USA > South Carolina > History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, Vol. I pt 1 > Part 26
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Hugh Bryan and his wife, Tracy thinks,-(Great Awakening, p. 113,)-though very pious persons, were, perhaps, rather weak-minded, and not very well informed, and that Whitefield immensely overrated them. Bryan was impulsive, ready for every good work, and was sometimes carried far beyond the bounds of prudence, and his piety must have predominated over his wisdom. He was, however, greatly esteemed by the most experienced and spiritual Christians. Mr. Hutson
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242
HUGH BRYAN.
[1740-1750.
speaks of him as a gentleman of character in civil life, having been honored with commissions both in the magistracy and militia of the province. He was born in 1699, and died the last day of December, 1753. He was taken captive in the beginning of the Indian war of 1715, so memorable in the early history of the province, and disposed of as a slave to a half-breed by the king or chief. His master was killed in an engagement with the whites, and his own personal liberty was by that means somewhat enlarged. As often as the whites gained an advantage over them, the Indians clamored for his life. But he was always protected by the Indian chief, for the kindness which his father had shown the savages in for- mer years. He met with the Bible during his captivity. His Indian mistress gave him one, and a copy of Beveridge's Private Thoughts, taken from some white family they had killed. In the providence of God, he was brought by his cap- tors to St. Augustine, where he was given up by the Indian chief who had always befriended him; from which place he regained the house of his father, to the great joy of all. He was, at the time of his first acquaintance with Whitefield, a man of handsome fortune, and had been attentive to the duties of outward religion. His visit to Whitefield at his house in Georgia, and the expositions of the gospel plan of salvation, and especially his doctrine of the new birth, was blessed to his conversion. His wife had been a religious woman, retired seven times a day for prayer, and observed frequent fasts. But she rested not on the true foundation. "It was owing;" she says, "to a false notion she had learned from the books she read, and the doctrines she heard preached, that our works were a means of our justification, and that Christ's merits were to make up their deficiency." "That we were to be saved by faith alone, without any regard to works, past, present, or to come, was what I never heard any of our clergy preach." She found, however, the way of peace before she had read or heard Mr. Whitefield's views on the new birth and justification. "I would not have you think," she says, "that I was led away by him with his enthusiastic notions, as the world is pleased to call them." This family became, if not his wise, yet his devoted friends. Mrs. Bryan died, in the triumphs of faith, towards the close of 1740 .*
* See, for the above, "Living Christianity, delineated in the Diaries and Letters of two eminently pious persons, lately deceased, viz., Mr. Hugh Bryan and Mrs. Mary Hutson, both of South Carolina. With a preface by the Reverend Mr. John Conder and the Rev. Mr. Thomas Gibbons." Date
243
WHITEFIELD'S SENTENCE.
1740-1750.]
In the close of 1740, Rev. James Parker-born in Leicester, England, ordained to the ministry in London, and for seven years pastor at Gravesend-arrived in Charleston, being sent out by Dr. Watts and others, agreeably to the request of the church now known as the CIRCULAR Church. "Jan. 1st, 1741, he was elected pastor by this people, with a salary of £100 sterling and the parsonage," which office he accepted for the term of four years. His ministry was a short one. He died on the 6th of July, 1742. In the record of his election the church is called the Brick Presbyterian Church in Charleston .* Nov. 21st, 1742, Rev. Josiah Smith was elected pastor, with a salary of £800 currency for the first year, and the use of the parson- age, and the servant man, Boston, and £100 sterling thereafter.
During these years, and for some time after, the South Caro- lina Gazette is filled with attacks upon Mr. Whitefield, and rejoinders in his defence. They were generally under ficti- tious signatures. Probably many of them on the one side were by the commissary and his intimate friends, and on the other by Josiah Smith, the devoted friend of Whitefield and a champion in his favor. A year and a day had been allowed by Commissary Garden for Whitefield to prosecute his appeal. He had addressed the Bishop of London on the subject, especially to know whether the commissary " had any judicial authority against him, or any other clergyman, who did not belong to his province." The bishop appears to have paid no attention to the inquiry. Garden was resolved to proceed as if no appeal had been made, he having received no orders from the superior court whatever. He pronounced his final decree, after reciting the circumstances, in the words fol- lowing :-
" Therefore We, Alexander Garden, the Judge aforesaid, having invoked the name of Christ, and setting and having God himself alone before our eyes, and by and with the advice of the Rev. persons, William Guy, Timo- thy Mellichamp, Stephen Roe, and William Orr, with whom in part we have advised and maturely deliberated, Do Pronounce, Decree, and Declare the
of preface, Feb. 11, 1760. Part II., relating to Mrs. Hutson, is prefaced by J. J. Zubly and J. Edwards, and dated Jan. 31, 1759. The former part was collected, and forwarded to Dennis de Berdt, merchant in London, by Rev. William Hutson; American reprint : Boston, 1809, pp. 165, 12mo.
