Every professing Christian should be made aware of the persecutions which have been brought upon God’s saints. They began during the days of the Book of Acts, and they have continued to various degrees and strengths ever since. There have been the persecutions of the heathen against us, followed by the Catholics, and then followed by the Protestants. The Protestant attacks have come from nearly every sector of their camp – Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed, etc.
William Wickenden may have been the first Baptist to minister in New York. The Dutch Reformed Church of New York contemptuously referred to Wickenden as “the cobbler” who dipped his converts. The man was from Rhode Island, but felt led of the Spirit leave his home to minister among the American Dutch.
On this day in 1656 the General Assembly of New Netherland ordered Brother Wickenden to pay a fine of one hundred pounds Flemish and to be banished from the province. However, if he did not pay the fine, he would not be forced to leave – he’d remain a prisoner. Eventually the court was informed that Wickenden was a very poor man “with a wife and many children” and thus completely unable to pay the fine, so the kind “Christian” people of New York ordered his immediate banishment under the condition that if he ever returned he would arrested and kept in confinement until the fine and any further costs were paid in full.
As was true all over America, things got worse before improving. On September 21, 1662 the authorities of New Netherland said that because they “find by experience that their hitherto issued publications and edicts against conventicles and prohibited assemblies are not observed and obeyed as they ought, therefore, by these presents, they are not only renewed but enlarged in a manner following. Like as they have done heretofore, so they prohibit and interdict as yet, that besides the Reformed worship and service no conventicles or meetings shall be kept in this province, whether it be in houses, barns, ships, barks, nor in the woods or fields, upon forfeiture of fifty gulden for the first time, for every person, whether man or woman or child that shall have been present at such prohibited meetings, or shall have lent his house, barn or any place to that purpose; for ye second time twice as much, for the third time four times as much, and arbitrary punishment besides.”
It was through the peaceful, insistent and consistent ministry of men like William Wickenden that religious freedom eventually became the norm here in North America.