Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Vermont Bar Journal, Fall 2017, Vol. 48, No. 3 | Page 17

culiar privileges of the whole visible church
of christ on earth !
May God have mercy on
him, that his spirit may be saved in the day
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of the Lord Jesus Christ. AMEN.” 31
Bethiah Holton
Bethiah Holton had a spiritual experi-
ence. After reading her Bible and mature-
ly deliberating on what she read she came
to believe in universal salvation. Everyone
would be saved, not just those who were
good Christians. She then wrote a letter
to the Church of Christ at Westminster, of
which she was a member, saying:
“I firmly believe, that all mankind will
finally be restored to the divine favour
through the suffering, death and atone-
ment of Christ. And I should desire you
to consider the character given of Christ,
in john iv, 14, we have seen and do testify
that the Father sent the Son to be the sav-
iour of the world, that is, all mankind. The
language of scripture in this, and almost in-
numerable other passages, is that he tast-
ed death for every man, that the benefits
he has obtained extend as far as the effects
of Adam’s fall, and that by his obedience
the free gift came upon all men to justifica-
tion of life.”
The congregation reacted strongly to this
statement of faith, which leading members
regarded as heresy. The church formal-
ly voted to admonish her to abandon this
thinking, but shortly after this, Mrs. Holton
“admonished them to beware how they
walked, and to be careful by their virtuous
THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • FALL 2017
examples, to lead others to the practice of
the same virtues.” Now she had gone too
far, adding insult to heretical thinking, and
something must be done.
A meeting was called for May 17, 1795,
for the purpose of voting to deny her the
privileges of church membership, which in
1795 was a serious loss of attachment to
the community. She asked two friends to
represent her at the meeting, both lawyers,
one of them a member of the Vermont Su-
preme Court. Lot Hall was in the second
of seven terms on the court. Although he
lived in Westminster, he was not a mem-
ber of that church. After Judge Hall was in-
troduced, another member objected to his
appearance in part because he had been
educated in the profession of the law. The
congregation agreed, and voted to pre-
vent him from speaking in her defense.
The trial proceeded. Many members of
the congregation stood to express their
disapprobation of Mrs. Holton’s conduct.
Finally, near the end of the discussion,
Judge Hall could stand it no more and he
stood up, saying:
“Mr. Moderator, although I am not a
member of this body, and consequently
can claim no right on that accord, and not-
withstanding that I am debarred by a pre-
vious vote of yours, on this occasion, from
uttering a word on behalf of the distressed
woman before you I am compelled by the
call of humanity to defend a worthy, dis-
consequences of which would be “insub-
ordination, contempt for the institution of
marriage, mutual distrust, deception of ev-
ery kind, intemperate drinking, loathsome
disease, spurious progeny, murderous arti-
f ices to prevent propagation, subversion of
all government and social happiness, and
introduction of complete weakness.” 29
Dr. Pettingill explained the consequenc-
es of his refusal. “Should you continue ob-
stinate, and consequently receive the sen-
tence of excommunication, you will be de-
barred from the privileges of the whole
visible church on earth, and ranked with
hypocrites and unbelievers; we can no lon-
ger extend to you those tokens of friend-
ship, we owe to the rest of the world; and
you must lie under the displeasure of Him,
by whose authority we act.” 30 The Rupert
process took more than a year, allowing
the young man all that time to change his
mind, but apparently he never did.
Six months later, Dr. Pettingill issued
“The Form of Excommunication,” which
was read to the brethren of the church, as
they stood to hear the final verdict. Be-
cause he “is guilty of the irregularities al-
ready noticed, and continues perverse,
notwithstanding all the means we could
use to reclaim him, we do now pronounce
him excommunicated ! debarred from all the pe -
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