See Whitefield's Journal, where a letter from Hugh Bryan, giving an account of her death, is copied.
* MS. Records of the Circular Church.
In Mr. Peronneau's will, who bequeathed to the church £1500, in 1740, it is called the Independent Church; in 1742, the Brick Presbyterian Church ; in 1745, in the will of James Matthews, who bequeathed £200, it is called " the Congregation of Christian Dissenters, to whom the Northernmost Brick Meeting-house belongs."
244
HUGH BRYAN.
[1740-1750.
aforesaid George Whitefield to have been, at the times articled, and now, to be a Priest of the Church of England, and at the times and days in that part articled, to have officiated as a Minister in diverse Meeting-houses in Charles-Town, in the Province of South Carolina, by praying and preaching to public congregations, and at such times to have omitted the form of prayer prescribed in the Communion Book, or Book of Common Prayer; or at least, according to the laws, canons, and constitutions ecclesiastical in that part made, provided, and promulged, not to have used the same according to the lawful proofs before us in that part judicially had and made.
" We therefore pronounce, decree, and declare, that the said George White- field, for his excesses and faults, ought duly and canonically, and according to the exigency of the law in that part of the premises, to be corrected and pun- ished, and also to be suspended from his Office ; and accordingly by These Presents, we do suspend him, the said George Whitefield ; and for so sus- pended, we also Pronounce, Decree, and Declare him to be Denounced, Declared, and Published openly and publickly in the face of the Church."
This suspension from the ministry was based upon liis omit- ting to use the Common Prayer, which he did use whenever he could obtain admission to Episcopal churches. It was " for not reading the Common Prayer," says he, in his letter to the Bishop of London, "in the meeting-house, which I was obliged to preach in at Charlestown (unless I would be silent), because the commissary would not let me have the use of his church." For Whitefield to have used the Common Prayer in congregations where they were unused to it and where there were no books, would have been simply ridicu- lous, and would have prejudiced the people against him and his message .- (Ramsay, ii. 12, 13, 14; Dalcho, 120 et seq. ; S. C. Gazette, Jan. 22, 1742.)
A circumstance occurred about this time which was- much circulated at the north, when Davenport in Connecticut was giving way to the wildest fanaticism. Mr. Hugh Bryan had enlisted earnestly, at the suggestion of Whitefield, in the reli- gious instruction of the negroes, and, as we have seen, "the young stage-player was to be their first teacher." His zeal carried him at last beyond all bounds. His imagination became greatly excited and diseased. He is reported to have sent twenty closely-written sheets of his journal, containing predictions and the like, to the speaker of the Commons House of the province. (The journals published by Mr. Hutson contain no such things, but only the exercises of a soul under the stirrings of divine grace. It was said that he was encamped in the woods, gathering multitudes of people around him, especially negroes ; and that he had procured fire-arms to be sent from Charleston for some dangerous purpose. This matter was brought to the notice of the publie by a present- ment of the grand jury, charging him with uttering enthu-
245
SINGULAR HALLUCINATION.
1740-1750.]
siastic prophecies of the " destruction of Charles-Town, and of assembling great bodies of negroes under pretence of religious worship, contrary to law," and detrimental to the public peace. -(MS. Journal of Commons House, 1742-1743, p. 174.) A warrant was issued for his apprehension. Before it could be served he had discovered his delusion. He addressed a letter to the speaker, Mr. Bull, and to the members of the Commons House, confessing his errors, and asking pardon. This letter bears date March 1st, 1742. "It is with shame," he says, " intermixed with joy, that I write you this. I find that I have presumed, in my zeal for God's glory, beyond his will, and that he has suffered me to fall into a delusion of Satan, -- particu- larly in adhering to the impressions on my mind, though not to my knowledge, in my reflections and other occurrences of my journal. This delusion I did not discover till three days past, when, after many days' converse with an invisible spirit, whose precepts seemed to me to be wise, and tending to the advancement of religion in general, and of my own spiritual welfare in particular, I found my teacher to be a liar, and the father of lies ; which brought me to a sense of my error, and has much abased my soul with bitter reflections on the dis- honor I have done to God, as well as the disquiet which I may have occasioned my country. Satan till then appeared to me as an angel of light in his spiritual conversation ; but since I have discovered his wiles, he has appeared a devil indeed, showing his rage." He denies that he had furnished arms, or was engaged in anything treasonable. He adds the following postscript :- " May we all keep close to the law and to the tes- timony of our God, and hearken to no other revelation of divine truth, and watch and pray, that we enter not into temp- tation, is a further prayer of your most unworthy servant, H. Bryan." This was published by order of the Commons House of Assembly, passed March 3d, 1742 .- (S. C. Gazette, March, 1742, Charleston Library.) It is republished in the Boston Post-Boy with additional statements, on the authority of his brother, as to the way by which he was undeceived. " The invisible spirit bade him go, by a direct course, and without looking on the ground, to a certain tree, and take thence a rod, with which he must smite the waters of the river, and they should be divided, so that he should go over on dry ground. He started to obey ; and after several falls from not looking on the ground, found the tree and procured the rod." With this he began to smite the river, and press forward towards the further bank, till he was up to his chin in water; and his
246
INSTRUCTION OF NEGROES.
