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27. A Sermon Preached Before a Convention of the Episcopal Church [1784]
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- 2 7 A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE A CONVENTION OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH William Smith BALTIMORE I 7 8 4 WILLIAM SMITH (I727-I8o3). Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, Smith was educated at the University of Aberdeen and then emigrated to New York in I75I. A man of controversy and extremes, Smith immediately joined Samuel Seabury and other Anglicans in the struggle to define King's College as an Anglican rather than a nonsectarian institution. The controversy, and his A General Idea of the College of Mirania (I753), brought Smith to the public's attention and to the favor of Benjamin Franklin, who brought him to the College of Philadelphia , as it became in I755. Smith was appointed a professor of logic, rhetoric, and natural and moral philosophy and was ordained an Anglican priest. He served as provost of the College until I779 and again from I789 to I79I, when the University of Pennsylvania was formed. He was awarded doctorates of divinity by the universities at Oxford, Dublin, and Aberdeen and became a member of the American Philosophical Society in I768. Along the way Smith had parted company with his more moderate sponsor, Franklin, taking the side of the colonial proprietors in favoring a vigorous policy against the French and Indians during the war that raged from I755 to I763, rather than the passivity and compromise favored by the Quakers, Germans, and colonial assembly. He made many enemies in the process, and even though he opposed the Stamp Act in I765 and preached A Sermon on the Present Situation (I775) arguing the American case (responded to by John Wesley in A Calm Address to Our American Colonies), Smith could never warm to the cause of independence and was driven out of Pennsylvania in I779· He moved to Maryland and spent a decade there, establishing the Kent School (later renamed Washington College), and becoming a founder of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He spent his last years in Philadelphia and died there. A fine writer, gifted teacher, and powerful preacher, Smith held uncompromisingly to a view of religion and culture that he saw threatened by multiple dangers: the popery of the French, the barbarity of the Indians, the enthusiasm of the revivalists, the quietism of the Quakers, the alien culture of the Germans, and the dangers of republicanism bereft of virtue and the steadying hand of traditional authority. 8I6 [44.192.71.254] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:42 GMT) AN A D D R E s s T 0 T H .lli M E M B E R S OF THE PRoTESTANT EPISCOPAl. CHuRcH 0 F MARYLAND, C 0 N T A I N I N G, An A C C 0 UN T of the Proceedingr of fmne late CoNVENTIONS both of CLERGY and LAITY, for the Purpofe of organizing the faid Churcl1, and providing a Succeffion in her Miniflry, agreeably to the Principles of the American Revolution. PublHhed by a CoMMITTEE of Clerical and Lay-Members, appointed for ·that Purpofe, by a CoiJVention held at Annapolis, June 22d, 1784. TO WHICH IS ADDEb A s E R 1VI 0 N, Preached at the Opening of tlze Jaid Convention, BY wILL I AM sMITH, D~ D. PRESIDENT OF THE SAME. B A L 1' I 1\1 0 R. ·E : PRINTED FOR W I L I,. I A M G 0 D D A RD. M D C C L X X. X l V. ~Hold fast the form of sound Words which thou hast heard of me in Faith and Love which is in Christ Jesus-That good Thing which was committed unto thee, keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us. ~ ~For the Time will come when they will not endure sound Doctrine, but after their own Lusts shall heap to themselves Teachers, having itching Ears, and they shall turn away their Earsfrom the Truth, and shall be turned unto Fables.~ 2 Tim. ch. i. ver. 13, 14,-and ch. iv. ver. 3, 4· n this very adventurous and inquisitive day, when men spuming their kindred-earth, on which they were born to tread, will dare, on airy (or baloon) wing to soar into the regions of the sky; were it the pleasure of our Almighty Creator to purge any of us mortals of our terrestrial dross, and to place us, in good earnest, upon some distant orb, from which with clear and serene view, corporeal as well as intellectual, we could survey this world of ours-what...