University of Virginia Library

THE USE OF THE LITURGY AND VESTMENTS IN VIRGINIA.

From what has been said in the foregoing pages as to the
deplorable condition of the Church in Virginia, it may well be
imagined that its liturgical services were often very imperfectly
performed. In truth, the responsive parts were almost entirely
confined to the clerk, who, in a loud voice, sung or drawled them
out. As to the psalmody, it is believed that the Hundredth Psalm,
to the tune of Old Hundred, was so generally used as the signal
of the Service begun, that it was regarded as the law of the Church.
A case has been mentioned to me by good authority, where a new
minister, having varied from the established custom, gave out a
different psalm; but the clerk, disregarding it, sung as usual the
Hundredth. So unaccustomed were the people to join in the Service,

that when I took charge of the congregation in Alexandria
in 1811 I tried in vain to introduce the practice, until I fell on the
expedient of making the children, who in large numbers came
weekly to my house to be catechized, go over certain parts of the
Service and the Psalms with me, and, after having thus trained
them, on a certain Sabbath directed them to respond heartily and
loudly in the midst of the grown ones. They did their part well,
and complete success soon attended the plan. Throughout the
State, when not only the friends of the Church were rapidly diminishing
and Prayer Books were very scarce, but even clerks were
hard to be gotten, I presume that the Services were very irregularly
performed. I knew of an instance where the clergyman did
not even take a Prayer Book into the pulpit, but, committing to
memory some of the principal prayers of the Morning Service, used
them in the pulpit before sermon, after the manner of other denominations.
I am unable to say whether it ever was, or had been
for a long time, the habit of any or of many of the ministers to
use what is called the full Service, combining what all acknowledge
to have been originally the three distinct parts of the old English
cathedral Service, and used separately at different portions of the
day, namely, the Morning Service proper, the Litany, the Ante-Communion
Service, and which, without law, were gradually
blended into one, for the convenience of those who preferred one
long to three short services. The probability is, that in a church
without a head and any thing like discipline, the practice may have
been very various, according to the consciences, tastes, and convenience
of those who officiated. The practice of those who engaged
in the resuscitation of the Church in Virginia, was to use the two
former portions of the Liturgy—the Morning Service and Litany
—and to omit the Ante-Communion Service, except on communion
days. This was introduced among us by the brethren who came
from Maryland, the Rev. Dr. Wilmer, Norris, and Lemmon, who
doubtless believed that it was according to the design of those who
arranged the American Prayer Book. They quoted as authority
the declaration and practice of the Rev. Dr. Smith, who, as may
be seen in the journals of our earliest General Convention, took a
leading part in the changes of the Prayer Book. Dr. Smith, after
leaving Philadelphia, settled in Chestertown, Md., where it was
declared he never used the Ante-Communion Service. Dr. Wilmer
was one of his successors, and said that it was also affirmed that
Dr. Smith avowed himself to have been the author of one or more
of the Rubrics, on the meaning and design of which rested the
question of obligation to use the Ante-Communion Service every
Sabbath, and that he had in view the permission to leave it optional
with the minister. I am aware that Bishop White has expressed a
different opinion, and that his practice was otherwise, nor do I purpose
to discuss the question or take sides, but only to state the
authority on which the Virginia custom was advocated. Neither
do I mean to appropriate this custom exclusively to Virginia and a
part of Maryland. In other parts of the land there were those who
adopted it. I had it from the lips of Bishop Hobart himself, that
a portion of the clergy of New York omitted that part of the Service,
and, as I shall show hereafter, it was this fact which had
much to do with his proposition to abridge the Service in other
parts, in order the more easily to enforce the use of this favourite
portion. The Bishop acknowledged to me that the Virginia clergy
were not the only transgressors in this respect. This much I can
say, that if they did err in the understanding of the rubric, they
made amends for the abridgment of the Service by seeking to
perform what was used in a more animated manner, and to introduce
a warm and zealous response among the people, and also by more
lengthened, animated, and evangelical discourses from the pulpit.
Nor was there any attempt to enforce upon all the practice thus
commenced. From the first, every minister has been allowed the
free exercise of his conscience and judgment in regard to it. For
a time, Bishop Moore, who had been accustomed to the fuller service
in the city of New York, was disposed to urge the same upon
the clergy of Virginia, but, after some observation and experience,
became satisfied that it was best to leave it to the discretion of each
minister, and, though in his own parish he always used it, never
required the same in his visits to others.

As to the vestments, the same liberty and the same variety has
ever existed in the Church of Virginia, without interruption to its
harmony. It is well known that the controversy in our Mother-Church
concerning the use of the surplice was a long and bitter
and most injurious one; was, indeed, considered by some of her
ablest Bishops and clergy as that which was the main point which
caused the final secession; that if the obligation to use it had been
removed, the Church would, for at least a much longer period, have
been undivided. Various attempts were made to abolish the canon
or rubric enforcing it, but it was thought improper to humour the
dissenters by so doing, and alleged that if this were done other
demands would be made. At the revision of the Prayer Book by
our American fathers, this and other changes, which had long been

desired by many in England, and still are, were at once made, and
the dress of the clergy left to their own good sense, it being only
required that it should be decent. I believe it has never been attempted
but once to renew the law enforcing clerical habits. Soon
after I entered the House of Bishops some one in the other House
proposed such a canon. A warm but short discussion ensued,
which ended in the withdrawal of what found but little favour.
During the discussion the subject was mentioned among the Bishops,
who seemed all opposed to it, and one of whom, more disposed,
perhaps, to such things than any other, cried out, "De minimis
non curat lex." That the old clergy of Virginia should have been
very uniform and particular in the use of the clerical vestments is
most improbable, from the structure of the churches and the location
of their vestry-rooms. The vestry-rooms formed no part of
the old churches, but were separate places in the yard or neighbourhood,
sometimes a mile or two off. They were designed for
civil as well as religious purposes, and were located for the convenience
of the vestrymen, who levied taxes and attended to all the
secular as well as ecclesiastical business of the parish. The setting
apart some portion of the old churches as robing or vestry-rooms
is quite a modern thing, and it is not at all probable that the ministers
would have gone backward and forward between the pulpits
and the former vestry-rooms in the churchyards, to change their
garments.[13] The clergy of Virginia, from the first efforts at resuscitating
the Church, have been charged by some with being too
indifferent to clerical garments; nor have they been very careful
to repel the charge, thinking it better to err in this way than in the
opposite. Bishop Hobart once taunted me with this, though at the
same time he acknowledged that there were times and places when
it would be folly to think of using the clerical garments, saying,
that in his visitations, especially to Western New York, he sometimes
dispensed not only with the Episcopal robes but even with
the black gown. The Bishops of Virginia have sometimes been
condemned for not requiring the candidates to be dressed in surplices
at the time of their admission to deacons' orders, although
there is no canon or rubric looking to such a thing. They are at
least as good Churchmen, in this respect, as the English Bishops.
When in England, some years since, I witnessed the ordination of
fifty deacons, by the present Archbishop of Canterbury, in Durham
Cathedral, not one of whom was surpliced; some of them, as well
as I remember, having on their college gowns, answering to our
black gowns, and others only their common garments. There is, I
think, less disposition to form and parade there than is sometimes
seen in our own country. I only add that Bishop Moore, in his
visitations, always took his seat in the chancel in his ordinary dress,
except when about to perform some official act, and thus addressed
the congregation after the sermon. I have seen no cause to depart
from his example.