Baptists in colonial America learned what it meant to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). They experienced various kinds of persecution because they rejected infant baptism and the authority of the state to coerce in matters of religious duty. Many Baptists refused to pay taxes imposed to support religion, or to pay fines that punished their religious convictions, for doing so acknowledged the state’s authority to judge matters of religious duty. Baptists suffered persecution primarily in the southern colonies and in New England. Massachusetts, however, excelled the rest.

On September 5, 1651, a magistrate led Obadiah Holmes to the whipping post in Boston, Massachusetts, before a crowd of spectators. He was guilty of baptizing a believer and of leading a small worship service of Baptists. Holmes came to Boston on business from Rhode Island in company with two other Baptists, Newport pastor John Clarke and a layman named John Crandall. When Massachusetts leaders learned that the three were holding a worship service in a private home on Sunday, they arrested them.

Massachusetts Bay leaders aimed to halt the spread of Baptist “errors” by punishing the three severely. Opposing infant baptism jeopardized society, they believed. Ipswich pastor Thomas Cobbett explained that rejecting infant baptism overturned “our very fundamentals of civil and sacred order here in New England.” John Cotton, the colony’s most prominent pastor, told the court that “denying infant baptism would overthrow all,” and therefore, Baptists were “soul-murderers” and deserved death.

Related: From bombings to bubblehead income: The diversity of persecution in new testament perspective — Greg Cochran

The court found them guilty of contravening the established order of church and state, but imposed heavy fines rather than death. Clarke and Crandall gained release after benefactors offered to pay the fines, but Holmes could not in good conscience permit the payment of his 30-pound fine — an amount roughly equivalent to half a year’s professional salary. The court therefore ordered Holmes’s whipping.

The executioner made Holmes release his New Testament, pulled off his clothes, and tied him to the post. He then spit on his hands to be sure of a firm grip and whipped Holmes with a three-corded whip 30 times “with all his strength.” Holmes prayed. As the lashes flayed his skin, he did not flinch or groan. Christ granted him “joyfulness in my heart and cheerfulness in my countenance,” he recounted. Throughout the episode, Holmes expressed love and patience toward his persecutors, and prayed that “the Lord would not lay this sin to their charge.”

Toleration of different forms of religion was dangerous, New England Puritans said, because it would permit false teachers to sow error, which would result in divisions, disagreements, and the gradual subversion of true religion.  Increase Mather, president of Harvard College, warned that “the antichrist hath not at this day a more probable way to advance his kingdom of darkness than by a toleration of all religions and persuasions.” God required the state to use its coercive power to establish and protect true religion, because true religion was essential to the welfare of society.

Baptist appeals to religious liberty and the rights of conscience made no sense to most colonial Americans. Baptists were false teachers — generally ignorant and always obstinate. New England Puritans distrusted and despised Baptists. Baptists undermined all order.

Related: Religious liberty and persecution: a global perspective — David Platt

Even after Parliament enacted toleration in Great Britain in 1689, Massachusetts authorities used their laws to injure and intimidate Baptists. Massachusetts leaders initially ruled that legal toleration did not apply to Baptists — it applied to the legally established Congregational churches alone. In 1728, pressure from England forced Massachusetts to grant Baptists legal toleration and freedom from paying taxes to support the ministers and meeting houses of the established church. But this law and its subsequent revisions in practice afforded little protection. They entangled the Baptists’ right of exemption in such requirements that it was a simple matter for assessors and judges to deny their claims to legal exemption.

Assessors consequently taxed Baptists contrary to law. When challenged, judges and juries generally ruled against the Baptists, alleging either that the law had no force in the particular instance or that the terms of the law were not validly fulfilled. Some judges fixed upon any excuse, however implausible, to dismiss Baptist complaints. Baptists appealed these rulings in the courts, and when these failed, they filed petitions for relief with the Massachusetts assembly.

In the meantime, in many cases, the assessors threw the Baptists in prison for failure to pay the taxes they had illegally assessed. They seized the Baptists’ land, oxen, cows, hogs, horses, tools, or pewter — whatever valuable possessions they owned — and sold them at auction, sometimes for as little as one-tenth their value. Authorities intimidated, threatened, and falsely accused Baptists who resisted these unjust proceedings. Baptists had no choice but to spend considerable time, effort, and money defending themselves trying to preserve their personal liberty and the livelihood of their families.

In 1774, Baptists petitioned the Continental Congress for relief from New England establishment laws. A delegation that included Massachusetts congressmen John Adams, Samuel Adams, and Robert Treat Paine agreed to hear the Baptists’ grievances. For four hours they dismissed Baptist concerns. They claimed that the establishment in Massachusetts was a “very slender one” that was “hardly to be called an establishment” at all. Baptists in fact had “no cause to complain.” Their complaints had nothing to do with conscience but only with “paying a little money.” Those who complained, they suggested, were fanatics with a martyr complex who sought to divide the colonists in their conflict with King George. The solar system would change, John Adams said, before they gave up their religious establishment.

Adams was wrong. Massachusetts finally disestablished in 1833. The state, in fact, is not capable of producing true religion. Taxes and coercion cannot produce faith in Christ, which is the only basis of true religion, but rather punish those whose conscience is bound to pursue obedience to Christ.

The spirit of Massachusetts nevertheless is stirring anew. Ignorant and obstinate religion must again be restricted to prevent injury to our society. Individual religious conscience must yield to the general good of society, enforced if necessary by taxes, fines, and imprisonment.

Will we fear “those who kill the body and after that have nothing more that they can do” (Luke 12:4)? Or like Obadiah Holmes, will we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us?

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Gregory A. Wills is dean of the School of Theology and professor of church history at Southern Seminary. This article was originally published in the winter 2015 issue of Southern Seminary Magazine.