SAMUEL CARTLEDGE: A COLONIAL SAUL OF TARSUS

After a remarkable ministry of preaching and planting churches in Virginia, North and South Carolina, Daniel Marshall moved to Georgia in 1771.  But Daniel Marshall was not entirely welcome in Georgia.  Upon entering the colony, he was arrested by Samuel Cartledge for the crime of preaching the Word of God.  When “conducting religious service in a grove and while upon his knees offering the opening prayer, he was suddenly interrupted by a heavy hand being laid upon his shoulder with the exclamation, ‘You are my prisoner!’  Rising from the posture of devotion, the venerable man of God, with benignant face and snow-white hair, stood front to front with a stern officer of the law.  The devout preacher was informed that he was a transgressor of the law in that he had ‘preached in the parish of St. Paul!’  In brief, Mr. Marshall had violated the enactment of 1758 which provided that worship in the colony should be ‘according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England.’  Thereupon he was forced to give security for his appearance in Augusta on the following Monday to answer for a violation of the law.”^[i] 

Obeying the summons, he appeared in court and “was ordered to leave the province of Georgia and to visit it no more in the capacity of a preacher.  With fervor and stern courage he boldly replied, ‘Whether it be right to obey God or man, judge ye’ … Mrs. Marshall gave earnest expression with solemn denunciation of the law, quoting with fluency passage after passage of Scripture.  The stern constable, Samuel Cartlege, was so impressed by the inspired words to which she gave utterance that he was pricked to the heart, and was ultimately led to Christ.  Five years later Mr. Marshall baptized this same constable.”^[ii]  (The presiding judge was also converted).

“This is the province of the glorious gospel.  Sin separates the strongest friendships; but grace unites in bonds of affection that nothing can sunder.  What a pleasing sight it must have been to the spectators on the banks of the Kiokee, when he who had formerly laid his hands on the minister of salvation, saying, ‘You are my prisoner,’ was now led gently into the baptismal waters by that same minister, and buried in the name of the Trinity, in hope of a blessed resurrection!  Many a tear no doubt fell on that occasion, when the meek preacher was repaying his persecutor with good will, and trying to help him on towards heaven.”^[iii]

“Not long after that, Cartledge began serving as a deacon at Kiokee Baptist Church, the same church his former prisoner had planted … In 1789 he began preaching and was ordained by Daniel Marshall’s son, Abraham.  Samuel Cartledge went on to serve in the preaching ministry for the next 50 years of his life.  God used Daniel Marshall and his family as the means to grant Samuel Cartledge the new birth, baptism as a believer, and place him on the path to ordination into the gospel ministry.’”^[iv] 

For more than fifty years Cartledge pastored a Baptist church in South Carolina.  He also regularly assisted other churches and was instrumental in planting numerous churches throughout his long life and ministry.

 “As late as 1843, at the age of 93, he travelled from his home in South Carolina on a visit to Georgia, and after preaching with his usual earnestness, in the very neighborhood where he had arrested Daniel Marshall, seventy-two years before, he was thrown from his horse as he was setting out for home, and so much injured that his death was the result.”[v]  Cartledge was buried nearby in the cemetery of one of his church plants, Damascus Baptist.   

“Friends considered his sudden and apparently painless death to be providential.  They had often heard Samuel say, ‘I’m more than willing to die.  I feel that to be absent from the body and present with the Lord would be far better.  For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.  But if it be the will of God I would greatly prefer to die suddenly and be relieved from a long period of suffering and helplessness.’  The morning of his death he had quoted those very passages to Dr. Crawford as he led morning devotions for the family.”[vi]

The following obituary was printed in the Edgefield Advertiser newspaper: “It is with feelings of deep regret that we announce to his numerous relatives and acquaintances, the death of this venerable soldier of the Revolution, and faithful Minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

“At an early age he entered the Revolution, was present at the siege at Savannah, in the scenes of which, he acquitted himself with honor to his country and the great cause in which he was engaged … But it is not the character of a soldier of the Revolution, that has endeared him to the bosoms of all who knew him.  He was for nearly seventy years a pious and devoted minister of the gospel.  Although of limited education, his extensive usefulness has never been questioned.  Thousands, who have long since gone to their Heavenly home, will rise up and bless the memory of the sainted patriarch, who, under God, was the great instrument of their eternal happiness.  And other thousands will admire, if not follow, his example.  His zeal and his piety uniformly kept pace with each other, and it is difficult to determine in which he excelled … religion was his great theme to the last.  Wherever he went, religion was invariably the most prominent topic of conversation, and if at any time he discoursed of other matters, it was because these subjects interested others and not him.  He seldom had an interview with any person to whom he did not introduce the subject of religion before parting.

