Unitarianism in America / Cooke, George Willis, 1848-1923

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Title: Unitarianism in America

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UNITARIANISM IN AMERICA
A History of its Origin and Development


BY


GEORGE WILLIS COOKE

MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, AMERICAN ACADEMY OF
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE, ETC.




PREFACE.


The aim I have had in view in writing this book has been to give a history
of the origin of Unitarianism in the United States, how it has organized
itself, and what it has accomplished. It seemed desirable to deal more
fully than has been done hitherto with the obscure beginnings of the
Unitarian movement in New England; but limits of space have made it
impossible to treat this phase of the subject in other than a cursory
manner. It deserves an exhaustive treatment, which will amply repay the
necessary labor to this end. The theological controversies that led to the
separation of the Unitarians from the older Congregational body have been
only briefly alluded to, the design of my work not requiring an ampler
treatment. It was not thought best to cover the ground so ably traversed by
Rev. George E. Ellis, in his Half-century of the Unitarian Controversy;
Rev. Joseph Henry Allen, in his Our Liberal Movement in Theology; Rev.
William Channing Gannett, in his Memoir of Dr. Ezra Stiles Gannett; and by
Rev. John White Chadwick, in his Old and New Unitarian Beliefs. The attempt
here made has been to supplement these works, and to treat of the practical
side of Unitarianism,--its organizations, charities, philanthropies, and
reforms.

With the theological problems involved in the history of Unitarianism this
volume deals only so far as they have affected its general development. I
have endeavored to treat of them fairly and without prejudice, to state the
position of each side to the various controversies in the words of those
who have accepted its point of view, and to judge of them as phases of a
larger religious growth. I have not thought it wise to attempt anything
approaching an exhaustive treatment of the controversies produced by the
transcendental movement and by "the Western issue." If they are to be dealt
with in the true spirit of the historical method, it must be at a period
more remote from these discussions than that of one who participated in
them, however slightly. I have endeavored to treat of all phases of
Unitarianism without reference to local interests and without sectional
preferences. If my book does not indicate such regard to what is national
rather than to what is provincial, as some of my readers may desire, it is
due to inability to secure information that would have given a broader
character to my treatment of the subject.

The present work may appear to some of its readers to have been written in
a sectarian spirit, with a purpose to magnify the excellences of
Unitarianism, and to ignore its limitations. Such has not been the purpose
I have kept before me; but, rather, my aim has been to present the facts
candidly and justly, and to treat of them from the standpoint of a student
of the religious evolution of mankind. Unitarianism in this country
presents an attempt to bring religion into harmony with philosophy and
science, and to reconcile Christianity with the modern spirit. Its effort
in this direction is one that deserves careful consideration, especially in
view of the unity and harmony it has developed in the body of believers who
accept its teachings. The Unitarian body is a small one, but it has a
history of great significance with reference to the future development of
Christianity.

The names of those who accept Unitarianism have not been given in this book
in any boastful spirit. A faith that is often spoken against may justify
itself by what it has accomplished, and its best fruits are the men and
women who have lived in the spirit of its teachings. In presenting the
names of those who are not in any way identified with Unitarian churches,
the purpose has been to suggest the wide and inclusive character of the
Unitarian movement, and to indicate that it is not represented merely by a
body of churches, but that it is an individual way of looking at the facts
of life and its problems.

In writing the following pages, I have had constantly in mind those who
have not been educated as Unitarians, and who have come into this
inheritance through struggle and search. Not having been to the manner born
myself, I have sought to provide such persons with the kind of information
that would have been helpful to me in my endeavors to know the Unitarian
life and temper. Something of what appears in these pages is due to this
desire to help those who wish to know concretely what Unitarianism is, and
what it has said and done to justify its existence. This will account for
the manner of treatment and for some of the topics selected.

When this work was begun, the design was that it should form a part of the
exhibit of Unitarianism in this country presented at the seventy-fifth
anniversary of the formation of the American Unitarian Association. The
time required for a careful verification of facts made it impossible to
have the book ready at that date. The delay in its publication has not
freed the work from all errors and defects, but it has given the
opportunity for a more adequate treatment of many phases of the subject.
Much of the work required in its preparation does not show itself in the
following pages; but it has involved an extended examination of manuscript
journals and records, as well as printed reports of societies, newspapers,
magazines, pamphlets, and books. Many of the subjects dealt with, not
having been touched upon in any previous historical work, have demanded a
first-hand study of records, often difficult to find access to, and even
more difficult to summarize in an interesting and adequate manner.

I wish here to warmly thank all those persons, many in number and too
numerous to give all their names, who have generously aided me with their
letters and manuscripts, and by the loan of books, magazines, pamphlets,
and newspapers. Without their aid the book would have been much less
adequate in its treatment of many subjects than it is at present. Though I
am responsible for the book as it presents itself to the reader, much of
its value is due to those who have thus labored with me in its preparation.
In manuscript and in proof-sheet it has been read by several persons, who
have kindly aided in securing accuracy to names, dates, and historic facts.

G.W.C.

BOSTON, October 1, 1902.




CONTENTS


I. INTRODUCTION.--ENGLISH SOURCES OF AMERICAN UNITARIANISM
  Renaissance
  Reformation
  Toleration
  Arminianism
  English Rationalists

II. THE LIBERAL SIDE OF PURITANISM
  The Church of Authority and the Church of Freedom
  Seventeenth-century Liberals
  Growth of Liberty in Church Methods
  A Puritan Rationalist
  Harvard College

III. THE GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY IN THE CHURCHES
  Arminianism
  The Growth of Arminianism
  Robert Breck
  Books Read by Liberal Men
  The Great Awakening
  Cardinal Beliefs of the Liberals
  Publications defining the Liberal Beliefs
  Phases of Religious Progress

IV. THE SILENT ADVANCE OF LIBERALISM
  Subordinate Nature of Christ
  Some of the Liberal Leaders
  The First Unitarian
  A Pronounced Universalist
  Other Men of Mark
  The Second Period of Revivals
  King's Chapel becomes Unitarian
  Other Unitarian Movements
  Growth of Toleration

V. THE PERIOD OF CONTROVERSY
  The Monthly Anthology
  Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Piety, and Charity
  General Repository
  The Christian Disciple
  Dr. Morse and American Unitarianism
  Evangelical Missionary Society
  The Berry Street Conference
  The Publishing Fund Society
  Harvard Divinity School
  The Unitarian Miscellany
  The Christian Register
  Results of the Division in Congregationalism
  Final Separation of State and Church

VI. THE AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION
  Initial Meetings
  Work of the First Year
  Work of the First Quarter of a Century
  Publication of Tracts and Books
  Domestic Missions

VII. THE PERIOD OF RADICALISM
  Depression in Denominational Activities
  Publications
  A Firm of Publishers
  The Brooks Fund
  Missionary Efforts
  The Western Unitarian Conference
  The Autumnal Conventions
  Influence of the Civil War
  The Sanitary Commission
  Results of Fifteen years

VIII. THE DENOMINATIONAL AWAKENING
  The New York Convention of 1865
  New Life in the Unitarian Association
  The New Theological Position
  Organization of the Free Religious Association
  Unsuccessful Attempts at Reconciliation
  The Year Book Controversy
  Missionary Activities
  College Town Missions
  Theatre Preaching
  Organization of Local Conferences
  Fellowship and Fraternity
  Results of the Denominational Awakening

IX. GROWTH OF DENOMINATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS
  "The Western Issue"
  Fellowship with Universalists
  Officers of the American Unitarian Association
  The American Unitarian Association as a Representative Boy
  The Church Building Loan Fund
  The Unitarian Building in Boston
  Growth of the Devotional Spirit
  The Seventy-fifth Anniversary

X. THE MINISTRY AT LARGE
  Association of Young Men
  Preaching to the Poor
  Tuckerman as Minister to the Poor
  Tuckerman's Methods
  Organization of Charities
  Benevolent Fraternity of Churches
  Other Ministers at Large
  Ministry at Large in Other Cities

XI. ORGANIZED SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORK
  Boston Sunday School Society
  Unitarian Sunday School Society
  Western Unitarian Sunday School Society
  Unity Clubs
  The Ladies' Commission on Sunday-school Books

XII. THE WOMEN'S ALLIANCE AND ITS PREDECESSORS
  Women's Western Unitarian Conference
  Women's Auxiliary Conference
  The National Alliance
  Cheerful Letter and Post-office Missions
  Associate Alliances
  Alliance Methods

XIII. MISSIONS TO INDIA AND JAPAN
  Society respecting the State of Religion in India
  Dall's Work in India
  Recent Work in India
  The Beginnings in Japan

XIV. THE MEADVILLE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL
  The Beginnings in Meadville
  The Growth of the School

XV. UNITARIAN PHILANTHROPIES
  Unitarian Charities
  Education of the Blind
  Care of the Insane
  Child-saving Missions
  Care of the Poor
  Humane Treatment of Animals
  Young Men's Christian Unions
  Educational Work in the South
  Educational Work for the Indians

XVI. UNITARIANS AND REFORMS
  Peace Movement
  Temperance Reform
  Anti-slavery
  The Enfranchisement of Women
  Civil Service Reform

XVII. UNITARIAN MEN AND WOMEN
  Eminent Statesmen
  Some Representative Unitarians
  Judges and Legislators
  Boston Unitarianism

XVIII. UNITARIANS AND EDUCATION
  Pioneers of the Higher Criticism
  The Catholic Influence of Harvard University
  The Work of Horace Mann
  Elizabeth Peabody and the Kindergarten
  Work of Unitarian Women for Education
  Popular Education and Public Libraries
  Mayo's Southern Ministry of Education

XIX. UNITARIANISM AND LITERATURE
  Influence of Unitarian Environment
  Literary Tendencies
  Literary Tastes of Unitarian Ministers
  Unitarians as Historians
  Scientific Unitarians
  Unitarian Essayists
  Unitarian Novelists
  Unitarian Artists and Poets

XX. THE FUTURE OF UNITARIANISM

APPENDIX.
  A. Formation of the Local Conferences
  B. Unitarian Newspapers and Magazines




UNITARIANISM IN AMERICA.

A HISTORY OF ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT.




I.


INTRODUCTION.--ENGLISH SOURCES OF AMERICAN UNITARIANISM.

The sources of American Unitarianism are to be found in the spirit of
individualism developed by the Renaissance, the tendency to free inquiry
that manifested itself in the Protestant Reformation, and the general
movement of the English churches of the seventeenth century toward
toleration and rationalism. The individualism of modern thought and life
first found distinct expression in the Renaissance; and it was essentially
a new creation, and not a revival. Hitherto the tribe, the city, the
nation, the guild, or the church, had been the source of authority, the
centre of power, and the giver of life. Although Greece showed a desire for
freedom of thought, and a tendency to recognize the worth of the individual
and his capacity as a discoverer and transmitter of truth, it did not set
the individual mind free from bondage to the social and political power of
the city. Socrates and Plato saw somewhat of the real worth of the
individual, but the great mass of the people were never emancipated from
the old tribal authority as inherited by the city-state; and not one of the
great dramatists had conceived of the significance of a genuine
individualism.[1]

[Sidenote: Renaissance.]

The Renaissance advanced to a new conception of the worth and the capacity
of the individual mind, and for the first time in history recognized the
full social meaning of personality in man. It sanctioned and authenticated
the right of the individual to think for himself, and it developed clearly
the idea that he may become the transmitter of valid revelations of
spiritual truth. That God may speak through individual intuition and
reason, and that this inward revelation may be of the highest authority and
worth, was a conception first brought to distinct acceptance by the
Renaissance.

A marked tendency of the Reformation which it received from the Renaissance
was its acceptance of the free spirit of individualism. The Roman Church
had taught that all valid religious truth comes to mankind through its own
corporate existence, but the Reformers insisted that truth is the result of
individual insight and investigation. The Reformation magnified the worth
of personality, and made it the central force in all human effort.[2] To
gain a positive personal life, one of free initiative power, that may in
itself become creative, and capable of bringing truth and life to larger
issues, was the chief motive of the Protestant leaders in their work of
reformation. The result was that, wherever genuine Protestantism appeared,
it manifested itself by its attitude of free inquiry, its tendency to
emphasize individual life and thought, and its break with the traditions of
the past, whether in literature or in religion. The Reformation did not,
however, bring the principle of individuality to full maturity; and it
retained many of the old institutional methods, as well as a large degree
of their social motive. The Reformed churches were often as autocratic as
the Catholic Church had been, and as little inclined to approve of
individual departures from their creeds and disciplines; but the motive of
individualism they had adopted in theory, and could not wholly depart from
in practice. Their merit was that they had recognized and made a place for
the principle of individuality; and it proved to be a developing social
power, however much they might ignore or try to suppress it.

