Hans Rollmann
When the congregation brought a grievance before the local judges, it in turn was accused of inciting anti-Catholic feelings through the sermons of its minister John Jones. The Rev. Walter Price,{4} a local Anglican clergyman, had accused the Congregationalist minister and former paymaster at the garrison of preaching "against the Roman Catholick's Religion and thereby mak[ing] dissentions in this place." In a petition to the justices, Jones defended himself by stating that although he considered "the Church of Rome to be repugnant to Scripture," he "never used the words Roman Catholic or Papist, Pope or Popery in any of [his] public Preaching, either in St. John's or elsewhere." Nor did he wish, the minister assured the court, "to give offence to any, but to live at peace with all men, well knowing that true religion does not consist in Sects and Parties but in righteousness and Godliness and peace." Having himself experienced persecution at the hands of the governor and the Established Church earlier in his career as a minister, he now desired "that his fellow Citizens of the Catholic party should enjoy with himself the full liberty of Conscience." Although the staunch Calvinist disagreed with Roman Catholicism on many points and was always ready "to assert and prove Scriptural truths according to his several oaths taken in this Court," he most happily concurred "in whatever his Majesty and the Parliament might think proper to do for their [i.e. Catholics'] relief in the Toleration of their Religious Principles, and this not only from a motive of duty and Loyalty, but of equity and Justice, that what he would men should do unto him, the same he would do unto them."{5}
If any among the Catholic rioters felt that their assault might receive the blessing of the Church, they were quickly told differently by the new superior of the Catholic mission in Newfoundland. The Reverend James Louis O'Donel{6} publicly repudiated the mob action in no uncertain terms. Just the year before, he had come to the island, following a request made by Irish merchants, to serve among the largely Gaelic-speaking Irish Catholics. By his presence, it was hoped that the behaviour of what the merchants in their letter to Bishop Talbot of London had called "unruly and scandalous priests" might be checked and the influx of unlicensed ones from Ireland be controlled.{7} When the former teacher of theology at Prague arrived in St. John's on 4 July 1784,{8} even the hard-to-please Rev. Price quickly called him "a sensible, well-disposed man."{9} And John Jones, to remember the event, wrote in his journal: "This year 1784 the Romish Priest came to the Harbour, got full toleration and exercise [of] the Popish Religion in all respects, obtained leave to build a chapel and laid the foundation thereof."{10}
The days of gubernatorial fiat, when the heavy-handed, governor Dorrill tore down dwellings and fishing places in which itinerant priests had said mass,{11} were now all but memory. Presumably, the relaxation of the penal laws in England in 1778,{12} the subsequent removal of the discriminatory "except Papists" clause from the instructions to governors of Newfoundland in 1779,{13} the realities of Irish population growth in the island,{14} the trouble with Methodists in Conception Bay,{15} perhaps even the benign example of a changed legal situation for Catholics in Quebec{16} and Nova Scotia,{17} and, more recently, the 1783 permission for Catholics to build a chapel in St. John's{18} - all of this had finally culminated in a more general public announcement of religious liberty in 1784 by Governor John Campbell,{19} the son of a Scotch clergyman.{20} The governor, by a vaguely worded instruction, even allowed Catholic priests to solemnize marriages.{21}
Already by the end of 1783, Irish merchants had approached the ecclesiastical authorities in Ireland,{22} and through them Bishop Talbot, the Vicar Apostolic of the London district, who was responsible for the Roman Catholics of Newfoundland.{23} Bishop Egan of Waterford had also speedily informed the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith in Rome.{24} When on 30 May 1784 Pope Pius VI approved O'Donel's appointment and raised Newfoundland to an independent ecclesiastical territory under the direct control of the Holy See,{25} the establishment of institutional Catholicism in the island had begun in earnest. One of the first public actions of the new Prefect Apostolic was to reproach the rioters.{26}
