A SERMON PREACHED IN NEW YORK, JULY 4TH, 1793
BEING THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE
INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA:
At the Request of the Tammany Society, or Columbian Order
by SAMUEL MILLER, A.M.
One of the Ministers of the United Presbyterian Churches, in the City of New York
To The Tammany Society, Or Columbian Order
Whose Principles of Association
Merit the Highest Applause –
And Whose Patriotic Exertions
Demand the Warmest Gratitude
of Every American –
THIS SERMON
Delivered published at their Request,
Is respectfully dedicated,
By their Fellow-Citizen,
The Author
In Society, July 4, 1793.
RESOLVED, That the Thanks of this Society by returned to the Reverend Mr. SAMUEL MILLER, for his elegant and patriotic Discourse, delivered by him, before the Society, this Day.
ORDERED, That Brothers Rodgers, Mitchell, and Ker, Be a Committee to wait on Mr. Miller, for this Purpose, and to request a Copy for the Press.
A true Copy from the Minutes, BENJAMIN STRONG, Secretary
ADVERTISEMENT
THE following Discourse is published, almost verbatim, as it was delivered, excepting the addition of the Notes. It was compiled on very short Notice – amidst many pressing Avocations – and, consequently, in great Haste. These Circumstances, together with the want of Abilities and Experience in the Author, must apologize for its indigested and defective Appearance.
C H R I S T I A N I T Y
the GRAND SOURCE, AND THE SUREST BASIS
of P O L I T I C A L L I B E R T Y:
A SERMON.
II. CORINTHIANS, iii. 17.
AND WHERE THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS, THERE IS LIBERTY.
14 Ellis Sandoz, ed., Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730-1805 (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), vol. 2, pp. 1154, 1159, 1165, 1166, 1167.
15 See chapter 3, note 47 where a letter from Methodist Bishops Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury on behalf of the Methodist-Episcopal church is cited. This clearly shows that Washington’s language for Deity was that of the evangelical preachers of his day. Coke and Asbury write: “We have received the most grateful satisfaction, from the humble and entire dependence on the Great Governor of the universe which you have repeatedly expressed, acknowledging him the source of every blessing,….” Washington responded on the same day “It always affords me satisfaction when I find a concurrence of sentiment and practice between all conscientious men, in acknowledgments of homage to the great Governor of the universe,….”
16 In a subsequent chapter on Washington’s sermons, we will consider the collection of sermons that Washington stated in writing that he had read, enjoyed, or approved. An example presented there is “A Sermon Occasioned by the Death of the Honourable Sir William Pepperell etc.,” Boston, 1759, to which Washington gave his “approbation” (see WGW, letter to Reverend Joseph Buckminster, December 23, 1789). The terms for “God” that Stephens used in this sermon include: “Supreme Ruler of the Universe” “great Governor of the World,” “His Providence,” “Divinity,” “universal Sovereign,” “Definition of Infinite Wisdom,” “supreme Universal Monarch,” “universal Judge,” “Discerner of true Worth.” Such titles for deity used by Christian preachers of Washington’s era, which Washington also employed, are utterly absent from Thomas Paine’s deistic Age of Reason.
17 Boller, George Washington And Religion, p. 28-29, writes, “Parson Weems quoted him [Lee Massey] as saying: I never knew so constant an attendant at Church as Washington. His behavior in the House of God was ever so deeply reverential, and greatly assisted me in my pulpit labors. No company ever withheld him from church. I have often been at Mount Vernon, on Sabbath morning, when his breakfast table was filled with guests; but to him they furnished no pretext for neglecting his God, and losing the satisfaction of setting a good example For instead of staying home out of false complaisance to them, he used constantly to invite them to accompany him. But Massey’s statement was made many years after the period to which he referred and, as Paul Leicester Ford suggested, it was probably made “more with an eye to its influence on others than to its strict accuracy.” The same comment may be made of George Washington Parke Custis’ statement, some years after Washington’s death, that his step-grandfather “was always a strict and decorous observer of the Sabbath. He invariably attended divine service once a day, when within reach of a place of worship. If we examine Washington’s own record of what he did on Sunday before the Revolution, we find that he was considerably less conscientious about attending church than either Lee Massey or GWP Custis seems to have recollected. According to his diary, Washington went to church four times during the first five months of 1760, and in 1768 he went fifteen times; and these years seem to be fairly typical of the period from 1760 to 1773. It is true, as the pietists have noted, that bad weather sometimes made it impossible to make the trip to church, that illness occasionally kept Washington at home, and that Pohick Church did not hold services every Sunday because the rector had to preach elsewhere in Truro parish. But Washington, we know, also transacted business on Sundays, visited friends and relatives, traveled, and sometimes went fox-hunting, instead of going to church. . . . But at the most it does not seem to have exceeded an average of once a month.”
