Charles J. Stille 
 
 Christ Church, Phila-cJ.elT^hia, 
 and the Province of 
 Pennsylvania. 
 

 ^'iOGlCALSt*^^^ 
 
 "By 5^20 
 
 ^8 
 

 Christ Church, Philadelphia, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 PROVINCE OF PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES J. STILLE, LL-D. 
 
 
St---,' - 
 
 THE 
 
 HISTORICAL RELATIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 Christ Church, Philadelphia, 
 
 WITH THE 
 
 PROVINCE OF PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE TWO HUNDREDTH 
 
 ANNIVERSARY OF CHRIST CHURCH, 
 
 NOVEMBER 19, 1895, 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES J. STILLE, LL.D. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 PRESS OF P. C. STOCKHAUSEN, 55 N. 7TH ST. 
 
 1895. 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 PROVINCE OF PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 /^l^HE history of the indirect influence of Christ Church 
 1^^ upon the lay element in Pennsylvania, in the pro- 
 vincial era, is not as interesting nor as attractive 
 a topic as the ecclesiastical history proper of the Church. 
 The most conspicuous examples of such influence are to 
 be found in the repeated but unsuccessful efforts made by 
 members of this congregation to persuade the King to sub- 
 vert the Proprietary government, the administration and 
 policy of which they alleged tended to destroy the exercise 
 of their rights and privileges, civil and religious, as free- 
 born Englishmen. On four different occasions at least in 
 seventy years, its members were the leaders of such a 
 movement, and I propose in treating of the topic which 
 has been assigned to me to explain why they adopted 
 such revolutionary measures to destroy the government 
 under which they lived. 
 
 The lay element in Philadelphia society in provincial 
 days belonging to the dominant religious sect, may be said 
 to have been for many years unfriendly to the doctrine and 
 discipline of the Church of England, and it watched the 
 growth in strength and power of Christ Church with suspi- 
 cion and jealousy. From the beginning there were two 
 parties here : the Church party and the Quaker party. 
 The former contended that its opponent had usurped power 
 not granted by the Charter of the Province, to the mani- 
 
fest injury of the civil and religious rights of other free- 
 born Englishmen. Strange to say, Christ Church although 
 flourishing for more than seventy years in a peaceful com- 
 munity, with absolute freedom of worship, the right to 
 which had never even been questioned by the Quaker 
 rulers of the Province nor by anyone else, was in a very 
 important sense a Church Militant. Indeed, I do not think 
 it is going too far to say that in no American Colony were 
 the Church and those who dissented from it during many 
 years placed in more open and violent antagonism. The 
 Quakers formed for a long time the dominant party in the 
 Province, and Churchmen alleged that it exercised at times 
 its power in such a way as to conflict with the traditional 
 religious beliefs and practices of the members of the 
 Established Church. The latter, feeble in number, con- 
 stantly resorted to the Imperial power in England to main- 
 tain what they claimed to be their civil and their religious 
 rights and privileges. They petitioned the King to force 
 the Quaker magistrates to take such oaths of office as were 
 customary and obligatory in England, and to which alone 
 they attributed any binding legal force here. They asked 
 that the juries and witnesses in the courts should come 
 under the same formal obligation, that the right of petition, 
 which they alleged the Quakers had set at naught, should 
 be maintained as sacred, and that they should be forced to 
 place the Province in a state of defence against the pirates 
 and Indians, by whose incursions they were threatened. 
 Feeling that there was little prospect of compelling the 
 Quakers to adopt any such measures of legislation in the 
 Provincial Assembly as the emergency required, they 
 earnestly urged the King to dispossess the Proprietor, to 
 dissolve the existing government, and to govern Pennsyl- 
 vania henceforth as a Royal Province, 
 
There is a popular opinion that the Provincial Regime 
 in Pennsylvania was marked not only by religious tolera- 
 tion, but by absolute religious freedom ; that there was, 
 during this provincial era, a kind of idyllic tranquility and 
 harmony here, resulting from non-interference with the 
 religious rights and opinions of those who did not agree 
 with the ruling party. Those who hold such opinions for- 
 get that although William Penn, our founder, was the most 
 enlightened political philosopher of his time, and one of 
 the earliest advocates, since the days of the Emperor Con- 
 stantine, of absolute religious freedom, none of his succes- 
 sors in office held the same opinions as he. There was not 
 a Quaker among them. They and their Deputy Governors 
 during the whole Provincial Regime were strong adherents 
 of the English Church, as by law established, and in an 
 important sense special patrons of Christ Church. Their 
 notion of other people's religious rights did not extend 
 beyond the protection vouchsafed to Dissenters by the 
 English Toleration Act (so called) of 1689. They held 
 that the Quakers had no special power in this Province to 
 enlarge the indulgence granted by that Act. The history, 
 therefore, of the comparatively small body of Episcopalians 
 here, or of the members of Christ Church (for I use in this 
 paper the terms as equivalent), is a history of strife for 
 objects which we may now think trivial, but which both 
 parties, two hundred years ago, looked upon as fundamental. 
 It is, of course, not pleasant to recall the history of more 
 than seventy years of religious discords but I trust that we 
 are now far enough away from the battle-field to describe 
 its scenes with impartiality and truth. If I am forced to 
 " rake up the ashes of our fathers," 1 trust that it will not be 
 necessary to disturb them further than to throw light upon 
 the scenes in which they were such conspicuous actors. 
 