[1740-1750.
brother, who had followed him as fast as he could, but just saved him from drowning. His brother then urged him to go home, but the spirit assured him that if he should go home that night he would be a dead man before morning. However, the sharp weather and his wet jacket at length prevailed. He went home, and finding himself alive in the morning, con- cluded that the spirit, which had lied to him twice, must be the "father of lies."-(New England Postboy, No. CCCVIII., Mond., May 3, 1742, Mass. Hist. Soc. Liby. ; a Letter from a gentleman in N. Eng. to his friend in Glasgow, on " The State of Religion in N. England since the Rev. Mr. George White- field's arrival there," Old South Ch. Liby. The same is found in Tracy's "Great Awakening," pp. 240, 241, from which the preceding facts are directly taken, although the original authorities have been examined.)
This conduct of Hugh Bryan exhibits a singular mixture of religious zeal, and either mental infirmity or temporary in- sanity. It may be that he was right in ascribing it all to the access to his mind of an evil spirit, whose mysterious agency is real, but was never yet defined by the Scriptures, human experience, or philosophy. It is very like the extravagances of Davenport in Connecticut about the same time, whose progress the legislature of that province put forth its power to arrest. It must have acted as a caution to the extrava- gances to which the human mind was then prone, and been a triumph to the enemies of Whitefield, and of evangelical religion. Yet Mr. Bryan seems not to have lost the confi- dence of men of judgment and piety. He saw his error, and almost madness, quickly, and his subsequent life showed him to be a true servant of God, and probably this "catastrophe" was serviceable to him as well as to others.
Great attention seemed at this time to have been awakened in behalf of the religious instruction of the negroes. A letter was published in England addressed to the converted negroes of Jonathan Bryan in South Carolina .* April 17th, Rev.
* A Letter to the Negroes lately converted in America, and particularly those, lately called out of darkness into God's marvellous light, at Mr. Jona- than Bryan's in South Carolina. A welcome to the believing negroes into the household of God. By a friend and servant of theirs in England. Eph. ii. 9, " Not of works, lest any man should boast." Col. iii. 11, "Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all and in all."-London, J. Hart, 1743, pp. 32, 8vo. This warm and fervent appeal is in the Old South Library, Boston, No. 530. Whitefield probably gave the information. "I
247
STONEY CREEK CHURCH.
1740-1750.]
James Parker and Josiah Smith publish and enforce the Bishop of London's recommendation as to the instruction of negroes, and although it was excepted to by a writer, April 24th, it seems not to have been without effect. In 1743 the Society for Propagating Religion in Foreign Parts fell upon the plan of purchasing young negroes, instructing them, and sending them forth to teach other negroes and Indian slaves. Two had been purchased some fifteen months since, and pre- parations for their being put under a course of instruction were nearly completed. Alexander Garden proposed to erect a school-house on the glebe land in Charleston, near the parsonage, for the negro school of Charleston. £400 was the sum he thoughit necessary for this, which he invites the citi- zens to contribute. The commissary intended to employ both the negro youths to teach in this school, until their services should be needed in the country parishes. In consequence of this information, the society sent out a large quantity of Bibles, Testaments, Prayer-books, and Spelling- books. In 1744 upwards of sixty children were instructed in it daily; eighteen of whom read in the Testament well, twenty in the Psalter, and the rest were in the Spelling-book. -(S. C. Gazette, March 14th, 1743; Dalcho, pp. 156, 157.)
