This Day in Presbyterian History

Attempts to found democracies, or rather, true lawful liberty, are doomed to failure unless they are built on a proper foundation.

What follows is another article discovered during a foray into an old dusty volume :

THE FOUNDATION OF TRUE LIBERTY.

Some time since an interesting Sabbath School celebration was held in a town in the interior of this State. On one of the banners borne in the procession, there was a beautiful tree, spreading its tall and stately branches in every direction, and beneath it was a volume, in which its roots were deeply fixed, and from which it derived all its nourishment and strength.—The tree was Liberty, that volume the Bible. The idea was not only beautiful, but true. The Bible is the great protector and guardian of the liberties of man. There never has been on earth true liberty, apart from the Scriptures and the principles of the Bible. This remark is fully sustained by the history of the world. Go to the plains of Babylon, and the entire history of that Empire, until its destruction by Cyrus, is a history of the most absolute despotism. Egypt and Persia were equally strangers to civil liberty. The same was true, with some slight modifications, of Greece and Rome. Facts spread on every page of the world’s history, point to the Bible as the only basis of the temple of freedom.

Where the Bible forms public opinion, a nation must be free. “Christianity,” says Montesquieu, “is a stranger to despotic power.” De Tocqueville, “it is the companion of liberty in all its battles and all its conflicts—the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its claims.” The Abbe de la Mennais, whom the late writer distinguishes as one of the most powerful minds in Europe, speaks eloquently of the Divine author of Christianity, “the great republican of his age.” Everywhere the men whose minds have been imbued with the light and spirit of the Bible, have been the devoted friends of civil liberty. Such were the Lollards in England, the adherents of Luther in Germany, and of Knox in Scotland. Such were the Huguenots of France, who fled their country, or sealed their testimony with their blood on the fatal revocation of the edict of Nantes. Such were the Puritans, who, with the courage of heroes and the zeal of martyrs, struggled for and obtained the charter of liberty which England now enjoys. Hume, with all his hostility to the Bible, says, “the precious spark of liberty had been kindled and was preserved by the Puritans alone, and it was to this sect the English owe the whole freedom of their Constitution.

Pass we to the period of the American revolution! Who were the signers of the Declaration of Independence? Who were the men, whose wisdom in council, and whose daring in the field, delivered us from foreign oppression, and made us a free and independent nation? Who was Washington? His character is settled beyond all dispute—his sentiments are known and recorded. The infidel can never refer to him for authority. The Atheist can never enroll him among those who believe the universe is without a Father and a God. His examples and his opinions are to travel down with the richest influence to future ages, and his purity of life in the cabinet and the camp, his reverence for the Bible and the institutions of religion, are to be spoken of with the profoundest regard by millions yet unborn.

Who was Patrick Henry, the man who struck the notes of freedom to which this nation responded, and were changed from subjects of a British king to independent freemen? He has not left his religious sentiments in doubt. In his will is found the following passage : “I have now disposed of all my property to my family—there is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the religion of the Bible. If they had that, and I had not given them one shilling, they would be rich; and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world, they would be poor.”

Who was Samuel Adams, one of the brightest stars in the constellation of great names, that adorned that era? “Adams,” says his biographer, “was a Christian. That last production of his pen was in defence of Christian truth, and he died in the faith of the gospel.”

And who was Roger Sherman? His biographer says, “few men had a higher reverence for the Bible; few men studied it with deeper attention, and a few were more intimately acquainted with its doctrines?” And who does not know that Livingston, and Stockton, and Witherspoon, and Benjamin Rush, bowed with profound reverence to the teaching of the Bible, and drew from its precepts their strongest incentives in their self-sacrificing labors? The Bible, then we say it without the fear of successful contradiction—the Bible, in its influence more than any thing else, has made us what we are—a free and independent nation. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupt public conscience, is incompatible with freedom.

[excerpted from The Evangelical Guardian, 4.10 (February 1847): 442-443.]

A Man of Genius and Eloquence

The minister showed up at the door of his new congregation in Philadelphia, only to find the door locked, obviously by some dissenters who did not like the fact that the majority of the congregation had called this new preacher.  The dissenters were primarily opposed to his stance on the New Side – Old Side schism, then in full swing in the infant Presbyterian denomination.  He stood solidly on the New Side.  Eventually, some of his supporters threw him into the sanctuary through an open window.  What a beginning to a ministry!  But it was in this way that the Rev. George Duffield began his long pastorate at the Pine Street Presbyterian Church, where he was to remain there until his death on February 2, 1790.

