USA > North Carolina > Sketches of North Carolina, historical and biographical : illustrative of the principles of a portion of her early settlers > Part 10
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RELIGION IN IRELAND PREVIOUS TO EMIGRATION.
that the exercises were either a work of the Spirit or any evidence of its presence. Mr. Blair says-" When we came and conferred with them, we perceived it to be a mere delusion and cheat of the destroyer, to slander and disgrace the work of God." The putting down these irregularities did not hinder the progress of the good work, but rather gave confidence both to preachers and people. Instead of permitting the passions and feelings of their hearers to lead the pastors, or the heat of excitement to blind their eyes, they submitted all things in religion to the test of Scripture, and by its authority they chose to abide. This was their rule in church government, ordination and doctrine : and more than two centuries in Europe, and more than a century in America, has tested and proved the prudence and propriety of their decisions.
The monthly meeting at Antrim, besides being a source of rich encouragement and high enjoyment to the people, became to the ministers a source of great consolation. In them they took coun- sel and gave advice, and comforted and exhorted each other ; and, until presbyteries were formed, it was their grand council. It must be borne in mind, that the whole country was under the Established Church of England ; and in the space occupied by these laborers were some twenty ministers of the Established Church, who took no interest in the revival, but rather set them- selves against it, and were opposed to these ministers preaching in their parish bounds. Bishop Echlin, at first favorable to these ministers, soon became their bitter enemy : while Knox of Raphoe continued their friend to the last. Mr. Livingston says that the brethren that formed this meeting lived in the greatest harmony, each preferring the other in love.
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SKETCHES OF NORTH CAROLINA.
CHAPTER VII.
THE EAGLE WING-OR FIRST ATTEMPT AT EMIGRATION FROM IRELAND TO AMERICA, 1636.
IN the spring of the year 1631, the presbyterians of Ulster, wearied out by the intolerance of Charles I., and Archbishop Laud, and the consequent exactions of the ministers of the crown, particularly the Lord Deputy Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Stafford, by which their cup of bitterness was made to overflow, turned their eyes to the new settlements in the wilds of America. The Puritans of England, who were contending and suffering for the same rights of conscience, had planted colonies in Massachu- setts, which cheered them with the expectation of a refuge from the ills they could neither be freed from, nor endure, in their native land. The flourishing colony had been planted at Salem, in the year 1628, and had been even more successful than Plymouth. These prosperous efforts to secure the enjoyment of liberty of conscience, turned the attention of the distressed congregations of Ireland to seek, in the deeper solitudes of distant America, what had been promised, and sought for in vain, in depopulated Ireland ; or enjoyed only while they reclaimd the desolations of the pre- vious rebellion.
The ministers that had come over from Scotland, whose names have been enumerated, had not attempted to form a Presbytery. The whole country had been laid off into parishes and bishoprics of the Church of England ; and as the emigrants from England or Scotland found their residences, they were consequently in- cluded in some parish, and the ministers that came over to preach to them were admitted to occupy parish churches, and enjoy their own forms and ceremonies. Archbishop Usher was most mild and tolerant in his views of church order and government ; and so, for a time at least, were some of his bishops ; and in the different Dioceses of Ulster might be seen priests and deacons of the Established Church, and here and there intermingled a Pres- byterian or Puritan minister, with a flock of their own peculiar creed and forms, under the bishop's supervision. The great revival had broken up some of this quietness and order that had
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THE EAGLE WING.
prevailed, by exciting jealousies between the favorers and opposers of that blessed work : the bishops mostly withdrew their favor and protection, and were ready to carry into effect the rigid orders from Laud and the Deputy, and proceeded to silence those that would not conform strictly to the rites and ceremonies of the esta- blishment, and began with Blair and Livingston : but by the good offices of Archbishop Usher these men were restored to their ministry. Their enemies, however, made representations at Court which resulted in shutting out from the exercise of the ministry, Blair, Welch, Livingston, and Dunbar.