[Sidenote: Reformation.]

In its earliest phases Protestantism magnified the importance of reason in
religious investigations, although it used an imperfect method in so doing.
All doctrines were subjected more or less faithfully to this test, every
rite was criticised and reinterpreted, and the Bible itself was handled in
the freest manner. The individualism of the movement showed itself in
Luther's doctrine of justification by faith, and his confidence in the
validity of personal insight into spiritual realities. Most of all this
tendency manifested itself in the assertion of the right of every believer
to read the Bible for himself, and to interpret it according to his own
needs. The vigorous assertion of the right to the free interpretation of
the Word of God, and to personal insight into spiritual truth, led their
followers much farther than the first reformers had anticipated.
Individualism showed itself in an endless diversity of personal opinions,
and in the creation of many little groups of believers, who were drawn
together by an interest in individual leaders or by a common acceptance of
hair-splitting interpretations of religious truths.[3]

The Protestant Church inculcated the law of individual fidelity to God, and
declared that the highest obligation is that of personal faith and purity.
What separated the Catholic and the Protestant was not merely a question of
socialism as against individualism,[4] but it was also a problem of outward
or inward law, of environment or intuition as the source of wholesome
teaching, of ritualism or belief as the higher form of religious
expression. The Protestants held that belief is better than ritual, faith
than sacraments, inward authority than external force. They insisted that
the individual has a right to think his own thoughts and to pray his own
prayer, and that the revelation of the Supreme Good Will is to all who
inwardly bear God's image and to every one whose will is a centre of new
creative force in the world of conduct. They affirmed that the individual
is of more worth than the social organism, the soul than the church, the
motive than the conduct, the search for truth than the truth attained.

These tendencies of Protestantism found expression in the rationalism that
appeared in England at the time of the Commonwealth, and especially at the
Restoration. All the men of broader temper proclaimed the use of reason in
the discussion of theological problems. In their opinion the Bible was to
be interpreted as other books are, while with regard to doctrines there
must be compromise and latitude. We find such a theologian as Chillingworth
recognizing "the free right of the individual reason to interpret the
Bible."[5] To such men as Milton, Jeremy Taylor, and Locke the free spirit
was essential, even though they had not become rationalists in the modern
philosophical sense. They were slow to discard tradition, and they desired
to establish the validity of the Bible; but they would not accept any
authority until it had borne the test of as thorough an investigation as
they could give it. The methods of rationalism were not yet understood, but
the rational spirit had been accepted with a clear apprehension of its
significance.

[Sidenote: Toleration.]

Toleration had two classes of advocates in the seventeenth century,--on the
one hand, the minor and persecuted sects, and, on the other, such of the
great leaders of religious opinion as Milton and Locke. The first clear
assertion of the modern idea of toleration was made by the Anabaptists of
Holland, who in 1611 put into their Confession of Faith this declaration of
the freedom of religion from all state regulation: "The magistrate is not
to meddle with religion, or matters of conscience, nor compel men to this
or that form of religion, because Christ is King, and Lawgiver of the
church and conscience." When the Baptists appeared in England, they
advocated this principle as the one which ought to control in the relations
of church and state. In 1614 there was published in London a little tract,
written by one Leonard Busher, a poor laborer, and a member of the Baptist
church that had recently been organized there. The writer addressed the
King and Parliament with a statement of his conviction "that by fire and
sword to constrain princes and peoples to receive that one true religion of
the Gospel is wholly against the mind and merciful law of Christ."[6] He
went on to say that no king or bishop is able to command faith, that it is
monstrous for Christians to vex and destroy each other on account of
religious differences. The leading Protestant bodies, especially the
established churches, still held to the corporate idea of the nature of
religious institutions; and, although they had rejected the domination of
the Roman Church, they accepted the control of the state as essential to
the purity of the church. This half-way retention of the corporate spirit
made it impossible for any of the leading churches to give recognition to
the full meaning of the Protestant idea of the worth of the individual
soul, and its right to communicate directly with God. It remained for the
persecuted Baptists and Independents, too feeble and despised to aspire to
state influence, to work out the Protestant principle to its full
expression in the spirit of toleration, to declare for liberty of
conscience, the voluntary maintenance of worship, and the separation of
church and state.

After the Restoration, and again after the enthronement of William and
Mary, it became a serious practical problem to establish satisfactory
relations between the various sects. All who were not sectarian fanatics
saw that some kind of compromise was desirable, and the more liberal wished
to include all but the most extreme phases of belief within the national
church. When that national church was finally established on the lines
which it has since retained, and numerous bodies of dissenters found
themselves compelled to remain outside, toleration became more and more
essential, in order that the nation might live at peace with itself. From
generation to generation the dissenters were able to secure for themselves
a larger recognition, disabilities were removed as men of all sects saw
that restrictions were useless, and toleration became the established law
in the relations of the various religious bodies to each other.

[Sidenote: Arminianism.]

The conditions which led to toleration also developed a liberal
interpretation of the relations of the church to the people, a broader
explanation of doctrines, and a rational insight into the problems of the
religious life. One phase of this more comprehensive religious spirit was
shown in Arminianism, which was nothing more than an assertion of
individualism in the sphere of man's relations to God. Calvinism maintained
that man cannot act freely for himself, that he is strictly under the
sovereignty of the Divine Will. The democratic tendency in Holland, where
Arminianism had its origin, expressed itself in the declaration that every
man is free to accept or to reject religious truth, that the will is
individual and self-assertive, and that the conscience is not bound.
Arminius and his coworkers accepted what the early Protestant movement had
regarded as essential, that religion should be always obedient to the
rational spirit, that nature should be the test in regard to all which
affects human conduct, and that the critical spirit ought to be applied to
dogma and Bible. Arminius reasserted this freedom of the human spirit, and
vindicated the right of the individual mind to seek God and his truth
wherever they may be found.

As Protestantism became firmly established in England, and the nation
accepted its mental and moral attitude without reserve, what is known as
Arminianism came to be more and more prevalent. This was not a body of
doctrines, and it was in no sense a sectarian movement: it was rather a
mental temper of openness and freedom. In a word, Arminianism became a
method of religious inquiry that appealed to reason, nature, and the needs
of man. It put new emphasis on the intellectual side of religion, and it
developed as a moral protest against the harsher features of Calvinism. It
gave to human feelings the right to express themselves as elements in the
problem of man's relations to God, and vindicated for God the right to be
deemed as sympathetic and loving as the men who worship him.

While the Arminians accepted the Bible as an authoritative standard as
fully as did the Calvinists, they were more critical in its study: they
applied literary and historical standards in its interpretation, and they
submitted it to the vindication of reason. They sought to escape from the
tyranny of the Bible, and yet to make it a living force in the world of
conduct and character. They not only declared anew the right of private
judgment, but they wished to make the Bible the source of inward spiritual
illumination,--not a standard and a test, but an awakener of the divine
life in the soul. They sought for what is really essential in religious
truth, limited the number of dogmas that may be regarded as requisite to
the Christian life, and took the position that only what is of prime
importance is to be required of the believer. The result was that
Arminianism became a positive aid to the growth of toleration in England;
for it became what was called latitudinarian,--that is, broad in temper,
inclusive in spirit, and desirous of bringing all the nation within the
limits of one harmonizing and noble-minded church.

[Sidenote: English Rationalists.]

It was in such tendencies as these, as they were developed in Holland and
England, that American Unitarianism had its origin. To show how true this
is, it may be desirable to speak of a few of the men whose books were most
frequently read in New England during the eighteenth century. The prose
writings of Milton exerted great influence in favor of toleration and in
vindication of reason. Without doubt he became in his later years a
believer in free will and the subordinate nature of Christ, and he was true
to the Protestant ideal of an open Bible and a free spirit in man. Known as
a Puritan, his pleas for toleration must have been read with confidence by
his coreligionists of New England; while his rational temper could not have
failed to have its effect.

His vindication of the Bible as the religion of Protestants must have
commended Chillingworth to the liberal minds in New England; and there is
evidence that he was read with acceptance, although he was of the
established church. Chillingworth was of the noblest type of the
latitudinarians in the Church of England during the first half of the
seventeenth century; for he was generously tolerant, his mind was broad and
liberal, and he knew the true value of a really comprehensive and inclusive
church, which he earnestly desired should be established in England. He
wished to have the creed reduced to the most limited proportions by giving
emphasis to what is fundamental, and by the extrusion of all else. It was
his desire to maintain what is essential that caused him to say: "I am
fully assured that God does not, and therefore that man ought not, to
require any more of any man than this--to believe the Scripture to be God's
word, to endeavor to find the true sense of it, and to live according to
it."[7]

He would therefore leave every man free to interpret the Bible for himself,
and he would make no dogmatic test to deprive any man of this right. The
chief fact in the Bible being Christ, he insisted that Christianity is
loyalty to his spirit. "To believe only in Christ" is his definition of
Christianity, and he would add nothing to this standard. He would put no
church or creed or council between the individual soul and God; and he
would direct every believer to the Bible as the free and open way of the
soul's access to divine truth. He found that the religion of Protestants
consisted in the rational use of that book, and not in the teachings of the
Reformers or in the confessions they devised. It is the great merit of
Chillingworth that he vindicated the spirit of toleration in a broad and
noble manner, that he was without sectarian prejudice or narrowness in his
desire for an inclusive church, and that he spoke and wrote in a truly
rational temper. He applied reason to all religious problems, and he
regarded it as the final judge and arbiter. Religious freedom received from
him the fullest recognition, and no one has more clearly indicated the
scope and purpose of toleration.

Another English religious leader, much read in New England, was Archbishop
Tillotson. It has been said of him that "for the first time since the
Reformation the voice of reason was now clearly heard in the high places of
the church."[8] He was an Arminian in his sympathies, and held that the way
of salvation is open to all who choose to accept its opportunities. He
expressed himself as being as certain that the doctrine of eternal decrees
is not of God as he was sure that God is good and just. His ground for this
opinion was that it is repugnant to the convictions of justice and goodness
natural to men. He maintained that we shall be justified before God by
means of the reformation that is wrought in our own lives. We have an
intuition of what is right, and a natural capacity for living justly and
righteously. Experience and reason he made concomitant spiritual forces
with the Bible, and he held that revelation is but a republication of the
truths of natural religion. Tillotson was truly a broad churchman, who was
desirous of making the national church as comprehensive as possible; and he
was one who practised as well as preached toleration.

Not less liberal was Jeremy Taylor, who was numbered among the dissenters.
In the introduction to his Liberty of Prophesying he said, "So long as men
have such variety of principles, such several constitutions, educations,
tempers, and distempers, hopes, interests, and weaknesses, degrees of light
and degrees of understanding, it was impossible all should be of one mind."
Taylor justly said that in heaven there is room for all faiths. His Liberty
of Prophesying, Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants, and Milton's
Liberty of Unlicensed Printing are the great expressions of the spirit of
toleration in the seventeenth century. Each was broad, comprehensive, and
noble in its plea for religious freedom. It has been said of Taylor that
"he sets a higher value on a good life than on an orthodox creed. He
estimates every doctrine by its capacity to do men good."[9]

Another advocate of toleration was John Locke, whose chief influence was as
a rationalist in philosophy and religion. While accepting Christianity with
simple confidence, he subjected it to the careful scrutiny of reason. His
philosophy awakened the rationalistic spirit in all who accepted it, so
that many of his disciples went much farther than he did himself. While
accepting revelation, he maintained that natural knowledge is more certain
in its character. He taught that the conclusions of reason are more
important than anything given men in the name of revelation. He did not
himself widely depart from the orthodoxy of his day, though he did not
accept the doctrine of the Trinity in the most approved form.

One of the rationalistic followers of Locke was Samuel Clarke, who
attempted to apply the scientific methods of Newton to the interpretation
of Christianity. He tried to establish faith in God on a purely scientific
basis. He declared that goodness does not exist because God commands it,
but that he commands it because it is good. He interpreted the doctrine of
the Trinity in a rationalistic manner, holding to its form, but rejecting
its substance.

These men were widely read in New England during the eighteenth century. In
England they were accounted orthodox, and they held high positions either
in the national church or in the leading dissenting bodies. They were not
sectarian or bigoted, they wished to give religion a basis in common sense
and ethical integrity, and they approved of a Christianity that is
practical and leads to noble living.