The philanthropists of that day differed in some of their opinions from those of ours. Whitefield plead strenuously with the trustees of Georgia for the introduction of rum and negro slaves. Rum was granted first; slaves were not intro- duced by authority before 1749. Whitefield purchased & plantation and negroes in Carolina in 1747. Through Kis exertions and those of Mr. Habersham chiefly, the trustees were induced to allow of their introduction into Georgia
The Spaniards invaded Georgia with a fleet of thirty-seven sail of vessels and galleys. South Carolina sympathized with her sister colony and observed a fast, July 25th, 1742, in deprecation of the threatened danger. Mr. . Habersham, in Whitefield's absence in England, moved the family at Bethesda, then consisting of eighty-five or eighty-six persons, to Mr. Bull's and Jonathan Bryan's plantations in South Carolina, where they remained till the Spaniards retired.
The next year brings us to the organization of THE INDE- PENDENT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH of STONEY CREEK in PRINCE: WILLIAM'S PARISH.
am informed that twelve negroes belonging to a planter converted at the Orphan House, are savingly brought home to Christ."-Letters of Feb. 23d and March 4th, 1742.
248
REV. WILLIAM HUTSON.
[1740-1750,
The "young stage-player convinced when Whitefield was in New York," p. 240, who was to be "the first teacher" of Mr. Bryan's negroes, whom he afterwards said "he designed for the ministry," was Mr. William Hutson, then a young man of twenty-one years of age. "He was born in England August 14th, 1720, and entered on the study of law at the Inns of Court, London. To this profession he had a great repugnance, but his father remaining firm to the purpose he had throughout his education, he deserted the parental roof and came to America. He soon expended what little means he had, for he brought little with him but his mother's picture. As a means of supporting himself he joined a strolling company of players. The statement of Whitefield makes the scene of this engagement to be New York, but the traditions of one branch of the family represent it as being in Charleston, and still another in London itself." It was publicly announced that he would appear on the stage on an appointed night, as a member of this company, in a character which had been assigned him. Mr. Whitefield was to preach on the evening preceding Mr. Hutson's debut on the stage. Mr. Hutson went to hear him an unconverted man with an inclination to scoff, rather than to profit, but remained to pray! Anxious and perplexed in relation to his engagement with the players, he called the next morning on Whitefield, told him of the change that had been wrought in him, informed him of the obligation he was under to appear on the stage, declared his great reluctance to do so, and asked his advice and counsel. Mr. Whitefield advised that as he had entered into an engagement with the company, which had been announced to the public, he should comply with it, perform his part, and afterwards leave the stage. He accord- ingly appeared at the appointed time, but his feelings were so painfully excited · that he utterly failed in the performance of his part. Relinquishing his connection with the company, he became destitute of the means of support. In this state of destitution, whilst he was strolling about the bay of Charles- ton, he attracted the observation of Mr. Hugh Bryan, who was just then leaving the city on his way home. Mr. Bryan remarking that Mr. Hutson was attired in the faded garb of a gentleman, and conjecturing that he was a stranger and in need, accosted him and inquired into his condition and cir- cumstances. Having ascertained that he was of respectable condition, in distress, without employment, and well educated, he proposed to Mr. Hutson to accompany him to his resi-
249
ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH.
1740-1750.]
dence, and to assume the office of tutor in his family. Mr. Hutson agreed to do so, and became an inmate of the family of Mr. Bryan.
How long Mr. Hutson continued in Mr. Bryan's family can- not be ascertained ; nor is it known when and where he pur- sued the study of theology ; but it appears that he com- menced to exercise the ministerial office in the year 1743, when he was about twenty-three years old, and continued to dis- charge its duties during eighteen years, until his death. "He first preached," says Ramsay, " as a licentiate at the orphan- house in Georgia, where his first sermon was delivered."- (MS. Letter of Henry W. Perroneau, Esq., Apr. 8, 1853.)
The record of the ordination of Mr. Hutson, which to the writer of the preceding extract was unknown, is found in the Book of the Stoney Creek Church, established in what was then called " The Indian Land," in the vicinity of Pocotaligo. We are indebted chiefly to the labors of Mr. Whitefield, under Christ, for the existence of this church. A call was extended to Mr. Hutson to become their pastor, which is signed by Hugh Bryan, Jonathan Bryan, Stephen Bull, Jr., William Gillbart, Robert Ogle, James Rowlain, and Jos. Bryan, bear- ing date May 20th, 1743.
