CHAPTER XX

COLONIAL AND MISSIONARY WORK

IN estimating the work done by the Church in the colonial and mission field during the eighteenth century, it is only fair to remember that it was a new and tentative task which it was taking in hand. The first serious and systematic effort only dates from the first year of the century, when the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (the S.P.G.) was founded, or rather when it became a distant and separate branch of the noble project formed three years before by the institution of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (the S.P.C.K.). There had, of course, been isolated and unsystematic attempts made before to provide for the spiritual wants of our countrymen in the plantations and to Christianise the heathen by whom they were surrounded. But it is astonishing how small a space such subjects occupy in the writings, and therefore we may assume in the thoughts, even of good churchmen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When, then, the S.P.G. began its glorious task, it was practically beginning a new thing; and from its very foundation traces may be found of the tentative and experimental nature of its efforts, and traces also of the character of the time at which it took its rise. The time was the Revolution era, when William III. was on the throne, and when what was called Whig theology was in the ascendency; when Latitudinarian and Erastian ideas were taking the place of those which prevailed during what has been rightly termed the golden age of English theology. Beginning its operations at such a time, it is wonderful that it conducted them in so Church-like a

The S.P.G.

CHAP. XX

MISSIONARY METHODS

307

manner as it did; nevertheless, it is idle to deny that from a churchman's point of view its method was not what it would have been in more congenial times.

A Church may be built up in two ways. from below or you may begin from above.

You may begin In other words,

Rival

work.

you may begin by gathering individuals and, when sufficient numbers are banded together, setting a head over them; or you may begin by appointing a head methods of with other members about him, and then drawing individuals round the centre. The latter is now the plan on which our missions are conducted; the former was the plan adopted by our earlier missions, by the S.P.G. at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and by the Church Missionary Society (the C.M.S.) at the beginning of the nineteenth. The idea was first to form your society and then set a bishop over it; not first appoint your bishop and then gather your society about him. For many years the result was most disastrous. The colonial and missionary work began without a bishop, and it continued without a bishop for the greater part of a century. To say that this was like acting the play of Hamlet with the character of the Prince of Denmark omitted, would be to understate the case. Bishops are necessary to the Church of England. It cannot exist without them. It would cease to be an episcopal Church and would become something else. "It is evident to all men diligently reading the holy Scripture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church-Bishops, Priests, and Deacons." But this is just what was not evident in the Church in the colonial and the mission fields of the eighteenth century. "Ye are to take care that this child be brought to the bishop to be confirmed by him," says the minister to the sponsors after the child has been admitted into the Church. But this could not be done. There were no bishops within three thousand miles to whom the child could be brought. It was idle to pray that the bishops might "lay hands suddenly on no man," or "make choice of fit persons to serve in the sacred ministry of the Church," when there was no one to lay hands, suddenly or advisedly, on persons fit or unfit.

It may seem strange that an age which above all things

prided itself upon being "the age of reason" should not have perceived the unreasonableness, in fact, the absurdity of the situation. But the explanation suggests another element of weakness in the work of the Church abroad. It was far too much tied and bound in the chain of politics. It was the State and not the Church that was the obstacle to the remedying of the monstrous anomaly of an episcopal bishops society without a bishop. One of the earliest

missionaries of the S.P.G., the Rev. John Talbot, wrote in 1702, within a year of its foundation, from New York: "There are earnest addresses from divers parts of the Continent and Islands adjacent for a Suffragan to visit the several churches; ordain some, confirm others, and bless all"; and the Society thought this sentence so important that it transferred it almost verbatim to a prominent position in its first Report. In the next year, 1703, the members of the Society in that most important Church centre, the University of Oxford, made the subject of a suffragan bishop to America their first consideration. The need was strongly urged by others, and in 1709 a memorial was presented by the Society to Queen Anne. Several Church dignitaries, headed by Archbishop Sharp, the Queen's guide in spiritual matters, drew up a scheme to be presented to Convocation "concerning bishops being provided for the plantations." Nothing, however, was done owing to the absence of the Bishop of London, who was supposed to be responsible for the Church in the colonies. In 1713 a second memorial was presented by the Society to Queen Anne, and was so favourably received that it was hoped the work might be set in hand at once. But the Queen's death put a stop to it.

