Samuel Seabury and the Formularies
Samuel Seabury died two hundred twenty-five years ago today (February 25, 1796). After almost 200 years without a resident bishop in America, Seabury was the first bishop to be consecrated for the Protestant Episcopal Church. At his own expense he sailed to London hoping he could be consecrated there, but when those plans fell through, he went to Aberdeen Scotland where he was made bishop in 1784. He liked the dignity of his office a lot, signing his first letter to the Connecticut clergy, "Samuel, by divine permission, Bishop of Connecticut." He stubbornly opposed "lay" involvement at General Conventions, until he finally conceded this point for the sake of unity. Seabury was a high church sacramentalist who was happy to include in the American Prayer Book an "epiclesis" (invoking of the Holy Spirit to make the bread and wine of Communion the body and blood of Christ) from the Prayer Book of the Scottish Church - the first time an epiclesis was used in Anglican history since it was dropped by the English reformers for theological reasons. Seabury and other early High Churchmen (e.g. Bishop Hobart), however, still affirmed that the real presence of Christ in the eucharist is a spiritual presence, spiritually taken and spiritually received. Seabury stood for strong ecclesiastical control (bishops), and for the diocese as the main unit of ministry rather than the local congregation. Like many who followed in the tracks of William Laud, Samuel Seabury was a flaming Arminian, happily opposed to the adoption of the historic Anglican formularies (the Articles of Religion). After he died, the newly formed Protestant Episcopal Church adopted the Articles as our theological standard in 1801.
The Nature of Salvation: Theological Consensus in the Episcopal Church 1801-73, Robert W. Pritchard
Men and Movements in the American Episcopal Church, E. Clowes Chorley
The Critical Years: The Reconstitution of the Anglican Church in the United States of America: 178—1789, Clara O. Loveland