“Be silent,” said the chaplain, “I shall not stand by and listen to such reprehensible language.”
“I’ll not be gagged, I shall speak the truth,” persisted Fleming.
And for this without loss of time he was transferred to the dark.
All the chaplain’s professional feelings were also roused by another incident that transpired not long after his arrival. It was discovered that a prisoner, George Anderson, a man of colour, who had been educated at a missionary college, had through the connivance of a warder been endeavouring to sow the seeds of disbelief in the minds of many of the prisoners. He had turned the chaplain and his sacred office into ridicule, asserting that the services of the Church of England were nonsense from beginning to end, that the prayers contained false doctrine, that the Athanasian Creed was all rubbish, and that the church “went with a lie in her right hand.” This man Anderson must have been a thorn in the chaplain’s side, for they had more than once a serious scuffle in the polemics of the church. Mr. Russell got warm in the discussion of a certain passage in Scripture, and jumping up suddenly to reach his Bible, struck his leg against the table. After this Anderson had drawn a caricature of the scene, writing underneath, “Oh, my leg!” and from henceforth the chaplain went by the name of “Oh, my leg.” At another time there was a long dispute as to the date of the translation of the Septuagint, and upon the service for “the Visitation of the Sick.” Anderson, on returning to his cell from Mr. Russell’s office, had been in the habit of taking off his coat, and shaking it, saying always: “Peugh—— I smell of fire and brimstone.” One cannot refrain from observing here how much better oakum picking would have suited Anderson than theological controversy.
Fortunately among the prisoners were two—Johnson and Manister Worts—who were more than a match for the unorthodox black man. Anderson asserted that the Athanasian Creed was objected to by many able divines; he took exception to the title, “religious” given to the king in the prayer for the High Court of Parliament, whether he was religious or not; he maintained that his animadversions upon the church were the very words used by his former pastor, the Reverend Silas Fletcher, from the pulpit. The knowledge and acquirements of Johnson and Worts however enabled them “triumphantly to refute Anderson.”