seats
unhewed trees till we cut plankes; our Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to
two neighbouring trees. In foul weather we shifted into an old rotten
tent; this came by way of adventure for new. This was our Church till we
built a homely thing like a barne set upon Cratchets, covered with
rafts, sedge, and earth; so also was the walls; the best of our houses
were of like curiosity.... Yet we had daily Common Prayer morning and
evening; every Sunday two sermons; and every three months a holy
Communion till our Minister died: but our Prayers daily with an Homily
on Sundays wee continued two or three years after, till more Preachers
came."

According to Bruce's _Institutional History of Virginia in the
Seventeenth Century_[35] it would seem that the early Virginians were as
strict as the New Englanders about the matter of church attendance and
Sabbath observance. When we come across the notation that "Sarah Purdy
was indicted 1682 for shelling corn on Sunday," we may feel rather sure
that during at least the first eighty years of life about Jamestown
Sunday must have been indeed a day of rest. Says Bruce: "The first
General Assembly to meet in Virginia passed a law requiring of every
citizen attendance at divine services on Sunday. The penalty imposed was
a fine, if one failed to be present. If the delinquent was a freeman he
was to be compelled to pay three shillings for each offense, to be
devoted to the church, and should he be a slave he was to be sentenced
to be whipped."[36]

In Georgia and the Carolinas of the later eighteenth century the
influence of Methodism--especially after the coming of Wesley and
Whitefield--was marked, while the Scotch Presbyterian and the French
Huguenots exercised a wholesome effect through their strict honesty and
upright lives. Among these two latter sects women seem to have been very
much in the back-ground, but among the Methodists, especially in
Georgia, the influence of woman in the church was certainly noticeable.
There was often in the words and deeds of Southern women in general a
note of confident trust in God's love and in a joyous future life,
rather lacking in the writings of New England. Eliza Pinckney, for
instance, when but seventeen years old, wrote to her brother George a
long letter of advice, containing such tender, yet almost exultant
language as the following: "To be conscious we have an Almighty friend
to bless our Endeavours, and to assist us in all Difficulties, giv