YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

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'MAKERS OF AMERICA'

THE

LIFE AND TIMES

OF

BISHOP WHITE

BY
JULIUS H* WARD

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1892

Copyright, 1892,
By Dodd, Mead and Company.

All rights reserved.
Wa

SEmbersttg Press :
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

JOHN WILLIAMS,
Presiding Bishop in the Chair of Seabury,
<&W "PBioBrapbg OF
THE PATRIARCH OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH
IS DEDICATED
BY ONE OF HIS SPIRITUAL SONS.

PREFACE.

The career ¦ of Bishop White involves the
history of the first half century of the American
Episcopal Church. He was its first Bishop
in the English line, and to him for fifty years
fell the duty of guiding its growth and presiding
over its councils. When -he died in 1836, he
was so well known that it was not thought
necessary to write a biography in detail, and
Dr. Wilson's Memoir is the only attempt that
has been made to set forth his individual career.
Bishop Perry has rendered invaluable service in
gathering up and putting into print the docu
mentary ecclesiastical history of the period ; but,
so far as I know, this is the first attempt that has
been made to give a personal portrait of this
great Church leader, and to show what part he
had in the civil and religious life of the times
in which he lived.
Bishop White was not a voluminous letter-
writer, and most of his contemporaries passed
away without putting on paper their impressions
of him, so that the painting of his portrait has

11 PREFACE.
not been an easy task. Had it not been for the
excellent memory of his great-granddaughter,
Mrs. Elizabeth White Reed, the widow of the
lamented Prof. Henry Reed, and for the compre
hensive knowledge of the Bishop's life and times
possessed by his great-grandson, Mr. Thomas
H. Montgomery, this work would have greatly
lacked in such colour and in such accuracy of
detail as it has. The materials have been gath
ered from free access to Bishop White's manu
scripts, from Dr. Bird Wilson's " Memoir," from
his own very full " Memoirs of the Church," and
from the biographies of his later contemporaries.
There are three notable portraits of Bishop
White, — the one by Gilbert Stuart, painted when
he was first consecrated to the Episcopate; the
one which has been engraved by John Sartain,
and represents him as the Chaplain of the Conti
nental Congress ; and the one made by Inman
in his extreme old age, which has been chosen
for reproduction, because it best presents him
in his official character.
J. H. W.
Brookline, Mass.
Sept. 2, 1892.

CONTENTS.  ? 
Chapter Page
Introduction by Bishop Potter  v
I. Early Life  1 1
II. In Holy Orders  25
III. Organizing the American Church .... 37
IV. An Independent Church in America .... 57
V. Philadelphia a Century Ago  69
VI. Bishop White as a Man  T]
VII. The Day of Small Beginnings  90
VIII. Inspiring Younger Men  101
IX. Working to Larger Ends  118
X. The Rise of Party Spirit  126
XI. Reminiscences  135
XII. Theologian and Author  153
XIII. The Last Years  164
XIV. A Half Century of Church Life  180
Appendix  193
Index  197

INTRODUCTION.

Next in interest to the story of beginnings is the
story of transplantations. We turn with inexhaustible
curiosity to see how it was that a small people became
great, — that a few wise and courageous souls led the
way in lifting a nation out of ignorance and barbarism
up to the high places of the world, out of bondage
and poverty up to wealth and power. And the same
story only grows more interesting when it takes on
that other form in which a nation or a race illustrates
its out-populating power in colonization. Indeed, in
some aspects of it, this study is more interesting than
the other; for however much or little one may hold
with Buckle as to the modifying, if not formative,
influences upon nations of climate, soil, and the other
characteristics of environment, it can never cease to
be interesting to note how far race-characteristics,
and, above all, great moral and spiritual ideas, have
survived exportation, and what inherent force they
have revealed to illustrate themselves — to grow and
flourish — in a new country.
It is this which will always make the story of the
English colonization of America of pre-eminent in-

vi INTRODUCTION.
terest. There are few peoples whose insular position
and traditions have made their distinctive traits more
marked or characteristic. Indeed, there is no paral
lel in history to the sturdy dominance of those traits,
or the cool and resolute indifference, whether to ridi
cule or resistance, with which the Englishman has
not only transported himself but everything, even to
his beer and his bath-tub, to the remotest regions
and the most inhospitable climes. In these he
has still maintained his undimmed attachment to
his fatherland, and his persistent maintenance of its
speech and customs. Those of other lineage emi
grate, and leave their language and their customs
more or less largely behind them. Even Oriental
peoples let go their most cherished usages. But
the Englishman compels other nations to speak
his tongue, to learn his ways, and so, at any rate,
to respect his race-attachments.
Colonization has illustrated this fact, both by what
it has perpetuated and by what it has modified. And
this is the significance of the English transplanta
tion to these shores. In one aspect of it, it was a
revolt ; in another, it was a reproduction of the best
life of a great nation in what we who are Americans
believe to have been nobler and larger forms. The
Puritan recoil against ecclesiastical intolerance did
not indeed express this in form, but it included it in
fact; for where it pressed for freedom in one direc
tion, it unconsciously affirmed the righteousness of
that freedom in others. If it be said that the note of
religious tolerance was not expressed in the Puritan

INTRODUCTION. vii
settlement, it must also be said that the germ of it
was present in the lines which determined that set
tlement. And so with all the rest. The Puritan ideas
of civil government, of the family, of personal rights,
were not ours ; but they were the soil out of which,
by no violent transition, these latter have come.
It is doubtful, however, whether they would have
come so peacefully and so happily if it had not been
for that providential ordering which, in grave emer
gencies, whether in Church or State, produced the
men to meet them. It is impossible to remember the
story of our first days, whether in the Colonies or
in the Republic, without recognizing the deep and
lasting influence for good of a few strong and wise
men. Of one of these this volume tells the story. It was
the happy fortune, as men sometimes account such
things, of the Church of which he became the Presid
ing Bishop, to possess in William White one with a
singular adaptedness for a difficult and delicate task.
An English subject by birth, and an American citizen
by deliberate choice and adoption, he belonged to
two hemispheres, and included in his beautiful and
gracious personality the best traits of both. An Eng
lish Churchman by. baptism and inheritance, when the
time came to be an American Churchman, he adjusted
himself to his new relations without violence or in
consistency; and in recognizing his obligations to
his country, cast no scorn upon the Anglican mother
hood from which, both in Church and State, he had
sprung.

Vlll INTRODUCTION.
It was the union of these two which made the
former especially odious to a vast majority of his
American fellow-citizens. That they had grounds for
their dislike of an Established Church, and their ap
prehension as to its possible encroachment upon their
personal liberties, can scarcely be denied; and yet
when they proposed to dismiss the Church in which
so many of them had been nurtured out of the hori
zon of their interest or loyal affection, because of
their quarrel with the State, they were on the eve
of a blunder the proportions of which, in view of the
religious possibilities of the near future in America,
it is not easy to estimate. For to-day it is beginning
to be seen, as it never has been seen before, that
the Church of which William White was a bishop has
an office of reconciliation which no other body can
even pretend to attempt. As one follows the Epis
copate of White, it is impossible not to own that
his clear and penetrating vision discerned this from
afar. And to lay foundations with this larger outlook
in view, was his great and unique office.
There have been those who have been ready to
resent his prudence, to contemn what they called his
excessive timidity, and to protest against what seemed
his too easy temper of concession. But it is well to
remember that he was confronting emergencies which
might easily have had another issue than the one that,
as a matter of fact, did come to pass, and that his
position was one of pre-eminent difficulty and isola
tion. In the end his wisdom and moderation, and
his equal courage and humility, made a way for him

INTRODUCTION. ix
through all difficulties ; and he lived to see a great
wish brought to the promise, if no more, of a noble
conclusion. Without heat, without bitterness, with an
inexhaustible patience and an often marvellous fore
sight, he made it possible for the Church of England
to live again in her Republican daughter, and taught
her clergy and laity how to be loyal to their glorious
past, and yet sensitive and responsive to their more
glorious future.
It is in the study of such a life that they who hope
and believe great things for the Church which William
White helped to transplant in her completeness to
American shores, will find a clew to the problems that
confront her to-day ; and it is therefore a timely
office which the author of this volume has rendered
to his fellow-Churchmen and his fellow-countrymen
in placing it within their reach.

HENRY C. POTTER.

Diocesan House, New York.
St. Bartholomew's Day, 1892.

BISHOP WHITE.

CHAPTER I.
EARLY LIFE.
The White family, like the Washington family, had
the distinction of high character and excellent social
rank. Both families had an eminent, if not distin
guished, English ancestry, and it is as important in the
one case as in the other that the two men, one of
whom is rightly called the "Father of his country,"
and the other the Patriarch of the American Episcopal
Church, should be traced to some extent in their English
connections in order to give weight to their position in
the American colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania.
The English history of the family can be traced back
through a period of more than three hundred years.
The father of Bishop White came to this country in
1 72 1 as a boy to seek his fortune. He was the youngest
son and the only member of his family who made his
home in the new world. He kept up his intercourse
by frequent letters with his three sisters, who shared
warmly in their brother's ideas of liberty across the
Atlantic. They were themselves Jacobite gentlewomen.
The portraits of their parents, painted by Sir Godfrey

12 BISHOP WHITE.
Kneller, were sent to their brother in Philadelphia in
1776, and are still in the custody of members of Bishop
White's family. They are remarkable pictures. Mr.
William White is dressed in the style of a gentleman of
the Non- Jurying period in English history, and Eliza
beth Leigh, who was apparently much younger than
himself, is represented as in the prime of life. It is
the portrait of a woman of energy and nerve, and
Bishop White records that she had a great deal to do in
developing the character of his own father when he was
a mere lad in his English home. She was left a widow
at an early age and remained such until her death in
1742, at the age of sixty-six.
Thomas White was only sixteen years old when he
arrived in Maryland with a hundred guineas in his
pocket. His father had been a dissipated man and had
died early. He left his wife and six children, of whom
Thomas was the youngest, in straitened circumstances.
Young White became an apprentice to the clerk of the
county of Baltimore, and at the end of his apprentice
ship was appointed his deputy. He practically edu
cated himself in the law, and was successful in his
profession. He was frugal in his habits, and put all
his spare money into lands which had not been taken
up from the proprietary office. In addition to this, he
was made a colonel of the county militia and appointed
to the office of surveyor of the district. He speedily
rose to a position of influence, and at the age of forty-
two removed to Philadelphia, where he married two
years later as his second wife the widow of a Mr. New
man, who was of Quaker ancestry, but had always been

EARLY LIFE. 13
a member of the Episcopal Church, and whose family
had been all along connected with it. Concerning his
father, who died in September, 1779, in his seventy-
fifth year, Bishop White wrote as follows : —
" My father left the world with the reputation of unsul
lied integrity through life ; and I think I may say that he
possessed a remarkably correct judgment of men and things.
In his domestic character he was indulgent and exemplary.
During the last twenty-two years of his life, he was so far
a cripple, in consequence of a fall from a carriage, as to
walk on two canes with handles. This kept him out of all
society except such as could be had at his own hos
pitable table and fireside ; and, except in afternoons [that]
of some of the principal gentlemen of the city, of his own
age, who in those days habitually assembled at the public
coffee-house for society merely." J
His mother's maiden name was Esther Hewlings.
She was a daughter and grand-daughter of wardens
of St. Mary's Church, Burlington, the latter leaving the
Society of Friends in the Keithian controversy. They
were early settlers of West Jersey, under the purchase
made by William Penn before the settlement of Penn
sylvania. She had two children by this second mar
riage, William White and his sister Mary, who was one
year younger than himself, and who became the wife
of Robert Morris, the "financier of the Revolution."
His mother died on the last day of the year, 1 790, in
her seventy-first year. Her son in a letter to Bishop
Hobart says : " My mother, if I am not misled by
partiality, possessed an excellent understanding, with
1 MS. Autobiography addressed to Bishop Hobart.

14 BISHOP WHITE.
sincere but unostentatious piety." In further mention
of her, he makes grateful acknowledgment of the early
impression made by her religious instructions upon his
young mind.
William White, who was to be in his early prime the
first bishop of the Episcopal Church in America, in
the line of the English succession, thus writes of his
birth and of his earliest years : —
" It depends on a few hours whether I should be con
sidered born in 1747 or 1748; being a man of Old Style,
which began the year on the 25th of March, and I was
born on the 24th ; so that the change of style brought my
birthday to the 4th of April. At the age of seven, I was
transferred from the school of a mistress to the English
school of the newly erected College of Philadelphia, of
which my father was a trustee, having been so from the
beginning of the institution, under the name of an acad
emy. The master of the school was Mr. Ebenezer Kin-
nersley, who often appears in the early works of Dr.
Franklin as a co-operator with him in his electrical experi
ments. At about the age of ten years I went into the Latin
school, under the mastership of Mr. Paul Jackson, a man
considered as possessed of a fine genius and of classical
attainments. Not long after my entrance into the school,
he left it. This proved a misfortue to me ; it being found
convenient to his successor, Mr. John Beveridge,a thorough
grammarian, with little else to recommend him, to reduce
the number of his classes. In consequence, I was elevated
to the one above us, passing from the beginning of an easy
book to the latter part of a difficult one to boys of our
standing. I record the incident for the purpose of censur
ing this and every similar expedient for the hastening of
boys through grammar schools, which is frequent. At the

EARLY LIFE. 15
age of thirteen, our class being examined for college by the
Provost and the Vice-Provost, although three were rejected,
I was not one of them. Among the many incidents recol
lected by me of the sound discretion of my father there is
his putting of his prohibition on my then entering of col
lege. It was humiliating at the time, although softened
by the permission, obtained at his request, that I should be
with the now Head Class in the Latin School, in one part
of the day only; the other part to be spent in the school
in which arithmetic was taught, and in which usually one
hour of the day only was spent by each class in its last
year in the Latin school. Had it not been for this post
ponement, I should not have gone through college, as I
trust I did, with reputation. There have since occurred
frequent occasions of comparing the conduct of my father
with that of others, much to their disadvantage. I was
three years in college, my pupilage ending on my birthday
in 1765, — which was the last day of examinations, although
a month before the commencement ! '' 1
He was graduated just as he had completed his
seventeenth year.
Dr. William Smith, who was Provost of the College
when young White entered the lowest room of its
academy and when he left it at graduation, was a promi
nent man in Philadelphia, and was associated with
him as a trustee ofthe College from the year 1774. At
a later time, when he had been elected by the conven
tion of Maryland for the Episcopate of that State, Mr.
White, who was then Bishop of Pennsylvania, refused
to recommend him to the General Convention for this
high office, and he adds : " To me his failure was prin-
1 MS. Autobiography.

1 6 BISHOP WHITE.
cipally owing. My reasons are not detailed, partly
because there has been no reproach cast on me on that
account, and partly because, in our frequent collisions,
I ought not to claim the commendation of an impartial
narrator. During his subsequent years we were on very
amicable terms." He evidently did not think that
Dr. Smith was fitted in temperament and spirit for the
Episcopal office, and it was characteristic of him that
he was always entirely independent and honest in reach
ing his decision concerning actions in which he had to
take responsibility. Dr. Smith was one of the leaders
in the early organization of the Episcopal Church, and
his failure to enter the Episcopate did not prevent his
rendering efficient service in those early days.
His early inclination toward the ministry is illus
trated by a story told by a lady a year and a half older
than he was, who was his intimate playmate when they
were both children. She used to say when she was
herself advanced in life : —
" Billy White was born a bishop. I never could per
suade him to play anything but church. He would tie his
own or my apron around his neck for a gown and stand
before a low chair which he called his pulpit ; I, seated be
fore him on a little bench, was the congregation, and he
always preached to me about being good. One day I heard
him crying, and saw the nurse running into the street, call
ing to him to come back and be dressed. He refused, say
ing, ' I do not want to go to dancing-school, and I won't
be dressed, for I don't think it is good to learn to dance.'
And that was the only time I ever knew Billy White to be
a naughty boy." When this lady in his later life repeated
these reminiscences of his childhood to the Bishop, they

EARLY LIFE. 17
amused him, and he added that his mother, finding him so
unwilling to learn to dance, gave it up, "though," he con
tinued, " I am by no means opposed to others learning, if
they like to dance." l
His own account of himself after graduation is the
best statement that can be given of the influence which
led him to study for the ministry : —
" My leaving of the College, being at the point of time
when the choice of a profession ought to be final, there
shall be noticed the circumstances which led to its being
in favour of the ministry. It may be recorded with truth,
but let it be with humility and with sorrow for innumerable
failures, and for the having fallen far short of what was
due to the advantages of early years, that there is not re
collected any portion of my life, during which I was alto
gether regardless of the obligations of religion, or neglectful
of the duty of prayer. But in about the middle of my six
teenth year, there occurred some circumstances, particularly
the decease of an amiable young lady of my own age, but in
whom I had not felt any further interest than as an acquaint
ance of my sister. This event gave to my mind a tendency to
religious exercises and inquiries, which were also promoted
by its being understood that a visit was to be expected from
the Rev. George Whitefield. His former visits had been
principally before my birth ; and the last of them had been
when I was too young to have retained the recollection of
his person. His coming at this time caused religion to be
more than commonly a subject of conversation, and this
added to the existing tendency of my mind. I heard him
with great delight in his wonderful elocution, although in
formed that it was greatly impaired by the state of his
health, which had evidently affected his throat and had
1 Dr. Bird Wilson's Memoir, p. 21.
2

1 8 BISHOP WHITE.
swelled his person, reported to have been naturally slender.
Under this disadvantage, his force of emphasis and the
melodies of his tones and cadences exceeded what I have
ever witnessed in any other person." "¦
Again he says : —
"Even before my graduation, and especially after it, the
expectation of my being for the ministry had drawn to me
the kind attentions of the clergy, particularly of Dr. Peters
and Mr. Duch£, the rector and one of the assistant minis
ters of Christ Church and St. Peter's, to the former of
which our family belonged. Although I shall always re
member those two gentlemen with respect and affection,
on account of their merits and their kindness to me, yet
there was in each of them a singularity of religious charac
ter which lessened the profit of an intercourse with them.
Dr. Peters was a native of England, and had come to
this country nearly forty years before the time now spoken
of. He was then a young clergyman, of a respectable family
in Liverpool, of an excellent education, and of polished man
ners. It was said that his acquaintance had been culti
vated by the genteel families of the city, but that, being
no favourite with the then rector of Christ Church, the Rev.
Archibald Cummings, he accepted from the Proprietary
Government the secretaryship of the land office, which laid
the foundation of a considerable fortune. He was also the
secretary of a succession of governors, and continued to
be of the governor's council until his decease. At an age
turned of sixty, he gave up his lucrative offices and became
more serious in religious concerns than at any former
period of his life, although his morals had been correct,
his attendance on public worship constant and solemn, and
his preaching occasional. Soon after, the rectorship of the
1 MS. Autobiography.

EARLY LIFE. 19
church becoming vacant, by the decease of the Rev. Dr.
Tenney, the successor of Mr. Cummings, Mr. Peters was
chosen to it. The singularity alluded to was his adopting of
the notions of Jacob Behmen and William Law, in conse
quence of which his sermons were not always understood.
In social discourse he could be exceedingly entertaining on
an ordinary and on any literary subject, especially if it re
garded classical or historical learning. Yet, from the mo
ment of turning the conversation to religion, he was in the
clouds. " Mr. Duche- was of a respectable family in this city
[Philadelphia]. He was in the first-class of graduates of
our College, and having finished his studies in it with repu
tation, he spent some time in the English University of
Cambridge. A remarkably fine voice and graceful action
helped to render him very popular as a preacher. His dis
position also was amiable. The greatest infirmity attend
ing him was a tendency to change in religious sentiment.
A few years after his ministerial settlement, he took to the
mysticism of Jacob Behmen and William Law. From this
he became detached for a time, and his preaching, which
was more zealous than either before or after, seemed to me
to border on Calvinism, although, probably, he was not
aware of or designed it. In this interval my personal
knowledge with him began, and, having one day asked of
him the loan of Law's works, then much talked of, I re
ceived a refusal, and the reason given being the danger
he had formerly been in from the reading of those books.
He relapsed, however, to the theory of the Mystics, and
continued in it until the troubles [arose] which drove him
from his native country. In England, he became a con
vert to the opinions of Baron Swedenborg, and in these
he continued until his decease. ... In recollecting the
pleasure taken in his conversation, I think myself singu
larly happy in not having been drawn by it from what then

20 BISHOP WHITE.
and ever since I have considered as correct views of our
holy religion." 1
No better account of his life while under the pastoral
charge and spiritual direction of these revered clergymen
can be found than that which he has himself furnished
in the short autobiography already quoted from : —
rFrom the time of asy graduation in May, 1765, to that
of wiy going to England, October, 1 770,.~l employed myself
in attention to sacred and other literature, perhaps not
without some profit. Yet that portion of my life is now
looked back on as what might have been much more im
proved by literary cultivation, and thus have prevented the
deficiencies which have been the unavoidable result of a
multiplicity of concerns. This is the proper place of re
cording the benefit received in conjunction with four other
youths designed for the ministry, by a species of theologi
cal exercise, instituted on the proposal of the Rev. Dr.
Smith, the Provost of the College. During three succes
sive seasons and within the space of a few months of each,
on Sunday evenings, these exercises were performed in the
hall of the old College, then not much less in size than either
of our two churches, and in the audience of numerous
and respectable assemblies. The ground-work of what we
wrote and delivered was the history of the Bible. On each
evening two of our company delivered their compositions,
previously corrected by the Provost, who afterwards en
larged on the subject. Although this was far from being a
complete course of ecclesiastical study, it called to a variety
of reading and to a concentration of what was read. There
was also use in the introduction to public speaking. The
young men with whom I was associated were Thomas
Coombe, Thomas Hopkinson, brother of the late Judge
Hopkinson, John Montgomery, and Joseph Hutchins."
1 MS. Autobiography.

EARLY LIFE. 21
This was the best substitute possible for a theological
training at that time in the British colonies of North
America. f In the absence of a bishop for the American colo
nies, all candidates for the Christian ministry- Hrthis
country were" ofe___ge# to go to England for ordination.
The Bishop of London had nominal jurisdiction of
the American clergy and parishes j_Dr. Richard Ter-
rick was then the Bishop of London, and William;
White embarked for England in October, 1770, to ob
tain orders at his hands. He was ordained deacon in
the following December Ember season in the Royal
Chapel, of which the Bishop of London was dean. He
was not yet old enough to receive priest's orders, and
continued about a year and a half in England) spend
ing a great part of the time with two aunts, the sisters
of his father, until he should reach the requisite age.
His life with them and his journeys in different parts
of England caused the time to pass rapidly and delight
fully. It may here be further said of the family in
England, with whom his father had kept up a constant
correspondence since he came to this country, that his
grandfather became so dissipated that he left his wife
and six children without property. His widow was
equal to the emergency, and had recourse to millinery
for subsistence, and brought up her daughters to the
same business. The eldest son became a silk mercer ;
a younger son went out to the East Indies and soon
died there ; the youngest of the family, who came to
America, was the father of Bishop White. The three
sisters, after losing their mother, the two married ones

22 BISHOP WHITE.
having in the mean time lost their husbands, lived to
gether, chiefly on jointures and annuities, purchased
by their profit in business, in a genteel competency at
Twickenham. It was to him that they bequeathed at
death their entire estate, amounting to about .£3,000
sterling. When young White made his first visit to
England, one of the sisters had just passed away. Of
the others he writes as follows : —
" I was received by the survivors, Miss White and Mrs.
Weeks, as a son. They were excellent women, which was
also the character of their deceased sister. The eldest in
particular [has been] ever since considered by me as one
of the finest women I ever knew. With an excellent un
derstanding, exemplary piety, and great dignity of manner,
she possessed the vivacity of youth at above the age of
seventy." 1
His father had advised him to be cautious on polit
ical subjects, especially the claims of Stuarts, when
among his English relatives. He continues : —
"After a while, familiarity banished reserve on the sub
ject of politics, when I learned from these ladies that they
had been educated in the principles of Jacobitism, but had
long given up the cause as desperate, — the readier on ac
count of their respect for the personal character of the
present King. I did not fail to acknowledge to them that
both their brother and his son, although neither of them
had ever entered zealously into political party, were at
tached to the principles of the British Constitution, as con
firmed, not introduced, by the Revolution of 1688."
While in England at this time he made numerous
journeys to different parts, visiting Lancashire, Liverpool,
1 MS. Autobiography.

EARLY LIFE. 23
Derbyshire, Oxford and its Universities, and meeting a
large number of the men then eminent in the English
Church/ One of the foremost men in literature whom
he found at the University was Dr. Samuel Johnson.
He thus writes about him in his autobiography : —
" My introduction to him was a letter from the Rev.
Jonathan Odell, formerly missionary at Burlington. The
doctor was very civil to me. I visited him occasionally,
and I know some who would be tempted to envy me the
felicity of having one morning found him in the act of pre
paring his dictionary for a new edition. His harshness of
manners never displayed itself to me, except in one in
stance, when he told me that, had he been Prime Minister
during the then recent controversy concerning the Stamp
Act, he would have sent a ship of war and levelled one of
our principal cities to the ground. On the other hand, I
have heard from him sentiments expressive of a feeling
heart, and convincing me that he would not have done as
he said. Having dined in company with him in Kensing1-
ton, at the house of Mr. Elphinstone, well-known to scholars
of that day, and returning in the stage-coach with the
doctor, I mentioned to him there being a Philadelphia edi
tion of his ' Prince of Abyssinia.' He expressed a wish
to see it. I promised to send him a copy on my return to
Philadelphia, and did so. He returned a polite answer,
which is printed in Mr. Boswell's second edition of his
' Life of Dr. Johnson.' Mr. Abercrombie's admiration of
Dr. Johnson had led to a correspondence with Mr. Bos-
well, to whom with my consent the letter was sent.
" This reminds me of another literary character, a friend
of Johnson, Dr. Goldsmith. We lodged for some time
near to one another, in the Brick Court of the Temple. I
had it intimated to him by an acquaintance of both that
I wished for the pleasure of making him a visit. It ensued,

24 BISHOP WHITE.
and in our conversation it took a turn which incited in me
a painful sensation from the circumstance that a man of
such a genius should write for bread. His ' Deserted Vil
lage ' came under notice, and some remarks were made by
us on the principle of it — the decay of the peasantry. He
said that were he to write a pamphlet on the subject, he
could prove the point incontrovertibly. On his being asked
why he did not set his mind to this, his answer was : ' It is
not worth my while. A good poem will bring me a hun
dred guineas, but the pamphlet would bring me nothing.1
This was a short time before my leaving of England, and
I saw the doctor no more."