6 
 
 By the " great law " adopted by the freemen at Upland 
 in December, 1682, it was provided that "no person now 
 or hereafter living in the Province, who shall confess one 
 Almighty God to be the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of 
 the world, and professeth himself or herself obliged in con- 
 science to live peaceably and justly under civil government, 
 shall in any wise be molested or prejudiced for his or her 
 conscientious persuasion and practices ; nor shall be obliged 
 at any time to frequent or maintain any religious worship, 
 place or ministry, contrary to his mind, but shall fully and 
 freely enjoy his or her liberty in that respect without any 
 interruption or molestation." This provision, it will be 
 observed, establishes religious toleration, not liberty. 
 
 Before the Charter was granted by the King, it was sub- 
 mitted to the Bishop of London and an amendment was 
 made to it, at his instance, providing that that Bishop 
 should have power to appoint a chaplain for the service of 
 any congregation, consisting of not less than twenty persons, 
 who might desire such a minister. Out of the different 
 interpretation which was placed by the Quakers and by the 
 Church people on this innocent looking provision, arose all 
 the bitterness of the controversy which characterised the 
 relations of these religious bodies during the Provincial 
 era. There never was, it seems to me, a religious dispute 
 in which each side was more sincere in maintaining oppo- 
 site views. The Quakers insisted that the principal object 
 which Penn had in view in founding the Colony, was to 
 secure a place of refuge and safety for those of his followers 
 who were exposed to persecution in England, and where 
 they might with absolute freedom maintain their creed and 
 practice their profession ; that all acts of the government 
 should be subordinated to carrying out such a scheme, 
 called by its leader " the Holy Experiment," and that any 
 
act of Governmeut, Imperial or Provincial, wliicli inter- 
 preted the Charter in any other way, was repugnant to its 
 spirit if not to its letter. 
 
 The conditions imposed by law on the power of the 
 Legislative Assembly, and to which they all heartily agreed, 
 were that they should not deny liberty of worship to those 
 who differed from them and should not deny to any one the 
 rights of Englishmen. The Quakers had, of course, the 
 entire control of the legislative body, and they practically 
 determined how far the privilege granted b}^ the Charter 
 extended. In their early legislation here they made what 
 turned out to be (as Penn had tried in vain to convince 
 them) a serious mistake, and that was by sometimes acting 
 as if this was a Quaker colony exclusively, possessed of 
 certain privileges to which, as refugees and as Quakers, 
 they considered themselves entitled, and to which all the 
 inhabitants must conform ; and not, as it really was, in law 
 and in intention, a colony of free-born Englishmen, all of 
 whom were entitled to the privileges granted by the Charter, 
 as well as those common law rights of Englishmen which 
 they had not forfeited by crossing the sea, whether they 
 belonged to the Society of Friends or not. In those days 
 a limited toleration, strictly laid down by a formal statute, 
 was the only one which was recognized by English or 
 Provincial law. The natural right to religious liberty, as 
 it is now called, was not asserted, except by a stray philos- 
 opher, until the period of our Revolution. Toleration in 
 that era meant simply an exemption from the penalties 
 which had been imposed upon Dissenters from the Estab- 
 lished Church by various statutes which had been enacted 
 since the Reformation. 
 
 The utmost limit of that toleration was reached by a 
 statute of the first year of William and Mary, 1689, com- 
 
8 
 
 monly called " the Toleration Act," which relieved certain 
 Dissenters, including Quakers who took the Test and made 
 the Declaration against certain Roman Catholic dogmas, 
 from penalties to which at the time they were amenable. 
 The early legislation here of the Assembly, professed to 
 give a wider or freer toleration than that granted in England 
 by that Act. Hinc illae lacrymae. 
 
 The English Churchman in this Province, and especially 
 the English clergyman sent here by the Bishop of London, 
 regarded all these pretensions of the Quakers as unfounded, 
 illegal and extravagant. The clergyman when ordered 
 here for duty by the Bishop of London might be a poor 
 missionary, but he was a member of what he called the 
 Established Church in America, and he brought with him, 
 in his opinion, the whole power of that Church, with all 
 the rights and immunities with which it was clothed in 
 England. He had a lofty conception of the inherent dig- 
 nity of his office. The Bishop of London was his lawful 
 superior, he alone having jurisdiction over him, and in his 
 church courts alone could he be called upon to account for 
 any offence in which the rights of conscience or his rights 
 as a clergyman were involved. The tenure of his office 
 was life-long ; his congregation and his vestry had no con- 
 trol either in choosing or deposing him. With many of 
 the clergy sent to this country, it was a favorite maxim 
 that vestries were useless bodies, and they held to the old- 
 world doctrine that the clergy should be supported by the 
 State ; if not directly by tithes, then by setting apart large 
 tracts of land, the income of which should be reserved for 
 their support. In a word, for many years they held that 
 any action of the Provincial Government which interfered 
 with their status and privileges here, as members of the 
 Established Church of England, as settled by the statutes 
 
of the realm, should be disallowed by the Privy Council ; 
 hence the frequent appeals on their part to the Imperial 
 Government, asking not merely that such action should be 
 declared illegal and void, but that the Proprietary Govern- 
 ment should be abolished as incurably bent on setting 
 aside their privileges, which they claimed as absolute in 
 English law. 
 
