Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses at the Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885

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Episcopal Church. Diocese of Connecticut. Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses at the Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885

Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses at the Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885

Table of Contents

PREFATORY NOTE. CENTENARY OF BISHOP SEABURY'S ELECTION:

CENTENARY OF BISHOP SEABURY'S CONSECRATION:

CENTENARY OF BISHOP SEABURY'S RETURN:

APPENDIX—COMMEMORATION AT ABERDEEN, 1884:

DEUS, AURIBUS NOSTRIS AUDIVIMUS, PATRES NOSTRI ANNUNTIAVERUNT NOBIS, OPUS QUOD OPERATUS ES IN DIEBUS EORUM, ET IN DIEBUS ANTIQUIS. PREFATORY NOTE

"NOVI ORBIS APOSTOLI SIT NOMEN PERENNE." CENTENARY COMMEMORATION

OF THE ELECTION OF BISHOP SEABURY

THE REV. SAMUEL SEABURY, D.D. WAS ELECTED FIRST BISHOP OF CONNECTICUT AT WOODBURY, MARCH 25, 1783

THE RT. REV. SAMUEL SEABURY, D.D. WAS CONSECRATED FIRST BISHOP OF CONNECTICUT AT ABERDEEN, NOVEMBER 14, 1784

THE STONES REVIVED. NEHEMIAH IV. 2

DR. TATLOCK'S ADDRESS

THE BISHOP'S REPLY

DR. BEARDSLEY'S ADDRESS

REV. MR. NICHOLS'S ADDRESS

REV. MR. HART'S ADDRESS

BISHOP WILLIAMS'S ADDRESS

EXHIBITION OF SEABURY RELICS, ETC

CENTENARY COMMEMORATION

OF THE RETURN OF. BISHOP SEABURY. 1885. THE RT. REV. SAMUEL SEABURY, D.D. FIRST BISHOP OF CONNECTICUT, HELD HIS FIRST ORDINATION AT MIDDLETOWN, AUGUST 3, 1785

THE WISE RULER

APPENDIX

COMMEMORATION AT ABERDEEN, OCTOBER 7-8, 1884

TO THE BISHOPS OF THE SCOTTISH EPISCOPAL CHURCH: HEALTH AND GREETING IN THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. AMEN

SEABURY AS A BISHOP

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Episcopal Church. Diocese of Connecticut

Published by Good Press, 2021

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It ought never to be forgotten that the first missionary—if I may so speak—of our Church in Connecticut was the Book of Common Prayer. Keith and Talbot had, indeed, preached at New London in 1702. Muirson had organized the few churchmen at Stratford into a parish in 1707. Different clergymen had, from time to time, through the watchful care of Caleb Heathcote—a name that we ought never to forget—ministered to that little band in their sore trials and vexations. One, Francis Phillips, had come to them and, after six months of neglect and carelessness, departed, leaving only confusion behind him. But long before anything like permanent ministration was begun at Stratford by George Pigot on Trinity Sunday in 1722, Samuel Johnson at Guilford had been diligently studying the Book of Common Prayer put into his hands by Smithson— another name never to be forgotten—and in those studies we find, it seems to me, the true beginnings of what was to become the Diocese of Connecticut. The old Faith enshrined in the historic creeds of the Prayer-Book; the law and life of worship embodied in its formularies, all leading up to and centering in the highest act of Christian worship, the Holy Eucharist; its ideal of the Christian life taught in its Catechism and carried out in all its offices from baptism to burial; on these foundations, no broader and no narrower, was our Church here built up. God grant that on these foundations it may stand till time shall end!

I protest against the narrow and unhistoric idea that Johnson and those who labored with and after him conformed to the Church of England only because of their convictions touching Holy Orders. No doubt those convictions were a factor, a most important factor, in the change they made. But there was a great deal more involved than that one question. Men who had gone from the dry bones of Ames's Medulla and Wollebius to the "fresh springs" of Hooker and Bull and Pearson, must have found how utterly unlike to the Catholic Faith which they there were taught, were the "distributions and definitions" of that "theoretical divinity" in which they had been trained. It was indeed, as one of them said, "emerging from the glimmer of twilight into the full sunshine of open day." Men who had unlearned their prejudices against "pre-composed forms of prayer" by the study of such books as King's Inventions of Men in the Worship of God and the fifth Book of Hooker's immortal work, and above all of the Book of Common Prayer itself, must have reached another and a loftier ideal of worship than any they had known before. Men who had passed from the narrow, cramped, and often conventional theories of Christian living to which they were accustomed, to the reading of Scott's Christian Life [Footnote: I have often been told, by the late Dr. Jarvis, that Scott's Christian Life was a favorite book with our early clergy, especially with Johnson and Beach.] and the works of Hammond and Ken, had, surely, found something totally different from anything to which they were wonted. The question, as it presented itself to them, took on no narrow shape, ran in no single groove. It covered the Orders, the Faith, the Worship of the Church of God, and it took in with them the ideal of the Christian Life. It was no narrower than that; and they who assume that it was, contradict the conclusions of reason and the testimony of history. The pioneers of our Church were sometimes, in their own days, called by their opponents "covenant-breakers." If, however, they withdrew from covenants entered into by men with each other, it was only that they might attain the fulness of the New Covenant in the Blood of the Incarnate Son of God.

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