USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > Two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, held at Moses Brown School, Providence, R.I., sixth month, 24th, 1911 > Part 5
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It is often said of, and said by, the Unitarian body, in the midst of whose historic preserves I live, that it would be far larger than it is were it not for the fact that its truest conten- tions have been practically adopted by many Churches besides. Time was when their seer, Channing, predicted that in America at any rate where there was so much less of tradition to resist them, they would carry everything before them, because of the congruence of their main ideas with the spirit of the times. That has not come true.
If all of the prophetic quality which we have ascribed to the
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Quakers and George Fox was really theirs, if our world has but caught up in its slow-footed fashion with so much that they surmised, it might be open to some one to ask, Why, then, does not this company, also of the children of the prophets, come to its own, inasmuch as, in a way, the whole world has, in such impressive fashion, come to them?
I wonder if George Fox would not have answered that ques- tion too. It is true that to dislodge an organization one needs to build up a counter-organization. But yet if you do that your own organization will in turn fall a prey to the decay or perver- sion which has been inseparable from all the rest. It will need, in turn, to be dislodged. It is true that for the propagation of a set of ideas an institution specifically devoted to that task is the appropriate instrument. But if what you wish to transmit is not a set of ideas, but a spirit, then the fruit of your work will less easily be counted or measured by any of the conventional standards. That will not prove that you have not been very fruitful. Then the fruit of dissemination of your pure and beautiful spirit must not be looked for entirely, or even mainly, within an ecclesiastical organization, which bears a particular name. It must be looked for among men of all other organiza- tions and of no organization, among Christians of every name and among Christians not consciously such. There is a great difference between being a prosperous sect and a vast and potent influence. The two things do not necessarily exclude one an- other, though they are likely to do so. But for a religion of the Inner Life and Light the latter would seem to be the appro- priate and characteristic way.
If Christ's law be true, that to save one's life one must lose it, I do not see why that law is not applicable to institutions and movements as much as to individual men. It seems quite obvious that some fierce ecclesiastical organizations have lost their lives by perpetuating and enlarging them.
It seems equally obvious that some other movements and impulses, especially of the religious sort, have saved their lives by losing them, have become immortal and well-nigh omnipo- tent by sinking themselves absolutely in the mind and life of masses of men, to whom they possess no obvious and outward relation. I wonder if Fox saw this. It would have been like
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him. There is certainly a truth here for us to see and one worthy to be pondered in our time. A man is reputed a prophet by dint of that which a subsequent age is in a position to patronize him for having said which has come true. He really was a prophet by dint of that which the men of his own time heard him say, but did not believe was true. Columbus did what he did for the world by believing that America was there far down the western horizon, when nobody else believedit. But he became a lauded discoverer only after there were many more men in the world, and some of them very commonplace ones, who knew all about America.
It is possible that Fox and the mind of his type is recognized by us as that of the discoverer, because we feel that wherein he transcended the mind of his own age. Is it not equally possible that he is still prophetic, in our age, of that which we do not believe to be true? With our faith in organization and ma- chinery we are at the opposite pole from him. But it may be he is right. In his attitude as to punishments by the state, as to prisons, as to war, etc., I am sure that he is right. And the world apparently has still a long way to go before it will come up with him. And yet upon what did he base these conclu- sions, save on his sense of what was worthy of God and best for man? Am I not right, that it is the religious spirit which is the discoverer?
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THE QUAKER CONQUEST.
Conquest means more than victory or triumph. It carries with it the quality of permanence. A victory today may have a reversal tomorrow, but a conquest continues its effects until they become permanent conditions. A conquest may be by physical force or it may be produced by a moral change or by a change of sentiment. Physical force may compel submis- sion and obedience without producing a change in either char- acter or sentiment. A moral change goes far deeper and by conviction and a new point of view reaches the foundation of things, and produces a new character into which new lights shine and from which a new fruitage is produced.
The history of England furnishes a striking example of each . of these types of conquest: The first was of the date 1066, the other reached the determining stage of its consummation in 1689. The Norman Conquest was obtained by valor in arms. The conquest by which religious liberty was obtained was won by a higher type of valor, that of quiet suffering and patient endurance.
It is not necessary to recount the persecutions of Quakers in England. They are matters of English history. After George Fox began his ministry much of his life was spent in prisons. His followers suffered in like manner. The persons and the estates of Quakers suffered continual violence. It was a time of violence but the Quaker was the only protestant against whom Churchmen and Puritan and Presbyterian joined in their fury. But the English people had hearts and consciences and there was a limit beyond which persecutions could not go. When their conscience was aroused they called a halt. The coming of the Prince of Orange to the throne furnished the opportunity for the righting of the grievous wrong of which the nation had become conscious and the passage of the Toler- ation Act quickly followed.