 With claims such as these, and with the feeling of supe- 
 riority to their fellow-colonists begotten of those claims, it 
 is not to be wondered at that any act of the Quaker majority 
 of the Assembly, which seemed to dispute their validity, 
 should be severely criticised and opposed by the Episcopal 
 clergy. It is perhaps not too much to say that the Church- 
 men from the beginning, under the lead of Colonel Quarry, 
 the Judge of Admiralty, and the most conspicuous member 
 of the vestry of Christ Church, were anxious to substitute 
 a Royal for a Proprietary Government, but they were 
 ready, before the controversy was closed, to avow that it 
 was their purpose to contend for it. In the meantime, a 
 most uncomfortable feeling existed between the parties, and, 
 any act of the majority which could be construed to con- 
 strain the actions of Churchmen in any way, seemed likely 
 to kindle into a consuming flame the spirit of discord which 
 grew apace with the growth of Christ Church. 
 
 But the clergy were not the only complainants; mur- 
 murs of dissatisfaction were heard among those of the 
 laity, who were not Quakers, that the legislation of the 
 Quaker Provincial Assembly was inconsistant with the 
 Charter and the safety of the Province. No proper pre- 
 paration, it was alleged, was made to protect the inhabitants 
 against the pirates in Delaware Bay, the French and 
 Indians, the Test Oath was made more indulgent in its 
 terms than had been prescribed by Parliament and a general 
 
lO 
 
 disposition, it was said, was shown to govern the Province 
 on Quaker principles, not on those distinctively English. 
 
 To those who have looked on William Penn as the 
 apostle of toleration, it seems indeed strange that the very 
 first complaint made by the vestry and congregation of 
 Christ Church against the legislation of the Assembly and 
 the action of the magistrates under it, was that it violated 
 the civil and religious rights of these Englishmen, inhabi- 
 tants of the Province, who were not Quakers. Yet such was 
 the charge brought before the Privy Council. Within ten 
 years after the settlement of the Province, George Keith, at 
 one time a most zealous Quaker and a very learned man, 
 but who afterwards became a very active church missionary, 
 denounced the leaders of his former friends in a manner, 
 which, to put it mildly, constituted the serious offence (as 
 the Quakers considered it and had so declared by a Provin- 
 cial statue), of "speaking evil of dignities." For this 
 offence Keith was brought before the magistrates (many 
 of whom were members of the Ecclesiastical Meeting, a 
 tribunal which had deposed him from his membership in 
 the Society), and being somewhat bullied by them, he lost 
 his temper and abused his judges in his turn. For this he 
 was nominally condemned to pay a fine, but the Churchmen 
 chose to consider his sentence as really that of an apostate, 
 and not merely the punishment meted out to an offender 
 against the statute which prohibited speaking disrespect- 
 fully of the Government or its ofhcers. His friends, and 
 especially Churchmen, took up his cause with zeal, and as 
 they had no hope of relief from the Provincial Govern- 
 ment, they went to the root of the matter and sent a peti- 
 tion to the Imperial Government, begging it to depose that 
 of the Proprietary. They insisted that Keith had been 
 tried by a tribunal which had no legal authority whatever, 
 
II 
 
 the judges never having been qualified for their office by 
 taking either the oath or affirmation then required of all 
 officials by the Imperial Government. They insisted, too, 
 that Keith had really been condemned for an ecclesiastical, 
 not for a civil offence, and thus that the rights of non- 
 Quakers were put in jeopardy. These charges, which 
 accused the authorities of a flagrant usurpation of power, 
 were formally laid before the Privy Council in England. 
 At the same time it was alleged that the Quakers, owing 
 to their conscientious scruples about war, had taken no 
 measures to protect the shores of Delaware Bay from the 
 incursions of pirates. As William Penn was probably 
 thought by the new sovereigns to be something of a 
 Jacobite, owing to his favor with James II, he was suspended 
 from his government, which was handed over temporarily 
 to Governor Fletcher, of New York. Thus it would appear 
 that the lay element of the Church here, even before the 
 formal organization of Christ Church, was strong enough 
 to induce the English Government to revolutionize the 
 administration, mainly on the ground that the rights of non- 
 Quakers were not adequately protected by the action of the 
 Provincial Assembly which the Quaker majority controlled. 
 It is difficult, I confess, to understand with our present 
 notions of religious liberty, how the Churchmen, possessing, 
 as they did, freedom of worship and the absolute control of 
 the property belonging to their Church, could have made 
 any complaint on that score of a violation of the religious 
 rights of those who were non-Quakers. However this may 
 be, it was evident that the Provincial Assembly did not 
 learn wisdom from experience. In 1698, after the Proprie- 
 tary Government had been restored, the magistrates con- 
 tinued their prosecutions against those who attacked the 
 Provincial Government, and their opponents asked that the 
 