The record proceeds to state that, " in obedience to this call Mr. William Hutson was ordained by the Rev. Mr. Josiah Smith and Mr. John Osgood, after a sermon preached by Mr. John Osgood from Hebrews the 13th chapter and 17th verse." On the 8th of June, 1743, " a day set apart by the church for fasting and prayer, to settle matters about and to organize the church," a solemn covenant and articles of faith, " which is the nerve and substance of the faith of the church," were adopted. The covenant was signed by William Hutson as pastor, by Hugh and Jonathan Bryan as deacons, and the same names as before, with the addition of William Kennady. The church is entitled " The Stoney Creek Independent Pres- byterian Church." The Confession of Faith is well drawn up, and clearly and consistently on the doctrinal basis of the Westminster Confession. It varies from it on the subject of the church as to the independence of particular churches, maintaining this independence, "and that no one church hath any priority or superintendency above or over another, and that every church ought to be organical; that an elder or elders, a deacon or deacons, ought to be elected in every con- gregation, according to those holy qualifications laid down in the word of God, and that the said elders and deacons so
1
250
ORANGEBURG.
[1740-1750.
chosen ought solemnly to be ordained with prayer and laying on the hand of the eldership. That such churches as have not officers so ordained are disorderly ; there being something yet wanting." It declares their belief that "a true church is not national or parochial." -- (MS. Confession, Art. 24.) The church at Stoney Creek seems to have been formed, as to gov- ernment, upon the scheme advocated by John Owen. These documents probably proceeded from the pen of Mr. Hutson ; and if so, though we differ in principle from the form of gov- ernment, they do him great credit as a man of ability and judgment.
CHAPTER II.
IN the same year 1743, the German and Swiss settlers of Orangeburg were interfered with in their religious worship by an attempt made by Rev. Bartholomew Zauberbuhler to oust their pastor, John Giessendanner. Mr. Zauberbuhler was himself a native of the canton of either St. Gall or Appenzel, one of the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, and was there- fore in his own country an adherent of the Helvetic Confession, setting forth the doctrines of the Reformation as proclaimed by Zuingle, Bullinger, and Calvin. He had been engaged in the settlement of a colony of Swiss Protestants in the newly- constituted township of New Windsor, opposite Augusta. He had resolved to seek Episcopal ordination, and had peti- tioned council that he might be sent to preach to the Ger- mans in Orangeburg and on the Santee, and that he might receive a competent salary till such time as he could be conse- crated by the Bishop of London, after which he proposed to visit Germany and to bring over others of his countrymen, " it being a great encouragement to them to know that they may have the gospel not only on their passage, but after their ar- rival." Council grants him £500 out of the township fund, provided he could obtain Commissary Garden's certificate of his qualifications for ordination. Armed now with a supposed authority from Governor Bull and Commissary Garden, he came into the pastoral charge of Giessendanner, and sought to expel him and occupy his place. A petition signed by about fourscore of the inhabitants of Orangeburg is spread out on the journals of the governor and council, detailing the facts,
251
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, CHARLESTON.
1740-1750.]
and praying for redress. Mr. Zauberbuhler was summoned by the governor, reprimanded for his interference, and curtailed of half the salary allowed him, unless he should bring over the foreign Protestants as he had stipulated. The petition is an interesting historic document, apologetic that their pastor is not rectus in ecclesia, according to the established religion of the province. It states that Mr. Giessendanner had been intro- duced in Charleston " to an Assembly of Presbytery, who, upon examination, furnished him with orders to preach;" that he hath done this in Dutch (German) constantly for the space of five years, to the inexpressible satisfaction of the congregation at Orangeburg ; that "two years ago, the petitioners being full sixty miles from any other place of worship, some of whom had not been favored with a sermon for seven years, observing said Mr. John Giessendanner to be a man of learning, piety, and knowledge in the Holy Scriptures, prevailed on him to offici- ate in English every fortnight, which he hath since performed very articulate and intelligible, to the entire satisfaction of the English petitioners, and always behaves himself with sobriety, honesty, and justice, encouraging virtue and reproving vice." -(MS. Records of Gov. and Council, March 6th, 1743, State Archives, Columbia.) This document reveals to us the exist- ence and action of the Presbytery in Charleston in 1738, and is of interest otherwise. Mr. Giessendanner continued his ministry some time longer, until, to meet the state of things in this new country, he went to London in 1749, received Episco- pal ordination, and returned in 1750 as a minister of the Episcopal church. His labors, both before and after this period, seem to have been assiduous, and his record of bap- tisms, marriages, and burials, yet preserved, shows that they extended over a wide tract in the central portion of South Carolina. It is one among numerous other proofs of the ab- sorbing nature of an ecclesiastical system established by law over a people the majority of whom are dissenters from it. Most of these settlers were probably Lutherans, but a portion must have been brought up under the Helvetic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, and in their own land professed the Reformed or Calvinistic faith.
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