or Britain brought to America.57
John Dury stressed the expense and importance of conversion in one of the earliest missionary texts, The Glorious Progress of the Gospel, amongst the Indians in New England. He exhorted his readers, “Come forth ye Masters of money, part with your Gold to promote the Gospel; let the gift of God in temporal things make way, for the Indian receipt of spirituals.”58 Rather than suggesting a transatlantic reciprocity, he pinned his appeal on Christian obligation: “If you give any thing yearly,” he concluded, “Remember Christ will be your Pensioner.” The main compensation suggested for these contributions was spiritual. For parting with their gold the English would underwrite the Indians’ reception of spiritual wealth and receive the blessing of God.
Dury’s preface was written in the early, optimistic stages of Christian missions in America. By the end of the seventeenth century, especially after King Philip’s War had destroyed most of New England’s praying Indians, missionaries began to acquire a tone of pessimism and urgency.59 While they adapted images of exchange to their projects, they did so less to emphasize the value of Indian conversion than to stress the debt England owed America’s natives for what they had suffered. This shift may have reflected a growing familiarity with the language of debt, especially after the founding of the Bank of England in 1690.60 It also, however, was a response to glaring evidence of colonial exploitation, Indian demise, and evangelical failure.
In 1693 Patrick Gordon, a Scottish Episcopalian minister, appended a proposal for spreading the gospel in pagan countries to his Geography Anatomized, a cultural survey of the globe.61 Of North America Gordon wrote of the great embarrassment to England, “That those very Indians who inhabit near on the English Pale … should still continue in most wretched ignorance…. O Christians. Shall we covet and thirst after their Talents of Gold? and yet keep hid in a Napkin that Talent entrusted to us. Shall we greedily bereave them of their Precious Pearls? And not declare unto them the knowledge of the Pearl of Price. No! No! Let us not act as others have done in making Gold our God, and Gain the sole design of our Trading.”62 Focused on what he saw as the theft of America by the English, Gordon did not even mention trade. Citing parables about the Kingdom of God, he stressed the kingdom’s value and reminded his readers of their duty not to hoard its blessings. He sharpened this reminder by pairing the allusion to the spiritual gold of God’s kingdom with a reference to the Indians’ material gold. Rather than selling the idea of supporting missions by alluding to the riches of America, he suggested that those who have acquired wealth from the Americas owe some return.
Gordon drafted part of this proposal in a letter to the SPG, and it was transcribed into the society’s journal in 1701.63 The next year the SPG sent Gordon to Jamaica, Long Island, as one of its first missionaries.64 Although Gordon’s death shortly after his arrival prevented any sustained contribution to the SPG’s efforts, his publication may have influenced the society’s preachers. In 1704 Gilbert Burnet, the well-known Latitudinarian and chronicler of the Civil War, appealed to merchants, noting, “You great Dealers in Trade, who have had so plentiful a Harvest in Temporal things, from the Productions of those Countries, and from the Industry of our Colonies settled among them, are, in a more especial manner, bound to minister to them in Spiritual things.”65 As he alluded to Paul’s formulation Burnet told his audience they owed America a spiritual debt that could be repaid through the contribution of funds. He thus suggested that financing missionary work translated into a spiritual expiation for material gain.
Other SPG preachers, like George Stanhope, the Dean of Canterbury, emphasized the idea of spiritual debt by comparing merchants to sailors acquiring Indian gold with European glass. Presenting this image with reference to Paul’s vision of spiritual-material exchange in 1714, however, he reversed the usual description of transatlantic trade. Emphasizing the “obligation” of all Christians to spread the word of God, he wrote:
But this Obligation seems to be drawn yet closer, upon All, whose Fortunes are owing to any Commerce with those Ignorants and Unbelievers. For, may I not be allowed to turn to St. Paul’s Argument, and affirm upon this Occasion, that to Them, whose Strength and Toil is consumed in the Service of your Carnal Things, Some Debt is contracted, Some Title thereby convey’d, to the Spiritual Advantages, they might receive from you? This were to act like generous Traders indeed; To barter Gold for Brass, and Pearl for Trifles; in returning the noblest and most useful Treasure, for Riches, which they knew not either the Use, or the Value of.66
While gentile Christians of the early church offered material help to Jewish ones in return for sharing the spiritual wealth of Christ, Stanhope suggested that the British owed a spiritual debt to those who had given them material wealth. The change was subtle but significant. Material acquisition preceded spiritual generosity. The order and the origin of exchange were overturned. This reversal allowed Stanhope to validate the very trade that the image of gold for glass condemned. The Indians gave away gold because they did not understand the use of it. By taking their gold and repaying them with spiritual wealth, the British were donating spiritual pearls for material trinkets.
Rather than badgering his audience into charity, Stanhope tried to prompt their generosity by offering a pleasing image of mutually profitable trade. A few years later Edward Chandler, Bishop of Coventry and Litchfield, expanded on Stanhope’s strategy by presenting a moral vision based on reciprocity: “Natural Justice guides Men to be kind to that People, and Benefactors to those Places, by whom, and where they live, thrive, and prosper…. The moral sense whereof is this, that we return good, wherever we receive good: Return it not in Beads and Baubles, but in a Species, which may indeed cost us little, but to them, that are without Christ, and without God in the World, is of inestimable Value.”67 Although he cited “natural Justice,” Chandler echoed Paul’s description of exchange when he stressed the importance of repaying goodness. His goal may have been the gathering of money for mission, but he approached it by describing colonialism as an exchange of gifts rather than exploitation. Describing America as England’s “benefactor,” Chandler called his audience to express thanks by offering America a gift of “inestimable value,” the knowledge of Christ.
The idea of mission allowed Chandler to reverse the usual vision of gold traded for glass. Britain would give true gold instead of the “beads and baubles” other colonists offered for the wealth of America. At first cheated of their treasure, the Indians would now receive something more lasting and useful. Their gain did not required Britain’s loss but in fact enabled its continued enrichment.
“We are more poor, they more rich by this”
The idea of spiritual wealth flowing to America in exchange for temporal riches became a cliche in missionary writings, especially Anglican ones, through the mid-eighteenth century. In 1709 William Dawes, Bishop of Chester, said in a sermon before the SPG, “[W]e cannot make them a more rich amends, for all these Advantages, for all these their carnal Things, than by letting them reap our spiritual ones.”68 Several decades later Martin Benson, Bishop of Gloucester, proclaimed, “We abundantly reap temporal things thence, and it is just therefore that we should sow spiritual things there.”69 Reminding his readers of their Christian duty as he alluded to their profits, Benson drew simultaneously on images of husbandry and trade, combining the Gospels’ evocations of God’s vineyard with Paul’s juxtaposition of spiritual and material wealth. Perhaps John Waugh, the Dean of Gloucester, made the point most persuasively in 1722 when he wrote,
Nor can we otherwise do Justice, or express our Gratitude to those poor Infidels, from whose Countries we have drawn such immense Wealth … than by repaying them spiritual for temporal Riches. This, as it is an easie Expence to the Contributors, for so great Gains, so will it be a Means of procuring to those that receive the Advantage of it, a Treasure of inestimable Value, The Knowledge of the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent. A Treasure, which St. Paul set so great a Value upon,