12 
 
 King should take them under his special care, A petition 
 to the Crown requesting that such a change should be made 
 was denounced by the Provincial Magistrates as seditious, 
 and its supposed author was arrested and condemned for 
 violating the statute making it a penal offence to speak 
 disrespectfully of the Government and its officers. To 
 this was added by the non-Quakers a protest against a 
 statute passed in 1700, substituting a new form of test in 
 the room of that which had heretofore been in force by 
 virtue of the Toleration Act, by which the Quakers here 
 were granted a toleration which did not exist in England. 
 All these measures were protested against by the vestry of 
 Christ Church as an invasion of what they called their 
 religious rights as members of the Church of England. 
 They sent a second time a petition to the Privy Council by 
 Colonel Quarry, asking that some remedy for their griev- 
 ances should be found. So great was the influence of this 
 then feeble Church with the Imperial authorities, that they 
 were again led to interpose, and orders were sent out here in 
 1702 requiring that hereafter all persons who wished to 
 celebrate their worship publicly or to hold any office under 
 the Provincial Government without exposing themselves to 
 the law against non-conformity, should be obliged to make 
 a declaration of fidelitv and allegiance to the sovereign and 
 to take the Test ; that is, make a declaration of their dis- 
 belief in certain Roman Catholic Dosfmas in the exact 
 form provided by the Toleration Act. There was at first 
 considerable hesitation here in taking this Test, not that 
 there was any objection to the doctrines it avowed, but the 
 objections were as to the form of the affirmation required. 
 The Assembly was induced in 1705, by what influence I 
 have never have been able clearly to understand, to embody 
 in a statute provisions requiring all persons in the Province 
 
13 
 
 to qualify themselves for taking any office by taking and 
 subscribing the Test and affirming their belief in the Decla- 
 ration as an indispensable qualification before assuming its 
 duties. This Act, which is simply a copy of the English 
 Toleration Act, remained in force up to the time of the 
 Revolution, and it seems to have settled the vexed question 
 how far any one could go astray from the orthodoxy 
 required by the Imperial Government and yet hold office, 
 by pleading that another standard had been set up by the 
 Assembly of the Province. The policy which provided 
 that these Tests should prevail in Pennsylvania was in 
 strict imitation of the widest form of toleration then 
 known in England. If we wish to trace the influence of 
 Christ Church on the lay element during the Provincial 
 era, not only here but in England, we cannot do better 
 than consider carefully the part that she took in this other- 
 wise profitless controversy, and for that reason I have 
 called attention to these long-forgotten quarrels. 1 have 
 alluded to them here only because they jeopardized the 
 existence of the Proprietary Government. 
 
 At this time (1705) the congregation consisted of about 
 five hundred members, and the number of persons in the 
 Province who were Episcopalians was constantly increas- 
 ing. Mission Churches were established at Chester, Oxford, 
 Radnor, New Castle and Dover, which were served by 
 clergymen sent out by the Venerable Society. And as they 
 secured a firmer footing in the Province, the fear which 
 had oppressed the earliest members of the Church that 
 they would perish from their own weakness, gave way to a 
 more hopeful spirit. Still, as late as 17 18, the friends of 
 the Church, both here and in England, endeavored to per- 
 suade Sir William Keith, the most popular of the Proprie- 
 tary Governors, and the one least inclined to stretch his 
 
14 
 
 prerogative, to make an effort to secure permanent legal 
 support for the Church. His answer tells the whole story 
 in a single sentence, " I agree with you," he says, " that 
 the Church should be endowed by the Province, but what 
 can I do for such an object with an Assembly composed of 
 twenty-five Quakers and three Churchmen." 
 
 As time passed on the controversial spirit became less 
 bitter, and indeed differences of opinion grew less marked 
 as people knew each other better. Churchmen became 
 less exclusive and welcomed here in this Church the 
 ministrations of the Swedish Lutheran clergyman who 
 had charge of the Swedish Mission here. For many years 
 the services of the Church were in charge at different 
 times of Rudman, Sandel, Lidman, Hesselius and Lin- 
 denius, who were recognized as in full communion with 
 the Church of England, although they had been ordained 
 by the Archbishop of Upsal and not by the English 
 Bishops. As one remarkable result of this fraternal spirit, 
 and as illustrating how the influence of this Church 
 extended beyond its borders, I may remind you that four 
 churches originally Swedish in this State, one in Delaware 
 and one in New Jersey, became, at different times, by the 
 almost unanimous vote of their congregations, constituent 
 members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United 
 States. 
 
 In speaking of the influence of the members of this 
 congregation on public affairs during the Provincial era, I 
 must not forget to claim for some of them the great honor 
 of having been the founders and the early guardians of the 
 College and Academy of Philadelphia. Dr. Franklin, who 
 first conceived the plan of this establishment, and sought 
 with characteristic vigor to organize it by securing money 
 for its endowment and selecting its professors, was a pew- 
 
