Chapter I: The Undermining of Puritan Standards and Institutions (3)

[146] _Acts and Laws of the State of Connecticut_, p. 418.

[147] In September, 1818, by the adoption of the new state constitution, the long wearisome struggle was brought to an end, and State and Church in Connecticut were separated completely.

[148] This point of view was tersely set forth in the election sermon preached by the Rev. Mr. Payson, at Boston, May 27, 1778: “Let the restraints of religion once be broken down, as they infallibly would be by leaving the subject of public worship to the humours of the multitude, and we might well defy all human wisdom and power to support and preserve order and government in the state.”—Quoted by Backus, _Church History of New England, from 1620 to 1804_ (ed. of 1844, Philadelphia), pp. 204 _et seq._

[149] The state of feelings shared by the supporters of the Establishment at the time when the blow fell severing the bond between the church and state in Connecticut, is vividly expressed by Beecher: “It was a time of great depression.... It was as dark a day as ever I saw. The injury done to the cause of Christ, as we then supposed, was irreparable. For several days I suffered what no tongue can tell _for the best thing that ever happened to the State of Connecticut_.” (_Autobiography, Correspondence, etc._, vol. i, p. 304.)

[150] This was the view propounded by President Ezra Stiles, of Yale, in his election sermon of May 3, 1783: “Through the liberty enjoyed here, all religious sects will grow up into large and respectable bodies. But the Congregational and Presbyterian denominations, however hitherto despised, will, by the blessing of Heaven continue to hold the greatest figure in America, and, notwithstanding all the fruitless labors and exertions to proselyte us to other communions, become more numerous than the whole collective body of our fellow protestants in Europe.” (Quoted by Backus, _History of New England_, vol. ii, p. 312.)

To this exposition and bold forecast Backus took decided objections, on the grounds (1) that _persecution_ and not _tolerance_ had promoted the growth of sects in America, and (2) that the numerical increase of the Congregationalists and Presbyterians in this country did not justify any such prediction. _Cf. ibid._, pp. 403–407.

[151] Perhaps no man more boldly stated this interpretation of the motives that inspired the Standing Order than Abraham Bishop, leader of the forces of Republicanism in Connecticut and arch-enemy of “ecclesiastical aristocrats.” “The religion of the country is made a stalking horse for political jockies ... Thanksgiving and fasts have been often improved for political purposes and the miserable gleanings from half a year’s ignorance of the true interests of our country have been palmed on the people, by the political clergy, as a pious compliance with the governor’s very pious proclamations.... The union of Church and State ... [is] the grand fortress of the ‘friends of order and good government.’” (_Oration delivered at Wallingford, New Haven_, 1801, pp. 46, 83.) That “the church is in danger” has for some time past been one of the most frequent and frantic of all the absurd cries heard in the land, and that New England through her clannishness has produced “patriarchs in opinion” who assume the prerogative of dictating the opinions of the people on all subjects, are further trenchant comments of the same orator. (_Ibid._, pp. 13, 17.) Bishop’s observations respecting the alleged specious and insincere character of those public utterances by which “the friends of order and good government” sought to preserve the _status quo_, are equally pointed. “The sailor nailed the needle of his compass to the cardinal point and swore that it should not be always traversing. So does the New England friend of order: but he cautiously conceals the oppression and imposture, which sustains these habits.... This cry of _steady habits_ has a talismanic effect on the minds of our people; but nothing can be more hollow, vain and deceitful. Recollect for a moment that everything valuable in our world has been at one time innovation, illuminatism, modern philosophy, atheism.... Our steady habits have calmly assumed domination over the rights of conscience and suffrage. Certainly the trinitarian doctrine is established by law and the denial of it is placed in the rank follies. Though we have ceased to transport from town to town, quakers, new lights, and baptists; yet the dissenters from our prevailing denomination are, even at this moment, praying for the repeal of those laws which abridge the rights of conscience.” (_Ibid._, pp. 14, 16.)

