Milo Mahan

May 24, 1819 (age 51)

Having carried on studies preparatory to the ministry, Mahan was ordained deacon by Bishop Thomas C. Brownell at New Canaan, Connecticut, October 27, 1845; and priest, by Bishop Levi S. Ives, at the Church of the Holy Communion, New York, on December 14, 1846. After serving as assistant to Dr. Samuel Seabury at the Church of the Annunciation, New York, in November 1848 he became rector of Grace Church, Van Vorst, Jersey City, organized not long before. In two years, under his leadership, it developed into a flourishing parish, and he then went to St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia, as assistant to Dr. J. P. B. Wilmer. In 1851, he published The Exercise of Faith in Its Relation to Authority and Private Judgment, in which, from the Anglican point of view, he set forth the errors of the Roman Catholic position. The same year he was appointed a professor of ecclesiastical history at the General Theological Seminary, New York. With two or three other clergymen, he started and for several years conducted the Church Journal, the first number of which appeared February 5, 1853. An intimate friend of Bishop G. W. Doane of New Jersey, Mahan cooperated in the bishop's educational projects, serving as a trustee of St. Mary's Hall and of Burlington College. He also represented the New Jersey diocese in the General Conventions of 1856, 1859, and 1862. Bishop Doane, shortly before his death in 1859, expressed the desire that Mahan be his successor, but his election was prevented by those who had been hostile to Doane. In the General Convention of 1862, he made a vigorous protest against endorsement of the Union cause, on the ground that the issue was political rather than religious. His Southern sympathies made him uncomfortable in New York and this fact, together with the need of more salary, led him to resign his professorship in 1864, and assume the rectorship of St. Paul's Church, Baltimore. He had previously published A Church History of the First Three Centuries, from the Thirtieth to the Three Hundred and Twenty-third Year of the Christian Era (1860), a useful compendium, but without originality and somewhat influenced by the writer's own ecclesiastical views; and a reply to Bishop John William Colenso's conclusions regarding the Pentateuch, The Spiritual Point of View: or the Glass Reversed, an Answer to Bishop Colenso (1863). Obsessed with the idea that the Bible contains elaborate and abstruse symbolism, he had also published in 1863 an ingenious work on the significance of numbers employed therein, entitled: Palmoni: or, the Numerals of Scripture a Proof of Inspiration. His Comedy of Canonization called forth by the Comedy of Convocation, a caricature of the Anglican position by a convert to Rome, appeared anonymously in 1868; and his Church History of the First Seven Centuries, in 1872. He represented the diocese of Maryland in the General Conventions of 1865 and 1868. On June 30, 1870, he was called back to the General Theological Seminary as professor of systematic divinity. The following month he accepted the appointment, but his death occurred before he entered upon its duties. In 1875, The Collected Works of the Late Milo Mahan, D. D. , in three volumes, edited by J. H. Hopkins, was published.

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Works

book

The Exercise of Faith

(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

A Church History

(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

The Spiritual Point-of-View

The Comedy of Canonization: In Four Scenes (Classic Reprint)

(Excerpt from The Comedy of Canonization: In Four Scenes ...)

an answer to Bishop Colenso

(The spiritual point-of-view or, The glass reversed : an a...)

Palmoni, Vol. 8: Or, the Numerals of Scripture, a Proof of Inspiration; A Free Inquiry (Classic Reprint)

(Excerpt from Palmoni, Vol. 8: Or, the Numerals of Scriptu...)

Milo Mahan Edit Profile

clergyman educator

Background

Milo Mahan was born on May 24, 1819, in Suffolk, Virginia, and was the son of John Mahan, a native of Ireland, by a third wife.

His father died when Milo was about two years old and his half-brother, Dennis Hart Mahan, assumed responsibility for the care and education of the boy, leaving him with his mother for some years.

Education

Mahan studied at Flushing, Long Island, conducted by Rev. William Augustus Muhlenberg, known after 1838 as St. Paul's College. Here he showed unusual intellectual ability, and in his seventeenth year, he went to the Episcopal High School, Alexandria, Virginia, to teach Greek.

During the years, he spent there he became affected by the Oxford movement to a degree displeasing to Bishop William Meade, and he returned to St. Paul's College as a teacher.

Career

Having carried on studies preparatory to the ministry, Mahan was ordained deacon by Bishop Thomas C. Brownell at New Canaan, Connecticut, October 27, 1845; and priest, by Bishop Levi S. Ives, at the Church of the Holy Communion, New York, on December 14, 1846.

After serving as assistant to Dr. Samuel Seabury at the Church of the Annunciation, New York, in November 1848 he became rector of Grace Church, Van Vorst, Jersey City, organized not long before. In two years, under his leadership, it developed into a flourishing parish, and he then went to St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia, as assistant to Dr. J. P. B. Wilmer.

In 1851, he published The Exercise of Faith in Its Relation to Authority and Private Judgment, in which, from the Anglican point of view, he set forth the errors of the Roman Catholic position. The same year he was appointed a professor of ecclesiastical history at the General Theological Seminary, New York.

With two or three other clergymen, he started and for several years conducted the Church Journal, the first number of which appeared February 5, 1853. An intimate friend of Bishop G. W. Doane of New Jersey, Mahan cooperated in the bishop's educational projects, serving as a trustee of St. Mary's Hall and of Burlington College. He also represented the New Jersey diocese in the General Conventions of 1856, 1859, and 1862.

Bishop Doane, shortly before his death in 1859, expressed the desire that Mahan be his successor, but his election was prevented by those who had been hostile to Doane. In the General Convention of 1862, he made a vigorous protest against endorsement of the Union cause, on the ground that the issue was political rather than religious.

His Southern sympathies made him uncomfortable in New York and this fact, together with the need of more salary, led him to resign his professorship in 1864, and assume the rectorship of St. Paul's Church, Baltimore. He had previously published A Church History of the First Three Centuries, from the Thirtieth to the Three Hundred and Twenty-third Year of the Christian Era (1860), a useful compendium, but without originality and somewhat influenced by the writer's own ecclesiastical views; and a reply to Bishop John William Colenso's conclusions regarding the Pentateuch, The Spiritual Point of View: or the Glass Reversed, an Answer to Bishop Colenso (1863).

Obsessed with the idea that the Bible contains elaborate and abstruse symbolism, he had also published in 1863 an ingenious work on the significance of numbers employed therein, entitled: Palmoni: or, the Numerals of Scripture a Proof of Inspiration. His Comedy of Canonization called forth by the Comedy of Convocation, a caricature of the Anglican position by a convert to Rome, appeared anonymously in 1868; and his Church History of the First Seven Centuries, in 1872.

He represented the diocese of Maryland in the General Conventions of 1865 and 1868. On June 30, 1870, he was called back to the General Theological Seminary as professor of systematic divinity. The following month he accepted the appointment, but his death occurred before he entered upon its duties.

In 1875, The Collected Works of the Late Milo Mahan, D. D. , in three volumes, edited by J. H. Hopkins, was published.

Achievements

Mahan's two major historical works were A Church History of the First Three Centuries, from the Thirtieth to the Three Hundred and Twenty-third Year of the Christian Era (1860), and Church History of the First Seven Centuries (1872).