Slike strani
PDF
ePub

began to admit the suspicion that the establishment was proving a burden instead of a blessing. It prepared the minds of men for the final blow struck in the stormy times of the Revolution." (Hawks.)

Before that blow was struck, another and justifying reason for it was given by the renewal of the spirit of persecution, in the most harsh and foolish actions of which the establishment was guilty. They are the more remarkable because coming after the gradual enlightenment of almost the entire colonial period and on the eve of the great struggle for freedom. So placed, the persecution of the Baptists may be Persec rated as the worst and most inexcusable assault on freedom of Bal of conscience and worship, which our colonial history describes.1

As before noted, Baptists began to come into the colony so early as 1714, settling quietly and undisturbed at Norfolk. Thirty years later, others began settlements in the northern part of the province, to which increasing numbers were added in the following years. In the same period numbers of Moravians and Mennonites also appeared in the Blue Ridge country. It is difficult to account for the outbreak of persecution which took place between 1765 and 1770. Twenty years before, Governor Gooch had issued a proclamation against the Moravians and Mennonites, but they do not appear to have been subjected to any more drastic measures. They quietly went about their own business and were undisturbed, sharing at last with the Quakers in the exemptions of 1766.2

Perhaps the bitter cup of persecution presented to the Baptists, at the same time that other sects were obtaining an enlargement of liberty, may be charged to their own violence of speech. It was a time of much religious excitement among the dissenting churches, especially in the north of

1 Foote, Sketches, pp. 314, 318; Hawks, Contributions, I, 121; Campbell, Virginia, p. 553; Howison, Virginia, II, 160, 168.

2 Hening, VIII, 242.

Virginia.1 The Presbyterians of the Shenandoah were experiencing an almost constant revival through several years, in the interest and fervor of which their Baptist brethren shared. But the latter were not guided by the same prudence of discussion or charity of speech which the Presbyterians observed. Many of their preachers were illiterate : they gave free rein to the language and manner of passion; and with their vehemence of gesticulation and a singularly rasping quality of voice they wrought their hearers into a high state of excitement. With it all they did not scruple to denounce the established Church and its clergy. "There was a bitterness," said Hawks, " in the hatred of this denomination towards the established Church, which surpassed that of all others. It was always prompt to avail itself of every prejudice, which religious or political zeal could excite against the Church. No dissenters in Virginia experienced for a time harsher treatment than the Baptists. They were beaten and imprisoned, and cruelty taxed ingenuity to devise new modes of punishment and annoyance." It is but fair to conclude that the former fact accounted for, though it could not justify, the latter, in view of the peace and quietness experienced at the time by all other dissenting churches.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

The increase of the Baptists, with their impolitic freedom of speech, excited alarm and stern opposition among churchmen. The clergy of the establishment preached against them as of the same sort as the Anabaptists of Munster, and the local authorities learned to look upon them as disturbers of the peace, to be suppressed by the civil power.

The climax came in 1768 when the sheriff of Spotsylvania arrested John Waller, Lewis Craig, and James Childs, zealous Baptist preachers. On their appearance before the magistrate, release was offered if they would promise not to preach in the county for a year and a day. This promise was refused, and the men were imprisoned. Craig was released after four weeks, but the two others lay in jail four weeks more.

1 See Foote's Sketches.

It is to be noted that this persecution was entirely the act of local authorities. The colonial government had no hand in it and seems to have considered it unjust. That certainly was the mind of Governor Blair, who wrote a sharp rebuke to the sheriff of Spotsylvania County. "You may not molest these conscientious men," he wrote, "so long as they behave themselves in a manner becoming pious Christians. I am told that they differ in nothing from our Church but in (the manner of) Baptism, and their renewing of the ancient discipline, by which they have reformed some sinners and brought them to be truly penitent. . . . If this be their behaviour, it were to be wished we had some of it among us."