On June 3, 1715, the Society presented an application to George I., submitting a scheme for the creation of four bishoprics-two for the Islands, two for the Continent. Of the former, one was to be settled at Barbadoes, the other at Jamaica; of the latter, one at Burlington in New Jersey, the other at Williamsbury in Virginia; and detailed suggestions were made for the incomes of the four bishops. But, alas! the Rebellion of 1715 broke out, and our statesmen could find no time for discussing such matters. Whether in any circumstances they would ever have found time is very doubtful.

XX

THE BISHOPS AND WALPOLE

309

The blighting influence of the Whig predominance in the Church at home extended to the Church abroad, but it is a mistake to suppose that our bishops, and still less the missionaries of the S. P.G., showed any apathy in the matter. The interest which the Archbishop of York, Dr. Sharp, manifested has already been noticed. That of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Tenison, is attested by the fact that he bequeathed to the Society £1000 "towards the settlement of two bishops, one for the Continent, the other for the Islands of America"; and the terms of the bequest prove that he confidently expected the scheme to be carried out. He died in December 1715,

but his successor, Archbishop Wake, took at least as strong and active an interest in the matter.

Policy of English bishops.

It may be asked, Why did not the English bishops take the matter into their own hands, fall back upon their own spiritual authority, do what by all the laws of the Church they had a perfect right to do, and take the consequences? The consequence would have been that they would have fallen under the pains of that farreaching Act Praemunire. They would either have been deposed, or at least have brought about a collision between Church and State, which at that crisis was certainly to be deprecated. That such a course would have been bitterly resented by the secular power cannot be doubted. The dissenters on both sides of the water were strongly opposed to the creation of new bishoprics; and it was always the policy of Walpole, his followers, and his successors to conciliate the dissenters in every way. Perhaps surprise cannot be expressed at the opposition of dissenters when it is considered what the eighteenth-century conception of a bishop in England was. He was a great State official at least as much as a Church ruler; and as several of the colonies in North America had been founded by dissenters, it was perhaps not unnatural that they should regard with some jealousy the introduction of such officials into them. It was feared that they would be invested with powers which certainly would have interfered with the secular authority, and that the taxation of the colonies and the proposal to introduce bishops were parts of one general system inimical to political and religious liberty.

Jonathan Mayhew, a New England preacher of a violent and narrow type, was the chief opponent of the proposed establishment of episcopacy in America, and did not spare himself to prevent the possibility of the idea being carried out. To him the system of congregationalism was the only one to be tolerated. The Congregationalists had been driven out of the Old World because they had offended the bishops. Were they now to be pursued into the New World, because no other new world remained as a sanctuary from episcopal oppression? "Where," he asks, "is the Columbus to explore one for us, and pilot us to it, before we are consumed by the flames, or deluged in a flood of Episcopacy?" The Church of England, as he conceived it, was alien in her mode of worship from the simplicity of the Gospel and the apostolic times. It had been a persecuting Church in the mother country, and would become so in New England if allowed to establish itself there and to carry on an active propaganda. “What,” again he asks, "might probably be the sad consequence if this growing party should once get the upper hand here, and a major vote in our houses of assembly-in which case the Church of England might become the established religion here, tests be ordained to exclude all but conformists from posts of honour and emolument, and all of us be taxed for the support of bishops and their underlings?" The dread, therefore, of Secker's proposal to establish the Episcopal Church in America must be reckoned with as one of the most powerful of the secondary causes of the Rebellion. That Secker and his friends did not grasp the political bearing of their proposals upon the already excited colonists is probable enough, and easy to understand in view of the distance from this country to America and of the imperfect facilities for communication in those days. Nor did Mayhew, on the other hand, see that episcopalians were at least entitled to the complete development of the system they professed.

But it is almost needless to say that bishops after the home pattern were not the kind of bishops that were either required or desired. Whether it be true or no, as has been said, that "the English bishops thought more of the Acts of Parliament than of the Acts of the Apostles," they certainly sought no Act of Parliament to enable them to send this