Toleration entitles them to it, then we humbly conceive that the pushing the matter to a determination could be attended with no ill consequences; as we only pressed for an explication of the Act of Toleration, with reference to Virginia, according to its true intent and meaning in England, whether the determination of such a point belongs to the lawyers, to judges, or to his majesty and council, you, sir, can determine: though an authoritative order from the latter would be most regarded by our rulers; and all the order we desire is this, that wherever ten or fifteen families of Protestant dissenters, who cannot attend at the meeting-house already licensed, apply for licenses at the General Court, they shall be granted them. It has been confidently affirmed to me by some of the Council that the dissenters in England have no such privilege. In this, sir, I request your information; for if this be the case we must resign our claim.

"I send you inclosed a copy of a certificate given to the clerk of the General Court last April, to be presented to the Court. He showed it to the Governor and some of the Council, in my presence, before they sat in court, and their answer was-That it would be in vain to present it in court, for they would grant no more licenses till they had received answer from England, whither they had written for instructions.' Another certificate was presented to a county court, and rejected, and a third would have been presented to the General Court had I not discouraged the persons concerned, by informing them it would be in The certificate is drawn up in the form prescribed by Dr. Doddridge in his letter to me; and it was his judgment that in case it should be refused, we should have just ground of complaint in the courts of England. I therefore send you a copy of it, that you may make what use of it you think expedient. The persons concerned in all these certificates live thirteen, twenty, thirty, forty miles from the nearest of the places already licensed, and therefore unless they can obtain places licensed contiguous to them, they will be generally deprived of public worship altogether.

vain.

"I also send you a narrative of the state of religion among the dissenters here in Virginia, printed in Boston; and if it engage your fervent prayers, intermingled with thanksgivings for us, my end is obtained. I also present you with a collection of poems, which, though beneath your notice in all other respects, will, I hope, be acceptable as a token of impotent gratitude.

"I have had some thoughts of laying our affairs before the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and soliciting their interest in our behalf. My motives are partly that their concurrence may enforce your attempts in our favour; and especially to convince the world that I am a Presbyterian

minister, which some here have pretended to scruple; and I can think of no better expedient for this end than to prevail on the General Assembly to espouse my cause. But in this, and in all other affairs of the like nature, I am wholly at your direction and control; and as I shall request my friends in Scotland to act in concert with you, it will be still in your power to follow your own judgment.

"Though I apply to you as a petitioner for a favour, yet, when I assure you that I affectionately love you, and remember you when I bow my knees to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, you will not, I hope, suspect it as an artifice to bribe your friendship. Though my warmest gratitude is due for your generous and pious zeal for the interests of dissenters, yet I have a disinterested esteem for you on account of your personal worth, which universal fame has not permitted me to be unacquainted with. I request your prayers, dear sir, for me, that I may be faithful and successful in that part of the Lord's vineyard which his providence has assigned me; and for my people, that their light may so shine before men, &c.

"The news of Dr. Doddridge's death gave an incurable wound to my spirit; and Zion through all her divisions has felt the blow. I should be glad to know what posthumous writings of his are put to the press, and particularly, whether he lived to finish his Family Expositor, which is very acceptable in Virginia, and of great service already to sundry families.

"I expect, dear sir, you will write to me as frequently as you can, for my mind is uneasy till the matter be determined; till then, I hope, I shall exercise that patience, and show that quiet submission, which you in the name of the committee have so kindly recommended to me. I request you to return my most grateful acknowledgments to them, and assure yourself that I am, reverend and worthy sir, your obliged and most humble servant,

"Hanover, May 21st, 1752.

66

SAMUEL DAVIES.

I write in a hurry, and therefore you will exercise your candour, sir, towards my blunders and inaccuracies."

Letter from Dr. Avery to Mr. Davies.

"REV. AND DEAR SIR-Yours of the 21st of May came safe though directed in a way which for many years I have not been used to; having not preached these thirty years past. Mr. Mauduit received yours of an earlier date designed for the Bishop of London, which he communicated to me, and we agreed that it was by no means advisable to send it to his lordship. I shall not enter into any debate with you concerning the scheme proposed for erecting a Bishoprick in North

America. The less is said on that head, either on your or on our side of the water, I believe the better. But one thing in yours addressed to his lordship greatly surprised me. You represent your friends in North America, particularly in New York, Virginia and Massachusetts, as far as your correspondence reaches, if not as desiring, yet as very willing to acquiesce, in having such an ecclesiastical superior officer sent over to America with power to ordain, confirm, &c. Now all my accounts from Connecticut, the Jerseys, and the Massachusetts, directly and strongly contradict this. They uniformly speak of it as a measure quite inconsistent with their peace and tranquillity. From both the ministry and laity in all those colonies, I have received thanks for my having done the little I did do, or indeed could do to prevent such an appointment taking place; and I have had the most importunate, repeated solicitations to prevent so sore a calamity as that seemed likely to prove to the colonies. These I have had from many quarters; and some of them expressed in strong and irritating terms. Yours to his lordship is the first letter I have seen from those parts expressing a desire, or so much as an indifference and coolness on that head.

