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c 74.9 87h 847999
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02246 6590
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016
https://archive.org/details/historyofbaptist00grif_0
١
T. S. Griffiths
A HISTORY OF BAP- C
/ TISTS IN NEW JERSEY
BY
THOMAS S. GRIFFITHS
"Truth is the historian's crown, and art squares it to comeliness."-John Hall.
1904 HIGHTSTOWN, NEW JERSEY BARR PRESS PUBLISHING COMPANY
Copyright, 1904 . BY THOMAS S. GRIFFITHS
1847999
PREFACE
The author of this history of Baptists in New Jersey owes a vast debt of gratitude to pastors and to others familiar with olden days on account of their aid to secure a fitting history of the earlier and later times. The work was undertaken at the suggestion of Rev. O. P. Eaches of Hightstown. Fifty and more years ago the Rev. R. T. Middleditch was asked by the Board of the State Convention to write such a history. Later, Rev. J. M. Carpenter was a substitute for Mr. Middleditch. The papers of these gentleman have fallen into my hands and other facts have come to my knowledge. The author has been associated with the New Jersey Baptist Convention since 1843. He was personally acquainted with the men who orignated it, and with very old men and women who were familiar with the earliest times and has also stored up from his youth data and facts touching the past. He is specially indebted to O. B. Leonard of Plainfield, without whose help the history would have been quite immature. To T. T. Price, M. D., of Tuckerton, a native of Cape May county, eminently familiar with the Baptist beginnings there about; to J. W. Lyell of Camden; to Deacon Howell of Morristown; to Pastor Fisher of Holm- del; to Pastor Johnson of Jersey City; to Pastor Sembower of Cedar- ville; to D. Dewolf of Newark; to Pastor Anschutz of Hoboken; to C. A. Kenney, clerk of Lafayette church; to Rev. G. W. Clark and Rev. O. P. Eaches both of Hightstown, in preparing the book for "press." Mr. Clark also furnished the sketch of the Afro-American churches, and prepared the brief indexes. The help of these men has been invaluable and they are entitled to the highest praise for their aid in making the book becoming to the denomination and to its object.
THOS, S, GRIFFITHS,
These letters have come to me unsolicited. Each of these gentle- men are widely known, Hon. O. B. Leonard of Plainfield, New Jersey, and Dr. T. T. Price of Tuckerton, New Jersey, as treasure stores of old times records. No others in New Jersey are known to be more familiar with our denominational history from the first.
"From a perusal of the manuscript of New Jersey Baptist churches history, I can say you have done a good service in preparing so much valuable information. It is certainly a praiseworthy undertaking, well accomplished and will be a useful and instructive compendium, especially of the early beginnings of the Baptist churches in this com- monwealth. The denomination will be indebted to you all through this twentieth century for such comprehensive encyclopedia."
O. B. LEONARD.
Plainfield, New Jersey, March 4, 1904.
"I have received your manuscript with a great deal of pleasure. It has been a labor of love. You have certainly condensed the materials wonderfully. I find nothing to alter and little to criticise. Let us never lower our flag, nor fail to honor our noble heroic ancestry. I congratulate you that your work is so nearly complete and so well done."
T. T. PRICE, M. D.
Tuckerton, New Jersey, January 8th, 1904.
INTRODUCTION
Many requests have come to me to write the History of New Jersey Baptists, founded upon my long acquaintance with Baptist interests. Acquaintance, however, with men and facts is but one requisite to write history, if associated with a genial, impartial and philosophic temper; discriminating between fact and legend, prejudice and truth, excepting always the "materials of Morgan Edwards," which are invaluable and the only record we have of the early times. Memorials are lost that would have been links in our chain of history, distinctive of the men, of whom we know but little and yet enough to revere them. These memorials, did we have them, would be index pointers at the corners of historic travel, whereby we could better know the "ebb and flood" of opinions as well as the places of the "Light house men" by whom "courses" have been laid in the "crises" of our denominational life. These, whether fragments or consecutive records, are not appreciated in the time of their happening, but later are invaluable. Since Morgan Edwards wrote his "materials" there has not been a historical record of Baptist affairs. Since the "Acts of the Apostles," the history of Christianity has been an account of divers' teachings and of sects without number, indicating that Chris- tianity later as at the first looses the shackles off of mind and con- sciences; sets men to thinking, constituting them independent.
