APPENDIX C
PETITION OF BAPTIST COMMITTEE ON GRIEVANCES TO THE GENERAL COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS

This petition was signed in behalf of the Committee by Samuel Stillman, Hezekiah Smith, and John Davis. One central point of their argument was that some of the civil laws of the Province were "ecclesiastical in their nature." They rightly and clearly discerned that here was an impermissible intermingling of functions of church and state which could cause nothing but trouble. They felt that functions of an ecclesiastical nature should be kept quite separate from functions of a civil nature.

Here is the text of their petition presented to the "General Court," the Council, and the Lieutenant Governor, regarding oppression because of their faith:

We are encouraged in this our address, from the consideration of the rights of mankind having been so well defined in the votes of this Honourable House, by which we are taught to think, "that no taxation can be equitable where such restraint is laid upon the taxed, as takes from him the liberty of giving his own money freely." This being true, permit us to ask—With what equity is our property taken from us, not only without our consent, but violently, contrary to our will, and for such purposes as we cannot, in faithfulness to that stewardship with which God hath entrusted us, favor? Permit us therefore to lay before this Honourable Court the grievances of which we complain and pray your friendly as well as legislative interposition….

These evils have arisen from some of the laws of this Province, which are ecclesiastical in their nature, and bear hard upon us, and we think deprive us of a Charter privilege, especially one law … in consequence of which … three hundred and ninety-eight acres of our lands have been sold to build, and remove, and repair when moved, a meeting house in which we have no part, though our money helped to build it, and to settle a minister whom we cannot hear ….

We beg your indulgence while we recite one thing more, which we deem hard; and that is, a proviso in the law by which no Baptist can avail himself even of that law in new settled towns, and we are thereby virtually prevented from settling in such new towns. We therefore pray the General Court to relieve us in the following instances, viz.:

1st. To repeal a law and restore to the Baptists the lands which have been taken from them to support the minister settled by law, and give them damages for the many and great injuries they have been made to suffer.

2dly. To enable our brethren in different parts of the Province to recover damages for the losses they have been made to sustain on a religious account.

3dly. To grant perpetual exemption to all Baptists and their Congregations from all ministerial rates whatsoever, according to the full intent and meaning of the Charter of the Province; that we all may enjoy full liberty of conscience as others His Majesty's subjects, in this Province.[1]

[1] Reubin A. Guild, Chaplain Smith and the Baptists (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1885), pp. 16148.