When we consider what were the relations of the colonies to England during
the first half of the eighteenth century, and that the New England churches
were constantly influenced by the religious attitude of the
mother-country,[10] it is plain enough that toleration and rationalism were
in large measure received from England. In the same school was learned the
lesson of a return to the simplicity of Christ, of making him and his life
the standard of Christian fellowship. The great leaders in England taught
positively that loyalty to Christ is the only essential test of Christian
duty; and it is not in the least surprising the same idea should have found
noble advocacy in New England. That a good life and character are the true
indications of the possession of a saving faith was a thought too often
uttered in England not to find advocacy in the colonies.

In this way Unitarianism had its origin, in the teachings of men who were
counted orthodox in England, but who favored submitting all theological
problems to the test of reason. It was not a sectarian movement in its
origin or at any time during the eighteenth century; but it was an effort
to make religion practical, to give it a basis in reality, and to establish
it as acceptable to the sound judgment and common sense of all men. It was
an application to the interpretation of theological problems of that
individualistic spirit which was at the very source of Protestantism. If
the individual ought to interpret the Bible for himself, so ought he to
accept his own explanation of the dogmas of the church. In so doing, he
necessarily becomes a rationalist, which may lead him far from the
traditions of the past. If he thinks for himself, there is an end to
uniformity of faith--a conclusion which such men as Chillingworth and
Jeremy Taylor were willing to accept; and, therefore, they desired an
all-inclusive church, in order that freedom and unity of faith might be
both maintained.

In its beginning the liberal movement in New England was not concerned with
the Trinity. It was a demand for simplicity, rationality, and toleration.
When it had proceeded far on its way, it was led to a consideration of the
problem of the Trinity, because it did not find that doctrine distinctly
taught in the New Testament. Accepting implicitly the words of Christ, it
found him declaring positively his own subordination to the Father, and
preferred his teaching to that of the creeds. To the early liberals this
was simply a question of the nature of Christ, and did not lessen for them
their implicit faith in his revelation or their recognition of the beauty
and glory of his divine character.

[1] Paul Lafargue, The Evolution of Property from Savagery to
    Civilization, 18, 19. "If the savage is incapable of conceiving the
    idea of individual possession of objects not incorporated with his
    person, it is because he has no conception of his individuality as
    distinct from the consanguine group in which he lives.... Savages, even
    though individually completer beings, seeing that they are
    self-sufficing, than are civilized persons, are so thoroughly
    identified with their hordes and clans that their individuality does
    not make itself felt either in the family or in property. The clan was
    all in all: the clan was the family; it was the clan that was the owner
    of property." Also W.M. Sloan, The French Revolution and Religious
    Reform, 38. "In the Greek and Roman world the individual, body, mind,
    and soul, had no place in reference to the state. It was only as a
    member of family, gens, curia, phratry, or deme, and tribe, that the
    ancient city-state knew the men and women which composed it. The same
    was true of knowledge: every sensation, perception, and judgment fell
    into the category of some abstraction, and, instead of concrete things,
    men knew nothing but generalized ideals."

[2] Francesco S. Nitti, Catholic Socialism, 74, 85, 86. "If we consider
    the teachings of the Gospel, the communistic origins of the church, the
    socialistic tendencies of the early fathers, the traditions of the
    Canon Law, we cannot wonder that at the present day Socialism should
    count no small number of its adherents among Catholic writers.... The
    Reformation was the triumph of Individualism. Catholicism, instead, is
    communistic by its origin and traditions.... The Catholic Church, with
    her powerful organization, dating back over many centuries, has
    accustomed Catholic peoples to passive obedience, to a passive
    renunciation of the greater part of individualistic tendencies."

[3] See David Masson, Life of John Milton, III. 136; John Tulloch, Rational
    Theology and Christian Philosophy in England, II. 9; John Hunt,
    Religious Thought in England, I. 234.

[4] The word socialism is not used here with any understanding that the
    Catholic Church accepts the social theories implied by that name. It is
    used to indicate that the Roman Church maintains that revelation is to
    the church itself, and that it is now the visible representative of
    Christ. The Protestant maintains that revelation is made through an
    individual, and not to a church. See Otto Gierke, Political Theories of
    the Middle Age, translated by F.W. Maitland, 10, 22. "In all centuries
    of the Middle Age Christendom is set before us a single, universal
    community, founded and governed by God himself. Mankind is one mystical
    body; it is one single and internally connected people or fold; it is
    an all-embracing corporation, which constitutes that Universal Realm,
    spiritual, and temporal, which may be called the Universal Church, or,
    with equal propriety, the Commonwealth of the Human Race.... Mediaeval
    thought proceeded from the idea of a single whole. Therefore an organic
    construction of human society was as familiar to it as a mechanical and
    atomistic construction was originally alien. Under the influence of
    biblical allegories and the models set by Greek and Roman writers, the
    comparison of mankind at large and every smaller group to an animate
    body was universally adopted and pressed. Mankind in its totality was
    conceived as an Organism."

[5] Tulloch, Rational Theology in England, I. 339.

[6] David Masson, Life of Milton, III. 102.

[7] The Religion of Protestants, II. 411.

[8] John Hunt, Religious Thought in England, II. 99.

[9] John Hunt, Religious Thought in England, I. 340.

[10] John Hunt, Religious Thought in England, I. 340.




II.


THE LIBERAL SIDE OF PURITANISM.

Unitarianism was brought to America with the Pilgrims and the Puritans. Its
origins are not to be found in the religious indifference and torpidity of
the eighteenth century, but in the individualism and the rational temper of
the men who settled Plymouth, Salem, and Boston. Its development is
coextensive with the origin and growth of Congregationalism, even with that
of Protestantism itself. So long as New England has been in existence, so
long, at least, Unitarianism, in its motives and in its spirit, has been at
work in the name of toleration, liberty, and free inquiry.

The many and wide divergences of opinion which were an essential result of
the spirit and methods of Protestantism were shown from the first by the
Pilgrims and Puritans. In Massachusetts, stringent laws were adopted in
order to secure uniformity of belief and practice; but it was never
achieved, except in name. Antinomianism early presented itself in Boston,
and it was quickly followed by the incursions of the Baptists and Friends.
Hooker did not find himself in sympathy with the Massachusetts leaders, and
led a considerable company to Connecticut from Cambridge, Watertown, and
Dorchester. Sir Henry Vane could not always agree with those who guided the
religion and the politics of Boston; Roger Williams had another ideal of
church and state than that which had come to the Puritans; and Sir Richard
Saltonstall would not submit himself to the aristocratic methods of the
Boston preachers.

These are but a few of the many indications of the individualistic spirit
that marked the first years of the Puritan colonies. It was a part of the
Protestant inheritance, and was inherent in the very nature of
Protestantism itself. Although the Puritans had only in part, and with
faltering steps, come to the acceptance of the individualistic and rational
spirit in religion, yet they were on the way to it, however long they might
be hindered by an autocratic temper. In fact, the Puritans throughout the
seventeenth century in New England were trying at one and the same time to
use reason and yet to cling to authority, to accept the Protestant ideal
and yet to employ the Catholic methods in state and church. In being
Protestants, they were committed to the central motive of individualism;
but they never consistently turned away from that conception of the church
which is autocratic and authoritative.

[Sidenote: The Church of Authority and the Church of Freedom.]

Looked at from the modern sociological point of view, there are two types
of church, the one socialistic or institutional and the other
individualistic, the one making the corporate power of the church the
source of spiritual life, the other making the personal insight of the
individual man the fountain of religious truth. Such a church as that of
Rome may be properly called socialistic because of its corporate nature,
because it maintains that revelation is to, and by means of, an
institution, an organic religious body.[1]

Catholicism, whether of Rome, Greece, or England, makes the church as a
great religious corporation the organ of religious expression. Such a
corporation is the source of authority, the test of truth, the creator of
spiritual ideals. On the other hand, such a church as the Protestant may be
called individualistic because it makes the individual the channel of
revelation. It emphasizes personality as of supreme worth, and it makes
religious institutions of little value in comparison.

Practically, the difference between the socialistic and the individualistic
church is as wide as it is theoretically. In all Catholic churches the
child is born into the church, with the right to full acceptance into it by
methods of tuition and ritual, whatever his individual qualities or
capacities. In all distinctly Protestant churches, membership must be
sought by individual preference or supernatural process.[2] The way to it
is through individual profession of its creed or inward miraculous
transformation of character by the profoundest of personal experiences. In
all socialistic or Catholic churches--whether heathen, ethnic, or
Christian--young people are admitted to membership after a definite period
of training and an initiation by means of an impressive ritual. In all
Protestant churches, initiation takes place as the result of personal
experiences and mature convictions, and is therefore usually deferred until
adult life has been reached.

When we bring out thus distinctly the ideals and methods of the two
churches, we are able to understand that the Puritans were theoretically
Protestants, but that they practically used the methods of the Catholics.
This will be seen more clearly when we take the individualistic tendencies
of the Puritans into distinct recognition, and place them in contrast with
their socialistic practices. The Puritan churches were thoroughly
individualistic in their admission of members, none being accepted into
full membership but those who had been converted by means of a personal
experience. In theory every male church member was a priest and king,
authorized to interpret spiritual truth and to exercise political
authority. Therefore, in 1631 the General Court of Massachusetts (being the
legislative body) established the rule that only church members should
exercise the right of suffrage. This law was continued on the statute books
until 1664, and was accepted in practice until 1691.

Because the individual Christian was accounted a priest, however humble in
learning or social position, he had the right to join with others in
ordaining and setting apart to the ministry of God the man who was to lead
the church as its teacher or pastor, though this practice was abandoned as
the state-church idea developed, as it did in New England by a process of
reaction. Every man could read the Bible for himself, and give it such
meaning as his own conscience and reason dictated. By virtue of his
Christian experience he had the personal right to find in it his own creed
and the law of his own conduct. It was not only his right to do this, but
it was also his duty. Revivalism was therefore the distinct outgrowth of
Puritanism, the expression of its individualistic spirit. It was the human
means of bringing the individual soul within reach of the supernatural
power of God, and of facilitating that choice of the Holy Spirit by which
one was selected for this change rather than another. The means were
social, it is true; but the end reached was absolutely individual, as an
experience and as a result attained. What confirmation was to the Catholic,
that was conversion to the Puritan.

The Puritans in New England, however, inherited the older socialism to so
large an extent that they proceeded to establish what was a state church in
method, if not in theory. Though they began with the idea that the churches
were to be supported by voluntary contributions (and always continued that
method in Boston), yet in a few years they resorted to taxation for their
maintenance, and enacted stringent laws compelling attendance upon them by
every resident of a town, whatever his beliefs or his personal interests.
They forbade the utterance of opinions not approved by the authorities, and
made use of fines, imprisonment, and death in support of arbitrary laws
enacted for this purpose. These methods were the same as those used by the
older socialistic and state churches to compel acceptance of their
teachings and practices. They were based on the idea of the corporate
nature of the church, and its right to control the individual in the name
of the social whole.

The harshness of the Puritan methods was the result of this attempt to
maintain a new idea in harmony with an old practice. The Baptists were
consistently individualists in rejecting infant baptism, accepting
conversion as essential to church membership, maintaining freedom of
conscience, and practising toleration as a fundamental social law. The
Puritans inconsistently combined conversion and infant baptism,--the
Protestant right of private judgment with the Catholic methods of the state
church,--a democratic theory of popular suffrage with a most aristocratic
limitation of that suffrage to church members. As late as 1674 only 2,527
men in all had been admitted to the exercise of the franchise in
Massachusetts. One-sixth or one-eighth of the men were voters, the rest
were disfranchised. The church and the state were controlled by this small
minority in a community that was theoretically democratic, both in religion
and politics.

It is not surprising that there began to be mutterings against such
restrictions. It shows the strength of character in the Puritan communities
of Massachusetts and New Haven that a large majority of the men submitted
as long as they did to conditions thoroughly undemocratic. As a political
measure, when the grumblings became so loud as to be no longer ignored,
what is called the half-way covenant was adopted, by means of which a
semi-membership in the churches could be secured, that gave the right of
suffrage, but permitted no action within the church itself.[3] Many
writers on this period fail to understand the significance of the half-way
covenant; for they attribute to that legislation the disintegrating results
that followed. They forget that these half-members were not admitted to any
part in church affairs; and they refuse to see that the methods employed by
the Puritans were, because of their exclusiveness, of necessity
demoralizing. In fact, the half-way covenant was a result of the
disintegration that had already taken place as the issue of an attempted
compromise between the institutional and the individualistic theories of
church government.

[Sidenote: Seventeenth-century Liberals.]

