USA > Virginia > Old churches, ministers and families of Virginia, Vol. II > Part 38
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The history of the missionaries of that Society in South Carolina, as given by one of her sons, (the Rev. Mr. Dalcho,) informs us of some who, on account of their evil character, were soon complained
* That some of the followers of Laud came over to Virginia after his fall, is evident from what Sir William Berkeley says in his memorable protest against much preach- ing and the establishment of a printing-press and schools in the Colony. He speaks in praise of some ministers who came out soon after Laud's death, and very slight- ingly of the rest, saying that, "if they would only pray more and preach less, he would like to see them better paid." As for free schools and a printing-press, he thanked God there were none in the Colony, and trusted there would be none for a hundred years to come, as he considered them fruitful nurseries of heresy and rebellion. No doubt Sir William sympathized with Laud in many things. He was as much disposed to high-handed measures in the management of the Colony as Laud was in England. Cromwell's rebellion in England and Bacon's rebellion in Virginia may be, in a great measure, traced to the arbitrary spirit and conduct of the Archbishop and Governor.
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of, and either recalled or dismissed from the service. The con- gregations, indeed, became very cautious how they received the missionaries. They delayed institutions, as in Virginia, until satis- fied of their good character by sufficient trial. The Society some- times complained that too long a trial was required. Still, I doubt not that their general character for morals and piety was much superior to that of the imported clergy of Maryland and Virginia. But now a most important inquiry must be made, in order to form a correct estimate of the religion of the Colonial Churches. It is this :- What was the type of the theology-the substance and style of the preaching-of the ministers of that day? What doctrines were insisted on with emphasis from the pulpit ? How did the preaching of that day accord with the doctrines of the apostles and the reformers on the subject of human depravity, and of Christ as the sinner's " all in all"? How did the sermons compare with our homilies on the misery or sinfulness of man, on justification, on the new birth, &c .? It will surely be admitted to be a fair way of deciding this question to ascertain what was the theology and preaching in England during the time when our supply was greatest from the Mother-Church. The clergy coming over to us must have borne a strong resemblance in their theology and style of sermon- izing, and in other respects, to the great body of those left behind ; only that we are obliged to admit the probability of what was so generally declared in all the documents and histories of the times,-namely, that, with some honourable exceptions, they were inferior in character. In making this inquiry, we shall not go back to the few who came out during the reign of James I. We will pass over those few who came to America in the days of Laud, who, intent on establishing high Episcopal and Sacramentarian views and on putting down all dissent, neglected (as some of his own admirers admit) most shamefully the religious condition of the Colonies .*
* Dr. Coke, the Methodist Bishop, who from his office and his extensive travels throughout England and America had a good opportunity to form a correct judgment, says, not only of those who absconded at the American Revolution, but of those who remained, that, " Fallen as the ministers of the Establishment in England generally are, they are incomparably to be preferred before the clergy of America." (See his Life of Samuel Drew, p. 145.) The Bishop of London wrote a letter to Dr. Dod- dridge, in the year 1751, concerning a communication from the Rev. Mr. Davies, in which, while he endeavours to defend the American clergy against the wholesale charges brought against them, he is forced to make the following acknowledgment :- "Of those who are sent from hence, a great part are the Scotch or Irish, who can get no employment at home, and enter on the service more out of necessity than choice ; some others are willing to go abroad to retrieve either lost fortunes or lost character " VOL. II .- 23
