'Benignity of the English Prelates': praise for the Church of England in an early Protestant Episcopal ordination sermon

On the 28th May 1787, in Christ Church, Philadelphia, the first ordination took place in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of Pennsylvania. The bishop was, of course, William White, who had been consecrated to the episcopate two months earlier by bishops of the Church of England, in Lambeth Palace chapel. 

The preacher at the ordination was Samuel Magaw, Rector of St. Paul's, Philadelphia, and then vice-provost and professor of moral philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. Magaw's sermon offers a significant insight into Protestant Episcopalian self-understanding as a church in, as then was the case, the States of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina.

When the sermon was published, the dedication to White celebrated his "appointment to the Episcopal Chair". This introduced a major theme in the sermon: the unembarrassed Protestant Episcopalian dependence upon the Church of England. Indeed, Magaw was explicit in affirming the continuity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the newly independent United States with the colonial-era Church of England:

In every particular of a nature purely religious, we continue altogether the same we ever were; things merely local easily admitting of a change accommodated to time and circumstances. "We hold the same essential articles of faith and discipline with the Church of England." 

The clergy and some of the laity present would have recognised the quotation. It was from the proceedings of the 1786 General Convention, which had expressed "stedfast resolution to maintain the same essential articles of faith and discipline with the Church of England", and had used the same wording in its address to the Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England. The purpose of the address was "to compleat our Episcopal system by means of the Church of England". 

As Magaw noted with gratitude, such completion had indeed been effected by the Church of England:

In one matter, of very great importance, The having among ourselves, the ministerial Succession in its respective Orders, we are on a much better footing, than, probably, we should ever have been, if our former political connexion had continued.

It was, to say the least, a particularly interesting observation. The political difficulties associated with the creation of an American episcopacy had prevented any such movement, despite significant support from within the Church of England in the mid-18th century. The tensions which emerged following the 1765 Stamp Act certainly made any progress towards an American episcopacy, from the perspective of the Westminster administration, almost certainly impossible. By contrast, independence for the United States - together with Parliament then passing in 1786 the Consecration of Bishops Abroad Act - enabled an American episcopacy to be created. Here, as Magaw declared, was a fruit of independence, an episcopal order long desired but politically impossible in the colonial era.

Who was to be thanked for this happy and providential development? Again, Magaw was unembarrassed in referring to the Church of England:

A new era hath opened in our Church that will be remembered for ever. Our Episcopal system is completed: and in a manner that we perfectly rejoice in; and which (we are happy to understand) is looked upon in friendship by so many of our fellow-Christians: in a manner withal, that reflects lustre on the attention, and benignity of the English Prelates. The first Fruits of so distinguished an event come forward on the present day. I join with thousands to meet, and welcome the Blessing.

The fact that Magaw - only 4 years after the end of the Revolutionary War, and with tensions between Great Britain and the United States continuing after the Treaty of Paris - was explicit and unembarrassed in declaring Protestant Episcopalian agreement with the Church of England, and dependence upon the English Church for the creation of the American episcopate, is very revealing. There was very obvious political reasons for Magaw - and Protestant Episcopalians in general - to minimise this relationship and to avoid references to it in public statements. 

It also was very well-known that large numbers of Church of England clergy in the colonies had been Loyalists, with some of these clergy then ministering in the Protestant Episcopalian church in the United States. If was for this reason that White himself had opposed a proposal in General Convention in 1785 to create a liturgical observance of Independence Day: "many clergy ... had been averse to the American revolution". Indeed, he went on to state that, because of this, "the majority of the clergy could not have used the service, without subjecting themselves to ridicule and censure" (emphasis added).

This background makes Magaw's praise for and statement of Protestant Episcopalian agreement with the Church of England all the more significant. It highlights the theological and ecclesiastical importance to the early Protestant Episcopal Church of affirming its relationship with the Church of England, an agreement in the "essential articles of faith and discipline". What is more, it was the bestowal of the episcopate on William White and Samuel Provoost by English bishops which secured that which Magaw celebrated in his sermon, and which allowed the ordination to occur in Philadelphia in May 1787: "our Episcopal system is completed". 

It is this which makes what laudable Practice has previously described as 'the Scottish myth' entirely misleading as an account of PECUSA's origins. Seabury receiving episcopal consecration from Scottish Non-Jurors was very much a secondary and less significant contributing factor to the emergence of PECUSA. It was the "benignity of the English Prelates" - and agreement with the Church of England in the essentials of the faith - which provided the core foundation for the emergence of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States.