USA > Pennsylvania > Chronicles of Pennsylvania from the English revolution to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1688-1748, Vol. I > Part 17
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35
The Society of Friends had never promulgated ar- ticles of religion to be subscribed, or a catechism to be taught. Peculiar tenets and practices, which presup- posed the truth of much of what Western Europe believed, were recognized as Quakerism: but the pref- atory and even basic dogmas, while they might be gathered from writings like Barclay's, were left to the
211
RELIGIOUS DISSENSION.
individual conscience, directed by an inner revelation. There was no insisting upon even those creeds which have been called the symbols of Christianity, and which Fox and the majority of his followers had accepted together with the historical statements of the Gospels. Fox had flouted at training-schools for ministers, even at making them familiar with Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Thus, with hearers ignorant of, or with no pre- dilection towards, what was agreed upon by Roman Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran, Greek, and Anglican, there was a diversity of teaching in the bond of fellow- ship, which is delightful in the view of many people of to-day. There does not seem to have been any con- siderable movement to give a Unitarian interpretation to the New Testament. John Gough's History of the People called Quakers says that George Whitehead, William Mead, and other English Friends, on exami- nation before Parliament, gave satisfactory statement of their belief in the Trinity as well as Holy Writ, so that the profession of faith required by the Act of Toleration then passed was put in the words suggested by them-a strange way, indeed, of stating the Trinity -viz: "I, A. B. do profess faith in God the Father and in Jesus Christ his eternal Son, the true God, and in the Holy Spirit, one God blessed for evermore; and do acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine Inspiration." Yet there had been, and there lingered in that body of exalters of their personal intuition a tendency to make figurative or to forget the Bible's story, and, from the expressions of some prominent members, it seemed at times that they were lapsing into Deism. The great opposition which Christian theologians, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Congregationalists, made to the Society of Friends in the last third of that Century was more conscientious than a desire for soldiers, for tithes, or even for observance of the sacraments: it
212
CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
was loyalty to external Revelation. The reproaches cast upon the Society that its teachers, if, indeed, they did not reject, at least failed to hand down, their de- posit of truth, seemed to many people to be justified by the events now to be mentioned, when a party taking a stand for Orthodoxy declined to hold meetings with the majority of the ministers at Philadelphia, and when, moreover, the Yearly Meeting in London expelled the leader of that party.
George Keith, one of the most eminent preachers and controversialists of the Society, long felt the need of some sort of confession of faith, probably almost as much to answer the jibes of non-Quakers, as to control or teach Quakers. In fact, the occasion of his urging the matter in the Philadelphia meeting was the accusa- tion made by Christian Lodowick in Rhode Island that the Quakers, giving another sense to the words of Scripture, denied the true Christ. Keith had gone to Rhode Island to assist other Friends in disputation. No impression seeming to be made by the spoken avowal of positive or literal faith, Keith and others, in 4th month, 1691, wrote a declaration of the belief of the Friends in certain points of elementary Orthodoxy as to our Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Apparently it was another one of Keith's productions, printed in 1692, which he submitted to the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting of 11th month, 1691, and approval of which was expressed at the next Monthly Meeting by three of the six appointed to examine it. The Rhode Island Meeting directed the printing of the aforesaid confes- sion, and it was printed by Bradford in Philadelphia. The leaders in Penn's great town went so far as to find fault with Bradford for doing this, they never having authorized the publication of that much of a creed.
It is necessary not only to mention the Keithian schism, because it was an important incident in the his-
213
RELIGIOUS DISSENSION.
tory of the colony, but to go into considerable detail, because, with the exception of Gough, the Quaker writers and those who have echoed them, have told little except of the bad temper, violent language, and self-will of Keith. He certainly had the natural indig- nation of a zealot, he was habituated to the bitterness of expression of that age, in which the Quakers had been about as bitter as others, and he carried out the sectarian idea of separating from those teaching what is false. The schismatics from whom he separated, by that time, however, had formed themselves into what they believed to be a Church, and thought schism from it to be a sin; and their preachers had begun to be separate as clergy from the laity. Gough's account is not entirely accurate in details, apart from being pretty much a sermon upon two texts put at the end, viz: the statement that, on 1mo. 16, 1713-4, Keith, as he lay sick in bed, said that he did believe that if God had taken him out of the world when he went among the Quakers, and in that profession, it had been well with him; and the statement that, a couple of years later, to a Quaker visiting Keith, when on his death-bed, he said that he wished he had died when a Quaker, for he was sure that it would have been well for his soul- remarks which were, after all, different from saying that he had done wrong in leaving the latitudinarians controlling the Society of Friends, and did not even involve the unimportance of the sacraments, for he had received them, water-baptism, as he mentions, and al- most as certainly the bread and wine before becoming a Quaker. Both Robert Barclay and he had shown themselves not wholly satisfied with the Quakers' dis- continuance of a religious-we may say eucharistic, but not sacramental-feast; and, before Keith received the Communion from the Church of England, he prac- tised the rite, as well as that of baptism, among the
214
CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
seceding Quakers who attended him. Some of the Scotch Quakers were then practising a feast.
