'Views sustained in the Church of England, and in this Church': William White's 'Commentaries Suited to Occasions of Ordination', early PECUSA, and 18th century Anglicanism

Over the next few months, laudable Practice will have a weekly post considering extracts from William White's Commentaries Suited to Occasions of Ordination. This was published as a single volume in 1833, but first appeared in the Quarterly Theological Magazine and Religious Repository in 1813/14. The request for publication as a single volume came unanimously from White's fellow bishops, during the 1832 General Convention: "we do earnestly recommend such an edition of that work to the patronage of all the Clergy and Members generally of the Church". 

There are at least three reasons why we might give consideration to White's Commentaries Suited to Occasions of Ordination. Firstly, the unanimous request from the House of Bishops is suggestive of how White's understanding of ordained ministry appealed to both the Old High and Evangelical traditions within early PECUSA. Secondly, the year of publication, 1833, also has obvious importance: the work points to a widely supported understanding of ordained ministry on the cusp of the Oxford Movement. Thirdly, it can contribute to a recognition of White's significance to early PECUSA. Too much popular commentary from within and outside TEC is concerned with Seabury and what I have previously termed 'the Scottish myth'. White and his theological debt to the Church of England, however, were much more influential in shaping PECUSA than Seabury and Scottish Episcopalianism. 

This debt to the Church of England is explicitly stated in White's preface to the work:

The other cause of regret, was, in some ministers, deviations from the clear senses of those answers in the services, which give the pledge of adherence to our liturgy; and of submission to an authority recognized by our system of ecclesiastical government, and by the canons. It is impossible, that this conduct can be vindicated by any professions of piety, supposing them to be sincere; but I must declare the opinion, that it has been chiefly owing either to vanity, or, under the most favourable circumstances, of views of the dispensation of grace, differing from those sustained in the Church of England, and in this Church. The most favourable interpretation to be put on such cases, is that the parties, perhaps insensibly to themselves, have no preference of our ministry, otherwise than as a door to our Churches, not otherwise to be entered.

Notice, indeed, how White first refers to the Church of England and then to "this Church". This reflected the similarly unembarrassed references to the Church of England in the Preface to the PECUSA BCP 1789 and in early PECUSA preaching. Here in these words White quite clearly refers to the Church of England as the doctrinal norm for early PECUSA.

In doing so, White perhaps adds another reason for us to give consideration to this work. White - born in 1748, received orders in 1770, consecrated to the episcopate in 1787 - was very much a product of 18th century Anglicanism. The fact that the first form of this work was published in the very last years of the 'long 18th century' - 1814/15 - only adds to the sense that it gives us insight into the Anglicanism of that century. And it is also fitting that the single volume edition of the work was published in 1833, the year in which a movement emerged with a desire to reject and undo 18th century Anglicanism. White's Commentaries Suited to Occasions of Ordination, therefore, in addition to offering us insight into early PECUSA, can also contribute to a renewed understanding of the theological strengths of 18th century Anglicanism. 

White ends the preface by noting how he expected candidates for holy orders to read the work:

if read in retirement, with meditation and prayer, the intended effect would be thus the most likely to be accomplished.

In itself, it is a rather lovely and quite moving sign of the oft-dismissed piety of 18th century Anglicanism, a victim of - to use a phrase from the Marxist historian E.P Thompson - "the enormous condescension of posterity". Perhaps readers of the various posts in this series might approach "with meditation and prayer" the various extracts, reflecting on what White's words mean for both contemporary Anglicanism and Episcopalianism, and for our own ministries and vocations.

(The image is an 1829 portrait of "The Right Rev. William White, D.D. Senior Bishop of The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States and Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania".)