3. ALARMS DUE TO THE SPREAD OF RELIGIOUS RADICALISM AND SCEPTICISM

During the eighteenth century the progress of religious thought in New England in the direction of liberal positions was marked. Near the beginning of the century, in his _Ratio Disciplinae_, Cotton Mather was able to speak confidently of the solid and compact character of religious opinion in his generation, and felt free to dispose of the subject with a few general statements regarding the universal adherence of the churches of New England to the orthodox standards of the mother country. He made the added comment: “I can not learn, That among all the Pastors of Two Hundred Churches, there is one Arminian: much less Arian, or a Gentilist.”[152] At the end of the century, it is very certain that no such all-inclusive generalization, by the widest stretch of the imagination, would have been possible. Indeed, when a noted Philadelphia minister of the day, the Reverend Ashbel Green, visited New England in 1791, he found an aptitude for polemical discussion on the part of the clergy which impressed him as most extraordinary. Through his contact with the Boston Ministerial Association he encountered “Calvinists, Universalists, Arminians, Arians,” and at least one “Socinian,” all participating in pleasant social intercourse, despite their radical differences of religious opinion. To the mind of the visiting Philadelphia clergyman the situation was explicable only on the basis of an extreme laxness in the matter of religious sentiments and doctrines, a judgment which obviously requires some modification in view of the predilection for doctrinal controversy which he himself remarked.[153]

From the days of the Great Awakening, the lines of doctrinal cleavage had grown increasingly distinct in the religious thought of New England. Apart from those effects of the revival which already have been noted,[154] it may be said that the one really permanent result of that notable wave of religious enthusiasm was the polemical controversy which it precipitated.[155] The question concerning the “means of grace,” around which the controversy in its initial stage raged,[156] became larger and more complicated by virtue of the massive system of theology which Jonathan Edwards developed upon the fundamental notion of the utter worthlessness of man, due to his depravity and consequent helplessness.

Into the metaphysical subtleties of the Edwardean system we are not called to go; it is sufficient to observe that the reaction against such a conception of human nature was bound to be marked in the midst of an age generally responsive to enthusiasms born of fresh conceptions of the essential dignity and worth of man. The virtue of humility was destined to divest itself of much of that abject quality with which the whole Calvinistic theology had clothed it, and to accommodate itself to candid and unblushing convictions of human endowments, abilities, excellencies, and prospects, because of which it would be impossible to retain the traditional contempt for human nature.[157]

The reaction against the Edwardean theology was fruitful in the encouragement of liberal notions along other closely related lines. The bold necessitarianism of that system could not but produce an effect generally favorable to the promotion of man’s confidence in himself, in the midst of an age characterized by prodigious political initiative and love of liberty, and by conceptions of the Deity which stressed the very vastness of those reaches of space stretching between God and the world. The heavy emphasis which the new theological system laid upon the notion of the divine sovereignty, true as it was in spirit to the traditional Puritan interest in the cause of theocracy, was doomed to find itself belated within an age beginning to glow with humanitarian passion and with enthusiasm for the ideal of democracy; and, positively considered, to give impulse in the general direction just noted. The very heat and intensity of the controversy which, from the middle of the century on, filled New England with its din and confusion, in itself bore witness to the degree of pressure which the more secularized notions of human worth and destiny had begun to exert. That a system so staggering in its assumptions, so all but invulnerable in its logical self-consistency, and withal so inexorable in its demands upon the human spirit for the abandonment of all thought of independent ability and worth, having been brought to close quarters with more or less vague and undefined, but none the less vital human interests and passions, should tend to give rise to a variety of radical opinions and judgments, was to be expected. And thus it operated,[158] not, to be sure, without the assistance of significant concurrent causes.

The wash of the wave of the great deistic controversy on the other side of the Atlantic was not without its effect upon the religious thought of New England. The direct evidence of this is, however, much more elusive than one might at first suppose.[159] That the reading public was acquainted with the writings of the great English deists, Herbert, Chubb, Shaftesbury, Tindal, Wollaston, Toland, Hume, is clear from references to their works which appear with considerable frequency in the private and public records of the day; but invariably these references are made in a more or less casual manner, and, for the most part, in connection with sweeping generalizations made by the clergy respecting the prevailing scepticism of the age. Apart from such allusions and the appearance of titles in the lists of booksellers who were advertising their stocks in the newspapers, it would be difficult to cite specific evidence, Thomas Paine’s _Age of Reason_ alone excepted, to the effect that the impact of English deism upon the thought of New England was anything like direct.

