In the summer of the ensuing year he issued a proclamation against the Moravians, New Lights, and Methodists, prohibiting their meetings under severe penalties. There would seem to be some inconsistency in bringing such harsh and sweeping charges against those ministers whom he had recently received so courteously, and had permitted to preach. Perhaps when he at first reckoned the visits of these missionaries transient, and their influence inconsiderable, he was willing to indulge his courtesy and obliging disposition toward them; but when dissent was found spreading with such unexpected rapidity, Gooch, together with the clergy and other friends of the establishment, became alarmed, and had recourse to measures of intolerance, which they would rather have avoided. Besides this, the address of the Synod of Philadelphia could not but confirm the unfavorable opinion at first formed of the missionaries.
FOOTNOTES:
[434:A] Bishop Meade's Old Churches, etc., i. 456.
[435:A] Old Churches, i. 154, 165; Evang. and Lit. Mag., ii. 341.
[438:A] Letter from Bolivar Christian, Esq., of Staunton, referring to the records of Augusta.
[439:A] Milton's Prose Works, i. 423.
[439:B] Memoir of Samuel Davies, in Evang. and Lit. Mag., (edited by Rev. Dr. John H. Rice,) ii. 113, 186, 201, 330, 353, 474. "Origin of Presbyterianism," ib., 346. "Sketch of Hist. of the Church in Va." (by Rev. Moses Hoge, President of Hampden Sidney College,) appended to J. W. Campbell's Hist. of Va., 290; Hawks, chap. 6: Burk, iii. 119: Hodge's Hist. of Presbyterian Church, part ii. 42, 284; Foote's Sketches of Va., 119.
[441:A] Evang. and Lit. Mag., ii. 351.