IN HOLY ORDERS. 25

CHAPTER II.
IN HOLY ORDERS.
f In June, 1772, Mr. White was ordained a priest by
Dr. Terrick, the then Bishop of London, and em
barked immediately for Philadelphia, where he arrived,
after a tedious passage, on the 13th of September.
There were then only two parishes identified with the
Church of England in that city, though several con
gregations were gathered in the colony. Christ Church
was the first parish in Philadelphia, and it was twelve
years after the founding of the city, when the pop
ulation could not have been more than four or five
thousand, in 1695, before the Churchmen identified
with this parish undertook to build an edifice, partly of
wood and partly of brick, in which they could worship
God after the forms of the Church of England. St.
Peter's Church was established half a century later, in
1758, at the request of a number of the leading citi
zens of Philadelphia, because another place of worship
was much wanted. It was undertaken by the direction
of the vestry of Christ Church, and was simply another
church in that parish. In 1765 a charter was granted
by Governor Penn to the united churches. Mr. White
had been baptized in Christ Church in his infancy;
he had attended its services from his youth until he

26 BISHOP WHITE.
went to England to receive holy orders ; his father
had been identified with it as a parishioner, and he was
the bright and shining light of the company of people
who worshipped there, and who constituted a fair pro
portion of the best social life of Philadelphia at that
time. It was hardly a month after his return, when he
and a young man, Mr. Coombe, who had made the
voyage to England at an earlier period and had been a
London curate, were elected as the assistant ministers
in these two churches. The rector, Dr. Peters, had
requested that Mr. White might be appointed to this
position while he was yet in England, and it is a signal
instance of the spirit in which he began his work that
he recognized the limited means of the parish, which
were barely sufficient to provide for the rector and the
Rev. Mr. Duche, who had charge of St. Peter's, and
desired that what might be specially done by the con
gregation for him might be paid to his brother assist
ant. In a letter to Dr. Peters, he said : " Whilst I
officiate in these churches, I shall always be satisfied
with what they can afford to offer me from their regu
lar funds, and not expect to receive any part of what
may be raised in some new way." He received a sal
ary of one hundred pounds per annum from the rector,
and at the special request of the vestry was induced to
take fifty out of the two hundred pounds which the
congregation had raised for himself and Mr. Coombe.
From this time onward until his connection with
these churches ended with his death in 1836, the
question of salary was never raised by him. The united
churches paid him what they felt able to. Though he

IN HOLY ORDERS. 27
lost in the Revolutionary war at least ten thousand
pounds from the paternal estate by the depreciation of
the currency, the position of his family and his own
subsequent circumstances were such, in connection
with his modest ways of living, that he was able to
maintain his place among the foremost citizens of Phil
adelphia out of his own income. This incidentally
had much to do with his comfort and success at a
time when the church in Pennsylvania had no spare
funds, and the clergy were often without fixed salaries
and without the means of subsistence. Mr. White, as
presbyter and bishop, never knew what it was to be
without a comfortable support.
In February, 1 773, he was married to Miss Mary Har
rison, to whom he had been tenderly attached for some
time before his voyage to England. She was of English
descent, and her father had been for some time the
mayor of Philadelphia. He was also one of the wardens
of Christ Church when it was the only Episcopal parish
in the city. With this lady he lived in uninterrupted
harmony until her death on the 13 th of December,
1797. In the family record which he made of the
births of his children this date is followed immediately
by the words, " Mrs. AVhite departed this life." He
always spoke of her as Mrs. White, in the tenderest
terms, but with a reserve which indicated that the
affection was too strong and the sense of loss too deep
to be treated with freedom.
Concerning his home at this period, his great-grand
son, in the " Notes of the White Family," ' writes
thus : —

28 BISHOP WHITE.
" The early part of the married life of Bishop White
was passed in the house at the southwest corner of Pine
and Front Streets, upon the site of which now stands St.
Peter's House, that noble establishment of St. Peter's
Church. Some months before his marriage he had been
appointed one of the assistant ministers of Christ Church
and St. Peter's, — and as junior assistant his duties may
have been given principally to St. Peter's Church, — whence
the reason for establishing himself in its near vicinity. In
his study in this house were planned, upon the close of the
war, all the measures looking to a union of the clergy and
congregations of the Commonwealth, out of which period
came the federate Union of the churches in all the States
forming the American Church."
His ministry was without notable incident until the
troubles between Great Britain and the colonies led to
the War of the Revolution. His position in this con
flict is best stated in his autobiography : —
" Long before that period [the Revolutionary War], I
had carefully studied the English history, and my reading
in the department had been considerable. The principles
which I had adopted are those which enter into the Con
stitution of England from the Saxon times, however the
fact may have been disguised, and were confirmed and acted
on at the Revolution in 1688. The late measures of the
English government contradicted the rights which the
colonists had brought with them to the wilds of America
and were, until then, respected by the mother country. The
worst state of dependent provinces has been that which
bound them to a country itself free. . . . Our quarrel was
substantially with our free fellow-subjects of Great Britain,
and we never objected to the constitutional prerogative
of the Crown until it threw us out of its protection.
This it did, independently on other measures, by what was

IN HOLY ORDERS. 29
called the Prohibitory Act passed in November, 1775,
authorizing the seizure of all vessels belonging to persons
of this country, whether friends or foes. The Act arrived
about the time of the publication of Paine's ' Common
Sense.' Had the Act been contrived by some person in
league with Paine, in order to give effect to his production,
no expedient could have been more ingenious. To a reader
of that flimsy work at the present day the confessed effect of
it at the time is a matter of surprise. Had it [been] issued
six months sooner, it would have excited no feeling except
that of resentment against the author. But there had
come a crisis which the foremost leaders of American re
sistance were reluctant to realize to their minds."
In a subsequent note he adds : —
" Even in regard to war, there is a fact which shows
how far it was from being sought for or anticipated by the
American people. The Congress of 1 774 concluded their
address to them with the advice to be prepared for all
events; and yet, until the shedding of blood at Lexington
in April, 1775, there was no preparation beyond the imme
diate vicinity of the British army in Boston. The secre
tary of Congress, Mr. Charles Thomson, subsequently
expressed to me his surprise at its not being generally
understood that the Congress perceived the probability of
what came to pass, and were of opinion that it should
be prepared for, by being provided with the means of
resistance." Mr. White does not hesitate to say that —
"perhaps had the issue depended' upon my determina
tion, it would have been forsubmi'ssion, with the determined
and steady continuance of the rightful' claim. But, when
my countrymen in general had chosen the dreadful measure
of forcible resistance, — for certainly the spirit was almost

30 BISHOP WHITE.
universal at the time of arming — it was the dictate of con
science to take what seemed the right side. When matters
were verging to independence, there was less to be said for
dissent from the voice of the country than in the beginning."
Mr. White took no extreme position. He con
tinues : —
" Although possessed of these sentiments, I never beat
the ecclesiastical drum. My two brethren in the assistant
ministry preached animating sermons, approbatory of the
war, which were printed, as did the most prominent of our
clergy — Dr. Smith. Our aged rector [Dr. Peters], in con
sequence of increasing weakness, was retiring from the
world. Not long before this time he resigned his rector
ship, was succeeded by Rev. Mr. Duche", and soon after
died. Being invited to preach before a battalion, I de
clined and mentioned to the colonel, who was one of the
warmest spirits of the day, my objections to the making
of the ministry instrumental to the war. I continued, as
did all of us, to pray for the King until Sunday [inclu
sively] before the 4th of July, 1776. Within a short time
after, I took the oath of allegiance to the United States,
and have since remained faithful to it. My intentions
were upright, and most seriously weighed. I hope that
they were not in contrariety to my duty."
The materials are scanty for details of the life of
Mr. White at this period. In September, 1777, he re
tired with his family to the house of his brother-in-
law, Mr. Aquila Hall, in Maryland. The British were
then advancing upon Philadelphia, and the Continental
Congress had fled to Yorktown. Says Mr. White : —
"Just before breaking up they had chosen me their chap
lain. They chose with me the Rev. Mr. Duffield, of the
Presbyterian communion. Nothing could have induced me

IN HOLY ORDERS. 31
to accept the appointment, at such a time, even had the
emolument been an object, as it was not, but the deter
mination to be consistent in my principles, and in the part
taken. Under this impression, I divided my time between
Congress and my family, which the double chaplaincy
permitted, until the evacuation of the city in the June
following." He accepted the chaplainship a few days before the
capture of General Burgoyne, at a time when it looked
as if the British army might advance southward from
the frontier of New York and sever the Eastern States
from the Southern. Bishop Kemper gives some inter
esting facts about this chaplainship, which are best
related in his own words : —
"He had removed with his family to Maryland; and
being on a journey, he stopped at a small village between
Harford county and Philadelphia, at which he was met by
a courier from Yorktown, informing him of his being ap
pointed by Congress their chaplain, and requesting his
immediate attendance. He thought of it for a short time ;
it was in one of the gloomiest periods of the American
affairs, when General Burgoyne was marching without hav
ing yet received a serious check, so far as was then known,
through the northern parts of New York ; and after his
short consideration, instead of proceeding on his journey,
he turned his horses' heads, travelled immediately to York-
town, and entered on the duties of his appointment." 1
This was when the finances for carrying on the war
were at their lowest ebb, and when, though this body
soon returned to Philadelphia, it was alike destitute
of funds and of credit. On one occasion, going into
1 Dr. Wilson's Memoir, p. 55.

32 BISHOP WHITE.
the chamber of Congress to perform his duty as chaplain,
he remarked to one of the members : " You have been
treating yourselves, I perceive, to new inkstands."
"Yes," was the reply, "and private credit had to be
pledged for the payment." At another time, observing
that the clerks had removed from their usual room and
inquiring the cause, he was told that there was no
wood to make the fire there nor money to buy it. He
continued as chaplain until Congress was removed to
New York, and when, after the adoption of the Fed
eral Constitution, the government was again estab
lished at Philadelphia, he was once more chosen for
this service, and continued to be so chosen at each
successive session by the Senate, until the removal of
the government to Washington in the year 1801.
Everywhere it was difficult to maintain services in
the parishes of the Church of England during the war.
While Mr. White was absent from Philadelphia, his
friend, the Rev. Mr. Duche, had become so obnoxious
to his country in consequence of a letter written by
him to General Washington, that he had gone to Eng
land. In this letter he entreated him to use his in
fluence with Congress for the putting an end to the
war, and in the event of their refusing, to negotiate at
the head of his army. Mr. White says : —
" It was a very incorrect measure, but induced by de
spair of the American cause, and to spare the effusion of
blood. On the other hand, Mr. Duche" must have been
aware that his having officiated as chaplain to Congress,
even after the Declaration of Independence, was known to
his superiors in England. To appease in that quarter was
the professed object of his voyage."

IN HOLY ORDERS. 33
When the English army entered Philadelphia in
September, 1777, after officiating at Christ Church, and
after praying for the King in the service, he was ar
rested at the door of the church and conducted to jail,
where he remained but one night, his friends in the
mean time making known his change of sentiment. Mr.
White cites this as one of the many instances where
the British officers violated their promise of protec
tion to the people whom they invited to stay in their
respective homes, and who were made to suffer on ac
count of their submission to the English government.
Writing in 18 19 of the condition of the American
Church at this time, Mr. White says : —
" The present state and prospects of our church ex
hibit a contrast fruitful of satisfaction, compared with the
period when I was the only officiating clergyman of our
church in the State. Our settled clergy of the province,
exclusively of the city, had been never more than six, and
these were supported principally by stipends from Eng
land. During the Revolutionary war some had died, and
the others had retired to England, except Dr. Smith, who
remained until what took place subsequently in the Col
lege. He then removed to Maryland, and set on foot his
measures for the founding of a College in Chestertown,
in which he had accepted the parish, and another in
Annapolis. I was now in a trying situation, in the paro
chial cure of the churches to which my services had been
and have been ever since devoted. The difficulty was in
regard to the warm spirits of Whigs and Tories, as they
were called. With the latter the danger was the absent
ing of themselves from the churches, in the devotions of
which the new allegiance was acknowledged. That some
took this part for a time is certain ; but it is remarkable
3

34 BISHOP WHITE.
that of these there were scarcely any who had professed
conscientious scruples against resistance, and that they
were chiefly persons who had engaged in it without calcu
lating the consequences, and had afterwards inconsistently
relinquished it. The prejudice wore away gradually.
With the hot Whigs it was more difficult to deal because
of the present season of success, and because they who
stayed [in the city] had become in some measure iden
tified with the enemy, whose conduct had been in many
instances wantonly oppressive, although, it must be con
fessed, with very little discrimination between friends and
foes. There arose great danger of the introduction of a
political creed into the churches, which might have dis
tracted them for many years. But the heat became allayed
by some judicious men on the same side in politics, who
convinced them that, instead of endeavouring to annul the
last election of vestrymen, it would be best to let all things
remain quiet until the next Easter [the time appointed
by charter for the annual election]. On the arrival of that
period the changes were very few, and consisted chiefly in
restoring members who had been left out, for no other
reason than because, being out of the lines, they could not
attend to the duty. The vestry, after the election at Easter,
voted the rectorship vacant. This was not unexpected,
but [it] placed me in delicate circumstances, on account of
my long friendship for Mr. Duche", whose return, consider
ing his attainder and the indignation excited by the afore
said letter, was at present out of question. There was
seen the hazard of some share of the same indignation,
when it was stated in the acceptance of the rectorship that,
if ever the former rector should return to this country by
the permission of the civil authority and with the wishes
of the members of the churches, I should think it my duty
to resign. It was so entered on the minutes at my desire.
When he returned in 1792, his engaging in the ministerial

IN HOLY ORDERS. 35
duty [on account of a slight paralysis] was to be despaired
of. My election to the rectorship was unanimous."
While the war was still going on, it was impossible
for Mr. Duche to return to America, but the affection
between him and his former assistant was not impaired
by their political differences. When he returned to
Philadelphia in 1792, Bishop White entertained him
for several weeks under his own roof, with his family.
It was while Mr. Duche was his guest, that he visited
President Washington, who treated him with great
courtesy. The only further incident that concerns the
life of Mr. White at this time is his part in the con
cerns of the College of Philadelphia, of which he had
then been a trustee for about six years. A contest was
in progress to take it out of the hands of Church
men, which Mr. White could not consent to. Party
spirit was then at a great height, and the attack upon the
College was the result of it. Its charter was changed,
and the institution was taken out of the hands of
Churchmen and received the name of the University
of Pennsylvania, when Mr. White was in Maryland at
tending the funeral of his father. An attempt was
made to place Mr. White at the head of the new in
stitution as Provost, and he was partially inclined, on
the side of his literary tastes, to encourage this effort,
but he lost the position by one vote. The injustice
done to the College l gave birth to the Episcopal Acad
emy, and an effort was made to restore to the former
trustees of the College their chartered rights and their
1 He was its treasurer from 1775 to 1789.

36 BISHOP WHITE.
estate ; 1 but the bad management of the new institu
tion prevented it, from the start, from being what it
might have been, and forbade the hope of this res
toration. One of the first acts of the new institution in
conferring degrees was to give to Mr. White the honour
of the doctorate of divinity in 1782. Dr. White's
political opinions were maintained during this critical
period with moderation and calmness. He was never
willing to be a partisan, and he held that the members
of the Episcopal Church should conduct their eccle
siastical affairs without regard to their differences in
political opinions. His own sentiments were favourable
to the Federal party, and he was not slow to express
them or to use his vote at elections. From the first
he was opposed to the introduction of religious ideas
into politics.
1 The fight was not so much against Churchmen as such as
against Dr. Smith and his friends as politicians. It has been the
style thus to becloud the controversy, but more patient investi
gation makes the motive clear.

ORGANIZING THE AMERICAN CHURCH. 37

CHAPTER III.
ORGANIZING THE AMERICAN CHURCH.
In his letter to Bishop Hobart, Dr. White says : —
"On the taking of place of the peace of 1783 a new
responsibility was induced on the consciences of the few of
us remaining of the old stock of the clergy. Not long be
fore, despairing of a speedy acknowledgment of our inde
pendence, although there was not likely to be more of war,
and perceiving our ministry gradually approaching to an
annihilation, I wrote and published a small pamphlet called
' The Case of the Episcopal Churches Considered.' It has
been faulted from inattention to the precise time of its
being issued."
In a note to this statement he adds the following : —
" In agreement with the sentiments expressed in that
pamphlet, I am still of opinion that in an exigency in which
a duly authorized ministry cannot be obtained, the para
mount duty of preaching the Gospel and the worshipping
of God on the terms of the Christian covenant should go
on in the best manner which circumstances permit. In re
gard to the Episcopacy, I think that it should be sustained
as the government of the Church from the time of the Apos
tles, but without criminating the ministry of other churches,
as is the course taken by the Church of England."
This pamphlet was published and advertised on the
6th of August, 1782, and some copies had been dis-

b

38 BISHOP WHITE.
tribute a few days before. Within forty-eight hours it
was announced that General Carlton had made the first
overture to General Washington looking to the recog
nition of our Independence, and after August 8th the
advertisement was withdrawn, and all the copies already
issued recalled. These dates are necessary to explain
why Dr. White advocated the measures set forth in this
pamphlet, which in later years was represented as his
full and unlimited opinion of ecclesiastical authority.
They were directed only toward the making of a tem
porary organization which was to be completed as soon
as an opportunity should occur to obtain the Episcopal
succession. In an appendix to his charge to the Church
in 1807 Bishop White expresses his mature belief "that
under the state of things contemplated some such ex
pedient as that proposed must have been resorted to ;
although had the proposal been delayed a little longer,
the happy change of prospects would have prevented
the appearance of the pamphlet, unless with consider
able alterations." It was written from an intimate
knowledge of the condition of the American Episcopal
parishes at that time. Dr. White had corresponded
1 with the influential friends of the Church in the several
States, with the few who were then left of the eighty
parochial clergymen who were residing, when the Revo
lutionary War began, to the northward and to the east
ward of Maryland, and with those then remaining in
Maryland and in Virginia, and had found that, on ac
count of the entire absence of the authority of the
Episcopate as a resident influence in the American
colonies from the beginning, there was an exceedingly

ORGANIZING THE AMERICAN CHURCH. 39
slight sense of the principles of ecclesiastical govern
ment in the minds of the laity, and a strong feeling of
the uncertainty of maintaining the Episcopal orders on
the part of the clergy. Dr. White's pamphlet was
written in view of these facts, and when peace was con
cluded in January, 1783, there was no longer any reason
for insisting upon the provisional organization which
he had urged.
In substance the general principles embraced in it
were these : The Church was to be free from subjection
to any spiritual jurisdiction connected with the tem
poral authority of a foreign state. Everything was to
be avoided that had the look of making the churches
subservient to party, or of uniting their members on
questions of a civil nature. The laity as well as the
clergy were to have a share in the government of the
Church. The power of electing the superior order of
ministers was to be in the clergy and the laity together.
In the deprivation of the superior order of the clergy
there should be no interference of the civil authority,
and all action should be in the Church at large and en
tirely ecclesiastical. The parochial churches were to
be on an equality, and each parish should retain every
power that need not be delegated for the good of the
whole. In the absence of funds for the support of the
superior order of the clergy, it was stated that their
duties should not be allowed to interfere with their
employment as parochial clergymen, and their super
intendence was consequently to be confined to small
districts. The particular organization here proposed
comprehended permanent superintending ministers with

4° BISHOP WHITE.
powers similar to those of bishops. The individual
churches were to be associated in small districts, in
each of which the minister should be a delegate to a
convention composed of representatives elected from
the vestry or congregation of the churches which they
served. A permanent president was to be chosen,
who with other clergymen appointed by the body might
exercise powers purely spiritual, powers of ordination
and discipline over the clergy, according to reasonable
laws. The United States was to be divided into three
large districts, each of which should have an annual
assembly, consisting of members from the smaller dis
tricts within it, equally composed of clergy and laity,
and voted for by those orders promiscuously, the pre
siding clergyman being always one. In addition to
this, there was to be a body representing the whole
Church, consisting of members from each of the larger
districts chosen from clergy and laity equally, which
should meet statedly once in three years. On the
point of Episcopacy, the churches were not to be far
from this mode of government, and whatever was lack
ing to the integrity of the system was to be supplied
when the succession could be obtained.
There was nothing essentially contradictory, in this
provisional system of government, to the order of the
Episcopal Church ; and in this outline it is possible to
trace the original features of the organization which
was attempted as soon after the peace with Great
Britain as the clergy and laity could be conveniently
brought together. The difficulties in the way of such
action were great. Intercourse by letter was slow and

ORGANIZING THE AMERICAN CHURCH. 41
expensive, and the churches in the New England
States were practically separated from those in the
Middle and Southern Atlantic States. All the parishes
were disabled; many of the houses of worship had
been destroyed or desecrated ; and it was a difficult
matter to bring about unity of action. As soon as In
dependence had been declared, a few young men to
the southward, who had been educated for the min
istry, sailed for England, and applied to Dr. Lowth,
the then Bishop of London, for holy orders. Bishop
Lowth could not ordain them until an act of Parlia
ment had been obtained, allowing him to dispense
with the oaths of allegiance ; and while they were wait
ing for this obstacle to be removed, Mr. John Adams,
then the Minister of the United States to the Court of
St. James, prepared the way for the obtaining of Epis
copal ordination for these young men from the Danish
Church. But this action could not be accepted ex
cept in a special exigency, which did not occur.
There was a simultaneous demand in the Southern
and Middle States that some association should be
effected under which the churches might act as a
body, and Dr. White, in his " Memoirs of the Church,"
thus describes the way in which this came about : —
" The first step towards the forming of a collective body
of the Episcopal Church in the United States was taken at
a meeting for another purpose of a few clergymen of New
York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, at Brunswick, in
New Jersey, on the nth and 12th of May, 1784. These
clergymen, in consequence of prior correspondence, had
met for the purpose of consulting, in what way they could

42 BISHOP WHITE.
renew a society that had existed under charters of incor
poration from the Governors of the said three States, for
the support of widows and children of deceased clergymen.
Here it was determined to procure a larger meeting on the
fifth of the ensuing October, in New York ; not only for
the purpose of reviving the said charitable institution, but
to confer and agree on some general principles of union
for the Episcopal Church throughout the States. Such a
meeting was held, at the time and place agreed on ; and,
although the members composing it were not vested with
powers adequate to the present exigencies of the Church,
they happily, and with great unanimity, laid down a few
general principles, to be recommended in the respective
States, as the ground on which a future ecclesiastical gov
ernment should be established." 1
These principles of ecclesiastical union, to be sub
mitted to the churches in the several States, were as
follows : —
" i. That there shall be a General Convention of the
Episcopal Church in the United States of America.
" 2. That the Episcopal Church in each State send
deputies to the Convention, consisting of clergy and laity.
"3. That associated congregations, in two or more
States, may send deputies jointly.
" 4. That the said Church shall maintain the doctrines
of the Gospel, as now held by the Church of England ; and
shall adhere to the liturgy of the said Church, as far as
shall be consistent with the American Revolution and the
constitutions of the respective States.
" 5. That in every State, where there shall be a bishop
duly consecrated and settled, he shall be considered as a
member of the Convention, ex-officio.
1 Memoirs of the Church, 3d ed., p. 19.

ORGANIZING THE AMERICAN CHURCH. 43
" 6. That the clergy and laity, assembled in convention,
shall deliberate in one body, but shall vote separately ; and
the concurrence of both shall be necessary to give validity
to every measure.
" 7. That the first meeting of the Convention shall be at
Philadelphia, the Tuesday before the feast of St. Michael
next." Up to this time all action had been voluntary on
the part of the clergy and laity. The object had been
to consult together to see what could be done. At an
earlier date there had been a gathering of the clergy
in Maryland for the purpose of choosing a bishop, and
Dr. William Smith, then the leading man among the
Maryland clergy, had been chosen for this office. It
was at this meeting that the title " Protestant Episcopal
Church " was used for the first time. It is to be noted
that with two exceptions no clergy from the New Eng
land States were present at these preliminary meetings.
The reason for this was that " the more northern
clergymen were under apprehension of there being
a disposition on the part of the more southern to
make material deviation from the ecclesiastical system
of England, in the article of Church government."
This is a reference by Dr. White to his pamphlet on
"The Case of the Episcopal Churches Considered,"
which had alarmed the clergy of Connecticut and Mas
sachusetts, who held strictly to the perpetuation of the
Church of England in this country, with only the
slightest adjustment of the Prayer-book to the new
conditions under which it was to be used. There was
1 Dr. Wilson's " Memoir," p. 102.

44 BISHOP WHITE.
also an objection to the introduction of the laity into
the Church councils. It is with reference to this state
of things that Dr. White, in his "Memoirs of the
Church," wonders " that any sensible and well-informed
persons should overlook the propriety of accommodat
ing that system, in some respects, to the prevailing
sentiments and habits of the people of this country,
now become an independent and combined common
wealth." He was not slow to take action in Pennsyl
vania to prepare for the approaching Convention of
the churches in the different States, which was to be
held at Philadelphia in September, 1785. The pre
liminary steps to this end were taken at his own house
March 29, 1784. This was only a few days before the
first gathering of the American clergy at New Bruns
wick. The first convention of the congregations in
Pennsylvania took place in May, 1784. Dr. White
was unanimously chosen president, and clerical and
lay deputies were appointed to attend the General
Convention of the States to be held in the following
September, in Philadelphia, Dr. White being one of
the number.
It is now necessary to go back a little in order to
pick up another part of the narrative. A meeting of
the clergy of Connecticut, ten in number, in the quiet
village of Woodbury, in the last week of March, 1783,
hardly more than two months after peace had been de
clared, called to take action with reference to the
proper organization of the American Church, was
really the first step in a single State to secure the
Episcopal authority in the United States. It resulted

ORGANIZING THE AMERICAN CHURCH. 45
in the choice of Samuel Seabury, the leading clergy
man in Connecticut at that time, as their future
bishop. The clergy were determined that no effort
should be neglected to thwart what seemed to be the
attempt to create an Episcopal Church without episco
pacy, which Dr. White appeared to them then to have
in mind, and Dr. Seabury was immediately dispatched
to London to see what he could do to obtain consecra
tion from the English bishops. He found it impossible
to remove the obstacles in his way. For twelve months
he persisted in his task without success. The diffi
culty was that Church and State were so connected in
England that Parliament must pass a statute releasing
foreign bishops from the oath of allegiance, before
Americans, with whom the English had just concluded
peace, could be consecrated to the office of bishops,
even for their own country ; and the time was not ripe
for any such action. In his despair Dr. Seabury sought
the Primus of Scotland, Bishop Kilgour of Aberdeen,
and after much opposition from those who had been
determined that no efforts should be spared to prevent
the consecration of an American bishop, he was con
secrated in the private chapel of the Bishop-Coadjutor
of Aberdeen, on the 14th of November, 1784. This
was the consummation of the first wish of Bishop Sea-
bury's heart and the great endeavour of his life, and it
vastly changed the situation in the American States ;
but when he returned to Connecticut, he found that
steps had already been taken for the organization of
the Episcopal churches upon a more comprehensive
plan than had been attempted by the clergy of Con-

46 BISHOP WHITE.
necticut. During his absence the Massachusetts clergy
had met in Boston, and had adopted principles similar
to those which had been accepted at the meeting in
New York in September, 1784, but later on they mani
fested a disposition not to take a part in the Conven
tion invited to assemble at Philadelphia on the 2 7th of
September, 1785.1 It is important to dwell upon these
facts, because they represent two lines of divergence
which have existed from the first in the American
Episcopal Church, and which grew out of the develop-
1 How little exchange of opinion and understanding of the
situation among Churchmen there was in those days, is illus
trated by the conduct. of the Connecticut Churchmen at this time
toward the scattered churches in the new American States.
When Dr. White, then but thirty-four years of age, at what
seemed to him the great crisis in the Revolution, put forth the
pamphlet entitled " The Case of the Episcopal Churches Con
sidered," which was intended to bridge over a difficulty that
could not be surmounted, they were not slow, seven months
after the exigency had passed which it was intended to serve,
to read him an instructive homily on his venturing outside of
Episcopacy in a struggle for life and mere existence, overlooking
the fact that every copy within reach had long been withdrawn ;
and yet they had not the friendliness to tell the young Philadel-
phian that they had appointed Samuel Seabury to go abroad to
seek consecration. This he learned at New Brunswick in May,
1784, when Mr. Moore informed him of the Woodbury transac
tion which had taken place fourteen months before I This single
incident shows the difference of feeling between the two sections
of the American Church, and how little the Connecticut brethren
realized the larger problem with which they had to deal ; but all
these misunderstandings were cleared away, when, later on, the
two bishops met together and laboured jointly for the common
good of the Church.

ORGANIZING THE AMERICAN CHURCH. 47
ment of the Church among two different sorts of people
during the colonial period.
The parishes of the English Church in New Eng
land were composed partly of persons who had been
won over from Puritanism and partly of English colo
nists who had been brought up in the old faith. Early
in the eighteenth century large numbers of the native
New England people had embraced the principles of
what Governor Winthrop called " our dear Mother, the
Church of England," especially in Connecticut and
Massachusetts, and had become what might be called
strong Churchmen. They held their opinions with in
tense conviction and were as forward and active in
their religion as in their politics. The Church people
of New York shared these intense convictions to a cer
tain extent with them ; but in the other parts of the
Atlantic seaboard where the English Church had a foot
hold the people were of a different type of character,
and this to some extent modified their Churchmanship.
The Quaker and German elements largely coloured the
type of Episcopacy in Pennsylvania, and in Delaware
the Swedish element was a determining factor. In
Maryland and in Virginia the old proprietary system
had a controlling influence, and the clergy were more
eminent in religion than in morals. The people like
the clergy were unwilling to submit to discipline, and
with their bishop at the head of the largest diocese in
the world, and three thousand miles away, it was im
possible to maintain ecclesiastical discipline. Still
further south, in the Carolinas, the spiritual condition
was not much better. When peace was declared be-

48 BISHOP WHITE.
tween Great Britain and the American colonies the
political connection between the new States was not
much more concrete than the ecclesiastical ties. New
England was a section quite by itself, and the Middle
and Southern States were essentially identified in public
matters. It is not strange that in ecclesiastical affairs,
with these two hereditary conditions which sprang from
the soil, there should be a stronger and a different type
of Churchmanship in New England from that which
prevailed to the southward. In New England the
clergy with unreasonable haste had proceeded to elect
a bishop without the consent of the laity, without pre
viously preparing the way for it by a proper organization
of the parishes, and without reporting their action to
the parishes in the other States. It was partly on
account of the absence of authoritative credentials
beyond the testimony of the clergy, that Dr. Seabury,
gentleman and scholar as he was, failed to secure the
Episcopate from the English bishops.
On the other hand, with the ecclesiastical elements in
many quarters so indifferent and unintelligent that they
could not be depended upon for the support of such
measures as might be adopted, Dr. White had such con
trol over the parishes in Pennsylvania, and took such a
statesmanlike view of the situation, that he brought the
Churchmen of that State into an organized condition,
representing the Church in its integrity, before any
effort was made to secure the Episcopate. Then there
was something in a representative form to be depended
upon when the first preliminary General Convention
was called for at Philadelphia in 1785. It was Bishop

ORGANIZING THE AMERICAN CHURCH. 49
White's suggestion in his suppressed pamphlet, that the
laity should be included jointly with the clergy in the
efforts to organize the parishes into ecclesiastical juris
dictions coterminous with the several States. In all
the New England jurisdictions the laity were at first
rigidly excluded, though they were afterwards admitted.
Bishop Moberly has seen fit to specially commend the
American Church for going back to primitive usage in
admitting the laity to a share in the organized life of
the Church, and it was due to Dr. White's clear dis
cernment of its necessity at that time for the wise
organization of the American dioceses that the laity
were associated with the clergy in ecclesiastical legis
lation. Probably he was quite as much influenced by
the demands of common sense as by the claims of
Catholic antiquity. The English Church had been
from the beginning in this country so largely controlled
by the influential laity that any other course would have
been suicidal, and to his discernment of the real con
dition of things is mainly due the fact that the laity
have been allowed to participate to an unprecedented
degree in the direction of our ecclesiastical affairs.
It is not difficult to perceive two figures rising at this
point into prominence in the organization and develop
ment of the American Church. Dr. White and Dr.
Seabury before the Revolution were the leading clergy
men in their respective fields of labour. It could not
be said in truth that they differed widely in their
Churchmanship. The difference was more in their way
of meeting and dealing with ecclesiastical questions
than in the divergence of their views of the truth.
4

SO BISHOP WHITE.
After they became bishops, they were quickly recog
nized as not only leaders but champions of the faith.
Bishop Seabury was confident, impulsive, aggressive.
He made the Puritans sensible of his authority as an
ecclesiastic, and no man was more a bishop than he
when dressed in his robes of office. He was sensitive
and zealous for every bit of prerogative and every part
of the Catholic faith. In temperament Bishop White
was his opposite. While always a man of dignity and
reserve, he never insisted upon his prerogative as a
bishop. Once at the roll-call of a society to which he
belonged among the Quakers, his name was read as
William White. Some one broke in upon the reader
with the charge of disrespect toward the bishop, but
he quickly interposed with the words, " I am perfectly
contented with the name my mother gave me." He
carried his ends without seeming to do so. His re
serves were more remarkable than his utterances and
gave him a silent power among men. He always took
the sensible line of conduct ; and if in a community
where the forms and ceremonies of the Church were at
a discount he adjusted himself to the sentiment of the
people in presenting the claims of his own communion,
it was not because he was a man indifferent to Church
principles or without a firm belief in them himself, but
because he felt profoundly convinced that it was better
to carry the whole community with him for moderate
views than to have the commendation of a part of it
and the honest antagonism of the rest. The two men
were the complement of one another, and when they
came together as the first two members of the House

ORGANIZING THE AMERICAN CHURCH. 51
of Bishops, and sat on opposite sides of the table in
Bishop White's study, after their early differences had
been arranged, they were like Paul and Apollos work
ing together for the increase of the kingdom of God.
The natural order of the narrative has been a little
anticipated in order to obtain a certain perspective.
It is time to turn back to the natural course of events
in the organization of the American Church. The in
terest centres at this time in the wise steps by which
Dr. White proceeded in securing a proper ecclesiastical
organization. It was his aim to prepare for the choice
of a bishop by the proper representatives of the Church.
The first thing to do was to collect and unite its scat
tered members so that they might be a body over
which a bishop could be placed when consecrated, and
on whose authority he could depend in his application
to the English bishops for consecration. The General
Convention, which met in Philadelphia on the 27th of
September, 1785, consisted of representatives from
seven States, — New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina.
Dr. White was unanimously chosen president, and the ^
Church was organized and united in these States under'
a provisional and general constitution, which was not
finally ratified until the Convention of 1789. This
gathering was of the first importance, because, under
Dr. White's direction, it blocked out the course which
was to be taken in the future in regard to the Episco
pate, the constitution, the liturgy, the articles of re
ligion, and the canons. The Convention entered on
the business of the Episcopacy, with the knowledge

53 BISHOP WHITE.
there was then a bishop in Connecticut, consecrated
not in England but by the Non-juring bishops of
Scotland. Bishop Seabury had already begun the ex
ercise of his new functions, early in the preceding sum
mer, and two or three persons in the Southern States
had received ordination at his hands. And yet, with
no disrespect to the new bishop, the majority of the
members of this Convention thought it most proper that
they should obtain, the Episcopate directly from the
English Church.
The war was then so recent, and ecclesiastical and
political affairs in England were so complicated, that
this object had to be conducted with the greatest tact
and delicacy, for fear that it would provoke opposition
in England, and would be resented as an act by which
the Episcopal Church intended to unduly assert itself
in this country. However loyal to the new govern
ment its members then might be, the Church as a
whole was in great disfavour in America because many
of its clergy and laity had taken the Tory side during
the Revolution. In nothing is the sagacity of Dr.
White more distinctly seen than in the way in which
he proceeded in disarming opposition in America to
the request that the Episcopal succession should be
obtained from the English bishops ; and a signal proof
of it is that John Adams, a Puritan of strict type, was
foremost in his efforts to forward this business when
clergymen were sent to England to obtain Episcopal
consecration. Such limited powers as this Convention
possessed were put to service in the form of an address
to the archbishops and bishops of England, asking

ORGANIZING THE AMERICAN CHURCH. 53
them to consecrate to the Episcopacy those persons
who should be sent with that purpose in view from
the churches in any of the States respectively. Dr.
White prepared this address, and it was adopted sub
stantially as he wrote it. It was received with friendly
caution. The liturgy, as altered, and also the constitu
tion then adopted, though sent to England, had not
reached that country at the date of their reply to the
address. After the Convention had adjourned, the English
bishops sent a second letter, in which they commented
upon the omissions which had been made in the re
vision of the book of Common Prayer, and gave the
promise that an act of Parliament would be passed by
which the powers necessary for the proposed consecra
tion would be granted by the State to the bishops for
this purpose. A third letter from the Archbishop of
Canterbury gave notice that this act had been passed,
and that in their opinion in England only three bishops
should be consecrated for the United States. Dr.
White was unanimously elected bishop of Pennsylvania
at a special convention, which was held on the 14th of
September, 1786. Three only of the clergy of that
State besides himself were present, though two clergy
men belonging to it expressed their concurrence in
the election later on. At about the same time the Rev.
Mr. Provoost was elected bishop in New York. The
adjourned General Convention met at Wilmington,
Del., according to previous appointment, and signed
the testimonials in favour of the two bishops-elect.
They also took pains to satisfy the English prelates that

54 BISHOP WHITE.
they had taken every possible care to maintain the
same essential articles of faith and discipline which had
been handed down in the Church of England. They
restored the article, " He descended into hell " in the
Apostles' Creed and inserted the Nicene Creed in the
liturgy, but they refused to admit the Athanasian.
Dr. White was the ruling spirit in all these delibera
tions, and the committee on the communications from
the English bishops sat up all night to digest the
measures which were adopted the next day in the
Convention. It will be seen from the account already given that
Dr. White and Mr. Provoost were chosen bishops and
were prepared to visit England for their consecration
under far different auspices from those under which
Dr. Seabury had proceeded three years earlier. The
object was the same, but the preparation for it shows a
different conception of the requirements of the Church
from that which obtained in New England. Dr. White
had laboured from the beginning of his larger responsi
bilities to unite the scattered congregations in the dif
ferent Middle and Southern States, and his success in
reaching this result was due to his knowledge of men
and his intuitive good sense in knowing how far to go.
Much fault has been found with the " Proposed Book."
He led the way in liturgical changes which would have
lowered the Episcopal Church in its early beginnings in
this country to a point of practice in doctrine and dis
cipline and worship which at the end of a century its
members are thankful to have left forever behind ; but
though this revision of the Prayer-book in 1785 was

ORGANIZING THE AMERICAN CHURCH. 55
quickly superseded by a book in which there was a
closer conformity to the Church of England, it was not
so unwise a work as it has often since been represented
to have been. In point of fact, Dr. Smith was the
promoter of most of the ecclesiastical and doctrinal
changes. In the Middle and Southern States there
had to be much yielding to the environment, if the
Episcopal Church in its independent form was to be
organized at all. This latitudinarianism did not express
the fulness of Dr. White's own convictions, but his eye
was on the possibilities of securing a united and prop
erly organized Church, and he trusted to the future to
bring many things into the right shape, when he ac
cepted a present statement of which he did not fully
approve. Between the free and easy laity, who largely
represented the Church in Virginia and Maryland, and
who feared that the introduction of the bishop would
greatly interfere with their habits of living, and the
German and Quaker elements which largely repre
sented the unorganized religious life in Pennsylvania,
it was necessary for him to take a moderate and
middle course, passing lightly over points which he
deemed to be defective in order to secure other points
which were vital. By thus proceeding with wise cau
tion and with a mild enforcement of fundamental
principles, he secured a practically united Church ;
where, if he had insisted upon all his convictions, it
would have been impossible to secure and maintain a
practical unity. The benefit of proceeding in this way
was easily perceived when the bishops-elect proceeded
to England and asked for consecration to the Episco-

56 BISHOP WHITE.
pate. They had their credentials, and a feeble but
organized Church was behind them and had already
endorsed them. This was the secret of their speedy
success in obtaining consecration, and it largely ex
plains the cause of Dr. Seabury's rejection by the
English bishops.

