George Mason, Peyton Randolph, Wythe, Edmund Pendleton, General Nelson, Richard Bland, Archibald Cary, Richard Henry Lee, and hundreds of others, who rendered signal service to America in time of need, were servants of Christ, in His Church, and were Parish Vestrymen.
As the Church at Jamestown ministered to the men who laid the foundations of American civilization, so Bruton Parish Church situated in Williamsburg, the Colonial Capitol, ministered to the men, who, through the State Constitution and Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence, passed by Congress, laid sure and strong the foundations of the free and independent government of the federal republic. The sons of the Church and heirs of her teaching, these patriots and warriors of Virginia came to this Church to find clearer vision and nobler courage, and to invoke upon their cause the blessing of their God and the God of their fathers. The state documents of this period reflect the glow of faith and the fervor of religious devotion which illumined the lives of these men who consecrated themselves to the cause which resulted, through their endeavor, in our heritage of civil liberty.
The Period of Greatest Trial and Greatest Triumph, 1782-1907
The struggle of the Church for her life after the Revolution was almost as tragic and desperate as the struggle of the colony of 1607 for existence, and in many respects the forces allied against the early Colonists were symbolical of those arrayed against the Church.
About no period of American Church History are there more gross and yet more generally accepted misconceptions. We are told and our children are told, that the Church was disestablished by those who were the champions of religious freedom, and that these champions of liberty were the de-
