131 Primary Source Reading: Letter from Anthony Burns to the Baptist Church
131 Primary Source Reading: Letter from Anthony Burns to the Baptist Church
In answer to my request by mail, under date July 13, 1855, for a letter of dismission in fellowship and of recommendation to another church, I have received a copy of the Front Royal Gazette, dated Nov. 8, 1855, in which I find a communication addressed to myself and signed by John Clark, as pastor of your body, covering your official action upon my request, as follows: —
The Church Of Jesus Christ, At Union, Fauquier Co., Virginia.
To all whom it may concern,
Whereas, Anthony Burns, a member of this church, has made application to us, by a letter to our pastor, for a letter of dismission, in fellowship, in order that he may unite with another church of the same faith and order; and whereas, it has been satisfactorily established before us, that the said Anthony Burns absconded from the service of his master, and refused to return voluntarily — thereby disobeying both the laws of God and man, although he subsequently obtained his freedom by purchase, yet we have now to consider him only as a fugitive from labor (as he was before his arrest and restoration to his master), have therefore Resolved, Unanimously, that he be excommunicated from this communion and fellowship of this church.
Done by order of the church, in regular church meeting, this twentieth day of October, 1855.
Wm. W. West, Clerk.
Thus you have excommunicated me, on the charge of “disobeying both the laws of God and men,” “in absconding from the service of my master, and refusing to return voluntarily.”
I admit that I left my master (so called), and refused to return; but I deny that in this I disobeyed either the law of God, or any real law of men.
No man had any right to steal me. He committed an outrage on the law of God; therefore his manstealing gave him no right in me, and laid me under no obligation to be his slave. God made me a man — not a slave; and gave me the same right to myself that he have the man who stole me to himself. The great wrongs he has done me, in stealing me and making me a slave, in compelling me to work for him many years without wages, and in holding me as merchandize, — these wrongs could never put me under obligation to stay with him, or to return voluntarily, when once escaped.
You charge me that, in escaping, I disobeyed God’s law. No, indeed! That law which God wrote on the table of my heart, inspiring the love of freedom, and impelling me to seek it at every hazard, I obeyed, and, by the good hand of my God upon me, I walked out of the house of bondage.
I disobeyed no law of God revealed in the Bible. I read in Paul (Cor. 7:21), “But, if thou mayest be made free, use it rather.” I read in Moses (Deut. 23:15), “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee, even among you in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him.” This implies my ri