The organization of the Hanover Presbytery, now Presbytery of the James in Virginia, is a fascinating tale of pious migrants settling the Mid-Atlantic region, of emerging church leaders challenging them to grow and cooperatively come together during the turbulent years before the American Revolution broke out.
Francis Makemie, the father of American Presbyterianism, wrote A Plain and Persuasive to the Inhabitants of Virginia and Maryland (1750). He advised migrants to the New World to move south into Virginia and to build houses, churches, and school, to grow tobacco. Makemie then moved north, won a right to preach and build churches in New York and vicinity. He helped form America’s first Presbytery. The body grew, disagreed over matters such as the First Great Awakening, split into Old Side — New Side, but carried on. Pious people, but without clergy, streamed into Virginia. Some began to form “reading houses,” as they were called, because Williamsburg’s Anglican establishment would not allow other Protestants to build “churches.” A William Morris, for example, joined with his neighbors to meet and study books they had, including Luther’s Galatians commentary, John Knox’s Scot’s Confession, the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and George Whitefield’s sermons. The movement spread. When asked by authorities to which denomination they belonged, they identified themselves as Presbyterians, aided by New Side clergyman from New Castle, William Robinson.
Meanwhile, young Samuel Davies, born in New Castle County, Delaware, matured. He grew up in a Baptist-turned-Presbyterian family, studied with Presbyterian pastor Samuel Blair at Fagg’s Manor, Pa., and received a classical education and the deep Calvinistic piety of the Awakening. He was licensed readily by the New Side New Castle Presbytery. They sent him to Virginia as an evangelist. Under his eloquent leadership, a handful of Presbyterians, scattered here and there in the colony, grew until there were seven preaching stations. He trained other clergy, who found him an inspiring leader. He installed them in churches that he and they continued to cultivate.
The burgeoning number of congregants found Davies’ sermons compelling. He did not talk down to his hearers, who were largely unschooled. His sermons were lengthy educational events for those who flocked to hear him explore biblical texts with classical Hebrew, Greeks and Latin references and offer applications for their daily lives. His sermons represented the only schooling most of his parishioners had. He did not hesitate to drop a quotation from Plato, Augustine, Tacitus, Addison, Pope, Watts, or Whitefield now and then to drive home his lesson. His ordination and installation sermons illustrate the power of his preaching and also the view of ministry and its responsibilities, which he embodied. The ministry was not a “trade” like other trades, he told them. Jesus, the “Great Bishop” of souls, inspires in us the “love of souls.” “Bishop” is the name of a “work” not a “dignity,” not a right to “lord it over” others, but a calling to share love in word and by life with hearers. Pastors are to aim their arrows at the heart with love so that they will make their proper “medicinal wounds” in both poor and rich alike.
Moreover, pastors are to offer their own lives as sermons and to practice what they preached from the pulpit.
Davies was aware that a sermon might strike a person in different ways. He wrote of parishioners’ responses:
“Sometimes, O how divinely sweet, O how nourishing is the sincere milk of the word! How does the word enlighten, quicken and comfort you! How exactly it suits your every case! At other times it is tasteless; it is a dead letter, and has no effect on you. At times a sentence seems almighty, and carries you before it: you feel it to be the word of God; at other times, you perceive only your fellow-mortal speaking to you, and all his words are but feeble breath; as different from the former as chaff from wheat.”
To be most effective, Davies stressed that pastors needed a “love of souls” — a love that softens the sharp edge of the gospel, as he put it. Love, he said, animates exhortations. Love of the heart sweetly forces convictions on unwilling minds. Love mingles smiles with frowns. Love makes the hearer a friend. Love offers “open-hearted frankness,” which allows preachers to comfort a congregation as a father does his children. Love makes ministers bend the knee in prayer for all humankind as well as friends — all trusted to ministerial care. Many around Virginia heard Davies in the pulpit and he was pastor to at least three hundred families on the Virginia frontier.
Davies did not challenge the institution of slavery. It is probable that he and his family possessed slaves. He was, however, concerned about souls and the fair treatment of the slaves. He spoke out in support of their learning to read. He ordered and distributed Bibles and other books to encourage their education. He told slave-owners who neglected such education they were sinning, the punishment for which was the War. With Gilbert Tennent, Davies visited the British Isles for two years (1753-1755); they raised money for the new College in Princeton (N.J.). While there he visited the tomb of John Locke and preached in many important churches where he was greatly appreciated.
Back in Virginia, he was joined in preaching by other ministers, some of whom he trained for the pastorate. He, John Todd, Alexander Craighead, Robert Henry, John Wright and John Brown organized the Hanover presbytery on October 3, 1755. The Synod of New York recognized the Presbytery and extended it into the Deep South and westward to the frontiers into which pioneers were flowing and settling. Davies preached the opening sermon of the new body. Ominously, the first order of business was to set aside a day of fasting and to call Virginians to arms — not to love — because of the outbreak of the French and Indian War (1755-1763).
In 1759 Samuel Davies accepted a call to succeed Jonathan Edwards of New England and New York as president of the new college located in Princeton. While reluctant to leave his people in Virginia, he finally agreed to go north to New Jersey where he succumbed to sickness and almost immediately died. He is buried in the same graveyard as Edwards.
Davies left us a great heritage in Hanover Presbytery, which grew over the centuries and has been useful to the church. His influence, even on the life of one particular person, was greater than he ever knew.
One young man, growing up in Hanover County, was taken regularly by his Anglican family to hear Davies preach. After a Sunday service, his parents made the youngster give the text and replicate Davies’ discourses. The young man was none other than Patrick Henry, whose rhetorical skills were shaped by the Presbyterian minister. We still recall on the Fourth of July, when we celebrate the American Revolution, Henry’s famous “give me liberty or give me death” speech of 1775 in support of that Revolution. Henry claimed that Davies was the greatest orator he ever heard.
Davies was so popular that his Sermons on the Most Useful and Important Subjects, Adapted to the Family and Closet (3 vols.) were published and preached in London from 1766-1771 and in numerous other editions thereafter. See also, Samuel William Pilcher, Samuel Davies, Apostle of Dissent in Colonial Virginia (University of Tennessee Press, 1971). Some hymnbooks still carry Davies’ “Great God of Wonders.”
Samuel Davies makes the organization of Hanover Presbytery 250 years ago well worth remembering! I hope this short essay makes that “Plain and Persuasive,” as Makemie put it.
JAMES H. SMYLIE is professor emeritus of church history at
Union Seminary — PSCE in Richmond, Va.