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We pass over also the times of the Commonwealth and of the two succeeding reigns, and come down to that of William and Mary,- the time of the greatest influx of ministers to America,-the time of Tillotson and Burnet, and the formation of the two great societies for extending the Church,-the Christian Knowledge Society and the Propagation Society, which began their work within two years of each other under the direction of kindred spirits,-the one in 1698, the other in 1700. The history of those times shows that Romanism and Calvinism were equally eschewed. Let the sermons and tracts of that day be compared with those of the Calvinistic preaching in the time of Elizabeth and the semi-Romanistic ones in the days of Laud, and a marked difference will be seen. But there may also be seen as marked a difference between the sermons of Tillotson and others of his stamp, and those of the earlier Re- formers, as well as those of a later period, which have been denomi- nated Evangelical. The age of Tillotson and Burnet may be called the age of reasoning, of liberalism, of comprehension. Tillotson and Burnet were great and good and pious men,-practical and useful men. Their views of the Church, ministry, and Sacraments were conservative. Their charity was truly Christian. And yet it must be admitted that they stood at the beginning of a new school, differing from any going before, and destined soon to degenerate into something which they did not design. The sermons of Tillot- son are masterpieces of reasoning on all theological subjects,-are a body of divinity to students ; but then they are not addressed to the hearts and consciences of sinners so as to awaken them to cry, " What must we do to be saved?" They do not present Christ in all his fulness to the soul with that earnest application which the true evangelical preacher does. Burnet also admitted that he wished to lower the doctrine of the article "On Justification by Faith" somewhat,-though by no means to make it approach the Sacramental view, but rather the contrary. The followers of such men soon began to substitute reasoning, natural religion, and mo- rality for the Gospel. They did not deny the evangelical system, but they did not preach it as they ought to have done, and the pulpit, of course, lost its power. There were but few sermons published
The Bishop on this and other accounts was anxious to have Bishops sent to America, that they might exercise discipline over the clergy coming from England, and ordain natives for the Church. Had all the ministers of Dissenting Churches in America been as liberal as Mr. Davies, Bishops would probably have been sent at an early period, and much evil been prevented. Mr. Davies, in his letter to the Bishop of London, expresses himself most favourably of the measure.
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in that day. At any rate, Tillotson's so far exceeded all others in many respects, that they were the sermons of the Church. In the Church of Virginia none appear to have been used by the lay readers but Tillotson's. In many old vestry-books I have met with, a suffi- cient number of his sermons were ordered to supply the lay readers ; and there were probably two lay readers to each clergyman in the diocese. They were indeed better and longer than the brief and most unimpressive sermons of the clergy, (judging from a number of the latter which I have read,) but still they are not calculated to rouse lost sinners to a sense of their condition and lead them to a Saviour, notwithstanding all that is so excellent in them. Tillot- son's sermons, abridged into moral essays and dry reasonings on the doctrines of religion, were, I fear, the general type of sermon- izing among the clergy who came over to America for the last seventy or eighty years before the War of the Revolution.
I fear that many of the publications of the Christian Knowledge Society were somewhat wanting in that pressing of evangelical principles upon the hearts and consciences of men in the way that has been found so effective to their conversion since the days of Venn, Newton, Simeon, and others. Soon after entering the mi- nistry, I was desirous to publish a volume of sermons and tracts for servants, and, being unable to find any such in this country, I addressed a letter to Mr. Wilberforce, the warm friend of the negro race, and made known to him my wishes,-not without acknowledg- ing my indebtedness to his book, under God, for much of that which I considered a true view of our holy religion. In reply, he sent me all the tracts of the Christian Knowledge Society,-perhaps all that then had been published in England for the poor. I confess I was disappointed in them; not that they had any of that false doctrine which, at a later period, was surreptitiously introduced into some of them by altering certain words, but that they did not press with sufficient force and earnestness certain truths upon the minds of the poor.
