The historic episcopate

Preface

The subject of this book has engaged its author's attention at intervals for nearly half a century.

The present time seems propitious for publishing it, in the hope of an irenic rather than a polemic effect. Our Lord seems to be pressing on the minds of his people the duty of reconciliation with each other as brethren, and to be bringing about a harmony of feeling and of action, which is beyond our hopes. He is beating down high pretensions and sectarian prejudices, which have stood in the way of Christian reunion.

It is in the belief that the claims made for what is called "the Historic Episcopate" have been, as Dr. Liddon admits, a chief obstacle to Christian unity, that I have undertaken to present the results of a long study of its history, in the hope that this will promote, not dissension, but harmony. If in any place I have spoken in what seems a polemic tone, let this be set down to the stress of discussion, and not to any lack of charity or respect for what was for centuries the church of my fathers, as it still is that of most of my kindred.

I wish to thank here Rev. Louis F. Benson, D.D., for the encouragement, advice and assistance he has given me in this work. Also to recognize with thanks my obligations to the librarians of Union Theological Seminary, for their kind and prompt aid in my visits to their splendid library, and especially to Mr. Harold Tryon, my former pupil and always friend, who is now an instructor in that Seminary.

Philadelphia,

Table Of Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The New Testament Age 17

II. The Presbyterl\n Fathers 50

Introduction

In the later history of the American Churches nothing is more gratifying than the decay of the polemic spirit. The men most honored are no longer those who administer the hardest knocks to other communions than their own. The literature in which the different sects used to pay their disrespects to each other is in small demand. The controversies of to-day are not between the different denominations of Christians, as they deal with questions on which there is a difference of opinion within the churches, and thus tend to weaken rather than to strengthen denominational feeling.

There is one exception to this, growing out of the claim put forward by a party within the Protestant Episcopal Church, but not by that Church itself. This party tells us that theirs alone of all the churches called Protestant possesses an authorized ministry and valid sacraments. Nor is this merely an academic thesis. It is proclaimed in sermons, propounded in leading articles, circulated in tracts, and pressed in social intercourse, as a reason why the members of other Protestant communions should abandon these for this favored Church; and every suggestion of a union of the Protestant churches is met with the demand that the pastors of these shall confess their lack of proper ordination, and shall submit to receive this at the hand of their bishops.

This teaching, as has been said, is that not of that church, but of a party within it, which has grown up within the last seventy years, and must be reckoned among the novelties which disturb the peace of a much respected communion. Down to the rise of the Oxford school in England, and the spread of its influence in America, the position of Protestant episcopacy in our country was far from that which has been given it by these new controversialists.

At the first the whole of the English colonies in America were attached to the diocese of London, so that not only ordination but even confirmation was limited to those who could undertake an ocean voyage lasting several months, and exposing passengers to perils of storm, war and pestilence, such as no longer exist for those who cross the Atlantic. At the same time, in spite of the appointment of Episcopal commissaries with powers of visitation, there was no possibility of keeping the clergy of the Church of England in America under due discipline, and the lives of some were a scandal to their cloth.

The hardships of the situation were not unf elt in England and three several attempts were made to transport the English episcopate to America. The first of these was set on foot by Archbishop Laud, but was thwarted by the outbreak of the civil war. The second was due to the zealous churchmanship of the Earl of Clarendon, but came to an end with his expulsion from the chancellorship and banishment from England in 1667. The third grew out of the revival of zeal for the Church in the reign of Queen Anne. The papers were about to pass the great seal, and a house for the bishop had been secured in Burlington, N. J., when the queen's death transferred the English monarchy to a family of Germans, who cared nothing for the matter. The accession, however, of the third king of the house of Hanover seemed to offer a favorable opportunity for the appointment of an American bishop. George III was proud of his position as a British sovereign, and loyal in his way to the Church of England. Archbishop Seeker and Bishop Porteous of Chester — the latter a native of Virginia — were friendly to the proposal.

The difficulty in the way was the indifference of English statesmen to Church interests, and their reluctance to take any course for such an object which ran the risk of exciting extensive opposition either at home or in the colonies. And in both there was opposition enough. The British and Irish nonconformists resisted the proposal to extend the influence and power of English prelacy beyond the seas. The colonists, not excepting the Episcopalians in Virginia, objected to the coming of a bishop who might bring with him the prelatic courts, with their jurisdiction over marriages, wills and other matters, which lasted in England until 1857, to say nothing of the peril of having Parliament enact a general tithe or tax upon all the colonists for the support of the bishop and his clergy.