We Baptists, and other names of Christendom have multiplied in this land of the free beyond all anticipations. Others have had im- mense source of increase by emigration. Ourselves have had but growth. New Jersey included a large variety of people from abroad. England, and her dependencies, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Germany and France contributed a quota, among them each were Baptists, including a large number of men and women and persons of wealth. Baptist judges were in the courts and were usually members of the Governor's council. The pastors of our churches were the equals of any other denomination. The Eatons, Stelles, Morgans, Millers and Mannings have no superiors. In the central part of the colony, five schools of different denominations and of the highest grade. Two of them, Baptists, were located within a radius of twenty miles. Soon after, 1700, the first Baptist college went from New Jersey. Its churches furnished a majority of the constituents of the first association on the continent. Legacies exceeding thousands of dollars were left for education in New Jersey, and contributions and legacies
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to educate for the ministry were made long before there was an educa- tion society.
The origin of Baptists has been a prolific theme. Among our- selves there is a wide dissent. Only a few account among us that antiquity is of any worth, esteeming it better to be right now, than to concern ourselves about those who lived a thousand years since. There is but one Protestant sect that maintains the dogma of "succession" as essential to the reality of the church. While it may be that Baptist churches have succeeded each other in the centuries, it is not proved. The only fact in worth assurance is that we are conformed to the New Testament pattern. Age matters little. Sin is older than time. It is the oldest sad fact of the world and is none the better for its antiquity, but the worse. Baptists have have been a distinctive people for many ages. Moshieme in his history of Chris- tianity, said of them: "Their origin is hid in the depths of antiquity." In other words, a people who have always baptized, are constantly cropping out in religious history. Many of the good and wise of other Christian names than Baptist, who have made religious history their study, agree with Moshieme. Not that a people known by our name have existed from time immemorial, but that sects like to ours have appeared far back in the centuries. In- deed they held as Bible teachings, some things which we reject. As families of children differ, some tall, some short; some frail and some strong, so of sects. Allied in some things, different in others. Some admit our antiquity and load on us the odium of the wrong doing of the fanatics of 1530, who like us claimed that immersion only, is baptism.
Belief that immersion only is baptism, does not constitute a Baptist. Else tens of thousands of members of Pedo Baptist churches are Baptists, such as Mormons. Other sects, whose fellowship evan- gelical Christendom repells. A fundamental and primary distinction of Baptists is, that the Bible is the only authority for a Christian faith and practice; that each disciple has an inalienable right to deter- mine for himself, what its teaching is, irrespective of birthright, ruler, priest or church. A Baptist is one who is responsible to God only for what he does in his name. Obedience is conformity to his will, not in part, but in all things. "Be ye separate" is as essential as taking the Word of God as a final rule of light and of hope. There is but one proof of legitimacy, a New Testament birth. Our origin may have been in the first, the fourteenth or the twentieth century; it matters not which. The children of a lawful marriage are equally legitimate, whether born in the first or the seventh marriage. Our
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ancestry or antiquity is of no moment other than that it is of the Divine Word.
Let us, however, be mindful of the men who have gone before us. We inherit their integrity to the truth. Those who follow us, will glory in our integrity, if we give to them the truth, as pure and as Christly as we have received it; free speech, free conscience, an open Bible and adherence to the scripture pattern, both of church order and of the ordinances. (Hebrew 13:10.) "For we have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat who serve the Tabernacle." Subject as is humanity to the changing current of human opinions, there is no safety in equal civil and religious rights. The few Baptists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have infused North America and Eastern Europe with the Baptist idea of equal rights and liberties.
Liberty has its chief enemy in the abuse of it. Even good men use it, as if liberty was license. There is need to keep in mind the exhortation: (I Cor. 8:9) "Take heed therefore, lest by any means, this liberty of yours be a stumbling block." A peril to Baptists is that liberty is a law to itself. Civil and religious liberty seems safe, but while Baptists have refused government aid for their schools, not a decade has passed since protestant denominations have received monies for their sectarian uses.