15 
 
 holder in this Church, although he disclaimed anj^ inten- 
 tion of making the College a Church institution. He 
 preferred that in a Province such as this, it should rest 
 upon what was called in those days the " broad bottom," 
 that is, that it should be independent of the control of any 
 Church or denomination. But when he looked around for 
 those who would appreciate and support his project, he was 
 obliged to take from this Congregation mainly the men of 
 education and of means who would aid him. His first 
 choice for Rector or Head Master of the Academy was the 
 Rev. Richard Peters, one of the most scholarly men in the 
 Province, who had long held the important place of Secre- 
 tary of the Land Office and afterwards for nearly ten years 
 was the Rector of Christ Church. Finding it impossible 
 to induce Mr. Peters to accept the place, he made the final 
 choice of Rev. William Smith, a man of indomitable 
 energy, of very considerable learning and of great organ- 
 izing power. Mr. Smith was an Episcopal clergyman of 
 high reputation, and, as far as a man in his position could 
 be, he was a member of this Congregation. He gave life 
 and vigor to the skeleton plan which Dr. Franklin had 
 sketched out. His experience as a teacher and his various 
 learning led him afterwards into paths where Dr. Franklin 
 could not follow him, yet his scheme of college education, 
 in accordance with the universal judgment of scholars, for 
 more than a hundred years formed the true model for the 
 liberal training of young men in this country. He induced 
 the Trustees of the Academy, shortly after his induc- 
 tion, to solicit from the Proprietaries a charter for a Col- 
 lege, and, this obtained, he established as a means of 
 instruction in this institution a ciwriculum of studies 
 which formed the basis of education afterwards followed 
 by every college in this country professing to give a liberal 
 
i6 
 
 training to young men. The result of the life and vigor 
 which he had infused into the College which he had 
 created, was, in the opinion of the late Dr. George Wood, 
 such, that in a short time this College, founded by two of 
 your members, " was perhaps unrivalled and certainly not 
 surpassed by any seminary at that time existing in the 
 Provinces." And I may add, that had it escaped from the 
 mischievous designs of unscrupulous politicians during 
 the Revolution, and had its affairs since that era always 
 been managed with the same self-sacrificing devotion and 
 fidelity to its interests exhibited by its Trustees before that 
 change, it would doubtless to-day occupy the same proud 
 pre-eminence. Of the Trustees previous to the Revolution 
 nearly four-fifths were members of this Congregation, and 
 this was the period when its work was most active and the 
 demands on their enlightened care incessant. Mr. Peters, 
 the Rector of the Church, was for many years the President 
 of the Board, and the Trustees, agreeing with Dr. Smith 
 as to the plan of education which had been adopted, and 
 disagreeing wholly, much to his chagrin, with that urged 
 by Dr. Franklin, supported fully their Provost, not only in 
 all his efforts for the promotion of higher education here, 
 but in all the various trials and difficulties into which his 
 eager and impetuous temper led him. Dr. Smith was a 
 strict Churchman for those daj^s, as were doubtless the 
 majority of the Trustees of the College, but they ever 
 maintained its original design by selecting as its professors 
 men who represented the various denominations in the 
 city. One of the more immediate good results of the 
 establishment of this College, was the training of men who 
 occupied a prominent position as ministers of Christ 
 Church at the outbreak of the Revolution. William 
 White, Jacob Duche and Thomas Coombe were all gradu- 
 
17 
 
 ates of the College of Philadelphia and received their 
 training from Dr. Smith. 
 
 Between the years 1740 and 1756 there was perpetual 
 fear of war and an invasion of this Province by the Indians 
 and French, who had formed what was intended to be a 
 permanent alliance, and had established themselves on the 
 line between Pittsburgh and Lake Erie. The object of the 
 invasion on the part of the French was supposed by many 
 who thought themselves wise, to be part of a systematic 
 scheme to subjugate the English colonists on the borders 
 of the Atlantic, in this and other Provinces ; to make them 
 dependencies of France, and, worse than all, to force, by 
 persecution, the inhabitants to become Roman Catholics. 
 However chimerical all these fears may appear to us now, 
 there is no doubt of the reality of the anxiety and appre- 
 hension which they excited at the time. To the intensity 
 of the desire to make some adequate military preparation 
 to defend themselves, was added the natural dread of con- 
 tending with such a nation as France, when no means of 
 defence had been made ready, as well as a special horror of 
 the practices of the savage and inhuman warfare of the 
 Indians. Those who had now combined against us were 
 the descendants of those whom William Penn on his 
 arrival had found so friendly — the Delawares and the 
 Shawnees, who had been made desperate by the cruel and 
 fraudulent appropriation of their lands by his successors. 
 Gentle as lambs when the white man first came among 
 them, they had become fiends now, as all the accounts of 
 their cruel massacres of the inhabitants clearly showed. 
 The settlers in the territory exposed to these ravages called 
 loudly upon the Government for protection and succor. 
 Although the deepest sympathy was expressed on all 
 hands for their unfortunate condition, no troops were sent 
 
i8 
 
 to defend them, owing to the quarrel between the Governor 
 and the Assembly as to the best mode by which the sol- 
 diers and the money for their support should be raised. 
 The Governor, to state the nature of the controversy in a 
 single sentence, urged that a Militia Bill, which should 
 enroll as many of the able-bodied men of the Province as 
 might be needed, should be passed, and that a tax should 
 be levied for their pay and equipment from which the 
 immense private estates of the Proprietaries should be 
 exempted ; while the Assembly contended that the neces- 
 sary force should be raised by a voluntary enlistment, and 
 that loans should be issued to raise money, to be reim- 
 bursed by general taxation, for the maintenance of the 
 troops. For many years this wearisome and profitless 
 struggle continued and nothing was done in the way of 
 defence of the frontier or to avert the threatened danger of 
 invasion. The Governor and the Proprietary party insisted 
 that the refusal to adopt his suggestions was owing to con- 
 scientious scruples on the part of the Quakers about 
 making war, but so untrue was this charge that the 
 Assembly, goaded into action by Braddock's defeat in July, 
 1755, consented at last to exempt the estates of the Pro- 
 prietaries from taxation, in consideration of a gift by them 
 to the Province of five thousand pounds, and established a 
 chain of forts from the Delaware to the Maryland frontier 
 along the Alleghany Mountains, garrisoned by a body of 
 volunteers, Provincial troops, w"ho for a long time effectu- 
 ally guarded the threatened districts. In this controversy 
 the larger number of the members of this congregation 
 sided with the Proprietary party, having convinced them- 
 selves that no Assembly in which the Quakers had a 
 majority of the votes would, under any circumstances, 
 adopt warlike measures. They went so far on this account 
 