AN INDEPENDENT CHURCH IN AMERICA. 5 7

CHAPTER IV.
AN INDEPENDENT CHURCH IN AMERICA.
The two bishops-elect embarked in the monthly
packet for England on the 2d of November, 1786,
and arrived at Falmouth on the 20th of the same
month. On the 4th of February, 1787, their consecra
tion took place in Lambeth Chapel. Toward the end
of the month they sailed for New York, where they ar
rived on the 7th of April, and soon began the exercise
of the Episcopal office in their respective dioceses.
There was no lack of courtesies to Bishop Seabury
during the time that other parts of the American
Church were waiting to obtain the Episcopate in the
English line. While the bishop and clergy of Connec
ticut did not like the complexion of the measures taken
for the calling of a General Convention at Philadelphia
in 1785, they invited several of the Southern clergy to
a convention to be held in the summer of 1784 at
New Haven. It is plainly confessed that there was a
strong feeling on the part of Bishop Seabury that
Dr. White was not caring for the prerogatives of the
Church, and that he was lowering its standard to the
level of the prejudices of the people among whom he
lived. Dr. White easily understood this, and while
he congratulated Bishop Seabury on his arrival home

58 BISHOP WHITE.
and apologized for not coming to his convention, the
clergy of Connecticut were invited in turn by the
Philadelphia Churchmen to attend their General Con
vention. This Bishop Seabury also declined to do.
Stiffness and courtesy were manifested on both sides.
Dr. White did not deny the validity of Bishop Sea
bury's consecration, but he was determined not to take
any step by which the completeness of the Episcopal
succession in the English line might be impaired for
the American Church. Directly after he had returned
from England, it was proposed that he and Bishop
Provoost should unite with Bishop Seabury in conse
crating the Rev. Edward Bass, who had been elected
bishop by the clergy of Massachusetts and New Hamp
shire ; but both of the bishops in the English line were
opposed to this as unwise, and Bishop Provoost was
even unwilling to recognize the validity of the Scotch
succession. Bishop White was happily relieved from
his embarrassment, before any action became neces
sary, by the consecration of Dr. Madison in England
for Bishop of Virginia. There were now three bishops
in America who had derived their Episcopate from the
English succession.
The centripetal forces in the Church at this time were
greater than the centrifugal. It was for the interest of
Bishop Seabury and his party as much as it was for
Bishop White and his party to put away their differ
ences and come together, though Bishop Provoost could
never forget that Bishop Seabury had been a Tory in
the Revolution, and was irresistibly opposed to his Whig
principles. He had been chosen bishop by churchmen

AN INDEPENDENT CHURCH IN AMERICA. 59
mostly belonging to this party in New York, and much
of his failure to develop his diocese and secure the con
fidence of his clergy was attributed to this cause. The
first time that the two prelates met was at an adjourned
meeting of the General Convention, which was held in
Philadelphia in September, 1789. Bishop Provoost
was detained at home by illness, and only two bishops
were present, Bishop Seabury and Bishop White. The
first House of Bishops held its sessions in his own study,
in the new house which had been built for him and
completed while he was absent in England to obtain
his consecration. It was located in Walnut street, and,
though still complete in its outside form, is no longer
used as a dwelling house. The rooms which Bishop
White occupied as a study and bedroom are still kept
in substantially the condition in which he used them a
century ago. It was here that these two men, who
had been for several years under constant temptation
to misunderstand one another, contested over a study
table the principles which should be maintained in
violate in the American Episcopal Church.
The two men were the complement of one another, the
one prudent and wise, the other valiant and uncompro
mising in his principles, and only yielding where discre
tion seemed to be the better part of valour. Bishop
Seabury was attended by two deputies from Connecticut
and by the Rev. Samuel Parker, afterwards Bishop
Parker, who represented the churches in Massachusetts
and New Hampshire. A conference took place between
them and a committee of the Convention, and the result
was that after some modifications they signed the con-

6o BISHOP WHITE.
stitution, and the union was completed. Bishop White
afterwards wrote that Dr. Parker of Boston was largely
influential in bringing about this harmonious arrange
ment. The clergy in that State, though still without a
bishop, were equally free from the authority of men in
England or Connecticut, and they had it in their power
to act the part of mediators in bringing the clergy of
Connecticut and those of other States together. It
ought also to be said that Bishop Seabury, during the
period in which his jurisdiction was not recognized be
yond Connecticut, and also in these negotiations, con
ducted himself with the dignity and cordiality which
belonged to his office ; and when he and Bishop White
in the latter's study sat face to face, they were practi
cally the guiding and restraining minds in the Ameri
can .Church. They were in the positions where each
could render the highest service in its organization.
It is impossible to present Bishop White in his work
as its founder and leader, without entering into detail
on points of organization. The General Convention
of 1789 was the first really authoritative gathering of
American Churchmen. Though much which had been
outlined in other meetings of the clergy and laity was
practically adopted, it was not until this time that it
was considered to have a binding force. The laity had,
by Bishop White's devising, been admitted as equal re
presentatives with the clergy in the Lower House from
the beginning, but it was at this time that Bishop Sea
bury and the clergy of Connecticut consented with
reluctance that the two orders should sit together in
the same House. It was a notable event to admit the

AN INDEPENDENT CHURCH IN AMERICA. 6 1
laity into the Church Councils. It was secured by
yielding to conquer. The rule had been that each State
should have clerical and lay deputies in its diocesan
convention. At the solicitation of the clergy of Con
necticut this article of the constitution was omitted to
suit their case. By allowing them the privilege of
organizing the convention in their own State on the
principles preferred by themselves, all opposition was
disarmed, and the result was that in the General Con
vention of 1 792 lay as well as clerical deputies appeared
from that State, and their diocesan convention was then
so ordered that lay deputies from the parishes were
admitted to it.
The first consecration which took place in the United
States was that of Dr. Claggett, as Bishop of Mary
land, at the General Convention of 1792 in New York.
Dr. Madison of Virginia had been consecrated by the
English prelates in September, 1 790. Bishop Provoost
presided, and was assisted by Bishops White and Madi
son, and by Bishop Seabury, who for the first time ex
ercised the highest gift of his Episcopal office. By
this act all the suspicions which Bishop Seabury at
times entertained, that the bishops in the English line
intended to ignore his office were set aside, and from
this time until his death in 1796 no one laboured more
vigorously than he to secure the complete organization
and the full development of the American Episcopal
Church. At first there was no House of Bishops, for the very
good reason that the General Convention was organized
before any bishops had been consecrated to constitute

62 BISHOP WHITE.
such a House. There was very great jealousy of anything
like Episcopal authority, and it was regarded in 1786
as a great point gained that the right of presiding was
secured to the bishops. It was by this concession that
Bishop White presided, as the senior bishop, in the Con
vention of 1789. But when there should be three bish
ops of the Church, it was provided that they should
form a separate House, and that their power should be
confined to the revision of the acts of the Lower House,
which might, in case of their nonconcurrence, pass an
act by a majority of three-fifths of that House. In this
arrangement Bishop White took no part. The only
point which Bishop Seabury insisted upon when the
union took place, was that the Constitution should be
so modified as to declare explicitly the right of the
bishops, when sitting in a separate House, to originate
and propose acts for the concurrence of the other
House, and to negative such acts proposed by that
House as they might disapprove. This was boldly
holding up the Episcopal authority ; and had not a lay
delegate from Virginia objected that it was a stretch of
authority that the Church in Virginia would dissent
from, it would have been accepted. It was not to be
accomplished until the Convention of 1 808, and Bishop
Seabury and the New England deputies reluctantly ac
quiesced in a compromise which came short of what
they thought that Episcopal government demanded.
Before the House of Bishops was created it was a
permanent rule of order that in the General Conven
tion " the senior bishop present should be the presi
dent, — seniority to be reckoned from the dates of the

AN INDEPENDENT CHURCH IN AMERICA. 63
letters of consecration." This made Bishop Seabury the
first president of the house. In 1 792 Bishops Provoost
and Madison were dissatisfied with this rule. Bishop
White believed that it was the correct principle, but
to avoid any appearance of seeming to claim his right
under the rule, he absented himself from the House on
the morning when the matter was to come up, and the
rule was then altered so that the bishops held the presi
dency in rotation. This made Dr. Provoost president in
1792, but in 1804 the former rule was again established,
and Dr. White then became and continued to be the
presiding bishop during the remainder of his life. Not
only this, but he wrote and issued all the pastoral letters
addressed to the whole Episcopal Church until 1836.
In the Convention of 1 789 the Protestant Episcopal
Church, essentially as we know it to-day, took its shape.
The Prayer-book of the Church of England was used
without alteration until the Fourth of July, 1776. On
this day the vestry of Christ Church and St. Peter's,
Philadelphia, directed the disuse by the clergy of the
parish of the petitions wherein the King of Great
Britain was prayed for. No other change took place
until the Convention of 1785. It was then at first in
tended to make only the changes and the alterations
which the civil changes required ; but in this Conven
tion it was soon found that much more ought to be
done, and done in a different way from the liberal use
of the pruning-knife shown in the " Proposed Book."
The English bishops had been cautious to guard against
these changes in favour of a lower standard of principles
and devotion, and in 1 789 the time had gone by when

64 BISHOP WHITE.
the " Proposed Book " was acceptable even to the ma
jority of American Churchmen. The revision of 1789
brought out a striking difference in the course adopted
by the two Houses in the General Convention. The
bishops held that the Church under another name was
still the same body which existed before the Revolu
tion, and was in possession of all the institutions that
then existed. The other House proceeded as if the
thing to do was to prepare offices that were absolutely
new. As this course was confined to the Lower House,
it did not have authority against the principle adopted
by the bishops. Thus the revision of the liturgy was
saved from the excesses to which many in the Lower
House might have carried it. It fell to Bishop White,
though he was not in favour of making a selection of
the psalms in metre, as one of the bishops appointed
on the committee, to aid in preparing the psalms and
hymns in metre for use in the earlier days of the
Church. At that time the idea prevailed largely that
in appointing psalms and hymns and the metre to be
used, heresy might be brought into the Church and
cause a great deal of difficulty. The alterations in the
ordination offices, on the review of them in 1792, were
prepared by the bishops. Bishop White says, in his
"Memoirs" : —
" There was no material difference of opinion except in
regard to the words used by the bishop at the ordination
of priests, ' Receive ye the Holy Ghost,' and, ' Whose sins
thou doest forgive they are forgiven, and whose sins thou
doest retain, they are retained.' Bishop Seabury, who
alone was tenacious of this form, consented at last, with

AN INDEPENDENT CHURCH IN AMERICA. 65
great reluctance, to allow the alternative of another as it
now stands."1
The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England
were then regarded as more important than they are
now, and the English bishops were strenuous that they
should be retained essentially in their integrity. This
was the occasion of discussion in several conventions.
Bishop Madison did not believe in having any articles
of religion at all, and Bishop Provoost held the same
opinion ; while Bishop Seabury, at first in doubt
whether it was expedient to have any, was afterwards
strongly convinced that they should be retained.
Bishop Claggett was in favour of them ; Bishop White
also professed himself an advocate for articles ; but
they were not finally established as documents of
authority until the Convention of 180 r. Bishop White
did not consider them the best rule of faith that could
be devised, but he thought that they were better than
any others likely to be obtained under present circum
stances. The members of the General Convention in
that day were not equal to entering upon determina
tions of such magnitude.
It was a different work that came before the Con
vention of 1 789 when it entered upon the framing of
a code of canons for the regulation of the Church.
Bishop White's experience and learning and judgment
were of signal use in forming and improving it. It was
a work which had to be undertaken almost entirely
afresh. The Church of England supplied many excel-
1 Third edition, p. 191.
S

66 BISHOP WHITE.
lent principles in its canons, but the situation of the
two Churches was so different that very few of the
English canons could be adopted in the United States.
Bishop White was prominent in all the canonical legis
lation of the Church, usually the chairman of the com
mittee that had the work in hand, and it was not until
1832 that a wise and well-matured body of canons was
established by the General Convention. His part in
regulating the judicial functions was not a consequence
of his rank as presiding bishop ; but it was accorded to
him out of respect for himself personally, and of confi
dence in his skill, experience, and impartiality.
While the Convention of 1 789 did not complete the
organization of every detail in the polity and discipline
and worship of the Episcopal Church, all its leading
principles were practically established and in force
when it adjourned. Speaking generally, it could be
said that the new Anglican communion in America had
completed its outfit and was in proper working order.
It is interesting for a moment to compare this work
of organization with that which proceeded at the same
time in the Roman Catholic Church under the lead of
Dr. Carroll, who was at first a missionary priest in
Maryland, then an Apostolic Prefect, and who was
finally chosen by the Roman priests in Maryland as
the first Bishop of Baltimore. This took place in
r789. He was consecrated in Lulworth, England, by
the Right Rev. Charles Walmesley, then senior Vicar-
Apostolic of England, on the feast of Assumption,
August 15, r790. All the time that Bishop White was
preparing the way for the organization of the Anglican

AN INDEPENDENT CHURCH IN AMERICA. 67
churches established in America under the complete
control and direction of the Episcopacy, Dr. Carroll,
established at Baltimore, and occupying a similar posi
tion, as the foremost Roman priest in the United States,
was urging that the Roman Catholics, both clergy and
laity, might be placed under a diocesan bishop, who
should bring the entire Roman Catholic communion in
the United States within proper ecclesiastical direction.
Between Bishop White and Bishop Carroll, though they
were never intimate with one another, there was much
in the circumstances of their ecclesiastical work that
was similar. Both had to proceed with great cau
tion lest they should arouse political animosity ; both
were placed in situations where the oversight of the
churches at large was almost forced upon them before
they had the right to act with authority ; both were
modest men, not given to self-seeking, but brought
into prominence because of their recognized fitness
for the work which they were appointed to do ; and
both were supremely devoted to the great purpose of
organizing their respective bodies upon a true and
right historical basis. It was given to Archbishop
Carroll to live until the autumn of 1815, and during
the thirty-five years in which he was the foremost
Roman Catholic prelate in the United States, he made
his Church in this country a compact, influential, and
progressive body. Bishop White survived Archbishop
Carroll more than twenty years, but the great work of
his life was completed when the American Episcopal
Church had been developed into a good working or
ganization. There were many other things for which

68 BISHOP WHITE.
he was distinguished in the future development of the
Episcopal Church, the outgrowth of his commanding
influence in its early shaping ; but these were the natural
outgrowth of his position, and the further evidence of
his wise and statesmanlike qualities.

PHILADELPHIA A CENTURY AGO. 69

CHAPTER V.
PHILADELPHIA A CENTURY AGO.
In 1790, when the national government was removed
from New York to Philadelphia, the latter was the
wealthiest and largest city in the country. It then
contained about seventy thousand inhabitants, and re
presented a Swedish, German, Irish, and English popu
lation. Philadelphia was at that time the only place
of importance in Pennsylvania. Some settlements
were established in the neighbourhood, but in very' few
of them were there enough people of any one reli
gious faith to support a clergyman. At this time there
were only three or four Episcopal Churches in Phila
delphia itself, but they included then, as now, a large
portion of the people of wealth and refinement and
position. The choice of the city as the location of
the national government during the administration of
Washington gave it a fresh impulse, and the inhabitants
submitted to heavy taxes upon their resources to meet
the new conditions. With comparatively few excep
tions, there were no people of wealth in the American
States. Washington and Bishop White were at that
time two of the wealthiest men in the country, and
perhaps the two who had the least desire to make a

7° BISHOP WHITE.
display of it or to exact any deference on account of it
from their fellow citizens.
When Washington came to Philadelphia a presiden
tial mansion was procured for him by the citizens at
great expense ; but he declined to live in it, and hired
a house at $3,000 a year of Robert Morris, the brother-
in-law of Bishop White, near the corner of High and
Sixth streets, where he could live with the plainness
and simplicity which he felt to be most becoming in an
American citizen who was setting an example for the
nation. The gentry in Philadelphia made the most of
the government socially, and imitated as far as they
could the court habits of London and Paris in dress
and equipage and manners. The lines between them and
the traders and the common people were very sharply
drawn. None but the gentry were expected to wear
calfskin shoes ; there were but few four-wheel carriages,
and Washington in his coach drawn by six horses was
the only person in the nation who was expected to sup
port such a style, and it was out of respect to his
office as President, not from any private wishes, that
he maintained it. Dignity and moderation were ob
servable in all that he did, — in his social entertain
ments, in his personal bearing, and in his public
relations. Bishop White, who then virtually stood forth as the
first person in the Episcopal Church in North America,
was in Philadelphia only second in prominence and
position to President Washington. The two men were
in close and confidential relations. The Bishop was
constantly invited to be present at the dinners of state

PHILADELPHIA A CENTURY AGO. 71
given by Washington, and his residence on Walnut
street was the only place where the President and
his wife allowed themselves to make a social call.
Bishop White was a Federalist, and a man of strong
political convictions, which he did not hesitate to ex
press whenever the occasion called for it. When Dr.
White was appointed chaplain of the Continental Con
gress his brother-in-law said, " If he accepts it," he drew
his hand across his throat and added, " he will be
hung." This did not in the least deter him from doing
what he thought to be his duty. The intimacy between
him and Washington was all the greater because they
were limited in their spheres of action. One could
not interfere with the other. Then, too, the relation
was that of a parishioner to his pastor. Bishop White
retained the rectorship of Christ and St. Peter's
churches to the day of his death. He was in his
prime when Robert Morris occupied the pew next to
the pulpit in old Christ Church, and when Washington
sat in the pew next to him and used to drive up through
the archway and enter the edifice by the side door.
Benjamin Franklin and Francis Hopkinson were also
parishioners at that time, and the beautiful chimes and
the mitre on the spire and the modest elegance of
the building made it the most conspicuous and notable
place of worship in the city. Alexander Hamilton
must have often been a worshipper at that time, and
the Governor of Pennsylvania had his official pew in
the gallery near to the chancel. The place was already
notable for what had taken place in it. In the vestry
Seabury and White had revised the Communion Office

72 BISHOP WHITE.'
in 1789, introducing the prayer of consecration from
the Scotch ritual without which Bishop Seabury would
not call it faithful to the principles of the Catholic
faith, and which Dr. William Smith read so well to the
General Convention assembled in the church, of which
he was president, that they accepted it without any
hesitation. Here the cares and anxieties of state were
forgotten by the leaders of the new government, while
they assembled under the direction of Bishop White to
worship the Lord of the whole earth; and here the
piety and the fashion of the first city in the land found
devout and congenial expression.
Washington was not himself a communicant of the
Church, though his wife was a devout and constant re
ceiver of the sacraments. He was a deeply religious
man, and at his own table, in the absence of a clergy
man, always said grace standing. He never allowed
religious discussion, or at least never indulged in it
himself, and neither he nor Bishop White ever broke
the reserve in which they treated matters of personal
religion. To each of them religion in the inner life
was something sacred and to be treated with great re
serve. This did not mean the absence of devotion or
any want of thoughtfulness in these matters. It indi
cated that in an age of cant there were two persons,
high in office and foremost citizens of a great nation,
who had the courage to set an example of the highest
meaning to others in their expression of the relations
of the soul to God. The reserve which both main
tained in their religious life was characteristic of them
to a great extent in all their intercourse with their fel-

PHILADELPHIA A CENTURY AGO. 73
lowmen. This does not mean that they were always
grave and serious. They knew how to be affable and
communicative to others, but beyond their family ties
neither of them had many correspondents to whom
they wrote freely about the things in which they were
interested. For this reason, the lives of each have to
be treated largely from the outside. It is what they
were engaged in and the way in which they met their
duties and the spirit which they brought into life that
chiefly interest us. There are no asides, no looking
into the inner man, no hours of agony or moments of
triumph, and the biographer of both is obliged to re
sort to special methods for presenting them not only in
the spirit in which they discharged the duties of public
office but in the freedom of private life.
Such men give their strength to mankind, to the
causes and interests through which the world advances.
It will not be amiss if the reader is asked to compare
the situations of these two men in their positions in
the State and in the Church. There was no connection
between the two institutions, but each was new in its
organization and each demanded men of nerve, silence,
and courage at the head of affairs. Washington was
then in the height of his career. The man who had
been aptly called "the Father of his country" had
been elected to be the head of the new government.
The Constitution had been accepted in the different
States with difficulty, if not resisted, and people were
in constant danger of forgetting what the Revolution
had cost, and what the nation stood for as a whole.
There were two views of the way in which the country

74 BISHOP WHITE.
should be governed, the Federal view, and the Repub
lican, or, as it came to be later, the Democratic view.
It was either a government which had central power
enough to compel obedience to its principles, or a gov
ernment which could only be the expression of the
political principles of the sovereign States. Washing
ton could take but one view of the situation. He had
fought for the whole country, and had made greater
sacrifices for its independence and its unity than any
other citizen.
It was his privilege and his duty to stand up for
unity of action, and for the principles which Hamilton
and Madison had put forth in the " Federalist." There
was, however, a strong and jealous feeling among many
men, of whom Jefferson was the leader, that the en
croachments of Federal power must be resisted and
repressed at every step. This made the government
bitterly partisan from the beginning, and much as Wash
ington was beloved and revered by the people nothing
too bitter could be said against him by the politicians.
He realized while President the truth of the words
that a prophet is not without honour save in his own
country and among his own kith and kin. This did
not cause him to swerve from duty, but it made his
position irksome and wearying to one who preferred
his quiet life at Mount Vernon before all the emolu
ments of high station. The following anecdote con
cerning Washington is related by the Bishop : —
" On the day before his leaving of the Presidential chair
a large company dined with him. Among them were the
foreign ministers and their ladies, Mr. and Mrs. Adams,

PHILADELPHIA A CENTURY AGO. 75
Mr. Jefferson, with other conspicuous persons of both sexes,
During the dinner much hilarity prevailed, but on the re
moval of the cloth it was put an end to by the President,
certainly without design. Having filled his glass, he ad
dressed the company with a smile on his countenance,
as nearly as can be recollected, in the following terms :
' Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last time I shall drink
your health as a public man. I do it with sincerity, and
wishing you all possible happiness.' There was an end of
all pleasantry. He who gives this relation accidentally
directed his eye to the lady of the British minister, Mrs.
Liston, and tears were running down her cheeks." *¦
Within a few days before his second term expired
the vestry of Christ Church waited on him with an
address prepared and delivered by the Bishop, to
which he answered that he had been gratified by what
he had heard from that pulpit, but he committed him
self to nothing more.
Bishop White had a more limited sphere to work
in than Washington had. It was entirely ecclesias
tical, but it had many points of likeness with the
new political regime. The situation has already been
described. The feebleness of the churches after the
Revolution was great. Outside of Boston, New York,
and Philadelphia hardly one was self-supporting. When
the aid of the venerable Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel was withdrawn at the end of the war, not
only were many of the clergy either dead or living
elsewhere, but the parishes were in a weak and help
less condition, and none of them appreciated, or had
1 Dr. Wilson's Memoir, p. 192.

76 BISHOP WHITE.
ever known by experience, the advantage of working
together. It was as difficult for Bishop White to bring
these unrelated congregations together as it was for
Washington and Franklin to persuade the thirteen
original States to act in concert. The same sort of
quiet and calm statesmanship required in the one case
was needed in the other. It was with the utmost
difficulty that Bishop White persuaded the imperious
Seabury to concede some of his strong and justifiable
positions as a Churchman, while it was even more difficult
for him to deal with the clergy and laity in many quar
ters, who feared that, if the Church were properly or
ganized under the bishops, they would be deprived of
their freedom of living as they pleased. It was nothing
short of the firmness and determination, which are
often concealed under the forms of gentleness and the
seeming to yield, that enabled Bishop White to gather
the scattered fragments of the American Church at
that time to a point where the clergy and laity were
willing to act together. The years of greatest weak
ness in the Episcopal Church were precisely the years
during which the American nation passed through
at Philadelphia its trysting period under President
Washington.

BISHOP WHITE AS A MAN. 77

CHAPTER VI.

BISHOP WHITE AS A MAN.