By arbitrary methods the Puritans succeeded in controlling church and state
until 1688, when the interference of the English authorities compelled them
to practise toleration and to widen the suffrage. The words of Sir Richard
Saltonstall to John Cotton and John Wilson show clearly that these methods
were not accepted by all, and even Saltonstall returned to England to
escape the restrictions he condemned. "It doth not a little grieve my
spirit to hear what sad things are daily reported of your tyranny and
persecutions in New England," he wrote, "as that you fine, whip, and
imprison men for their consciences. First you compel such to come into your
assemblies as you know will not join with you in your worship, and when
they show their dislike thereof or witness against it, then you stir up
your magistrates to punish them for such (as you conceive) their public
affronts. Truly, friends, this your practice of compelling any in matters
of worship to do that whereof they are not persuaded is to make them sin,
and many are made hypocrites thereby, conforming in their outward man for
fear of punishment. We pray for you and wish you prosperity in every way,
hoped that the Lord would have given you so much light and love there, that
you might have been eyes to God's people here, and not to practise those
courses in wilderness which you went so far to prevent. These rigid ways
have laid you very low in the hearts of the saints."[4]

Another man who withdrew to England from the narrow spirit of the Puritans
was William Pynchon, of Springfield, one of the best trained and ablest of
the early settlers of Massachusetts. In 1650 he published a book on the
Meritorious Price of our Redemption, in which he denied that Christ was
subject to the wrath of God or suffered torments in hell for the redemption
of men or paid the penalty for all human sins; but such teachings were too
liberal and modern for the leaders in church and state.[5] What is now
orthodox, that Christ's sacrifice was voluntary, was then heretical and
forbidden.

If during the first half-century of New England no liberalism found
definite utterance, it was because of its repression. It was in the air,
even then, and it would have found expression, had there been opportunity
or invitation. There were other men than Williams, Saltonstall, Pynchon,
and Henry Vane, who believed in toleration, liberty of conscience, and a
rational interpretation of religion. In a limited way such men were Henry
Dunster and Charles Chauncy, the first two presidents of Harvard College,
who both rejected infant baptism because it was not consistent with a
converted church membership. It was a small thing to protest against, and
to suffer for as Dunster suffered; but the principle was great for which he
contended, the principle of individual conviction in religion.

The better spirit of the Puritans appears in such a saying as that of Sir
Henry Vane, the second governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, that "all
magistrates are to fear or forbear intermeddling with giving rule or
imposing their own beliefs in religious matters."[6] To a similar purport
was the saying of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Connecticut, that "the
foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people."[7] In
the writings of John Robinson, the Pilgrim leader, a like greatness of
purpose and thought appears, as where he says that "the meanest man's
reason, specially in matter of faith and obedience to God, is to be
preferred before all authority of all men."[8] Robinson was a very strict
Calvinist in doctrine; but he was tolerant in large degree, and thoroughly
convinced of the worth of liberty of conscience. His liberality comes out
in such words as these: "The custom of the church is but the custom of men;
the sentence of the fathers but the opinions of men; the determinations of
councils but the judgments of men."[9] How strong a believer in individual
reason he was appears in this statement: "God, who hath made two great
lights for the bodily eye, hath also made two lights for the eye of the
mind; the one the Scriptures for her supernatural light, and the other
reason for her natural light. And, indeed, only these two are a man's own,
and so is not the authority of other men. The Scriptures are as well mine
as any other man's, and so is reason as far as I can attain to it."[10]
When he says that "the credit commending a testimony to others cannot be
greater than is the authority in itself of him that gives it nor his
authority greater than his person,"[11] he puts an end to all arbitrary
authority of priest and church.

It will be seen from these quotations that the spirit of liberality existed
even in the very beginnings of New England, and in the convictions of the
men who were its chief prophets and leaders. It was hidden away for a time,
it may be, though it never ceased to find utterance in some form. The
breadth of the underlying spirit finds expression in the compacts by which
local churches united their members. The liberality was incipient, a
promise of the future rather than a realization in the present.

The earliest churches of New England were not organized with a creed, but
with a covenant. Occasionally there was a confession of faith or a creedal
statement; but it was regarded as quite unnecessary because it was implied
in the general acceptance of the Calvinistic doctrines, and the use of the
Cambridge platform or other similar document. The covenant of a church
could not be a statement of beliefs, because it was a vow between Christ
and his church, and a pledge of the individual members of the church with
relation to each other. The creed was implied, but it was not expressed;
and, although all the churches were Calvinist at first, the nature of the
covenant was such that, when men grew liberal, there was no written creedal
test by which they could be held to the old beliefs. When Calvinism was
outgrown, it could be slowly and silently discarded, both by individual
members of a church and by the church itself, because it was not explicitly
contained in the covenant. The creed was rejected, but the covenant was
retained.

As soon as authority was withdrawn from the Puritan leaders by the English
crown, the spirit of liberty began to show itself in many directions. In a
sermon preached in 1691, Samuel Willard, the minister of the Old South
Church in Boston, and afterwards president of Harvard College, gave
utterance to what was stirring in many minds at that time. He said that God
"hath nowhere by any general indulgence given away this liberty of his to
any other authority in the world to have dominion over the consciences of
men or to give rules of worship, but hath, on the other hand, strongly
prohibited it and severely threatened any that shall presume to do it." He
earnestly asserted that no authority is to be accepted but that of the
Bible, and that is to be free for each person's individual interpretation.
"Hath there not," Willard questions, "been too much of a pinning our faith
on the credit or practice of others, attended on with a woful neglect to
know what is the mind of Christ?" Here was a spirit that not many years
later was showing itself in the liberal movement that grew into
Unitarianism. The effort to free the consciences of men, and to bring all
appeals to the Bible and to Christ, was what gave significance to the
liberal movement of the next century.

[Sidenote: Growth of Liberty in Church Methods.]

There also began a movement to bring church and state into harmonious
relations with each other, and to overcome the inconsistency of being
individualist and socialist at the same moment. The theory of conversion
being retained, it was proposed to make the ordinances of religion free to
all, in order that they might bring about the supernatural change that was
desired. This is the real significance of the position taken by Solomon
Stoddard, of Northampton, who taught that the Lord's Supper is a converting
ordinance, and who in practice did not ask for a supernatural regeneration
as preparatory to a limited church membership, though he regarded this as
essential to full admission. The half-way covenant had been adopted before
Mr. Stoddard became the pastor of the church; but soon after his settlement
this limited form of admission was more clearly defined, and he admitted
persons into what he described as a "state of education."[12] This "large
congregationalism," as it was called, was in time accepted as meaning that
those who have faith enough to justify the baptism of their children have
enough to admit them to full communion in the church. Mr. Stoddard appealed
to the English practice in his defence of the broader principle which he
adopted. He also vindicated his position by reference to the practices of
the leading Protestant countries in Europe. His methods, as outlined and
interpreted in his Appeal to the Learned,[13] were based more or less
explicitly on the corporate idea of the church.

Although Stoddard was a strict Calvinist, there can be no doubt that his
method of open communion slowly led to theological modifications. Not only
did it have a tendency to bring the state and church into closer relations
with each other, by making the membership in the two more nearly the same,
but it led the way to the acceptance of the doctrine of moral ability, and
therefore to a modification of Calvinism. If it was a practical rather than
a theological reason that caused Stoddard to adopt open communion, it
almost inevitably led to Arminianism, because it implied, as he presented
its conditions, that man is able of his own free will to accept the terms
of salvation which Calvinism had confined to the operation of the
sovereignty of God alone.

Another way in which the spirit of the time was showing itself may be seen
in the fact that the parish, towards the end of the seventeenth century, on
more than one occasion refused to the church the selection of the minister;
and church and parish met together for that purpose. This was the case in
the first church of Salem in 1672, and at Dedham in 1685. So long as church
members only were given the right of suffrage, the selection of the
minister was wholly in their hands. As soon as the suffrage was extended,
there was a movement to include all tax-payers amongst those who could
exercise this choice. In 1666 such a proposition was discussed in
Connecticut, and not long after it became the law. In 1692 the
Massachusetts laws gave the church the right to select the minister, but
permitted the parish to concur in or to reject such choice. During the next
century there was a growing tendency to enlarge the privileges of the
parish, and to make that the controlling factor in calling the minister and
in all that pertained to the outward life of the church and congregation.
The result will be seen more and more in the influence of the parish in the
selection of liberal men for the pulpit.

A notable instance of the more liberal tendencies is seen in the formation
of the Brattle Street Church of Boston in 1699. Although this church
accepted the Westminster Confession of Faith and adopted the practices
common to the New England churches at this period, it insisted upon the
reading of the Bible without comment as a part of the church service. The
relation of religious experiences as preparatory to admission to the church
was discarded, all were admitted to communion who were approved by the
pastor, and women were permitted to take part in voting on all church
questions. These and other innovations occasioned much discussion; and a
controversy ensued between the pastor Benjamin Colman and Increase
Mather.[14] The Salem pastors, Rev. John Higginson and Rev. Nicholas Noyes,
addressed a letter to the Brattle Street congregation, in which they
criticised the church because it did not consult with other churches in its
formation, because it did not make a public profession of repentance on
behalf of its members, because baptism was administered on less stringent
terms than was customary and too lax admission was given to the sacraments,
and because the admission of females to full church activity had a direct
tendency "to subvert the order and liberty of the churches." Though the
Brattle Street Church was for a time severely criticised, it soon came into
intimate relations with the other churches of Boston, and it ceased to
appear as in any way peculiar. That it was organized on a broader basis of
membership indicates very clearly that the old methods were not
satisfactory to all the people.[15]

[Sidenote: A Puritan Rationalist.]

The influence of similar ideas is seen in the books of John Wise, of
Ipswich, whose Churches' Quarrel Espoused was published in 1710, and his
Vindication of the Government of the New England Churches in 1717. His
first book was in answer to the proposition of a number of the ministers of
Boston to bring the churches under the control of associations. By this
remonstrance the plan was defeated, and the independence of the local
church fully established. In republishing his book, he added the
Vindication, in order to give his ideas a more systematic expression. The
Vindication is the most thoroughly modern book published in America during
the eighteenth century. It has a literary directness and power remarkable
for the time. Wise gives no quotations indicating that he had read the
great liberal writers of England, but he was familiar with Plato and
Cicero.

In his first book he speaks of "the natural freedom of human beings,"[16]
and says that "right reason is a ray of divine wisdom enstamped upon human
nature."[17] Again, he says that "right reason, that great oracle in human
affairs, is the soul of man so formed and endowed by creation with a
certain sagacity or acumen whereby man's intellect is enabled to take up
the true idea or perception of things agreeable with and according to their
natures."[18] In such utterances as these Wise was putting himself into the
company of the most liberal minds of England in his day, though he may not
have read one of them. The considerations that were influencing Milton,
Chillingworth, and Jeremy Taylor, in favor of toleration and a broad
inclusiveness of spirit, evidently were having their effect upon this New
England pastor.

It is not to be assumed that John Wise was a rationalist in the modern
sense; but he gave to the use of reason a significance that is surprising
and refreshing, coming from the time and circumstances of his writing. In
his Vindication we find him accepting reason and revelation as of equal
validity. He appeals to the "dictates of right reason"[19] and the "common
reason of mankind"[20] with quite as much confidence as to the Bible. He
says that all questions of government, religious as well as political, are
to be brought to "the assizes of man's own intellectual powers, reason, and
conscience."[21] He assumes that God has created man capable of obeying his
will and living in conformity with his law; for he says that, "if God did
not highly estimate man as a creature exalted by his reason, liberty, and
nobleness of nature, he would not caress him as he does in order to his
submission."[22]

Wise says that the characteristic of man which is of greatest importance is
that he is "most properly the subject of the law of nature."[23] He uses
this expression frequently and in a thoroughly modern sense.

The second great characteristic of man, according to Wise, "is an original
liberty enstamped upon his rational nature."[24] He indicates that he is
not inclined to discuss the merely theological problem of man's relations
to God, but, considered physically, man is at the head of creation, "and as
such is a creature of a very noble character." [24] All the lower world is
subject to his command, "and his liberty under the conduct of right reason
is equal with his trust." [24] "He that intrudes upon this liberty violates
the law of nature." [24] The effect of such liberty is not to lead man into
license, but to make him the rational master of his own conduct. Every man
is therefore at liberty "to judge for himself what shall be most for his
behoof, happiness, and well-being."[25]

The third great characteristic of man is found in "an equality amongst
men," [25] which is to be respected and vindicated by governments that are
just and humane. "By a natural right," he says, "all men are born free;
and, nature having set all men upon a level and made them equals, no
servitude or subjection can be conceived without inequality."[26] Again he
says that it is "a fundamental principle relating to government that, under
God, all power is originally in the people."[27] This is true of the church
as well as of the state, and Wise says the Reformation was a cheat and a
schism and a notorious rebellion if the people are not the source of power
in the church.

