QUERY XVII.
THE DIFFERENT RELIGIONS RECEIVED INTO THAT STATE?
The first settlers in this country were emigrants from
England, of the English Church, just at a point of time when it
was flushed with complete victory over the religious of all
other persuasions. Possessed as they became of the powers
of making, administering, and executing the laws, they shewed
equal intolerance in this country with their Presbyterian
brethren, who had emigrated to the Northern Government.
The poor Quakers were flying from persecution in England.
They cast their eyes on these new countries as asylums of
civil and religious freedom; but they found them free only
for the reigning sect. Several acts of the Virginia Assembly
of 1659, 1662, and 1693, had made it penal in parents to
refuse to have their children baptized; had prohibited the
unlawful assembling of Quakers; had made it penal for any
master of a vessel to bring a Quaker into the State; had
ordered those already here, and such as should come thereafter,
to be imprisoned till they should abjure the country; provided
a milder punishment for their first and second return, but
death for their third; had inhibited all persons from suffering
their meetings in or near their houses, entertaining them
individually, or disposing of books which supported their tenets.
If no capital execution took place here, as did in New
England, it was not owing to the moderation of the church, or
spirit of the Legislature, as may be inferred from the law
itself; but to historial circumstances which have not been
handed down to us. The Anglicans retained full possession of
the country about a century. Other opinions began then to
creep in, and the great care of the government to support
their own church, having begotten an equal degree of indo-