The Act of Toleration was drawn to apply to all dissenters but the Quakers were given special and peculiar consideration by Parliament. George Whitehead with three associates went
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before the parliamentary committee and in consideration of their request the phraseology of the act was so shaped as to meet their views concerning the Holy Scriptures and the con- fession of faith which the act prescribed. But there remained the difficulty of the oath of allegiance which the act required. In lieu of this a formal declaration of loyalty was accepted. Nor was this all. As Friends made no use of the ordinances they were made exempt from certain requirements of other dissenters for giving assent to the canon of the Church of Eng- land in reference to the Eucharist and the admission of the truth of the greater part of the thirty-nine articles. I conclude the English portion of my subject by quoting from Augustine Birrell's Preface to the recently published "Quaker Post-Bag," "One thing in the strange history of the Quakers stands out in the clearest relief. Despite their bold denial of all the Sacra- ments and of any kind of formal priesthood, or ministry, denials which, in the first instance, brought down upon their covered heads the whole forces of all the hatreds of Christendom for once united, they nevertheless were the first, and for a long, long time the only Nonconformists to obtain the protection of the law. This they won, not by political strife, but by a sub- lime indifference to consequences, legal or social. Unable to swear, they found the courts closed against them, when in pur- suit of their civil remedies. They submitted in silence, and were the more careful not to make bad debts. Marriage was only to be had within the walls of the Establishment. All other Nonconformists, wishing to wed, went to church, at least once in their lives, fearing bastardy for their offspring. The Quak- ers feared nothing, did not go to church, kept their own marriage registers, and made it a matter of religion never to die intestate. This attitude of sublime indifference was soon found intoler- able. In 1676 the Quakers were allowed to affirm in courts of justice and later their marriages outside the walls of either church or chapel were recognized. No such consideration was shown to other Nonconformists for a century or so. Quaker history stands alone in its indomitable success."
It is not necessary to repeat the story of the persecution of the Quakers in Massachusetts. That story is well known. It went to extremes never attempted in England. The Puritan
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had come to establish a religious commonwealth. None but those who were of one mind and one practice were invited to come and the Puritans firmly believed that they had the right to exclude all others. The harshness of their methods of exclu- sion and the extremes to which they were carried shocked the Christian world. The government of Massachusetts felt it necessary to issue an official apology in justification of their acts, and Governor Endicott sent an address to King Charles upon the subject. The effect upon the common people of the province is shown in a letter written by one James Cudworth, who had been a magistrate and a commissioned officer in the military. He says "The Quakers have many meetings and many adherents. Their sufferings are grievous and sadden the hearts of most of the pious and virtuous part of this Commonwealth; it lies down and rises up with them, and they cannot put it out of their minds."
After the force of public opinion compelled a cessation of the persecution the final legal steps were not consummated until the new charter for the province was obtained in 1691. That charter shows very clearly that it was prepared in Massachu- setts. The endless details could never have been inserted other- wise. In its confusing verbiage one clause stands clear and explicit: "And we do grant, establish and ordain that forever hereafter there shall be a liberty of conscience allowed in the worship of God to all Christians (except Papists) inhabiting or which shall inhabit or be resident within our said Province or Territory."
The results of the Massachusetts experience reached into other New England colonies. As both Roger Williams and the Quakers who settled on Rhode Island had experienced Massa- chusetts intolerance, religious liberty was a foregone conclu- sion for Rhode Island and the Providence plantations. Roger Williams in 1636 declared his object to be "the settling of the plantation and especially for the receiving of such as were troubled elsewhere about the worship of God." So also those eighteen who came from Boston in 1638, twelve of whom had just arrived from England, and purchased of the Indians the island on the east side of Narragansett Bay, known by the Dutch as "Rhoode Eylandt," and elected William Coddington
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their chief magistrate, established liberty there. The united government went into operation in 1647, and in 1663 King Charles granted the celebrated charter that remained for 180 years the supreme law of Rhode Island, both as colony and state, and only gave place to a state constitution in 1843.
We now come to the division of our subject that embraces matters not so generally known and which furnishes the reason for the preparation of this paper. It requires the narration of events which led to the official establishment of religious liberty in New York and New Jersey, the far reaching effects of which it is impossible to estimate.
It was but natural for the Quakers, driven out of Massa- chusetts, to look to the Dutch for religious toleration. The Puritans themselves had gone to Holland to find religious lib- erty when they had been compelled to flee from England. The Dutch had founded New Amsterdam under the director- generalship of Peter Minuit in 1625. The first settlers were Walloons, driven out of the southern provinces of the Nether- lands by the religious bitterness following the protracted war with Spain. These Belgic provinces were strongly Roman Catholic and their protestant people took advantage of the opportunities offered by the newly organized Dutch West India Company and sought new homes along the shores of the Hudson River. They settled also upon Long Island and explored and claimed the shores as far east as Block Island and Rhode Island and westward to the Delaware. Under Minuit and his early successors all settlers found the liberties they desired.