Keith was born in the vicinity of Aberdeen, Scotland, and graduated at Marischal College, intending, it is supposed, to be a minister of the Scottish Kirk. He was converted to Quakerism in or before 1664, when he suffered the first of his many imprisonments in its cause. He assisted Robert Barclay in disputations, succeeded Christopher Taylor in the school at Edmon- ton, and was Surveyor-General of East Jersey. Bp. Burnet, acquainted with Keith at College, claimed that he was the most learned member of the Society of Friends. He came to Philadelphia in 1689, and for over a year had charge of the school chartered by Penn, retiring from it on 4mo. 10, 1691.
Keith, who, by his far superior prominence in the Society at large, could without presumption aspire to the leadership of the members in America, first ruffled his new neighbours by projects for changing their dis- cipline. Gough says that Keith proposed some regu- lations to the ministers at the Yearly Meeting, but, on the latter wishing to ask the Yearly Meeting in London, decided to let the matter drop. He then undertook to correct by Orthodox standards the loose preaching which he was hearing at Meetings. In attempting to restrain the tendency to allegorize the New Testament, he overhauled William Stockdale for preaching "Christ within" to the exclusion of the historic Christ. Going beyond this elementary reform, Keith insisted on doc- trines well accepted by contemporary theologians, but of which probably his fellow ministers present had never heard, while he indulged in speculations which perhaps they did not comprehend. Jennings reported afterwards to the Quakers in England that the question on which so many took the negative was the universal- ity of the need of faith in the historic Christ for salva- tion. Keith had formerly taken the negative, but,
215
RELIGIOUS DISSENSION.
changing, suggested at one time that the heathen might acquire that faith in some future state, and suggested at another time that the "inner light" could give an unconscious faith. In short, Keith undertook to direct in doctrine and procedure the Friends of Pennsylvania. How troublesome certain of them were in secular affairs, this history elsewhere shows; while as to Jennings, who had recently moved from West Jersey, his course there may have been conscientious, but he was once elected Governor of that province, and his election declared by Quaker arbitraters an infringement of Byllinge's right. It was difficult enough to teach a group of the most independent religious thinkers. Those with whom Keith was concerned, were the most important part of the Society of Friends politically, and felt them- selves a chosen people. At their head as Clerk of the Quarterly Meeting of Ministers, enabling him to mould the expression of the sense, was Jennings; and nothing could be done among the Philadelphia Friends which did not commend itself to Thomas Lloyd, while any confession of faith would abridge the liberty, or contra- dict the views, of some old preacher or "martyr." Lloyd (see Roberts's letter in Penna. Mag. of Hist., Vol. XVIII, p. 205) did not antagonize Keith until he in- sisted upon a declaration of faith. There were some leaders who actually had cast aside many of the older and widely prevalent beliefs. In the Reasons and Causes of the Separation, written by Keith or his friends, it is said that the doctrine of Christ's being in Heaven in the true nature of man, and of faith in Him being necessary to our perfect justification and salvation, and of His coming again, outside of us, to judge the quick and the dead, and of the resurrection of the dead and day of judgment were called by some "Popery," and by others "Presbyterian and Baptist principles." With the leaders, the resentment excited by Keith's various propositions, and, with the more
216
CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
docile, the feeling that he was troublesome, obscured the greater issue which was raised when he criticized theological expressions, and was met with statements and questions which until some time in the Nineteenth Century, would not have been tolerated in any so-called Christian Church. Some of those who refused to fol- low Keith, including Lloyd, had no intention of com- mitting themselves to Rationalism, particularly after a letter was received from George Whitehead, Patrick Livingston, and other London Friends deprecating dis- putations upon subjects not tending to edification, and affirming salvation through Christ to those who never heard of Him, but urging all not to reject Jesus Christ's outward coming, suffering, death, resurrection, ascen- sion, and glorified state in the heavens.