To propitiate this opposition, Dr. Thomas Bradley Chandler, of Burlington, published An Appeal to the Public in Behalf of the Church of England in America (New York, 1767), in which he set forth the hardships attending the dependence of the Episcopalians in the colonies on an English bishop, and assured his countrymen that nothing more was intended than the erection of an American diocese with jurisdiction over the clergy and people who voluntarily submitted to its bishop. The good faith of Dr. Chandler and his associates was not called in question; but it was pointed out that they could give no assurance that the British Parliament would not follow up this step by levying a general tithe and erecting a bishop's court with powers similar to those exercised by English bishops. In fact, the proposal brought into light the perils to religious equality which attached to the connection with the mother country, and thus helped to bring on the war for independence. It led to annual conferences of the Puritan churches of New England with the Presbyterians of the middle colonies, and to correspondence with the English dissenters, with a view to watching the movements of the friends of an American bishopric.

For these reasons the war wrought disaster to the Church of England in the colonies. Although Washington and other laymen of that communion, and William White and others among its clergy, were on the patriotic side, }'et it lost heavily in membership through the emigration of the loyalists to other parts of the British Empire and the withdrawal of patriots to other communions. Dr. Chandler gave good reason for believing that it was the strongest Christian communion in America before the war; but it certainly was far outnumbered by several others after its close, and to this day ranks below four other Protestant churches in point of membership. For this reason, and because independence had removed the peril of an established church, the opposition to the transplanting of Protestant episcopacy to America ceased. Opposition was disarmed, and the representative of our government at the Court of St. James took part in the negotiations to secure the consecration of bishops for a church which was now content to take its place among the Christian communions of America.

Outside the diocese of Connecticut, the bishops and other clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church assumed an attitude of great moderation in their presentation of the merits of episcopacy. In the preface to the Book of Common Prayer, as adopted by the General Convention of 1789, a reference is made to the attempts to revise the prayer book of the Church of England in 1689, and it is said :

But this good work miscarried at that time; and the Civil Authority lias not since thought proper to revive it by any new commission. But when in the course of divine Providence these American states became independent with respect to civil government, their ecclesiastical independence was necessarily included; and the different religious denominations of Christians in these states were left at full and equal liberty to model and organize their respective churches, and forms of worship, and discipline, in such manner as they might judge most convenient for their future prosperity; consistently with the constitution and laws of their country.

Very similar in spirit is the language used by President Washington, in reply to an address from the General Convention of that year. "On this occasion," he wrote, "it would ill become me to conceal the joy I have felt in perceiving the fraternal affection, which appears to increase every day among the friends of genuine religion. It affords edifying prospects indeed, to see Christians of different denominations dwell together in more charity, and conduct themselves with respect to each other, with a more Christianlike spirit than they ever have done in any former age, or in any other nation."

Bishop William White, who on his title-pages describes himself as " Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Pennsylvania," and not (like his successors) "Bishop of Pennsylvania," was the most outstanding and the noblest figure in the newly organized Church. Seven years before his writing of the preface he had been moved by the miseries and decay of the Episcopalian churches, under a war which seemed interminable, to write a pamphlet : The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States Considered (Philadelphia, 1782). He proposed that, without waiting for the action of English bishops, there should be chosen a number of bishops or superintendents to take charge of the churches, and to ordain and confirm with episcopal authority. The proposal would have met the approval of Drs. Bancroft, Andrews, Bramhall, Cosin and Hooker, on that ground of necessity which they recognized as existing for the Reformed churches of the Continent. He puts the case for the episcopal form of government by saying that "the opinion that episcopacy was the most ancient and eligible, but without any idea of divine right in the case, this author believes to be the sentiments of the great body of Episcopalians in America, in which respect they have in their favor, unquestionably, the sense of the Church of England, and, as he believes, the opinions of her most distinguished prelates for piety, virtue and ability."

Bishops Provoost and Madison, who shared with him the direction of their church in its opening years, were of the same mind. The former showed his recognition of other than episcopal orders by having Dr. William Linn, of the (Dutch) Reformed Church, take a prominent part in the funeral services of an American general in Trinity Church, in the presence of President Washington and of both houses of Congress. Bishop Madison proposed active negotiations with " Christians of other denominations" for the restoration of Christian unity among the Protestants of America, in terms not unlike the Lambeth proposals of our own time.

