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.