Those who had been reproved by Keith, attacked him in return. Stockdale criticized Keith's speaking so much of Christ within and Christ without as preaching two Christs, or as letting people infer two distinct Christs. The Plea of the Innocent, in contradiction to the Quarterly Meeting of the following year about the violation of Gospel order, says that Keith did privately deal with Stockdale, and then laid the matter before twelve of the ministers, who, except John Hart, and ex- cept John Delaval, rather excused Stockdale. Calling Stockdale an ignorant heathen, Keith asked judgment against him for making the criticism, or charge, and, receiving no answer, laid the matter before the Yearly Meeting held in Philadelphia in 7th month, 1691. Keith afterwards made a great point that that as- sembly of preachers of the Gospel debated for about ten hours one day, and at five subsequent "meetings," i.e. sittings, whether preaching Christ without and Christ within was preaching two Christs, and then came to "a slender and partial judgment," of which they made no record. Nevertheless, a declaration was made that Stockdale was blameworthy, because Keith's
217
RELIGIOUS DISSENSION.
doctrine was true. On 11mo. 29, 1691, at the Monthly Meeting, Thomas Fitzwater charged Keith with deny- ing the sufficiency of the light within for salvation. This insinuated that Keith could no longer be properly classified as a Quaker. Gough is not accurate in his account of the Fitzwater episode. At the next Monthly Meeting, 12mo. 26, 1691, to which Fitzwater had prom- ised to bring his proof, Stockdale came forth as a witness in support of Fitzwater, but other Friends testified that Keith had denied the sufficiency "without something more," meaning the death and mediation of Christ. After Jennings, the Clerk, and other op- posers of Keith, had retired from the assemblage, those remaining, including Fitzwater, unanimously agreed to adjourn to the next day at the 8th hour at the school house, the usual place of holding meetings in winter. Lloyd and Cooke, but not Jennings, at- tended this adjourned meeting, as did Fitzwater. How- ever, there being strong contention, all three went away. Stockdale was sent for, but declined to come. Those present, numbering about sixty, including min- isters and "those in the habit of attending monthly meetings," then unanimously agreed to a judgment signed by J. W. (Qu: Joseph Willcox?), whom they constituted Clerk, to the effect that Fitzwater should forbear to preach until he gave a writing condemning his charge against Keith, and satisfying as to his own true faith and belief in Christ's resurrection and Christ's being in Heaven in his glorified human nature; and also to the effect that Stockdale forbear to preach until he condemn his unrighteous charge against Keith of preaching two Christs. Furthermore, the opinion was given that the book vindicating the Christian faith of the Quakers of Rhode Island was for good, and for the service of truth, and that Bradford should not be discouraged for printing it. With a misprint giving date of the meeting as 2nd month instead of 12th month,
218
CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
the names of "some of the Friends that gave the afore- said judgment," to the number of forty-five are in print, viz: George Hutcheson, Thomas Winn (evi- dently Dr. Thomas Wynne, Speaker of the Assembly) Thomas Budd, Paul Saunders, John Hart, Thomas Hooton, John Lynam, Anthony Taylor, Thomas Pas- chall, Ralph Jackson, Abel Noble, Humphrey Hodges, Phillip James, Nicholas Pearce, Henry Furnis, Richard Hillyard, John Furnis, Anthony Sturges, John Red- man, Robert Wallis, Thomas Peart, John Williams, Thomas Jenner, Thomas Tresse, Ralph Ward, William Davis, John Loftus, William Dillwyn, Francis Cook, William Harwood, John Duploveys, Henry Johnson, James Chick, John Budd, Joseph Walker, Thomas Morris, William Bradford, Hugh Derborough, John McComb, William Paschall, William Say, John Hutchins, Joseph Willcox, William Hard, and James Cooper.
