A Pioneer Methodist Preacher on Religious Liberty
The following interesting paragraphs, sent us by Mr. A. Delos Westcott, are taken from “Memoirs of the Life and Travels of B. Hibbard, Methodist Minister.” Mr. Hibbard was born at Norwich, Conn., in 1771, and preached during the early part of the nineteenth century. He says: “I was the first Methodist preacher that ever went into West Hampton to preach. The people were warned by their minister, Mr. H——, against the Methodists, insomuch that all his people were prejudiced against us, except a Mr. Soule, who had heard the Methodists somewhere in his travels. This man invited me to preach in his house; and in notifying the people, he did not say it was a Methodist preacher that was to preach. So when some came and learned who was to preach, they were about to go away again; but others said, ‘It is no harm to hear for once, seeing we are here.’ This pacified them, and none went away. “I preached to them, ‘What shall it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul,’ etc. I left many of them in tears, and rode on to Northampton to preach that evening. . . . The system of opposition to the Methodists seemed now to be quite new, tho some thought opposition was done away. We were no longer called wolves in sheep’s clothing, nor deceivers; but we were a Christian people and had done some good. We were not allowed to be a learned people; but we were a sincere people; and our want of learning was a matter of grief and not of disgrace. It was said by some, that if our ministers were men of learning, so as to read the Bible in the Hebrew and Greek, we should soon give up the doctrines of perfection and falling from grace. And this sentiment coming from ministers professing the knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, gave me queer feelings.” “Many of those who opposed us were ministers of piety and true godliness. But their notions of Calvinism and their love for the order and established religion of New England, had corrupted their judgment, so that they refused liberty of conscience to all but those of the standing order. Yet they thought they gave liberty only because they wanted all to be of their opinion; and we all had liberty to worship with them and conform to their order.” “The policy of New England was to unite the church with the state, and because they tolerated other denominations, they therefore professed liberty of conscience; but by confounding toleration with liberty, they deceived themselves and others; for toleration is not liberty. Toleration is the counterfeit of liberty, and a bad counterfeit, too; for it assumes a right in the ruler to grant liberty to men to worship their God under certain restrictions. This assumption is tyranny in disguise. If the rulers could answer for their subjects at the bar of God, and if they would do it faithfully, then they might legislate, and direct when, and where, and how, and whom we should worship. But seeing that every one of us must give an account of himself to God, it is an insult, both to God and man, for man to assume a right to dictate to man whom or how he shall worship. It is, indeed, the duty of civil rulers to regulate civil society, and not suffer one to deprive another of his rights. But to presume to dictate to men whom they shall worship, or how, when, and where they shall worship, is arrogating a power to themselves that belongs to God only; and this is not only presumptuous but blasphemous, as it is assuming rights that belong to God alone.” “The law establishment of religion in New England was a grief and an offense to me. I thought learned men trifled with God and religion to take upon themselves to coerce the consciences of men, and force them to support a religion they did not believe in.” “I am ashamed of New England, the land of my fathers. Where is thy boasted goodness? How are thine altars (sacred to religion) polluted by the minister’s preaching his party politics and vehement invectives!”