Only in the United States do Protestants, except Baptists, refuse public monies for sectarian use. Such a fact is of tremendous meaning. As the battle for the separation of Church and State was won by Bap- tists, Baptists are the only security for the permencancy of the separa- tion. Liberty of speech, liberty of conscience, equal civil rights, man his own master Godward, manward, are essentially involved in the con- tinuance of this order. Civil and religious liberty is not that one may do and think what he pleases, but that one may do and think what is right to think and do. "Things honest in the sight of God" is the Divine limitation of doing and thinking. Our view is: That the right of private judgement involves the necessity of respecting the opinion of another.
Agreement is the Baptist conception of church fellowship and is Scriptural: (Amos 3: 3) "Can two walk together except they be agreed." The going out of Judas Iscariot in the interval of the Passover and of the institution of the "Supper," illustrates the great truth that the ordi- nance divides to unite. At Babel human self sufficiency scattered the people, till at Pentecost, "men out of every nation under heaven" were gathered together, phophetic of the Gospel mission to gather "into one" in the churches of Christ. Christianity is the most potent force to endow men with care for the "little things, but as much for few
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things." Where the gold and clay are commingled truth and false- hood have fellowship.
Certain data are significant of the Divine part in our advanced era: In 1436, Gutenberg used types to print with; 1483, Luther was born; 1492, America was discovered; in 1526, the first English Bible was print- ed; the first Swedish Scriptures, in 1528, 1530 the first German Bible, the first French Scriptures in 1531; Henry VIII divorced England and Rome, in 1534; the Duke of Alva at the end of the Thirty Years' War to destroy Holland, retired in 1573; Within about one hundred and thirty-five years occurred these wonderful events, fraught with the rescue of mankind from the tyranies of civil and religious despotism. With but two other eras can this period be compared: That of the birth of the Immanuel, and that of the Declaration of Independence by the American colonies. The last of which was the culmination of the events from 1436 to 1573.
In the meantime, God had kept North America from Romish settle- ment and sent hither the Bible educated men of Europe to constitute a nation he had prepared for Himself. How happened this chain of events: Printing, Luther born, America found, an open Bible, England wrenched from Popish rule, this continent shut up from an alien Christi- anity and conditions in their native lands to drive these Bible taught people to a wildreness owned by savages thousands of miles over the sea, if God had no hand in it, if He had no purpose in the world's life? A miracle greater than giving life to the dead and corresponding to His resurrection. Civil and religious freedom came to the earth peacefully, elsewhere it would have cost an increditable price of human life and treasure. Amid the surprises of history is the ease and certainty with which the wise plans of the Jesuits to pre-empt this continent for them- selves were brushed aside. Their mission enterprises are wonderful not alone for their vast comprehension, but also for their faith in Jesus Christ, a Saviour. The recesses of Asia and Africa, the isles of the sea, the frozen North and the frozen South, the martyrdoms of the Roman missionaries, tell the story of the crucifixion which exceeds even the ro- mance of the life of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order. In North America, their stations through Canada to Detroit, Michigan, St. Paul, thence North and West to the Pacific and South to New Orleans, and all communicating with each other from Northern glaciers to Cape Horn. What South America is North America would have been only that God turned hither men who had learned of Him, of themselves, and who had access to Him without the intervention of a priest. An open Bible has been mightier than either priest or infidel.
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Neither Roman Catholics nor Protestants in Europe gave protection to Baptists, with the exception of Philip of Hesse. Roman Catholics and Protestants persecuted to death Baptists. The fundamental faith of Baptists, the Bible, a law for kings, priests and people alike and each disciple a judge for himself of what is truth; all men having an inalien- able right to teach his own convictions of truth and duty, a heresy in the times which consented to kingly and priestly right to dictate, which sentiment stripped king and priest of right and power. John Knox, Luther, Melancthon, Zwingle and even the rulers of Holland, plotted to exterminate the malignant sect. Phillip of Hesse at one time was their protector. Of the two thousand and more Ana Baptists executed up to 1530, not one had died or suffered harm in Hesse. In 1529, in reply to a remonstrance from the electors of Saxony, Philip wrote: "We are still unable at the present time to find it in our conscience to have any one executed with the sword on account of his faith, to punish capit- ally those who have done nothing more than err in the faith, cannot be justified on Gospel grounds." When fire, or rack, and sword awaited our brethren in every other place, Hesse was a refuge for them. Mon- vovia also for selfish and business reasons gave Baptists comparative security from the stake, the dungeon and the rack, they being experts in certain manufactures for which Monvovia had repute from abroad.
