Convention of 1859, the remaining earthly hope of his life was quenched. His health from this time gradually declined; his age seemed visibly to increase upon him; and it was not long before his final illness overpowered him. Toward the close of that illness he humbly professed, in answer to the questions proposed in the Office for the Visitation of the Sick, ministered to him by one of his presbyters, his friend, the Rev. Dr. Francis Vinton, his forgiveness and charity for all; his sincere repentance of sin; his sole hope in Jesus Christ his Saviour; but added in solemn earnestness, as he fixed his eyes upon his interrogator: "Of the crimes of which I have been accused and for which I have been condemned my conscience acquits me in the sight of God." This was on Friday, April 26, 1861. On the Sunday following he received the Viaticum at the hands of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Seabury, the rector of his parish church, and on Tuesday of the same week, April 30th, he departed this life. His funeral rites, solemnized in Trinity Church on Tuesday of the week following (such as no one who witnessed could ever forget), testified to the love and reverence in which he was held by the great body of his people, both clergy and laity. Watched through the night by the Rev. Dr. Samuel Roosevelt Johnson and other loving friends, his body was on the following day laid to rest at Trinity Cemetery. Few have passed through such a fight of afflictions; few have had, and few have better used, such opportunities to exemplify the highest graces of the Christian life, as fell to the lot of this venerable man. In his twofold testimony of action and suffering, undertaken and endured in the simple desire to promote the Christian edification of the clergy and people committed to his charge, few have better illustrated than he the words which our Lord applied to the Holy Baptist, and which were used as the text for the discourse delivered at his funeral: "He was a burning and a shining light, and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light." Wmflatury THE FIFTH BISHOP OF NEW YORK.* I AM thankful to associate the name of my dear father, with this memoir of his lifelong and beloved friend. Drawn with the discriminating hand of intimate friendship, it is so truly the picture of an “old master," that I do not presume to spoil it by any touches of a modern brush. And yet I am glad to add to it the tribute of my boyish and reverent recollection of Bishop Wainwright, in all the majesty of his dignified manhood and all the courtesy and charm of his character, as a gentleman, as a distinguished citizen, as scholar, pastor, and bishop. JONATHAN MAYHEW WAINWRIGHT was born in Liverpool, England, on the 24th day of February, 1792. Peter Zein MoMainwritte Wainwright, his father, was an English merchant, who had established himself not long after the War of Independence in the city of Boston. Here he married Elizabeth, daughter of Jonathan Mayhew, D.D., a Congregational minister. Dr. Mayhew was a descendant of Sir Thomas Mayhew, one of the early settlers of the country, and the first Governor of Martha's Vineyard. He was a Unitarian in doctrine, and bitterly opposed to Episcopacy. He took an active part against its introduction into America; and was engaged in an extensive controversy with Archbishop Secker, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Bradbury Chandler, of New Jersey, and others. An anecdote related by a venerable presbyter illustrates well the relation which Dr. Mayhew held toward the Church, and sheds a half-prophetic ray upon his grandson's course. The Rev. Dr. Eaton, now more than forty years ago, was dining with a friend at Cambridge. In the room was a portrait of Dr. Mayhew with an inverted mitre in one corner. "What a pity," said the guest, "that Dr. Mayhew should have felt such enmity toward the * Extract from the memoir of Bishop Wainwright, written by Bishop Doane of New Jersey. |