From the year 1770 when Mrs. White records that
on April 12th she "let Billy have to pay the Hebrew
master £1," and that on May nth she let Billy have
another £1 for the same purpose, her son may be said
to have found his vocation ; and he never lost it. One
would have picked Bishop White out on the streets,
although a perfect stranger to him, as an ecclesiastic.
He was over six feet in height ; in early life he had a
ruddy face and full cheeks, but in later years was always
something less than fleshy, though a man of hardy and
robust constitution. He was never sick a day in his
life until he took his bed in his eighty-ninth year to
die, and then the end was simply the winding up of
life on account of old age. His height was largely due
to his long legs, which were always covered up to the
knees with black silk stockings ; and when friends re
monstrated with him in his old age that the calves
of his legs were not as full as they once were, he still
declined to alter his style of dress. At home he
always wore in summer a silk dressing-gown ; in the
winter he put on a camlet cloak whenever he went out.
He made his own fire up to the last of his life, and was
regular and methodical in his habits. He never went

78 BISHOP WHITE.
out of town in summer. In his younger days he was
spoken of as being very handsome ; and a woman once
said to a relative of his, when the Bishop was preaching
during an evening service at Christ Church, "Becky,
come out at once to church ; your cousin is in the
pulpit and looks like an angel ! "
The Bishop was a hearty eater, and liked good
things. He was fond of mince-pies, and used to but
ter them. In fact, he treated his bread as if it were
furnished him for the sake of the butter that might be
consumed with it. Old Dr. Chapman used to say to
him : " I believe if you could swallow ten-penny nails
you would digest them." His love of good food was
the secret of his long life, but one of his habits was
anything but temperate. He liked green tea, as black
as lye, and insisted on having it. It must be as strong
as it could be made. At his home there was scarcely a
meal at which he did not have a guest, though he never
knew what it was to spend his time with boon com
panions. He always dined at two o'clock. He drank
two glasses of wine, and never went beyond this limit,
at this meal ; he used to smoke one or two cigars after
dinner. The early death of his wife in 1779 did not
break up his home, which was lovingly cared for by
members of his family until his oldest daughter was
able to take charge of it ; and he found in the society
of his children and that of his grandchildren much of
the solace and recreation of his life. He used to
spend most of his time in his study, but after nine
o'clock in the evening he always came downstairs for
an hour with the family. He liked to have his grand-

BISHOP WHITE AS A MAN. 79
children dance, though he would never allow them to
waltz. He used to smoke a solitary cigar, drink one
glass of sherry, and eat two roasted apples every night
before retiring. One of his family says : " The only
way we could tell that he was not well was when he
left off his cigar. He delighted in the evening to have
his grandchildren rub his hair behind his ears, which
he called teaseling, and to rub his silk stockings before
a hot open fire. He never wore a wig, as the fashion
was, but powdered his hair." One of his friends, a
lady often in his company, picked up every hair that
fell from his long locks, and finally collected, unknown
to him, quite a good-sized lock of his hair. This shows
how he was venerated. He was not only liked by his
own Church people, but beloved by all denominations.
He was always spoken of as " Our Bishop."
He never asserted himself in conversation. He bore
himself with a quiet dignity. In this respect he con
trasted sharply with Bishop Seabury, who had natu
rally an aggressive and confident manner. In the early
days of the Church he was in favour of introducing what
would now be called the provincial system ; but he
was strongly opposed to the creation of an archbish
opric, though he would most likely have been ap
pointed archbishop, had the arrangement of provinces
been introduced. Dr. Bird Wilson says : —
" In his intercourse with his family and relatives he
manifested an affection tender, constant, and judicious ;
and he received from all of them the reverence and attach
ment so justly due. His general social intercourse was
distinguished by benevolence and urbanity, flowing from a

80 BISHOP WHITE.
heart disposed to promote the happiness and gratification
of all around him. With these he possessed a delicacy of
feeling which made him instinctively shrink from anything
that might wound the feelings of others. His society was
sought by old and young, and by each sex. His conversa
tion, in which he readily and freely engaged and took
pleasure, was cheerful, animated and full of anecdotes re
lating to interesting scenes which he had himself beheld at
different periods of his life, and to the numerous persons
of distinction with whom he had formerly been acquainted.
For his memory was retentive and accurate : not only with
respect to facts occurring in early life, which is not uncom
mon in aged men ; but also to those of more recent occur
rence, which is more unusual.
" Religion was readily made the topic of conversation
whenever an occasion offered appearing to promise good
from the introduction of its truths. But it was contrary
to his principles, and thought by him injudicious and seldom
productive of beneficial results, to press them constantly
into notice, without regard to suitable opportunities. The
deportment of all towards him was easy and unrestrained,
but respectful and affectionate ; the dignity of his character
and manners repressing any approach to undue familiarity.
With all this mildness and suavity he could, when the oc
casion demanded, reprove with severity, — with great skill,
in consequence of his correct knowledge and judgment of
the principles of human nature, and with much efficacy,
either by words, or by marked silence and disapprobation,
or other indications of his sentiments. Such a deportment
and such dispositions and character attracted, as they were
naturally adapted to do, the friendship and affection of all
who knew him. No man, probably, could be more free
than he was from experiencing the enmity of others, or
more remote from enmity to them. It was remarked that
he had no enemies, and was well spoken of by all ; and for
this last reason his friend and intimate, Dr. Benjamin Rush,

BISHOP WHITE AS A MAN. 8 1
denounced against him (humorously) the woe pronounced
in the Gospel, because all men spake well of him !
" He thought it not inconsistent with his sacred office to
be present at and partake of the public dinners on anniver
sary festivals or other celebrations. I was once informed
by him, in the course of a conversation at a late period of
his life, of his reasons for so doing. He believed it called
for by his public station ; that it tended to check impro
prieties, and also led to opportunities of usefulness which
he should not otherwise have obtained. But he early
formed a resolution that if he lived to the age of seventy
he should consider himself at liberty to decline them. To
this resolution he accordingly afterwards adhered.
" Towards Christians of other denominations Dr. White
was tolerant and liberal ; and with many of them he sus
tained a friendly and intimate intercourse. This did not
require any sacrifice of religious truth, or disregard or
neglect of the 'interests of his own Church ; nor was he
capable of either. His moderation did not proceed from
indifference. He was firm in maintaining what he deemed
religious truth, and in an enlightened attachment to the
Episcopal Church. Both in these respects, and in the
course pursued by him in the affairs of his own Commu
nion, moderation and firmness harmonized in an unusual
degree; though it might sometimes be thought that they
apparently interfered ; only, however, in cases in which he
avoided pressing an approved principle, because he thought
the occasion unfavourable, and expected that one more pro
pitious would occur. He felt and showed a proper defer
ence and respect for the opinions of others ; and was
deliberate and cautious in forming his own ; but when
once formed, they were steadily adhered to and acted
upon. "The mildness and candourof the Bishop's disposition
were strikingly illustrated by the spirit prevailing in his
controversial writings. These were wholly free from the

82 BISHOP WHITE,
least infusion of animosity, bitterness, sarcasm, or unfair
ness in the statement of the opinions or motives of ad
versaries, by which such writings are too generally
distinguished. Probably they may be less pleasing to
many readers for the want of those properties ; some of
which, at least, are thought to add to the animation and in
terest of controversy. But they are more honourable to his
character and Christian feelings ; the more so, because
theological controversy is so apt to excite unfriendly and
violent emotions even in those who, on all other occasions,
manifest a truly Christian temper. Candour, urbanity, and
the love of truth are preserved throughout his works. The
support of sound and correct principles, and not victory or
the display of intellectual ability or learning, was his uni
form object, — which he sought to attain by just argument,
without resort to misrepresentation or invective.
" Modesty and humility appeared in his whole life and
conversation, in his deportment in every station. Pos
sessed of an unusual degree of personal influence, and of
acknowledged eminence, he was perfectly unassuming, and
apparently unconscious, certainly unostentatious, of both.
Both also were received unsought ; and both were probably
much increased by this very cause. He even felt pain at
receiving compliments on his own usefulness or attain
ments ; though they were not designed merely as such, or
uttered in his presence, but expressed with sincerity and
truth in letters or publications. As a specimen of this
may be adduced the following remark in a letter to Bishop
Hobart [ioth of August, 1808], who had, in a review of his
Episcopal charge of 1807, spoken highly of his theological
learning and abilities : ' As a reviewer I think you too long
in your extracts from my charge. If you go on so, it will
take up too much of your room. I take well your gentle
castigations ; which I could answer, but have not time.
It gave me less concern than the stroking which preceded.
Be assured I felt a painful sensation on reading of my " ex-

BISHOP WHITE AS A MAN. S3
tensive and deep theological erudition ; " for, if I thought
myself, as I do not, possessed of talents for it, circum
stances have not permitted my being enough in my study
for the acquisition.' To these estimable features may be
added great innocency and purity of mind and manners,
shining forth in his whole deportment, as if_ he were un
conscious of evil.
" His conduct in every situation, even the most unex
pected and trying, evinced distinguished Christian pru
dence. This virtue had full scope for exercise and
probation, in the various situations in which he was from
time to time placed, by the incidents connected with the
government and affairs of the Church over which he pre
sided, and by his frequent intercourse with those of other
denominations. By it he was enabled, without abandoning
any principle deemed correct byh.imself or his own Church,
to preserve harmony of feeling and intercourse with others,
and obtain their respect and friendship. And an intellec
tual quality, possessed by him in a very eminent degree,
and improved by close observation and experience, con
tributed largely to the good results of that prudence, and
to the increase of his usefulness to the Church, — I mean
his accurate discrimination of the characters of men, in
which he was seldom mistaken when he had reasonable
opportunities of forming a judgment. He was not hasty
or rash in adopting his opinion, or disposed to entertain
prejudices, or to persevere in a mistaken judgment. The
most perfect candour towards all was his aim and desire.
"Being placed in a very extensive parish, as well as in a
large diocese, his active duties were numerous and arduous,
and necessarily occupied much of his time. Yet he was
enabled to devote much time also to the labours of his
study. It has often excited surprise that he was able to effect
so much. But the causes were his great and unintermitted
industry ; his exact method in the employment of his time ;
his strict punctuality in complying with every engagement

84 BISHOP WHITE.
(for which he was remarkable, and often produced the like
habit in those with whom he had intercourse in busi
ness) ; the ease with which he could fix his mind intently
on the subject before him ; and the clearness and rapidity
of his conception. These habits and powers continued
unimpaired until his last illness.
" In relieving distress, and in other exercises of charity,
he was benevolent and liberal. Yet his revenues were not
large ; his family became numerous ; and his station ex
posed him to many unavoidable expenses. His income
from his parish was about twenty-two or twenty-three hun
dred dollars. As bishop he received nothing except the
interest on Mr. Andrew Doz's legacy, of about four thou
sand dollars, which was the first foundation of the Episco
pal fund of the diocese ; and he was frequently obliged to
defray himself the expense of visiting different churches.
He had however a respectable, but not large, private
estate. The mention of this subject suggests the introduc
tion of a remark made in a daily publication in Philadel
phia, shortly after his death. Referring to the notice in
the London papers of that event, and of the comparative
mediocrity of his salary, the editor said : ' Bishop White
enjoyed a revenue beyond a monarch's command ; his
daily income was beyond human computation. If he went
forth, age paid the tribute of affectionate respect, and
children " rose up and called him blessed."' The general
sentiment applauded and concurred with the just and beau
tiful commendation." *¦
There is yet more to be said of his characteristics as
a man. His manner to inferior people was that of a
gentleman of the old school. He always took off his
hat to them, when they took off their hats to him.
His grandson once said to him : " Why do you do
1 Dr. Wilson's Memoir, pp. 276-283.

BISHOP WHITE AS A MAN. 85
this?" "My child, would you have them polite to
me, and I not to them?" Mr. John Sergeant said:
" There will never be but oile Bishop of Pennsylvania
who will be known as the Bishop." Mr. Robert Walsh
was at his house every day, and used to keep him well
informed in all political matters. He was deeply inter
ested in politics, always voted, and would stand in line
waiting for his turn. His presence there had a salu
tary influence. Once he went with his dignified step
to the polls and found them manned by a disputing
multitude, fighting for access to the window. The
moment it was whispered, " Bishop White is coming,"
a lane was opened by the contending factions, and
the venerable prelate walked through and deposited
his vote ; the cessation of action continued until he
had repassed the lines, and the result on the crowd
was striking and beneficial for a considerable length
of time. He was alive to all that was going on in
his country and in Philadelphia, and he kept up this
interest until his old age. He used a carriage until
late in life, and had the front seat taken out of it in
order to give his legs, which were unduly long, ample
room. He was an early riser, usually getting up before
any one else in the family. He persisted in preaching
down to the very last of his life. When a parishioner
offered him his sympathy in trying to preach in his
old age, saying, "Isn't it hard for you to preach?"
he replied : " Ob, no ; the trouble is with your ears ! "
He was much with Benjamin Franklin, and Franklin's
daughter, at her father's request, gave him the American
Prayer-book for which Franklin wrote a preface.

86 BISHOP WHITE.
Every man, woman, and child paid attention to the
Bishop as if he belonged to them, and he could never
walk through the streets without constant interruption
from the people who insisted upon showing him their
respect. He never minded the weather, and he led a
very regular life. He was frequently invited to the
city dancing assemblies, though he never participated
in them. Up to seventy years of age, he used to go to
dinner parties ; then he stopped and said : " The old
man has done his duty." He was always to be found
in his study, where he usually spent his mornings, with
a book on his lap. He wrote his sermons standing
up, in a large, clear, and scholar's hand. One can
read them even to-day almost as easily as if they were
in type. His literary industry was something remark
able. There was only one important work of his
which was not published during his lifetime, and of
this he said : " If anything is ever published after my
death, I would rather have the answer to Barclay's
Apology brought out than anything else." The reason
why this work has never been brought out is not that
it is not a valuable treatise, — something in the style
of Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity," — but that the
Quakers, against whose religious views it was written,
have so far declined in numbers and in importance
that it would be to-day simply of historical value.
Bishop White had to suffer a great deal from the im
portunity of the extremists of his time. If he had one
application to take the temperance pledge, he had five
hundred. His reply was that he had taken this pledge
two or three times in his religious vows, and that he

BISHOP WHITE AS A MAN. 87
did not see why he should take it again. He held that
when a Christian man had promised to keep his body
in soberness, temperance, and chastity, he had gone
as far as language permitted him to go.
It is not difficult from these fragmentary reminis
cences of his personality to draw the inference that
" he was more of a gentleman than any of his people ; "
and that he illustrated, as Washington did, the highest
style of what an American citizen ought to be in the
early days of our existence as a nation. His appear
ance as a Bishop was dignified and striking. The
Episcopal robes became him greatly. This is seen in
the portrait of him by Gilbert Stuart, as well as in the
Inman portrait which represents the Bishop in his old
age. He liked to preach, and during his long rector
ship of Christ Church and St. Peter's he was always in
his pulpit in one of these churches every Sunday morn
ing. In making his visitations as Bishop he always
preached to the congregation, and then gave a short
address to the candidates whom he had confirmed.
Among the first persons to receive confirmation after
his consecration were his wife and children. This
took place at St. Peter's Church, Philadelphia, Nov. 10,
1787, when he held his first confirmation, and admin
istered the rite to forty-four persons. A month later,
in the same year, he confirmed thirty-five persons in
the same church. In Trinity parish, Oxford, in 1788,
notable as the first charge of Bishop Hobart, who was
born in Philadelphia and educated for the ministry
under Bishop White, he confirmed forty-three. In
1805, on the 13th of May, sixty-one were confirmed at

88 BISHOP WHITE.
St. Paul's ; and on the 30th of May in the same year
sixty-nine at St. Thomas's, Philadelphia. The largest
class ever presented to him was at Trinity Church,
Swedesborough, when two hundred and thirty-three
persons were confirmed at one time. Again, on the
28th of March, 18 12, one hundred and seventy-five
were presented to him at St. Peter's on Easter eve,
and at Christ Church on the 13th of April, 181 1, being
Easter eve, he confirmed one hundred and forty -nine
persons. Again, at St. James's, Philadelphia, on the
17th of April, 1813, at Easter eve, the number rose to
one hundred and fifty-one persons. Still further down
the list, the record is made that at Trinity Church,
Wilmington, on the ioth of October, 1819, one hun
dred and eleven were confirmed; and as late as 1825,
at the visitation of Trinity parish, Pittsburgh, in the
month of June, one hundred and thirty-five persons
received this rite. These were among his largest
classes, though as late as the 28th of March, 1836, a
class of forty-eight was presented to him in his own
parish, at Christ Church. His last confirmation was
held on the 15th of May, in the same year, at St.
Andrew's parish, where a class of forty-four was
received. These statements are given in order to indicate the
state of the Church at that time. At one of Bishop
Seabury's visitations in Connecticut the largest con
firmation on record took place, — four hundred and
seventy-six persons were confirmed at one time. In
this instance persons came from several neighbouring
parishes, and it was soon after Bishop Seabury's conse-

BISHOP WHITE AS A MAN. 89
cration, when, as was often the case, nearly the whole
congregation received the rite as the complement
of what they had a right to ask from the Church and
had been unable to obtain. Often there were persons
who objected to receiving confirmation when they
had been communicants all their lives, and among
these was Bishop White's own mother, who could not
be made to see that submission to this rite, even at her
son's hands, was necessary in her old age. Bishop
White confirmed each person separately, and always at
one sentence in the confirmation office his voice broke
and he could not control his emotion. In the service
for the consecration of bishops, at the words, " Be to
the flock of Christ a shepherd, not a wolf," his voice
broke in the same way ; and he could never read the
parable of the prodigal son without betraying a similar
sensibility.

90 BISHOP WHITE.

CHAPTER VII.
THE DAY OF SMALL BEGINNINGS.
No other religious body in North America had the
antecedents of the Episcopal Church during the colo
nial period, or had a more unpromising outlook at the
close of the eighteenth century, or had more to contend
with in the way of growth. Even Archbishop Carroll,
who had a similar work of gathering up fragments and
welding them into a proper organization, had in some
respects less to contend with. After the churches
had been united in their new organization and the
Episcopate had been secured, the whole company
North and South, along the Atlantic seaboard, would
not have made a respectable American diocese in point
of wealth or numbers, although the personal influence
of Churchmen in those days was great on account of
their political and social standing. In many of the
parishes the people ranked among the foremost fami
lies of the country. This was the case especially in
New York and Newport and Boston, where one of the
two strongest parishes, — King's Chapel, — the earliest
Episcopal organization in Boston, had become alien
ated by adopting the Unitarian principles of belief, and
had withdrawn its influence from the weak and strug
gling Church. Parishes were established at Marblehead,

THE DAY OF SMALL BEGINNINGS. 91
Salem, Newburyport, and Portsmouth. The founda
tion known as Trinity Parish, New York, gave the
Episcopal Church great social and financial strength in
that city. After New York there was almost nothing
until Philadelphia was reached, and here the chief
strength was confined to three or four parishes. In
Maryland there was some strength in Baltimore and in
Annapolis, and in Virginia there were many old churches
in country districts, some of them in a decayed condi
tion, many of them without pastors, and all of them
deprived of their glebe lands, which had been used
before the Revolution for the support of the clergy. In
North and South Carolina there was some strength, but
though the churches were Episcopal in name, the peo
ple were only willing to have a Bishop among them on
the condition that he should not discharge the duties of
his office.
The sympathy between these scattered congregations
along the seaboard was not at all that of an active
propaganda. It was all that each parish could do to
hold its own. In the northern section, outside of the
cities, the parishes had been largely assisted before the
Revolution by the grants of the venerable Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel. With the independence
of the American States these grants were withdrawn.
At no time could they have ceased with greater injury
to these struggling congregations. Archbishop Carroll
complains that in his own communion there were no
funds to do anything with. The Episcopal parishes
were in the same situation. Bishop Seabury was still
a parish clergyman at New London after he had en-

92 BISHOP WHITE.
tered upon his Episcopate, and his Episcopal income
was confined to the payment of his travelling expenses
as he journeyed from parish to parish. Bishop Provoost
was a man of wealth, and also had the rectorship of
the leading parish in New York. Bishop White, as has
been already said, was also a man of wealth, and never
received a dollar of income as Bishop during his long
Episcopate. Bishop Madison left the presidency of
the College of William and Mary to take the charge of
the churches in Virginia, but no provision was made
for his support while discharging the duties of his
./office, and the reason why Dr. Griffiths did not go to
England to receive consecration with Dr. White and
"~ Dr. Provoost was that he was too poor to bear the ex
penses of the journey. This expense, according to
Bishop White's accounts, was ^so.1 The poverty of
the Episcopal churches in those days was real and
. great. The clergy were obliged to eke out their in-
k comes by taking private pupils, and in many places
i it was with difficulty that the congregations were held
together at all.
In New England most of the clergy had been loyal
to the King during the Revolution, and the political
hostility of the Puritans and of their descendants was
added to the religious prejudice against them, which
had been one of the traditions brought over from Eng
land in the great emigration of 1640. It is impossible
at this time to appreciate the severity or intensity of
the feeling which was entertained toward Churchmen
1 This included the expense of his robes.

THE DAY OF SMALL BEGINNINGS. 93
at the beginning of the century in all parts of New
England. The austerities of the religious life were
cultivated at the expense of its amenities. No courte
sies were wasted between the Church rectors and their
clerical neighbors. Most of the Church people were
converts from the Puritan faith, and only in places like
Newport and Boston and New York were there to be
found persons who represented to any extent the colo
nial traditions and family life of the Episcopal Church.
Trinity Parish, New York, had a certain prestige on
account of its endowments, but the Dutch Reformed
people and the Presbyterians gave a wide berth to its
members in their social and religious intercourse. The
conciliatory course of Bishop White had done much to
create a kindly feeling among the Quakers. He had
been careful not to antagonize their peculiar tenets,
and yet he was the foremost man among Churchmen to
recognize the need of organization and to insist on the
proper foundations for future growth. The Church in
Philadelphia advanced more rapidly from 1790 to 1800
than it did at any other point during that time along
the Atlantic coast, and it is this fact which gave the
Episcopal Church a precedence and position that have
been retained up to the present time in that city.
In 1 79 1 Bishop White had a communication from
Dr. Thomas Coke, an Oxford graduate and a pres
byter of the Church of England, who for fourteen years
had been following John Wesley, and who, like him,
did not intend to promote a separation of the Metho
dists from the Church of England. He wrote first to
Bishop White, about two months after Wesley's death,

94 BISHOP WHITE.
and then three weeks later, May 14, 1 791, to Bishop
Seabury, proposing in a confidential way measures for
the union of Methodists in this country with the Epis
copal Church. He evidently felt that he had no
authority adequate to his office as an overseer or bishop
in the Church of God. His actual feeling is expressed
in the following extract from his letter to Bishop
Seabury : —
" I love the Methodists in America and could not think
of leaving them entirely, whatever might happen to me in
Europe. The preachers and people also love me ; many
have a peculiar regard for me. But I could not with
propriety visit American Methodists, possessing in our
Church on this side of the water an office inferior to that of
Mr. Asbury. But if the two Houses of the Convention of the
Clergy [meaning the General Convention] would consent
to your consecration of Mr. Asbury and me as bishops of
the Methodist Society in the Protestant Episcopal Church
in these United States, or by any other title, if that be not
proper, on the supposition of the reunion of the two churches
under proper mutual stipulations, and engage that the
Methodist Societies shall have a regular supply, on the
death of their bishops, and so on, ad perpetuum, the grand
difficulty in respect to the teachers would be removed —
they would have the same men to confide in whom they
have at present, and all other mutual stipulations would
soon be settled."
It is not known that Bishop Seabury sent any reply
to this letter, but Bishop White returned an answer.
Bishop Madison had the design of securing a union
with the Methodists very much at heart, and introduced
a proposition into the House of Bishops in 1792 which
was intended to bring about some sort of union

THE DA Y OF SMALL BEGINNINGS. 95
between the two bodies. The proposition read as
follows : —
"The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States
of America, ever bearing in mind the sacred obligation
which attends all the followers of Christ to avoid divisions
among themselves and anxious to promote that union for
which our Lord and Saviour so earnestly prayed, do hereby
declare to the Christian world, that, uninfluenced by any
other considerations than those of duty as Christians and an
earnest desire for the prosperity of true Christianity and the
furtherance of our holy religion, they are ready and willing
to unite and form one body with any religious society which
shall be influenced by the same Catholic spirit. And in or
der that this Christian end may be the more easily effected,
they further declare that all things in which the great essen
tials of Christianity or the characteristic principles of their
Church are not concerned, they are willing to leave to
future discussion; being ready to alter or modify those
points which, in the opinion of the Protestant Episcopal
Church, are subject to human alteration. And it is hereby
recommended to the State Conventions to adopt such
measures or to propose such conferences with Christians
of other denominations as to themselves may be thought
most prudent, and report accordingly to the ensuing Gen
eral Convention."
This plan was considered as preposterous by the
Lower House. The clerical and lay deputies would
not entertain it for a moment, and the Bishops asked
leave to silently withdraw it. Bishop White saw Dr.
Coke three times, and heard him read the letter which
he had written to Bishop Seabury. Dr. Coke did not
propose that the two bodies should be affiliated. His
only expectation was that he and Mr. Asbury would
become Bishops of the Methodist Society.

96 BISHOP WHITE.
Bishop White remarks that " it was evident that
from some circumstances which passed in conversation
with Dr. Coke, there was a degree of jealousy, if not
of misunderstanding, between him and Mr. Asbury ; "
and it is not known that the latter desired the Epis
copal office. When Dr. White went to England for his
consecration, he attempted to see Mr. Wesley in order
to state to him some facts about the relation of the
Methodist societies in America to the Episcopal Church,
but his stay was so short that he was unable to obtain
an interview. He had a conversation, however, with
his brother, the Rev. Charles Wesley, who expressed
himself in strong terms against the secession of the
Methodists from the Church of England. The object
of Dr. Coke seems to have been to obtain the Episco
pal office on the ground that it would confer upon him
self a real authority as a leader of the Methodist body.
He did not intend that the two bodies should be com
prehended in a large unity of plan or purpose. On the
other hand, Bishop White and his brother prelates could
not confer upon these two Methodist superintendents
the full authority of the Episcopate without exacting
sacred pledges that the dignity and prerogatives of the
office would be faithfully regarded.1
The movement fell through because neither party
was willing to meet the conditions of the other, though
the bishops were far wiser than any others who had to
deal with this subject. When in the Convention of
1 Bishop White's Memoirs of the Church, Dr. Da Costa's
edition, pp. 195-199.

THE DAY OF SMALL BEGINNINGS. 97
1856 the Memorial Movement, originated by Dr.
Muhlenberg in 1853, was before the General Conven
tion of that date, it was again, as in 1792, the Lower
House which decided against that wise effort to reach
out on the part of the Episcopal Church to a large
comprehension of the needs of our Protestant Chris
tianity. The Bishops of the Church in 1792 and in
1856 had a far higher and clearer sense of Catholic
life and order than that entertained by the rank and
file of the Episcopal Church, and it was not until 1886
that the declaration on Christian Unity was made by
the House of Bishops and the Lower House was ready
to unite in a standard of union which could be offered
in behalf of comprehensive Christian unity, and even
then the final terms of this famous declaration were
less comprehensive than the Bishops in 1792 and 1856
were ready to accept. In this connection it is not
without interest to state the beginning of Methodist
Episcopacy, fons et origo. "The imposition of the
hands " was not done publicly in the church, but in
Wesley's bedchamber at Bristol, England. It was soon
reported that Wesley had made Dr. Coke a Bishop ;
and his brother, the Rev. Charles Wesley, who was not
in the secret, and did not approve of what he had
done, wrote the following witty epigram : —
" So easily are Bishops made,
By man's or woman's whim ;
Wesley his hands on Coke hath laid,
But — who laid hands on him ? "
The weakness of the Church at the beginning of the
present century may be estimated in another way. It
7

98 BISHOP WHITE.
was without endowments for the training of the clergy,
without institutions of any kind, without any effort to
undertake missions at home or abroad, and without the
idea of doing anything beyond the maintenance of a
bare existence. When Dr. Channing Moore was chosen
Bishop of Virginia in 1814 there were seven clergymen
and seventeen laymen present to elect him, and this
was in a territory where before the Revolution more than
ten times seven regularly served at the altar. When
Bishop Seabury died in 1796 he was practically in
charge of all New England. He made his visitations
on horseback, or in a sulky, or by sea, as circumstances
offered, and it was not until nearly the end of his life
that an effort was made to furnish him with an Epis
copal income, and even that was but a pittance, in no
way meeting the demands of his office. Dr. Benjamin
Moore, who succeeded Bishop Provoost, was supported
on the Trinity foundation, and it was not until the
Church had gone a long way down into the present
century that in any diocese an adequate income was
provided for the Bishop placed at its head. It was
not until 1795 that Dr. Robert Smith was consecrated
Bishop of South Carolina, and that diocese had no re
presentative in any General Convention until 18T4.
The only condition on which its clergy entered into
the general compact for organizing the Church in the
United States was that no Bishop should be imposed
upon them. It desired the autocracy of power neither
in Church nor in State.
And yet in this very feebleness there was strength.
This was the time when the Methodist circuit-rider

THE DA Y OF SMALL BEGINNINGS. 99
was the pastor of the settlers on the frontier in the
new States opening west of the Alleghanies, the time
when the country was just beginning to emerge from
its deadly torpor after the war. It took from 1789
until 1 81 1, when Dr. Hobart and Dr. Griswold were
consecrated by Bishop White, respectively as Bishops of
New York and of the Eastern Diocese, which meant
all of New England but Connecticut, for the stricken
and dismembered Episcopal Church to gather up its
forces and prepare for active work. If these were
years of solitude, they were also years of preparation.
In each diocese some effort was made to advance the
Church in the home field, and the men were beginning
to appear here and there who were to be the leaders of
the Church in the next generation. Bishop White had
found a young man of promise in John Henry Hobart,
another in Jackson Kemper, still another in William
Augustus Muhlenberg, still another in James Milnor,
and yet another in William H. De Lancey, all of whom
were his assistants in the united churches in Philadel
phia then under his parochial charge. Two other men
came forward at about this time, who were only re
motely influenced by Bishop White, but were destined to
have an important part in the development of the Epis
copal Church. One of these was Dr. Philander Chase,
the first Bishop of Ohio, a man of remarkable indi
viduality .and power ; the other was Alexander Viets
Griswold, who was born in Simsbury, Connecticut, and
who was consecrated with Dr. Hobart in 1811. Bishop
Chase was the man for a pioneer diocese, and Bishop
Hobart became the first one to raise the standard of

ioo BISHOP WHITE.
Churchmanship in the United States. Early in 1812
the Society for the Advancement of Christianity in
Pennsylvania was formed. It did not originate with
Bishop White, but it received the sanction and support
of the Convention of the Diocese, and was cordially
approved and aided by him in its organization and
work. He united with Bishop Madison in different
efforts to carry the Church beyond the Alleghany
mountains into the new field, and in this way the .Epis
copal societies were organized in various parts of Ohio
and in different parts of Kentucky and Tennessee.

INSPIRING YOUNGER MEN.

CHAPTER VIII.

INSPIRING YOUNGER MEN.

The story of Bishop White's career cannot be con
fined simply to a personal record. He was the Presiding
Bishop of the whole Church in the United States ; and
as years went on, he came to be regarded as the
patriarch and father of the Anglican Communion in
this country. He was deeply interested in every ef
fort to advance the Church, both at home and in the
foreign field ; but in days when the facilities for travel
were few, and when the clergy were hardly sufficient to
supply the existing parishes, and when there was no
provision for the study of holy orders, the progress
was necessarily slow and embarrassing. It is a re
markable fact that Bishop White gathered around him,
either as assistant ministers or for purposes of instruc
tion, the men who were in their generation largely to
influence and guide the awakening life of the Church.
Jackson Kemper, who was for twenty years the as
sistant minister of St. James's Parish, Philadelphia,
under Bishop White, was ordained deacon by him in
1 8 1 1. He showed his fitness to be the first missionary
Bishop of the Northwest by the way in which he spent
his only two vacations during the whole period of his
assistantship. In 1812 and in 1814 he was granted

102 BISHOP WHITE.
leave of absence from the united churches to perform
missionary tours in the West ; and in Western Pennsyl
vania, Western Virginia, and Eastern Ohio he took his
first lessons in the work to which God was to call him
later in life. In the wild regions of what was then the
far West, he travelled extensively, and in many places
was the first to hold Divine service according to the
book of Common Prayer. It was in these fields that
he had his zeal enkindled for the office of a missionary
bishop, to which he was elected at the General Con
vention of 1835, when the Episcopal Church first rose
in its full strength to the conception of what it had to
do in the United States. He was the last person whom
Bishop White consecrated to the Episcopal office. In
St. Peter's Church, at Philadelphia, where, twenty-four
years before he had knelt to take upon him the vows of
a deacon, for the third time he knelt to have the vener
able hands of his chief pastor and friend laid upon his
head. He went forth from that sanctuary to be for
eleven years literally a homeless man ; without his
children, without his library, without even a study,
travelling on horseback and on foot, preaching in way
side cabins, in taverns, in school-houses, and upper
rooms, his saddle bags containing his worldly goods, —
his robes and Communion Service, his Bible, and his
Prayer-book. Few men ever gave themselves more
unreservedly to missionary work. He was the great
pioneer of the Northwest until he fell at his post in
Wisconsin in 187 1. He established prosperous dioce
ses in Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa,
Kansas, and Nebraska.

