The Rise and Fall of Religious Liberty in America
By C. M. S.
Conscience Outlawed in Virginia
It was in Virginia particularly that the Presbyterians learned what intolerance means. The Baptists had known for many years, practically as well as theoretically, the iniquity and cruelty of a union of religion and the state. The Presbyterians saw in Virginia, from a different view-point than ever before, how persecution looks to the one who experiences it. In Scotland the Presbyterians had conducted themselves toward dissenters very much as the Church of England had done. But in Massachusetts, where Congregationalism was established, the Presbyterians were not received with open arms; and in that, Virginia, where the Episcopal Church was established by the state, their worship was under the ban, and their ministers were subjected to many inconveniences and petty annoyances. In Foot’s “Sketches of Virginia,” page 25, we find this statement in reference to conditions in that State: “Toleration in the forms of religion was unknown in Virginia in 1688. From the commencement of the colony, the necessity of the religious element was felt. The company knew not how to control the members composing the colony but by religion and law. They exercised a despotism in both.” In the year 1643 the colonial assembly passed a law requiring that all non-conformists should depart from the colony “with all conveniency.” The colonial charter made withdrawal from the established church a crime equal to revolt against the government. Any person so withdrawing from the “doctrines, rites, and religion now professed and established” should be arrested and imprisoned until he should reform, or, “when the cause so requireth, that he shall with all convenient speed be sent into our realm of England, here to receive condign punishment, for his or their said offense.”5 An act, passed by the Virginia Assembly in 1661-62, evidently aimed at the Quakers, as there were no Baptists in the colony at the time, reads as follows:—
Whereas, Many schismatical persons, out of their averseness to the orthodox established religion, or out of the new-fangled conceits of their own heretical inventions, refuse to have their children baptized; be it therefore enacted by the authority aforesaid, that all persons that in contempt of the divine sacrament of baptism, shall refuse when they may carry their child to a lawful minister in that county to have them baptized, shall be amersed two thousand pounds of tobacco; half to the informer, half to the public. In the year 1643 a régime of the cruelest intolerance was instituted by Governor Berkeley, who strove by whippings and brandings to make the inhabitants of that colony conform to the established church. As a result of these bitter persecutions, the Baptists and Quakers were driven from the colony, and found refuge in North Carolina. Dr. Semple, writing of the experiences of the early Quakers, declares that “the utmost degree of persecution was exercised toward them.” Thomas Armitage, in his “History of the Baptists,” states that at this period in the history of Virginia the most dissolute among the orthodox clergy “so embittered the spirits of the baser class against the pure and godly men who went everywhere preaching the Word, that, even after the toleration act had compelled the colony to modify her laws, and they could not legally be imprisoned for preaching the gospel, mob law was let loose upon them everywhere, and they were thrust into prison for the sin of others in disturbing the public peace. Everywhere their congregations were disturbed and broken up.” Says Howe: “A snake and a hornets’ nest were thrown into their meeting, and even in one case firearms were brought to disperse them.” Taylor says that the Baptist ministers were “fined, pelted, beaten, imprisoned, poisoned, and hunted with dogs; their congregations were assaulted and dispersed; the solemn ordinance of baptism was rudely interrupted, both administrators and candidates being plunged and held beneath the water till nearly dead; they suffered mock trials, and even in courts of justice were subjected to indignities not unlike those inflicted by the infamous Jeffreys.” About thirty Baptist ministers were imprisoned in Virginia, some of them for several times; but they improved their time and opportunities by preaching through the bars of their prison to the crowds who came to listen, and through that preaching many were brought to Christ. Upon this point Dr. Hawks gives the following testimony:— No dissenters in Virginia experienced for a time harsher treatment than did the Baptists. They were beaten and imprisoned; and cruelty taxed its ingenuity to devise new modes of punishment and annoyance. The usual consequences followed. Persecution made friends for its victims; and the men who were not permitted to speak in public found willing auditors in the sympathizing crowds who gathered around the prisons to hear them preach from the grated windows.