been confiscated. There was no discipline for clergy or laity, and it
did seem as if the vine of the Lord's planting was to perish out of the
land.


On the Feast of the Annunciation, 1783, ten of the clergy of Connecticut
met in the glebe house at Woodbury to elect a bishop. They met
privately, for the Church was under the ban of civil authority, and they
feared the revival of bitter opposition to an American episcopate which
might alarm the English bishops and defeat their efforts. They did not
come to make a creed, or frame a liturgy, or found a Church. They met
to secure that which was lacking for the complete organization of the
Church, and thus perpetuate for their country that ministry whose
continuity was witnessed through all the ages in a living body, which is
the body of Christ. I know of no greater heroism than that which sent
Samuel Seabury to ask of the bishops of the Church of England the
episcopate for the scattered flock of Christ. You remember the fourteen
months' weary waiting, and when his prayer was refused in England, God
led him to the persecuted Church of Scotland. Now go with me to
Aberdeen; it is an upper room, a congregation of clergy and laity are
present. The bishops and Robert Kilgour, Bishop of Aberdeen, Arthur
Petrie, Bishop of Moray, and John Skinner, Coadjutor Bishop of Aberdeen,
who preached the sermon. The prayers were ended; Samuel Seabury, a
kingly man, kneels for the imposition of apostolic hands, and, according
to the godly usage of the Catholic Church, is consecrated bishop, and
made the first apostle for the New World. None can tell what, under
God, we owe to those venerable men. They signed a concordat binding
themselves and successors to use the Prayer of Invocation in the
Scottish Communion Office, which sets forth that truth which is
inwrought in all the teachings of our blessed Lord and His apostles,