INSPIRING YOUNGER MEN. 103
Over all these regions Bishop Kemper was expected
to travel, to watch their development, to seek out the
scattered families of communicants, to found parishes
in the growing towns, and to establish Church institu
tions. The following story shows how thoroughly he
lived in the eyes of all men, and kept his office as
bishop in the forefront of everything : —
" Two years ago we were in a railway carriage when the
Bishop came in. A number of gentlemen were conversing,
and the conversation turned on success in life. One of
them, not a Churchman, known all over the West as one
of its largest capitalists and most successful business men,
remarked : ' Gentlemen, there is a man [pointing to Bishop
Kemper] who is the most successful man I know, as well
as the most devoted to his business. When I look at him
I consider myself an entire failure. He is the richest man
in the Northwest.' A rather obtuse personage in the com
pany said, ' Why, I did not know that the Bishop was rich.'
'Rich?' was the answer; 'why, he is so rich that he
doesn't think as much of a million dollars as you or I
would of a hundred, and we are not paupers. Why, he 'd
give away a million on sight, and never miss it. What
grubbing fellows he must consider such as we ! Yes, the
Bishop is rich. He 's the only man I could envy. The
look on half the faces in this car when he came in was
something all the money in the country could n't buy ! '" '
This was the character and the career of one of the
men whose life was largely fashioned under the influ
ence of Bishop White.
Another man over whom the Bishop of Pennsylvania
had great influence was Dr. Muhlenberg. Before there
was any divinity school in the country he was one of
1 The Christian Year, September, 1871, vol. i. p. 289.

104 BISHOP WHITE.
three young men who used to recite regularly to Mr.
Kemper, then the Bishop's assistant, and who also met
once a fortnight in the Bishop's study to read essays of
their own on subjects selected by the Bishop.1 Young
Muhlenberg, while the formation of a theological sem
inary was under consideration, read before him in
1817 an argument for a large general seminary, and
pointed out how he would have it arranged. This is
believed to have been the earliest open statement of
the plan for the General Theological Seminary, which
was established in 1820, and in it he differed radically
from his revered father in the Church, who expressed
his preference for the establishment of local or diocesan
seminaries. Young Muhlenberg constantly accompa
nied Mr. Kemper in his visits among the sick and poor
of the city, and continually sought opportunities for
improvement which indicated his sympathy at that
early age with the whole life of humanity. He had
his first class in the Sunday-school at St. James's,
Philadelphia, and that school was one of the first in
the country ; and here, at the request of Bishop White,
he trained the first boy-choir in America. He was
also instrumental in abolishing the clerk's reading of
the responses, and especially the giving out of the
metre psalm, which was a great annoyance in wor
ship. A good story is told by him in further illustra
tion of this practice : —
" Soon after my ordination, being in New York, accom
panying Bishop White on his way to Hartford for the con-
1 Life and Works of Dr. Muhlenberg, by Annie Ayres, p. 39
et seq.

INSPIRING YOUNGER MEN. 105
secration of Bishop Brownell, at an evening party at my
sister's, I asked Bishop Hobart how he, with his Church
views, could allow a layman, every Sunday, in his presence,
to stand up and exhort the people. He asked what I
meant. I replied, 'The clerk giving out the psalm with
the call to " sing to the praise and glory of God." ' He
laughed, and I know that not long after the practice was
abolished in New York also."
In the second year of his divinity studies, Bishop
White gave him a license as a lay reader. In the ex
ercise of this office he felt more and more drawn to
his future profession. He was also the manager of an
auxiliary Bible society, composed chiefly of young men,
and connected with the first Bible society in the
country, of which Bishop White was president. His
Church-father had counted greatly on having young
Muhlenberg as one of his assistant ministers, and he was
elected as his chaplain, as soon as he was admitted to
the diaconate. The venerable Bishop and his youth
ful friend were well suited to each other. The older
man liked the delicate sensibility and the retiring shy
ness which lent a wonderful charm to the originality
and independence of his young friend. Interesting
stories are told of both of them. A day or two after
his ordination he was asked to baptize an infant in
St. Peter's Church. His countenance flushed and his
whole manner became embarrassed, and he earnestly
requested Bishop White, who was present, to administer
the sacrament for him ; but the Bishop would have his
young brother make a beginning, and would not yield.
Another story is told of the first confirmation which he

106 BISHOP WHITE.
attended as his chaplain. While the Right Reverend
Father was laying hands on a chancelful of young
people, an excited lady rushed up, exclaiming in a
loud whisper : " Mr. Muhlenberg, the Bishop said
she ! " " Move him to the end of the row," was the
quiet and instant rejoinder. The Bishop had mistaken
the lady's son for a girl, but it was rectified when the
round of the chancel was completed.
Still another anecdote illustrates the relations be
tween the two. On the first Sunday of his officiating
as assistant, the Bishop preached in the morning, and
Mr. Muhlenberg read prayers, which was the deacon's
part. In the afternoon when Mr. Muhlenberg was to
preach, the Bishop put on the surplice to read prayers.
The curate reminded him that to read prayers was his
own duty as the assistant. The Bishop replied : " You
read for me this morning, and I will read for you this
afternoon." The young deacon begged in vain to be
allowed to take his place in the desk, but the Bishop
refused and walked out of the vestry, saying pleas
antly, " Turn about is all fair." " Turn about ! " said
Mr. Muhlenberg in telling the story ; " turn about be
tween the Patriarch of the Church, then past seventy,
and a boy honoured with the appointment of chaplain
to him ! " The vestrymen insisted that the assistant
ought always to read prayers, and laughed at the ar
rangement as " Bishop Muhlenberg and Mr. White ; "
and the Bishop finally yielded to what was thought by
them to be the right usage. Young Muhlenberg spent
three years with him as deacon. Shortly after his admis
sion to the priesthood, the Bishop took him to Lancaster,

INSPIRING YOUNGER MEN. 107
Pa., when a church was to be consecrated. The ser
vice took place on Sunday, and in the afternoon Mr.
Muhlenberg occupied the pulpit, and preached so well
that the people immediately called him to the rector
ship, which he, greatly to the regret of the Bishop,
accepted. This did not terminate their affectionate
intercourse, and Mr. Muhlenberg still retained his
kindest regard, and was followed by him with constant
sympathy in his later career.
Dr. Muhlenberg used to say that Bishop White be
came a better Churchman after Dr. Hobart was made
Bishop of New York, than he was before. Young
Hobart was practically educated by him, and had re
garded him as his spiritual teacher from childhood,
pointing out in his old age the very pew in Christ
Church where he used to sit with his father and mother.
He derived in the first instance all his ideas of the
Church from Bishop White's personal instructions, and
from the books which he loaned him to read.1 He
was confirmed by the Bishop in 1790, in his fifteenth
year, and was a student in the University of Pennsyl
vania until 1793, when he finished his studies at Prince
ton, under Bishop White's advice. The first years of
his ministry were spent at Oxford, in the Pennsylvania
diocese. Here he was distinguished for his qualities
as a debater, for his attachment to the Episcopal
Church, and for his liberality towards Christians of
other religious bodies. Bishop White followed him
with constant interest as a spiritual adviser, and
earnestly recommended him to study the Bible in
1 Dr. Berrian's Memoir, Hobart's Works, vol. i. p. 52.

108 BISHOP WHITE.
forming his opinions. After his ordination he was
under the Bishop's control, and was located about ten
miles from Philadelphia. He thus speaks with char
acteristic modesty of his relations to young Hobart :
"Although his signal proficiency is the fruit of his
own talents and industry, yet I have ever since pleased
myself with the hope that he may have derived some
little aid from what it occurred to me to suggest to
him."1 In the year 1800 he was called to be an
assistant at Trinity Parish, New York, and quickly be
came one of the leading men in the diocese. Dr. Mc-
Vickar says : " In the State Convention, from the day
of his first appearance, he became what may be termed
its business man. He was annually chosen its secre
tary from 1801 to 181 1, when he was elected to be its
Bishop, and during the whole of this period its official
business rested on him."
As early as 1799, through the friendship of Bishop
White, he had been appointed secretary to the House
of Bishops ; and he was regularly chosen both a mem
ber of the standing committee of the New York diocese
and a delegate to represent it in the General Conven
tion. Dr. McVickar notes as a coincidence " that the
very first entry of his name on the minutes of the
[diocesan] convention, the first year he sat in it, is in
connection with the principle that marked all his
subsequent course, — Ecclesia est in Epsicopo. ' On
motion of the Rev. Mr. Hobart, Resolved, That this
Convention cannot with propriety act upon this memo
rial while this Church is destitute of a Bishop.' This
1 Dr. Berrian's Memoir, Hobart's Works, vol. i. p. 67.

INSPIRING YOUNGER MEN. 109
entry follows, in the journal of 1801, immediately after
the resignation of" Bishop Provoost." 1 The confidence
reposed in his judgment and in his practical talent placed
him, even at that early age, among the wisest counsel
lors of the Church. It was during this time that he
wrote the series of books by which he was greatly to
improve the devotional life of his own Communion,
and prepare the way for a higher standard in ritual
and a stronger statement of Church principles. Bishop
Hobart died at the early age of fifty-five, in the year
1830, six years before Bishop White ended his life-
work ; but he put into that short career the energy
and the vigour which made his influence more remark
able and more widely extended than that of any other
man up to that time in the American Episcopate, ex
cept Bishop White, from whom, it is right to say, he
derived his comprehensive grasp of the situation and
the treatment of Church questions like a Christian
statesman. Bishop White had great difficulty among the Penn
sylvania Quakers and the latitudinarian Churchmen of
that region and further South, in asserting the princi
ples of the Church. He always acted upon them him
self, but he could not set them forth to the full extent
that he believed in them. It is not here stated that
he was ready to advocate all the opinions which Bishop
Hobart held in regard to the priesthood, the holy
communion, and the sacrifice of Christ ; but it is cer
tain that he never rebuked his disciple for holding
more advanced views than he did, and, as has been said,
1 Dr. McVickar's Life of Bishop Hobart, p. 200.

no BISHOP WHITE.
he was a better Churchman after Dr. Hobart entered
the House of Bishops than he was before. The inti
mate and confidential relations in which the two men
stood to one another is illustrated by the fact that it
was to Bishop Hobart that his aged friend in Septem
ber, 1 8 1 9, addressed at his special desire a letter relat
ing the incidents of the early part of his life, and it
is more than likely that his " Memoirs of the Church "
was suggested by the same party. Perhaps there was
no one of the men whom Bishop White educated and
loved, who in turn had greater influence upon him or
consulted him oftener in the administration of Church
affairs. Bishop Hobart was too independent and ag
gressive a man always to follow Bishop White's con
servative methods, and he ruled a part of the Church
in which his policy was accepted and carried out. In
New York and in Connecticut the greater part of the
strong Churchmen in the early years of this century
were to be found ; and if Bishop White inspired him as
a young man, he did not in any visible way control his
public action.
Two men are yet to be introduced in this portraiture
of the persons who were pupils of Bishop White or
pioneers under him as Presiding Bishop in extending
the Church at this period, — Philander Chase and
Alexander Viets Griswold. Philander Chase was a
New Englander to the backbone, a self-made man, but
one who never lost his individuality in his office, and
had in him abundant raw materials for the making of a
great man. It was apparently an accident that led
him into the Episcopal Church ; but from his first

INSPIRING YOUNGER MEN. HI
reading of the Prayer-book he was an ardent Church
man, and induced his parents, brothers, sisters, and
not a few others in the neighbourhood to follow his ex
ample. He became at once a lay reader, officiating as
he had opportunity in different places in New Hamp
shire and Vermont, along the banks of the Connecticut
River. He was born in 1 775, — the same year in which
Bishop Hobart was born, but he was utterly unlike him
in temperament and Churchmanship. Indeed, when
Mr. Chase — after graduating from Dartmouth in 1795,
and receiving ordination at the hands of Bishop Pro
voost in 1798, and after a brief experience in New
York State and New Orleans, during which his thoughts
and anxieties were directed toward the great West as
the field which it was his duty to occupy, and after a
brief stay in Ohio, during which he had shown himself
a very efficient leader — was nominated for the Episco
pate by the first Convention of Ohio, Bishop Hobart
was inclined to treat him with decided contempt. He
neither liked his Churchmanship nor the headlong way
in which he threw himself into difficulties, with the
faith that somehow things would turn out right. Bishop
White was the most charitable and liberal of the
bishops who consecrated him, though Bishop Hobart
assisted at his consecration. The latter treated him with
greater kindness, after his return from a successful trip
in England to raise funds for the diocese of what the
English were pleased to call " Oh-i-o." He was the
founder of Kenyon College, and of the Gambier Theo
logical Seminary, and in the height of his career was
greatly admired and trusted. Though a man very dif-

H2 BISHOP WHITE.
ferent in temperament from Bishop Kemper, he had
the same indomitable missionary spirit, and a still
stronger purpose of having his own way in everything.
His " Reminiscences " is as racy a work in its way
as Boswell's " Life of Johnson."
He was a unique character, a truly Yankee bishop,
a man who succeeded best where he was a law unto
himself; and his pioneer work in Ohio and Illinois,
for which he raised large sums in England, was the
first instance, after the Revolution," in which . English
Churchmen contributed money for an American mis
sionary enterprise. When dressed in full canonicals
the large and portly old man was every inch a bishop,
and his bearing was distinguished down to the smallest
details. His wit even in sacred things was inimitable
and keen, but it never interfered with his worship or
his preaching. The story of his life reads like a ro
mance. He was the first to show in American orders
a type of Churchman in whom an overpowering in
dividuality was the conspicuous feature. Bishop Smith
speaks of him, when he presided over the House of
Bishops, as one who gave that office an expression in
human form as impressive and majestic as that which
Daniel Webster made upon the American Senate.
"And yet," he continues, "there was all the time a
child-light in his eye, a quick and nervous play of the
muscles of his face, aud an archness of expression
spread over his whole countenance, which, in his last
daguerrotype, looks slyly above his glasses, and which
will carry down to posterity no very incorrect impres
sion that something queer within was being held under

INSPIRING YOUNGER MEN. 1 13
constant restraint." "• His life was a daily surprise ; the
Yankee and the ecclesiastic were strangely blended in
his personal bearing and in his intense realization of
the meaning of his office. Bishop Chase and Bishop
Kemper were the two men who made their mark upon
the country west of the Alleghanies during the life of
Bishop White.
Alexander Viets Griswold was a New Englander,
but a man of far different type, self-educated, and great
by the force of mind and character that was in him.
He was consecrated to the Episcopate in 1 811, and
did not have to ride on horseback to his jurisdiction,
as Bishop Chase did, when he returned from Philadel
phia to take charge of the Eastern Diocese. He was
not much under the influence of Bishop White until
he became, as a brother prelate, a welcome guest in the
house of the Presiding Bishop when the General Con
vention was held in Philadelphia, but he was a man of
similar spirit and similar dignity of character. It is
necessary to take into account what he did in order to
obtain a faithful picture of the whole Church during
Bishop White's leadership. Two causes led to the for
mation of the Eastern Diocese. There was special need
of a bishop to watch over the infancy of the parishes
Episcopally constituted, and the weakness of the
Church in the Eastern States rendered each common
wealth separately inadequate to the maintenance of a
bishop. The growth of the Episcopal Church in this
region had been stoutly resisted by the New England
1 Dr. Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit, vol. v.,
p. 459.

114 BISHOP WHITE.
people, and all their institutions were hostile to its in
troduction. Bishop Bass was engaged in active duty
only six years, having been consecrated in 1797, and
Bishop Parker, who was consecrated in September,
1804, died in the December following, without ever
having met his convention. In 1805 the Massachusetts
Convention urged the joining of Rhode Island, New
Hampshire, and Massachusetts in one diocese, and the
choosing of a single bishop to serve them all. It
was slow work to bring about this result. It was not
easy to secure unanimity of feeling or harmony of
action. The territory was large ; the clergy were scat
tered ; and it was difficult to gain the consent of the
several parties to this united action.
Mr. Griswold preached a sermon at the Conven
tion held in Boston in 18 10 to elect a Bishop of the
Eastern Diocese, and a Congregational minister of
Boston, who heard it and asked who this man was,
on being informed that he had just been elected
Bishop of the Eastern Diocese, rejoined : " Well, I can
only say that if such is to be the general character of
his preaching, he is worthy to be made Archbishop of
Christendom." 1 His natural qualities indicated rare
fitness for the Episcopate, and no man could have been
chosen who more completely reversed in his severe,
simple, and primitive manners, the Puritan prejudices
against Episcopacy which had existed ever since the
settlement of the country. He had every gift that was
needed in those days to make his work successful.
He was in the prime of life ; he had sanctified common
1 Dr. John S. Stone's Memoir of Bishop Griswold, p. 159.

INSPIRING YOUNGER MEN. 1 15
sense ; he had the patience and humility to illustrate
the spiritual character of a bishop in a rare degree ;
and he had plenty of the wisdom of this world in his
dealings with men and in the direction of affairs.
It was an anxious moment when the call was issued
for his consecration. It was with the greatest difficulty
that the three bishops necessary to a canonical conse
cration were brought together. Bishop Moore of New
York had just been "visited by a paralytic stroke."
Bishop Claggett of Maryland, just recovering from a
severe illness, attempted to reach New Haven, but was
compelled to return. Bishop Madison of Virginia felt
bound, under " the solemnity of an oath," not to
leave the duties of the College of which he was Presi
dent. Bishop Provoost, the senior of Bishop Moore
in New York, had " never performed any ecclesiastical
duty since the appointment of his assistant in 1801,"
and at this time was only beginning to recover from an
attack of the jaundice. Bishop White and Bishop
Jarvis of Connecticut were the only bishops to be had.
Bishop Provoost was finally prevailed upon to leave
his retirement and give his attendance, though up to
the last moment it was feared that he could not at
tend ; and thus, says Bishop White, " the business was
happily accomplished."
Hardly had Bishop Griswold become acquainted with
his Episcopal duties before the great defection in the
Congregational Churches of Massachusetts became the
all-absorbing religious interest of the community. It
embraced the flower of the Puritan clergy and a large
proportion of the intelligent and cultivated laity. The

116 BISHOP WHITE.
defection from the old theology was common through
out all the New England States, but the Episcopal
Church was so weak that in the section called the
Eastern Diocese it had little or no power to assert suc
cessfully its claims as a more reasonable and whole
some form of religion. It was too weak to emphasize
its qualities ; but in Connecticut, where the Church
had been comparatively strong for a century, the Unita
rian movement made no progress, and those who de
parted from the standing order became Churchmen,
almost without exception. It is a curious point in the
evolution of the religious life of New England that wher
ever the Episcopal Church was strong enough to show
the development of the Christian life upon a broad and
Catholic basis, the Unitarian defection was held within
the limits of the Catholic faith and reinforced it with
its generous culture. Had the Church been as strong in
Massachusetts as it then was in Connecticut, it is not un
reasonable to think that the Unitarian body could never
have been organized upon a successful basis. Bishop
Griswold could do nothing to arrest or absorb this
movement, but he created the impression that the
Episcopal Church was the home of piety and learning,
and he dispelled the prejudices against the Church
more than anybody else. He gradually lifted up the
Episcopal parishes, far and near, to a position of re
spectability and influence. He did in the Eastern
Diocese what Bishop White did in Pennsylvania and
Maryland and Virginia and in the dioceses farther
South. He counselled the best use of the influences
to be had, and worked quietly by unsensational methods

INSPIRING YOUNGER MEN. 117
in a community that was often bitterly hostile to his
faith. His public career was contemporary with that of
Channing, and though the two men probably never
met, they had much in common in their ethical views
of Christianity.
This review of the first outputting of strength in
the Episcopal Churches of the United States presents
Bishop White in the position of a wise and conserva
tive leader, who educated and guided the best men
within his reach, and either sent them forth as his
pupils or aided them with his friendly counsel in the
ventures of faith which they were induced to under
take. It was not a period for great things, not a
time when the Church could put forth its strength
and work by institutions as well as by men, not a time
when the soil was ripe for marked advances. The
thinking in religion of the original founders of the
country was as yet unquestioned and unimpaired.
What their fathers believed, the sons transmitted, and
no decided advance was possible for new inquiries.
The Methodist circuit-rider, travelling on horseback
from setdement to settlement among the scattered
pioneers of the frontier, was the person who was suc
cessfully building up a new generation in what was, to
most of them, a new faith.

n8 BISHOP WHITE.

CHAPTER IX.

WORKING TO LARGER ENDS.

There were two drawbacks to the growth of the
Episcopal Church in the first part of this century.
One was the absence of institutions for educating
and training its clergy, and the other was the de
pressed condition of the larger number of the parishes
on account of the Revolution. They were so nearly
destroyed that they were a long time in reviving.
Perhaps a third reason should be assigned in the be
ginnings of party feeling in the dioceses of Virginia
and Maryland and Pennsylvania. There was a nota
ble instance of this in the election of Dr. Kemp as
the Bishop of Maryland, which came near creating
an "Evangelical Episcopal Church" in that diocese,
established on almost identically the basis of what is
known as the " Reformed Episcopal Church " in our
own day. The earliest movement toward a school for
the education of the clergy was made in Maryland.
It was the intention to establish it at Washington.
The General Theological Seminary was not then in
existence, neither had any diocese in 1813 founded
a school for theological instruction within its limits.
Bishop White was constantly exercised over this mat
ter, and believed that the best way out was to establish

WORKING TO LARGER ENDS. 119
diocesan schools, though when seven years later it was
finally decided by the General Convention to establish
one school for the whole country, he acquiesced in
the decision, and was always loyal to that institution.
The beginning of the General Theological Seminary
was in the General Convention of 18 14, when the
Rev. Dr. Gadsden of South Carolina offered a reso
lution that a committee be appointed, with the consent
of the House of Bishops, to take into consideration
the institution of a theological seminary. It was voted
down ; but by a subsequent resolution the whole mat
ter was referred to the Bishops. Nothing was done
until the Convention of 181 7, when a committee of
three Bishops — White, Hobart, and Croes — and two
clergymen was appointed to solicit subscriptions in
different parts of the country for the school. It was
the intention to locate it in New York City, but to
solicit the subscriptions in such a way that the whole
Church in the United States would feel a common
interest in it. Much time was taken in the Convention
of 1820 in transferring the Theological School from
New York to New Haven, and a special Convention
was called in 182 1 to remove it back to New York,
where a diocesan seminary had already been begun
under the auspices of Bishop Hobart. The starting
of this institution quickly aroused the interest of Vir
ginia in undertaking a training-school, Which should
gather candidates in Virginia and Maryland and Penn
sylvania, and which should be more evangelical than
it was feared that the New York institution could pos
sibly be under the control of Churchmen of the type

120 BISHOP WHITE.
of Bishop Hobart. This resulted in the organization
of the Alexandria Seminary in 1823, which, though
not a rival of the New York school, was from the first
intended to emphasize the Low Church ideas of the
district in which it was located. As between the two,
Bishop White gave his support and influence to the
New York school, and in the latter years of his Epis
copate was its annual visitor. He also gave the part
ing address to its students nearly every year down to
the end of his life.
At this time the Church was rapidly increasing
in every diocese. The clergy numbered about three
hundred, and the subscriptions for the New York and
the Alexandria schools showed that the people were
ready to give money for religious purposes. While
the General Convention of 1820 was engaged in set
tling the permanent location of the General Seminary
in New York, it also initiated the first domestic and for
eign missionary movement in the Episcopal Church in
the United States, and made the Presiding Bishop the
head of the society. It was high time that the Church
had put forth some organized effort both at home and
abroad ; and this society accomplished great good in its
constantly extending operations, for a period of fifteen
years. Then, at the meeting of the General Conven
tion in 1835, ^he organization was entirely changed,
and the Church undertook and agreed, in her repre
sentative character as the body of Christ, to carry
on the work of Christian missions. In 1829 a Board
of Missions was organized, with two committees of
seven members each, — one to direct the Foreign

WORKING TO LARGER ENDS. 1 21
Missions, and the other to have charge of the
Domestic Missions. The High Churchmen took the
home field, and the Low Churchmen the foreign
field. The latter concentrated their interest in the
Alexandria Seminary, while the Church as a whole
bent its energies upon the Western field, first sending
out a missionary leader to Wisconsin to labour among
the Indians at Green Bay, and soon after commis
sioning Bishop Kemper with the duty of planting
parishes in the then undeveloped Northwest.
Bishop White was a comprehensive man, and took an
active interest in both branches of the missionary work.
There was no right or left hand in his interest in the
kingdom of Christ. The foreign field was under con
sideration as early as June, 1822. It was the design
to establish a mission on the western coast of Africa ;
but it was some time before suitable men could be
found to engage in this work. At length Mr. John
Payne, then a student in the Theological Seminary
at Alexandria, expressed his wish to go, when or
dained, as a missionary to Africa, and was assigned
to Cape Palmas as the field of his labors. Mr. Payne
embarked for Africa on the 18th of May, 1837, and
subsequently became Bishop of Africa, where he car
ried on the work until his death, many years later.
A mission was also established among the Greeks
by Dr. Robertson, afterwards missionary at Constan
tinople. In the fall of 1830 he was the first to begin,
with the late Dr. Hill, a missionary work at Athens,
which was largely confined to the education of poor
children of both sexes. His work was not in antago
nism to the Greek Church, but rather supplementary

122 BISHOP WHITE.
to it. A mission to Constantinople was undertaken by
the Rev. Horatio Southgate, who was appointed in No
vember, 1835, an exploring missionary agent to this
and the adjacent countries ; but the result of his work,
though not due to any lack of devotion on his part,
was not what had been expected. The Foreign
Missionary Society resolved to establish a mission
in China on the 13th of May, 1834; but it was not
until the 23d of March, 1835, that the Rev. Francis
R. Hanson embarked for Canton to organize this
work. Two years later the Rev. W. J. Boone, sub
sequently consecrated Bishop of Shanghai, China,
entered upon this field as a missionary at Singapore.
These efforts were the fruit of the awakened zeal of
the Episcopal Church at this time ; but they were
feeble ventures as compared with the more energetic
development of missionary enterprises in the South
and West.
At this time Bishop Chase was engaged in laying
the foundations for the Church in Ohio. He had been
consecrated in 18 19, returning to his missionary field
on horseback as soon as the services were over, and
zealously entering upon his Episcopal duties. In 1821
he conceived the idea that the assistance of the Church
of England might be successfully invoked in aid of
an effort to establish a seminary designed to supply
the West with ministers, and he determined to go
forth and see what he could do. Bishop Hobart,
whom he met in New York on his way to England,
was strenuously opposed to his going abroad for this
purpose. He had little faith in Bishop Chase's judg
ment and wisdom, and visiting England at the same

WORKING TO LARGER ENDS. 123
time, he did a great deal toward thwarting his mission.
Bishop Chase was not a High Churchman, and this fact
had to do with Bishop Hobart's opposition to him ;
but the Bishop of Ohio came back with twenty thou
sand dollars in 1824, to which ten thousand more was
subsequently added, for the foundation of Kenyon
College and of the Gambier Theological Seminary of
Ohio. The very strong individuality which enabled
him to found these institutions and take charge of
them, and still act as the head of the diocese, led to
his resignation as President, and as Bishop of Ohio,
in September, i83r. He then started for the western
wilderness, settling in Michigan near the borders of
Indiana, and in 1835 becoming the first Bishop of Il
linois. He remained a missionary to the end of his
life. This was only one field of development in the
American Church.
As early as 181 2, Bishop White had his eye upon
the consecration of a bishop for the churches lying
beyond the Alleghany Mountains. Only once, in
June, 1822, did he cross the Alleghanies, and then
it was too late to repair the loss occasioned by the
neglect to enter earlier upon this great and growing
field. Bishop Perry well says, " Had the plea of the
faithful Doddridge and his few associates been listened
to and their request for a bishop granted, the Church
would have been a leader in the van of the country's
progress, and much of the great West would have been
moulded from the start in her holy ways ! " 1 The
1 The History of the American Episcopal Church, vol. ii,
P- 239-

124 BISHOP WHITE.
delay in supplying bishops for the independent diocese
was owing undoubtedly to the feebleness of the par
ishes in the different States, and their inability to
support a bishop if they had one ; but it was almost
fatal to the seizing of the opportune moment for the
rapid and large growth of the Episcopal Church. Even
in the East the securing of bishops for each State was
a slow process. New Jersey, dating its organization
back to the year 1 775, had no bishop until 1815. Dela
ware, represented in the earliest conventions, had no
bishop until 1841. North Carolina, though organized
at the start, in 1790, on the principle that a bishop
should be at once secured, was without one until
1823. Maine, organized in 1820, secured the Episco
pate in 1847. Georgia waited from 1823 to 1 841 for
this boon. Mississippi, where the Church had been
begun during the days of Spanish domination in
1792, though organized in 1825, waited until 1850
for its first bishop, the apostolic William Mercer
Green. Tennessee, though organized in 1828, did
not receive the Episcopate until 1834 ; and Kentucky,
which had received the Church during the earlier
days of its settlement, waited until 1832 for a bishop.
Michigan had Church services within its borders before
the Revolution, but was only able to organize in 1832,
and to secure a bishop in 1836 ; and Missouri waited
five years longer, and Indiana eleven, before these
feeble organizations respectively received a head.
These facts show how slowly the Episcopal Church
advanced when it was in the first glow of prosperity ;
but if the gains seem moderate to us, they did not

WORKING TO LARGER ENDS. 125
seem so to the venerable Bishop Green, who said when
he took leave of the General Convention of 1883 :
"Of the Convention of 1823, which met in this city,
I alone am alive. When I went into holy orders,
sixty-three years ago, there were nine bishops in the
Church ; when I look around me to-day in the House
of Bishops, I cast my eyes upon more than seven
times that number. How hath God wrought ! His
blessing hath been upon the Church, and she hath
prospered." In 1835, during the last General Conven
tion at which Bishop White presided, Jackson Kemper
was consecrated the first Missionary Bishop of the
Northwest, and in his sermon at this consecration,
Bishop Doane expressed the awakening to new life
when he laid down the principle that this " Church
is to be a Missionary Church, that her Bishops are
true Apostles, and that of this missionary body every
Christian by the terms of his baptismal vow is a
member."