At the trial of Waller and Childs, which the rebuke of the governor had no power to stay, some notable things occurred. The prosecuting attorney bore testimony to their zeal in his opening words: "May it please your worship, these men are great disturbers of the peace: they can not meet a man upon the road, but they must ram a text of scripture down his throat!" The indictment charged them with "preaching the gospel contrary to law." This astonishing charge furnished to Patrick Henry the second opportunity of dramatic exhibition before a court. He offered his services to defend the poor preachers, and tradition has it that he rode fifty miles to do so. In his speech he so dwelt. upon the folly and wickedness of attempting "to punish a man for preaching the gospel of the Son of God," that he overwhelmed the court and secured the immediate discharge of his clients.

But the issue of this case did not end the persecution. In 1770 two other Baptist preachers, William Webber and Joseph Anthony, were thrown into Chesterfield County jail, and there "they did much execution by preaching through the grates of their windows." In Middlesex County several Baptist ministers were imprisoned and treated like criminals. So late as 1772 a letter in the Virginia Gazette justified the persecution, charging the Baptists with heresy and hateful

1

[blocks in formation]

doctrines, and with disturbing the peace of religion, and denying that they were entitled to the benefit of the toleration act. This was strange language at the very time when Virginia was ringing with the cry for freedom. But it was unheeded. The end of the persecution had come, and of all persecution in America.

Presently there was to pass into oblivion the religious establishment, in whose interest such oppression was instituted. The Church in Virginia had grown almost obsolete; its methods, its claims, its arrogance alike hateful to the great majority of the people. The causes of this issue are not far to seek. The unwillingness of the Church to permit any other worship than its own, with the consequence that many of the scattered population were deprived of all religious services; its indifference to the spiritual good of the people; the corrupt character of many of its clergy; its ́rancor in prosecuting any dissent; the growing sense of injustice in taxing people for the support of a religion not their own; the ill-starred Parsons' Cause, which left upon the clergy and the Church a heavy, though unjust, burden of ridicule and contempt; the persecution of the Baptists, as the last throe of a dying tyrant; and finally the ill-judged effort to establish an American episcopate an effort to be hereinafter detailed all together forced the Church of England in Virginia to a dishonored fall, far different from the fate which, as shall be seen, the theocratic establishment of Massachusetts met with dignity and composure.

While we can have no sympathy with the spiritual tyranny of early Massachusetts, nor approve its oppressive measures; at the same time we cannot fail to reverence the high religious motives of its leaders, by whom God's honor was chiefly to be sought; the learning and pure character of its ministry; its care for a "godly ministry" in every vicinage; and the decorous gravity with which it adapted itself, though unwillingly, to the growing liberty of mind. We look in vain for such traits in the Virginia establishment; a mere appendage

of the state, with no higher demand than an outward conformity to its law, and no more earnest purpose than to secure its own perquisites and emoluments.

[ocr errors]

Thus the difference between the two institutions was immense. The Theocracy represented a magnificent dream, which had in it more of heaven than of earth a superb effort to realize in the world the purity and duty of the City of God. The Virginia establishment debased the things of God into a mere setting for the sordidness of earth. fall there were few to mourn.

In its

The details of its disestablishment will be noted in our study of the Revolutionary Period and the Final Settlements.

II. The Carolinas

The earliest settlers in the territory of the Carolinas came across the southern border of Virginia. Some of them were non-conformists who desired to escape from the intolerant measures of Berkeley. Some were Quakers; one of whose preachers, Edmundson, was the first man to preach the gospel in Carolina. Others, without any religious motive, sought "more and better land." This desire, according to Professor Weeks,1 "and not that for religious liberty, was the leading factor in the settlement of North Carolina."

Governor Berkeley of Virginia had already assumed to grant property rights so far to the south as Cape Fear, but the first formal and legal action toward colonial institution in the territory was by charter, granted in 1663 by Charles Charter. II. to Lords Clarendon, Albemarle, Craven, Berkeley and Ashley, Sir George Carteret, Sir William Berkeley (governor of Virginia), and Sir John Colleton. The charter constituted these eight men proprietaries of all the territory now included in the two Carolinas, with all privileges and powers

1 Johns Hopkins Studies, X.

2 Of this number Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, ten years later, became proprietaries of New Jersey.

« PrejšnjaNaprej »