Boller’s use of Washington’s diaries here is methodologically unsound. His conclusions are non-sequiturs. Washington, for example, almost ignores political events. On this count, they were irrelevant too. (Historians have been frustrated by Washington’s seeming indifference in his own diary to the world-changing events that he often participated in.) Or by this same logic, church attendance could be construed as even more important than his attendance at the Constitutional Convention—for he never even said a word beyond bare attendance! Or as a reductio ad absurdum, by the same logic, consider then the profound significance of the fact that on a Saturday and Sunday at the end of July 1769, Washington chose to give so much detail concerning his hounds. With barnyard clarity, Washington records: “Chaunter again lind with Rockwood” and “The black bitch countess appeard to be going proud” and “was shut up in order to go to the same Dog.” And that the next day “Chaunter Lined again by rockwood.” By Boller’s logic, if importance is established by record and commentary, we are compelled to assume that the breeding of his dogs was the most important thing in his life, since Washington by far presents more on his dog’s historical actions than he does of his own actions on Sunday worship or at the Creation of a New American Government! Let it be noted, that a thorough search of Washington’s diaries shows that he did not fox-hunt on Sundays. Not being of the Puritan tradition, he had no scruple about traveling on Sunday. The few Sundays in his diaries that mention fox hunting show that he traveled to someone’s home to fox hunt. The next day’s entry then shows the typical recounting of the foxes that were chased and sometimes killed. While Boller’s logic diminishes the faithfulness of Washington’s attendance at church, a few other factors should be kept in mind. First, to make his point, he must, in essence, call Reverend Massey and Washington’s grandson, who grew up in Washington’s house, exaggerators or outright liars. Next, he has to disregard the fact that the trip to church took nearly all day, since it required an approximately nine mile carriage ride through unpaved country roads, and in the winter, it was to a church building that by law could not have a fireplace for heat, lest it be susceptible to catching fire. Further, Boller’s portrayal of the minimal attendance of Washington at church overlooks the written record and the physical evidence of Washington’s custom of reading a sermon to his family on Sundays. Finally, we will, in a subsequent chapter, consider the training the Washington family gave to their children through Episcopal tutors and that Washington himself received in childhood in regard to the regular use of The Book Of Common Prayer which provided a weekly spiritual experience, even when weather, health, distance, or lack of clergy prevented the family from attending worship. As strange as it may sound, in the rural countryside of Virginia, an average of once a month attendance at church gave one high marks for consistency. Consistent with this, when Washington lived in New York and Philadelphia as president, his attendance was far more convenient and far more frequent.
18 Rupert Hughes writes in George Washington the Human Being and the Hero 1732-1762 (New York: William Morow & Co., 1926), p. 555, “Dr. Conway, speaking of Washington’s Diaries, notes ‘his pretty regular attendance at church but never any remark on the sermons.’” The same flawed logic as Boller is reflected here by Hughes. Washington did, in fact, comment on the sermons, only rarely in his diaries, but in letters to the preacher/writers of the sermons, he did on some twenty different occasions. We will consider these in a later chapter.
19 Reverend John Stockton Littell, D.D. Washington: Christian – Stories of Cross and Flag No. 1 (Keene, N.H.: The Hampshire Art Press).