About this time my attention was called to some sermons of the Rev. Mr. Bacon, a minister of our Church in Maryland, addressed expressly to masters and servants. They were preached and pub- lished in 1743. Their style is plain and forcible, and all that is said is well said; but still there is the deficiency of the age in them. They do not present Christ to men as poor lost sinners, in the way they ought to do. They recognise the doctrine and declare it in few words, but do not emphasize and press it. They were the best I could get, however, and I published them. In an abridgment of
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two of them afterward, I sought to supply this deficiency. Let me add, that I think there may seem this same error in one of the directions for the conduct and preaching of the first missionaries of this Society when sent to South Carolina. The directions, with this one exception, arc most wise and pious. Nothing could be better. The defective passage, as I think, is this :- "That, in in- structing heathens and infidels, they begin with the principles of natural religion, appealing to their reason and conscience, and thence proceed to show the necessity of revelation," &c. Now, this is precisely the method attempted at first by the Moravian missionaries in the North, and which they found so fruitless, and therefore abandoned, choosing the more evangelical one with suc- cess .* (See Dalcho's History of the Episcopal Church in South Carolina, p. 46.) The fault of the Tillotson school was too much reasoning,-too much appeal to natural religion, which, though, like Butler's Analogy, it might be very effective with some for a certain purpose, could not answer for the multitudes. Had our Lord preached thus, the common people would not have heard him gladly. Nor would the wise and mighty have been converted by the Apostles, if such had been their preaching. In what I have said of the successors of the Tillotson school, there has been of late a general agreement of our divines, whether called High or Low Churchmen, all admitting that the moralizing system will not avail, though differing much as to other things. I would not be mis- understood on this subject. I do not deny to Tillotson most ad- mirable method and valuable matter in his sermons; for I have read many of them with great pleasure, and not, I hope, without profit. But I must regard him and his imitators as false models of preaching, as comparatively ignoring the deep corruption of human nature, so that God in his good providence saw fit to raise up not only the Whitefields and Wesleys, who took an erratic course, but the Venns, the Newtons, and the Simeons in the bosom of the Church, to preach a simpler and fuller Gospel to the millions of lost ones in our mother-country. This failing to set forth the desperate wickedness of the human heart, calling for a Saviour,
* Bishop Horsley, in his charge of 1790, exposes the plan of beginning with natural religion, affirming that the difficulty of understanding the principles of natural religion is as great as that of understanding revealed; that the true way is to preach the plain Gospel of redemption to sinners, as that which God has pro- vided for them, and look up to him to open the hearts of the hearers to receive what he has sent them. Such has been the experience of all who preach to the benighted heathen, or to the poorest and most illiterate in Christian lands.
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a new birth, has, from my first entrance on the ministry, seemed to me the great defect of our old clergy. I remember to have preached before one of the oldest, most venerable and eminent of them, on the text, "The carnal mind is enmity toward God," and in the sermon to have quoted many of those Scriptures which represent us as "Hating God," "being his enemies in our. minds," "being children of the devil," and having quite grieved him by it. He said that he did not like such a mode of preaching. It was in vain that I adduced Scripture as my warrant and example. He did not like it. And yet I was not wont to speak the doctrine harshly, but tenderly and in pity.
Having presented this general view of the American Church, let me proceed to mention some things which will show that I have, from an early period, had opportunity of forming a correct estimate of some things occurring within it during the last forty or fifty years. At the age of seventeen I went to Princeton College. In going from and returning to Virginia during my collegiate course, I became a temporary inmate in the hospitable house of Dr. Aber- crombie, the associate minister with Bishop White in the churches under his care. Several of the sisters of Mrs. Abercrombie, having lived for a long time in the family of one of my uncles of Virginia and received much kindness from him, became the means of my introduction to this very kind and agreeable household. The daughters were most interesting young women. On Good Friday, 1807, I heard Dr. Abercrombie, who was regarded as one of the pulpit orators of the day, preach on the Passion of Christ. A strong impression was made on my mind and memory by his action in the pulpit, as well as by his language. After describing some of the sufferings of Christ, he came to the crucifixion, and, erect- ing his tall form to the highest point, he stretched out his arms in a horizontal direction, and, standing motionless for a time, pre- sented the figure of a cross. I have never entered St. Peter's since, without having the scene renewed. Nor has the impression made by the kindness of himself and family ever been effaced. At the close of my collegiate course, I formed some acquaintance with the Rev. Dr. Beasley, associate minister with Dr. Hobart in Trinity Church, New York; and with Dr. Montgomery, of Grace Church, New York. That acquaintance was increased into considerable intimacy afterward with Dr. Beasley, while he lived both in Balti- more and Philadelphia, and with Dr. Montgomery in the latter place, whom I often saw, for many years, at my home in the family of old Commodore Dale, that good man and true Christian, who