At the Quarterly Meeting held at the beginning of March, 1691-2, a few days after this, it was asked that this judgment be recorded in the Monthly Meeting book, but the other party denied that those who gave the judgment constituted a legal Meeting, inasmuch as there was no precedent for an adjourned Monthly Meeting, and as the Clerk had gone, and few ministers were present. Moreover, this party asserted that, as the subject of the charge against the ministers Fitz- water and Stockdale was a matter of doctrine, it could not be judged by a Monthly Meeting, but only by a meeting of ministers. However, it was agreed that the adjourned meeting was legal, but that an appeal had been taken from its decision. Keith was then told that he should submit to a judgment by the present Meet- ing. This curtailment of the right of private judgment, so much talked of by Protestants, was denied by Keith, as giving the ministers the teaching powers of a sacer- dotal order. He would say only that he would submit
219
RELIGIOUS DISSENSION.
to the judgment "of the spirit of truth in Friends." When asked to leave pending discussion, he refused to do so, unless about seven or eight of his opposers also absented themselves, and, they not doing this, the sub- ject was not taken up. As the policy of the leaders was to smother discussion, and to shield comrades whose views the majority themselves thought erroneous, there was really no inaccuracy in Keith's remark, made at this time, that the ministers opposed to him had "met together," that is had come intending, "to cloak heresies and deceits."
The subject at bottom was and is, however, one as to which Patrick Henry's words at the beginning of the American Revolution are appropriate, even if some readers would emphasize the first word: "Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace-but there is no peace." These criers of "peace" undertook to silence Keith's tongue. Accordingly, two members were appointed to admonish him to retract at the next Quarterly Meeting; but, when they visited him, he, feeling himself a champion of the truth, said that there were "more damnable heresies and doctrines of devils among the Quakers than among any profession of Protestants," and that he trampled "the judgment of the Meeting under his feet as dirt."
At the Monthly Meeting held on March 25, 1692, some of his opponents proposed to change the hour and place of meetings for worship established for the Winter. This was objected to by several of the Keithian faction, but was agreed to by the majority, and declared adopted. Although Lloyd and his party accordingly went the next morning to the meeting-house at the Centre, the followers of Keith, claiming that the change contravened the principle of unanimity by which all Quaker proceedings were to be conducted, met at the usual time and place, and did not unite with the others in the afternoon at the Bank Meeting House (Front above Arch), a few of them holding a private gathering
220
CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
at Keith's house. Subsequently they attempted to go to the house on the bank in the morning, but found the doors locked against them.
With the fair claim that the others were the aggres- sors, but on the broad basis of duty not to unite in worship with those who rejected the truth, arose the "Christian Quakers," as they called themselves, or "Separatists," or "Keithians," as the others called them. Out of the sparse population of the country and the small number of dwellers in the great towne, hun- dreds flocked to hear Keith, wherever he was expected to preach. Persons of other religious antecedents joined these Separatists, so that Keith prepared a con- fession of faith. Outside of Philadelphia, the sense of many of the regular meetings was Keithian : and Joseph C. Martindale, M.D., in his History of the Townships of Byberry and Moreland, asserts that, at one time which he does not clearly indicate, Keith's followers had the ascendency in sixteen out of thirty-two Meetings. Ap- parently the latter number covers the Meetings pre- viously established for worship on one or both sides of the Delaware.
Yet the Keithians, soon after the beginning of the separation, put themselves on record as attempting an accommodation. Fifteen made in writing an offer for restoration of unity and the oblivion of all hard words, if the others would bring their erroneous ministers to a confession of error, and would declare certain funda- mental doctrines. Through the influence of two visit- ing Friends from England, a conference was held on 3mo. 14, between the ministers then in town and an equal number of Keithians, but, the matter not being settled, T. B. and W. B. (Thomas Budd and William Bradford) wrote the next day to T- and A- (evidently Thomas Lloyd and Arthur Cooke), for an- other meeting. This brought no reply, and Keith did not help the cause of harmony, but was thought a dis-
221
RELIGIOUS DISSENSION.
turber, by going to the afternoon meeting on the 22nd, and expressing a desire to have the breach healed. Two of the opposite side came to Keith's meeting, and declared their testimony against him. The Monthly Meeting of 3rd mo. 26, 1692, controlled by Keith's enemies, disposed of the Fitzwater matter by letting him off with an apology for his "rash spirit in making the charge" against Keith of denying the sufficiency of the Light Within without something more, which charge Fitzwater, however, said was true; and no affirmance of belief was made in the paper given forth.