Two other ideas presented by this leader show his modernness and his
originality. He says that "the happiness of the people is the object of all
government,"[28] and that the state should seek to promote "the peculiar
good and benefit of the whole, and every particular member, fairly and
sincerely."[29] "The end of all good government," he assures his readers,
"is to cultivate humanity, and promote the happiness of all, and the good
of every man in all his rights, his life, liberty, estate, and honor,
without injury or abuse done to any." [29] That government will seek the
good of all is likely to be the case, because man has it as a fundamental
law of his nature that he "maintain a sociableness with others."[30] "From
the principles of sociableness it follows as a fundamental law of nature
that man is not so wedded to his own interest but that he can make the
common good the mark of his aim, and hence he becomes capacitated to enter
into a civil state by the law of nature."[31] This attraction of man to his
kind enables him to yield so much of his freedom as is necessary to make
the state an efficient social power, "in which covenant is included that
submission and union of wills by which a state may be conceived to be but
one person."[32] This thoroughly modern idea of the social body, as being
analogous in its nature to the individual man, is nobly expressed by Wise,
who says that "a civil state is a compound moral person, whose will is the
will of all, to the end it may use and apply the strength and riches of
private persons toward maintaining the common peace, security, and
well-being of all, which may be conceived as though the whole state was now
become but one man."[33]

It is not surprising that the writings of John Wise had no immediate effect
upon the theological thinking of the time, but they must have had their
influence. Just before the opening of the Revolution they were republished
because of their vindication of the spirit of human liberty and democracy.
What Wise wrote to promote was congregational independence, and this may
have been the reason why his theological attitude was never called in
question. It is true enough that he questioned none of the Calvinistic
doctrines in his books; but his political views were certain to disturb the
old beliefs, and to give incentives to free discussion in religion.

[Sidenote: Harvard College.]

The centre of the liberalizing tendencies of the last years of the
seventeenth century was Harvard College. That institution was organized on
a basis as broad as that of the early church covenants, with no creed or
doctrinal requirements. The original seal bore the motto Veritas; but, as
the state-church idea grew, this motto was succeeded by In Christi gloriam,
and then by Christo et Ecclesiae, though neither of these later mottoes was
authoritatively adopted. The early charters were thoroughly liberal in
spirit and intent, so much so as to be fully in harmony with the present
attitude of the university.[34] Under the Puritanic development, however,
this liberality was discarded, only to be restored in 1691, when William
and Mary gave to Massachusetts a new and broader charter. From that time a
new life entered into the college, that put it uncompromisingly on the
liberal side a century later. Even under the rule of Increase Mather,
seconded by the influence of his son Cotton, a broader spirit declared
itself in the culture imparted and in the method of free inquiry.[35]

Samuel Willard, the successor to Increase Mather in the presidency, was of
the liberal party in his breadth of mind and in his sound judgment. He was
followed in 1708 by John Leverett, one of the founders of the Brattle
Street Church, a man in whom the liberal spirit became a controlling motive
in his management of the college.[36] It is not strange that the men who
had been shut out from the suffrage and from active participation in the
management of the churches, should now come forward to claim their rights,
and to make their influence felt in college, church, and state. It was the
distinct beginning of the liberal movement in New England, the time from
which Unitarianism really took its origin.

[1] Kuno Francke, Social Forces in German Literature, 105. "No mediaeval
    man ever thought of himself as a perfectly independent being founded
    only on himself, or without a most direct and definite relation to
    some larger organism, be it empire, church, city, or guild. No
    mediaeval man ever doubted that the institutions within which he lived
    were divinely established ordinances, far superior and quite
    inaccessible to his own individual reason and judgment. No mediaeval
    man would ever have admitted that he conceived nature to be other than
    the creation of an extramundane God, destined to glorify its creator
    and to please the eye of man. It was reserved for the eighteenth
    century to draw the last consequences of individualism; to see in man,
    in each individual man, an independent and complete entity; to derive
    the origin of state, church, and society from the spontaneous action
    of these independent individuals; and to consider nature as a system
    of forces sufficient unto themselves. When we speak of individualism
    in the declining centuries of the Middle Ages, we mean by it that
    these centuries initiated the movement which the eighteenth century
    brought to a climax."

[2] Williston Walker, the Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism, 246.
    "From the first the fathers of New England insisted that the children
    of church members were themselves members, and as such were justly
    entitled to those church privileges which were adapted to their state
    of Christian development, of which the chief were baptism and the
    watchful discipline of the church. They did not enter the church by
    baptism; they were entitled to baptism because they were already
    members of the church. Here then was an inconsistency in the
    application of the Congregational theory of the constitution of a
    church. While affirming that a proper church consisted only of those
    possessed of personal Christian character, the fathers admitted to
    membership, in some degree at least, those who had no claim but
    Christian parentage." That is, in theory they were Protestants, but in
    practice they were Catholics.

[3] The ecclesiastical historians say that the half-way covenant had no
    effect on suffrage. Dexter, Congregationalism as Seen in its
    Literature, 468, says: "I am aware of no proof that half-way covenant
    members of the church by that relation did acquire any further
    privileges in the state." Williston Walker, New Englander, cclxiii.,
    93, February, 1892, takes ground that "added political privilege was
    no consequence of the dispute." On the other hand, the secular
    historians as strongly assert that the suffrage was widened. John
    Fiske, Beginnings of New England, 250, says the half-way covenant
    "entitled to the exercise of political rights those who were
    unqualified for participation in the Lord's Supper." Alexander
    Johnston, Connecticut, 227, says "it really gave every baptized person
    voice in church government." J.A. Doyle, The Puritan Colonies, II.,
    98, asserts that "it broke down the hard barrier which fenced in
    political privileges." The true explanation is given by George H.
    Haynes, Representation and Suffrage in Massachusetts, 1620-1691, 54,
    published in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and
    Political Science, Vol. XII., Nos. VIII. and IX. Haynes says that the
    half-way covenant, as first formulated in 1657, "virtually recognized
    a partial church-membership in persons who had made no formal
    profession and subscribed to no creed. In 1662 the same opinion was
    reaffirmed by the clergy, and the General Court ordered the result of
    the Synod to be printed and 'commended the same unto the consideration
    of all the churches and people of this jurisdiction.' Here ended
    legislative action on the matter. This was no statutory change of the
    basis of the franchise; but, as individual churches gradually adopted
    more liberal conditions of admission and were therein sanctioned by
    the General Court, it resulted that the operation of the religious
    test became less odious and the suffrage was not a little broadened."

[4] Henry Bond, Early Settlers of Watertown, II. 916; Convers Francis,
    Historical Sketch of Watertown, 135.

[5] Mason A. Green, History of Springfield, 113; E.H. Byington, The
    Puritan in England and New England, 185.

[6] A Healing Question.

[7] Alexander Johnston, Connecticut: A Study of a Commonwealth-Democracy,
    72, Hooker's sermon preparatory to forming a government.

[8] The Works of John Robinson, American edition of 1851, I., 53.

[9] Ibid., 47.

[10] Ibid., 54.

[11] Ibid., 56.

[12] J.R. Trumbull, History of Northampton, I. 213.

[13] An Appeal to the Learned, being a vindication of the right of visible
     saints to the Lord's Supper, though they be destitute of a saving work
     of God's Spirit in their hearts, Boston, 1709. See also his Doctrine
     of Instituted Churches, Boston, 1700.

[14] Dwight, Life of Edwards, 300.

[15] S.K. Lothrop, History of Brattle Street Church, 7-40; E. Turrell, Life
    of Benjamin Colman, D.D., 96, 125, 178, 180.

[16] The Churches' Quarrel Espoused, edition of 1860, 140.

[17] Ibid., 143.

[18] Ibid., 145

[19] The Churches' Quarrel Espoused, edition of 1860, 32.

[20] Ibid., 58.

[21] Ibid., 72.

[22] Ibid., 65.

[23] Ibid., 30.

[24] Ibid., 33.

[25] The Churches' Quarrel Espoused, edition of 1860, 34.

[26] Ibid., 37.

[27] Ibid., 64.

[28] Ibid., 54.

[29] Ibid., 55.

[30] Ibid., 32.

[31] The Churches' Quarrel Espoused, edition of 1860, 32.

[32] Ibid., 39.

[33] Ibid., 40.

[34] Josiah Quincy, History of Harvard University, i. 44-54.

[35] Ibid., 65, 200.

[36] Josiah Quincy, in the seventh chapter of his History, gives a detailed
     account of this movement. It is also dealt with by Brooks Adams in his
     chapter on the founding of the Brattle Street Church, in his
     Emancipation of Massachusetts, though he gives it a somewhat
     exaggerated and biassed importance. Most of the facts appear in
     Lothrop's History of the Brattle Street Church.




III.


THE GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY IN THE CHURCHES.

From the moment when the Puritan control of the church and state in New
England was so far weakened as to permit of free intellectual and religious
activity the democratic spirit began to manifest itself. The old regime had
so fixed itself upon the people that the progress was slow, but none the
less it was steady and sure. So far as the new spirit influenced doctrines,
it was called Arminianism, the technical theological name for democracy in
religion at this time.

[Sidenote: Arminianism.]

Arminianism is a dead issue at the present day, for the Calvinists have
accepted all that it taught when the name first came into vogue. Every kind
of reaction from Calvinism in the New England of the first half of the
eighteenth century took this designation, however; and to the Calvinists it
was a word of disapproval and contempt. Toleration, free inquiry, the use
of reason, democratic methods in church and state, were all named by this
condemning word. Vices, social depravities, love of freedom and the world,
assertion of personal independence, had the same designation. It is now
difficult to understand how bitter was the feeling thus produced, how keen
the hurt that was given the men who tried to defend themselves and their
beliefs from this odium.

What the word "Arminian" legitimately meant, then, is what we now mean by
liberalism. Primarily theological and doctrinal, it meant much more than
the rejection of the doctrine of decrees and the autocratic sovereignty of
God or the acceptance of the freedom of the will and the spiritual capacity
of man. First of all, it was faith in man; and then it was the assertion of
human liberty and equality. In a theological sense it did not have so wide
a purport, but in a practical and popular sense it grew into these
meanings.

In order fully to comprehend what Arminianism was in the eighteenth
century, the student must remember that it was the theological expression
of the democratic spirit, as Calvinism was of the autocratic. The doctrine
of the sovereignty of God is but the intellectual reflection of kingship
and the belief that the king can do no evil. The doctrine of decrees, as
taught by the Calvinist, was the spiritual side of the assertion of the
divine right of kings. On the other hand, when the people claim the right
to rule, they modify their theology into Arminianism. From an age of the
absolute rule of the king comes the doctrine of human depravity; and with
the establishment of democracy appears the doctrine of man's moral
capacity.

[Sidenote: The Growth of Arminianism.]

As early as 1730 Arminianism had come to have an influence sufficient to
secure its condemnation and to awaken the fears of the stricter Calvinists.
Jonathan Edwards said of the year 1734 that "about this time began the
great noise that was in this part of the country about Arminianism."[1] At
Northampton the leader of the opposition to Jonathan Edwards was an open
Arminian, a grandson of Solomon Stoddard, and a cousin of Edwards. He was a
young man of talent and education, and well read in theology. In a letter
written in 1750, Edwards said, "There seems to be the utmost danger that
the younger generation will be carried away with Arminianism as with a
flood." In another letter of the same year he said that "Arminianism and
Pelagianism[2] have made a strange progress within a few years."[3] In
his farewell sermon, Edwards spoke of the prevalence of Arminianism when he
settled in Northampton, and of its rapid increase in the succeeding years.
He said that Arminian views were creeping into almost all parts of the
land, and that they were making a progress unknown before.[4] In a letter
of 1752 Edwards said that the principles of John Taylor, of Norwich, one of
the early English Unitarians, were gaining many converts in the colonies.
Taylor's works were made use of by Solomon Williams in his reply to Edwards
on the qualifications necessary to communion.[5]

It was owing to the rapid growth of Arminianism that Edwards undertook his
work on free will. In the preface to that work he said that "the term
Calvinistic is, in these days, among most, a term of greater reproach than
the term Arminian." That Edwards exaggerated the extent of this defection
from Calvinism is probable, and yet it is very plain that it was this more
liberal attitude of the Northampton church which caused his dismissal. What
Stoddard had taught and practised was as yet powerful there, and Edwards's
opposition to his grandfather's teachings undoubtedly led to the failure of
his local work.