The amount of independent literary expression which the doctrines of deism obtained in New England was practically negligible.[160] The quality was even less noteworthy. Ethan Allen’s _Reason the Only Oracle of Man_,[161] published in 1784, was perhaps the only production of native orig into which anything like general attention was accorded; and the evident inability of this work to root itself deeply in the thought of the people, despite the prestige due to the author’s Revolutionary record, was demonstrated the moment Paine’s more serious work began to circulate in this country. The crudeness of Allen’s style, coupled with the ferocity of his onslaught on the advocates and absurdly credulous devotees of supernaturalism, as Allen regarded the orthodox party of his day, went far toward determining the attitude of contempt and high-minded scorn with which his work was generally treated, when leaders of conservative thought deigned to notice it at all.[162]

But Thomas Paine’s attack upon the foundations of supernaturalism was by no means taken lightly. From the time of its arrival in this country, the _Age of Reason_ produced an amount of excited comment which gave to its appearance and circulation all the elements of a sensation.[163] The natural interest of the public in the appearance of the production was admittedly great; but at least a partial explanation of the attention which the book received is to be found in the fact that its author was able to effect plans to have the work published cheaply abroad and extensively circulated in this country.[164] In any event, whatever may have been the precise influences which promoted the distribution and perusal of the book, the _Age of Reason_ aroused an immediate public interest, chiefly antagonistic, the like of which probably had been accorded to no other volume circulated in America before its day. The bumptious and militant nature of its deism, as well as its raw and unceremonious ridicule of much that passed in the thought of the times for essential orthodoxy, drew popular attention from the worthier and more exalted passages in the volume,[165] and irritated the opposition beyond control. A vociferous chorus of hostile criticism arose.[166] Clergymen poured out the vials of their wrath and execration, despite their evident desire to appear undisturbed; newspaper editors and contributors gave voluminous expression to their sense of chagrin and pained disappointment that so scandalous and impious a publication should be in circulation;[167] observers of and participants in the college life of the day felt called upon to lament the extent to which unsettling opinions of the nature of those expressed by Paine had laid hold of the imaginations and altered the convictions of youthful minds.[168] The impression that Paine had aided and abetted the cause of impiety and irreligion was general.[169]

It was not the doctrinal controversies of the period, however, nor yet the intrusion of the principles of natural religion, by which the unsettling tendencies of the times were believed to be promoted most directly and powerfully. In the judgment of practically every leader of conservative thought in New England, and of all America for that matter, that unholy preëminence belonged to the effect produced upon the public mind in this country by the French Revolution, and more especially the impious principles of infidelity and atheism by which, they concluded, that colossal overturning of institutions was stimulated and guided. No single phenomenon of our national history stands out in sharper relief than the impression which the great European convulsion made, first upon the imaginations and later upon the political and religious ideals of the citizens of this young republic in the West, who followed the earlier fortunes of the French Revolutionary cause with breathless interest and concern. The memory of the recent struggle of the American colonists for independence, for the happy issue of which France had made such timely and substantial contributions, in itself supplied a pledge of profound sympathy for that country. That the spark of revolution had been communicated originally by America to France was, moreover, one of the favorite conceits of the day. Gratitude, the bonds of political friendship and alliance, the supposed similarity of popular enthusiasms and passions—all the essential factors requisite for the development of a spirit of tender and affectionate regard were clearly present.

Thus it happened that from the hour when the first rumblings of the impending European revolution were heard on this side of the Atlantic, the citizens of these states evinced an earnest and sympathetic concern;[170] and as the revolutionary drama unfolded through its earlier scenes the enthusiasm and lively sympathy of the people grew apace. The atmosphere was electric. Anticipations of citizens ran high. Liberty was again in travail.[171] The institutions of freedom were about to descend upon another nation. The shackles of political and ecclesiastical tyranny were being torn from the limbs of twenty-five millions of slaves.[172] Having revolutionized France, America’s ideals might be expected to leaven the whole of Europe.[173] The millennium could not be far away. Admiration for the French cause and devotion to it swept all before them. So much so that when, in the autumn and winter of 1792–93, the thrilling news of the successes achieved by the French armies in repelling the invaders of the new republic began to arrive in America, a wave of irresistible and uncontrolled enthusiasm swept over the land.[174] The “French Frenzy,” with its maudlin outbursts of professed attachment for the great watchwords of the Revolution—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—with its pageants and civic feasts, its cockades and liberty caps, its ribald singing of republican songs and dramatic intertwinings of the standards of the two sister republics, deserves a place altogether by itself as an extraordinary expression of the public mind.

