iculed so long about it, to so little purpose, that I am without common patience. So I leave you to pity me and pray for Liberty of Conscience to revive among us . . .”
Madison’s ardor can be traced directly to his experience at Princeton. Of Madison’s many Christian teachers, the most influential clearly was John Witherspoon, the Scottish-born Presbyterian minister who was president of the college. Although orthodox in his own beliefs, Witherspoon encouraged intellectual inquiry and defended every person’s “right to private judgment in matters of opinion.” (Ketcham 43) Madison so admired Witherspoon that he stayed on in Princeton for six months after his graduation in order to study under him.
Patrick Henry not only came from much more modest circumstances than Jefferson, Madison or Mason; his religious training was both more and less traditional than any of theirs. His father, John Henry, was a pillar of the Anglican Church and “a staunch defender of every aspect of the church establishment, including the character of the parish rector, his brother Patrick,” for whom his son was named. (Mayer 34) His mother, on the other hand, was caught up in “the Great Awakening” — the evangelical fervor that raced through the colonies around the time of Patrick Henry’s birth in 1736. She became an abstemious Presbyterian who “set herself against the drinking, gambling, and dancing that comprised her husband’s chief diversions and the stuff of gentry political life.” (Mayer 39) She dragged young Patrick to revivalist “New Light” services conducted by the Revered Samuel Davies, a renowned preacher whose flowing, emotional sermons contrasted sharply with the dull, sanctimonious homilies read by the Anglican clergy “in velvet tones perfectly suited to the gentry’s own complacency.” (Mayer 34) Patrick’s mother not only made him listen to Davies’ sermons: on the way home in the family carriage she would make him repeat their substance back to her.
The effects of young Patrick’s dual religious upbringing can be seen throughout his life. On the one hand, he never left the Episcopal Church, and he emulated his father’s genteel social behavior; as a lawyer, however, he developed a powerful and decidedly non-traditional style of courtroom oratory that clearly reflected Davies’ influence, and which eventually made him the most riveting political speaker of his extraordinary political era. He also adopted his mother’s disdain for fashionable dress, fine furnishings and liquor. Throughout his life he spoke openly of his religious faith, and late in life he became a dedicated student of the Bible.
Of the four men at the vortex of colonial Virginia’s attempt to come to grips with the issue of religious liberty, George Mason held the most orthodox and traditional religious views. A wealthy planter and life-long Anglican who attended services faithfully, served for many years as a member of his parish vestry, and never by word or action exhibited any doubt concerning the tenets of his church, he seems an unlikely progenitor of the disestablishment movement. Yet, as we shall see, his authorship of the Virginia Declaration of Rights set in motion a chain of events that culminated in the First Amendment.
The personal relationships among and between these four famous men also are worth mentioning. Jefferson and Madison, who apparently met in 1776 as fellow members of the Virginia House of Delegates (Koch 3), were warm and lifelong friends thereafter, and neither can be understood apart from their regular and “gravely formal” written correspondence, much of which was conducted in their private code, and their frequent visits back and forth between Jefferson’s home at Monticello and Madison’s family seat 23 miles away at Montpelier, in Orange County.
When Jefferson was 16, he encountered Patrick Henry, who was seven years older, playing the fiddle, dancing and charming the guests at a Christmas party in Hanover County. Although Jefferson thought Henry somewhat coarse, he initially admired both Henry’s gregariousness and his eloquence, writing of one of Hen