19 
 
 as to join with the Presbyterians, who had suffered most 
 severely from the Indian raids after Braddock's defeat, in 
 a petition to the Crown, being the third time in which 
 they had made the same application, asking that Quakers 
 should not be permitted hereafter to sit as members of the 
 Assembly. Their action must be attributed to a deep- 
 rooted delusion on the subject, which then prevailed here, 
 and which perhaps the professed principles of the Quakers 
 had done much to foster, and to the natural anxiety which 
 they felt to prevent the possibility of the recurrence of 
 a neglect of the safety of the Province. 
 
 But during the years of danger which threatened their 
 safety, when the accounts from the West told of little but 
 of Indian outrages and French victories and marches east- 
 ward, the conduct of this congregation was marked by a 
 manliness and courage and readiness to make sacrifices for 
 the safety of the Province, worthy of all praise as an 
 example, and to which those who succeed them here may 
 point with becoming pride. They were taught from this 
 pulpit the Christian duty of warfare in defending them- 
 selves. Dr. Smith tells us that in this crisis he preached 
 here no less than eight military sermons, as he calls them, 
 and we may be quite sure that in them the duty of defend- 
 ing their lives and their homes from a French and Indian 
 invasion was duly inculcated. We may be also certain 
 from what we know of the membership of Christ Church 
 at that time, that the men on whom the Governor most 
 fully depended at that critical time for the safety of the 
 Province, were to be found among those who gathered 
 here to worship God. The military spirit which prevailed 
 in the congregation was so marked that, in 1758, at the 
 opening of the campaign of that year General Forbes, 
 commander of the army in this Province, could find no 
 
20 
 
 better means of rousing the military ardor of the inhabi- 
 tants than by asking Dr. Smith to denounce here once 
 more the horrible cruelties which his army was sent to 
 avenge. 
 
 During the eventful years (1740- 17 56) in which the 
 Province was forced to defend itself from the incursions of 
 the Indians to the westward, none of the inhabitants who 
 formed social organizations were more zealous and steady 
 in upholding the hands of those to whom were committed 
 the safety, honor and welfare of the people of this Prov- 
 ince, than the members of this congregation. Opinions 
 might differ, and doubtless often did, among them in regard 
 to the righteousness of the conduct of the agents of the 
 Government in their treatment of the Indians, but when 
 these savages determined to wreak their vengeance by an 
 indiscriminate slaughter of the inhabitants, the law which 
 Churchmen invoked was that of self-defence. At that 
 time the members of Christ Church succored the distressed 
 inhabitants west of the Susquehanna by timely gifts, and 
 they urged the immediate necessity of raising money and 
 men to protect them, profiting by the lessons which they 
 had learned, as I have stated, from this pulpit as to the 
 clear duty of the citizen and the Christian. At that time 
 the special interest which the members of this Church 
 could feel as Episcopalians in the sufferings of those 
 exposed to Indian assaults was centered in a feeble mission 
 of the Venerable Society, of which the headquarters were 
 at Carlisle. But the sympathy exhibited by them in this 
 city for the victims of savage cruelty was not bounded by 
 any such narrow frontier. Judging from the names 
 attached to a petition to the Crown in 1756, praying that 
 hereafter no non-resistant Quaker should be permitted to 
 hold a seat in the Assembly, the members of this congre- 
 
21 
 
 gation were the most determined of those who were willing 
 to undergo any revolutionary change in government which 
 would guarantee that the white population of the Province 
 should be duly protected. 
 
 There were many officers, members and pew-holders in 
 Christ Church in the regiments raised by the government 
 of the Province for service during the French and Indian 
 wars. General James Irvine, who was a prominent mem- 
 ber of this congregation, and is traditionally remembered 
 from his always appearing clad in mourning on Good 
 Friday, began his military career as an officer in Bouquet's 
 expedition for the recapture of Fort Duquesne, and was 
 during the Revolution an officer of high rank in the 
 Pennsylvania Line. Among others, we find the well- 
 known names of Colonels Thomas Lawrence, Edward 
 Jones and Turbutt Francis ; of Lieut.-Colonels Thomas 
 Yorke and James Coultas ; of Major Samuel McCall ; of 
 Captain Thomas Bond ; of Lieutenants Lynford Lardner, 
 William Bingham, Atwood Shute, James Claypoole and 
 Plunket Fleeson. 
 
