THE FALL OF THE ESTABLISHMENT.

As the days of the Revolution drew nearer, the Established Church grew relatively weaker. The struggle against the increasing number and power of the Dissenters was continued, but the State support on which its clergymen depended often failed them. This fact will explain and mollify many of their harsh criticisms of the colonists; but the support failed through no fault of the colonial Churchmen. They did what they could; the spirit of the age was against them.

With the end of the seventh decade ecclesiastical legislation ceased. The Vestry Act of 1768 is the last law in North Carolina seeking to perpetuate an endowed Church at the expense of other denominations. From 1770 the entries in the records in regard to Church affairs become fewer; as times became more troublesome the mouths of the missionaries, who were mostly Tories, were gradually stopped. The Vestry Act of 1768 expired ’by limitation in 1773, and the law amending and further continuing it, passed in 1774, related solely to the poor.¹ The Establishment was dead.

But the Establishment threatened for the time to make a breach in the ranks of the patriots. “Distinctions and animosities,” writes Governor Martin in 1774, “have immemorially prevailed in this country between the people of the Established Church and the Presbyterians on the score of the difference of their unessential modes of church government and the same spirit of division has entered into, or

been transferred, to most other concernments; at present there is no less apparent schism between their politics than in matters appertaining to religion, and while loyalty, moderation and respect to government seem to distinguish the generality of the members of the Church of England, I am sincerely sorry to find they are by no means the characters of the Presbyterians at large.” “If my opinion is right,” he adds, “I submit to your lordship’s wisdom the expediency of giving greater encouragement to the Establishment of the Church of England in a political view with respect to religion.”¹

This recommendation of Governor Martin was the dying wail of the Establishment. But it was uttered in vain. The great majority of the Churchmen remained faithful to the cause of the colonies, and the Establishment simply disappears from the history of North Carolina. A majority of its ministers remained faithful to the home government and were deprived of their cures. They returned to England, and the Episcopal Church received a set-back from which it did not recover for a generation. Others threw in their lot with the colonists and became useful citizens of the infant State.² The correspondence of the S. P. G. disappears. Its work, whether good or bad, had been done, and it passed from politics into history. The Dissenters had kept up a manly fight; for three-quarters of a century they had struggled for the rights of man. The struggle was now rising to its flood, and on the crest of the receding waves of royalty went the Establishment with all it means.

Dissatisfaction seems to have reached, if possible, a higher height in Mecklenburg than elsewhere. These people were

mostly Scotch-Irish and had been Dissenters for generations before coming to America. This county, which was to become soon the “Hornet’s Nest” of the Revolution, instructed its delegates in September, 1775, to oppose in the Congress that was to meet in Halifax in April, 1776, “any particular church or set of clergymen being invested with power to decree rites and ceremonies and to decide in controversies of faith to be submitted to under the influence of penal laws.” They were to oppose also “the establishment of any mode of worship to be supported to the opposition of the rights of conscience.”¹

But this convention was busy making preparation for war, and did nothing. The instructions to the delegates to the Halifax Convention of November, 1776, are still more clear-cut and positive in their position. They are in the handwriting of Waightstill Avery, a representative of the best Puritan blood of New England. Sections twenty and twenty-one of these instructions sum up the cause for which the Dissenters had carried on their long war:

“That in all times hereafter no professing Christian of any denomination whatever shall be compelled to pay any tax or duty towards the support of the clergy or worship of any other denomination.

“That all professing Christians shall enjoy the free and undisturbed exercise of religion, and may worship God according to their consciences without restraint except idolatrous worshipers.”

After the adoption of the constitution and form of government, the delegates were instructed to “endeavor to have

all vestry laws and marriage acts heretofore in force totally and forever abolished.”¹

These instructions had immediate effect. A clause was inserted in the Declaration of Rights recognizing “the natural and unalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences.” But this was not all. They inserted a section in their constitution:

“XXXIV. That there shall be no Establishment of any one religious Church or Denomination in this State in Preference to any other, neither shall any person, on any pretence whatsoever, be compelled to attend any place of worship contrary to his own Faith or judgment, or be obliged to pay for the purchase of any Glebe, or the building of any House of Worship, or for the maintenance of any Minister or Ministry, contrary to what he believes right, or has voluntarily and personally engaged to perform, but all persons shall be at Liberty to exercise their own mode of Worship. Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to exempt Preachers of treasonable and seditious Discourses, from legal trial and Punishment.”²

The divorce of Church and State was complete.