George Duffield was educated first at Newark Academy in Delaware.  He followed that  with training at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), graduating in 1752.  A personal study in theology, under Dr. Robert Smith, of Pequea, Pennsylvania, came next in his years of ministerial preparation.  Ordination to ministry in the Presbyterian Church enabled him to serve three churches in central Pennsylvania, namely, Carlisle, Newville, and Dillsburg.  After the last congregation he was called in 1771 to the Pine Street Presbyterian church in Philadelphia.  It was to be his greatest work.

The national issues of independence from England were on the horizon.  George Duffield set his ministry in support of liberty from tyranny.  So vocal was he that eventually the church became known as “The Church of the Patriots.”  When the first chaplain to the newly formed Continental Congress went over to the British side, the Congress named two chaplains to replace him.  One was an Anglican pastor, and the other George Duffield.  He would serve alongside the Anglican pastor as well as serving as chaplain of a Pennsylvania regiment in the war for Independence.

Such attachment to Revolutionary ideals would not go unnoticed by the British occupational forces in Philadelphia.   They placed a price on his head, thereby putting him in great danger.   The Pine Street Presbyterian building  was turned into a hospital, with the pews being burned for warmth of the British wounded inside of it.  Then it was made into a stable for their animals.  The greatest insult of all came when one hundred deceased Hessian (German mercenaries serving the British army) soldiers were buried in the church cemetery of Pine Street Presbyterian.

During the war, Duffield counseled and comforted founding father George Washington with Scriptural truth.  After the war, Duffield returned to Pine Street Presbyterian to rebuild and continue his ministry.  John Adams, after hearing him one Sunday, told his wife that Duffield was “a man of genius and eloquence.”

He was married first to Elizabeth Blair, who died in 1757.  Two years later, he married Margaret Armstrong.  Among his descendants were two others named George Duffield, each of whom continued serving both Church and nation as Presbyterian clergy.  George Duffield died in Philadelphia.

Words to Live By:  Taking a stand for God and country has its own perils.  But if the cause is right and biblical, then it is worth the cost.  Our times are in His hands.

WCF 4:2
“After God had made all other creatures, He created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after His own image, having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfill it: and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject to change.  Besides this law written in their hearts, they received a command, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which while they kept it, they were  happy in their communion with God, and had dominion over the creatures.”

For further reading:
Duffield’s works are few and none are freely accessible on the Internet at this time.
Here is a chronological bibliography of Duffield’s published and unpublished works—

1775-1780
George Duffield sermons, 1775-1780, Archival Material .21 linear foot (1 volume). George Duffield was pastor of the Old Pine Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and served as chaplain to the Continental Congress and the Pennsylvania Militia. These seven sermons are dated “at P[ine] St.” June 18, 1775; July 30, 1775; and May 5, 1776; “at York” April 5, 1778; and at “P[ine] St.” July 18, 1779; March 30, 1780, and undated. [Preserved at the New York Public Library Research Library]

1776-1783
George Duffield sermons, 1776-1783, Archival Material, 5 items.  Holograph (i.e., handwritten) manuscript sermons, including a sermon fragment dated [1776?], a sermon on Isaiah 9:12, 13 dated 1777 Aug 10, a sermon on Jeremiah 4:14 dated 1779 May 6, and two manuscript copies of Duffield’s “Sermon on the Occassion of the Peace,” [1783], one in his hand, the other in an unidentified hand. Accompanied by a memorandum in Duffield’s hand dated 1777 Sep 7, concerning a cloud formation, and an ALS from George Duffield (1818-1888) to Noah Porter dated 1876 May 29, with which he donated the manuscripts to Yale. [Preserved at the Yale University Library]

1784
A sermon preached in the Third Presbyterian Church in the city of Philadelphia, on Thursday December 11, 1783. The day appointed by the United States in Congress assembled, to be observed as a day of thanksgiving, for the restoration of peace, and establishment of our independence, in the enjoyment of our rights and privileges. By George Duffield, A.M. Pastor of said church, and one of the chaplains of Congress. [Five lines of Scripture quotations]. [Boston] : Philadelphia printed : Boston : Re-printed and sold by T. & J. Fleet, 1784. (26, [2] p.)