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married Dr. Montgomery's aunt. From these two ministers I necessarily learned many things about the Church of that day. In the year 1811, I was ordained, and soon after received from Bishop Hobart, by the hand of his old college friend, Charles Fenton Mercer, of Virginia, a large assortment of books, tracts, and pam- phlets, most of them written by himself, on points of controversy with other denominations, and on some matters of internal trouble in the diocese of New York, and also some Episcopal devotional works. I read them all, and remember to have sympathized with him in his personal difficulties. I admired the ability displayed by him in his contest with Dr. Mason, and entirely agreed with him in his argument for the Apostolic origin of Episcopacy, though unable to follow when he proceeded to claim exclusive divine right for it. By means of these publications, I became tolerably well acquainted with the politics of the Church, and under circumstances quite favourable to an impartial judgment. About six years after this, (and before I attended any General Convention, though twice elected, being prevented by unavoidable circumstances,) I went on a painful errand to the South, bearing to its milder climate a sick and, as the result proved, a dying wife. During my stay in Charles- ton, South Carolina, myself and wife received every kind attention which brother ministers and Christian ladies could have shown us. It was during the last year of good Bishop Dehon's life, whose praise was on every tongue. Dr. Gadsden was then in the la- borious discharge of his duties to bond and free. I saw him in the place of his greatest honour,-in the Sunday-school, teaching the coloured ones, both old and young. I preached in several of the churches in Charleston. In one of them-either St. Philip's or St. Michael's-I witnessed what surely would have gladdened the heart of the most prejudiced opponent of slavery. I saw what I was told were the last fruits of the labours of the old missionaries of the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts,-old negro men and women with some of their children sitting on benches along the side-aisles, and around the chancel and near the pulpit, which was advanced some distance into the middle aisle .* Spec-
* The structure of this building was nearly the same with that of most of the old large English churches, which is, I believe, the best that can be. The chancel is against the wall, behind the pulpit, that being advanced some distance into the middle aisle, which is always large enough to admit of benches for the poor. The poor also sit around the chancel, on the place where the communicants kneel, and on chairs and stools between that and the pulpit, and on the stair-steps leading up
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tacles aided their aged vision, and, with Prayer-Books in their hands, they read the responses aloud in the midst of their owners. The missionaries were not prevented from teaching them to read, but rather encouraged so to do. Nor have masters and mistresses ever been prevented from doing it themselves, or having it done at home; though public schools are forbidden. On the contrary, there have, I believe, always been more well-instructed and in- telligent coloured persons, bond and free, in Charleston than in any other city in the Union. I had occasion, two years after this, to take the gauge and dimensions of the condition of the coloured people in all the Atlantic States, and think that I am qualified to judge on the subject.
It was at this time that I became acquainted with Dr. Percy, and his excellent son-in-law, the Rev. Mr. Campbell, of South Carolina; both of whom agreed in their views of experimental piety, and that mode of presenting the Gospel to men for which we are pleading. Dr. Percy was a bold, impressive, and faithful preacher of the doc- trines of grace. He was one of those who, under the auspices of Lady Huntington, felt called on to preach an almost-forgotten Gospel in England, though in a somewhat irregular way. He was a graduate of Oxford, and was ordained by an English Bishop in 1767. He came over to America as one of Lady Huntington's preachers. Here he took part with the Revolutionists, and preached to the American troops. At the fall of Charleston, he was ordered by Colonel Balfour to desist from preaching, on pain of confine- ment. When Lady Huntington in her old age proposed to secede from the Church of England, and wished Dr. Percy to ordain some preachers for her, he positively and indignantly refused, and then connected himself more closely with the Episcopal Church. In 1805, he became assistant minister in St. Philip's and St. Michael's Churches, Charleston, South Carolina. A few years after this, St. Paul's Church in that city was built for him. He died in the year 1817. Dr. Gadsden preached his funeral-sermon in St. Philip's Church, at the request of the Bible Society, of which he had been
to the pulpit. A door at the upper part of the church allows an easy ingress and egress to the poor. The minister is thus more in the midst of his people, and has them all so near to him that he can see their countenances and be seen and heard by them much better than on the more modern plan, where the preacher is either thrown against the wall, perhaps in a recess, or else is on one side of the congregation, before some little quasi pulpit where, what with the high-pitched roof and great distance of the congregation, the voice is almost lost.