It is well to judge charitably of the people who lived centuries back. Mindful of the times in which they lived, of their education under Roman Catholic training. Macaully indicates why and how it was that kings and rulers of the States of Europe, except England and Holland gained absolute rule over the estates and consciences of their subjects. The Parliaments of England and Holland kept control of the purse and thus bridled their Kings, compelling them to heed their subjects in order to get supplies for their maintainance. The purse is always a fulcrum of power, whether in the hand of the executive or in that of the people. With the sword in one hand and the purse in the other, the people had but one alternative, sub- mission.
Printing had made the Bible an open book, educating the people into a consciousness of responsibility for what they were and what they ought to be. The discovery of America had awakened hopes of escape from the bondage of priest and king. Thus social, political, and spirit- ual inspirations transformed the era.
In 1643, the "Westminster Confession of Faith" was formulated. While showing some advance from the cruel policies of former times, "the confession retained the lever of civil authority to meddle in the religion of men. It affirmed that "heretics may be lawfully called to
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INTRODUCTION
account and proceeded against by the civil magistrate. It asserted the duty of the civil magistrate to preserve the unity and peace of the church; to suppress heresies and reform all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline." The Baptist "Confession of Faith," published in the year before, 1642, declared: "It is the duty of the magistrate to tenderly care for the liberty of men's consciences without which all other liberties will not be worth naming, much less enjoying. And as we can- not do anything contrary to conscience, so, neither can we forbear the doing of that which our consciences bind us to do, but in case we find not the magistrate to favor us herein, yet we dare not suspend our practice, because we believe we ought to go on in obedience to Christ."
In 1610, thirty-three years before the adoption of the "Westminster Confession," Baptists issued "a confession of faith" in which they assert "that the magistrate is not to meddle with religion or matters of con- science, nor compel men to this or that form of religion, because Christ is the King and Law-giver of the Church and conscience." The West- minster Assembly might have known by these published statements (and by their contention against Baptist teaching) a better way than theirs. After one hundred and forty-four years, 1787, the "West- minster Confession" was altered to conform to our Constitution, which guaranteed civil and religious liberty to all, without respect to magis- terial or courtly permission.
Among the memorable events of history was the part Baptists had incorporating in the Constitution of the United States the guarantees of religious liberty and civil rights to all who live under the constitution. History is silent of the means and men whereby the fundamental prin- ciples of Baptists were incorporated in the Constitiuton. Writers of secular history are of two classes; One, having but little knowledge and less appreciation of Christianity and, hence, ignorant of the influences, which as a constituent of society and a factor of government it imbues with its teaching of right and of law. The other class having a denomi- national relation is preoccupied with their religious predilections and rarely see with unbiassed mind the good others exert and think it of indifferent moment. Neither is a competent historian ignorant as they are of the quiet force that lays foundations and plants "land marks," which determine the courses of generations.
Only Pennsylvaina, New Jersey and Rhode Island were colonies that never knew a persecution. In New Jersey as in Rhode Island there were historic facts that distinguished the source of the nation's constitu- tional liberties. About 1664-5, Obadiah Holmes, Sr., a victim of Puritanical persecution in Massachusetts came with other Baptists and some "Friends" (Quakers) and took up a large tract of land in East
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INTRODUCTION
Jersey. These guaranteed in their patent: "Unto any and all who shall plant and inhabit any of the lands aforesaid, they shall have free liberty of conscience without any molestation or disturbance whatsoever in their way of worship." In 1666, a colony of Congregationalists from Connecticut founded Newark, New Jersey. These resolved that: "None should be admitted freemen, or free Burgesses, save such as were members of one or the other of the Congregational Churches, and determined as a fun- damental agreement and order that any who might differ in religious opinion from them and who would not keep their views to themselves should be compelled to leave the place." These provisions show whence the nation's liberties came.
