Great sermon!
But this couldn't have been THE Samuel Seabury, the first US bishop: the dates are wrong. Bishop Seabury lived from 1706 to 1764. The sermon must have been by one of his many illustrious descendants.
What a wonderful website this is! Thanks.
Sorry, Ivan, but the Samuel Seabury who was the first Anglican Bishop in the United States lived from 1729 to 1796. I believe the date given at the top of the web site where the sermon is refers to the date of the collection the sermon appears in.
This is a sermon by Bishop Seabury's son, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Seabury, collected by Bishop Seabury's grandson, William.
Rome did not adopt the Immaculate Conception of Mary until 1854, long after the first Samuel Seabury died.
But it is still a great sermon--thanks for posting it.
Ha! I correct myself--this Samuel Seabury was the Grandson of Bishop Seabury, not the son, and William the great-grandson.
Why couldn't they have been more creative in their naming pattern?
If I can defend the Roman Catholic position on this doctrine as opposed to the views of Samuel Seabury fils, I would point out that a) this doctrine was very much the product of applying Reason (which Seabury calls "scholastic speculation") to the data of Scripture and Tradition. Seabury asserts that the strongest statement made in Scriptures about the Blessed Virgin Mary is her assertion in the Magnificat that "He that is mighty hath done to me great things, and holy is His name." But the text that is normally taken as teh primary evidence for the Immiaculate Conception is Luke 1:28, translated by the Authorised Version as "Hail, thou that art highly favoured", but by the Douay-Rheims (following Jerome's Vulgate) as "Hail, full of grace." The Catholic version seems better justified, as both words of the Greek "Chaire kecharitomene" are based on "charis" or "grace". Thus a literal reading would be something like, "Grace to you who are highly graced". Now the question is, how could Mary be "full of grace" before the coming of the saviour? Only if God had somehow purified her or preserved her from sin in anticipation of Christ's saving work.
While scholastic writers like Duns Scotus worked out the logic of this in great detail, the teaching is implicit in many of the early Fathers and the hymns and liturgies of the early Eastern Church. The Church - Eastern and Western - has celebrated the Conception of Mary as a holy day from the earliest times. The principal reason the Orthodox Church rejects the Immaculate Conception (aside from their rejection of it as an imposition of Roman authority) is because the reject the Western Church's teaching on original sin - which orthodox Anglicans, presumably, accept.
Thus, the Immaculate Conception was not the result of Rome "making it up as it goes along", but the product of centuries of reflection (Reason) on the Gospel of Luke (Scripture) and the liturgy, hymns, and patristic writings (Tradition) of the early Church.
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