William Robinson's Long-Lost Letter

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We must always remember when we turn one eye upon ourselves and our guilt, blemishes, vileness, and loathsomeness, we must let the other eye be fixed upon Jesus Christ! — William Robinson

William Robinson is one of the most influential colonial American Presbyterian ministers about whom we know so little. He was born in England, the son of a well-to-do Quaker physician, around the beginning of the 18th century, and after falling into the sins of big city life in London, made his way to America to work as a teacher, before a conversion experience led him to become a student for the ministry at William Tennent’s Log College. Samuel Miller tells the story of that experience in his biography of John Rodgers:

He was riding at a late hour, one evening, when the moon and the stars shone with unusual brightness, and when every thing around him was calculated to excite reflection. While he was meditating upon the beauty and grandeur of the scene which the firmament presented, and was saying to himself, "How transcendently glorious must be the Author of all this beauty and grandeur," the thought struck him with the suddenness and force of lightning: "But what do I know of this God? Have I ever sought His favor or made Him my friend?" This happy impression, which proved, by its permanence and effects, to have come from the best of all sources, never left him until he took refuge in Christ as the hope and life of his soul.

Marker located at the Historic Polegreen Church in Mechanicsville, Virginia (photo by R. Andrew Myers).

An alumni of William Tennent’s Log College; Robinson was called to succeed William Tennent as pastor of the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church, but declined the call; he was a leader of the Great Awakening, and a friend of George Whitefield and Gilbert Tennent; he served as moderator of New Brunswick Presbytery; and he preached the first Presbyterian sermon in central Virginia (July 6, 1743), and paved the way for the ministry of Samuel Davies, who wrote of him that "The work was begun and mainly carried on by that favored man, Mr. Robinson, whose success, whenever I reflect on it, astonishes me.” Davies also said:

Probably Mr. Robinson, during the short period of his life, was the instrument in the conversion of as many souls as any minister who ever lived in this country. The only circumstance relating to his person which has come down is that he was blind of one eye [as a result of scarlet fever]; so that he was called by some “the one-eyed Robinson.”

It was his dying wish that Davies would be sent to minister to the people of Hanover County, Virginia, where Robinson had preached three years before, and accepted a financial gift from his grateful hearers only with the proviso that it would go to support Davies’ theological education. He died on August 1, 1746, just six years after his ordination to the ministry, and his funeral sermon was preached by Samuel Blair. But although the stories of his travels throughout Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and his ministry in Delaware, are fascinating to read, and his role in the education and missionary efforts of Samuel Davies was key to bringing the Great Awakening to Virginia, we have nothing to read that was written by his own hand — or so it was thought until very recently.

James P. Williams is an American Baptist minister who was serving as pastor of four Baptist churches in England from 2007 to 2010. While cleaning one of those churches, he discovered a letter from William Robinson to his [unnamed, female] cousin in England dated June 16, 1741. The letter is transcribed in his book Light the Fire Again: Eighteenth-Century Light for the Twenty-First Century Darkness, which tells more fully than has been done before the story of Robinson’s life and ministry. The letter rejoices in the news that Robinson had received that his cousin was born again. He tells her about reports he has heard from George Whitefield concerning revival in England, and gives a report on revival throughout the northern colonies:

…here has been such Surprising Effusions of God’s spirit in the ministry Especially under Mr. Whitfield & our new Brunswick Presbytery in which are the famous Tennents my dear brethren, that all New England, the Provinces of York, the Jersies, Pensilvania, and Maryland are filled with Convinced & Converted souls, many are the thousand Brot to Christ and on the way Children, youth & aged persons, rich & poor, Black & White, tis no Great Matter here to preach unto Five Thousand People, for my Brethren to preach 3-4 or 5 times a day.

It is a letter that practically drips with the sweet savor of the gospel. In all his rejoicing of the communion in Christ which he now shares with his cousin, and in all his descriptions of revival, Robinson is concerned to give God the glory rather than himself or even those brethren of whom he speaks so highly. Robinson: “I cannot tell what great things God has done for ME, what honors conferred on me a poor ignorant wretch. Oh that I may be humble and thankful.” The work of both conversion and revival is by the hand of God, and brings Robinson to a humble adoration of the One who has merciful done and continues to do great things among the people on both sides of the pond. The whole letter takes up a handful of pages in transcription, and Williams helpfully includes a summary of its highlights as well. The life story of Robinson is given in Light the Fire Again with a view towards inspiring 21st century readers to catch the flame that stirred Robinson, Whitefield, the Tennents, Davies, Jonathan Edwards and others in the 18th. We are most grateful to Williams for finding Robinson’s letter and sharing its contents with this generation. May that spark contained within, by the grace of God, help to light the world again today!

James Hunt and the Revival of Presbyterianism in Virginia

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“I think books are like people, in the sense that they'll turn up in your life when you most need them.” — Emma Thompson

James Hunt, an interesting colonial American Presbyterian minister in his own right, had a ringside seat to the 1740’s revival in Virginia known as the Great Awakening. He was born in Hanover, Virginia on February 19, 1731 to James and Sarah Hunt. The elder James Hunt in the early 1740s was part of a group led by Samuel Morris who were disaffected with the stale liturgical and spiritually dry worship that they experienced in the established Anglican church of the Old Dominion colony of Virginia.

