A History of American Christianity

by Leonard Woolsey Bacon

[143:1] S. G. Fisher, "The Making of Pennsylvania," p. 125; Thomas, "The Society of Friends," p. 235.

[143:2] "Religion gave birth to wealth, and was devoured by her own offspring." The aphorism is ascribed to Lord Falkland.

[143:3] Thomas, "The Society of Friends," p. 236.

[144:1] Fisher, "The Making of Pennsylvania," pp. 166-169, 174.

[144:2] It is not easy to define the peculiarity of Penn's Indian policy. It is vulgarly referred to as if it consisted in just dealing, especially in not taking their land except by fair purchase; and the "Shackamaxon Treaty," of which nothing is known except by vague report and tradition, is spoken of as some thing quite unprecedented in this respect. The fact is that this measure of virtue was common to the English colonists generally, and eminently to the New England colonists. A good example of the ordinary cant of historical writers on this subject is found in "The Making of Pennsylvania," p. 238. The writer says of the Connecticut Puritans: "They occupied the land by squatter sovereignty.... It seemed like a pleasant place; they wanted it. They were the saints, and the saints, as we all know, shall inherit the earth.... Having originally acquired their land simply by taking it, ... they naturally grew up with rather liberal views as to their right to any additional territory that pleased their fancy." No purchase by Penn was made with more scrupulous regard to the rights of the Indians than the purchases by which the settlers of Connecticut acquired title to their lands; but I know of no New England precedent for the somewhat Punic piece of sharp practice by which the metes and bounds of one of the Pennsylvania purchases were laid down.

The long exemption of Pennsylvania from trouble with the Indians seems to be due to the fact that an exceptionally mild, considerate, and conscientious body of settlers was confronted with a tribe of savages thoroughly subdued and cowed in recent conflicts with enemies both red and white. It seems clear, also, that the exceptional ferocity of the forty years of uninterrupted war with the Indians that ensued was due in part to the long dereliction by the Quaker government of its duty of protecting its citizens and punishing murder, robbery, and arson when committed by its copper-colored subjects.

[145:1] Penn's "Truth Exalted" (quoted in "Encyclopædia Britannica," vol. xviii., p. 493).

[147:1] In 1741, after a decade of great activity and growth, the entire clerical strength of the American Presbyterian Church, in its four presbyteries, was forty-seven ministers (Thompson, "Presbyterian Churches," p. 33).

[148:1] It is a subject of unceasing lament on the part of historians of the American Episcopal Church that the mother church, all through the colonial days, should have obstinately refused to the daughter the gift of the episcopate. There is no denying the grave disadvantages thus inflicted. But it admits of doubt whether such bishops, with such conditions, as would have been conceded by the English church of the eighteenth century, would, after all, have been so very precious a boon. We shrink from the imputation upon the colonial church of Maryland and Virginia which is implied in suggesting that it would have been considerably improved by gaining the disciplinary purity of the English church of the Georgian era. The long fight in Virginia, culminating in Patrick Henry's speech in the Parsons' Case, so far Americanized the Episcopal Church as to make sure that no unwelcome minister was ever to be forced from outside on one of its parishes. After the Revolution it became possible to set up the episcopate also on American principles. Those who are burdened with regret over the long delay of the American Protestant episcopate may find no small consolation in pondering the question, what kind of an outfit of bishops, with canons attached, might have been hoped for from Sir Robert Walpole or Lord Bute? On the whole, at this point the American Episcopal Church is in the habit of pitying itself too much. It has something to be thankful for.

[150:1] It is a curious exception, if it is indeed an exception, that the one Christian colony that shows no record of early Indian missions should be that of William Penn. Could this be due to the Quaker faith in the sufficiency of "the Light that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world"?