Samuel Seabury

Samuel Seabury.
Painting by Ralph Earl , 1785.

Samuel Seabury (born November 30, 1729 in Ledyard , Groton , Connecticut , † February 25, 1796 in New London , Connecticut) was the first Bishop of Connecticut and thus also the first bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America at all. 1789-92 he was also the presiding bishop of this church.

biography

Early years

Seaburys father Samuel Seabury (1706-1764) was originally pastor of the Congregationalist community in Groton, but confessed around 1729 to Anglicanism . It is possible that he was influenced in this change of heart by his wife, who came from an Anglican family. In 1730, Seabury Senior was ordained a deacon and priest of the Church of England and served as a pastor in New London, Connecticut (from 1732 to 1743), and then until his death in Hempstead , Long Island .

The younger Samuel Seabury first studied at Yale University ( BA 1748). He then took theology lessons from his father and began his church career in 1742 as a catechist in the Huntington Congregation . In 1752 he went to Scotland to study medicine for a year at the University of Edinburgh . Eventually, however, he opted for the priestly career and was ordained a deacon on December 21, 1753, first by John Thomas, Bishop of Lincoln , and two days later by Richard Osbaldeston, Bishop of Carlisle , a priest. From May 1754 to December 1757 he served as a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in the congregation of Christ's Church in New Brunswick, New Jersey . In October 1756 he married Mary Hicks, the daughter of a New Yorker. In January 1757 he took up the parish of the barely twenty parish of Jamaica , a neighboring town of Hempstead, his father's parish. After ten years he moved in December 1766 to the congregation of St. Peter's Church in Westchester, from where he also looked after the Eastchester congregation, a total of about 200 believers. For financial reasons, Seabury also felt compelled to earn extra income through teaching and medical services. Since the population in New England, like on Long Island, mostly belonged to non-conformist sects such as Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Quakers, Seabury had to ensure that his few believers did not decide to convert to their parishes.

American Revolution

During the American Revolution he made a name for himself as one of the opinion leaders of the Tories (loyalists). A pamphlet, Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress , which he wrote under the pseudonym "AW Farmer" (short for A Westchester Farmer , "A Farmer from Westchester") had a great impact as Tory propaganda . It so upset the revolutionaries that copies of the script were publicly destroyed (one was symbolically tarred and feathered ). Seabury attacked the resolutions and the legitimacy of the first continental congress, in the course of which the delegates of the insurgent colonies had decided to boycott British goods. Seabury denigrated the import ban as a selfish conspiracy of wealthy traders who wanted to take advantage of the expected shortage of goods. He especially called on the farmers of the New York colony to oppose the measures, as they would be hit hardest by the simultaneous export ban. At the same time he warned the revolutionaries against taking up arms, since an uprising in the colonies was hopeless in view of the strength of the British army. In response to Seabury's “letter” from the revolutionaries , a pamphlet, signed under the pseudonym A Friend of America , and entitled A Full Vindication of the Measures of the Congress, from the Calumnies of their Enemies , appeared in December of that year . It was the political debut of the young Alexander Hamilton , later one of the " founding fathers " of the USA, who at that time had stayed in the colonies for barely a year but, despite his studies at the loyal King's College, had already devoted himself entirely to the cause of the insurgents . Until the spring of 1775, this pen war between the two unknown authors lasted an exchange of blows with pamphlets and counter-pamphlets, all of which appeared in the press of the printer James Rivington . First Seabury intensified his attacks in The Congress Canvassed , in which he reiterated his demand for the primacy of the (British) Parliament in an increasingly irritated tone, shortly afterwards he left the pamphlets A View of the Controversy between Great-Britain and her Colonies and An Follow the Alarm to the Legislature of New York . Hamilton again responded with an approximately 80-page essay, The Farmer Refuted . Seabury, however, continued his political agitation and was one of the most prominent signatures of a petition drawn up in April 1775 at a gathering of loyalists in White Plains.

In November 1775 Seabury was abducted from his home by a group of armed Whigs under the command of Isaac Sears , one of the leading members of the Sons of Liberty , and taken to New Haven Prison; then the militiamen rode to New York, where they devastated Rivington's printing works. Seabury was held captive for a total of six weeks. After it could not be proven that he was the "Westchester Farmer" (he did not admit his authorship until 1783), he was initially released and initially returned to Westchester, where he found his house and church looted. He continued to be harassed by the revolutionaries and arrested again for a short time. After the Battle of Long Island he fled like thousands of other loyalists to New York, which is now again under British control.