[Sidenote: Robert Breck.]

The council which dismissed Edwards from Northampton decided against him by
a majority of one; and that one vote may have been cast by Robert Breck, of
Springfield. If this were the case, there was something of poetic justice
in it; for only a few years earlier Edwards had used his influence against
the settlement of Breck because the latter was an Arminian. In 1734 a
fierce church quarrel took place in Springfield, that involved many of the
ministers of Massachusetts and Connecticut, invoked the aid of the county
court, and was finally settled by the legislature of Massachusetts, when
Mr. Breck was ordained.[6] He was charged with denying the authenticity of
parts of the Bible, with discarding the necessity of Christ's satisfaction
to divine justice for sin, with maintaining that the heathen who live up to
the light of nature would be saved, and that the contrary doctrine was
harsh. Breck refused to admit that he held these opinions, as thus stated;
but he was regarded by many as an Arminian and a heretic. It was said of him
that he would read any book, orthodox or otherwise, that would clear up a
subject. That he departed to any considerable extent from the generally
accepted faith of the time there is no evidence, but he was probably what
was often called "a moderate Calvinist." He did not favor the methods of
Whitefield, and he thoroughly distrusted the revival introduced by him.
Soon after Breck's settlement the Springfield church followed the Brattle
Street Church of Boston in discarding the relation of religious experiences
as preliminary to admission to the church. It voted that it "did not look
upon the making a relation to be a necessary term of communion."[7] At the
very time that Edwards was preaching of the awful fate of sinners in the
hands of an angry God, Breck was teaching that God is good and loving, and
that his salvation is freely open to all who may wish for it. It has been
truly said of these two men that "one had the heart and the other the
intellect of theology." With all his logic and power of thought and
marvellous spiritual insight, Edwards failed at Northampton because of
conditions beyond the control of his strenuous will. Robert Breck gained
year by year in his personal influence in Springfield, his cheerful and
progressive teaching made a deep impression on the community, and before he
died he saw a great change for the better in the people for whom he
diligently labored. Perhaps we could not have a plainer indication of the
change that was going on than is found in the experiences of these two
men.[8]

When Whitefield visited Harvard College in 1740, he was received in a most
friendly manner; yet he afterwards criticised the teaching there on the
ground that it was not sufficiently devout and earnest, and that the pupils
were not examined as to their religious experiences.[9] These charges were
denied by the president and tutors, and he was not again welcomed to the
college.

That there was a substantial basis for some of Whitefield's criticisms of
Harvard there can be no doubt. In 1737, when Edward Holyoke was proposed as
a candidate for the presidency, he met with a strong opposition from the
strict Calvinists. After the opposition had spent itself, he was elected
unanimously; and this act was received with marked approval by the General
Court, from which body his maintenance was obtained. President Quincy says
of President Holyoke that his religious principles coincided with the
mildness and catholicity which characterized the government of the college.
This evidently refers to the growing liberality of the college, and its
unwillingness to lend its aid to extreme theological opinions. That
moderateness of temper and that attitude of toleration which characterized
the leading men in England had shown themselves at Cambridge, and with a
strength that could not be overcome. "In Boston and its vicinity and along
the seaboard of Massachusetts, clergymen of great talent and religious
zeal," says President Quincy, "openly avowed doctrines which were variously
denounced by the Calvinistic party as Arminianism, Arianism, Pelagianism,
Socinianism, and Deism. The most eminent of these clergymen were alumni of
Harvard, active friends and advocates of the institution, and in habits of
intimacy and professional intercourse with its government. Their religious
views, indeed, received no public countenance from the college; but
circumstances gave color for reports, which were assiduously circulated
throughout New England, that the influences of the institution were not
unfavorable to the extension of such doctrines."[10]

At the commencement of 1737 candidates for degrees proposed to prove that
the doctrine of the Trinity was not contained in the Old Testament, that
creation did not exist from eternity, and that religion is not mysterious
in its nature. Much alarm was caused to the conservative party by the
negative form given these questions, which, it was said, "had the plain
face of Arianism." This criticism the faculty tried to quiet, but their
sympathies were evidently on the side of the graduates.[11] In 1738, when a
professor of mathematics was chosen, it was proposed to examine him as to
"his principles of religion"; but, after a long debate, this proposition
was rejected. After these and other efforts to control the religious
position of the college the strict Calvinists for the time withdrew their
efforts and concentrated them upon Yale College, in which institution the
faculty were now required for the first time to accept the Assembly's
Catechism and Confession of Faith.

When the legislature of Connecticut, during the great awakening, passed a
law prohibiting ministers from preaching as itinerants, several of the
members of the Senior Class subscribed the money necessary for the
publication of an edition of Locke's essay On Toleration. When this was
known to the faculty, they forbade the publication; and all the students
apologized but one, who learned a few days before commencement that his
name was to be dropped from the roll of graduates. He went to the faculty
with the statement that he was of age, that he possessed ample means, and
that he would carry his case to a hearing before the crown in England. In a
few days he was quietly informed that he would be permitted to graduate.
This is but a straw, and yet it shows clearly enough the direction of the
current at this time. A demand for toleration was made because it was felt
that there was a need for it.

[Sidenote: Books Read by Liberal Men.]

The names of no less than thirty-three ministers have been given who,
during the period from 1730 to 1750, did not teach the Calvinistic
doctrines in their fulness, and who had adopted more or less distinctly
some form of Arminianism or Arianism. These men were among the best known,
most successful, and most scholarly men in Eastern Massachusetts, though
they were not wholly confined to that neighborhood. We find here and there
some hint of the books these men read; and in that way we not only
ascertain the cause of their departure from Calvinism, but we also obtain
some clew to the nature of their opinions. Among the charges brought by
Whitefield against Harvard in 1740 was that "Tillotson and Clarke are read
instead of Shepard and Stoddard, and such like evangelical writers."[12]
Dr. Wigglesworth, the divinity professor at Harvard, said that Tillotson
had not been taken out of the college library in nine years, and Clarke not
in two; and he gave a long list of evangelical writers who were frequently
read. In spite of this disclaimer, however, it is evident that the methods
of the rationalistic writers were coming into vogue at Harvard, and that
even Dr. Wigglesworth did not teach theology in the manner of the author of
the Day of Doom.

Writing in 1759, Dr. Joseph Bellamy, one of the chief followers and
expositors of the teachings of Jonathan Edwards, said that the teachings of
the liberal men in England had crossed the Atlantic; "and too many in our
churches, and even among our ministers, have fallen in with them. Books
containing them have been imported; and the demand for them has been so
great as to encourage new impressions of some of them. Others have been
written on the same principles in this country, and even the doctrine of
the Trinity has been publicly treated in such a manner as all who believe
that doctrine must judge not only heretical, but highly blasphemous."[13]

It is said of Charles Chauncy, of the First Church in Boston, that his
favorite authors were Tillotson and Baxter.[14] Far more suggestive is the
account we have of the books read by Jonathan Mayhew of the West Church in
Boston, the first open antagonist of Calvinism in New England. Soon after
1740 he was reading the works of the great Protestant theologians of the
seventeenth century, including Milton, Chillingworth, and Tillotson; and
the eighteenth-century works of Locke, Samuel Clarke, Taylor, Wollaston,
and Whiston. He also probably read Cudworth, Butler, Hutcheson, Leland, and
other authors of a like character, some of them deists. Not one of these
writers was a Calvinist for they found the basis of religion either in
idealism or in rationalism.

The biographer of Mayhew says it "is evident from some of his discourses
that he was a great admirer of Samuel Clarke, whose voluminous works were
in his day much read by the liberal clergy." Clarke's Boyle lectures,
delivered in 1704-5, showed that natural and revealed religion were
essentially one, that moral action in man is free, and that Christianity is
the religion of reason and nature. At a later period he defended the two
propositions, that "no article of Christian faith delivered in the holy
Scriptures is disagreeable to right reason," and that "without liberty of
human actions there can be no real religion or morality." Even if one such
man as Jonathan Mayhew read Clarke's work in the Harvard Library, it
justified the alarm felt by Whitefield lest the students should be led away
from their Calvinist faith.[15]

[Sidenote: The Great Awakening.]

It was "the great awakening" that showed how marked had been the growth of
liberal opinions throughout New England in the forty years preceding.
Silently, a great change had gone on, with little open expression of
dissent from Calvinism, and without a knowledge on the part of most of the
liberal men that they had in any way departed from the faith of the
fathers. It was only with the coming of Whitefield and the revival that
this change came to have recognition, and that even the slightest
separation into parties took place.

The revival was an attempt to reintroduce the stricter Calvinism of the
earlier time, with its doctrines of justification by faith alone,
supernatural regeneration, and predestination made known to the believer by
the Holy Ghost. The liberal party objected to the revival because it was
opposed to the good old customs of the Congregational churches of New
England. The itinerant methods of the revivalists, the shriekings,
faintings, and appeals to fear and terror, were condemned as not in harmony
with the established methods of the churches. In his book against the
revivalists, Dr. Chauncy said that "now is the time when we are
particularly called to stand for the good old way, and bear testimony
against everything that may tend to cast a blemish on true primitive
Christianity."[16]

When the great awakening came to an end, the liberal party was far stronger
than before, partly because the members of it had come to know each other
and to feel their own power, partly because men had been led to declare
themselves who had never before perceived their own position, and partly
because the agitation had set men to thinking, and to making such scrutiny
of their beliefs as they had never made before. The testimonies of Harvard
College and various associations of ministers against the methods of the
revivalists were signed by sixty-three men, while those in favor of the
revival were signed by one hundred and ten. These numbers represent the
comparative strength of the two parties. It must be said, however, that the
leading men in nearly every part of New England were among those opposing
the revival methods, while in Eastern Massachusetts at least two-thirds of
the ministers were of the liberal party.[17]

The strong feeling caused by the revival soon subsided, and no division
between the Calvinist and the Arminian parties took place. The progressive
tendencies went quietly on, step by step the old beliefs were discarded;
but it was by individuals, and not in any form as a sectarian movement. The
relations of the church to the state at this time would have made such a
result impossible.

[Sidenote: Cardinal Beliefs of the Liberals.]

Looking over the whole field of the theological advance from 1725 to 1760,
we find that three conclusions had been arrived at by the men of the
liberal movement. The first of these was that what they stood for as a body
was a recovery and restoration of primitive Christianity in its simplicity
and power. It was said of Dr. Mayhew by his biographer that he "was a great
advocate of primitive Christianity, and zealously contended for the faith
once delivered to the saints."

The second opinion, to which they gave frequent utterance, was that the
Bible is a divine revelation, the true source of all religious teaching,
and the one sufficient creed for all men. In his sermon against the
enthusiasm of the revivalists, Chauncy said that a true test of all
religious excitement, and of every kind of new teachings, was to be found
in their "regard to the Bible, and its acknowledgment that the things
therein contained are the commandments of God." "Keep close to the
Scripture," was his admonition to his congregation, "and admit of nothing
for an impression of the spirit but what agrees with that unerring rule.
Fix it in your minds as a truth you will invariably abide by, that the
Bible is the grand test by which everything in religion is to be tried."

The third position of the men of the liberal movement was that Christ is
the only means of salvation, and they yielded to him unquestioning loyalty
and faith. Turning away from the creeds of men, as they did in so far as
they could see their way, they concentrated their convictions upon Christ,
and found in him the spiritual and vital centre of all faith that lives
with true power to help men. Mayhew held that God could not have forgiven
men their sins without the atonement of Christ, for his life and his gospel
are the means of the great reconciliation by which man and God are brought
into harmony with each other.

[Sidenote: Publications defining the Liberal Beliefs.]

In three publications may be seen what the Arminians had to teach that was
opposed to Calvinism. In 1744 appeared in Boston a book of two hundred and
eight pages by Rev. Experience Mayhew, one of a devoted family of
missionaries to the Indians of Martha's Vineyard. He called his book "Grace
Defended, in a Modest Plea for an important Truth: namely, that the offer
of Salvation made to sinners comprises in it an offer of the Grace given in
Regeneration." Mr. Mayhew claimed that he was a Calvinist, yet he rejected
the teaching that every act of the unregenerate person is equal in the
sight of God to the worst sin, and claimed that even the sinner can live so
well and so justly as to favor his being accepted of God. Mayhew maintained
that Christ died for all men, not for the elect only.[18] He claimed that
"God cannot be truly said to offer salvation to sinners without offering to
them whatsoever is necessary on his part, in order to their salvation."[19]
Mayhew was usually credited with being an Arminian; for he positively
rejected the doctrine of election, and he defended the principle of human
freedom in the most affirmative manner.

