Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – Patrick Henry & Defense of Three Baptist Pastors – Part ONE

Thomas E Kresal January 13, 2020

Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – Part ONE Patrick Henry & Defense of Three Baptist Pastors

June 4, 1768 , John Walker, Lewis Craig, James Childs, and others were dragged before the magistrates in Spottsylvania county, and bound over for trial. Three days after, they were indicted as ‘disturbers of the peace.’ The prosecuting attorney made this formidable charge; “ May it please your worships, these men are great disturbers of the peace; they can not meet a man in the road but they must ram a text of Scripture down his throat.’ “

It was these persecutions against the Baptists of Virginia which aroused the sympathies of the renowned Patrick Henry, and caused him to volunteer his services in the defense of the poor ministers who were dragged before the court as criminals “for preaching the Gospel of the Son of- God.”

The resistless eloquence of Mr. Henry, poured forth in the defense of three Baptist ministers, will ever be remembered by the friends of American liberty. From the first settlement of the Baptists in America down to the achievement of American independence, they were “insulted, fined, imprisoned, and despised.” Nor was it until compelled by law, that the enemies of the Baptists ceased to lay violent hands on them on account of their principles. “We are glad to know that there are numbers of pious persons in the various communions who did not then, nor would they now, indorse these persecuting measures against the Baptists.

(to be continued)

Thomas E. Kresal from: Baptist Succession by D.B. Ray, pg. 347