John Jones persuaded the judges of his innocence; and when three offenders were found, convicted, and sentenced to lashes, he successfully pleaded for a remission of these Draconian penalties.{27} What followed the mob action and subsequent trial was a remarkable exchange between the Congregationalist minister and the future Catholic bishop of Newfoundland, which is contained in the manuscript history of the Dissenting Church of Christ in St. John's, now in the possession of St. David's Presbyterian Church.{28}
While both men shared this background and attitude, O'Donel's letter permits us further glances into his philosophy of religion. Several streams converge here. He has inherited a fundamentally Augustinian anthropology, which conceives religion as a moral regulative for fallen humankind. And yet he is quite the child of his time when, in opposition to the Deist battle cry "Religion not mysterious," he asserts with Bishop Butler that religion, at bottom, is an opaque and ineffable mystery. This, in turn, legitimizes for O'Donel conceptually and institutionally distinct interpretations of the Sacred and relativizes creedal absolutism and a normative metaphysic, even though the Logos Christology of the Greek fathers and the natural theology of the Thomist tradition may have been on the mind of O'Donel and contributed toward this inclusive attitude as well. Such limits to knowing ultimate mysteries and apology for religious pluralism underlay ultimately even the philosophes' notion of religious tolerance. For they had argued that "since men are all hopelessly ignorant of the ultimate mysteries shrouding the universe, it would be the utmost in barbarity and absurdity to constrain, let alone persecute, those who hold views divergent from the dominant one: certainty is the mother of intolerance, disdain for metaphysical construction is an inducement to toleration."{29} And with the melioristic optimism of the Enlightenment, O'Donel judges the faintest presence of the Divine conducive to "the benevolent support and benefit of society." O'Donel sees in all human beings a striving towards perfection, and, like the wise judge in Lessing's Enlightenment drama Nathan the Wise, refuses "to be so foolish as to fall out with a man for not saying his prayers in the manner I do."
Even if the latitudinarianism of this letter could not have been expressed half a century later, something of its spirit was still alive at a time when No Popery Protestants and Nationalist Irishmen, Ultramontane Catholics and Tractarian Tories clashed head-on. For on 30 January 1833 Bishop Fleming, an uncompromising apologist for Roman Catholicism as the exclusive saving institution, submitted to the first session of the Newfoundland legislature a petition "to repeal this unchristian and unwise law, and to extend to the Dissenters and Methodists of this Island the privilege of solemnizing marriages in their own church, and by a clergyman of their own establishment."{30}
In the letters, we meet two men who can disagree over theological issues, but who are committed to a spirit of civility and mutual respect. Frightened by the absolutism and intolerance of the past, they find a common ground in the formal exercise of what may be judged as one of the great human achievements of the modern era: religious freedom and denominational pluralism.
The Letters
The truly benevolent part I understand you have taken in
signifying your public disapprobation of a late attempt to
interrupt my public Worship, demands of me a peculiar
acknowledgement. And the design I have to do so I hope will plead
in excuse for the trouble I give you of this, a stranger as I am to
you, Sir. I flatter my self many years patient forbearance under
the like and often more furious insults will evidently justify me
from the imputation of resentment, spleen or party spirit. You will
no doubt however have heard the late charge against me of breeding
discord among the Inhabitants of this place, but from the very
favourable opinion I must entertain of your character, I promise my
self the Attestation and other proof I offered yesterday to produce
to their Worships in Court, may satisfy you, as I believe it did
those Gentlemen, of the injustice done me. I however cordially
forgive the Authors and pray they may obtain mercy and grace.<
It is true you and I differ in Theological Points, but I hope we
are jointly influenced by the same pious and benevolent motives so
strongly recommended in the precepts and examples of our common
Lord. I am happy under our gracious and wise administration to
enjoy a free liberty of conscience and rejoice to see my fellow
subjects of every denomination enjoying the like blessing with my
self. To endeavour to do unto all men as I would they should do
unto me, is my duty, and what I have hitherto strove to prove, and
what by God's grace I intend to pursue.
