inge or riott, spendinge their tyme idellye by day or night." "The worst are sent to us," said Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, at a later period. And in 1751, the then bishop of London describes "a great part” of the colonial clergy as those "who can get no employment at home," or are willing to go abroad "to retrieve either lost fortunes or lost character." Discipline was impossible; and cases of the most shocking delinquency occurred with impunity. Such was the condition of the state church in the Virginian colonies.

In New England, the evils resulting to religion from the union of the church and the state were different in form, but equal in magnitude.

The law which made church membership requisite to the enjoyment of the rights and privileges of citizenship, speedily brought forth its fruits. The worthy and noble founders of these settlements seem quite to have overlooked, not only the sure influx of irreligious persons into them, but the fact, equally certain, that many of their own children would grow up without religion. The churches at first maintained a strict discipline, and allowed none to become members who did not give evidence of conversion. Gradually, however, a large population appeared who gave no such evidence, but who thought it very hard that they should, on this account, be excluded from citizenship in settlements which their fathers had founded. When the complaints of this class of persons could no longer be disregarded, the practical question lay between church discipline and the law. Which of these should be relaxed? Unhappily, the relaxation fell, not, as it ought to have done, upon the law, but, as it ought not to have done, on the discipline of the church. The colonial legislators decided that all baptized persons should be regarded as church members. Not simply, however, according to its terms was this enactment carried out. In order to meet, as it would seem, an ecclesiastical scruple, the baptized persons

who wished for citizenship were required to be of good morals, and publicly to own in the church the covenant made for them in their baptism.

The bearing of this system on the religious state of the colony soon appeared. For the attainment of a civil end, the churches were filled with persons who had been baptized, and who owned the covenant; but in consequence of a reluctance to pass the severer test by which the purity of the Lord's table was guarded, the number of communicants, or full members, rapidly diminished. To remedy this evil, and to fill the table with guests, the door to it was opened more widely, and all "well-disposed" persons were admitted to it, under the idea of the Lord's Supper being, like the preaching of the gospel, a means of grace, and adapted to the conversion of sinners, as well as to the edification of saints. The churches were thus filled with communicants, but with unconverted communicants; the consequence of which was, that the standard of religious sentiment and doctrine speedily began to decline, and that in the course of a few generations it fell very low.

As the New England colonies advanced in population, and as diversities of religious sentiment multiplied, the law which taxed the whole community for the support of one form of religion became increasingly unpopular, and it gave rise in the end to very serious difficulties. When the legislature had been obliged to extend the rights of citizenship to persons of all sects, and to allow to all the maintenance of their own worship, it became intolerable that, after paying for their own, they should be constrained to pay, in addition, for the parish or town churches also. Relief was obtained for this grievance; but it consisted, not in exempting any parties from the tax, but in allowing every one to appropriate his share of it to the form of religion he preferred. Compulsory support was thus given, not only to one form of religious worship, but to a hundredto anything, in short, which could contrive to call itself by

a Christian name. "Fair as this seemed," says Dr. Baird, "it proved most disastrous to the interests of true religion. The haters of evangelical Christianity could now say, ‘Well, since we must be taxed in support of religion, we will have what suits us;' and in many places societies were formed, and false preachers found support, where, but for this law, no such societies or preachers would ever have existed. It is impossible to describe the mischiefs that have flowed from this unfortunate measure, not only and particularly in Massachusetts, but likewise in Connecticut, Maine, and, I believe, in New Hampshire also."*

We thus see that, under both the forms, and in both the regions, in which it prevailed, the compulsory principle wrought evil, and only evil continually. It at once injured religion and tortured society. It was at length vigorously assailed, and finally overthrown; but of this we shall give an account in the next chapter.

* Baird, p. 205.

CHAPTER III.

ITS ABOLITION.

THE compulsory principle in religion was first assailed and overthrown in the Virginian group of settlements, and indeed in Virginia itself.

In this colony the friends of the established church kept for a long period a very close watch against the intrusion of dissent, which for more than a hundred years was scarcely suffered to exist within its bounds, even in the most secret manner. The element, however, which the legislature was so careful to exclude from without, was generated from within by the vices of the church itself. A church whose clergy spent most of their time in foxhunting and other sports, in company with the most dissolute of their parishioners, and who at the same time eagerly contended for the last pound of tobacco allowed them as their legal salary, could not permanently retain its hold on popular favour. Multitudes became alienated in heart, and practically abandoned it.

The date of the first actual nonconformist congregation existing in the colony cannot be ascertained. It appears, however, that prior to 1740 there existed one presbyterian congregation in Eastern Virginia; and it is believed that Scotch and Irish emigrants from Pennsylvania had introduced the same ecclesiastical polity into what was called "The Valley." A few quaker societies, some small German

congregations, and a considerable number of baptist churches-containing, perhaps, on the whole, a greater number of persons than all the other dissenting bodies together—also existed at this period. After the year 1740, presbyterianism rapidly increased; partly under the warmhearted labours of a godly layman, and partly through visitations from the north by two clergymen of that body, -one in 1743, and another in 1747. For some time before the revolution, the Virginian presbytery of Hanover was a numerous and powerful body. In the western part of the colony, the Scotch and Irish presbyterians also had by this time multiplied, and the baptists had increased most rapidly of all.

The effect of the revolutionary struggle was immediately to place the episcopal-that is, the established-church of Virginia, in a position of disadvantage. It was the church of the mother country, and was not unnaturally regarded as hostile to the cause of American freedom. As the dominant, it had also been the persecuting church; and the dissenting bodies in common regarded it as the author of many wrongs and sufferings, endured both by themselves and their fathers. It was to be looked for, consequently, that an attack on the ecclesiastical establishment would be speedy, and the shock severe.

The first blow was struck in the year 1775, immediately after the appearance of the Declaration of Independence. The baptists, who had suffered more than any other class of dissenters from the intolerance of the state church, and who had maintained an active and uninterrupted opposition to it for more than twenty years, now took the lead of the combined assault, by presenting a petition to the General Assembly, in which they desired "that they might be allowed to worship God in their own way, without paying the clergy of other denominations.” The quakers also petitioned. But the most important effort was made by the presbytery of Hanover, now a numerous and influential