In 1749 Lemuel Briant (or Bryant), the minister in that part of Braintree
which became the town of Quincy, published a sermon which he entitled The
Absurdity and Blasphemy of Depreciating Moral Virtue. It condemned reliance
on Christ's merits without effort to live his life, and showed that it is
the duty of the Christian to live righteously. Briant said that to hold any
other view was hurtful and blasphemous. He claimed that "the great rule the
Scriptures lay down for men to go by in passing judgment on their spiritual
state is the sincere, upright, steady, and universal practice of virtue."
"To preach up chiefly what Christ himself laid the stress upon (and whether
this was not moral virtue let every one judge from his discourses) must
certainly, in the opinion of all sober men, be called truly and properly,
and in the best sense, preaching of Christ."

A pamphlet of thirty pages appeared in 1757, written by Samuel Webster, the
minister of Salisbury, with the title "A Winter Evening's Conversation upon
the doctrine of Original Sin, wherein the notion of our having sinned in
Adam, and being on that account only liable to eternal Damnation, is proved
to be Unscriptural." It is in the form of a dialogue between a minister and
three of his parishioners, and gives, as few other writings of the
eighteenth century do, a clear and explicit statement of the author's
opinions in a readable and interesting form. That all have sinned in Adam
the minister pronounces "a very shocking doctrine." "What! make them first
to open their eyes in torment, and all this for a sin which certainly they
had no hand in,--a sin which, if it comes upon them at all, certainly is
without any fault or blame on their parts, for they had no hand in
receiving it!" That Adam is our federal head, and that we sinned because he
sinned, he calls "a mere castle in the air." "Sin and guilt are personal
things as much as knowledge. I can as easily conceive of one man's
knowledge being imputed to another as of his sins being so. No imputation
in either case can make the thing to be mine which is not mine any more
than one person may be another person." He declares that this doctrine of
imputation causes infidelity. "It naturally leads men into every
dishonorable thought of God which gives a great and general blow to
religion." It impeaches the holiness of God, "for it supposes him to make
millions sinners by his decree of imputation, who would otherwise have been
innocent." That it was his decree alone "that made all Adam's posterity
sinners is the very essence of this doctrine." "And so Christians are
guilty of holding what even heathen would blush at." That God "should
pronounce a sentence by which myriads of infants, as blameless as helpless,
were consigned over to blackness of darkness to be tormented with fire and
brimstone forever, is not consistent with infinite goodness." "How
dreadfully is God dishonored by such monstrous representations as these!"
Such a being cannot be loved by us, for every heart rebels against it. "All
descriptions of the Divine Being which represent him in an unamiable light
do the greatest hurt to religion that can be, as they strike at love, which
is the fulfilling of the law. I am persuaded that many of those who think
they believe this doctrine do not really believe it, or else they do not
consider how it represents their heavenly Father." The pamphlet concludes
with the acceptance of this broader teaching by the parishioners, but it
was the cause of controversy in pulpits and by means of pamphlets. Bellamy
denied the teachings of Webster, and Chauncy defended them. So bold a
pamphlet as this showed how men had come to reason without compromise about
the old doctrines, and gave evidence that the growing spirit of humanity
would no longer accept what was harsh and cruel.

[Sidenote: Phases of Religious Progress.]

The New England churches were thus not standing still as regards doctrines,
moral conduct, the methods of worship, or the relations they held to the
state; but step by step they were moving away from the methods and the
ideas of the fathers. The "lining out" of hymns was slowly abandoned, and
singing by note took its place. The agitation that followed this attempt at
reform was great and wide-spread. The introduction of an organized and
trained choir was also in the nature of a genuine reform. When the liberal
Thomas Brattle offered an organ to the new church in Brattle Street, it was
voted "that they do not think it proper to use the same in the public
worship of God." The instrument was, however, accepted by King's Chapel;
and an organist was secured from London. It was not until 1770 that the
church in Providence procured an organ, the first used in a Congregational
church in New England.

When Dr. Jonathan Mayhew died, in 1766, Dr. Chauncy prayed at his funeral;
and this was said to have been the first prayer ever made at a funeral in
Boston, so strong was the Puritan dislike of the customs of the Catholic
Church.[20] In this way, as well as in others, the new liberalism broke
down the old customs, and introduced those with which we are familiar.
Perhaps the most marked tendency of this kind was the introduction of the
reading of the Bible into the services of the churches as a part of the
order of worship. This innovation was distinctly due to the liberal men and
the high esteem in which they held the Scriptures as a means of giving
sobriety and reasonableness to their religion. The First Church in Boston,
in May, 1730, voted that the reading of the Scriptures, instead of the old
Puritan way of expounding them, be thereafter discretionary with the
ministers of that church, but "that the mind of the church is that larger
portions should be publicly read than has been used."[21] As we have seen,
the Brattle Street Church had already led in this reform, having adopted
this practice in 1699. This custom of reading the Bible as a part of the
service of worship came slowly into general acceptance, for there was a
strong feeling against it. When a Bible was presented to the parish in
Mendon, in 1767, a serious commotion resulted because of the strong feeling
against the Church of England then prevalent; and the donor gave it to the
minister until such time as the church might wish to use it. It was as late
as 1785 that a copy of the Bible was given to the First Church in Dedham,
with the request that the reading of it should be made a part of the
exercises of the Lord's day; and the parish instructed the minister to read
such portions of it as he thought "most desirable" and of "such length as
the several seasons of the year and other circumstances" might render
proper. In the West Church of Medway it was not until 1806 that this
practice was established, and two of the Salem churches began it the same
year. The reading of the Bible at ordination services did not become
customary until an even later date.[22]

Such are some of the practical innovations which accompanied the doctrinal
development that was taking place. Liberality in one direction brought
toleration and progress in others. Some of these changes were due to the
fact that the prejudices against the Catholic Church and the Church of
England had, in a measure, disappeared, because there was nothing to keep
them alive. Others were due to the intellectual influences that came into
the colonies from England. Still others resulted from the shifting
relations of church and state, and were the effect of attempts to adjust
those relations more satisfactorily.

[1] Narrative of Surprising Conversions, edition of 1808, 13.

[2] Denial of original sin, from Pelagius, an ascetic preacher of the
    fifth century.

[3] Dwight, Life of Edwards, 307, 336, 410, 413.

[4] Ibid., 649.

[5] Ibid., 495.

[6] Green, History of Springfield.

[7] Ibid., 255.

[8] E.H. Byington, The Puritan in England and New England, devotes a
    chapter to the controversy over Breck's settlement; but he does not
    treat of the theological problems involved.

[9] Whitefield's Seventh Journal, 28.

[10] History of Harvard University, 52.

[11] History of Harvard University, 23, 26.

[12] Whitefield's Journal, seventh part, 28.

[13] Historical Magazine, new series, IX. 227, April, 1871.

[14] W.B. Sprague, Annals of the Unitarian Pulpit, II.

[15] Levi L. Paine, A Critical History of the Evolution of Trinitarianism,
     99. "Samuel Clarke and others took the ground that God is unipersonal,
     and hence that the Son is a distinct personal being, distinguishing
     God the Father as the absolute Deity from the Son whom they regarded
     as God in a relative or secondary sense, being derived from the
     Father, and having his beginning from Him."

[16] Seasonable Thoughts, 337.

[17] Alden Bradford, in his Memoir of the Life and Writings of Rev.
     Jonathan Mayhew, D.D., gives a list of "the clergymen who openly
     opposed or did not teach and advocate the Calvinistic doctrines" at
     the time of Mayhew's ordination, in 1747. These were: Dr. Appleton,
     Cambridge; Dr. Gay, Hingham; Dr. Chauncy, Boston; William Rand,
     Kingston; Nathaniel Eelles, Scituate; Edward Barnard, Haverhill;
     Samuel Cooke, West Cambridge (now Arlington); Jeremiah Fogg,
     Kensington, N.H.; Dr. A. Eliot, Boston; Dr. Samuel Webster, Salisbury;
     Lemuel Briant, Braintree; Dr. Stevens, Kittery, Me.; Dr. Tucker,
     Newbury; Timothy Harrington, Lancaster; Dr. Gad Hitchcock, Pembroke;
     Josiah Smith, Pembroke; William Smith, Weymouth; Dr. Daniel Shute,
     Hingham; Dr. Samuel Cooper, Boston; Dr. Mayhew, Boston; Abraham
     Williams, Sandwich; Anthony Wibird, Braintree (now Quincy); Dr.
     Cushing, Waltham; Professor Wigglesworth, Harvard College; Dr. Symmes,
     Andover; Dr. John Willard, Connecticut; Amos Adams, Roxbury; Dr.
     Barnes, Scituate; Charles Turner, Duxbury; Dr. Dana Wallingford,
     Conn.; Ebenezer Thayer, Hampton, N.H.; Dr. Fiske, Brookfield; Dr.
     Samuel West, Dartmouth (now New Bedford); Dr. Hemenway, Wells. Among
     those who took part in the ordination of Jonathan Mayhew, and
     therefore presumably of the same theological opinions, were Hancock,
     Lexington; Cotton, Newton; Cooke, Sudbury; Prescott, Danvers (now
     Salem). To these may be added, says Bradford, though of a somewhat
     later date: Dr. Coffin, Buxton; Drs. Howard, West, Lathrop, and
     Belknap, Boston; Dr. Henry Cummings, Billerica; Dr. Deane, Portland;
     Thomas Cary, Newburyport; Dr. Fobes, Raynham; Timothy Hilliard,
     Cambridge; Thomas Haven, Reading; Dr. Willard, Beverly. Dr. Ezra
     Ripley added the names of Hedge, of Warwick, and Foster, of Stafford.
     This makes fifty-two in all, but probably as many more could be added
     by careful search.

[18] Grace Defended, 43.

[19] Ibid., 60.

[20] Alice Morse Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England, 364, 367.
     See H.M. Dexter, Congregationalism as seen in its Literature, 458.

[21] A.B. Ellis, History of the First Church in Boston, 199.

[22] New England Magazine, February, 1899. A.H. Coolidge on Scripture
     Reading in the Worship of the New England Churches.




IV.


THE SILENT ADVANCE OF LIBERALISM.

The progressive tendencies went silently on; and step by step the old
beliefs were discarded, but always by individuals and churches, and not by
associations or general official action. Even before the middle of the
eighteenth century there was not only a questioning of the doctrine of
divine decrees, the conception that God elects some to bliss and some to
perdition in accordance with his own arbitrary will, but there was also
developing a tendency to reject the tritheism[1] which in New England took
the place of a philosophical conception of the Trinity, such as had been
held by the great thinkers of the Christian ages. In part this doubt about
the Trinity was the result of a more thoughtful study of the Bible, where
the doctrine taught by the leading theologians of the old school in New
England does not appear; and in part it was the result of the reading of
the works of the English divines of the more liberal school. Something of
this tendency was also due to the spirit of free inquiry, and the rational
interpretation of religion, that were beginning to make themselves felt
amongst those not wholly committed to the old ways of thinking.

It was characteristic of those who questioned the doctrine of the Trinity,
as then taught, that they insisted on stating their beliefs in the language
of the New Testament, especially in that of Jesus himself. They found him
teaching his own dependence on his Father, claiming for himself only an
inferior and subordinate position. Believing in his pre-existence, his
supernatural character and mission, they held that he was the creator of
the world or that creation took place by means of the spirit that was in
him, and that every honor should be paid him except that of worshipping him
as the Supreme Being. As in the ancient family the son was always
subordinate to his father, so the Son of God presented in the New Testament
is less exalted than his Father. This conception of Christ is technically
called Arianism, from the Alexandrian presbyter of the fourth century who
first brought it into prominence.

[Sidenote: Subordinate Nature of Christ.]

The Arian heresy did not necessarily follow the Arminian, but much the same
causes led to its appearance. Many of the leading men in England had become
Arians, including Milton, Locke, Taylor, Clarke, Watts, and others; and the
reading of their books in New England led to an inquiry into the
truthfulness of the doctrine of the Trinity. As early as 1720 the preachers
of convention and election sermons were insisting upon a recognition of
Christ in the old way, showing that they were suspicious of heresy.[2]
Most of the Arians retained the other doctrines in which they had been
educated, even putting a stronger emphasis upon them than before. Rarely
was the subordinate nature of Christ made in any way prominent in
preaching. It was held so strictly subsidiary to the cardinal doctrines of
incarnation and atonement that only the most intelligent and watchful could
detect any difference between those who were Arians and those who were
strict Trinitarians. Now and then a man of more pronounced convictions and
utterance was shunned by his ministerial neighbors, but this rarely
occurred and had little practical effect. So long as a preacher gave
satisfaction to his own congregation, and had behind him the voters and the
tax-list of his town, his heresies were passed by with only comment and
gossip.