In Connecticut the churches and clergy were converts from the Puritan churches; and they justified Bishop Hobart's humorous saying, that " those who get episcopacy by infection have it worse than do those who inherited it." They were all Tories in the war for independence; and at its close a number of their clergy invited Dr. Samuel Seabury to proceed to England to obtain consecration as bishop. As he had been highly useful to the British commanders during the war, and was a pensioner of the British Government to his death, because of his serving as chaplain to one of its regiments, it might have been expected that his application would have been received with favor. But the legal difficulties in the way of consecrating an Anglican bishop who should take no oath of supremacy and allegiance to the King of England were found insuperable in this case, and this champion and pensioner of King George had recourse to the nonjuring bishops in Scotland who rejected the House of Hanover and, until 1790, refused to pray for its kings. From them he received consecration at Aberdeen in 1784, and returned to America without any recognition of his episcopacy from the Church of England. Bishop Provoost declined to admit the validity of this consecration, and Bishop White showed no zeal to bring about a union of Connecticut with the rest of the church. "This may oblige me," wrote Dr. Seabury, "to establish the Scotch succession from the reorganization of Charles II, to what is called the Revolution."

In 1789, however, and in the absence of Bishop Provoost, Dr. Seabury was recognized and admitted to the General Convention, to which he brought the element of exclusive episcopacy. In one of his sermons Bishop Seabury thus states his view of the ministry of the church: "Since the Holy Apostles did, in obedience to Christ, and under the direction of the Holy Ghost, transmit to others the powers received from him, constituting bishops, presbyters and deacons, as three orders of ministers in his church; it is the duty of all Christians to submit to that government which they, the Apostles, have instituted, and not to run after the new-fangled scheme of parochial episcopacy, of which the Bible knows nothing, and of which the Christian Church knew nothing till a little more than two centuries ago."

Even before the influences of the Oxford movement reached this country, this anti-Puritan churchmanship of Connecticut began to exercise an influence in some parts of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Bishop Hobart of New York (1811-1816) and Bishop Ravenscroft of North Carolina (1823-1831) were notable instances, and both confirmed the former's epigram as to the zeal of converts to episcopacy. But William White remained the type of " sound churchmanship " for the church at large, and to be a " prayer book churchman" was enough for even those who called themselves high churchmen. An appeal has been made to the Eleventh Canon of the Protestant Episcopal Church, adopted in 1792, as implying that the orders of episcopally ordained clergy alone are valid. But this canon was aimed not at the ministers of other Christian churches, to exclude them from an occasional exercise of their ministry, but against " persons not regularly ordained" who " assume the ministerial office and perform any of the duties thereof in this church." At the date of its enactment the churches of America were plagued with pretenders, who put themselves forward as ordained ministers of the gospel, and found too easy an acceptance in congregations destitute of pastors. This was the interpretation put upon the canon by Dr. John Croes, the first Bishop of New Jersey, and by Bishop Onderdonk of Pennsylvania, who said to Dr. Richard Newton that "this canon had not reference to ministers of other denominations."

Other than episcopal orders were recognized in the missionary work of the church. In the mission at Sierra Leone Rev. Messrs. Rennig and Harting, and afterwards Rev. Messrs. Nylander, Butscher and Prape, were ac-

Introduction g

cepted as missionaries, although they had no orders but those of the Lutheran Church of Germany. For this there was a colonial precedent. When Rev. Evan Evans, rector of Christ Church in Philadelphia, visited England in 1707, Dr. Tiffany says, "his place was supplied by a Swedish clergyman, the Rev. Andrew Reedman; an incident which, like many other instances of interchange and good offices, shows the kindly relations of the two churches." Yet Swedish episcopacy has not the hallmark of an apostolical succession.

Besides the presence of Dr. Linn in Trinity Church, already mentioned, there were other instances of the recognition of the ministry of other churches. In earlier times, indeed, the practice was so common that the House of Bishops in 1820 sent a statement to the House of Deputies, saying: "The bishops have found by experience that such ministers, in many instances, preaching in our churches and to our congregations, avail themselves of such opportunity to inveigh against the principles of our communion." Through the growth of the Anglo-Catholic party it could not occur now without creating an extensive disturbance. The whole trend of ecclesiastical legislation within this church has been in the direction of increasing exclusiveness, since the year 1840. 1

I presume it is true of our Protestant churches generally, as it is of our Presbyterian Church, that these vagaries of opinion have been regarded with equanimity. Wholly satisfied as to the apostolicity of its orders, assured of the divine presence in its worship and the lives

1 For the facts relating to the earlier history of the Protestant Episcopal Church I am indebted to A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, by Charles C. Tiffany, D.D., Archdeacon of New York (New York, 1895); The Protestant Episcopacy of the Revolutionary Patriots Lost and Restored, by Mason Gallagher (Philadelphia, 1883); and a communication to The Church Witness and Advocate (Boston) in an issue for September, 1868. See also The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies, by Arthur Lyon Cross (London, 1902).

io The Historic Episcopate

of its people, conscious of special access to God in the sacraments of the Master's appointment, and rejoicing in the harvest it has gathered on the mission field both at home and abroad, it has felt no anxiety to vindicate its position against the assumptions of either the Church of Rome or the Church of England. It has kept a notable silence in the presence of depreciatory criticism from the champions of both.

