- ials bears. In superficial history and benighted fiction the
custom has been to speak of the clergy of Colonial Virginia with ridicule and scorn. This has been done so largely and for so long that the vast majority of people, even in the Church, have come to believe that the term "Colonial minister," is almost a synonym for all that was low and degraded in men. It is undoubtedly true that Virginia afforded a place of refuge to a number of ministers who left England because they could not well remain there, but these men who have been seized upon, advertised, exploited and held up to the public gaze and the public scorn were not types but exceptions. In St. John's Church, Hampton, a window has been placed memorial to the Colonial clergy of that Parish. Upon examining the records extending over 175 years, only one man was found who was unworthy of being named in the long list of godly men. On the walls of this Church near the pulpit, a tablet has been placed in memory of the clergy of Bruton Parish Church from 1674 to 1873. During this period of one hundred and ninety-nine years, not one minister is to be found against whom there stands a word of censure or reproach. They were men of education and of godly piety. Most of those who ministered here in the Colonial times were masters of arts of the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh, and we have the records giving the testimony of contemporaneous men to the effect that they were earnest and faithful ministers of the gospel of Christ.
Time fails us to mention the names upon the many memorial tablets or to recall the memories which they suggest. They are names which it is an inspiration to recall and which it would be a shame and reproach for us ever to forget;
- * * * * * * "They from their labors rest,
"Who Thee by faith, before the world confessed,
Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest
Alleluia.
