Page:American History Told by Contemporaries, v2.djvu/133

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No. 37]
"The Parson's Cause"
105

too, was granted. This, sir, as well as I can remember, is a just and impartial narrative of the most material occurrences in the trial of that cause. One occurrence more, tho not essential to the cause, I can't help mentioning, as a striking instance of the loyalty, impartiality and attachment of the Bench to the Church of England in particular, and to religion at large. Mr. Henry, mentioned above (who had been called in by the Defendants, as we suspected, to do what I some time ago told you of), after Mr. Lyons had opened the cause, rose and harangued the jury for near an hour. This harangue turned upon points as much out of his own depth, and that of the jury, as they were foreign from the purpose; which it would be impertinent to mention here. However, after he had discussed those points, he labored to prove "that the act of 1758 had every characteristic of a good law; that it was a law of general utility, and could not, consistently with what he called the original compact between King and people, stipulating protection on the one hand and obedience on the other be annulled." Hence, he inferred, "that a King, by disallowing Acts of this salutary nature, from being the father of his people, degenerated into a Tyrant, and forfeits all right to his subjects obedience." He further urged, "that the only use of an Established Church and Clergy in society, is to enforce obedience to civil sanctions, and the observance of those which are called duties of imperfect obligation; that, when a Clergy ceases to answer these ends, the community have no further need of their ministry, and may justly strip them of their appointments; that the Clergy of Virginia, in this particular instance of their refusing to acquiesce in the law in question, had been so far from answering, that they had most notoriously counteracted, those great ends of their institution; that, therefore, instead of useful members of the state, they ought to be considered as enemies of the community; and that, in the case now before them, Mr. Maury, instead of countenance, and protection and damages, very justly deserved to be punished with signal severity." And then he perorates to the following purpose, "that excepting they (the jury) were disposed to rivet the chains of bondage on their own necks, he hoped they would not let slip the opportunity which now offered, of making such an example of him as might, hereafter, be a warning to himself and his brethren, not to have the temerity, for the future, to dispute the validity of such laws, authenticated by the only authority, which, in his conception, could give force to laws for the government of this Colony, the authority of a legal representative of a Council, and of a kind and