HENRY, Patrick, and the Baptists, Sylvester Hassell In colonial times, the state of Virginia was subject to the same laws resulting from the union of the church and state as prevailed in the mother country. Emigrants from England brought over the same spirit which characterized them at home—the Churchmen or Episcopalians, the spirit of intolerance. And persecution, as evinced in the lives of the founders of that church, Henry VIII, Cranmer, Rogers, and others; and the Baptists, the spirit of independence and the love of civil and religious liberty. When then, it became known that the ruling power would not permit the Baptists to exercise their God-given privileges, persecution became the necessary consequence.
In 1775, three Baptist preachers, Lewis Craig, Joseph Craig, and Aaron Bledsoe, were indicted and brought to trial “for preaching the gospel of the Son of God in the Colony of Virginia.” When the prosecutor had ceased, Patrick Henry, residing in a distant county, and present to defend the rights of these poor people, arose and said, “May it please your worships; I think I heard read by the prosecutor as I entered this house, the paper I now hold in my hand. If I have rightly understood, the King’s attorney of this colony has framed an indictment for the purpose of arraigning and punishing by imprisonment three inoffensive persons before the bar of this court for a crime of great magnitude as disturbers of the peace. May it please the court, what did I hear read? Did I hear it distinctly, or was it a mistake of my own? Did I hear an expression as if a crime, and these men whom your worships are about to try for a misdemeanor are charged with what?”—adding in an impressive manner— “for preaching the gospel of the Son of God!”
Then pausing and slowly waving the paper three times over his head, and the interest of the audience being wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement, with an impassioned energy peculiarly his own, and with hands and eyes uplifted to heaven, he exclaimed, “Great God!” Continuing, he said, “May it please your worships; there are periods in the history of man when corruption and depravity have so long debased the human character that man sinks under the weight of the oppressor’s hand, and becomes his servile, his abject slave; he licks the hand that smites him; he bows in passive obedience to the mandates of the despot, and in this state of servility he receives the fetters of perpetual bondage. But, may it please your worships, such a day has passed away! From that period when our fathers left the land of their nativity for settlement in these American wilds for liberty— for civil and religious liberty of conscience—to worship their Creator according to their conceptions of heaven’s revealed will, from the moment they placed foot on the American continent, and in the deeply imbedded forests sought an asylum from persecution and tyranny— from that moment despotism was crushed; her fetters of darkness were broken, and heaven decreed that man should be free—free to worship God according to the Bible. Were it not for this, in vain have been the efforts and sacrifices of the colonists; in vain were all their sufferings and blood shed to subject this new world, if we, their offspring, must still be oppressed and persecuted. But may it please your worships, permit me to inquire once more, for what are these men about to be tried? This paper says, ‘For preaching the gospel of the Son of God.’ Great God! For preaching the gospel of the Savior of Adam’s fallen race.”
And with vehement energy he asked again, “What law have they violated?” It is said the effect of this tornado of truth, passion and eloquence was to cause the prosecutor’s frame to quake and his visage to become pale, and the judge to give the order, “Sheriff, discharge those men!”
Those were times that tried the souls of men. Like their predecessors in the faith, they suffered imprisonment, and indignities, but rejoiced in this their privilege of suffering shame for the name of Christ. No weight is heavy when he helps to sustain it. (Zions Advocate May, 1893)