Friends from Massachusetts early settled upon Long Island so that in 1657 ministers, among whom were Robert Hodgson and Robert Fowler, held meetings at Hempstead, Jamaica, Flushing and Gravesend. Their number steadily increased and Flushing and Oyster Bay became important Quaker cen- ters. The most prominent man among them was John Bowne. He came from Matlock in Derbyshire, England, where he was born on the 9th of March, 1627, and was baptized in the parish church on the 29th of the same month. The family came to America in 1649 and in 1651 or the following year John Bowne settled at Flushing. Subsequently he and his wife joined the Friends. The Friends meeting was regularly held at their
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house. The records of the meeting after his death has the fol- lowing entry: "John Bowne died at Flushing, 20th day of Tenth month 1695, and was buried the 23d of the same, being about sixty eight years of age. He did freely expose himself, his house and estate to the service of Truth, and had a constant meeting at his house near about forty years."
Peter Stuyvesant became director-general of New Amster- dam in 1647. His oath of office required "the maintenance of the reformed religion in conformity with the decrees of the Synod of Dort-recht, and not to tolerate in public any other sect." The charter of 1640 declared "And no other religion shall be publicly admitted in New Netherlands except the Reformed as it is at present preached and practiced in the United Netherlands."
Under these regulations Governor Stuyvesant considered it to be his duty to enforce the law and prohibit the holding of conventicles anywhere within his jurisdiction in accordance with an ordinance of the West India Company of 1662 which provided that "beside the Reformed religion no conventicles shall be holden in houses, barns, ships, woods or fields, under the penalty of fifty guilders for the first offence, double for the second, and arbitrary correction for every other." The execu- tion of these restrictions fell alike upon all who were not of the church of Holland, but its greatest severity was the portion of the Quakers.
Friends were of one mind in reference to their right to wor- ship God according to the dictates of their consciences and many suffered imprisonment for this. The greatest severity of the law fell upon John Bowne who was arrested September 1, 1662, charged with "harboring Quakers and permitting them to hold their meetings at his house." He was taken a prisoner to Fort Amsterdam and on the 14th of the same month the "court held by the Lords, Director General and Council at Fort Amsterdam in the New Netherlands" entered the fol- lowing judgment: "Because John Bowne, at present prisoner, dwelling in Flushing upon Long Island, has made no scruple in vilipendation of the orders and mandates of the Director General and Council of the New Netherlands, we do in justice to the high and mighty states of the United Provinces and the
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administrators of the West India Company of the Chamber of Amsterdam, having heard the demand of the substitutes and the acknowledgment of the prisoner, have condemned and do condemn the said John Bowne by these presents-boete- 5 and 20 pounds Flemish with the charges of the Justinian, and with express admonition and interdict to abstain from all such forementioned meetings and conventicles, or else for the second boete he be condemned to a double boete, and for the third boete to be banished out of this province of New Netherlands."
John Bowne refused to pay the fine and was then confined in a dungeon and restricted to bread and water. On the 31st of October he was put on board ship and sent a prisoner to Holland. He arrived at Amsterdam on the 29th of January, 1663. The authorities of New Netherlands forwarded a state- ment of the case for the adjudication of the authorities in Hol- land. The officials of the West India Company drew up a paper for John Bowne to sign. In reply he sent to the com- pany the following statement: "Friends, the paper drawn up for me to subscribe I have perused and weighed, and do find the same not according to that engagement to me through one of your members, viz: that he or you would do therein by me as you would be done unto, and not otherwise. For which of you being taken from your wife and family, without just cause, would be bound from returning to them unless upon terms to act contrary to your conscience, and deny your faith and reli- gion, yet this in effect do you require of me and not less. But truly, I cannot think that you did in sober earnest ever think I would subscribe to any such thing, it being this very thing for which I rather chose freely to suffer want of the company of my dear wife and children, imprisonment of my person, the ruin of my estate in my absence there, and the loss of my goods here, than to yield or consent to such an unreasonable thing as you thereby would enjoin me unto. For which I am per- suaded you will not only be judged in the sight of God, but by good and godly men, rather to have mocked at the oppressions of the oppressed and added afflictions to the afflicted than herein to have done to me as you in like case would be done unto, which the royal cause of our God requires. I have with patience and moderation waited several weeks expecting jus-
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tice from you, but behold an addition to my oppression in the measure I receive.
"Wherefore I have this now to request for you that the Lord will not lay this to your charge, but to give eyes to see and hearts to do justice, that you may find mercy with the Lord in the day of Judgment.
JOHN BOWNE."
In April John Bowne was released. He returned to America by the way of England and the Island of Barbadoes.