The ministers in Quarterly Meeting judged Stock- dale on 4mo. 4, 1692; the paper signed by Jennings as Clerk reproved him for "uttering new words offensive to many sound and tender persons," but blamed Keith for violating Gospel order in not dealing with Stock- dale alone before prosecuting the complaint, and for his "indecent expression" to Stockdale. Keith not appearing to retract what he said about "cloaking heresies and deceits," and the persons sent by the last Quarterly Meeting to admonish him reporting his words about "doctrines of devils," and about tramp- ling "the judgment of the Meeting under his feet," a second committee was sent to him, and the Meeting adjourned for a fortnight. The second committee, obtaining no satisfaction, prepared a testimony, to be published after he should have an opportunity to read it, for which they were obliged to wait four or five days later. The Meeting, on reconvening, forbade him to preach, and the declaration was published against him, dated 4mo. 20, 1692, and signed by the twenty-eight "public friends" following: Thomas Lloyd William Cooper
John Willsford
Nicholas Waln
Thomas Thackory William Biles (printed
William Watson
"Byles")
George Maris Samuel Jennings
222
CHRONICLES OF PENNSYLVANIA.
Thomas Duckett
John Delaval
Joshua Fearne
Even Morris
William Yardley (printed "Yeardly")
Richard Walter
Joseph Kirkbride
John Symcock
Walter Fawcit
Griffith Owen
Hugh Roberts
John Bown
Robert Owen
Henry Willis
William Walker
Paul Sanders
John Lynam
John Blunston
George Gray.
Certain of these twenty-eight signers went from Meeting to Meeting to deliver the judgment. On 4mo. 27, Lloyd, Jennings, and Delaval with Samuel Richard- son went to Frankford Monthly Meeting to give counte- nance to the reading of the judgment, Lloyd speaking against Keith for "imposing unscriptural words," i.e. asking belief according to theological terms. This judgment could not have been received at Frankford Monthly Meeting with unanimous satisfaction; for Martindale's History says that John Hart controlled the constituent First Day Meeting at Byberry in Keith's favor, and in time drove the opposing atten- dants of Byberry to secede.
The friends and followers of Keith in Philadelphia were not overawed. In protest against the judgment, Peter Boss wrote two letters to Jennings. The first receiving no notice, Boss kept a copy of the second, to insure an answer to it. It was clearly scurrilous in saying that the twenty-eight would have been better employed in inquiring whether Jennings or Simcock had been drunk on certain occasions, and also it was scurrilous in Quaker eyes in similarly insinuating that Jennings had once made a bet on the speed of his horse. The letter was not put in print until after Boss had been tried for defaming a magistrate. Keith and Thomas Budd wrote a Plea for the Innocent, signing it on behalf of themselves and other Friends of their
223
RELIGIOUS DISSENSION.
Meeting. Extenuating and justifying Keith's use of bad names to his opponents, and telling of the bad names which they gave to him, the Plea was very severe on Jennings, and said much more besides calling him "an ignorant, presumptuous, and insolent man" and "too high and imperious both in Friends meetings and worldly courts"; expressions for which Keith and Budd were indicted as contravening an Act of Assembly that no words of defamation be spoken against a magis- trate. An answer to the judgments was issued "on behalf of brethren who are falsely called the Separate meetings at Philadelphia," maintaining that, by the first judgment of Monthly Meeting, those making it had declared themselves no true believers in Christ Jesus, and so the answerers could not own them as Christians, nor join with them in worship. This answer was dated 5mo. 3, 1692, at a meeting at the house of Philip James, and signed by
Richard Dungworth John Loftus
John Wells
John McComb
Phillip James
James Chick
Henry Furnis
John Bartram
James Shattuck
Abel Noble
James Cooper, Sen.
Joseph Walker
William Davis
Thomas Paschall
Robert Wallis
Richard Hilliard
James Poulter
William Waite
Nicholas Pierce
Anthony Sturges
Thomas Budd
Ralph Ward
John Barclay
Thomas Peart
William Bradford
John Chandler
James Cooper, Junr.
Peter Chamberlain.
This answer was followed by an Appeal to the Yearly Meeting. The Appeal was signed by Keith, Budd, Dungworth, George Hutcheson, John Hart, and Abra- ham Opdegraves, and offered to have tried by two or three impartial men twelve questions, whether Keith's
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.