Dr. King, sometime before, had prepared an "Exposition of an Apostolical Church," founded entirely on the Word of God, which was printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was extensively distributed, and was denounced by the Greek hierarchy in Constantinople, Smyrna, and Thessalonica. In September, the Council of Judges in the criminal court of Athens, a sort of grand jury, presented him for trial in that court upon the allegations, that for two years he had "preached within his house in this place publicly, in the exposition of the sacred Scriptures, that baptism is no other than a simple symbol, and consequently it is indifferent whether men are sprinkled or immersed; that those who eat a little bread, and drink a little wine, are foolish in thinking that they will be saved by this communion; that the most holy mother of God is not ever virgin; that those who worship her, as also the other divine images, are idolaters; that he does not accept the sacred Councils, and the things ordained by them in religion, and handed down by tradition to the orthodox Christians in later times; that the fathers and the saints of the orthodox Oriental Church of Christ were deceivers, and as a consequence of this, they brought in divers heresies; that holy baptism is no other than an external sign for Christians;" etc.
There were successive appeals, as in the former case, up to the Areopagus; but with similar results, except that the highest court decided that the penal law did not apply to one half of the allegations. It was hoped that the matter would end here, but a trial was ordered for the 5th of March, 1852.
Great pains were taken, by the evil-disposed, to excite a tumult when Dr. King was brought before the court; and the head of police, while giving assurance of protection, advised him to go to the court-house in a carriage. This he declined. After a prayer with his family, he took his little son by the hand, and, in company with an American friend, walked first to the house of Mr. Pellicas, one of his lawyers. There he was told, that the King's attorney, in view of the excitement among the people, desired him to wait till he could enter the court with some hope of safety. But Dr. King did not wish a postponement on account of the excitement, of which there would always be more or less, and so they set out again on foot for the court-room. It was with difficulty they pressed through the crowd, in which the peculiar hats of many priests were to be seen on all sides. Our missionary declares, that he felt very happy, though not indifferent to his position, in the full belief, that the result would be good.
The charge of reviling the dogmas of the Eastern Church, which was now their only dependence, was not proved. So the King's attorney had recourse to the "Exposition of an Apostolical Church," printed in the United States, to the "Defense," printed in 1845, and to the "Farewell Letter," printed twenty-seven years before, which formed no part of the indictments, on the assumption that he must have preached the sentiments they contained. But even so, his preaching would be no more a reviling of the dogmas of the Greek Church, than any other exposition of the doctrines held by the millions of Protestants in Europe and America. His lawyers made an able defense, though embarrassed by the evident bias of the President of the court. After a trial of six hours, Dr. King was adjudged to be guilty, and was condemned to fifteen days' imprisonment, to pay the costs of court, and then to be banished from the Kingdom of Greece.
The court-house was soon cleared by the soldiers, but such a crowd awaited Dr. King without, that the military officer in charge proposed to call a carriage, and the King's attorney consented to his returning to his own house for the night, rather than going immediately to prison. He went out through a back door, and the officer ordered two or three soldiers to mount the carriage before and behind. Just as they entered the carriage, a rush was made by the crowd, but the soldiers drove them back with their bayonets.
He had been arraigned for violating the seventeenth and eighteenth articles of the Penal Code; yet the attorney failed to prove the "reviling," contemplated in the seventeenth article, and the Areopagus had decided that the eighteenth did not apply to the case. So that Dr. King was adjudged to be deserving of imprisonment and banishment, simply for preaching the Gospel in his own house, as held by all evangelical Christians. Yet the government claimed to be tolerant of all religions.
On the 9th of March, Dr. King entered the prison of Athens, where were one hundred and twenty-five prisoners, occupying eleven small rooms, eight of which were ten or eleven feet square, with from eight to twelve prisoners in each, the other three being larger.
"My heart is not sorrowful," he writes on the same day, "but full of joy. I consider this as one of the brightest days of my life. With my whole heart I thank the Lord Jesus Christ, that I am counted worthy to suffer shame for his name, and for the truths which he has taught. The morning before I came to the prison, I read with great interest, yea, I may say with tears of joy, Hebrews xi., xii., and xiii.; and I felt constrained to render to the Most High ascriptions of praise for mercies, rather than to seek freedom from trials. My principal petition to God, during all these days of excitement and triumph of the enemy, has been, that the name of the Lord may be glorified in me, and that the cause of truth may finally prevail."
On the 10th, having appealed to the Areopagus, he was removed to the police office, where he was treated kindly, and his friends had liberty to call upon him freely. Three days later, becoming ill of a fever, he was removed to his own house, where he remained, under a guard provided for the purpose, till the decision of the Areopagus was announced on the 25th. The sentence of the Criminal Court was confirmed.
By the more intelligent in the community, whether native or foreign, and by several of the ablest journals, the proceedings of the court were strongly condemned. Twelve Greek lawyers, several of whom had held the highest offices in Greece and were among the most distinguished of their profession, signed their names to a letter, declaring their entire dissent from its proceedings.1