Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/172

168 January, 1755, and returning to Philadelphia in the following April, he shortly entered on his duties as Missionary in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, from whence he ministered at York, and Carlisle and Shippensburg. His interest in the Indians was warmly aroused, but the defeat of Braddock marred his plans for usefulness among them. He became Chaplain to General Forbes in his expedition of 1758. For nearly twenty years he was Rector of St. James Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania; his life was full of untiring activities in the frontier settlements. In the Revolution he felt that his oath of allegiance as a minister bound him to England, and he parted with all his interests in Pennsylvania, and arrived within the British lines in New York in 1778. He died 25 May, 1780, and was interred in the chancel of St. George's Church, New York. He preached a notable sermon on Braddock's Defeat, which with an introductory letter by Provost Smith received a very extended circulation, entitled Unanimity and Publick Spirit. He had sought Mr. Smith's judgment upon it and asked his views on the office and duty of Protestant ministers, and the right of exercising their pulpit liberty in the handling and treating of civil as well as religious affairs, and more especially in times of public danger and calamity.

This embodied a reference to the Friends then in power in the Assembly who were opposed to all warfare defensive as well as offensive. And the Provost enclosing a copy of this production to the Archbishop of Canterbury, informs him upon the general consternation that followed General Braddock's Defeat, I wrote to the Missionaries on the Frontiers as far as I knew them, exhorting them to make a noble Stand for liberty, and vindicating the office and Duties of a Protestant Ministry against all the Objections of the Quakers and other Spiritualists who are against all clergy.

As we use the latter word to-day, such association would not be sought by the former now. It may well be granted, however, that the Friends were consistent, and that had the whole community been permeated with the just principles of which they claimed to be the exponent, there would have existed