I am happy in your approbation of my reasons for determining to retire from a station, in which the favor of my fellow citizens has so long continued and supported me: I return your kind prayers with supplications to the same almighty Being for your future welfare and that of our beloved country.
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE KETOCTON BAPTIST ASSOCIATION.
October 18, 1808.
I received with great pleasure the affectionate address of the Ketocton Baptist Association, and am sensible how much I am indebted to the kind dispositions which dictated it.
In our early struggles for liberty, religious freedom could not fail to become a primary object. All men felt the right, and a just animation to obtain it was excited in all. And although your favor selected me as the organ of your petition to abolish the religious denomination of a privileged church, yet I was but one of the many who befriended its object, and am entitled but in common with them to a portion of that approbation which follows the fulfilment of a duty.
The views you express of the conduct of the belligerent powers are as correct as they are afflicting to the lovers of justice and humanity. Those moral principles and conventional usages which have heretofore been the bond of civilized nations, which have so often preserved their peace by furnishing common rules for the measure of their rights, have now given way to force, the law of Barbarians, and the nineteenth century dawns with the Vandalism of the fifth. Nothing has been spared on our part to preserve the peace of our country, during this distempered state of the world. But the difficulties which involve it are now at their ultimate term, and what will be their issue, time alone will disclose. But be that what it may, a recollection of our former vassalage in religion and civil government will unite the zeal of every heart, and the energy of every hand, to preserve that independence in both, which, under the favor of heaven, a disinterested devotion to the public cause first achieved, and a disinterested sacrifice of private interests will now maintain.
I am happy in your approbation of my reasons for determining to retire from a station in which the favor of my fellow citizens has so long continued and supported me; and I return your kind prayers by supplications to the same Almighty being for your future welfare, and that of our beloved country.
TO THE GENERAL MEETING OF CORRESPONDENCE OF THE SIX BAPTIST ASSOCIATIONS REPRESENTED AT CHESTERFIELD, VIRGINIA.
November 21, 1808.
Thank you, fellow citizens, for your affectionate address, and I receive with satisfaction your approbation of my motives for retirement. In reviewing the history of the times through which we have past, no portion of it gives greater satisfaction, on reflection, than that which presents the efforts of the friends of religious freedom, and the success with which they were crowned. We have solved by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government, and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason, and the serious convictions of his own inquiries.