In December 1777, Oxford University awarded him an honorary doctorate in theology. Two months later, Seabury became chaplain of the King's American Regiment , formed from loyalist refugees to reinforce the British Army. In addition, he worked during the war years as a chaplain of the New York hospital and as a doctor in the poor house of the city.

Seabury as bishop

After the end of the Revolutionary War, the American Anglicans found the need to ordain new pastors by English bishops to be increasingly impractical, so some clergymen, particularly from Connecticut, decided to request that one of their own ranks be ordained to let. At a meeting of ten pastors in Woodbury on March 25, 1783, two candidates were selected for the office to be created, Seabury and Jeremiah Leaming. After Leaming rejected the request, however, Seabury was the only bishopric in June to go to England.

In England, however, the bishops refused to ordain him because, as an American citizen , he could not take the oath of supremacy on the king. After a year of unsuccessful negotiations, Seabury finally went to Scotland, where the bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church listened to his request. This numerically very small church had split off in 1689 from the Church of Scotland , which abolished the episcopate after the Glorious Revolution and was now again entirely Presbyterian . In the schism that broke out in the Church of England at the same time , these Scottish episcopals were also linked to those English bishops (the so-called " non-jurors " ) who refused the new king to take the oath of supremacy because they were still attached to the house by their previous oath Stuart saw bound. This situation also set a precedent which, decades later, allowed the Scottish bishops to consecrate Seabury as Bishop of Connecticut, a diocese outside Scotland, because between 1715 and 1725 the Scottish bishops also ordained three bishops for the nonjuring Church of England. When Seabury came to Scotland in 1784, three of the only four remaining bishops of the Scottish nonjurors spoke out in favor of the ordination of Seabury, only Charles Rose, Bishop of Dunblane, refused to give his consent, since Seabury had received his ordination in the Church of England. On November 14, 1784 , they consecrated him in Aberdeen as Bishop of Connecticut. The bishops who participated in his ordination were: The Right Reverend Robert Kilgour, 39th Bishop of Aberdeen , The Right Reverend Arthur Petrie, 37th Bishop of Moray, Ross and Caithness, and The Right Reverend John Skinner, Bishop Coadjutor of Aberdeen. The anniversary of his ordination is now a feast day in both the Episcopal Church of the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada .

In 1785 he returned to Connecticut and settled there in New London , where he took over the parish of St. James's Church. The validity of his episcopal ordination was often questioned initially, but was ultimately recognized by the general assembly of the newly founded Episcopal Church in 1789. In 1790 Seabury also took over the leadership of the Diocese of Rhode Island . In 1792 he took his only episcopal ordination and consecrated together with the bishops William White , Samuel Provoost and James Madison , who in 1787 resp. Had been ordained by English bishops in 1790, Thomas J. Claggett as Bishop of Maryland , thus uniting the Scottish and English episcopal succession in the American Episcopal Church. Seabury died in New London on February 25, 1796 .

Descendants

His son Charles (1770-1844) was rector in various churches on Long Island; the son of Charles, Samuel (1801–1872), in turn, who graduated from Columbia University in 1823 , was rector of the Church of the Annunciation in New York City between 1838 and 1868 and from 1862 professor of biblical studies and exegesis at the General Theological Seminary . His son (Samuel Seabury's great-grandson), William Jones Seabury (* 1837), succeeded his father as Rector of the Church of the Annunciation from 1868 to 1898 and in 1873 became Professor of Church Order and Canon Law at the General Theological Seminary. William Jones Seabury also published a Manual for Choristers (1878), as well as the Lectures on Apostolic Succession (1893) and An Introduction to the Study of Ecclesiastical Polity (1894).

Honors

At the corner of 96th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan , a small park is named after him. The park has no direct connection to the places where he lived, but it is not far from the cathedral of the Diocese of New York .

Fonts

The following sermons and tracts from Seabury were printed:

• Free thoughts on the proceedings of the Continental Congress ... (1774)
• The Congress Canvassed: or, an Examination into the Conduct of the Delegates, at their Grand Convention, Held in Philadelphia, Sept. I, 1774. Addressed to the Merchants of New-York. By AW Farmer, Author of Free Thoughts, & c. (1774)
• A View of the Controversy between Great-Britain and her Colonies: including a Mode of Determining their present Disputes, finally and effecually, and of Preventing All Future Contentions. In a letter, to the Author of A Full Vindication of the Measures of the Congress. (1774)
• An Alarm to the Legislature of the Province of New-York, occasioned by the present Political Disturbances in North America; Addressed to the Honorable Representatives in General Assembly convened. (1775)
• A Discourse on II Tim. iii, 16. Delivered in St. Paul's and St. George's Chapels, in New York, on Sunday the 9nth of May 1777. (1777)
• Discourse on Brotherly Love, Preached before the Hon. Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons, of Zion Lodge, at St. Paul's Chapel, in New-York, on the Festival of St John the Baptist, 1777. (1777)
• St. Peter's Exhortation to fear God and honor the King, explained and inculcated; in a Discourse addressed to His Majesty's Provincial Troops, in Camp at King's-Bridge, on Sunday the 28th Sept. 1777. (1777)
• A Sermon, preached before the Grand Lodge, and the other Lodges of Ancient Free-masons, in New-York, at St. Paul's Chapel, on the Anniversary of St. John the Evangelist, 1782. (1783)
• The Address of the Episcopal Clergy of Connecticut, to the Right Reverend Bishop Seabury, with the Bishop's Answer. Also, Bishop Seabury's first Charge, to the Clergy of his Diocess, (1785)
• Bishop Seabury's Second Charge, to the Clergy of his Diocess, Delivered at Derby, on the 22d of September, 1786. (1786)
• A Sermon delivered before the Boston Episcopal Charitable Society, at Trinity Church; at their Anniversary Meeting on Easter Tuesday March 25, 1788. (1788)
• The Duty of Considering our Ways. - A sermon preached in St. James' Church, New-London, on Ashwednesday, 1789. (1789)
• An Earnest Persuasive to Frequent Communion; Addressed to those Professors of the Church of England, in Connecticut, who neglect that Holy Ordinance (1789)
• An Address to the Ministers and Congregations of the Presbyterian and Independent persuasions in the United States of America. By a Member of the Episcopal Church (1790)
• A Discourse, delivered in St. John's Church, in Portsmouth, Newhampshire, at the conferring the Order of Priesthood on the Rev. Robert Fowle, on the festival of St. Peter, 1791. (1791)
• A Discourse delivered before the Triennial Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, in Trinity-Church, New-York, on the Twelfth day of September, 1792. (1792)
• Discourses on Several Subjects. (2 volumes, 1793)
• A Discourse delivered at St. James's Church, in New-London, on Tuesday the 23d of December, 1794; before an Assembly of Free and Accepted Masons, convened for the purpose of installing a Lodge in that City (1795)
• A discourse. Delivered before an Assembly of Free and Accepted Masons, Convened for the purpose of Installing a Lodge in the City of Norwich, in Connecticut, on the Festival of St. John the Baptist, 1795. (1795?)
• Discourses on Several Important Subjects. Published from Manuscripts prepared by the Author for the Press. (1798)

literature

• E. Edwards Beardsley: Life and Correspondence of the Right Reverend Samuel Seabury . Houghton, Mifflin & Co, Boston, 1881.
• E. Edwards Beardsley: The History of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut . 2 volumes. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston 1983. Volume I: From the Settlement of the Colony to the Death of Bishop Seabury ( digitized ).
• Philip Gould: Wit and Politics in Revolutionary British America : The Case of Samuel Seabury and Alexander Hamilton . In: Eighteenth-Century Studies 41: 3, 2008. pp. 383-403.
• Ross N. Hebb: Samuel Seabury and Charles Inglis: Two Bishops, Two Churches. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison NJ 2010.
• Gerald B. Hertz: Bishop Seabury . In The English Historical Review 26: 101, 1911. pp. 57-75
• Anne W. Rowthorn: Samuel Seabury, a Bicentennial Biography . The Seabury Press, New York 1983.
• William Jones Seabury: Memoir of Bishop Seabury . Edwin S. Gorham, New York 1908.
• John Skinner: Annals of Scottish Episcopacy from the Year 1788 to the Year 1816 . Edinburgh, 1818.
• Bruce E. Steiner: Samuel Seabury, 1729-1796: A Study in the High Church Tradition. Ohio University Press, Athens OH 1971.
• Samuel Wilberforce: A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America . Rivingtons, London 1856.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biographical information, unless otherwise stated, from: Franklin Bowditch Dexter: Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College. Vol. II ( May, 1745 − May, 1763 ). Henry Holt & Co., New York 1896. pp. 179ff.
2. ↑ On the "Pamphlet War" s. Gould, Wit and Politics in Revolutionary British America ; Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick: The Age of Federalism . Oxford University Press, New York 1993. pp. 96-97; Ron Chernow: Alexander Hamilton . Penguin, New York 2004. pp. 57-61.
3. ↑ Ron Chernow : Alexander Hamilton . Penguin, New York 2004, pp. 68-69.
4. ^ Gavin White: The Consecration of Samuel Seabury. In: Scottish Historical Review 63, 1984. pp. 37-49.