Our only regret is in observing one of the great sisterhood of the Reformed churches abandon its place in that illustrious company and seek fellowship with the Latin and Greek churches rather than with its sisters nearer home, and once far nearer to its heart. We have looked for nothing else than the rebuff from both those alien communions, which has rewarded those efforts by the repudiation of its claim to stand apart from other Protestant churches either in the validity of its orders or the "catholicity" of its doctrines. We w r atch with slight interest the continuous and voluminous attempts to vindicate "Anglican orders/' but are struck with the fact that so often the authors of these defences end by submission to the papal authority (Newman, Allies, Rivington, etc.), and are led to wonder whether any of them indicate anything but a tormenting uncertainty about the matter in hand.

The proposals for Christian reunion emanating from the American House of Bishops in 1886 made the question one of living interest to the Presbyterian Church, and led our General Assembly of 1887 to appoint a Committee on Church Unity, to confer with the commission appointed by the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church the year before. After some preliminary correspondence, the committee conveyed to the commission the hearty acceptance by our church of the three first articles proposed as the basis of a possible reunion, that is, the Scriptures as the revealed word of God, the Nicene Creed, and the two sacraments. As to the fourth — "the historic episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of his church" — the committee wrote:

The Presbyterian Church holds, and always has held firmly, to what we believe to be the genuinely historic episcopate as this is set forth in the New Testament and in the practice of the early Church, so far as it did not swerve from apostolic models and directions. It finds the presbyter-bishop in all ages of the Church, in unbroken succession until the present day. At the same time we are not disposed to constrain others to adopt our interpretation in this matter. We shall feel no difficulty in uniting with those who interpret the bishops of the New Testament and of the primitive Church differently from ourselves, provided our own liberty of interpretation is not infringed. We can unite with those who think bishops to be a superior order of the clergy, provided we are not asked to abandon our own conscientious conviction that bishops as instituted by the Apostles are not of superior rank, but that all who are ordained to the ministry by the laying on of hands of the presbytery, and are intrusted with the care and oversight of souls, are bishops.

Acting under the instructions of the General Assembly, the committee put forward the statement that " mutual recognition and reciprocity between the different bodies who profess the true religion is the first and essential step toward practical church unity." They afterwards suggested as an expression of this the interchange of pulpits by the clergy of the two churches. On this point the commission declared its incompetency to act; and as the General Convention of 1896 took no notice of the suggestion, the negotiations were suspended. The reason for this was stated in a report adopted by the General Assembly of 1896:

The Presbyterian Church cannot with self-respect, and a proper regard for the honor of their divine Lord, who has called them into the communion of his visible Church, negotiate on the subject of Church unity with another Christian body except on terms of parity, and unleee they are explicitly acknowledged to be a church of Christ, and topo oocm a divinely authorised ministry, which he has both summoned to his service by the direct call

of his Holy Spirit, and has sanctioned by the gifts and graces bestowed upon them, and by his abundant blessing upon their labors. In presenting this to our Episcopal brethren as a necessary preliminary to all negotiations for church unity, we ask nothing more than they should unhesitatingly grant. . . With all her conscious weaknesses and imperfections, the Presbyterian Church, in no spirit of boasting or self-exaltation, but with humble and grateful loyalty to her divine Head, must insist that she is entitled to the name and the prerogatives of a true church of Christ, and that her ministry and ordinances are entitled to be regarded as genuine and valid. 1

The essential reasonableness of this action has been admitted by Bishop Doane of Albany, who says: "To approach the great Protestant churches of the world with the statement that their ministries are unlawful, is to propose, not reunion, but absorption; not consideration but contempt. If one may quote, not irreverently, the vulgar saying of the lamb and the lion lying down together with the lamb inside, it is just this and nothing more, and leaves us in an attitude of antagonism and isolation, which is perfectly hopeless and futile." 2

Bishop Doane quotes with approval a suggestion made by Dr. Palmer, Bishop of Bombay, that the whole question of the " origin of episcopacy and of holy orders" should be reopened for discussion in an impartial spirit. "What I desire to emphasize," says Bishop Palmer, "is that while the views of learned men are divided so widely on the history of the origin of episcopacy,, it is impossible to find language about it which all those whose reunion we desire to see could join heartily in using. Now

1 Church Unity: The Progress and Suspension of the Negotiations Between the Protestant Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches (Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1899). See also Church Reunion Discussed on the Basis uf the Lambeth Propositions of 1888. Reprinted from The Church Review for April and October, 1890 (New York, 1890).

