Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses at the Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885.Episcopal Church. Diocese of Connecticut
Religion
Report of Commemorative Services with the Sermons and Addresses at the Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885.
Episcopal Church. Diocese of Connecticut
Seabury, Samuel, 1729-1796
The reverent care and caution with which the offices of sacred
worship are approached are apparent. These are no signs of a
hesitancy which is doubtful of its position. They indicate rather
the strength of assurance which hesitates to touch the gift
entrusted to it lest touching may end in tampering. In the same
year in which these careful steps were taken, another convention,
in six days, revised the entire Book of Common Prayer, with all
its Offices and with the "Articles of Religion"; the result being
a book which underwent amendments in four States, had its
ratification postponed in another, was rejected in still another,
and was not considered at all in five. The contrast in results is
quite as striking as that in spirit and methods of action.
We also see, unless I greatly err, in his action in regard to the
changes in the State prayers and his own office for the Holy
Communion, Bishop Seabury's ideal of the position of a bishop in
the Church of God. And this view is confirmed by the entire course
of his Episcopate. What was established by competent authority, he
"required." What was not so established, however much his own
heart might be set upon it, he "recommended." When the first great
Bishop of New Zealand met his first synod, he uttered these noble
words: "I believe the monarchical idea of the Episcopate to be as
foreign to the true mind of the Church as it is adverse to the
Gospel doctrine of humility. I would rather resign my office than
be reduced to act as a single isolated being. It remains, then, to
define by some general principle the terms of our co-operation.
They are simply these: that neither will I act without you, nor
can you act without me." Of course, a bishop who takes this line
must lay his account with the charge that he seeks to avoid
responsibility. But he may comfort himself with the recollection
that had he taken the other line, the same persons who lament his
timidity would be sure to charge him with arrogant assumption. If
Seabury did not utter Selwyn's very words, he acted them. Nor is
it more or less than the very truth to say that in all his
Episcopate he exemplified the counsel of the Son of Sirach: "If
thou be made the master, lift not thyself up, but be among them as
one of the rest" [Footnote: Ecclus. xxii. I.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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