“At the age of 93, almost incredible, he was found riding from ten to twenty miles a day, through every description of weather, element or inclement, preaching the Gospel of Christ.  He closed his earthly career in the active service of his Great Master.  He died in the discharge of duty.  Honored, respected, and beloved, he has gone to his long home, to give up his stewardship, and received his Master’s award, ‘Well done GOOD and FAITHFUL servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord.’  Peace to his memory, and let every heart say Amen.  ‘Though dead, he yet speaketh’; his pious example will live in the remembrance of us all.  It calls upon us in the loudest accents, ‘prepare to meet thy God.’”

“When the Edgefield Association met the following September at Salem Church, resolutions were adopted in honor of ‘our beloved and venerable father in the gospel, Elder S. Cartledge’ … On Monday of the meeting … Reverend J. M. Childs preached the funeral sermon from 2 Tim. 4:7, ‘I have fought a good fight.’ 

“Indeed Samuel had fought a good fight and a long one, but there was more to tie him to St. Paul than an appropriately chosen text for his funeral.  Samuel like Saul had been a member of the established church and had persecuted those who followed a new and different faith, ironically in the parish of St Paul.  As Saul had experienced God through a great light from Heaven on the road to Damascus, Samuel was confronted with the gospel through a new light missionary.  Samuel, like Saul, travelled much, served tirelessly, evangelized fervently, loved his people like children and led a piously devoted life.  His peers occasionally referred to him as ‘Saul of Tarsus’.  His own frequent quotations from and allusions to St. Paul make it clear that he personally admired the famous Apostle and may have styled his ministry after him..”[vii]

The parallels between Saul of Tarsus and Samuel Cartledge are striking:

1.  Before conversion, both were members of the religious establishment.

2.  Cartledge arrested Daniel Marshall in the parish of St. Paul.

3.  Saul, on his way to Damascus to arrest Christians, was arrested by God and gloriously saved; Cartledge arrested Daniel Marshall and was himself arrested by God and gloriously saved.

4.  When Saul came near Damascus, “suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven” (Acts 9:3); Cartledge encountered Daniel Marshall, a “New Light” of the Great Awakening. 

5.  Both fervently preached the gospel and planted churches.

6.  Both had unrelenting zeal from conversion to death. 

7.  Both had an extensive itinerant ministry.

8.  Aquila and Priscilla were great assets to Paul; Daniel and Martha Stearns Marshall were a “colonial Aquila and Priscilla” who led Cartledge to Christ and taught him the ways of God.

9.  Cartledge planted a church near where he was converted and most likely was the one who named it Damascus Baptist Church.  Moreover, he is buried in the cemetery of that church.

10.  On the last day of his life, Cartledge quoted the Apostle Paul and a text of the Apostle Paul was used in his memorial service held by the Edgefield Association. 

Samuel Cartledge truly was a colonial Saul of Tarsus.

[i] A History of the Baptists in the Southern States East of the Mississippi, B. F. Riley, 1898, pp. 30, 31.

[ii] Riley, pp. 31, 32.

[iii] Georgia Baptists: historical and biographical, Jesse H. Campbell, 1874, p. 208.

[iv] The Prisoner: Samuel Cartledge and the Earliest Georgia Baptists, Chuck Ivey, Oct. 27, 2020 edition of the London Lyceum, www.thelondonlyceum.com. 

[v] History of the Baptist Denomination in Georgia, Samuel Boykin, vol. I. p. 352.

[vi] Samuel Cartledge and the Long Arm of Daniel and Martha Stearns Marshall, delivered by Tony Cartledge at the 2012 Fellowship of Baptist Historians meeting.

[vii] Ibid.