To this wild riot of tumultuous and spectacular enthusiasm an effectual check was soon to be given. With the execution of Louis XVI, in January, 1793, the admiration of the more thoughtful observers of the Revolution, who had accustomed themselves to pass soberly but apologetically over the earlier excesses of the revolutionists as unavoidable concomitants of a struggle necessarily desperate in its character,[175] received a rude shock.[176] The brutal death of a monarch whose personal services on behalf of their own cause during the days of deep necessity had been considerable, brought home to American citizens their first clear conviction respecting the excessively bloody and relentless spirit of the forces in control of the Revolution. The day of disillusionment had dawned. Leaders of thought made no effort to conceal their sense of mingled horror and regret. The amount of popular sympathy for the cause of the Revolution was still too great to allow anything approaching a general condemnation; but none the less a decided chill was felt.[177]

The murder of the king soon enough appeared to Americans a mere incident in a wild orgy of unbridled violence and blood-letting. A stream of information concerning the swift march of events in France, mostly having to do with enormities and excesses which gave all too patent proof of the fury of the currents of passion upon which the participants in the Revolution were being tossed, began to pour its waters through the channels of public utterance and discussion in America. The atrocities of the Reign of Terror brought fully home to the American public, to the conservative-minded particularly, the conviction that the Revolution had become diverted from its original principles and aims, and had descended to the plane of brutal despotism, reprehensible both in principle and practice above anything the eyes of men had ever beheld.[178] The leaders of the Revolution clearly were not the high-minded patriots and emancipators their admirers on this side of the ocean had adjudged them to be. The terms “assassin,” “savage,” “monster,” “regicide,” began to be employed as the only fit terms whereby to characterize the leading figures in an awful spectacle of butchery and rapine.[179]

But not until the religious aspects of the French Revolution are considered, is the deep revulsion of feeling which took place in New England completely laid bare. This feature of the situation had been regarded with deep solicitude from the beginning;[180] and as time went on through the cloud of confusion raised by the dust and smoke of the political developments of the Revolution, it became increasingly clear to the conservative class in New England that an alliance between the forces of anarchy and impiety had been effected. What else could explain the rapid development of a fierce reforming spirit, which in turn, within the space of not more than two or three years at the most, stood forth as a spirit of overt persecution in the handling of all ecclesiastical affairs? The vociferous affirmation of deistical and atheistical principles on the part of Revolutionary leaders in the councils of clubs and in sessions of the National Assembly, the reiteration and growing boldness of the demand for the elimination of the ancient system of religious faith, the successive efforts to supplant that system, first with the cult of Reason and later with the cult of the Supreme Being,—how were these to be construed other than as the expressions and performances of men who were bent upon the utter abolition of the Christian faith? There was wanting in New England, of course, intimate knowledge of the true state of French religious affairs and of the reactionary spirit displayed by the higher clergy and their devotion to the cause of monarchy. Little was known of the growing sense of resentment felt by a people who had begun to contemplate frankly the burdens which had been imposed upon them under the ancient régime, the multiplication of religious offices and establishments, the absorption of the land into vast ecclesiastical estates, and the indifference of the spiritual guides of the nation to private and public distress. It was hardly to be expected that spectators as far removed from the scene as the shores of New England would be able to interpret correctly the essential spirit of a people who had grown weary of the abuses of a religious system in whose principles and purer forms they still believed, despite the momentary violence of their leaders.[181]

By the year 1794 the belief that the revolutionists in France had added atheism to their program of anarchy was well established in New England. The difficulty of weighing this opinion exactly is greatly enhanced on account of the political handling which the situation received. Over the question of foreign alliances the Federalists and Republicans had split violently in 1793. The war which had broken out between England and France, regarded from any point of view, was of vast consequence in the eyes of the citizens of this young nation, just beginning to cope with the problems of diplomacy and international relations. The outbreak of hostilities between the two European nations with which the United States had had and must continue to have its most intimate and important intercourse forced an alignment among its citizens so sharp and decisive as to constitute the outstanding political feature of the country for years to come.[182] For reasons which we shall not now pause to consider, Federalists championed the cause of England in the European conflict, and Republicans the cause of France. Seizing upon the issue of “French infidelity,” Federalist editors were disposed to see in it the gravest peril by which the American people were threatened. The anti-religious spirit of the French Revolutionary leaders represented a danger-point of infection against which every citizen must needs be warned. On the other hand, Republican editors felt it incumbent upon them to do their utmost to minimize the genuineness and importance of all such damaging views of the case.[183]

But considerations of party advantage fall far short of furnishing a full explanation of the general sense of alarm the people of New England experienced on account of the open hostility to religion which they saw manifest in France. Out of France came a series of reports which taken together were calculated to raise their fears to the highest pitch. The confiscation of the property of the church, the abolition of religious vows, the promulgation of the “Civil Constitution of the Clergy,”[184] the banishment of non-juror priests, the infamy of the Goddess of Reason, the abolition of the Christian Sabbath, the secularization of festivals[185]—here were evidences of impiety as shameless as they were shocking.[186] Such principles and measures appeared as so many deadly thrusts at the Christian faith. It was difficult, if not impossible, for the most sympathetic admirers of France to find a way to explain this ominous cast of events.[187]

