EPISCOPACY IN MASSACHUSETTS.*
FEW harder tasks were ever attempted than to organise Episcopacy in Massachusetts, and yet fewer tasks have been more successful. In the finest square of the Boston of the present day, surrounded with noble architecture, stands the grand church in which ministered for many years Phillips Brooks, one of the first of modern preachers and one of the • The Life and Times of Itdeard Bass, First Btshop of Massachusetts. By Daniel Danny Ad.I.eun. Boston. ilough.00. Minim. and Co. 112s most charming of men. But to a Puritan of the narrow and stiff little Boston of the seventeenth century such a pheno- menon as the presence of an imposing Episcopal church in the very centre of the old Puritan city would have been an incredible scandal. "Did we not come here to put an end to all that ? " he would have asked, and not quite unnaturally. However, there stands the great church, and in the city and the State there are many other churches of the same faith; and yet the essential ideas of the old Puritan Commonwealth are not only far from being dead, but they are by none more securely guarded than by some of those who gather in churches stamped by the Puritans as idolatrous and hostile to the spirit of liberty. How this remarkable result has been brought to pass may be in a measure inferred from the present work. From a merely literary point of view, Mr. Addison might have made his work more interesting ; but he has conceived that his duty is rather to give to his readers as many original documents as
possible, so that much of the book is composed of letters and copies of documents throwing light on the theme. While we should have desired more in the way of pictures of life among the clergy of Massachusetts in the last century, we think this work is nevertheless of considerable value as showing how, under very difficult circumstances, the small sapling of English Episcopacy grew up into the sturdy and very healthy tree of the present time.
Edward Bass was the direct descendant of John Alden, the famous Puritan soldier who wooed the maiden Priscilla on behalf of his friend Miles Standish, of which incident Long- fellow has made a charming poem. Born in 1726, he entered Harvard College at the early age of thirteen. It is interest- ing to learn what was the mental pabulum of the student of theology at Harvard at that time. On March 2nd, 1742, the Faculty agreed that, in addition to classics and Greek Testament, the following books were to be daily studied : Compendium Logicz extracted from In Grand, Locke on the Understanding, Euclid's Elements, Gordon's Geographical Grammar, Dr. Watts's Astronomy, and Gravesande's Natural Philosophy. When Bass took his Master's degree, his thesis. was, "Will the blessed in the future world, after the Last Judgment, make use: of articulate speech, and will that be Hebrew " He answered both questions in the affirmative. Brought up in what was then the established religion of Massachusetts—Independency —Bass witnessed the advent of Whitefield in the colony, and it was thought that he did much to detach some of the Puritan colonists from their form of religion. However that may be, small Episcopal churches did rise up in the colony, and to one of these, St. Paul's, in what is still the very charming town of New- buryport, Bass was attached as assistant or curate in 1751, his selection being partly determined by his gentlemanly bearing. He had to repair to London to be ordained, and this he did in the following year. The journey was a serious one in those times, and it was costly; but the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel undertook part of the expense. The young clergyman returned and settled down in his parish, and we hear for some time of modest records of good work done in a quiet way, of baptisms, once or twice, of negroes who were at that time, it should be remembered, slaves even in Massachusetts. Newburyport was a great seat of the Methodist revival under Whitefield, and, as we have said, it was thought to have aided the Epis- copal Church in gaining ground. Bass describes the usual strange phenomena resulting from Whitefield's preaching as were seen in England. The position of the Episcopal Church in Massachusetts was not at that time very attractive. It must be understood that under the old system of things the town in Massachusetts was governed by the Church members,—i.e., the communicants of the Established Church of Independency. Episcopacy was looked upon, as savouring of English Toryism, and probably on the whole there was some truth in the idea, though, as Mr. Addison has shown, some of the most distinguished men in the Revolution, such as Washington, Patrick Henry, Hamilton, and others of the fathers of the Republic, were members of the Episcopal Church. Bass himself was a very mild Tory, friendly to the English Royal house, attached also to colonial liberty, but scarcely prepared to adopt the Whig attitude of independence which, as students of the American Revolution know, manifested itself some time before the Revolution actually broke out. The first champion
of the idea of independence was an occupant of the pulpit of the West Church in Boston, now a leading Unitarian church of that city, one Jonathan Mayhew. He always aimed at spreading the notion that the Church of England was synonymous with Toryism and servility towards the throne, and therefore when the Revolution took place it was easy to see that suspicions would fall on the clergy and members of the small but earnest Episcopal churches of the colony. This was what took place, and the bulk of the " loyalists " of Massachusetts were probably of the English Church.