1787
A sermon, preached at the ordination of the Revd. Ashbald Green, in the Second Presbyterian Church in the city of Philadelphia. Philadelphia : Printed by F. Bailey, at Yorick’s Head, Market Street., 1787. (53, [1] p.)  Note(s): Ewing’s sermon has separate title page (p. 3): Fidelity in the gospel ministry. A sermon, preached at the ordination of the Revd. Ashbald Green in Philadelphia, May 15, 1787. By John Ewing, D.D. … And the charge, delivered by the Revd. Dr. Duffield.

Secondary sources—
Coblentz, David Herr, “George Duffield (1732-1790), Pulpit Patriot,” Manuscripts 14.4 (Fall 1962): 26-32.

Mackie, Alexander, “George Duffield, Revolutionary Patriot,” Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society 33.1 (March 1955): 3-22.

Swaim, William T., “The Tempestuous Life of the Rev. George Duffield, D.D., 1732-1790 : A Biographical Address. Carlisle, PA: The Hamilton Historical Library Association, 16 December 1948. Revised for the 210th anniversary of the Monaghan Presbyterian Church. Dillsburg, PA: s.n., 1955. 15 p.; 28 cm.

An uncovered jewel, something I came across while working on an unrelated project. This short article reminds me that the works of the Rev. John Witherspoon really do need to be dusted off and brought to greater public attention. Sprinkle Publications did recently reprint Witherspoon’s Works, but I think those volumes haven’t gathered too much attention. We’re the poorer for that neglect. Small sins lead to bigger sins . . .

THE DOWNWARD COURSE OF SIN.

1. Men enter and initiate themselves in a vicious practice by smaller sins. Heinous sins are too alarming for the conscience of a young sinner; and therefore he only ventures upon such as are smaller, at first. Every particular kind of vice creeps in this gradual manner.

2. Having once begun in the ways of sin, he ventures upon something greater and more daring. His courage grows with his experience. Now, sins of a deeper die do not look so frightful as before. Custom makes everything familiar. No person who once breaks over the limits of a clear conscience knows where he shall stop.

3. Open sins soon throw a man into the hands of ungodly companions. Open sins determine his character, and give him a place with the ungodly. He shuns the society of good men, because their presence is a restraint, and their example a reproof to him. There are none with whom he can associate but the ungodly.

4. In the next stage, the sinner begins to feel the force of habit and inveterate custom; he becomes rooted and settled in an evil way.—Those who have been long habituated to any sin, how hopeless is their reform! One single act of sin seems nothing; but one after another imperceptibly strengthens the disposition, and enslaves the unhappy criminal beyond the hope of recovery.

5. The next stage in a sinner’s course is to lose the sense of shame, and sin boldly and openly. So long as shame remains, it is a great drawback. But it is an evidence of an uncommon height of impiety, when natural shame is gone.

6. Another stage in the sinner’s progress is to harden himself so far as to sin without remorse of conscience. The frequent repetition of sins stupefies the conscience. They, as it were, weary it out, and drive it to despair. It ceases all its reproofs, and, like a frequently discouraged friend, suffers the infatuated sinner to take his course. And hence,

7. Hardened sinners often come to boast and glory in their wickedness. It is something to be beyond shame; but it is still more to glory in wickedness, and esteem it honorable. Glorious ambition indeed!

8. Not content with being wicked themselves, they use all their arts and influence to make others wicked also. They are zealous in sinning, and industrious in the promotion of the infernal cause.—They extinguish the fear of God in others, and laugh down their own conscientious scruples. And now,

9. To close the scene, those who have thus far hardened themselves, are given up by God to judicial blindness of mind and hardness of heart. They are marked out as vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. This is the consequence of their obstinacy. They are devoted to the judgment they deserve.

Reader! view it with terror. — Dr. Witherspoon.

[excerpted from The Evangelical Guardian, 4.10 (February 1847): 461-462.]

Words to Live By:
By contrast, study to keep your hearts tender before the Lord, always ready and quick to repent at the slightest disobedience. Humble yourselves before His throne; draw near to Him; seek the Lord with your whole heart.