GABRIEL BERNON 147 



But though he gradually withdrew from active partic- Providence 

 ipatiou in business affairs, he lost none of his former 

 zeal in the cause of religion. While living in Boston he 

 had been a devoted member of the French Reformed 

 church, and the relations he afterwards sustained with 

 that church were always of the most cordial nature, but 

 on coming to Rhode Island, where there were not enough 

 of his countrymen to support such an organization, he 

 immediately allied himself with the Anglican communion. 

 More fervent in his faith than the majority of the Epis- 

 copalians in the colony, and accustomed to act rather Founder of 

 than talk, he was largely instrumental in founding the 

 first three Anglican churches in the province — Trinity 

 Church in Newport, St, Paul's Church in Kingston and 

 St. John's Church in Providence. In the year 1724, 

 when he was eighty-one years old, he crossed over to Devotion to 

 present to the Bishop of London the needs of the church 

 in Providence and the benefits which would accrue from 

 sending there an able and competent minister. Sui'ely 

 it is not too much to say that a man who, in the declining 

 years of his life, was willing to undertake the perils and 

 hardships of a voyage that was at its 'best an uncomfort- 

 able and hazardous proceeding — and willing to do this 

 not for personal motives but for the well-being of others 

 — was a man of heroic mould, and one of whom his de- 

 scendants may well be proud. 



Bernon had lost much of his property by some of his Last Years 

 later ventures, yet enough remained to him to enable him 

 to build a fine house in Providence ''near Roger Will- 

 iams' spring," and there he lived his last few years in quiet 

 happiness, giving his time to writings and correspond- 

 ence, mostly of a religious character. Up to the very 

 last his Protestantism was pronounced and vigorous. He 

 could never endure anything in the nature of priestly as- 

 sumption or ecclesiastical domination, and in a letter to 

 the vestry of Trinity Church in Newport written in his 

 old age, denouncing a pamphlet on church order which 