126 BISHOP WHITE.

CHAPTER X.
THE RISE OF PARTY SPIRIT.
From the beginning of the existence of the Church
of England in different parts of the Atlantic States
there was a division of sentiment in regard to Church
principles. The religious life of the century before the
Revolution was toned down to latitudinarianism and to
the dreary platitudes of the Hanoverian period, but
early in the nineteenth century there was an invigor
ating of the ecclesiastical life in Connecticut and in
New York. It was principally due to the fact that in
both States a great many native Americans examined
the polity and principles of the Church and entered into
its spiritual life. Bishop Seabury was the representa
tive of this advance in Connecticut, and Bishop Moore,
who succeeded Bishop Provoost, and after him Bishop
Hobart, made New York the strong abiding place of
High Churchmen. On the other hand, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Virginia represented great indifference
to Church principles. There was a certain loyalty to
the Prayer-book as it was then understood and inter
preted, but there was widespread laxity in following the
rubrics and in teaching the Church system. The surplice
was not commonly used, and the black gown was every
where worn in preaching. Even the sacraments of the

THE RISE OF PARTY SPIRIT. 127
Church were infrequently administered, the Holy Com
munion not more than three or four times a year, and
baptism only in families where it was desired. The
idea was that the minimum of churchly practices was
to be desired, and that the nearer the Episcopal Church
came to the usages and beliefs of other bodies the
more it was a sign of true Christian unity.
In due time this division of sentiment began to
assert itself in decided views on Church questions.
Bishop -White's moderate handling of Episcopacy in
the communities where he lived was especially an at
tempt on his part to prevent the raising of party ques
tions, and to conciliate persons who held divergent
views and yet were within the same religious body.
His celebrated pamphlet, devising an Episcopal Church
with Episcopacy left out, was written with special refer
ence to the holding of people together upon a basis of
unity which would include all the clergy in the country
in 1782 ; though it was far enough from expressing his
whole belief in Church principles. He was a great
deal stronger Churchman than he seemed to be in
those early days, though, in contrast to Bishop Seabury,
in his desire to keep the whole Church together, he
seemed like a moderate man ; but when party spirit
began to rage, and Philadelphia became a hot-bed of
Low Churchmen, Bishop White was anything but a party
man. He utterly refused to be the spokesman of a
party. When he was personally assailed in his Diocesan
Convention, his face flushed to the roots of his hair, as
he said, " I had as lief be called a Jew or a Turk as a
Low Churchman." One of his clergy insulted him in

128 BISHOP WHITE.
this Convention by saying, " We all know that our
Bishop is not a praying man." It was also urged as an
evidence of his lack of personal piety that he used
silver forks at his table.
These remarks indicate the bitterness which grew up
in Philadelphia about the year 1825, and culminated
in the election of Dr. Henry U. Onderdonk as Assistant
Bishop of Pennsylvania on the 25th of October, 1827.
It is not well to go into minute details concerning the
conduct of men who were now first called Low Church
men, and who distinguished themselves by abusive
treatment of their venerable Bishop. One of the lead
ers of this party spirit was the Rev. Dr. Gregory
T. Bedell, the father of the late Bishop Bedell,
who, with the late Dr. Stephen H. Tyng of New
York, were for a long time the leaders of the Low
Church party. Bishop White knew how to deal with
the people who assailed him. He delivered an address
at the opening of the special Convention called to con
sider the expediency of electing an Assistant Bishop,
which was a masterpiece of wise and politic advice.
What he feared was that a Low Church bishop might
be chosen, but he strictly avoided any attempt to give
direction to the proceedings, only venturing to point
out what kind of a man was required in a bishop. He
must be a man of piety, well furnished with a know
ledge of theological literature, and attached to the in
stitutions of the Church, in doctrine, in worship, in
ecclesiastical constitution, and in government. He
states that this sentiment, on which he had acted for
more than half a century, is " so far from being incon-

THE RISE OF PARTY SPIRIT. 12 9
sistent with liberality to forms of profession preferred
by our fellow Christians of various denominations, that
it is the only ground on which peace and mutual good
will between us can be maintained." He ventures to say
" that he had found the fruit of it himself in the friend
ships of many wise and pious persons whose sentiments
on some points differed materially from his own ;
whereas, had their theories been brought into collision
under the same roofs, there is no knowing in what de
gree there might have been the excitement of unamiable
sensations, nor to what extent the consequences might
have been injurious."
He deliberately faced the issue which the Low
Churchmen threatened to make. He said : —
" Could it be supposed probable, that there will be here
after a bishop of this diocese, who shall either openly op
pose himself to the recited properties of our communion,
or endeavour to undermine them insidiously and by degrees,
heavy will be his responsibility. Should his talents be
equal to the meditated undertaking, he may distract and
divide the Church, but he will not consummate his work."
The venerable Bishop expresses himself still more
keenly on the possibilities of a partisan associate in
the Episcopate when he reaches the end of his address.
It is visible in the following words : —
" Of the body now assembled, it is trusted by him who
addresses them that they will not lose sight of the shape in
which the recited points have been brought before them.
It has been the disclosing of a solicitude resting on the
mind of the speaker, not merely as applicable to the pres
ent crisis, but as reaching the concerns of the diocese when
9

130 bishop white:.
his voice will be heard in them no more, and perhaps while
it may still be heard, either by the failure of a choice at the
present meeting or by the non-compliance with it when made.
Having been so long occupied in sustaining the principles
which have been detailed, and being desirous of continuing
his testimony whenever it shall be especially called for, he
has conceived of the present as an opportunity not to be un
improved. Could he foresee that during the Episcopacy
either now or at any future time the stated points will be
either dismissed or disregarded, he would make some such
request as that of Hagar in the wilderness in reference to
what has so long been an object of his anxieties, of his
prayers, and of his exertions, — ' Let me not see the death
of the child ! ' "
At this point the voice of the Bishop was choked
by the violence of his emotion, and it was some time
before he could go on.
As early as 1823 the Low Churchmen in Pennsyl
vania had begun to marshal their forces as a party, and
the first manifestation of their power was shown in the
Diocesan Convention of that year in the election of
delegates to the General Convention. In the year
1824, during the sitting of the Convention at Norris
town, the lines were more strictly drawn, and in the year
1825, though there was no open collision between
the two parties, they were evidently measuring their
strength against one another. When Bishop White, be
ing then nearly eighty years of age, proposed that an
Assistant Bishop should be chosen by the diocese, he
gave expression to his solicitude in the address the
substance of which has already been quoted. The
anxiety which he betrayed in that document was fully

the rise of party spirit. 131
justified by what took place. The candidate of the
Low Churchmen was Rev. William Meade, afterwards
the Bishop of Virginia, and the two parties were so
evenly divided that no election was possible. After
this test of their strength, Mr. Meade declined to be a
candidate, and at a subsequent Convention the Rev.
Henry U. Onderdonk, D.D., was elected to this office.
This did not allay the irritation of the Low Church
men. They had been beaten, but they were not ready
to accept the situation. Before the Convention met
at Harrisburg, at which Dr. Onderdonk was elected,
five Low Churchmen sent out a confidential circular in
order to strengthen the members of their party and to
gather fresh recruits ; but they were not strong enough to
elect their candidate, after Mr. Meade had withdrawn
from the contest.
The pamphlet literature then issued is a present tes
timony to the war of words which was carried on be
tween individuals at this time. The Rev. William H.
De Lancey wrote a telling pamphlet under the signa
ture of "Plain Truth," which was answered by the
other party. He was then the minister at St. Peter's,
under Bishop White, and did not hesitate to speak in
this controversy with great plainness of what the other
party was doing. He wrote two or three other pam
phlets before the controversy was over. There is more
truth than fiction in the following passage, taken from
his second pamphlet, in which he describes the treat
ment of the aged Bishop : —
"The ruthless hand of party excitement has spared
neither his character, his feelings, nor his principles. He

132 BISHOP WHITE.
has lived to see a few misguided youths, to all of whom he
had extended a cordial hand of welcome, when at different
but not remote intervals they entered his diocese, and to
none of whom has he ever manifested the least unkind-
ness, leagued together in hostility against him, raising be
fore his very face the standard, and proclaiming in his very
ears the notes of deliberate and determined opposition;
and now, because there are some who have not yet laid
aside their veneration for age, their affection for his per
son, and their respect for his principles, he is held up by
one of the champions of the party, who has been not
one year within the diocese, as an object of mockery and
ridicule." The language which these men applied to Bishop
White is not worth quoting at this distance of time,
but an incident is mentioned by Dr. De Lancey in his
reference to the proceedings of the special Convention
of 1826, in his first pamphlet, which shows the spirit
of the Low Churchmen in that early day better than
anything else. He writes : —
" In the course of the session of that body, the Right
Rev. Bishop White was deliberately told by a layman [Mr.
S. J. Robbins], of the most active description among those
who are self-styled evangelical, that the reason why he [the
layman] had opposed a proposition to appoint a committee
to accelerate the organization of the Convention was, that
he thought the Bishop would not act impartially in the
selection of the committee. The answer of the venerable
prelate of eighty years, to this gross indignity, was, ' I thank
you for the good opinion you entertain of me.' "
This insult, publicly offered, was never publicly re
tracted. The activity of the Bishop's enemies did not

THE RISE OF PARTY SPIRIT. 1 33
stop when Dr. Onderdonk had been elected. They
sent a remonstrance to the bishops to prevent, if pos
sible, his consecration, and it was exceedingly doubtful
up to the 23d of October, 1827, whether they would
be justified in proceeding with the service : but the
day before it was to take place each bishop who was
to have a part in the consecration put on record his
testimony that there was nothing in the charges that
had been made against Dr. Onderdonk, or against the
method pursued in his election, which forbade his being
advanced to the Episcopate ; and on the 25 th of Octo
ber the consecration took place.
Thus ended a bitter and protracted contest, the first
and only one which took place in Pennsylvania in Bishop
White's lifetime, a struggle that caused him a great
deal of worry and anxiety, and indicated that he had a
hot-bed of religious strife in his own diocese. Many of
the Low Churchmen who were engaged in this contest
lived to be heartily ashamed of their conduct, and the
venerable Bishop left behind him papers which amply
vindicate his own course at every point where charges
were brought against him. It may seem unwise to
mention this contest here, but it was the first outbreak
of a party which has been in the past antagonistic to
the development of the Episcopal Church, and which
in the days of its numerical strength was a constant
source of irritation and trouble in the growth of the '
Church. It would be at the expense of historical
truthfulness if its doings at this time were ignored. The
best testimony to the impartiality of Bishop White in
the management of his diocese is that he controlled,

134 BISHOP WHITE.
without suppressing, the operations of this party, which
had its stronghold in the diocese of Pennsylvania.
Until 1 87 1, when the power of the Low Church party
was broken, its latest throes as a body having been man
ifested in the New York Convention of 1874, it was
constantly an irritating element in the work of the
Episcopal Church. It set up claims which could not
be maintained in a candid interpretation of the Prayer-
book, and it was a constant vexation within a Com
munion which was not strong enough to support hostile
societies, and keep up a party warfare within itself.1
1 The story of the election of the first Assistant Bishop in
the American Church, here briefly told, is given at great length
and with all the party colouring of a heated contest in Dr. John
Henry Hopkins's " Life of Bishop Hopkins ; " and a complete
collection of the pamphlets and broadsides and circulars then
issued has been preserved by Mr. Thomas H. Montgomery, who
is the family custodian of the Bishop White papers. As a piece
of inside history, and as an account of the rise of party spirit
in the American Church, the story of this contest is deeply
interesting.

REMINISCENCES. 135

CHAPTER XI.
REMINISCENCES.
Dr. Sprague in his " Annals of the American Pul
pit " contributes a brief account of two interviews
with Bishop White, which in the dearth of information
regarding his personality is very welcome. He says :
" I had the pleasure of a slight acquaintance with
Bishop White, sufficient to render him an object of
my enduring gratitude and veneration. I was first in
troduced to him in 1816, by a letter from a lady in
Virginia, between whom and himself there had long
existed an intimate friendship; and the kind and
genial manner in which I was received by him satis
fied me that I could not have presented myself under
better auspices. His person seemed to me majestic.
His countenance was divided between intelligence and
loveliness, and occasionally it would light up into a
fountain of sunbeams. The almond tree was in full
blossom. His manner was so simple and natural and
yet so cultivated ; so dignified and yet so bland and
winning, and his conversation was so rich and edifying,
and withal such a revelation of the past, that it really
seemed to me that I had then never stood in a pres
ence in which all the virtues and all the graces were
brought together in such goodly fellowship. I had

136 BISHOP WHITE.
another interview with him, a few years after I entered
the ministry, which only confirmed my previous impres
sions of the beauty and elevation of his character. I
had occasion also, at two or three different periods, to
ask favours of him, and they were granted as cheer
fully and promptly as if I had always sustained to him
the relation of an intimate friend. His whole char
acter seemed to me radiant with wisdom, dignity, and
purity." 1
Dr. Henry U. Onderdonk, who was chosen in 1827
as the Assistant Bishop of Pennsylvania, furnished Dr.
Sprague with the following reminiscences : —
" Bishop White's theological opinions are contained in
his several works ; they were decidedly anti-Calvinistic,
and may be classed with what was currently denomi
nated Arminianism in the last century, which, however,
you are aware, was not the system of Arminius. He was,
to the last, strongly opposed to the theory comprised
in the words, Priest, Altar, Sacrifice ; this being one of
the very few points on which he was highly sensitive.
The good Bishop's ecclesiastical views were those
known in history as Low Church ; it was not the Low-
Churchmanship of the present day, but that of Tillot
son, Burnet, and that portion of the English Divines
with which they were associated. He regarded with no
favour stimulating methods, extempore prayer, devia
tions from the Liturgy, etc. Yet, though stern against
the priestly doctrine, as well as decidedly averse to
modern Low- Churchmanship, he was, on the other
hand, most particularly attached to Bishop Hobart, and
1 Annals of the American Pulpit, vol. v. p. 284.

REMINISCENCES. 1 3 7
very largely under his influence, except in the few mat
ters of which he was eminently tenacious ; while, on
the other hand, he was not only courteous, but altogethei
friendly with leaders on the opposite side. In which
facts may plainly enough be read the almost unbounded
amiableness of his temper and principles.
"Bishop White was prominent in organizing the
American Episcopal Church. That he was equally so
in arranging the Prayer-book is not probable. He was
on the Committee that formed what is called the ' Pro
posed Book,' which soon passed away, and of which
Dr. William Smith [the elder] was, I have no doubt,
the chief projector, — he was chairman of the com
mittee and received a special vote of thanks, in 1785.
Our present Liturgy is but the English one, with unim
portant changes, except the addition to the Communion
Service, which is due to Bishop Seabury, and to which
Bishop White was opposed, though yielding to the
urgency of his compeer. The Institution Office is
later, and the production of Dr. William Smith, the
younger. " There was no reserve with Bishop White in avowing
his age, but, till within a few years of his death, he
was very unwilling to be thought feeble. A consider
able time before I came to Philadelphia, his vestries,
I understand, had released him from attending fune
rals; but I almost always, in those at which I was
present, observed him, not among the clergy, but in
the general train of followers. He did not like that
any one should accompany him home in the evening.
On one occasion I was doing so, yet endeavoring to

138 BISHOP WHITE.
conceal my purpose. At length, finding that I went
several squares out of the way to my house, he stopped,
and turning to me, said, ' I believe I must tell you, as
General Washington once did some friends, " Gentle
men, if you see me home, I shall see you home." ' It
was but a few years before his death that he began to
use a cane. For a year or two he accepted, in walk
ing, the arm of his son." 1
Bishop Alonzo Potter, who succeeded Dr. Onder
donk in the Pennsylvania Episcopate, also helped Dr.
Sprague to important materials for a sketch of Bishop
White. He says : —
" When about eighteen years old I came to Phila
delphia [in 1 81 8], having just graduated at College,
and during some eight or nine months I saw a good
deal of Bishop White. My impressions of him were
the more vivid, as I was at this time baptized and
confirmed by him, and received my first communion
at his hands. He was then, I think, somewhat past
seventy, in full health, perfectly erect, and without any
of the attenuation of age. His face was singularly
benignant and beautiful, though it had, perhaps, less
of the surprising grace and gentleness which charac
terized his later years, and which have been so ex
quisitely preserved by the artist Inman. I saw him
often in the pulpit and chancel, in a book-store which
he frequented almost daily, and occasionally in private
houses. Becoming also, at this time, a candidate for
the ministry, I enjoyed his supervision and counsel in
1 Annals of the American Pulpit, vol. v. p. 285.

REMINISCENCES. 139
my theological studies, although my immediate pre
ceptor was the Rev. Samuel H. Turner, now Dr. Turner,
of the General Theological Seminary in New York. After
a few months I left Philadelphia, and from that time to
the close of his life I met him only occasionally, at
meetings of the Board of Missions and at the sessions
of the General Convention. I mention these facts to
show how far my opportunities of observing him
reached. " One trait in his character struck me immediately, —
it was the absence of self-consciousness. Beyond any
one then living, he was the object, throughout Philadel
phia, among people of every religious denomination,
of respect and affection. This was very apparent when
he appeared in the streets. But he was not a man who
loved greetings in the market places, and to be called
of men ' Rabbi, Rabbi.' He therefore betrayed no
sense of his own consequence. He invited no salutations,
although he was never wanting in a proper recognition
of them. He moved along very quietly, and generally
at a slow place, and was, I do not doubt, entirely igno
rant of a thousand little demonstrations of regard and
veneration, which a man of morbid self-esteem would
have been prompt to discover and rejoice in. In his
public ministrations and in private intercourse it was
the same. He never claimed anything for himself.
His opinions, though delivered with the air of a man
who held them clearly and decidedly, were, to a sin
gular extent, devoid of anything peremptory or exact
ing. No man was more tolerant of differences of
opinion, and some of his most cherished and unbroken

14° BISHOP WHITE.
friendships were with men (like Bishop Hobart) from
whom he differed materially up to the close of his
life. " His public ministrations were not, at this time,
very attractive to a youth. His delivery was monot
onous, though few voices had greater sweetness or ap
parent flexibility. His style was deficient in point and
force, and the models on which he had unconsciously
formed himself were not favourable to a bold and com
manding eloquence. No one, however, not even an
immature young man like myself, could listen to him
with attention without knowing that he was receiv
ing the admonitions and instructions of a wise and
good man. He was a well-read theologian, of the
school of Burnet and Tillotson, with more of patristic
learning than was at all common in those days either
in England or in this country. There were few ques
tions, either among those which had divided his own
Church, or those which had separated her from the
Church of Rome on the one side and from other
Protestant bodies on the other, which he did not seem
to have considered carefully ; and the results of his
reading and reflection dropped richly from him in his
sermons, but in a manner so unobtrusive, and one
might almost say so shy, that it often escaped notice.
" In private he was exceedingly instructive and
entertaining. He abounded in anecdote, which he told
with evident self-enjoyment. His fund of information
seemed inexhaustible. He had read largely in the
solid English writers of the last two centuries, — his
torians, statesmen, and philosophers. His memory

REMINISCENCES. 141
seemed to give him perfect command of whatever he
had read. He was, to an uncommon degree, consci
entious in his statements, as well as in giving his opin
ions. Shortly before leaving Philadelphia, I called to
take my leave of him, and, while thanking him for his
kindness, I ventured to ask his opinion on a point
which has much divided theologians, and about which
I imagined he might not be over anxious to commit
himself. His answer was brief, but clear, and left me no
doubt that he held substantially the opinions that were
imputed to him. On the following evening I attended
service at a church where he was present, and was sent
for to come to him as the congregation retired. He
then stated that, in reflecting on the conversation of
the previous day, he had some doubt whether he had
made himself perfectly understood. He therefore re
ferred me to a passage in one of the books of Hooker's
' Ecclesiastical Polity,' as expressing with greater ful
ness and precision his own opinions.
" I should do him and my own recollections great
injustice, if I conveyed the impression that he held his
opinions haltingly, or was timid in the expression of
them. He abhorred contention, and often therefore
restrained himself when he thought speaking or writing
was more likely to gender strife than to advance truth.
He had, moreover, a wide mind, and could see the
strong points of an adversary, so that he was not in
haste to charge all who differed from him with wanting
honesty or intelligence. He was also pre-eminently
gentle and kind, and from the earliest years of his
childhood he had felt upon his own heart a sense of

142 BISHOP WHITE.
the Divine Presence. Such a temper and experience
necessarily qualified his views of practical and theoret
ical religion. He could not well, under any circum
stances, have been a passionate follower of Augustine
in theology, or of Wesley or Whitefield in their views
of experimental piety. The opinions, however, which
he did hold, he never hesitated to avow, whenever he
thought the interests of men required it. One of his
last acts was to deliver a charge, entitled ' The Past
and the Future,' which was as creditable to his moral
courage as it was to his foresight.
" In respect to his courage, few men were ever more
favoured. The horrors of pestilence, whether in the
shape of yellow fever or Asiatic cholera, had no effect
on him, when duty called him to encounter them. He
sent his family to a distance, and gave night and day
to the offices of religion, by the bed-side of the sick
and over the graves of the dead. Few spectacles have
had more of the moral sublime than was presented by
this aged Bishop, verging on fourscore and five years,
and yet daily taking his rounds among the victims of
cholera, in 1832, when many a younger clergyman felt
authorized to withdraw altogether from the perilous
contact. " He never courted danger ; he never shrank from
it when it came hand in hand with duty. At the open
ing of the Revolution, he was about to retire to Mary
land, but hearing, on the road, that he had been chosen
Chaplain to the Continental Congress, he instantly
turned his horse's head towards Philadelphia, without
stopping to take leave of his family. In his intercourse

REMINISCENCES. 143
with men, even those whom he most respected, he was
equally dauntless. The following is an incident in
point : He was proverbially punctual. On two suc
cessive occasions a board to which he belonged failed
to make a quorum for the transaction of business, be
cause of the absence of one or two distinguished gen
tlemen, who, he knew, might have been present without
inconvenience. He expressed his indignation that he
and his associates should be thus trifled with, and avowed
his determination to move, at the first opportunity, a
standing rule that trustees thus absent, without suf
ficient cause, should be understood to have vacated
their seats. At the next meeting, both these gentle
men being present, and both his personal friends, he
made the motion, and was with difficulty dissuaded
from pressing it to a vote.
" During the winter of 181 8, which I passed in Phil
adelphia, two bishops were consecrated at Christ Church
by Bishop White, — Chase of Ohio, and Bowen of South
Carolina. These solemnities brought together several of
his Episcopal brethren, such as Bishop Hobart of New
York, Bishop Kemp of Maryland, and Bishop Croes of
New Jersey. It was delightful to see the habitual def
erence and the earnest affection with which they all re
garded him ; and to a young man, a stranger to the
world, it was particularly striking to contrast the char
acters of these men, and to observe, when they came
together, how the contrasts became blended and har
monized through the presence and benignant influence
of the Legislator and Sage of the Church. When seeing
Bishop White with Bishop Hobart, I have often thought

144 BISHOP WHITE.
of Melancthon and Luther, the one made for counsel,
the other for action : the one meek, erudite, far-seeing,
philosophical ; the other impulsive, bold, prompt, with
a sway over men rarely surpassed.
" His career was long, and as felicitous as long. No
man had more unbroken health. The late Dr. Chap
man once told me that Bishop White was the only
man he had ever seen who could eat all kinds of food,
at all times, and in any quantity, and do it with im
punity. Born in Philadelphia, a resident of it for
eighty-eight years, decided in all his opinions, religious
and political, he had yet, when he came to die, no
enemy, and all good men claimed to be his friends.
The streets through which his remains passed were
like one hall of mourning, and his picture now stands
side by side with those of Washington and Lafayette
in the Hall of Independence. The late Charles
Chauncey, whom you knew, and whose praise is on
the tongue of every Philadelphian, assured me that,
though a decided Presbyterian, he and Bishop White
had lived next door neighbours for a quarter of a cen
tury with no feelings but those of the frankest and
warmest cordiality. They usually came out of their
doors at the same time on Sunday morning, and walked
together a square or two, when they separated to go to
their respective places of worship. The only subject
on which he ever remembered that they differed mate
rially, was one respecting the union of different reli
gious bodies for the publication of tracts and the
establishment of Sunday Schools, and he had seen
reason, since the Bishop's death, to conclude that his
was the better opinion of the two.

REMINISCENCES. 145
" He was by education and temperament much
averse to excitement; and yet few men saw earlier
and with more complacency that an era of greater
religious earnestness and activity was impending, or
did more to prepare his own Communion for it. He
was, from the first, a decided friend of every effort
to enlist that Communion in the work of Missions, at
home and abroad ; and some of the strongest papers
which he drew during the last few years of his life
were instructions to the earliest representatives of the
Episcopal Church of the United States in foreign
lands. He was also devoted, from the first, to efforts
for the amelioration of prison-discipline, the educa
tion of the deaf and dumb, the instruction of the
blind, the reformation of abandoned women, and the
care of orphans and destitute aged persons. As
the early ' guide, philosopher, and friend ' of our
Episcopal Church, when it emerged, a mere wreck,
from the War of Independence, we see, every year,
more occasion to admire his wisdom, activity, and
patience. As a theological writer he made con
tributions to literature more valuable than is gen
erally known, and among his unpublished works are
some abler and more elaborate than any of his yet
printed, particularly a voluminous ' Reply to Barclay's
Apology.' "As the first Bishop of this Diocese, he gave a
direction to the opinions and policy of his people,
wherever he went, for which his successors will have
reason to bless his memory for many generations.
He was a man without guile. He was just and gentle,

146 BISHOP WHITE.
yet inflexible. He lived for duty, and died in the
serene hope and faith of the Gospel of Christ." l
The Hon. Joseph R. Ingersoll, who was a promi
nent Churchman in Philadelphia, and a constant
hearer of the Bishop's preaching in Old Christ Church,
supplied Dr. Sprague with a lengthy account of his
work as a preacher, and also furnished some details
concerning him which are too important to be omitted.
He says : —
" His office as a Christian minister was a pledge
for continued exertions in a holy cause, and when
he became a bishop, his duties were only enlarged
and multiplied, without being altered in their great
and solemn purpose. He was, indeed, constantly
imparting instruction. His sermons, like his con
duct, served, as they were meant to do, not for his
own display, but for the benefit of others. In their
preparation and revisal they received the advantage
of unceasing reflection and study ; and by purify
ing the hearts and enlightening the understandings
of those who listened to them, he was himself a
learner. His mind was stored with wisdom gathered
for the benefit of mankind, and his heart was kept
pure by the lessons of purity which he taught. The
accumulation of his knowledge was extensive, although,
in his own view, it was not collected exactly in what
he would have called his study. He was practically
and essentially a student, and he became wiser by his
1 Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit, vol. v. pp. 285-
288.

REMINISCENCES. 147
faithful endeavours to make others wise. These dis
courses from the pulpit derived their merit chiefly
from their own innate and intrinsic wisdom and piety.
No attempt was made to lend them force or impres-
siveness by the charms of oratory. He did not be
lieve that gesticulation was natural to him, and no
gestures were used. The sermon, in the shape of
a small book, was held in the hand of the reader, and
there was remarkable uniformity in its length, which
appeared to be accurately measured by the number
of pages devoted to the manuscript. All that could
be regarded as mere manner was avoided, or at least
unused. In whatever sense the lesson of the Grecian
Orator may be understood, it would be difficult to
give the name of action to anything that was exhibited.
Yet this style, so far from ornamental, and so pecu
liarly marked by its simplicity, — this delivery so
foreign from the arts of elocution, as they are gener
ally practised, — did not deprive the sermons of their
attractiveness. They were probably far more attrac
tive than they would have been if attempts to adorn
them with ill-adapted figures of speech, or to bestow
upon them animation by more spirited delivery, had
been indulged or introduced. The late Judge Wash
ington said that he had been in the habit, during his
official visits to Philadelphia, of following Bishop
White from church to church, as he preached con
secutively in the several united churches of which he
was the rector. His discourses in the pulpit, and on
other occasions of official duty, were no less sound
and holy than his life was pure.

148 BISHOP WHITE.
" Precept and example were, in his preaching and
living, beautiful handmaids of each other. In the
tone and tendency of each there was a striking re
semblance. A dignified simplicity not unequally
characterized both. All of his movements, whether
self-guiding, or calculated for external influence, were
towards virtue. He felt little cause for self-reproof,
and it scarcely occurred to him, in the gentleness of
his spirit, to suspect the existence of grievous causes
for rebuke in those about him. His sermons partook
of instruction and guidance, rather than of censure or
remonstrance. His daily habits were those of peace
and good-will. With uniform cheerfulness of disposi
tion in his own bosom, he found himself, for the most
part, in the midst of corresponding cheerfulness. No
one had more reason to rejoice in the influence and
contagion of an amiable temper, which, while it excites
no counteracting or unhappy feeling in familiar inter
course, is comparatively free from the danger of en
countering it. If ever man made his own moral
atmosphere, it was Bishop White. There was no
austerity about him. He well knew, not only that vir
tues and vices are antipodes of each other, but that
virtues themselves, when driven beyond their nature,
lose their value and even their name. Superstition
and intolerance and persecution are not piety, any
more than avarice is frugality, or extravagance liberal
ity. He used the world without abusing it. Many
persons to whom written lessons might have been un
known, however salutary in their nature, saw and prof
ited by the remarkable illustration. His own home

REMINISCENCES. 149
was the abode of a generous and well-directed hos
pitality, and he partook without hesitation of hospitality
abroad. He was met in frequent, although not indis
criminate, social intercourse. He shared in it from
principle, as well as from good feeling, believing that
excess might be made less probable by the occasional
or habitual presence and association of those who
scrupulously avoided it. He never forgot the decorum
and amiable and unaffected dignity which became his
public character.
"The tendencies and habits of Bishop White did
not appear to undergo any material change with his
advancing years. He was ready and willing and able
to put forth his mental strength as long as it should
last, and it did happily last until the evening of a
greatly prolonged life. His unexhausted fertility of
mind and performance of duty were remarkable. It
is said that the fact could scarcely be believed by his
brother Churchmen in England, that the Bishop of the
Diocese of Pennsylvania preached every Sunday with
out fail ; and when it was added that he had numbered
at the time some eighty years, the feeling of incredu
lity became almost absolute. With all his gentle prop
erties, he. was eminently firm, when firmness was
required, in supporting what he deemed right or op
posing wrong. With all his habits of caution and for
bearance, promptness in thought and action were not
wanting when promptness became the occasion or him
self. The occasion, however, seldom found his mind
unprepared, and his promptness was probably less the
effect of any sudden impulse or mere suggestion of

150 BISHOP WHITE.
the moment, than of a previously matured and satis
factory course of comprehensive thought, which fitted
him for emergencies, and accounted for his meeting
and overcoming them without extraordinary effort. . . .
" His step became less firm ; his voice less distinct
and clear. Although his eye was not, for useful purposes,
dimmed, yet many years had overtaken and gone by
him since he had reached and triumphed over the
allotted term of ordinary human existence. The foot
which sustained his tall form no longer moved with a
buoyant and elastic tread. It was too plain that, like
a marble statue, however well proportioned, to which
the skilful artist gives additional support, something
was needed besides due proportion and native strength
to preserve continued uprightness and steadiness to
the body. Nothing was more natural than an offer
from a friend of a relieving and supporting arm.
Whether the offer was regarded as implying too plainly
a want of confidence in his own stability, which he
was not willing to admit, or the acceptance of it might
be thought by him to involve some trouble to an
other, it was generally declined, and the unsteady gait
and amiable disposition were no farther relieved or
disturbed. " It is satisfactory to feel that the noble countenance
and fine figure of Bishop White are sufficiently safe
in the recollection of his contemporaries, and in the
knowledge of the generation which has followed him.
By an arrangement among a number of persons, an
excellent picture was painted by Inman, representing
him as seated in the chancel, in the act of pronounc-

REMINISCENCES. 1 5 1
ing a discourse previously to one of his Episcopal
offices. The portrait was sent to England for the pur
pose of procuring the best possible engraving. This
was executed by one of the most distinguished artists,
in his happiest manner. The plan has been carried
completely into effect by multiplying copies of this
engraving. The form and features, once so cherished,
are kept in view by many who are able to blend their
belief in pious, moral, and intellectual worth of a past
day, with features and expression of almost speaking
benevolence and intelligence; and the memorial is
held with pride and gratitude. When Pettrick, the
sculptor, resided in Philadelphia, he was anxious to
prepare a bust of Bishop White without giving him
any trouble. He accordingly placed himself in front
of the pulpit, that the lineaments and countenance of
the Bishop might be seen to the best advantage ; and
while the venerable object of study was delivering his
sermon he was unconsciously standing for his likeness.
The attentive artist, meanwhile, was absorbed in his
own professional contemplations, quite unmindful prob
ably of the discourse ; and having faithfully fixed his
mind on the features presented to his eye, and im
pressed them firmly in his recollection, he retired to
the seclusion of his studio, and prepared his model
in the absence of the original." 1
The late Dr. John S. Stone delivered a memorial
sermon on Bishop White, in St. Paul's Church, Boston,
shortly after his death, in which he gives an incident
1 Annals of the American Pulpit, vol. v. pp. 289-292.