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President. Although Dr. Percy was honoured by the Church in Carolina, and was President of the Standing Committee, yet I could perceive there was a marked difference in his views on some points and those of the other clergy with whom I associated. His views are presented in two pamphlets which he published while officiating in St. Philip's and St. Michael's, and which he presented to me. One, on the Episcopal Church, sets forth her claims in such a manner that no sound Churchman could question his attach- ment to her, and yet no reasonable Non-Episcopalian complain. In the other we have a portrait at large of the true evangelical preacher in life and doctrine. One or two extracts from the latter of these will serve to confirm my views of the state of the Church at that time. He says, in his Introduction, "That real religion at the present period is at the lowest possible ebb, in most of our Churches, will hardly be denied by any serious and reflecting mind, who understands what the religion of Christ is, and what Chris- tianity was intended to do for mankind." He declares that all great and general declensions of religion, whether in principle or practice, begin at the Sanctuary or Church of God; and therefore he calls upon all the clergy to examine themselves, both as to their lives and preaching, and see whether they are not much in fault. He quotes Bishop Horsley as condemning the preaching of that day, saying to his clergy "that too many have continued so long preaching in the smooth and fashionable strain of dry ethics and mere moral suasion, instead of preaching the pure doctrines of the Reformation, that they had wellnigh preached pure Christian morality out of the world." Dr. Percy speaks very impressively of the duty of ministers "having their own hearts savingly con- verted unto God," as they hoped to be instruments of saving others. The whole pamphlet is worthy of perusal. I cannot, however, leave this topic without adverting to and correcting an error into which many have fallen in tracing the evangelical movement of the Church of England to the school of Whitefield and Wesley, with which Dr. Percy was for a time connected. Although God made much use for good of these zealous and fearless men, as all acknowledge, yet the great work of evangelical reformation in the English Church commenced in a different line, and at an earlier period, at Cambridge and London, and elsewhere, and has ever con- tinued distinct. We begin our line with the Venns, Newtons, Ro- maines, Legh Richmonds, and bring it down through the Simeons, Cecils, Pratts, Gisbornes, Wilberforces, the Thorntons, Hannah Mores, and others. These were never associated with the Hunt-
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ington school, but ever continued most true and faithful members of the English Church. There have been those both in England and in America who have sought to disparage the evangelical cause by identifying it with those who left the English Church; and many have been deceived by the misrepresentation. I remember that Mr. John Randolph could hardly be convinced by me that Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Perceval, and Miss Hannah More were not regular members of the Methodist Church in England. His prejudices were quite strong against them on this account. In my earlier days there were many such persons. We in this country also were esteemed or spoken of little otherwise. By many we were con- sidered as in no sense Churchmen, but rather intruders into the ministry of the Episcopal Church, having some sinister end in view. The wish has been often expressed that such would go to their place, -that is, to some other denomination with which they sympathized, -just as some of us have wished that Tractarians would go to their place, the Church of Rome. Which of us had the better right so to speak, let history declare. Hundreds of Tractarians have gone from the Church of England and America to Rome. Who of us have gone to Geneva? I doubt not but many were very sincere in their hard thoughts and hard speeches of us; but so was Paul in his denunciation of Christians. Even Bishop White has been declared (and it has often and recently been in print) to have denounced us in very strong and offensive language; which I shall believe when affirmed on sufficient authority. But if true, it only proves the justice of our complaint as to the manner in which we have been dealt with; for if the amiable Bishop White, with his moderate Church views, could thus speak, what might not others have said ? Bishop Hobart issued a Pastoral entitled "The High-Churchman Vindicated," in which he not only boasts of the name and principles of High-Churchmen, predicting that they will one day prevail and be honoured universally, but makes some comparisons between them and Low-Churchmen which are not only invidious, but such as only party feelings (of which we did not profess to be free) could have induced him to make. I should not have adverted to this, but that this Pastoral and another on the Principles of a Church- man have been republished by the Protestant Episcopal Society of New York, bound up in its volumes, and transmitted to posterity. In one of them, those who rank the distinctive principles of the Church, for which he pleads, among the non-essentials of religion, are declared to be guilty of treachery to their Church and to their Master. It is well known that Low-Churchmen do not consider
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