Bass himself took up a very honourable and wise position. As we have said, his sympathies were mildly Tory, but he felt that he was first and foremost a Christian teacher, and that he ought to do little or nothing to plunge his church into politics. As soon as he saw that the people had made up their minds to shake off the Royal yoke and to establish an independent Republic, he determined to accept the situation, and attach himself in his public services to the national cause :—
"There were two courses for him to pursue, either to flee from his parish, as the other ministers had done, and destroy the religious influence which he had built up during a quarter of a century, and wreck his church and all that pertained to it ; or, without doing any overt act of disloyalty to the English King or Church, continue quietly in his parish abiding the issues of war. This latter course he adopted ; and by reason of his action he kept his church open uninterruptedly during the Revolution, and at the end of it his parish was strong and able to take a promi- nent part in the organisation of the American Episcopal Church."
He first insisted on prayers for Congress as well as for the King, and when kingship went under, and the Republic was an accomplished fact, he omitted the old prayers for the Royal family of England, and anticipated the forms of the American Prayer-book as we find it at the present time. In taking this course he pleased the zealots of neither side, and a long correspondence went on with the Bishops in England as to whether such an avowed Republican should be con- sidered a loyal member of the Church. But Base saw clearly, as did other prominent men in the Episcopal Church, that the Revolution had rendered the old position of that Church impossible. Either a real American Episcopal Church quite independent of England, born out of the soil, must be created, or the Episcopal order would die out of American life. The Church must be reorganised, and be made self-governing. At the same time, the Episcopal succession must be obtained through the Episcopate of England. Sherlock, as Bishop of London, had taken a sensible view of the matter long before. He had said that it was impossible for the Bishop of London to supervise the affairs of such a distant land, and Bishop Butler had made an outline in 1750 for an American Episcopate. The time was now ripe for the organisation of an American Church. Three Bishops, Seabury of Connecticut, Provoost of New York, and White of Pennsylvania, had been consecrated in this country, Seabury by the Scottish Episcopate. The new era had begun. But, as showing bow the ecclesiastical system had been affected by the democracy of the Revolution, the feeling spread that, in the first place, the laity as well as the clergy must have a substantial voice in the Church government, and, in the second place, that the creeds and articles of the Church must be revised. Bass him- self took this view. He favoured the elimination of the Athanaeian Creed, optional use of the Nicene, a code of Church laws or canons, and while giving some power to the Bishops, yet making of a General Council the dernier ressort. His course of action has been largely adopted, with the result that the American Episcopal Church is one of the best and most democratic Churches of the Christian world, and in the reforming of the English Church, if reform there is to be, the Church in the United State s might well be turned to for guidance and aid in this direction.
Obviously it was necessary to create a bishopric in Massachusetts, and just as obviously Bass was marked out for the office. The clergy of the State and of the Province of New Hampshire, not yet made into a separate State, met at Salem in June, 1789 (just a month after a more celebrated gathering met at Versailles), and there they elected Bass Bishop, and also prayed the Bishops of New York, Pennsyl- vania, and Connecticut to invest him with the episcopal office. This, as a matter of fact, was not done for several years, Bass being consecrated in Philadelphia in May, 1797. The long delay was in part due to the discussion as to the rights
of the laity to help in ruling the Church. Bishop Bass enjoyed the deep respect of his flock and of his fellow-citizens down to his death, which took place in 1803. He appears to have retained that gentlemanly bearing which helped to win for him his first charge; and the picture we have of him in old age, clad in a long black coat, with pocket-folds and small- clothes, with black silk stockings, living on intimate terma with his people and smoking his pipe with them after dinner, is pleasing. His policy was one of conciliation. "He wanted the Puritans to see that a Bishop was a spiritual head of hia diocese, and not an arrogant usurper of authority." That policy was not only carried out by Bass, but it has been adhered to by his successors, with the result that to-day in the great Puritan city the Protestant Episcopal Church holds high place in the minds of the citizens, and is perhaps more to the front than any other religions body in ethical and social reform.
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