—“History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia.” Dr. Semple, in his “History of Virginia Baptists,” makes an interesting comment upon the ingenuity of the establishment in finding authority for imprisoning dissenters:— It seems by no means certain that any law in force in Virginia authorized the imprisonment of any person for preaching. The law for the preservation of peace, however, was so interpreted as to answer this purpose, and accordingly, whenever the preachers were apprehended, it was done by a peace warrant. . . . The first instance of actual imprisonment, we believe, that ever took place in Virginia was in the county of Spotsylvania. On June 4, 1768, John Waller, Lewis Craig, James Childs, etc., were seized by the sheriff, and haled before three magistrates. . . . They offered to release them if they would promise to preach no more in the county for a year and a day. This they refused, and, therefore, were sent into close jail. Historians of the period give only a few “sample cases of imprisonment,” declaring that “there were many others besides.” But it was not alone in the matter of the imprisonment of ministers that the established church showed how unlike Christ the professed Christian can be when he makes his religion an affair of law. Very ingenious devices were resorted to in order to make as difficult as possible the promulgation of principles or doctrines not authorized by the established church. For instance, after the passage of the act of toleration, which was designed by King William to ease the condition of dissenters, the Virginia government made illegal the holding of meetings in any buildings not designated and licensed by the authorities as places of worship. These authorities were under the control of the established church, and it can readily be surmised that the designating and licensing of these places for dissenters to hold worship was not very promptly or enthusiastically attended to. Wherever these authorities could withhold such licenses with any show of excuse whatever they did so. Upon one occasion the license for a place of worship was refused a Baptist company because there was already in that county a Presbyterian meeting-house. Even the licensed preachers among the Baptists were compelled to bear arms and attend the musters of the militia, a thing which was never required under any circumstances of the ministers of the established church. For a dissenting minister to preach in a meeting-house not designated in his license was prohibited by law, and Baptists, Quakers, and Presbyterians were forbidden to hold meetings at night. On March 26, 1770, the Virginia Baptists petitioned the Assembly, setting forth their grievances in the above matters and asking for relief. The committee to which the petition was referred brought in the following resolution:—
Resolved, That it is the opinion of this committee that so much of the said petition as prays that the ministers or preachers of the Baptist persuasion may not be compelled to bear arms or attend musters be rejected. This was agreed to by the house. William Fristoe, in his “History of the Ketockton Baptist Association,” says:— The enemy, not content with ridicule and defamation, manifested their abhorrence to the Baptists in another way. By a law then in force in Virginia, all were under obligation to go to church several times in the year; the failure subjected them to fine. Little notice was taken of the omission, if members of the established church; but so soon as the “New Lights” were absent, they were presented by the grand jury, and fined according to law. And we have seen this disposition manifest in our own day, where observers of the seventh day of the week have been haled before the courts for failure to observe Sunday as a rest day, when at the same time others who did not profess to keep the seventh day were permitted to labor on Sunday unmolested. It was only necessary for the colonial magistrates to know that the Baptists had meetings of their own to attend in order to begin at once to exercise their usurped authority upon them. If persons were absent from the established church upon principle, it was an indictable offense; if they were absent to minister to their own pleasure, it was not so serious a matter to the minions of the establishment. And just so does it prove to-day when the labor performed upon Sunday is performed by one who conscientiously rests upon another day, and just as conscientiously works on Sunday. Thus has it been proved again and again that to establish a religion is to outlaw conscience. The established church has always and everywhere been a mill whose grists were the consciences of men and whose product, arrogance, strife, bitter persecution, hatred, and hypocrisy. The established church attempts to set itself in the very gateway of heaven, to determine who shall and who shall not enter therein, and mete out rewards and punishments according to its own standards. We will consider next week the establishment of the one State in the union which refused to participate in the persecution of men for matters of conscience.