 It is not to be forgotten that the social position of many 
 of the members of this Parish (the united Churches of 
 Christ and St. Peter's) gave them an influence out of all 
 proportion with their numbers. It is true, of course, that 
 in the Provincial era the laymen of this Church were, 
 generally speaking, of the Proprietary party, and had sup- 
 ported the war measures of that party ; but when they 
 found that the government of the Province had become 
 that of a deputy, without whose consent no legislation 
 could be enacted, and who was bound in his acts to obey 
 the instructions of the Proprietaries in England, and who 
 was in no way responsible to the people of the Province 
 for them, they joined with other parties in the Assembly 
 
22 
 
 in unanimously declaring, in 1763, that pretensions such 
 as these were as dangerous to the prerogatives of the 
 Crown as they were to the liberties of the people. Pro- 
 prietary men as they were supposed to be, they had no 
 hesitation in praying the King, for the fourth time, with 
 Dr. Franklin, in 1764, that he would resume the govern- 
 ment of the Province and that the Proprietary system 
 should be abolished. 
 
 The signs of the times became more portentous after the 
 enactment of the Stamp Act of 1765, and it soon became ap- 
 parent that there would be as much opposition here on the 
 part of the Churchmen to Imperial misgovernment, as there 
 had been to the arbitrary pretensions of the Governors. 
 Indeed, it is hardly worth proving that during these 
 perilous times all classes of people in Pennsylvania, resist- 
 ants and non-resistants alike, protested against the Minis- 
 terial measures. The members of this cong^reoation, in 
 common with their fellow-citizens of other beliefs, remon- 
 strated against the Stamp Act and the Tea Act, as well as 
 against the Boston Port Bill and other measures intended 
 to punish the town of Boston ; they all signed the Non- 
 importation and the Non-exportation Agreements ; they all 
 petitioned the Crown to guarantee the right of self-govern- 
 ment ; they determined to maintain the fundamental rights 
 of the colonies; they warned the Ministry that armed 
 resistance would be made to further encroachments, and 
 they did not hesitate to vote for raising men and money for 
 the defence of the Province after the battle of Lexington. 
 Yet with all this, they never ceased to hope that some 
 peaceful settlement of the dispute might be made and that 
 no violent separation from the Mother Country would take 
 place. As the crisis of the Revolution approached, the 
 opinions held by the congregation as to the course they 
 
23 
 
 would take, are best expressed in the letter of their clergy 
 to the Bishop of London. In this letter, dated June 30, 
 1775, the clergy of this parish, Messrs. Richard Peters, 
 Jacob Duche, Thomas Coombe, William Stringer and 
 William W^hite, join with Dr. Smith, the Provost of the 
 College, in saying to the Bishop of London, "All that we 
 can do is to pray for such a settlement and to pursue those 
 principles of moderation and reason which your Lordship 
 has always recommended to us. We have neither interest 
 nor consequence sufficient to take any great lead in the 
 affairs of this great country. The people will feel and 
 judge for themselves in matters affecting their own civil 
 happiness, and were we capable of any attempt which 
 might have the appearance of drawing them to what they 
 think would be a slavish resignation of their rights, it 
 would be destructive to ourselves as well as to the Church 
 of which we are ministers. But it is but justice to our 
 superiors, and to your Lordship in particular, to declare 
 that such conduct has never been required of us. Indeed, 
 could it possibly be required, we are not backward to say 
 that our consciences would not permit us to injure the 
 rights of the country. We are to leave our families in it, 
 and cannot but consider its inhabitants entitled, as well as 
 their brethren in England, to the right of granting their 
 own money ; and that every attempt to deprive them of 
 this right will either be found abortive in the end or 
 attended with evils which would infinitely outweigh all 
 the benefits to be obtained by it. Such being our persua- 
 sion, we must again declare it to be our constant prayer, in 
 which we are sure that your Lordship joins, that the hearts 
 of good and benevolent men in both countries may be 
 directed towards a plan of reconciliation worthy of being 
 offered by a great nation that have long been the patrons 
 
24 
 
 of freedom throughout the world, and not unworthy of 
 being accepted by a people sprung from them and by birth 
 claiming a participation in their rights." 
 
 The sentiments frankly expressed in this letter were not 
 merely those of the clergy of Christ Church, but it voiced 
 doubtless the opinion of its lay members, as well as that of 
 a large circle of friends not of their religious faith, but 
 within the sphere of their influence. In a community 
 such as Philadelphia then was, it is not easy to over- 
 estimate the power derived from the common opinion on a 
 momentous question of its foremost citizens. Men like 
 William Bingham, Richard Bache, Benjamin Chew, John 
 Cadwalader, Gerardus Clarkson, Redmond Conyngham, 
 Manuel Eyre, Michael Hillegas, Archibald McCall, Charles 
 Meredith, Edmund Physick, William Plumstead, Samuel 
 Powel, Edward Shippen, Richard and Thomas Willing, 
 never speak in vain. These are names as familiar to those 
 who have passed a long life in Philadelphia as household 
 words, and those who bore them were all members of the 
 congregation of Christ Church, This letter to the Bishop 
 of London doubtless reveals that feeling of mingled defi- 
 ance and dread with which they viewed the approach of 
 the Revolution. 
 