Yours & ca. J.J.
The great hurry of business that an Assistant Clergyman and I
have been crowded with these days past prevented me from
acknowledging the receipt of your Letter ere now and assuring you
that I deem my self blameable, both in the Eyes of God and man,
were I not, as far as my influence can reach, to discountenance the
smallest insult offered any denomination of christians in their
mode of worship, for the my manner of Worshipping God is almost
Eighteen hundred years Old, it is not yet arriving to that state of
dotage as to build its happiness on the dissatisfaction of others,
or dress up hatred on the score of conscience in the gawdy attire
of virtue, for in my notion of the christian religion its sacred
maxims must be entirely reversed before such conduct could be
justifiable under any pretence whatsoever. Religion in its original
institution has been designed to make impressions of awe and
reverential fear upon men's minds, which are naturally licentious,
averse from duty, and abhor nothing more than restraint, for man
would if left to himself wantonly launch out into a boundless
enjoyment of all his natural appetites and sensual inclinations, to
prevent which God has imprinted such dread and terror on his
judgment, as would, if attended to, restrain the most eager and
luxurious appetite from its darling pleasures and desired satisfac-
tions. This, the infinite wisdom of God has done, by giving the
world some unaccountable revelations of himself in the rules of a
most mysterious religion, to protect which from the encroachments
of our bold minds, he has fenced it in with a sacred and majestic
obscurity in some of its principal points, for the christian
religion is as to a great part of it a kind of comment upon the
divine nature, and an instrument to convey right conceptions of God
into the soul of man, which is an object too high for our
speculation and too sublime for our descriptions. For how can such
vast and mighty things as the Attributes of God and their
appendages be crowded into a little finite understanding, how can
our poor short faculties measure the length of his eternity, the
breadth and Expansion of his immensity, the heights of his
Prescience and depths of his Decrees, and last of all that
unutterable, incomprehensible mystery of two natures united into
one person, and of one and the same nature diffused into a triple
Personality, all which being the fundamental matters treated of in
the Christian Religion, how can it be otherwise than a System of
mysteries and a knot of dark unexplainable propositions? This is
the reason why not only you and I but many others differ in
Theological points, as what seems dark and mysterious to one,
appears without the least scruple clear and intelligible to
another, but tho you and I differ in some points that is no reason
we should in all. Religion is a tye between God and Man, and should
a man mistake an imaginary for a real tye with his God, I should be
sorry for Error, and that for his sake, but sure such a mistake
should not dissolve the mutual friendship, that ought to subsist
between man and man. On the contrary, wherever there is the
smallest spark of true Christianity it will kindle a friendly
warmth in the hearts of its possessors for all mankind, for there
is hardly any necessity or convenience of mankind but is in a great
measure provide for by this great blessing of religion, which God
planted among men as a tree of life not only to spring upwards
towards himself, but also to spread its branches and extend its
refreshing shade to cool the intemperate ardor of all below; for he
who is an observant christian of any denomination is not only a
better man, but also a better neighbour, a better subject to his
King, and a truer friend, than he that is not so; for what can be
more decidedly devised for the general good of mankind than to
forgive injuries, to love and caress our mortal adversaries, and
instead of our enemies to hate only our revenge. Thus Religion like
incense while it ascends to Heaven perfumes all about it and as it
holds up one hand in supplication, reaches forth the other for the
Benevolent support and benefit of Society. I'll contend anywhere
for it, that this consists rather in the active piety of our lives,
than in empty thoughts and fruitless persuasions, for what can one
man be the better for what another man thinks or believes? When a
poor man begs alms of me can I believe my Bread into his mouth or
my money into his hands, without giving either to him? Believing
without doing is a cheap and easy, but still a very worthless way
of being religious, and therefore it is but a poor argument for a
man either of mine or any other persuasion to derive his sanctity
from the unobserved rules of the Holy Catholick and Apostolic
Church, or Bottom his saintship on the virtues of the Society he
belongs to and Sophistically conclude that he is no weed, only,
because he grows among the corn. As to party or adhesion thereto,
it carries a strong suspicion of the rankest of bad qualities, Viz,
Spiritual pride. There are two things natural almost to all men -
a desire of pre-eminence in spiritual perfection, and a spirit of
opposition to those who are not of their own way and fully made up
to their own prejudiced mind. Both these are eminently gratified by
listing in a religious party which occasions many to suffer
persecutions with a greater relish of pride that others can inflict
it. For I am sure it is not a true zeal rising from an hearty
concern for religion but rather a bad restless cross overbearing
humor which is imped with smart and quickened with opposition,
that makes people detest those who differ from them in religious
principles, for he who is truly Godly is humble and peaceable will
neither make nor be of a party, in the received sense of that word.