Many Baptists in New Jersey and in Pennsylvania held judicial positions. Pastor N. Jenkins of First Baptist church of Cape May was a member of the Governor's Council. In 1721, a bill was intro- duced into the Council to punish those who denied the doctrine of the Trinity; the Divinity of Christ; the inspiration of the Scriptures, etc., Mr. Jenkins opposed it.
The bill was quashed. Delegates from twelve colonies met at Philadelphia when Congress was in session in September, 1774. Rev. Mr. Backus of Massachusetts, an eminent Baptist, was urged by Rev. J. Manning, John Gano, William Van Horn and Hezekiah Smith to go to Philadelphia and sec if something could not be done to secure our religious liberties." There was a meeting of the chief members of Congress: Thomas Cushing, Samuel and John Adams, R. T. Paine, James Kinsey, Stephens Hopkins, Samuel Ward, J. Galloway and Thomas Mifflin, the Mayor and foremost "Friends of the City" and Baptists, Mr. Backus, Samuel Jones, William Rogers and Morgan Edwards. The last three pastors, in Philadelphia of Baptist churches. A principal speaker was Israel Pemberton, a Quaker. John Adams accused him of Jesuitism. Then, says a record of the meeting: "Up rose Israel Pemberton:" "John, John," he said, "Dost thou not know when "Friends" were hung in thy colony; when Baptists were hung and whipped and finally when Edward Shippen, a great mer- chant of Boston was publicly whipped because he would not subscribe to the belief of thee and thy Fathers and was driven to the colony, of which he afterwards became Governor?" In the midst of the dis- cussion, John Adams exclaimed: "The Baptists might as well expect a change in the solar system, as to expect that the Massachusetts authorities would give up their establishment."
The reporter present at the meeting adds to the former state- ment: "In that struggle, as always before, the Baptists led and the foremost man among them was James Manning, President of Brown
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University, baptized and licensed at Scotch Plains, New Jersey, and educated in that state. We owe nothing to the Puritans for our civil and religious liberties. Had they had their way we would not have had them. A line of inquiry for the origin of Baptists has not been explored. Baptist churches appeared among them at a very early date, so that their beginning is unknown nor probably ever will be. A tradition among them is: "that they have been Baptists since the Gospel was first preached in Wales." From the earliest date they have cherished those amazing ideas of human rights of civil and religious liberty, of which we boast. "The non-conformist" an English paper asserts, "in England there can be no doubt that Bap- tists existed as early as the third century." (Cook, page 27.) Austin, Archbishop of Canterbury in the sixth had great trouble with a colony of Baptists in Wales and used such repressive measures as to load his memory with infamy." C. H. Spurgeon said: "It would not be impossible to show that the first Christians who dwelt in this land were of the same faith and order as the believers who are now called Baptists." The Welsh, ostracized from commerce and travel; shut up in their mountains are left out of history. Yet they had advanced views of social life; of civil and of religious liberties and equalities that antidate memory and history.
The Welsh Triads were a code of law, unique and unparalleled, known only to themselves. The Triads are thus named because set in threes, three being a sacred number among the Druids, who were priests and teachers, learned and influential. These Triads are said to have originated among the Welsh Druids and were added to by suc- ceeding generations. The Welsh Druids are said to be in advance of other Druids in their ideas of the "rights" of mankind, and taught "That it was the duty of all men to seek after truth and to receive (maintain) it, against the whole world," an assertion which is the germ of civil and of religious freedom, and the essential element of growth in physics, morals and brains. Roger Williams and William Penn, each of Welsh origin, incorporated in the charter of their colonies, the largest liberties to all. The Triads were evolved from what is called "Dy- venwal Moelmud." They were known abroad, about three centuries before Christ: Of two hundred and twenty-eight, twenty are inser- ted showing their type and the intensity of their provision for a free conscience; a free speech; and the equal rights of prince and peasant; king and subject, noble and workman.
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