop of London. In this letter, dated June 30, 1775, the clergy of this parish, Messrs. Richard Peters, Jacob Duché, Thomas Coombe, Williamn Stringer and William White, join with Dr. Smith, the Provost of the College, in saying to the Bishop of London, "All that we can do is to pray for such a settlement and to pursue those principles of moderation and reason which your Lordship has always recommended to us. We have neither interest nor consequence sufficient to take any great lead in the affairs of this great country. The people will feel and judge for themselves in matters affecting their own civil happiness, and were we capable of any attempt which might have the appearance of drawing them to what they think would be a slavish resignation of their rights, it would be destructive to ourselves as well as to the Church of which we are ministers. But it is but justice to our superiors, and to your Lordship in particular, to declare that such conduct has never been required of us. Indeed, could it possibly be required, we are not backward to say that our consciences would not permit us to injure the rights of the country. We are to leave our families in it, and cannot but consider its inhabitants entitled, as well as their brethren in England, to the right of granting their own money ; and that every attempt to deprive them of this right will either be found abortive in the end or attended with evils which would infinitely outweigh all the benefits to be obtained by it. Such being our persua- sion, we must again declare it to be our constant prayer, in which we are sure that your Lordship joins, that the hearts of good and benevolent men in both countries may be directed towards a plan of reconciliation worthy of being. offered by a great nation that have long been the patrons
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of freedom throughout the world, and not unworthy of being accepted by a people sprung from them and by birth claiming a participation in their rights."
The sentiments frankly expressed in this letter were not merely those of the clergy of Christ Church, but it voiced doubtless the opinion of its lay members, as well as that of a large circle of friends not of their religious faith, but within the sphere of their influence. In a community such as Philadelphia then was, it is not easy to over- estimate the power derived from the common opinion on a momentous question of its foremost citizens. Men like William Bingham, Richard Bache, Benjamin Chew, John Cadwalader, Gerardus Clarkson, Redmond Conyngham, Manuel Eyre, Michael Hillegas, Archibald McCall, Charles Meredith, Edmund Physick, William Plumstead, Samuel Powel, Edward Shippen, Richard and Thomas Willing, never speak in vain. These are names as familiar to those who have passed a long life in Philadelphia as household words, and those who bore them were all members of the congregation of Christ Church. This letter to the Bishop of London doubtless reveals that feeling of mingled defi- ance and dread with which they viewed the approach of the Revolution.
Of these clergymen of the Church here, it may be said that Messrs. White and Duché became afterwards chaplains of the Continental Congress, and that Dr. Smith urged, in a powerful sermon delivered before Colonel Cadwalader's regiment of Volunteer Associators in this Church, the right and duty of armed resistance if the grievances com- plained of were not redressed. At that time (the early period of the Revolution) it is hardly necessary to say that . there was no question of independence, for no public man in Pennsylvania, within or without Christ Church, had
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advocated such a measure. When the time arrived when it was thought necessary by Congress to proclaim our inde- pendence, no less than three of the signers of that immortal instrument, Franklin, Robert Morris and Hopkinson, were found to be pew-holders in this Church. And on the very day on which that great charter of a new nation was signed, it was agreed by the vestry and clergy of this Church that the long-familiar prayer for the King and the Royal Family should thenceforth be omitted from the service. In short, in no quarter was the action of the Assembly of the State and of Congress dissolving our allegiance to Great Britain more loyally obeyed than in this Church, to which kings and queens in happier days had been loving nursing fathers and nursing mothers.
With the close of the Revolution that direct and peculiar influence of Christ Church upon the lay element in Phila- delphia, which, during the Provincial era, had been so characteristic a feature of its corporate life, in a great measure ceased. Whether this was due to changes which then brought into power men of a very different social position and very different political ideas from those who had governed this community in former days, I will not stop to inquire. Whatever may have been the cause, there can be no doubt in the mind of any student of our history that Quakers and Episcopalians, the foremost citizens of the Province, however faithful they may have been to the changes produced by the Revolution, lost their prestige and political leadership in the Commonwealth created by it.
Thenceforth Christ Church entered upon a new era, and devoted herself to the propagation exclusively of that special form of Christianity of which she had been the recognized representative here. Under the guidance of that wise, discreet, revered and saintly man who was then
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her Rector and was soon afterwards to become the chief pastor of this diocese, she became in a very important sense, omnium ecclesiarum mater et caput.
Bishop White, I need not say, was not only a great Churchman, but he was a great citizen also. From the stormy days of the Revolution, when he taught Congress that resistance to oppression is a religious duty ; from the day in which in his study in St. Peter's house in this city he outlined a plan for the Federal Union of the Church, down to the day when he was laid at rest under the chan- cel of this Church, the great work of his life was, so to speak, the naturalization of the order and discipline of the Protestant Episcopal Church under its new conditions in this country. What measure of success attended his efforts it is not my province to speak of, but I may venture to affirm that the Church in this country can never be too grateful for what she owes to his wisdom and sagacity. He is the great link which binds the past to the present. He was the champion of all that is true and noble and inspiring in the history of that form of Christianity of which he was here the chief minister, and to no wiser hands could the great task of adapting that historical and venerable form of ecclesiastical polity to our present need have been confided than to his.
I count it as one of the happiest recollections of my youth that I should have been permitted to see Bishop White in the last year of his life, not robed in his canon- ical vestments nor surrounded by those things calculated to impress a boyish imagination with the dignity of his position, but walking these streets in the ordinary dress of a clergyman of that day. His tall, spare figure, his cos- tume, that of a gentleman of the old school, the broad- brimmed hiat which half concealed his flowing white locks,
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his ample coat, his short clothes, his long stockings and buckled shoes, and his stout walking staff-all these things made him truly venerable in my eyes and produced an impression which the lapse of sixty years has not removed. As he passed along, supported on the arm of his grandson, I remember that I looked upon him, as I had ever been taught to regard him, as the last of the Revolu- tionary patriots. To those who met him and knew any- thing of his history and character, he was the type and exemplar of that pure and lofty doctrine which he had preached all his life. His perfect sincerity, his genuine simplicity, his boundless charity of act and opinion towards those who differed from him, caused him to be recognized, as was well said by a distinguished divine of another communion than his, as "truly the Bishop of us all."
With such a history and with such personages serving as illustrations of it, Christ Church is not merely a temple where men have met during the last two hundred years to worship God after the manner of their fathers, but it is also one of the brightest jewels in the mural crown of this godly city. Here men have been taught during all that long period, not merely their duty to God, but also to con- secrate the service of their lives to the welfare of their fellow-men, and especially to that of our own community and Commonwealth. As we recall the names of its mem- bers who in times past, amidst trials and obstacles of all sorts, have done their duty, while doing the State some service, may we emulate their example, never failing to heed the voice of God and our country when it calls upon us for work and self-sacrifice.
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