 Of these clergymen of the Church here, it may be said 
 that Messrs. White and Duche became afterwards chaplains 
 of the Continental Congress, and that Dr. Smith urged, in 
 a powerful sermon delivered before Colonel Cadwalader's 
 regiment of Volunteer Associators in this Church, the 
 right and duty of armed resistance if the grievances com- 
 plained of were not redressed. At that time (the early 
 period of the Revolution) it is hardly necessary to say that 
 there was no question of independence, for no public man 
 in Pennsylvania, within or without Christ Church, had 
 
25 
 
 advocated such a measure. When the time arrived when 
 it was thought necessary by Congress to proclaim our inde- 
 pendence, no less than three of the signers of that immortal 
 instrument, Franklin, Robert Morris and Hopkinson, were 
 found to be pew-holders in this Church. And on the very 
 day on which that great charter of a new nation was 
 signed, it was agreed by the vestry and clergy of this 
 Church that the long-familiar prayer for the King and the 
 Royal Family should thenceforth be omitted from the 
 service. In short, in no quarter was the action of the 
 Assembly of the State and of Congress dissolving our 
 allegiance to Great Britain more loyally obeyed than in 
 this Church, to which kings and queens in happier days 
 had been loving nursing fathers and nursing mothers. 
 
 With the close of the Revolution that direct and peculiar 
 influence of Christ Church upon the lay element in Phila- 
 delphia, which, during the Provincial era, had been so 
 characteristic a feature of its corporate life, in a great 
 measure ceased. Whether this was due to changes which 
 then brought into power men of a very different social 
 position and very difl'erent political ideas from those who 
 had governed this community in former days, I will not 
 stop to inquire. Whatever may have been the cause, there 
 can be no doubt in the mind of any student of our history 
 that Quakers and Episcopalians, the foremost citizens of 
 the Province, however faithful they may have been to the 
 changes produced by the Revolution, lost their prestige 
 and political leadership in the Commonwealth created by it. 
 
 Thenceforth Christ Church entered upon a new era, and 
 devoted herself to the propagation exclusively of that 
 special form of Christianity of which she had been the 
 recognized representative here. Under the guidance of 
 that wise, discreet, revered and saintly man who was then 
 
26 
 
 her Rector and was soon afterwards to become the chief 
 pastor of this diocese, she became in a very important 
 sense, omnium ecclesiar2i7n mater et caput. 
 
 Bishop White, I need not say, was not only a great 
 Churchman, but he was a great citizen also. From the 
 stormy days of the Revolution, when he taught Congress 
 that resistance to oppression is a religious duty ; from the 
 day in which in his study in St. Peter's house in this city 
 he outlined a plan for the Federal Union of the Church, 
 down to the day when he was laid at rest under the chan- 
 cel of this Church, the great work of his life was, so to 
 speak, the naturalization of the order and discipline of the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church under its new conditions in 
 this country. What measure of success attended his efforts 
 it is not my province to speak of, but I may venture to 
 affirm that the Church in this country can never be too 
 grateful for what she owes to his wisdom and sagacity. 
 He is the great link which binds the past to the present. 
 He was the champion of all that is true and noble and 
 inspiring in the history of that form of Christianity of 
 which he was here the chief minister, and to no wiser 
 hands could the great task of adapting that historical and 
 venerable form of ecclesiastical polity to our present need 
 have been confided than to his. 
 
 I count it as one of the happiest recollections of my 
 youth that I should have been permitted to see Bishop 
 White in the last year of his life, not robed in his canon- 
 ical vestments nor surrounded by those things calculated 
 to impress a boyish imagination with the dignity of his 
 position, but walking these streets in the ordinary dress of 
 a clergyman of that day. His tall, spare figure, his cos- 
 tume, that of a gentleman of the old school, the broad- 
 brimmed hat which half concealed his flowing white locks, 
 
27 
 
 his ample coat, his short clothes, his long stockings and 
 buckled shoes, and his stout walking staff — all these 
 things made him truly venerable in my eyes and produced 
 an impression which the lapse of sixty years has not 
 removed. As he passed along, supported on the arm of his 
 grandson, I remember that I looked upon him, as I had 
 ever been taught to regard him, as the last of the Revolu- 
 tionary patriots. To those who met him and knew any- 
 thing of his history and character, he was the type and 
 exemplar of that pure and lofty doctrine which he had 
 preached all his life. His perfect sincerity, his genuine 
 simplicity, his boundless charity of act and opinion 
 towards those who differed from him, caused him to be 
 recognized, as was well said by a distinguished divine of 
 another communion than his, as " truly the Bishop of us 
 all." 
 
 With such a history and with such personages serving 
 as illustrations of it, Christ Church is not merely a temple 
 where men have met during the last two hundred years to 
 worship God after the manner of their fathers, but it is 
 also one of the brightest jewels in the mural crown of this 
 godly city. Here men have been taught during all that 
 long period, not merely their duty to God, but also to con- 
 secrate the service of their lives to the welfare of their 
 fellow-men, and especially to that of our own community 
 and Commonwealth. As we recall the names of its mem- 
 bers who in times past, amidst trials and obstacles of all 
 sorts, have done their duty, while doing the State some 
 service, may we emulate their example, never failing to 
 heed the voice of God and our country when it calls upon 
 us for work and self-sacrifice. 
 
ilia 
 
PHOTOMOUNT 
 PAMPHLET BINDER 
 
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