These oppressed ministers, with many of their respective charges, began to make preparation for removal to America. Two persons were appointed delegates to visit New England, the Rev. John Livingston and Mr. William Wallace, and, if circumstances were favorable, to choose a place for their future residence. They proceeded to England to find a passage to America ; but some unexpected difficulties caused their return to Ireland, and prospects in Ireland appearing more favorable, the project was for a time abandoned. In 1634, these ministers, who had been re- stored to their office, were three of them again suspended, and the next year the fourth, Livingston, shared the same fate ; their only crime charged was their opposition to Episcopal forms. During the same year four other ministers were forbidden the exercise of their ministry on account of their adherence to Pres- byterial forms ; Brice, who was amongst the earliest that visited Ireland, and after a laborious ministry of twenty years, died the next year after his suspension, aged sixty-seven years,-Ridge, who went to Antrim in 1619, and had been most laborious and successful, and after his suspension returned to Scotland, and died . 1637,-Cunningham, who had gone over in 1622, and returning to Scotland, after his suspension, died in 1637,-and Colwort, minister at Oldstone, where the great Revival began.
Once more preparations for emigration were commenced, and a correspondence opened with the colonies in New England. Cotton Mather, in his Magnolia, tells us, Book 1st-" That there were divers gentlemen in Scotland, who, being uneasy under the eccle- siastical burdens of the times, wrote on to New England the in- quiries :- Whether they might be there suffered freely to exercise their Presbyterial church government ? And it was freely answered-that they might. Thereupon they sent over an agent, who pitched upon a tract of land near the mouth of the Merrimac River, whither they intended to transplant themselves. But
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SKETCHES OF NORTH CAROLINA.
although they had so far proceeded in their voyage as to be half- seas through, the manifold crosses they met withal, made them give over their intentions ; and the providence of God so ordered it that some of these very gentlemen were afterwards the revivers of that well-known Solemn League and Covenant, which had so great an influence upon the nation." There is one error in this extract. The conclusion would naturally be, that the expedition was from Scotland; and very probably Mather understood it to be from that country,-whereas, the company sailed from the North of Ireland. The error arose undoubtedly from the fact, that the correspondence was carried on from Scotland, and the agent was a Scotchman, the ministers were from Scotland, and of no small eminence, and the colonists themselves were either Scotch- men by birth, or the children of Scotchmen reared in Ireland.
The deposition of their ministers, which took place August 12th, 1636, hastened the preparations for emigration, and on the 9th of the following September, the EAGLE WING, a vessel of one hun- dred and fifty tons, set sail from Lockfergus with one hundred and forty emigrants prepared for the voyage, and a settlement in a new country. The colonists took with them the necessary imple- ments for carrying on fisheries, and also a considerable amount of merchandise to assist them by traffic to meet the expenses of the voyage and necessities of the new settlement. Among the emi- grants were four noted preachers, ROBERT BLAIR, JOHN LIVING- STON, JAMES HAMILTON, and JOHN MCCLELLAND : all afterwards promoters of the cause of truth in Scotland and Ireland. Among the families that composed the company were the names Stuart, Agnew, Campbell, Summervil, and Brown. Many single persons united in the expedition, and with them sailed Andrew Brown, a deaf mute, from the parish of Larne, who during the revival had been deeply affected, and had given satisfactory evidence, by signs connected with a godly life, of having been truly converted. Like the voyagers in the MAY FLOWER, this devoted people met with difficulties. The New England Memorial traces them in the former case to the knavery of the shipmaster, first in spring- ing the leak, then in landing them far north of the intended har- bor ; in the present case the parties concerned referred them to the providence of God.
" We had," says the Rev. John Livingston in his account of the voyage, " much toil in our preparation, many hindrances in our outsetting, and both sad and glad hearts in taking leave of our friends. At last, about the month of September, 1636, we loosed
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THE EAGLE WING.
from Lockfergus, but were detained some time with contrary winds in Lock Regan in Scotland, and grounded the ship to search for some leaks in the keel of the boat. Yet thereafter, we set to sea, and for some space had fair winds, till we were be- tween three and four hundred leagues from Ireland, and no nearer the banks of Newfoundland than any place in Europe. But if ever the Lord spoke by his winds and other dispensations, it was made evident to us, that it was not his will that we should go to New England. For we met with a mighty heavy rain from the northwest, which did break our rudder, which we got mended by the skill and courage of Captain Andrew Agnew, a godly passenger ; and tore our foresail, five or six of our champlets, and a great beam under the gunner's room door broke. Seas came in over the round house, and broke a plank or two on the deck, and wet all that were between the decks. We sprung a leak, that gave us seven hundred, in the two pumps, in the half hour glass. Yet we lay at hull a long time to beat out the storm, till the master and company came one morning and told us that it was impossible to hold out any longer, and although we beat out that storm, we might be sure in that season of the year, we would foregather with one or two more of that sort before we could reach New England.