A letter from a gentleman who knew the younger James Hunt and spoke to him shortly before his death and which contained Hunt’s narrative account of the events was published with annotations by John Holt Rice in the August 1819 issue of The Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine under the title Origin of Presbyterianism in Virginia.

This narrative of Hunt, conveyed to us by John Holt Rice, may be compared with other primary accounts of the beginning of the Hanover revival such as the letter of Samuel Morris (found in a 1751 letter from Samuel Davies to Joseph Bellamy and published as The State of Religion Among the Protestant Dissenters in Virginia); and the account given by David Rice (which appears in Robert H. Bishop, An Outline of the History of the Church in the State of Kentucky, During a Period of Forty Years, Containing the Memoirs of Rev. David Rice (1824)), and yet the narrative of Hunt, who was present (and indeed was spiritually awakened there) stands out for its rich, fascinating detail and, especially, for Hunt’s “pertinent remarks on the various providences of God” in the events which shaped the course of the revival.

Detail of the 1753 Fry-Jefferson map of Virginia, focusing on Hanover County in the center.

The Samuel Morris group had managed to acquire certain religious books which stirred something deep within them, including Thomas Boston’s Human Nature in Its Four-Fold State, Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians, the sermons of George Whitefield, and the works of John Bunyan. The group would gather at a Reading Room constructed for the purpose of reading these works aloud and discussing them, and as this activity grew in popularity, additional reading rooms were erected, something that did not go unnoticed by the civil authorities.

One of the Samuel Morris Reading Rooms, the reconstructed frame of which stands at the Historic Polegreen Church in Mechanicsville, Virginia (photo by R. Andrew Myers).

At this point, we will take up Hunt’s narrative directly:

And now their number became too large for any private house to contain them. Another step is taken — they build first one and then another of what they called ‘reading houses.’ Here the number of attendants and the force of divine influence much increase. The charge against the four principals, first engaged in the work, is changed — they are no longer considered as individual delinquents, whose obstinacy might be sufficiently punished by the civil magistrate; but as a malignant cabal, that required the interposition of the Executive. They are accordingly cited to appear before the Governor and Council. This was a shock for which they were not well prepared. The exaction of frequent fines, for nonattendance at church, they bore with patience and fortitude for the sake of a good conscience; but to be charged with a crime, of the nature, and extent, and penalty of which they had but indistinct conceptions, spread a gloom over their minds, and filled them with anxious forbodings, more easily conceived than described. They were placed in the most awkward situation. They were certainly and obviously a religious society. separate and distinct from the only one, the established church, which either the government, or the people, knew in the country; yet they were without a name. — They saw and felt the propriety of being able some how to designate themselves when they came before the Governor and Council. They once thought of calling themselves ’Lutherans,’ but they found some sentiments advanced in the only one of his books which they had, with which they could not agree, In the mean while the day drew on when they were to appear in Williamsburg; and with gloomy forbodings they get out without a name by which to call themselves, and without any written plan to shew the nature of the association which they had formed.

One of the four, who travelled down by himself, had to take shelter from a heavy storm of rain in the house of some poor man on the road. While there, waiting for the rain to cease, he to divert his melancholy, took down from a dusty shelf, an old dusty volume, and began to read. He had not read far, till he found himself not diverted, but deeply interested. He found his own sentiments embodied in a system. He read on with renewed pleasure and surprise, until the ceasing of the storm admonished him it was time to pursue his journey. He wished to know of the man whether he would sell that book. The man answered, no: but if he had any desire for it, he would give it to him, as he had no use for it, and it was not worth selling. Our poor distressed traveller received it as the gift of heaven — it was an old Scotch Presbyterian Confession of Faith. Meeting his companions in Williamsburgh, they took a private room, and there deliberately examined the book, and found it contained exactly the system of doctrines which they believed; and though not so well understanding the discipline, they did not so cordially approve that, yet, they unanimously agreed to adopt it as their confession of faith. Although they did not foresee the advantage it would be to them, yet it relieved them from the awkward situation in which they were, the heads and leaders of a religious society without a name. — When called before the Governor and Council, and interrogated about their profession, they presented their new found book, as their confession of faith. The Governor, Gooch, (who it was said had been educated a Presbyterian, but for the sake of an office or for some other reason, had become a member of the established church,) immediately observed, on seeing the confession, that these men were Presbyterians, and that they were tolerated by the laws of England. But the Council, not feeling the same educational prejudice in favor of Presbyterianism, or not construing so liberally the laws relating to them, were not so easily satisfied — a good deal of bitterness was manifested by them towards the poor unfortunate culprits. But in the midst of this warm discussion (Mr. Hunt observed he had often heard his father mention it with awe and reverence,) the heavens became suddenly shrouded in darkness — thunders with tremendous peals seemed to shake the foundation of the house where they were; and the council chamber where they sat, appeared for a considerable time to be one continued blaze of lightning. The Governor and Council, as well as themselves, were seized with solemn awe — Mr. Hunt’s father told him, he had never before, nor afterwards, witnessed so tremendous a storm. When it abated he and his companions were dismissed with a gentle caution to beware not to excite any disturbance in his majesty’s colony, nor by any irregularities break the good order of society in their parish.