"This must be my excuse for not forwarding your letter to his lordship, though on several other accounts on which I cannot enlarge, I should not have thought it proper to be put into his hands; some relating to himself, and some to yourself; but I will add one that would have been an objection to me had I approved of every sentiment in the letter; I well knew the length would have caused his lordship to have treated your letter with a contempt and disregard it did not deserve. For in cases which these great men, whether in church or state, have most at heart, I have repeatedly seen that they cannot bear long and minute representations.

"The next subject of your letter is an inquiry, whether you are not entitled according to the Act of Toleration to license as many meeting-houses as you see fit. Now if the Act of

Toleration be, in so many words, adopted, or wrought into your constitution and made a proper law of your colony, and is to be interpreted as the Act of Toleration is understood here, nothing can be more plain than that you may certify, record, or register as many houses for religious worship, as the dissenters in the colony think they want, or choose to have. If I was disposed to certify or register twenty houses in the parish in which I live as designed for religious worship, and demand it in the same form in which you tell me you have done, on paying sixpence either at the Quarter Sessions or in the Session . Court, the officers of those courts would not dare refuse it; if they did, we know where to apply .

bench would immediately grant a mandamus, and oblige the clerk of the peace, or the proper officer in the Ecclesiastical Court to do as we desired. Where you are to apply for redress according to the laws of your colony, we cannot say. Perhaps you have no Justices of the Peace or General Quarter Sessions, but every thing is adjudged among you by your Governor and Council. From them indeed you have an appeal to the King and Council; but redress this way cannot readily and speedily be procured. Such appeals must be attended with very great expense.

"Though I well knew the Attorney General's and other eminent lawyers' opinion on this question before, I have taken Sir D. Ryder's opinion on this head for your use, and herewith send it over to you, hoping that when his excellency your worthy Governor and the Council shall see, peruse, and consider it, they will no longer refuse your friends' request.

"When you certify places as designed for religious worship, you are not obliged to say who is to officiate in that place, your unnecessarily saying that has furnished the gentlemen who refuse and oppose you, with an handle. But the design of this proviso was not either to prevent the multiplying our places for worship, or to oblige us to ascertain and specify the persons who are intended to officiate in those places. In the proviso there is not a word relating to the qualifications, much less to the names of the persons to be employed therein. There are indeed other clauses of that Act relating to the qualifications of ministers [a couple of lines wanting] mentioned in the Act.

"I cannot advise you to have any recourse to the General Assembly of Scotland. I do not see how an application to them will or can stand you in any stead.

"I thank you for the historical account you sent me of the state of religion in the colony, and for the ingenious poems which accompanied your obliging letter. I have perused both the one and the other with pleasure, and my most fervent prayers shall not be wanting that the cause of religion, virtue, truth, liberty, and the most extensive charity may daily gain ground in Virginia and all your neighbouring colonies.

"Dr. Doddridge's death is a great wound to the dissenting interest, and indeed to the interest of religion. Our consolation must be, that the Lord reigns, who can carry on and perfect his work even without instruments, or by the means of such who seem to be much less fitted and qualified for such service than those which He has thought fit to remove.

May your health be confirmed and re-established, your valuable life prolonged, your usefulness be long continued and daily increasing, and your faithful endeavours to serve God and promote the welfare of your fellow creatures with respect to

their most important interests, be attended with the most desirable success. In which wishes the gentlemen of the com

mittee concur.

"With, Rev'd and dear Sir,

"Your sincere friend

and humble servant,

"BENJ. AVERY."

"P. S. You may be pleased when you show the Attorney General's opinion to his Excellency to let him know that you received it from me whom I flatter myself he will recollect, as he has seen me often both in London and at Bath; and pray present him with my most respectful compliments."

The opinion of Sir Dudley Rider is not to be found: but its meaning is not to be mistaken. It evidently decided two things, that by the English interpretation of the Act of Toleration the dissenters might ask for the licensure of as many houses as they thought necessary without fear of refusal,—and that this interpretation properly extended to Virginia. We see from the letter of the bishop of London, that his lordship entertained a different opinion. The Governor and Council of Virginia claimed the right, as supreme executive and judiciary of the colony, to determine the number of houses of religious worship to be allowed dissenters, and also their location. From this decision of the Governor and Council there was no redress but by an appeal to the King and Council, which was both troublesome and expensive. Here the matter rested till Mr. Davies visited England. After his return from England he received two letters from the committee of the dissenters, which will be given in their chronological order. They show the interest taken in the cause of the dissenters in Virginia, by the dissenters in England; and that all hope of redress from civil authority lay in an appeal to the King.

Amid all his labours, in seven preaching places, besides his journies to attend upon the judicatories of the church, Mr. Davies found time and strength and disposition to make frequent missionary excursions to the sections of country now included in the counties of Cumberland, Powhatan, Prince Edward, Charlotte, Campbell, Nottoway and Amelia. One of his excursions is referred to in the following account by Rev'd Archibald Alexander, D. D., of Princeton, who from his residence of many years in Prince Edward and Charlotte during the latter part of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, had full opportunity of becoming acquainted with the early history of the congregations. It is taken from a brief memoir of Major James Morton, which appeared in the Watchman and Observer for February 18th,