" During all this time, amidst such fears and dangers, the most part of the passengers were very cheerful and confident ; yea, some in prayer had expressed such hopes, that rather than the Lord would suffer such a company in such sort to perish, if the ship should break, he would put wings to our shoulders, and carry us safe ashore. I never in my life found the day so short, as at all that time, although I slept some nights not above two hours, and some not at all, but stood most part in the gallery astern the great cabin, where Mr. Blair and I and our families lay. For in the morning, by the time every one had been some time alone, and then at prayer in their several societies, and then at public prayer in the ship, it was time to go to dinner ; after that we would visit our friends or any that were sick, and then public prayer would come, and after that, supper and family ex- ercises. Mr. Blair was much of the time sickly, and lay in the time of storms. I was sometimes sick, and then brother McClel- land only performed duty in the ship. Several of those between deck, being thronged, were sickly ; an aged person and one child died, and were buried in the sea. One woman, the wife of Michael Calver, of Killinchy parish, brought forth a child in the
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ship. I baptized it on Sabbath following, and called him SEABORN."
The report of the master and company filled them with distress, -the storm was upon them and before them ;- oppression had driven them from Ireland, and waited their return. . After prayer, and long and anxious consultation, they agreed to return ; trusting in the good providence of God for their future welfare. The next morning as soon as the day dawned, the ship was turned, and they made for Ireland. On the third of November, after a pros- perous sail, they came to anchor in Lockfergus, the place of their departure, after an absence of about eight weeks, cast down under this providence of God, and anticipating hostility, ridicule and suffering. Having sold their effects in preparation for the voyage, and having vested their property in provision and stock of mer- chandize, suitable for their expected residence, they experienced great loss in disposing of their cargo, and reinvesting the proceeds in things suitable to their emergency. The persons, they had hired to go with them to assist in fishing and building houses, demanded their wages, and were dismissed at great disadvantage to their employers.
Their reception by their friends, like their departure, was mingled with "gladness and sorrow ;"-by their enemies with anxiety and disdain. Their friends commiserated their calamity, and rejoiced in their safety. Their enemies disliked their return, fearing the consequences, and were for a time divided in their opinion how they should be treated. Some were for exercising greater lenity ; others poured out their ridicule in no measured terms, and in ballads, and notes to printed sermons, compared these oppressed and disheartened people to asses, which the same vessel had a little before brought from France,-and their religious ministrations to brayings so sad, that Neptune had stopped their voyage, and sent them back to Ireland to be improved.
The next year, 1637, the ministers finding no peace in Ireland, went over to Scotland, and met a most cordial reception from ministers and people. Mr. Blair was settled at Ayr ; Mr. Living- ston at Stranrear ; Mr. Hamilton at Dumfries ; Mr. Dunbar at Caldir in Lothian ; Mr. McClelland in Kirkcudbright ; Mr. Temple in Carsphain ; Mr. Row at Dunfermline ; and Mr. Robert Hamilton at Ballantises. These nine were zealous promoters of the National Covenant, which was renewed for the third time in Edinburgh, 1st March, 1638. Four of them were members of the famous assembly that met in Glasgow, in November of the
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THE EAGLE WING.
same year, and took an active part in the doings of that body, by which Prelacy in Scotland was abolished,-the bishops deposed,- and Presbytery re-established. Those, who were settled on the western coast of Scotland, kept up their intercourse with Ulster ; and many of their former hearers removed to Scotland to enjoy their ministrations. On the stated communions, great numbers would go over from Ireland to enjoy the privileges they could not have at home ; on one occasion five hundred persons went over from Down to Stranrear, to receive the sacrament at the hands of Mr. Livingston. At another time, he baptized twenty children brought over to him, for that purpose, by their parents, who were unwilling to receive the ordinance from the Prelatical clergy.