Such imitators of Corath, Dathan and Abbiran, build upon the same
Ground upon which they stood and into which they sunk, for that
man's condition must be very unsafe, who deems prejudice a virtue,
counts his Sin his perfection & makes the object of his repentance
the ground of his salvation. From what I here advance I hope you
will do me the justice to believe I bestowed more of my time those
Twenty Eight years past on the study of Philanthropy than Party and
that I cannot be so foolish as to fall out with a man for not
saying his prayers in the manner I do, but however should the
spirit of outbidding each other in the barter of Spiritual for
temporal commodities, once take place in the minds of those, who
are either by Ordination or appointment destined to reconcile Man
to God they'll always breed opposition, disunite his majesty's
subjects and become obnoxious both to God and man. These are the
various sentiments that occurred to me on the subject of your
Letter, and you may rest assured that I wish for nothing more than
that we may all live in such tranquillity and good will towards
each other in this life as may enable us to attain to every
necessary qualification to enjoy the everlasting Bliss for which we
have been originally created in the life to come. These are the
unfeigned sentiments wherewith I remain.
Last Saturday I was unexpectedly favoured with your long letter of
that date. I did not wish you should have had the trouble of
enlarging so much on the subjects mentioned in yours as all
intended by my letter to you was, from the respect I bear your
character to express my acknowledgements for the public admonition
you were pleased to give such as might have been in the late insult
offered to me and my hearers. In respect to other matters
concerning our difference in points of Doctrine we have no doubt
both of us so entirely made up our minds, that any discussion of
those points would be needless. This consideration with the want of
time and a desire to avoid controversy alone prevents me more fully
answering yours, herein. I hope you are not disappointed and this
more especially as I am happy to find we agree in what is most
effectual to promote religious morals, the public peace, and
welfare of Society in general, to which good end and according to
the expressed desire on your part, I again hereby assure you, that
no effort of mine shall in any wise be wanting.
2) "Notes," 15.
3) "Notes," 20 - 21.
4) Cf. Ruth M. Christensen, "The Establishment of S.P.G. Missions in Newfoundland, 1703 - 1783," Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 20 (June 1951), 223.
5) For the preceding, see "Notes," 22 - 25.
6) Anonymous, "James Louis O'Donel", Dictionary of Canadian Biography: Vol. 5: 1801 to 1820 (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1983), 631 - 634.
7) Archives of the Sacred congregation of the Propagation of the Faith (Vatican), hereafter: "PF"; PF/SOCG, Vol. 867 (1784), 31rv, 32rv - 33rv, 38rf. Cf. the useful indices provided by Luca Codignola for the Public Archives of Canada (Ottawa).
8) PF/Congressi (AA), Vol. 2 (1763 - 89), 562rv - 563rv.
9) Manuscript Journal of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (London), hereafter: SPG; SPG Journal, Vol. 23 (Friday 17 December 1784), 423.
10) "Notes," 20.
11) Cf. already the documentation in Charles Pedley, The History of Newfoundland: From the Earliest Times to the Year 1860 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1863), 90 - 96. These documents, drawn from C.O. 194, have been reprinted many times since.
