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 régime 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."