The influence which this company of emigrants exercised on Ireland, and ultimately on America, is incalculable. It is scarcely possible to conceive, that any situation in New England could have afforded them such a theatre of action as the province of Ulster ; perhaps none they might have occupied anywhere in America, even in founding a new State, could have afforded such ample exhibition of the power of their principles and godly lives. There had been a revival, a great revival in Ireland, among the emigrants from Scotland and their children ; but as yet, no Presbytery had been formed ; and the influence of the Presbyte- rian Protestants was circumscribed, and their principles not yet deep-rooted for permanency. Had this colony succeeded in find- ing an agreeable situation in America, in all probability so many of their friends and countrymen would have followed, that the North of Ireland would have been deserted to the native Irish, or the wild beasts, as in the times just preceding the emigration from Scotland. This company of men, as will be seen in the subse- quent history, were the efficient instruments in the hands of God, of embodying the Presbyterians of Ireland, of spreading their principles far and wide, and marshalling congregation after con- gregation, whose industry made Ulster blossom as the rose. The Presbyterians became the balancing power of Ireland. " You need not"- said an intelligent physician of Petersburg, Va., who is familiar with Ireland, and does not claim to be a Presbyterian, -" You need not ask when you are to pass from the Catholic counties to those of the Protestants. You will see and feel the change in everything around you."
Had the principles of Usher prevailed, and these men been permitted to labor in peace in their parishes, it would in all proba- bility have been long before a Presbytery had been formed in Ire-
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SKETCHES OF NORTH CAROLINA.
land ; and when formed its influence and number of churches would have been really less than they were in 1642, the year the first Presbytery met. The intolerance of the Court and their obedient bishops drove these men out of the churches of the establishment. When the four set sail in 1636, for America, no faithful Presbyterian was left ; the others were dead, or had re- tired to Scotland; all bonds were broken that might have held them in connection with the Episcopal church. The tempest brought them back to do a work in Scotland ; and the rebellion and consequent massacre, by the native Irish, opened the way for their successful labors in Ireland, and for founding the Irish Pres- byterian church. The wrath of man, and the tempests of the ocean, together work the wonderful counsels of Almighty God.
After the lapse of some two-thirds of a century, Ulster began to send out swarms to America ; shipload after shipload of men trained to labor and habits of independence, sought the American shores ; year after year the tide rolled on without once ebbing ; and many thousands of these descendants of the emigrants from Scotland, disdaining to be called Irish, filled the upper country of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Ulster, in Ireland, has been an exhaustless hive, a perennial spring ; and the form and fashion of its emigrants were moulded by these men, whom the storms baffled and sent back to do a work for Ireland and America. LIVINGSTON and BLAIR lived for Posterity.
In 1608, Jamestown, in Virginia, was founded by a small com- pany from England ; in 1620, the May Flower landed her little band of Puritans on Plymouth rock"; in 1636, the Eaglewing re- landed her company at Lochfergus ; and some few years after- wards King Charles forbade the sailing of the vessel that should have carried away from England the Spirits of the Revolution. Napoleon, with all his immense hosts of savans and soldiers, did not, could not so change the condition of the world, as those four bands that, collectively, would scarce have formed a regiment in his immense army. Principles, not men, must govern the world under the Providence of God.
It was well that the distressed people of Ireland turned their thoughts to America for a resting place ; it was better that they embarked for the wilderness, as it manifested an enterprise equal to the emergency ; but it was better still that God's wise provi- dence sent them back to labor for Ireland, and shut them up to the work ; and last, it was best of all, that they laid the foundation of that church which may claim to be the mother of the American Presbyterian Church, the worthy child of a worthy mother.
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FORMATION OF PRESBYTERIES IN IRELAND.
CHAPTER VIII.
FORMATION OF PRESBYTERIES IN IRELAND.