*The Churchman (New York, November 21, 1909).

it lies with men who can be content to retract their own past asseverations, if they turn out untenable. — who are willing to approach the question in the spirit of scientific history, — who can die to themselves, their opinions, and (if they are so unhappy as to belong to one; their par and give themselves up to the truth — it lies with such men. I say, to provide a basis for reunion by studying over again the whole question of the origins of episcop^ with its bearing on the validity of ministry and sacrame: and by presenting to the church a dispassionate, scientific, scholarly statement of the whole subje

It is just in this faith that the present situation of the Christian Church calls upon us to reexamine the question in the new light which documentary discoveries and scholarly investigation have thrown upon it, that this book has been written. Its author does not claim that he walks on the summit heights of utter impartiality, which Dr. Palmer describes. He writes with the consciousness that he belongs to and in some degree speaks for a great Protestant communion, which has a very vital interest in this subject. But he writes also in the hope that he will contribute something to the coming of the day of Christian reunion, which will be effected on the bas 3 ripture. history and Christian insight into the

es s en tial things of the Church- "The mquiries," says Dr. William Sanday. u which have of late been made in the early history of the Christian ministry seem to me to result in an eirenicon between the churches. The dove returned with an olive branch in her mouth." 1

Before coming to the points of difference. I shall try to state those on which we are agreed, as to the history of the matter. These I believe to be:

1 . That our Lord Jesus Christ founded a visible church, gave it sacraments as a manifestation of its existence and unity, as well as means of grace to its members; and that he committed the government of it to his Apostles, who were the chosen witnesses of his resurrection.

2. That the Apostles, in gathering local churches in the name of their Master, committed the care of these to two classes of officers, namely, presbyters or bishops, and deacons; and that the former had charge of the spiritual interests of those churches (preaching the word, teaching, discipline and the care of souls), and the latter of the temporal.

3. That in the churches thus organized there was a plurality of both classes of officers, and the care of a local church was not committed permanently to any single person resident with it.

4. That from about the middle of the second century of the Christian era the local churches generally are found under the direction and care of a single person, called a bishop, with the presbyters (no longer called bishops) and the deacons both in subordination to him.

The questions in dispute are as to when, through whom, and why this change took place, and whether it was in harmony with the teaching of our Lord and his Apostles as to the proper state of a Christian church.

Four theories have been put forward in modern times as to the origin of this monarchic episcopate by those who regard it as the normal order of the Christian churches.

1. Richard Rothe, a German Lutheran theologian, in his remarkable book, The Beginnings of the Christian Church and its Constitution (Die Anfdnge der Christlichen Kirche und ihrer Verfassung, Wittenberg, 1837), starts from a statement made by Eusebius (A. D. 325) that the surviving Apostles and kinsmen of our Lord met in synod after the destruction of Jerusalem (A. D. 70). Dr. Rothe supposes that, in view of the loss of the visible center of unity, they agreed to set up the monarchic episcopate as a link of communication between the churches, and thus unite them into an undivided catholic church. None of the Fathers refer to such a decision.

2. Bishop Lightfoot substitutes for an apostolic synod the activity of the Apostle John, who lived on into the reign of Trajan (A. D. 98-117), and who made Ephesus the center of his later labors. Ireneus of Lyons (A. D. 180-189) speaks of the Apostles having made Polycarp bishop of Smyrna; and Tertullian (A. D. 200) asserts that this was done by John, and that "the order of bishops, if it be traced to its source, will be found to stand in John." Clement of Alexandria (A. D. 190-215) describes John as visiting the churches in Asia, and appointing them bishops.

3. Dr. George Salmon thinks it possible that Paul anticipated John in this work in Asia, and that the Diotrephes of the Third Epistle of John was a Pauline bishop, who resented the intrusion of John's messengers into his jurisdiction, as an encroachment on his authority. With this Dr. Charles Gore substantially agrees.

4. Dean Stanley and some others, who do not insist on tracing episcopacy back to the apostolic age, regard its evolution as a providential direction of the Church's development, and as possessing the authority which grows out of its inherent fitness to the needs of the Christian Church. Dr. Gore, recognizing the imperfection of the evidence for monarchic episcopacy in the apostolic age, seems to fall back upon this conception of an evolution under providential direction. It was anticipated by Dr. Newman in his Essay on Development (1895). "When the church was thrown upon her own resources" by the death of the Apostles, he says, "first local disturbances gave exercise to bishops, and next ecumenical disturbances gave exercise to popes."