Here Mr. Hunt stopped, to make a number of pertinent remarks on the various providences of God. Had not a storm driven one of those persecuted men into an unknown house for shelter — had the Governor not been educated a Presbyterian — or, finally, had not the clouds gathered blackness at that particular hour, it is probable the issue of their journey to Williamsburg would have been extremely different from what it was. He did not think there was any thing miraculous in any of these occurrences; but he thought (and so do I) that a man must be strangely blinded, who does not see, in such a train of unconnected contingent events, all concurring to the same end, the secret, though powerful hand of him who, ‘works all things according to the council of his own will.’

It was soon after these events that William Robinson arrived on a missionary journey to central Virginia. On July 6, 1743, Robinson preached the first Presbyterian sermon ever recorded in this region. The Samuel Morris group was so moved by his message that when it was time for him to depart they endeavored to give him some financial renumeration for his pastoral services. He declined the offer, but they managed to fill his saddle bags with money anyway which, when he realized what was done, finally accepted the gift — but not for himself. Instead, he in turn used the money to pay for the theological education of a young man he knew who had shown great promise. That young man turned out to be Samuel Davies, who would in the process of time, after completing his education, be sent to minister to the Samuel Morris group of Hanover. Davies’ missionary labors in Virginia, which are legendary, were paved by all that went before in the providence of God.

James Hunt, whose full account is very much worth reading, went on to study directly under Davies, both in Hanover and, later, at the College of New Jersey at Princeton. He was licensed to preach the gospel in 1760, and ordained to ministry the following year, whereupon he was admitted as a member of the Hanover Presbytery, under whose bounds he labored as an itinerant minister for a time. In 1763, he was called as the pastor of a congregation in Pennsylvania, but in 1770, he accepted a new call to jointly minister to the Bladensburg and Captain John’s congregations in Rockville County, Maryland, where he labored for the rest of his life. There, on his farm “Tusculum,” he founded Rockville Academy, which included among its pupils, the famous writer William Wirt. Hunt died on June 2, 1793, and his funeral sermon was preached by James Muir.

An answer to Pilate's question: What is truth?

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Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? (John 18:38)

Besides the famous Log College of William Tennent and its daughter schools in Pennsylvania — as well as the Log College of David Caldwell in North Carolina, and others — there was the Shepherd’s Tent of New London, Connecticut. of which Timothy Allen (1715-1806) served as President in the 1740s. Shepherd’s Tent was a brief but important contribution to the revivalism of the Great Awakening; see Richard Warch, “The Shepherd's Tent: Education and Enthusiasm in the Great Awakening,” American Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 2, 1978, pp. 177–198, for more about this contribution. John Brainerd and Elihu Spencer were among the students of Shepherd’s Tent.

Meanwhile, today’s post is extracted from a fascinating essay by Allen written as a response to an age-old question. The full treatise is very much worth the read. In conclusion, he gives an eight-part answer as follows.

Lastly. We see the sum of the answer to Pilate’s question, in these particulars.

1. GOD, his nature, and all his attributes and perfections, are truth, in its first and most important sense. His proper distinctions is, GOD of truth, Deut. xxxii.4.

2. JESUS CHRIST as a divine person, and as perfectly expressing GOD to men, is in equal sense, the truth. John xiv.6.

3. The Holy Ghost, as the great efficient of all divine purposes, and as represented in the genuine influence of all the words, and all the works of GOD, on the consciences of men, is truth. 1 John v.6. And for this reason styled, the Spirit of the truth. John xiv.17.

4. The work which JESUS CHRIST came to do, and which is the only obedience of merit, in which therefore all the hope of sinners lies, itself being the only perfect practical righteousness, is truth, in fact, through which only we are saved. 2 Thess. ii.13.

5. The Scriptures, as the only perfect literal description of the Godhead, and the only history of his kingdom, and its righteousness, is in the same sense, truth itself. John xvii.17.

6. The saving work of the Spirit of GOD, through belief of the word of GOD, and by which sinners are made partakers of the divine nature, and have fellowship with God, is truth. 1 John ii.27.

7. The whole kingdom of God, as including the creation and government of all things, is original truth, exemplified in facts. All his works are done in truth. Ps. xxxiii.4.

8. NATURAL self-consisting truth, in the last and most finished representation of it to men, is the distinguishing character of that kingdom, of which JESUS CHRIST was born lord and king. It was represented in types, in the Jewish state of the church; and the whole of that state of the church was type, or typical. But now the truth is come, which was all along meant by those types.

In this summation, Allen explores the manifold sense in which Pilate may receive a full answer to a profound question. Pilate may not have sought such an answer, but lovers of the truth, which is timeless, will appreciate what Allen had to say over 250 years ago. Our God is indeed a God of truth.

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