152 BISHOP WHITE.
that was characteristic of him and is too good to be
lost. He says : " He had it in his power to take those
incipient steps, which, followed up by other aspirants
to enlarged authority, would have led to the ultimate
establishment amongst us of a temporal headship in the
Church. But, like Washington, it was his peculiar
merit that he would not seize upon the opportunity with
which he was presented. He was aware of our danger ;
and, under God, has, it may be hoped, enabled us per
manently to shun it. ' Stop,' said he, a few months
before his death, to a minister who was addressing an
assembly over which the venerable man presided, and
who was indulging the too frequent habit of heaping
upon him the epithets of 'Patriarch' and 'Father of
the Church,' — ' stop ; don't call me by such names ! '
He seemed distinctly aware that one way in which
power may alarmingly and dangerously stretch itself, is
that of first permitting the names of authority and pre
rogative to be given it ; then, receiving apparently free
concessions of their exercise ; and finally, seizing on
their full energies by the strong hand of gradually
acquired influence. The undimmed eye of his fore
sight looked into the future of our destinies. He
discerned our peril ; and, acting in clear view and
with a just abhorrence of the spirit which governs the
above process, he steadily and to the very last put away
from himself even the names of the ancient despotism
in the Church."

THEOLOGIAN AND AUTHOR. 153

CHAPTER XII.
THEOLOGIAN AND AUTHOR.
Bishop White, though not a professed theologian,
was one of the most learned men of his day. At the
beginning of the century he had a long correspondence
with Dr. Joseph Priestley, who came to Philadelphia
from England about the year 1795, and frequently at
tended public worship at Christ Church. Mutual respect
and cordiality of feeling existed between them, and they
were in correspondence for several years after Dr.
Priestley returned to England. Bishop White was a
scholarly man from his earliest years, and extended his
studies to many and special departments of knowledge
which were without the lines of his profession. The
Bishop's library, which was all contained on the shelves
occupying two walls of his study, numbered about two
thousand volumes. This study was a large room in
the second story of his house, and directly behind the
front room which he occupied for his bed-chamber
and where he died. It was warmed by an open fire
place, and the portraits upon the walls were chiefly
those of the bishops in the American Church who
were contemporary with himself. His favourite place for
study was in front of the small table at the right side
of the fireplace ; and on the other side there stood an

154 BISHOP WHITE.
upright desk, where he usually wrote his sermons. He
used for this purpose little, books of his own manufac
ture, which were so small that he could easily hold
them in one hand when in the pulpit. His hand
writing was large, uniform, and extremely legible, and
he was careful in the arrangement of his papers and
manuscripts, and left nothing at loose ends. Every
document that had come under his notice was described
and labelled so that its contents were indicated. In
stances of his care in noting upon each document its
proper character, are furnished in the following copies
of notes made on the outside covers of two of his lit
tle manuscript books. One of them contains the fol
lowing : " Remarks on a Pamphlet published by ye
rev'r Benj : Allen, being an Appendage to ye Decision
of ye Bps. on ye Question of ye Consecration of ye
rev. Henry U. Onderdonk. If this Document should
survive, I wish it never to be brought forward for ye
continuance of controversy, but only to contradict mis
representation, if made. W. W." The other has the
following note on the outside : " 1829. Concerning
ye Question relative to ye Episcopacy which will come
before ye Gen'l : Convention conformably to ye In
struction of ye Convention of the State of Virginia re
corded on their Journal, page 1 7." This related to
the election of William Meade, who had been chosen
Assistant Bishop of Virginia, without the right of suc
cession. He was equally careful in regard to all his
own publications. In one of these little books is
found the following paragraph : " The reason of my
leaving of lists of my printed publications, small and

THEOLOGIAN AND AUTHOR. 155
generally anonymous, is, that in ye event of my de
cease, I may guard against ye imputing to me of any
other. However unimportant my name, and however
improbable it's being so misused, ye bare possibility of
it ought to be my justification. Wm : White."
Though the Bishop had ample time during his long
life in which to prepare works of importance, it must
be remembered that from an early age he was a public
man and had incessant demands upon his leisure. He
was the president of nearly every public institution in
Philadelphia ; and at his death the number of these in
stitutions and societies which sent in obituary reso
lutions, and which desired a place in his funeral
procession, was something unprecedented in the United
States. It is not necessary that a full list of his con
tributions should be here published. It was intended
shortly after his death that all his principal works
should be brought out in a collected form, but this
has never been done. The only one which has sur
vived and is likely to abide is the one entitled " Me
moirs of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United
States of America." This was published first in 1820,
and made a work of 474 pages, 8vo. It is of priceless
value from an historical point of view. When the
second edition was published in 1835, the Archbishop
of Canterbury wrote to Dr. Francis L. Hawks : " I
have been exceedingly gratified by Bishop White's at
tention in sending me the second edition of his ' Me
moirs of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United
States of America.' The work is more than ordinarily
valuable as an authentic record of transactions of the

156 BISHOP WHITE.
highest importance to the American Church, and as a
lasting memorial of the truly Christian principles, tem
per, and conduct of the venerable persons, American
and English, by whose prudence and piety the pro
ceedings were brought to a happy issue." No one
had a more complete knowledge of the Episcopal
Church in this country down to the year 1835 than
Bishop White, and his " Narrative of Events " is
brought down to that year, ending with a sketch of
the proceedings of the General Convention of 1835.
His account is minute and authoritative, and it is be
lieved to be strictly impartial. There is nothing like it
in American ecclesiastical history, and by it Bishop
White will transmit the records of his public career
and of the American Episcopal Church to remote
generations. Another work, first published in 1813 and 18 14 in a
magazine, and brought out afterwards in one volume in
1833, is entitled "A Commentary on the Questions in
the Offices for the Ordaining of Priests and Deacons ;
and a Commentary on the Duties of the Public Min
istry." This is a companion volume to Bishop Wilber-
force's " Ordination Addresses," and is still used in
preparation for holy orders. In 181 7 he published in
two large volumes " Comparative Views of the Contro
versy between the Calvinists and the Arminians." This
work has gone by with the theological views which it
maintained. Bishop White was an Arminian as op
posed to Calvinism. His most important work, the
one on which he believed that his reputation as a
divine would chiefly rest, is entitled " A Counter

THEOLOGIAN AND AUTHOR. 157
Apology for the Divinity of the Holy Scriptures, in a
Review of the Apology of Robert Barclay on the Same
Subject." It was begun in the year 1805. In 1810
it was resumed, and it was completed during that and
the succeeding year. It was reperused in 1826, and
was further revised in 1833. The decline of the
Quakers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey made the
publication of this work unnecessary, and it still re
mains in manuscript. The following note was dated
Oct. 18, 1833, and is inserted in the manuscript :
" On a reperusal of the ' Counter Apology,' I see no
cause to withdraw any of the arguments contained in it.
Whether it will ever be published is uncertain ; but I
believe that it would tend to the upholding of the truths
of our holy religion — first, by showing the danger of
a theory, which, by affirming an imaginary light of na
ture under an imposing but misapplied name, leads
to deism; and secondly, by distinguishing between
Christian duty and requisitions foreign to it, — repre
senting them, to young persons especially, as equally
obligatory, and thus preparing their ripened under
standings for an equal disregard of both." Many of
his writings were contributed to the religious papers,
especially those written in his old age. His five ad
dresses to the trustees, professors, and students of the
General Theological Seminary in 1823, 1824, 1827,
1828, and 1829, were all published in pamphlets, and
are full of excellent advice to young ministers. He de
livered also five Episcopal Charges, in 1807, 1825, i83r,
1832, and 1834, all of which were published. They
took up points of discipline, Episcopacy, the legislation

158 BISHOP WHITE.
of the Church, the question of Christian unity, and the
subject of revivals. His first Charge was delivered in
1807. It covered the divine constitution of the Chris
tian Church and the relation of the clergy to the Epis
copate. It also set forth the order and perfections of
the Church, and explained his position with reference
to " The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United
States Considered." The second Charge, delivered in
1825, discussed the common ministry. The reason
why he had for eighteen years previous delivered no
charges was because he had had so many chances to
speak on the ministry at ordinations that he did not
think it was necessary. The Charge of 183 1 was de
voted to several subjects, — revivals, the unity of the
Church, points of discipline, the Episcopacy, and ec
clesiastical legislation. While discussing in this Charge
the subject of a Bishop's Church, he said : " What to
your Bishop seems the most plausible is that in a city
or town of a diocese, as central as may be, there
should be a church, so far differing from the churches
generally as that the Bishop shall be its more imme
diate pastor, and that to enable him to visit his diocese,
a third part of it every year, there should be an as
sistant presbyter or deacon." He was always careful
to sustain the dignity and -the rights of the Episco
pate. The Charge of 1832 was delivered in a time
of religious excitement, and explains the Church sys
tem as opposed to revivals. It is valuable as a state
ment of his principles in regard to spiritual religion.
He laid down the following tests of a revival : " 1 . The
necessity of distinguishing affections due to the Holy

THEOLOGIAN AND AUTHOR. 159
Spirit from emotions coming from the animal economy.
2. The zeal should be divested of all that comes under
the name of angry passion. 3. There ought to be uni
versal attendance on the ordinances of religion. 4. The
truths of the evangelical dispensation ought to be the
prominent heads of instruction and edification. 5 . The
revival ought to be in agreement with that grace of
the Christian system which binds together believers in
ecclesiastical union."
These principles he had acted on for half a century,
and he puts them on record, under responsibility, as
the religious convictions of his life. His last Charge,
delivered in 1834, was entitled "The Past and the Fu
ture." He was sensible that a man in his eighty-sixth
year could not expect to address his people again, and
he felt it to be his duty in meeting his Convention —
the fiftieth Convention of his diocese — to pass in re
view the events connected with the organization of
the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of
America, and the lessons which they inculcate. There
is nothing here which is not to be found set forth in
detail in his " Memoirs of the Church," except the
large comprehensive counsels which the venerable
Bishop felt that he had a right to give to the Church
for the future. While nothing need be quoted from it,
it must be said that it has no charity for party issues in
the Church, and does not look forward to any innova
tions upon what has been inherited from the Church
of England.
He wrote the Pastoral Letters of the House of Bish
ops from 1808 to 1835 inclusive, ten in all, and left

160 BISHOP WHITE.
the following note concerning them : " As these letters,
although in the name of a House, were known to have
been written by me, and currently spoken of with that
circumstance attached to them ; and as, on that ac
count, I may be thought especially responsible for the
sentiments expressed, — I have thought that it comes
under the principle of these entries to take the present
notice of them. The notoriety referred to does not
attach to the various addresses penned by me for in
stitutions in which I have presided, but the responsi
bility for which may therefore be committed to the
bodies which respectively adopted them." They are
couched in guarded and conservative language, more
religious than ecclesiastical in tone, and are intended to
express the spiritual consciousness of the Church at
the time when they were put forth. It was natural that
they should carry great weight throughout the Amer
ican Church, and, as the words of the Presiding Bishop,
they expressed his comprehensive interest in the whole
Episcopal body in this country. Among the less im
portant writings of Bishop White on theological and ec
clesiastical subjects there is a remarkable correspond
ence which he carried on with Mr. Charles Miller, a
member of King's Chapel, Boston, which seceded from
the Episcopal Church in America in 1 783, and whose
minister, Mr. James Freeman, finding it impossible to
obtain ordination at the hands of Bishop Seabury, or,
later, from Bishop Provoost or Bishop White, was finally
ordained by the senior warden of the parish. The
reason of the defection was that the pews of the Church
men who had gone to Nova Scotia during the Revolu-

THEOLOGIAN AND AUTHOR. l6l
tion were confiscated ; and the persons who had burial
rights in the vaults of the Chapel, who were not in all
cases accredited parishioners, were forced to act as
parishioners in order to retain their rights of sepulture.
This circumstance gave the majority into the hands of
men who were Socinians, and thus the Chapel became
the first Unitarian place of worship in America, full forty
years before the Unitarians separated from the Con
gregational denomination. Between Mr. Miller and
Bishop White an extended correspondence was main
tained in 1785 and 1786, in which Dr. White did not
hesitate to set forth in plain terms what he thought of
these ecclesiastical proceedings.
Only two political discourses from his pen have been
preserved in print, though a third still exists in man
uscript. The first was preached in Christ Church, Phil
adelphia, on February 19th, 1795. It was on "The
Reciprocal Influence of Civil Polity and Religious
Duty." It was dedicated to President Washington, in
whose presence it had been delivered, with a lengthy
preface in praise of the religious character of his ad
ministration. The second, unpublished, was preached
on the 9th of May, 1 798, on the Fast Day recommended
by President Washington. It was "A Retrospective
View of Our Civil Origin." A considerable portion of
it was afterwards inserted in the Pastoral Letter of
1826. The third sermon was on " The Duty of Civil
Obedience as Required by Scripture." This was
preached, April 25th, 1799, in response to a day of
humiliation appointed by the President. It was first
used in substance on November 5 th, known before the

1 62 BISHOP WHITE.
Revolution as " Gunpowder Day," and was afterwards
preached on the Fourth of July, when the holiday fell
on Sunday. It did duty for the third time in 1799.
Bishop White was a Republican before the Revolution,
and a stanch Federalist after the adoption of the Con
stitution. He continued to stand with that party as
long as he lived.
In a little book entitled " Bishop White's Opinions,"
long since out of print, one obtains in a nutshell his
theological position. He is here represented, in a com
pilation of his views on certain theological and eccle
siastical points, on his positive and strongest side. In
this connection may be given an account of his method
in the examination of candidates for holy orders. The
venerable Dr. E. V. Buchanan, of Philadelphia, still
living, was examined for deacon's orders in his study
in 1832. It was a formidable ordeal for a young man
to pass through. The Bishop sat in his armchair, a
thin and tall man, cheerful, courteous, and dignified,
neatly dressed, wearing black silk stockings, with silver
buckies in his shoes, and the exact image of a gentle
man of the old school. Ten clergymen were arranged
in two rows on each side of the timid young man, and
were all at liberty to ask questions. They engaged in an
animated discussion over his answers, while the Bishop
gave him texts for sermons, and required of him a
Latin dissertation. In this connection a letter, ad
dressed to him at this time, is printed literally, and
shows how the Bishop treated his candidates for holy
orders.

THEOLOGIAN AND AUTHOR. 163
Philadelphia, Mch. 5, 1832.
Dear Sir, — I have received your letter of ye 2nd in
stant ; and in consequence of it, send to you ye following
texts for ye four sermons required by ye canon : Genesis
xlix. 10; Isaiah ix. 6; Matt. xiii. 52 ; Ephesians iv. 1. For
ye subject of ye Latin dissertation required, I name to you
31st Article. Wishing you success in your studies, I am
Yours affectionately,
Wm: White.

1 64 BISHOP WHITE.

CHAPTER XIII.

the last years.

After Dr. Onderdonk had become Assistant Bishop
he undertook the outside and distant work of the
diocese, leaving to Bishop White, who was now an
octogenarian, the work of his pastorate in Christ
Church and St. Peter's parishes, and such duties as
were laid upon him as the Presiding Bishop. He was
beyond the period when he was good for much in the
active work of the Church, but he was as sagacious in
council, as wise in his judgments, and as active in in
tellect, as he had been in earlier life. He was at this
time the full Bishop of Pennsylvania. Every one re
vered the tall and venerable man who walked the
streets of Philadelphia with slow and measured step,
and he was beloved, as never before, in his office of
chief pastor and in his character as a citizen. It was
remarked after his death that he was one of the three
perfect men that America had so far produced, Wash
ington and Marshall being the other two. Eveiybody
wished to have his blessing ; little children paused in
the street for his kindly greeting and to pay him re
spect ; and his weight of years and his kindness to all
made him, what Bishop Fraser was recently called, " the
Bishop of all denominations." That he enjoyed this

THE LAST YEARS. 165
distinction is not to be doubted, but it rather increased
his humility than ministered to his pride. In the coun
cils of the Church he had the same pre-eminence. He
was deferred to as the only one who had known all
things from the beginning, and at the General Conven
tion and in the public work of the Church he was the
central figure and the most influential factor.
In earlier years he had trained sons in the ministry
who had risen to do him honour, such men as John
Henry Hobart, Jackson Kemper, William Augustus
Muhlenberg, and William H. De Lancey, the last one
being the assistant at St. Peter's, and already known as
a man after his own heart. Bishop Hobart had been,
of these earlier men, the one who stood nearest to him.
In the sermon at his consecration, which, with that of
Dr. Griswold, took place in 18 ir, he thus refers to the
man who is said to have had more influence over the
venerable Bishop than any one else, and to whom he
looked forward as the one who would do most to re
peat his work in the Church and enlarge its scope :
" As one of them until within these few days has been
known only by a respectable and unblemished reputation,
and by the unanimity there have been committed to him
the concerns of the Church over a very extensive district,
he would excuse the indulgence of personal regards ; while
there is expressed peculiar satisfaction in the admission
of a brother known in his infancy, in his boyhood, in his
youth, and in his past labours in the ministry, to him to be
the principal agent in the reception of him to the Episco
pacy. There are not likely to be any within these walls
who have had such ample opportunity of judging of the
reverend person now referred to, as to real character and

1 66 BISHOP WHITE.
disposition. And his ordainer can with truth declare that
he shall discharge the duty on which he is soon to enter
with the most sanguine prospects as to the issue. This is
said without the remotest idea of a comparison with any
other, but merely on account of a longer and more intimate
acquaintance, and perhaps what is now announced may
not be altogether without a reference to self, although —
it is trusted — not operating in a faulty line. For, whether
it be the infirmity of an advance in years, or, as is rather
hoped, an interest taken in the future prosperity of the
Church, there is cherished a satisfaction in the recollection
of counsels formerly given to one who is in future to be a
colleague, who may, in the common course of affairs, be
expected to survive, and through whom there may accord
ingly be hoped to be some small measure of usefulness,
when he who gave those counsels shall be no more."
The time was at hand for a new movement in the
Episcopal Church in this country, and in 1832 he con
secrated four men to the Episcopate who were destined
to be as influential in their day in shaping the Church
in the future as Bishop White and the brilliant young
men whom he had instructed and inspired had been
and were already in giving breadth of thought and life
to the Church and variety to its ministrations. It has
been the good fortune of the Episcopal Church in the
United States to have had some of its greatest men in
the Episcopate, and when George Washington Doane
and Charles Pettit Mcllvaine and Benjamin Bosworth
Smith and John Henry Hopkins were consecrated as
bishops in that year — each one a man of strength
in a special direction — the Church took on a wider
character and opened to a greater outlook than it had

THE LAST YEARS. 167
before. In Hobart and Kemper and Muhlenberg,
Bishop White had spoken to a generation that had
come into existence since he had reached middle
life ; and in these new men, none of whom had been
directly under his influence, but all of whom had been
lifted up by his spirit, he found those who were repre
senting the larger life upon which the Episcopal Church
was now entering. Bishop Doane was to illustrate in
New Jersey the spirit which Bishop Hobart had mani
fested in New York ; Bishop Mcllvaine was to succeed
the eccentric and indefatigable Bishop Chase, who had
resigned his work in Ohio rather than be subjected to
the criticism of his peers ; Bishop Smith was to be the
pioneer of the Church in what was then almost the
wilderness diocese of Kentucky ; and Dr. Hopkins was
to be the first Bishop of Vermont, and manifest his
genius, "cribbed, cabined, and confined," among its
hillside farms.
It was a time of great stir in the world outside.
Goethe had finished his work and had just died ;
Coleridge was pouring forth his mystical philosophy at
Highgate, and Carlyle and Emerson were finding in
him and in Wordsworth the prophets of the new day ;
in religion the Tractarian Movement had just begun to
engage the minds of the Oxford Church leaders, and
Newman had written the first of the " Tracts for the
Times." In this country the Unitarians had captured
Massachusetts and were attempting to make headway
in Connecticut, where the milder spirit of the Episco
pal Church had absorbed into its fold the men and
women who, in the Bay State, had found a congenial

1 68 BISHOP WHITE.
field for their reaction from the New England theology
in a more radical religious system. Within three years
from the consecration of these men the Episcopal
Church was to declare, in the Convention of 1835, —
the one at which Bishop White bade farewell to his
brethren, — that the whole body of baptized Christians
was the missionary army of the Church of Christ, and
to organize itself for aggressive work both at home and
abroad, as a committee of the whole. It was a time
when men's hearts were large because their thoughts
were high and noble, and it was a fitting season for
this Patriarch of the American Church to
" Fold his tent, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away."
Bishop White had but recently entered upon his eighty-
ninth year. In spite of his great age, he still insisted
on preaching every Sunday in one of the churches of
which he was the rector. His last sermon was preached
on June 26th, and is entered in his record of sermons
for the Sunday as follows : " Of ye Sword of ye Gospel,
Heb. iv. 12." In the same book the dates of the next
to his last sermons are May 2 2d and 29th, June 5th
and T2th; and previous to this date the record shows
that, with the exception of four or five Sundays, he had
preached regularly from the beginning of the year. The
last official act which he performed was on the Fourth
of July, when he affixed his signature to the document
authorizing the consecration of the Rev. Samuel A.
McCoskry to the office of Bishop of Michigan. This
was the only consecration to the Episcopate in which
he did not have a part during his long career.

THE LAST YEARS. 169
The details of his last illness were written out at length
by one who was constantly with him, and were after
wards published in the paper called " The Missionary."
They furnish the only existing account of his last days.
The writer, after alluding to the fact that little more
than three months before he had entered upon his
eighty-ninth year, says : —
"Though since then he had been visited with a severe
attack of sickness, which at the time caused great anxiety,
he had so far recovered as to appear at the meeting of
the bishops, on the 21st day of June, with even more than
his wonted strength of body and clearness and activity of
mind. He continued thus in the discharge of his accus
tomed duties with his accustomed industry and assiduity,
— contributing to the last, or July number, of the 'Protes
tant Episcopalian,' a most remarkable article on the wan
derings of the mind in prayer ; keeping up the current of
his extensive correspondence ; preaching in St. Peter's
Church on Sunday, June 26th, the last time, ' the word of
God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged
sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and
spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of
the thoughts and intents of the heart;' and on Saturday,
July 2d, attending a funeral, and visiting, in a distant part of
the city, a member of his congregation. In the evening of
that day, however, he was evidently feeble, and retired to
rest without disease, but much exhausted. It was the last
time that he ascended the familiar stairs. A fall, on rising
in the course of the night, alarmed his watchful and de
voted son, who found him prostrate on the floor ; and from
that time, though without other injury from the fall (which
was the effect, it is supposed, of weakness merely) than
external bruises, he gradually sunk, from the slow failure,
one by one, of all the springs of life, — without pain,

170 BISHOP WHITE.
without severity of suffering, without a murmur or a groan,
— until the fifteenth day of his confinement, when, sweetly
as an infant drops away upon its mother's breast, he slept
in Jesus. " It was on Tuesday, July 12th, that the administration
of the Communion of the Sick was proposed to him ; to
which he gave, with great emphasis of manner, the most
cordial assent, spontaneously observing that it was an
ordinance significant of all that was most essential in
Christianity, and expressing the devout hope that he might
have grace to receive it with resignation and to his spiritual
profit. It was accordingly administered by the Assistant
Bishop, there being present with him all members of the
family, another Bishop, and the assistant minister of St.
Peter's Church. It was astonishing, in his great weak
ness of body, to see with what strength and fervour he en
gaged in the solemn service, and how perfectly his attention
and interest were sustained throughout. His manner was
that of deep and seraphic devotion, — ¦ following evidently
through all the prayers, uniting distinctly in every sentence
that was responsive, and most especially in the Confession
and in the Gloria in Excelsis, sealing every portion of the
service with an emphatic ' Amen ' ; and when the consecrated
elements were delivered to him, insisting earnestly, until
over-persuaded by those about him, that he could rise from
the bed, which for several days he had not left, to receive
them, as he was used to do, on his knees.
" From the commencement of the Bishop's illness,
though every office was performed with the utmost skill
and assiduity and tenderness by the members of his family,
it had been conceded to the affectionate interest of the
clergy that there should be some of them in the house
every night. On Tuesday night that pleasure — and
greater pleasure there could scarcely be — was shared by
the Bishop of New Jersey, with his brother of Michigan.

THE LAST YEARS. 171
Though it could not reasonably be doubted that the vener
able patient was acquainted with his true condition and its
unquestionable result, it was deemed kind and just — with
that respectful tenderness which was not more strongly
dictated by the relation of the parties than by the impulses
of filial feeling — to seek assurance that it was so, and to
afford the opportunity for any communication which he
might desire to make, and which, ere long, increasing
weakness might preclude. Accordingly, at a favourable op
portunity during the night, it was said to him : ' I hope,
sir, that you feel no inconvenience from the effort you
made in receiving the Holy Communion this afternoon.'
' Not the least,' he replied, ' not the least ; but much com
forted.' ' It was a great pleasure, sir, to be permitted once
more to receive that blessed sacrament which we have so
often partaken with you.' ' And a great pleasure to me to
have you.' ' We feel, sir, that you are very sick, very sick,
indeed.' ' I can say nothing to the contrary of that.'
' We thought, sir, that you might have something that you
would wish to communicate, some message for the Church,
to which God has spared you so long. We should be glad
to receive any word of counsel from you, and to bear it to
our brethren.' ' I can only say that I pray God's protec
tion and blessing that it may continue to have peace and
prosperity after my decease.' ' We trust, sir, that you rely
with entire confidence on the promises of that blessed
Gospel which you have preached so many years — ' • And,'
he interrupted, ' which has hitherto sustained me.' • And
you submit yourself, sir, wholly to God's gracious good
ness, with a single and entire reliance for salvation on the
merits of his Son, through faith in him ? ' ' Oh, entirely,
entirely ; I have no other wish, no other hope ! ' After a
pause, the effort of speaking being very great, though he
did not allow that he was fatigued by it, and was evidently
consoled and animated by the conversation, ' I should be

172 BISHOP WHITE.
glad,' he said, 'to express my feelings to you in some of the
Psalms and Hymns, but I cannot.' ' Perhaps you would
like to hear some of them read.' ' I should.' ' Will you
select one, sir ? ' ' No ; I leave it to you.' ' But you have
some favourite, sir, which you would prefer.' The 209th
hymn was then named by him : —
' Thou art the way — to Thee alone
From sin and death we flee ;
And he who would the Father seek,
Must seek him, Lord, by Thee,' —
which was accordingly read. Having signified his entire
assent and approbation of it, he said : ' That beautiful
hymn of Addison's has been a favourite with me all my life.'
He was asked if he meant that which begins, —
' When all Thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,' —
and signifying that it was, the whole of it was read. He
followed it throughout with the motion of his lips; and
when it was done, in reply to the remark, ' How comfort
able it must be to you, sir, to realize thus the protecting
care of God in life, in death, and beyond the grave,' he
said, with a warmth of expression not usual with him:
' Oh, it is charming, it is charming ! ' The fear that his
feeble strength might be overdrawn here interrupted this
delightful conversation, which he was evidently willing to
continue. There was no subsequent opportunity afforded ;
but it suffices abundantly to show that as he lived so he
died, in calm and meek reliance on his Saviour. Early
the next morning he was asked if he remembered Bishop
Ken's beautiful Morning Hymn, and at his request a part
of it was read to him, and prayers were said at his bedside;
in which, though very weak, he heartily united.
" He continued gradually failing, his nights restless and
his days wearisome, saying scarcely anything, yet recogniz-

THE LAST YEARS. 1 73
ing all his friends, and replying always to their inquiry that
he did not suffer, until Saturday, the 16th, when it became
apparent that a great change had taken place, and that
' the solemn crisis of departing life,' to use his own most
beautiful expression in the recent Pastoral Letter of the
House of Bishops, was near at hand. About two o'clock
of that day, when he seemed at the lowest point of phy
sical exhaustion, and his weeping family expected his im
mediate dissolution, on the approach of the present writer
to his bedside, mindful to the last of the courtesy which
graced his life, he addressed him with the accustomed in
quiry, by name, shortly after which he asked that prayers
might be offered. A considerable portion of the order for
the Visitation of the Sick, was immediately used, with
eminent propriety and feeling, by the assistant minister of
St Peter's Church, humbly commending ' the soul of this
thy servant, our dear father, into thy hands, as into the
hands of a faithful Creator and merciful Saviour.' Al
though, after this service, the saintly sufferer revived a
little, and continued, until within an hour or two of his
decease, to recognize his brethren and friends who came
about him, there was no distinctive act subsequent to this.
His last request, as became a Christian believer, was for
prayer to God. His last act, as became a Christian Bishop,
was the commendation of his soul to God in the office of
his Church.
" In the time and circumstances of his death, as in the
course of his long life, there was a beautiful propriety.
His alarming illness was extensively known. All the
periodicals of the Church, and many of the secular news
papers, had expressed concern for its issue. The result
was, as in the case of another apostle in a condition of
imminent peril, ' prayer was made without ceasing of the
Church unto God for him.' Especially was this the case
on the second Lord's Day after his sickness commenced,
the seventh Sunday after Trinity, and the 17th day of

174 BISHOP WHITE.
July; on which day the various Episcopal congregations
in several of the dioceses, ' were uniting their voices on be
half of the venerable Patriarch in the beautiful supplica
tion of their ritual, for a sick person.' Upon this sacred
day, whose solemn services for nearly seventy years had
seldom failed to engage his voice in the several offices of
the Christian ministry, as the hour of noon approached,
when the prayers of faithful thousands had but just gone
up to heaven in intercession for him, the day itself —
' So calm, so cool, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,'
in the house which for half a century had been his home,
in his own chamber, upon his own bed, with all his loved
ones of the first and second generation gathered round him,
so quietly that not a murmur caught the quickened sense
of love's most practised ear, so gently that the most at
tentive eye marked not the moment of its transit, his peace
ful spirit took its flight from earth, — washed, as we humbly
trust, from all defilements-, ' in the blood of that immaculate
Lamb, which was slain to take away the sins of the world,'
— to be ' presented pure and without spot ' before God.
Beautiful instance of the only true, the Christian euthan
asia ! Beautiful termination of a life, which faith and
holiness and charity had made instinct and radiant with
beauty! Beautiful illustration of the power of our reli
gion to adorn and bless the longest life, to console, to
strengthen, to make conqueror in death ! Beautiful copy
of a perfect Exemplar — may we follow thee as thou hast
followed Christ, live near to him as thou hast lived in the
meek piety of thy life, go to him as thou hast gone in
the calm confidence of thy triumphant death ! "
It had long been the express desire of the aged
Bishop that he might be permitted to depart this life
on the Lord's Day, and his wish was granted. He
passed away at a quarter before twelve o'clock, and the

THE LAST YEARS. 175
fact of his decease was announced in the city churches
in the afternoon, immediately after the evening service
preceding the sermon, accompanied by a request that
the sermon should be omitted, in compliance with an ar
rangement which had been made by some of the clergy
attending upon the Bishop. This request was generally
regarded, and a short address suited to the occasion
was made instead of the usual sermon, and the congre
gations were dismissed with the Apostolic benediction.
His funeral took place on Wednesday morning at
ten o'clock. It was a funeral service only surpassed
by that of Franklin half a century earlier. At an early
hour the street in which he resided was thronged with
crowds eager to catch a glimpse of the features of one
whom everybody esteemed, and at the hour appointed
for the service it was with difficulty that his house could
be approached by those who were invited to meet at
the Bishop's and the adjacent houses. At a few
moments past eleven o'clock, the procession began to
be formed in the following order : —
Sextons.
Officiating Clergy:
Rev. George Sheets,
Rev. W. H. De Lancey,
Rev. John W. James.
Bishop of the Diocese:
Rt. Rev. Henry W. Onderdonk.
Rev. Levi Bull,
Rt. Rev. Bishop McCos-
kry,
Rt. Rev. Bishop Doane,
Pall-bearers,

r pi

Rev. Dr. Abercrombie,
Rt. Rev. Jackson Kemper,
Rt. Rev. Bishop Bowen,
Pall-bearers.