The authorities in Amsterdam sent to the officials of New Netherlands the following decision, dated Amsterdam, April 16, 1663: "We, finally, did see from your last letter, that you had exiled and transported hither a certain Quaker named John Bowne, and although it is our cordial desire that similar and other sectarians might not be found there, vet as the con- trary seems to be the case, we doubt very much if rigorous proceedings against them ought not to be discontinued except you intend to check and destroy your population, which, however, in the youth of your existence, ought rather to be encouraged by all possible means.
"Wherefore it is our opinion that some connivance would be useful that the consciences of men, at least, ought ever to remain free and unshackled. Let every one be unmolested as long as he is modest, as long as his conduct in a political sense is unim- peachable, as long as he does not disturb others or oppose the government. This maxim of moderation has always been the guide of the magistrates of this city and the consequence has been that from every land people have flocked to this asylum. Tread thus in their steps and we doubt not you will be blessed.
(Signed) The Directors of the West India Company, Amster- dam Department. ABRAHAM WILMANDOUK, DAVID VON BAERLE."
This was regarded and acted upon as a decree of full religious liberty. It has peculiar historic interest because of the fact that it was the first official proclamation of religious liberty for
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any part of America except that of Lord Baltimore for Mary- land.
The continuation of Dutch authority was brief. New Amsterdam was seized by the British in 1664, 'was retaken and occupied by the Dutch and finally passed permanently to the British authority.
In the final surrender twenty-three articles of capitulation were agreed upon.
Article VIII stated "The inhabitants here shall enjoy the liberty of their consciences in divine worship and church dis- cipline." These articles were confirmed by the treaty of West- minster in 1674. This was the most advanced and complete recognition of religious liberty thus far established in any part of the British dominions. Thus, the rights obtained under the Dutch government by John Bowne and his fellow sufferers became the English law of all the territory transferred from the Dutch to the English. This domain included not only the territory of the present state of New York, but all of New Jer- sey as well, for the Dutch authority extended to the Delaware.
When Charles II wrested their North American possessions from the Dutch he granted them in bulk to his brother, the Duke of York, who in turn granted what is now New Jersey to John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. The Berkeley-Car- teret grant was covered by the Articles of Capitulation. The first grant to the Duke of York had become extinguished by the Dutch conquest. Upon the retransfer of New Netherlands to England the King issued a new patent for New York and New Jersey to the Duke of York and from this new patent all legal authority was derived. This was subsequent to the treaty of Westminster. New grants of New Jersey were made to the Berkeley-Carteret parties-the former now represented by John Fenwick. When in 1676 West Jersey was opened to settlement by the Friends, under the dominant spirit of Wil- liam Penn, six years before Pennsylvania was founded, they entered into the heritage secured by their brethren of Long Island.
The Quaker settlement on Long Island came by way of New England and the meetings organized there had official connection with New England; and this continued, until the year 1695
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when New England Yearly Meeting set up the Yearly Meet- ing of New York as an independent body. Hence the story of the Quaker conquest of New Netherlands is a part of the his- tory of the body whose two hundred and fiftieth anniversary we are now celebrating.
Much has been written of the influence of the Quakers upon the public thought and the public policy of English-speaking peoples but in the light of these studies a new significance is given to the title chosen by President Gregg of the Western Theological Seminary of "The Quakers as Makers of America," and to the statement of John Fiske that "All that now remains is to set up on Boston Common, the scene of their martyrdom, a fitting monument to the heroes that won the victory."
Doubtless in the progress of time religious liberty would have been secured for all America by other means, but the facts of history make it clear how it was obtained.
The efficacy of quiet suffering, of patient endurance, of pas- sive resistance in any contest with bitter prejudice, with evil passion and with brute force results from the operation of the law of all God's universe that like begets like, that hatred breeds hate and loving wins love. Count Leo Tolstoi nar- rates that he was once reading the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth to a wise man of the East. As the sage heard them one by one he claimed that each was known among his own people and was not original with Jesus. At length he read "Ye have heard that it hath been said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say unto you resist not him that is evil, but whosoever will smite thee on the right cheek turn to him the other also;" the wise man exclaimed "This is new, this is original." It was indeed the first enunciation of a great and potent law. It was a great contribution to the moral wisdom of the world. It is the secret of the greatest conquests the world has known.
But great and potent and universal as is this law it has been a stumbling block to modern Christendom. Men have not believed that Jesus meant what he said and they are still mak- ing apologies for resisting evil with evil. The Quakers believed it and in acting upon it they had God on their side and of course they won in every contest, whether it was in England or in America. It has been truly said that of all Christians the
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Quakers have taken Jesus Christ most seriously. John Morley, in his life of Cromwell, says "Quakerism was undergoing many changes and developments but in all of them it has been the most devout of all endeavors to turn Christianity into the religion of Christ."
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