THE first meeting of a regular Presbytery in Ireland took place at Carrickfergus on Friday, June 10th, 1642. Previously to that time the ministers in Ireland, who promoted the Revival, acted on Presbyterial principles, though by law of England under the juris- diction of Bishops of the Church of England. At the Reforma- tion almost the entire Irish nation were Roman Catholics or Pa- pists ; and the majority of the nation are to this day. Henry VIII. of England commenced establishing a Protestant national church, and Elizabeth followed up the design ; and James perfected the plan as far as he was able. Bishops were sent over, and the clergy were appointed to parishes and supported by the authority of the state ; yet the mass of the people remained Papists, and maintained their own bishops and priests, and received the ordi- nances at their hands. The Scotch emigrants were divided, in their settlements, into parishes ; or rather, the boundaries of the old parishes remained, and clergy were supplied by the state to the inhabitants, of whatever country or religious principles they might chance to be. The parishes occupied the same territory embraced by the Papists in their ecclesiastical divisions ; and neither the Scotch emigrants nor the native Irish Papists were permitted by law to enjoy their own clergy, or their own religious ceremonies ; and both were sufferers under the severities of Charles I. and Archbishop Laud. The ministers who went over to Ireland to preach to the Scotch, a short account of whom has been given, were presented to parishes and admitted regularly ; some were ordained by the Bishop, in conjunction with other clergy as a Presbytery, objecting more or less strenuously to his prelati- cal character.
A convocation of the Irish clergy was summoned in 1615, be- fore any number of ministers from Scotland had visited the island. As the Irish Church had always been independent of that of Eng- land, it was thought necessary to declare its faith, and settle its form of government. The only statutes in force in the kingdom respected solely the celebration of public worship, which was made
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SKETCHES OF NORTH CAROLINA.
conformable to that of the English churches. The English ritual was followed ; but the Irish Church had not adopted a Confession of Faith. Dr. James Usher, Professor of Divinity in the College of Dublin, and afterwards Archbishop, was appointed to draw up a Confession ; this task he performed to the approbation of the Convocation and the Parliament, and also to the satisfaction of the King and Council. The Confession was digested into no less than nineteen sections, and one hundred and four propositions ; and was as decidedly Calvinistic as that afterwards drawn up by the West- minster Divines. The Pope was pronounced Antichrist ; the doc- trine of Absolution condemned; the morality of the Sabbath strongly asserted, in opposition to the King's well known senti- ments. The reason for this was,-that the intolerance practised in England induced many of the Puritans to emigrate to Ireland ; and there, the King, glad to have them out of England, gave them preferments. Heylin says :- " They brought with them hither such a stock of Puritanism, such a contempt of bishops, such a neglect of the public Liturgy, and other offices of the Church, that there was nothing less to be found among them than the go- vernment and forms of worship established in the Church of Eng- land ! He was understood also as implying the validity of ordina- tions out of the English Church as truly as those performed by Diocesan Bishops. His words are :- " And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work, by men, who have public authority given them, in the Church, to call and send ministers into the Lord's vineyard."
ROBERT BLAIR, one of the most eminent of those who went to Ireland, from Scotland, refused to be ordained by the Diocesan Bishop alone, or by him in conjunction with Presbyters, in any other light than as a Presbyter. With that express understanding, as he asserts, he was ordained by the Bishop and other clergy.
JOHN LIVINGSTON, another laborer of great eminence, objected to ordination by the Bishop of the established church, and, as the Bishop of Down, in which his parish was, had resolved, in obe- dience to the court of England, to require submission to the rules of the Established Church, he applied to Knox, Bishop of Raphoe, taking with him letters of introduction from Lord Claneboy, and others. He says Knox received him kindly, and said he knew his errand, and that he was aware he had scruples against Episcopacy, as Welch and others had, and then proceeded to say, "that if I scrupled to call him my Lord, he cared not much for it; all that he would desire of me was, that I should preach at Ramelton the
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FORMATION OF PRESBYTERIES IN IRELAND.
first Sabbath, because they got there but few sermons, and that he would send for Mr. William Cunningham, and two or three other neighboring ministers to be present, who, after sermon, should give me imposition of hands ; but, although they perform- ed the work, he behoved to be present ; and although he durst not answer it to the State, he gave me the book of ordination, and de- sired that anything I scrupled at, I should draw a line over it on the margin, and that Mr. Cunningham should not read it. But I found that it had been so marked by others before, that I need not mark anything." Thus it appears Presbyterian ordination was introduced before the revival, and was acted on during that great excitement out of which grew the Irish Presbyterian Church.
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