176 BISHOP WHITE.
Family.
Physician to the Family.
Clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church, as Mourners.
Wardens of Christ Church, St. Peter's, and St. James's,
as Mourners.
Vestrymen of the same, as Mourners.
Standing Committee of the Diocese of Pennsylvania,
as Mourners.
The Clergy of various denominations.
Wardens and Vestrymen of the Protestant Episcopal
Churches.
Candidates for Holy Orders.
Trustees and Faculties of University of Pennsylvania.
Judges of the United States and State Courts.
American Philosophical Society.
Mayor, Recorder, and Aldermen.
Select and Common Councils.
Protestant Episcopal Academy.
Society for the Advancement of Christianity in Penn
sylvania.
Protestant Episcopal Diocesan Sunday School Society.
Bishop White Prayer Book Society.
Philadelphia Bible Society.
Prison Discipline Society.
Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb.
Institution for the Blind.
Philadelphia Dispensary.
Other Institutions with which the Bishop was connected.
Episcopalians. Citizens.
Every Christian denomination was represented in the
cortege, and the procession of persons in it, which ex
tended about two thousand feet, exclusive of the numer
ous carriages in attendance, formed but a small part
of the immense concourse of persons, who were col-

THE LAST YEARS. 177
lected to the number of upwards of twenty thousand to
participate in the mournful service. Among the Bishops
present were Dr. Bowen of South Carolina, Dr. Onder
donk of Pennsylvania, Dr. Kemper, Missionary Bishop
of Missouri and Indiana, and Dr. McCoskry, the newly
consecrated Bishop of Michigan. The pall-bearers
were Bishops Bowen, Doane, Kemper, and McCos
kry, assisted by the two oldest presbyters present,
the Rev. Dr. Abercrombie and the Rev. Levi Bull.
All the Episcopal clergy were robed in their sur
plices and attended as mourners. A large number of
the city clergy wore, in addition to their robes, a black
scarf as a badge of mourning. Besides the Episco
pal clergy, there were present many ministers of other
Christian bodies. Nearly the whole of Christ Church
was undergoing extensive repairs at the time of the
Bishop's death. He had begged the vestry to defer
them until he should pass away ; and it was in the
midst of these repairs that the building was required
for his funeral service. When the procession arrived
at Christ Church, the street was so crowded with peo
ple that it was impossible to advance until orders had
been given to make room for it. The body of the
venerable man was at length brought in and placed in
the middle aisle, before the chancel. It was covered
with a black pall, thrown over a white linen covering.
As the bearers proceeded up the aisle, the burial
anthem was read alternately by the minister officiating
and by the people. The Rev. Mr. De Lancey had
charge of the services in the Church and at the grave.
The sermon was preached by Bishop Onderdonk, who

178 BISHOP WHITE.
now entered upon the full duties of the Episcopate.
After the discourse was over, the company proceeded
to the family vault in the churchyard, where the re
mains of the Bishop's wife had been placed over fifty
years earlier, and where he had desired that his own
body might be placed. A solemn hush and awe per
vaded those who were present. It was as if the silence
of the grave had settled upon the lips of the by-stand-
ers, and the only sounds, after the service at the grave
was ended, were the stifled sobbings of those who could
not restrain their grief.
Business was generally suspended in Philadelphia
during the funeral, and the New York firemen, then in
the city, would have participated in the procession if
they had not asked this privilege at too late an hour.
It was an occasion that profoundly moved the people
of Philadelphia and of the surrounding country. Since
the death of Washington the bells of Christ Church
had not tolled a more melancholy peal than that which
reached the ears of the citizens on the Sunday that
Bishop White passed away. He seemed to be an
essential part of the population. The office and the
man were inextricably blended, and the man was every
where beloved. The universal feeling, as expressed
at the time, was : " That reverend figure, that gray
head, so familiar, so honoured, will never be seen in the
streets of Philadelphia again." He was the last con
necting link between the people of that day and the
great men of the Revolution. The words uttered by
Bishop White at the consecration of Dr. Onderdonk in
this ancient edifice, recounting his own earlier mem-

THE LAST YEARS. 179
ories of the place in connection with the work of his
life, bring to a fitting close the story of his last years.
Quaintly and modestly he says of himself: —
" He feels the full weight of an occasion, reminding him
of his near approach to the end of the ministry in which
he has been so long a labourer: and when, during the
transaction in which we have been engaged, he occasion
ally permitted his eye to rest on the spot, within the dis
tance of a few feet, where, in the days of his boyhood, he
joined in religious services within these walls ; when from
that spot his attention was transferred to the pulpit at his
elbow, from which, although not unfavoured by domestic
instruction and encouragement, there sunk into his youth
ful mind the truths of the ever-blessed gospel, and from
which for the space of fifty-five years he has been pro
claiming the same truths, with what effect will not be
known until the day which shall 'try every man's work of
what sort it is,' but certainly with effect far short of his
wishes and of his prayers, — there results from these rec
ollections and from others a most weighty sense of the
responsibility on which he has been so long acting ; and of
his need of the mercy of God, through the merits of the
Redeemer, for many failures and imperfections, and for a
falling short of his labours, however sincere in their prin
ciple, of what might have been accomplished by a more
diligent improvement of the opportunities with which a
beneficent Providence had furnished him."

180 BISHOP WHITE.

CHAPTER XIV.
A HALF CENTURY OF CHURCH LIFE.
The personal career of Bishop White was unique
among Americans. Younger in years than most of the
men with whom he was associated, he was from the
first their peer in range of outlook, in ability to see
what ought to be done, and in ripe and comprehen
sive judgment. He had the statesman's gift of work
ing wisely when he had a great end in view. No other
man appeared among Churchmen in the American
colonies who had the same ability at a great crisis to
decide promptly what to do and how to do it. When
he was hardly thirty-five years of age, with the excep
tion of Dr. Seabury, he was the most conspicuous cler
gyman, the one to whom all eyes instinctively turned
in the American colonies. He had made the impres
sion of a man who had the qualities and gifts of leader
ship, though he had not been called upon to show
forth all that he could do. His wealth, his social
position, his thorough education, and a certain matu
rity of mind and thought which impressed all who came
in contact with him, contributed to his eminence.
Though the junior of Washington in years, he was not
only his pastor but his equal in social rank and dis
tinction. In any community Bishop White would have

A HALF CENTURY OF CHURCH LIFE. 181
been a man of note, and in the political and religious
crisis which was brought to a head in the American
Revolution he had the qualities of courage and fore
sight which made him a man of mark.
He was born to enjoy the confidence of his fellow-
men, and exercise leadership over them. He did this
not by assuming to lead, but by the superiority of his
gifts, which impressed all who came in contact with
him. He gained the confidence of others by their
conviction of his largeness of mind and heart. He
lived in many respects a double life. In one character
he fulfilled his round of duty as the Bishop of Penn
sylvania and the rector of the united churches in Phil
adelphia, and in these positions he felt most at home.
In the other character he stood forth as the patriarch
of the American Church, the one man who had a full
knowledge of the Anglican Church in the United
States from the beginning, and to whom all momentous
questions in ecclesiastical affairs were constantly re
ferred as they arose. He took the initiative in the or
ganization of the American Church. Undoubtedly this
was in part forced upon him by his official position
in Philadelphia, but he could never have obtained
the immediate recognition he did among all the scat
tered parishes along the Atlantic seaboard, if he had
not impressed himself upon the minds of others as
one in whom they could place trust as a wise and
prudent leader in ecclesiastical affairs. No other man,
except Bishop Seabury, attained anything like the same
eminence or the respect which was conceded to him ;
and many as were sharers in the re-organization of the

1 82 BISHOP WHITE.
Church upon an American basis, he was the one man
whose opinion carried most weight in the decision of
what ought to be done.
Several things are to be noted in his attitude at the
crisis of Episcopacy in the new world. He looked over
the field and saw the Church as a whole, — its needs,
its possibilities, its distinctly American position. He
was not so intent upon what he held to be the truth
that he could not waive an interest temporarily in
order to gain a larger end. His action at a critical
moment in the history of the country was as magnani
mous as it was courageous and comprehensive. When
it seemed as if in the height of the conflict no settle
ment would be reached between the contending
parties, he embodied in a pamphlet, which has the
first historical value in being a witness to his Catholic
spirit and largeness of mind, — " The Case of the Epis
copal Churches in the United States Considered," — the
plan of a possible organization which could be ac
cepted as provisional until the full Apostolic Succes
sion could be obtained. Happily, in the cessation of
hostilities between this country and Great Britain al
most at the moment when it was first put into circula
tion, the reason for the views which he tentatively
advocated was superseded by the possibility that the
Succession could be obtained in time from the English
Church ; but this does not diminish the courage and
foresight of this young clergyman in devising measures
by which the Church in the American colonies could
be held together, and its services maintained, until there
should be a favourable change in public affairs.

A HALF CENTURY OF CHURCH LIFE. 183
The man who wrote this pamphlet had a free
mind. He was not bound to precedent, and the fact
that in it much which is embodied in the consti
tution and government of the Episcopal Church in
this country to-day was now outlined for the first time,
shows how distinctly he had thought for himself in
ecclesiastical matters. It is not simply his use of
Hooker's argument for a departure from the Episco
pal system under the " exigence of necessity " which
attracts attention to this pamphlet, but the large
ness of his views of the way in which ecclesiastical
government could be accommodated to the life of
the people. He here gave the first interpretation
of the Church system under the light of American
ideas. It is true that many features of the English
Church immediately disappear when the connection
with the state ceases, but Bishop White went further
than this. He made it manifest to his countrymen
that the Communion to which he belonged was a
purely spiritual body, and that its only reason for an
existence in this country was based on spiritual grounds.
It was a long time before the prejudices existing
against the American Church as a part of the English
Communion, embittered by the political animosities of
the Revolution, were allayed so that Bishop White's
comprehension of what an American Episcopal organ
ization ought to be could be widely understood ; but
to one looking back to the way in which he dealt with
great issues and accommodated the Episcopal system
to the democratic ideas found in the American gov
ernment and the thoughts of the people, it is the mark

1 84 BISHOP WHITE.
of unusual independence of mind and breadth of view
that Bishop White should from the beginning have so
clearly understood the situation, and laid down funda
mental principles with a large comprehension of the
working of a voluntary ecclesiastical body among a
free people. He was not the slave of his prejudices,
and he had the wisdom to act with the whole situation
in view.
In the organization of other religious bodies there
was nothing to change when they took shape in the
American colonies. They were voluntary bodies, and
what they were doctrinally in the old country they were
here ; but when the Anglican Communion became an
affiliated body with the Mother Church, it was made in
dependent of it, so that the book of worship, the canons,
the government, and even the constitution, though main
taining the same principles, were adapted to a freer po
litical and social and religious life. No estimate of
Bishop White's life-work would be complete which did
not recognize his loyalty to American ideas and his
equal loyalty to the religious body in which he was
permitted to serve. It is undoubtedly largely owing
to him that the Episcopal clergy and people have al
ways agreed to keep political contentions out of their
religious work. The question is never asked whether a
man belongs to one party or to another. His loyalty
to the nation is taken for granted, and it is believed
that this may be honestly expressed in the dominant
ideas which are at the basis of each political constitu
ency. This freedom from political connections did not
have any influence in favour of the Church, but it gave

A HALF CENTURY OF CHURCH LIFE. 185
its pulpit a dignity, and its proceedings and services a
wholesome character which came to be widely appre
ciated, and which toward the end of Bishop White's
career had a great deal to do with its wider growth.
One of the drawbacks which he had to contend
with was the barrenness and sterility of the American
people in their forms of worship. The stately ritual
of the Church of England was very much shorn of
its beauty and majesty by its limitation to a severe
simplicity of treatment. This was also in part due to
the neglect of discipline, which was one of the great
drawbacks which had to be contended with in those
days, and could only be gradually overcome. The
American ritual was cold and bare in the light of the
worship of to-day, and more people became Church
men through their intellectual convictions than from a
sympathetic appreciation of the worship. The very
simplicity of the Episcopal service in the years suc
ceeding the Revolution afterward became a draw
back in the spiritual enjoyment of the services by
communicants, and it is to be doubted whether Bishop
White ever knew the full beauty of the English ritual
as conducted in an American parish church. On
another point Bishop White took a stand that com
mended him to the sober and candid judgment of
intelligent people. He had to assert himself against
the popular religious errors and enthusiasms of the
day, and to incur the enmity of many good people
who carried their ideas to extremes, and whom he did
not wish to offend. The pathway of a Bishop in those
days was not a pathway of roses, and it required all

1 86 BISHOP WHITE.
the personal popularity enjoyed by Dr. White to make
his position tolerable while he was standing up for
social and moral truth as he understood it. He had
to educate and develop conservative opinion for the
country at large, and it required constant vigilance in
one who held the office of Presiding Bishop in the
United States to give the right tone to the religious
sentiment of the country. Not that the influence of
the Episcopal Church in those days was extensive
enough to make its influence widely felt as a public
educator; but to the extent of his ability and op
portunity Bishop White stood on the wholesome and
right side of all the great issues of the day. He
never allowed the man to be overcome by the ec
clesiastic. The personal life and the public career of such a
leader are always inextricably blended; and Bishop
White was so large a figure in ecclesiastical affairs in
the later years of the last and in the earlier part of
the present century, that it is almost impossible to see
or think of him apart from his public duties. He was
a leader whose influence was universally felt, though he
did not often put himself forward in a public capacity
outside of ecclesiastical affairs. He was rather the
power behind the throne than a visible functionary.
He never sought to attract attention to himself on ac
count of his office, and this caused him to be all the
better appreciated where the importance of his office
was understood. In those earlier days patience was a
virtue to be valued, and it must have seemed to Bishop
White as it did to some of the Jewish prophets that

A HALF CENTURY OF CHURCH LIFE. 187
he would never see the vision of the Lord in his
day. The virtue in his patience was that he never
despaired ; he made the most of such opportunities as
came to him, and especially, utilized the abilities of the
bright men who were under his influence, for the ex
tension of the kind of work which was most important
for the interests of the Church. Though a diocesan
Bishop simply, he was also the pastor of the whole
Church ; he did not feel satisfied until he had done
something to advance domestic as well as foreign
missions, and his mind and heart went out to the
country at large and to the whole world.
It was a notable event when in 181 1 Bishop White,
as Presiding Bishop, consecrated two men in the prime
of life who were to be associated with him in the
active development of the Church in the next genera
tion, — Dr. John Henry Hobart and Dr. Alexander
Viets Griswold. They were men utterly unlike in tem
perament, in intellect, and in their way of looking at
things, but each had the natural qualities of leader
ship. Dr. Hobart was consecrated for the diocese of
New York, and entered upon his duties when the first
demand was felt for an advance in American Church
manship. He had the instincts of a great Churchman,
and his distinction was that he founded institutions
and insisted upon the doctrinal and ecclesiastical
principles which were in accordance with his own
Communion. He was a worker rather than a scholar,
and excelled in the preparation of manuals of Chris
tian teaching which have been largely instrumental in
educating two generations of American Churchmen.

1 88 BISHOP WHITE.
While he stood faithfully by Bishop White, he was evi
dently a better Churchman than his teacher, who
greatly admired the way in which he lifted the religious
system of the Church to a higher plane than that to
which he was able to raise it in the different religious
atmosphere of Philadelphia. Bishop Hobart made
himself felt aggressively, and was the first American
ecclesiastic to engage the Presbyterians in controversy
over the authority of the ministry. He was the highest
Churchman then known in the United States.
Dr. Griswold, as Bishop of the Eastern diocese, was
as well fitted for his very different field as Dr. Hobart
was for the New York diocese. He had to encounter
a more bitter and more determined opposition to the
Episcopacy than existed anywhere else in the country,
but he met it with the mildness and gentleness of
spirit which gave Bishop White a large part of his
power in Pennsylvania. His strength was mainly to
sit still and wait for time to change the hearts of the
people. He had to break down the traditional preju
dice of New England against Episcopacy, and his
chief work was to make an impression for the Church
on its spiritual side. His Episcopate of over thirty
years was an unwearied effort to do what he was not
able to do ; and yet his life-work carried a weight in
New England in Christian wisdom and sagacity that
has been felt down to our own time, and probably did
more to bring the Episcopal Church into its present
favour in New England than any other influence exerted
during his generation. These two men illustrated dif
ferent types of leadership, and pointed out how differ-

A HALF CENTURY OF CHURCH LIFE. 1 89
ent schools of thought were allowed recognition and
toleration. Dr. Hobart was an advanced man; Dr.
Griswold was a mild Evangelical ; and yet both stood
upon the same basis of essential principles.
It is no injustice to others to ascribe the widening
out of the Episcopal Church during the first quarter of
this century largely to the oversight and rare wisdom of
Bishop White. Never from the moment of his conse
cration was he allowed to stand, strictly in the position
of a diocesan Bishop. He was the representative man
in the General Convention, in conferences, in consulta
tions with the Bishops; and the ecclesiastical policy
adopted in all these years was largely the result of his
suggestions and advice. To appreciate the full extent
of his work one must study carefully his " Memoirs of
the Church " and enter into a knowledge of his per
sonal life. He constantly held the post of responsi
bility. In fact, he was discharging the duties of three
men at one and the same time. He was the rector of
the largest parish in his diocese. He was responsible
for the whole of Pennsylvania. He was also the Pa
triarch of the American Church. After his judgment
and experience, his genuine gift of statesmanship was
of great service. One notes in examining his private
papers the care with which he attended to the duties
of the office of Presiding Bishop, and sees in him,
though advanced in years, a man whose thought and
spirit expanded as the Church widened its scope and
influence. The questions which have arisen in the
half century since his death were mostly anticipated
during his own lifetime.

19° BISHOP WHITE.
There is always a close relation between an institu
tion and the man who is so identified with it that in his
generation he represents a large part of it. It is im
possible to think of Methodism without bringing John
Wesley into view, and even at the distance of a cen
tury from his death the working habits of the Methodist
body bear the impress of his plain living and high
thinking. The same is true of the relation in which
Bishop White stands to the Episcopal Church in the
United States. As in the case of Wesley, he is less
quoted or referred to than formerly ; but the religious
historian is able to trace his guiding hand and con
trolling thought, not only in his Pastoral Letters, but in
the living for breadth and Catholicity which have been
the watchwords of the American Church from the be
ginning. He had the largeness of mind which is able
to decide correctly what shall be done at critical times,
and yet he was not a conventional nor an easily-yield
ing man. He was always looking out for the larger
Church, the larger field, the larger opportunity. The
same readiness to meet an emergency which charac
terized him in the years that followed the Revolution
was natural to him through life. He had the ability to
see special occasions in the light of universal princi
ples, and his action, though conservative, was never
unintelligent. It was of the greatest value, that one
mind, and that a mind of singular breadth and fair
ness, should have had so much to do with the begin
nings of the Episcopal Church in this country. The
opportunities were many in which a rash leader might
have ruined it, but no unwise step has been traced to

A HALF CENTURY OF CHURCH LIFE. 191
Bishop White, and his advances were so carefully and
shrewdly planned that few things went wrong.
It was inevitable from the nature of its beginning
that the Episcopal Church should have a hard struggle
to establish itself in this country, and to develop into
the proportions of a large and aggressive body. It
was long in presenting itself in a winning attitude to
the nation, and its history had been one in which the
changes made in the Church of England have mostly
been repeated with variations on American soil. Bishop
White's distinct achievement was that he helped greatly
to establish the Church on a thoroughly American basis,
and that he did not think it should be a solemn echo
of the English body. He did not wish it different in
its main principles, but he had no desire to accept
things simply because they were done in England. A
powerful influence was exerted by him in insisting that
the American Communion should be as distinct in its
characteristic lines of operation as it could be and
still be under the control of the same principles. He
stood for ecclesiastical flexibility. Under him the
Church followed an American spirit and method.
He was perhaps the most comprehensive of all our
ecclesiastical leaders, and the bishops who have chiefly
left their mark in the enlarged life of the Church
have worked essentially upon the lines which he laid
down. They have stood for the whole organization,
with the belief that liberty under law should be the
rule of healthy growth. The five bishops who were
consecrated by him in 1832 and 1835 — the third
generation who represent the shaping influence of this

192 BISHOP WHITE.
venerable leader — were men who in critical times had
the same care for the corporate life of the Church
which he manifested, and they presented it to our own
generation under the lead of the principles which Bishop
White guarded and protected as long as he lived.

APPENDIX

The following statement, made by the great-grandson
of Bishop White, shows the reverent care which the
family have given to his remains, and has a personal in
terest, in connection with his biography. It is furnished
by the kindness of Mr. Thomas H. Montgomery : —
Philadelphia, St. Barnabas' Day, June n, 1870.
In digging for the foundation walls of the new Parish
Building, at Christ Church, it became necessary to take
down the western wall of the family vault of Robert Mor
ris and the Rt. Rev. William White, D.D. An inspection
of the vault, on a previous occasion, showed that several
of the cases needed care. Twenty-five years ago new
cedar cases had been provided for all the coffins which re
quired them ; but an examination at this time showed the
necessity of again resorting to the same means of protec
tion. Accordingly, in company with my cousin, Thomas
H. Montgomery, the work was this day completed, and
with all the care which love and reverence could suggest.
A few memoranda of what we witnessed and of what
was done are here recorded. The remains of my sisters,
— to wit, Mary H. Bronson and Mrs. H. A. Miller,—
together with those of two of my nephews, viz., William
White and Alfred A. Miller, were deposited in a new case,
with the plates tacked upon the lid. The remains of my
father and mother, Enos and Mary Bronson, — and of a
13

194 APPENDIX.
very small child, probably Bird Wilson Bronson, were
placed together in a new case and designated as above.
Those of Uncle and Aunt Morris were placed together in
a new case. Those of Caroline, wife of Robert Mor
ris, M.D., were placed in a new case ; and in the same a
few loose bones of an adult, which could not be identified.
The same is to be said of Aunt Macpherson and of Grand
papa ; each was placed in a separate case and marked.
The remains of Aunt White, wife of Thomas H. White;
also of William, son of Grandpapa ; also of A. H.
and Charles Eugene, sons of George H. White; also
George Brinton, son of William White, Jr., — were put
into a new case and marked. Lastly, the remains of
Miss Lewis, great-granddaughter of Mrs. Gen. Wash
ington, were recased. In all eight new cases were pro
vided. No other cases were touched, they not requiring
removal as yet. The entire skeletons of my sister, Mrs.
Miller, and of her son William, were in an admirable state
of preservation. The head of my mother was covered
with hair, — a portion of which I preserved, — but the
bones of the head had crumbled. Hair was also distinctly
recognizable about the head of Robert Morris, a small
portion of which was preserved. The same may be said
of the crumbling skull of Grandpapa, a few hairs of which
were preserved by Thomas H. Montgomery.
The entire skeleton of Grandpapa could be distinctly
traced, the continuity of the extended body, even to the
fingers, being undisturbed ; the bones of the head alone
crumbling. The velvet cap, in which the head had reposed,
was entire, the texture apparently as firm as it had ever
been. And the Episcopal robes, all save the lawn, lay in
graceful folds, as when the body was originally prepared for
burial. The colour had changed to a brownish hue, but the
texture appeared to be perfect, having lost none of its
strength. I preserved a small piece of the stole, and also

APPENDIX. 195
removed, and now have, the silver plate which had fallen
in with the lid of the coffin upon the remains. This plate,
heavily gilded, and almost free from tarnish, was inscribed
as follows : — Rt. Rev. William White, D.D.,
Bishop of the Prot. Epis. Church of the
Diocese of Penn?,
Died July 17th, 1836,
Aged 88 Yrs. 3 Months, & 13 Days.
It was deemed proper to secure this plate for use upon a
new coffin when provided.
To the best of my recollection, the above embraces all
that need be recorded of this painful, yet sacred work, in
the care of the bodies of God's Saints.
William White Bronson.
I fully concur in the account given above by my cousin.
Thomas H. Montgomery.

INDEX.

Alexandria Theological Semi
nary, origin of, 119, 120.
Chase, Philander, Bishop, p. 99, his
career, 110-113; work in Ohio,
122, 123.
Christ Church Parish, origin of, 25 ;
reference to it as his religious
home, 179.
Church in the Revolution, 32-34.
Churchman, Low, origin of name,
126-129; end of the party, 134.
College of Philadelphia, changed to
University of Pennsylvania, 35.
De Lancey, Rev. W. H., his
pamphlets in behalf of Bishop
White, 131, 132.
DuchS, Rev. Mr., his rectorship of
Christ Church, 18; his mystical
studies, 19; forced to go to Eng
land, 32; his return, 35.
Eastern Diocese, why formed,
I-3-
Episcopal Church in America, first
steps in organizing of, 41-44 ; or
ganizing in Connecticut, 44; dif
ferent influences controlling it in
the country, 47 ; laity admitted to
the legislative body, 49, 61 ; feeble
ness of, after the Revolution, 90-
92 ; first signs of strength, 99, 100 ;
growth in New England, 116, 117 ;
dates of first organization in new
dioceses, 124.

General Theological Semi
nary, origin of, 118, 119.
Goldsmith, Oliver, met by Mr.
White in London, 23, 24.
Green, William Mercer, Bishop, fare
well to Convention of 1883, 125.
Griswold, Alexander Viets, Bishop,
99 ; sketch of his life and work,
113-117.
Harrison, Mary, wife of Bishop
White, 27 ; early death, 27.
Hobart, John Henry, Bishop, 99;
sketch of his life and work, 107-
110.
House of Bishops, origin of, 61-63.
Ingersoll, Joseph R., Hon.,
reminiscences of Bishop White,
1 46-1 5 1.
Johnson, Samuel, Dr., meets Mr.
White in England, 23.
Kemper, Jackson, Bishop, 99;
under Bishop White's direction,
and as missionary bishop of the
Northwest, 101-103.
Madison, James, Bishop, 92 ; ad
vises union with Methodists, 95.
Methodists, American, efforts at
union with the Church made by
Dr. Coke, 93-95 ; causes of fail
ure, 96, 97.

198

INDEX.

Missions in the Church, home and
foreign, 120-122.
Muhlenberg, William A., 99; sketch
of his career, 103-107.
Onderdonk, H. U., Bishop, men
tion of, 128 ; election to the Epis
copate, 131 ; reminiscences of
Bishop White, 136-138.
Party spirit in the Church, rise of,
126.
Peters, Rev. Dr., rector of Christ
Church, 18.
Philadelphia as it was after the Re
volution, 69, 70.
Potter, Alonzo, Bishop, reminis
cences of Bishop White, 138-146.
Roman Catholic Church, or
ganized by Bishop Carroll at the
same time, 66-68.
Seabury, Samuel, Bishop, efforts
to obtain consecration, 45 ; rela
tions to Bishop White, 57-60 ; his
part in the General Convention,
60; contrasted with Bishop White,
49-51; large confirmation class,
88 ; bishop of all New England, 98.
Smith, Dr. William, his work in
Maryland, 35 ; author of the In
stitution Office, 137.
Sprague, Dr. W. B., reminiscences
of Bishop White, 135, 136.
Stone, Dr. John S., reminiscences
of Bishop White, 152.
Unitarians in New England, why
not Churchmen, 116, 117; why
none in Connecticut, 126-129;
reason of the defection of King's
Chapel to, 160; capture of Mas
sachusetts by, 167.

Washington, George, President,
his intimate relations with Bishop
White, 70-75.
White, origin of the family, 11.
White, Thomas, comes to America,
12 ; his son's estimate of him, 13.
White, William, mother of, and
family origin, 13 ; son's opinion
of, 14 ; early education of, 15 ;
playing preacher, 16 ; at College
of Philadelphia, 17; studies for
orders, 20 ; in England to be or
dained, 21 ; English relatives, 22 ;
meets Dr. Johnson and Dr. Gold
smith, 23 ; in holy orders, 25 ;
assistant minister, 26; marriage,
27 ; first residence, 28 ; his posi
tion in the Revolution, 28-30;
chaplain of Continental Congress,
30, 31; political position, 36;
made Doctor of Divinity, 36;
" Case of the Episcopal Churches
Considered," 37-40; treatment by
Connecticut Churchmen, 46 ; con
trast between him and Bishop Sea
bury, 46 ; aim to organize the
Church properly, 51; sagacity of
in obtaining consent of American
Government to the Episcopate,
52; elected Bishop, 53; his work
as a leader so far, 54-56 ; trip to
England for consecration, 57;
part in first Episcopal Consecra
tion, 61 ; Presiding Bishop, 62 ;
his work contrasted with that of
Bishop Carroll, 66-68; relations
with General Washington, 70-75 ;
persona] portrait of the man, 77-
87 ; confirms his wife and children,
87 ; other confirmations, 88 ; cost
of his consecration in England,
92; position as a Churchman,
127; address to Convention be
fore electing an Assistant Bishop,
128-130 ; insulted in his Conven-

INDEX.

199

tion, 132 ; reminiscences, 135-152 ;
dislike to be honoured, 152; his
study and library habits, 153-155 ;
his various writings, 155-162 ;
method with candidates for orders,
162 ; pubhc feeling toward him in
Philadelphia, 164 ; bishops con
secrated by him, in 1832, 166; his
last days, 168 ; details of his ill

ness, 169-174; funeral, 175;
value of his " Case of Episcopal
Churches Considered," 183 ; his
difficulties, 184-186; how his in
fluence was felt, 186; compared
with Hobart and Griswold, 187-
189; representative Churchman,
189-192 ; reinterment of his re
mains, 193.

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