We find here and there definite indications of the doctrinal changes that
were taking place, as in the republication of Emlyn's Humble Inquiry into
the Scripture Account of Jesus Christ, which appeared in Boston in 1756.
Thomas Emlyn, the first English preacher who called himself a Unitarian,
published his Humble Inquiry in 1702; and in 1705 he established a
Unitarian congregation in London. This distinctively Unitarian book made an
able defence of the doctrine of the subordinate nature of Christ. More
significant than the republication of the book itself was the preface
written for it by a Boston layman, addressed to the ministers of the town,
in which he said that he found its teaching "to be the true, plain,
unadulterated doctrine of the Gospel." He also intimated that "many of his
brethren of the laity in the town and country were in sympathy with him and
sincerely desirous of knowing the truth." "In New Hampshire Province,"
wrote Dr. Joseph Bellamy, in 1760, "this party have actually, three years
ago, got things so ripe that they have ventured to new model our Shorter
Catechism, to alter or entirely leave out the doctrine of the Trinity, of
the decrees, of our first parents being created holy, of original sin,
Christ satisfying divine justice, effectual calling, justification,
etc."[3]

[Sidenote: Some of the Liberal Leaders.]

The farther advance in the liberal movement may be most easily traced in
the lives and teachings of three or four men. Rev Ebenezer Gay, who was
settled in Hingham in 1717, was the first man in New England to arrive at a
clear statement of opinions quite outside of and distinct from Calvinism.
Writing of the years from 1750 to 1755, John Adams said that at that time
Lemuel Briant, of Braintree, Jonathan Mayhew, of the West Church in Boston,
Daniel Shute, of Hingham, John Brown, of Cohasset, and perhaps equal to
all, if not above all, Ebenezer Gay, of Hingham, were Unitarians.[4] The
rapid sale of Emlyn's book would prove the truthfulness of this statement.
It was not by any sudden process that these men had come to what may be
called Unitarianism, though, more properly, Arianism; and not as a mere
result of a reaction from Calvinism. A new time had come, and with it new
hopes and thoughts. The burdening sense of the spiritual world that
belonged to the men of the seventeenth century did not belong to those of
the eighteenth. Men had come to see that God must manifest himself in
reason, common sense, nature, and the facts of life.

In the life and teachings of such a man as Ebenezer Gay we catch a new
insight into the spirit that was active in New England throughout the
eighteenth century for the realization of a larger faith. He was a man of a
strong, original, vigorous nature, a born leader of men, and one who
impressed his own character upon those with whom he came into contact. He
opposed the revival, and he made the men of his own association think with
him in their opposition to it. Years before the revival, however, he was a
liberal in theology, and had found his way into Arminianism. With the
spirit of free inquiry he was in fullest sympathy. He was strongly opposed
to creeds and to all written articles of faith. He condemned in the most
forcible terms the young man who, on the occasion of his ordination,
"engages to preach according to a rule of faith, creed, or confession which
is merely of human prescription or imposition." In his convention sermon of
1746 he denounced those who "insist upon the offensive peculiarities of the
party they espoused rather than upon the more mighty things in which we are
all agreed." It has been said of him that, after the middle of the century,
"his discourses will be searched in vain for any discussions of
controversial theology, any advocacy of the peculiar doctrines regarded as
orthodox, or the expression of any opinions at variance with those of his
successor, Dr. Ware."[5]

The sermon on Natural Religion as distinguished from Revealed, which Dr.
Gay delivered as the Dudleian lecture at Harvard, in 1759, showed the
reasonable and progressive spirit of his preaching. He claimed that there
is no antagonism between natural and revealed religion, and that, while
revealed religion is an addition to the natural, it is not built on the
ruins, but on the everlasting foundations of it. Revelation can teach
nothing contrary to natural religion or to the dictates of reason. "No
doctrine or scheme of religion," he said, "should be advanced or received
as Scriptural and divine which is plainly and absolutely inconsistent with
the perfections of God, and the possibility of things. Absurdities and
contradictions, are not to be obtruded upon our faith. No pretence of
revelation can be sufficient for the admission of them. The manifest
absurdity of any doctrine is a stronger argument that it is not of God than
any other evidence can be that it is."

Jonathan Mayhew, the son of Experience Mayhew, of Martha's Vineyard, was
settled over the West Church of Boston in 1747. He was even then known as a
heretic, who had read the most liberal books of the English philosophers
and theologians, and who had boldly accepted their opinions as his own. On
the occasion of his ordination not one of the Boston ministers was present,
although a number of them were well known for their liberal opinions. The
ordination was postponed, and later several men of remoter parishes joined
in inducting this young independent into his pulpit. No Boston minister
would exchange pulpits with him, and he was not invited to join the
ministerial association. He was shunned by the ministers, and he was
dreaded by the orthodox; but he was gladly heard by a large congregation,
which grew in numbers and intelligence as the years went on. He had among
his hearers many of the leading men of the town, and to him gathered those
who were most thoughtful and progressive. Boston has never had in any of
its pulpits a man of nobler, broader, more humane qualities, or one with a
mind more completely committed to seeking and knowing the truth, or with a
more unflinching purpose to speak his own mind without fear or favor. His
influence was soon powerfully felt in the town, and his name came to stand
for liberty in politics as well as in religion. His sermons were rapidly
printed and distributed widely. They were read in every part of New England
with great eagerness; they were reprinted in England, and brought him a
large correspondence from those who admired and approved of his teaching.
Though he died in 1766, at the age of forty-six, his work and his influence
did not die with him.

The cardinal thought of Jonathan Mayhew with reference to religion was that
of free inquiry. Diligent and free examination of all questions, he felt,
was necessary to any acquisition of the truth. He believed in liberty and
toleration everywhere, and this made him accept in the fullest sense the
doctrine of the freedom of the will. In man he found a self-determining
power, the source of his moral and intellectual freedom. He said that we
are more certain of the fact that we are free than we are of the truth of
Christianity. This belief led him to the rejection of the Calvinistic
doctrine of inability, and to a strong faith in the moral and spiritual
possibilities of human nature. He described Christianity as "a practical
science, the art of living piously and virtuously."[6] He had quite freed
his mind from bondage to creeds when he said that, "how much soever any man
may be mistaken in opinion concerning the terms of salvation, yet if he is
practically in the right there is no doubt but he will be accepted of
God."[7] He held that no speculative error, however great, is sufficient
to exclude a good and upright man from the kingdom of heaven, who lives
according to the genuine spirit of the gospel. To him the principle of
grace was always a principle of goodness and holiness; and he held that
grace can never be operative as a saving power without obedience to that
righteousness and love which Christ taught as essential.[8] He declared
that "the doctrine that men may obtain salvation without ceasing to do evil
and learning to do well, without yielding a sincere obedience to the laws
of Christianity, is not so properly called a doctrine of grace as it is a
doctrine of devils."[9] He said, again, that we cannot be justified by a
faith that is without obedience; for it is obedience and good works that
give to faith all its life, efficacy, and perfection.[10]

[Sidenote: The First Unitarian.]

Dr. Mayhew accepted without equivocation the right of private judgment in
religion, and he practised it judicially and with wise insight. He
unhesitatingly applied the rational method to all theological problems, and
to him reason was the final court of appeal for everything connected with
religion. His love of freedom was enthusiastic and persistent, and he was
zealously committed to the principle of individuality. He believed in the
essential goodness of human nature, and in the doctrine of the Divine
Unity. He was the first outspoken Unitarian in New England, not merely
because he rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, but because he accepted
all the cardinal principles developed by that movement since his day. He
was a rationalist, an individualist, a defender of personal freedom, and
tested religious practices by the standard of common sense. His sermons
were plain, direct, vigorous, and modern. A truly religious man, Mayhew
taught a practical and humanitarian religion, genuinely ethical, and
faithful in inculcating the motive of civic duty.

Dr. Mayhew's words may be quoted in regard to some of the religious beliefs
commonly accepted in his day. "The doctrine of a total ignorance and
incapacity to judge of moral and religious truths brought upon mankind by
the disobedience of our first parents," he wrote, "is without
foundation."[11] "I hope it appears," he says, "that the love of God and of
our neighbor, that sincere piety of heart, and a righteous, holy and
charitable life, are the weightier matters of the gospel, as well as of the
law."[12] "Although Christianity cannot," he asserts, "with any propriety
or justice be said to be the same with natural religion, or merely a
republication of the laws of nature, yet the principal, the most important
and fundamental duties required by Christianity are, nevertheless, the same
which were enjoined under the legal dispensation of Moses, and the same
which are dictated by the light of nature."[13] His great love of
intellectual and spiritual freedom finds utterance in such a statement as
this: "Nor has any order or body of men authority to enjoin any particular
article of faith, nor the use of any modes of worship not expressly pointed
out in the Scriptures; nor has the enjoining of such articles a tendency to
preserve the peace and harmony of the church, but directly the
contrary."[14] Such sentences as the following are frequent on Mayhew's
pages, and they show clearly the trend of his mind: "Free examination,
weighing arguments for and against with care and impartiality, is the way
to find truth." "True religion flourishes the more, the more people
exercise their right of private judgment."[15] "There is nothing more
foolish and superstitious than a veneration for ancient creeds and
doctrines as such, and nothing is more unworthy a reasonable creature than
to value principles by their age, as some men do their wines."[16]

Mayhew insisted upon the strict unity of God, "who is without rival or
competitor." "The dominion and sovereignty of the universe is necessarily
one and in one, the only living and true God, who delegates such measures
of power and authority to other beings as seemeth good in his sight." He
declared that the not preserving of such unity and supremacy of God on the
part of Christians "has long been just matter of reproach to them"; and he
said the authority of Christ is always "exercised in subordination to God's
will."[17] His position was that "the faith of Christians does not
terminate in Christ as the ultimate object of it, but it is extended
through him to the one God."[18] The very idea of a mediator implies
subordination as essential to it.[19] His biographer says he did not accept
the notion of vicarious suffering, and, that he was an Arian in his views
of the nature of Christ. "He was the first clergyman in New England who
expressly and openly opposed the scholastic doctrine of the Trinity.
Several others declined pressing the Athanasian Creed, and believed
strictly in the unity of God. They also probably found it difficult to
explain their views on the subject, and the great danger of losing their
good name served to prevent their speaking out. But Dr. Mayhew did not
conceal or disguise his sentiments on this point any more than on others,
such as the peculiar tenets of Calvinism. He explicitly and boldly declared
the doctrine irrational, unscriptural, and directly contradictory."[20] He
taught the strict unity of God as early as 1753, "in the most unequivocal
and plain manner, in his sermons of that year."[21] What most excited
comment and objection was that, in a foot-note to the volume of his sermons
published in 1755, Mayhew said that a Catholic Council had elevated the
Virgin Mary to the position of a fourth person in the Godhead, and added,
by way of comment: "Neither Papists nor Protestants should imagine that
they will be understood by others if they do not understand themselves. Nor
should they think that nonsense and contradictions can ever be too sacred
to be ridiculous." The ridicule here was not directed against the doctrine
of the Trinity, as has been maintained, but the foolish defences of it made
by men who accepted its "mysteries" as too wonderful for reason to deal
with in a serious manner. This boldness of comment on the part of Mayhew
was in harmony with his strong disapproval of creed-making in all its
forms. He condemned creeds because they set up "human tests of orthodoxy
instead of the infallible word of God, and make other terms of Christian
communion than those explicitly pointed out by the Gospel."[22]

Dr. Mayhew was succeeded in the West Church by Rev. Simeon Howard in 1767,
who, though he was received in a more friendly spirit by the ministers of
the town, was not less radical in his theology than his predecessor. Dr.
Howard was both an Arminian and an Arian, and he was "a believer neither in
the Trinity, nor in the divine predestination of total depravity, and
necessary ruin to any human soul."[23] He was of a gentle and conciliatory
temper, but his preaching was quite as thorough-going in its intellectual
earnestness as was Dr. Mayhew's.

[Sidenote: A Pronounced Universalist.]

Another preacher on the liberal side was Dr. Charles Chauncy of the First
Church in Boston, whose ministry lasted from 1727 to 1787. He was the most
vigorous of the opponents of the great awakening, both in his pulpit and
through the press. He wrote a book on certain French fanatics, with the
purpose of showing what would be the natural results of the excesses of the
revival; he preached a powerful sermon on enthusiasm, to ind