12) 18 George III, cap. 45, and 18 George III, cap. 60, Great Britain: The Statues at Large: George III 1778 - 1779 (Washington, D.C.: Microcard Editions, n.d.), Card 2, 74 - 75 and 152 - 154.
13) Whereas Article 21 of Governor Palliser's instructions of 1764 (C.O. 194/17) had read: "You are to permit a free exercise of religion to all persons except Papists [emphasis my own] so that they be contented with a quite and peaceable enjoyment of the same, not giving offence or scandal to the government," the clause "except Papists" is absent from the instructions to governors since Governor Edwards in 1779, presumably because of the liberation of the Penal Laws; cf. Raymond J. Lahey, "Religion and Politics in Newfoundland: The Antecedents of the General Election of 1832" (St. John's: Unpublished Lecture, Newfoundland Historical Society, 15 March 1979), 3 - 4.
14) E.g., Mr. Price to S.P.G., 30 November 1784; SPG Journal, Vol. 23 (Friday 18 February 1785), 43; "The Harbour of St. John's contains between 2 and 3000 Winter-residents, three fourths of whom are Roman Catholics, and one half of the remainder are Methodist."
15) Jacob Parsons, "The Origin and Growth of Newfoundland Methodism 1765 - 1855" (St. John's: M.A. Thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1964), 26, 32.
16) John S. Moir, Church and State in Canada 1627 - 1867, The Carleton Library, Vol. 33, ed. by Robert L. McDougall (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967), 92 - 110.
17) John Garner, "The Enfranchisement of Roman Catholics in the Maritimes," The Canadian Historical Review 34 (1953), 203 - 218. I am grateful to Prof. T.M. Murphy for acquainting me with this article.
18) See fn. 7.
19) Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, GN 2/1/A, Vol. 10, p. 138: "Pursuant to the King's instructions to me, you are to allow all persons inhabiting this island to have full liberty of conscience, and the free exercise of all such modes of religious worship as are not prohibited by law, provided they be contented with a quiet and peaceable enjoyment of the same, not giving offence or scandal to Government"; cf. also Public Record Office, C.O. 194, Vol. 35 (1780 - 1784), p. 631 ("Extract of Newfoundland Instruction"):" 12. To allow the Exercise of Such Modes of Religious Worship as are not prohibited by Law"; SPG Journal, Vol. 23 (18 February 1785), 43: "The Late Gov[erno]r Campbell left behind him a paper, which signified, that it was his Majesty's pleasure to grant his Subjects in Newfoundland, of all persuasion (as by Law tolerated,) equal authority and privilege in the exercise of their religion."
20) William Garden Blaikie, "John Campbell," The Dictionary of National Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1921/23), Vol. 3, 829 - 830.
21) Cf. the vague formulation in C.O. 194, Vol. 35 (1780 - 1784), 631: "No man to administer the Sac[ra]m[ents] that [sic] is not in Orders, and respecting the conduct of ministers." I am grateful to Mrs. Barbara Crosbie for having located this instruction.
22) See fn. 7.
23) PF/Acta, 154 (1784), 294r; PF/SOCG, 867 (1784), 34rv - 35rv and 36rv - 37rv; PF/Lettere 244 (1784), 480 - 481r.
24) PF.Acta 154 (1784), 294rv.
25) PF/Acta 154 (1784), 294rv; PF/Lettere 244 (1784), 477v - 479r and 480rv - 481r.
26) "Notes," 27.
27) Ibid.
28) The letters were copied in the end of the 18th century/beginning of the 19th century by a church member, in the case of O'Donel's letter with less literary skill than the original writer. Thus spelling and punctuation have been tacitly corrected in some cases. The documents can be found in "Notes," 27 - 33.
29) Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: Vol. 2: The Science of Freedom (New York: W.W. Norton, 1977), 399.
30) M.F. Howley, Ecclesiastical History of Newfoundland (Boston: Doyle and Whittle, 1888), 273.
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