How thoroughly the fear of “French infidelity” had gripped the imaginations of men in New England will appear more clearly if the following considerations are weighed. The presumption that the intimate relations which Americans had been having with the people of France had produced a serious blight of morals and religion among the former, seemed to find its justification in the currents of skepticism and irreverence which, by common consent, had set in among the youth of the land. This phase of the situation as reflected in conditions within the colleges was held to be particularly deplorable. It was the settled conviction of President Dwight of Yale that “the infidelity of Voltaire and his coadjutors” had a special attractiveness for youth, for reasons which do not impress one as being highly charitable, to say the least:

Youths particularly, who had been liberally educated, and who with
strong passions, and feeble principles, were votaries of sensuality
and ambition, delighted with the prospect of unrestrained
gratification, and panting to be enrolled with men of fashion and
splendour, became enamored of these new doctrines. The tenour of
opinion, and even of conversation, was to a considerable extent
changed at once. Striplings, scarcely fledged, suddenly found that
the world had been involved in a general darkness, through the long
succession of the preceding ages; and that the light of wisdom had
just begun to dawn upon the human race. All the science, all the
information, which had been acquired before the commencement of the
last thirty or forty years, stood in their view for nothing....
Religion they discovered on the one hand to be a vision of dotards
and nurses, and on the other a system of fraud and trick, imposed
by priestcraft for base purposes upon the ignorant multitude.
Revelation they found was without authority, or evidence; and
moral obligation a cobweb, which might indeed entangle flies,
but by which creatures of a stronger wing nobly disdained to be
confined.[188]

This somewhat theoretical view of the case was not unsupported by tangible evidence. The students of Yale were sceptical.[189] In the religious discussions of the lecture-rooms the cause of infidelity stood high in student favor.[190] Of seventy-six members of the class that graduated in 1802 only one was a professed Christian at the time of matriculation.[191] At the time President Dwight entered upon the leadership of the college, the college church was practically extinct.[192] Altogether the situation was highly alarming to the friends of Christianity.[193]

The condition of affairs at Harvard showed little if any improvement. When William Ellery Channing matriculated in that institution in 1794 he found the thought and principles of the students on a lower level than they ever before had reached.[194] The French Revolution, which generally throughout the country had shown itself to be contaminating, already had left its marks deep upon the life of the college. The old loyalties were shaken; conversation had become bold and daring in tone; the foundations upon which morals and religion had been built in the past were now believed to be seriously undermined.[195]

On the part of men who held themselves responsible for the education of youth, everywhere the feeling prevailed that a popular mood of skepticism had developed for which the precepts and example of the French were chiefly responsible.

With the clergy—and in their state of mind we are interested especially—this feeling was hardly less than an obsession. The special conservators of the moral and religious health of the people, they had long been concerned over the possible effects of radical French political and religious notions; and when they seemed to see the triumph of those notions in the excesses of the French Revolution, their sense of alarm was intense. It was, of course, the exhibition of violent hostility to organized Christianity in France which the Revolutionists were making, over which their hands were flung high in horror.

The clergy of New England, like the majority of their fellow-countrymen, in the beginning had not adopted an attitude of hostility toward the French upheaval. There was that in the earlier struggles of the French people to tear the yoke of despotism from their necks which appealed mightily to the sympathies of the clerical heart. It was not without some travail of spirit that clergymen arrived at the conclusion that their sympathy and enthusiasm for the French Revolution had been misplaced.[196] Two factors contributed to this result. In the first place, the changed complexion of the Revolution; in the second place, the new party alignments at home which brought the orthodox clergy, almost to a man, into the Federalist camp.

Which of these two factors was the more decisive in its power of control over the clerical mind, it would be difficult to say. As a matter of fact, the two influences were interrelated to an extraordinary degree. Political alignments, as we have seen, were interwoven closely with the question of foreign alliances. Conversely, the status of foreign affairs was bound to react strongly upon the judgments of clergymen with whom patriotic concerns were second in importance only to the interests of religion. Be that as it may, the years 1793 and 1794 saw the Federalist clergy in New England rapidly veering round to the fixed position of vehement antagonism to French principles. The following is a brief account of the course they pursued.

On the occasion of the annual fast in Massachusetts, April 11, 1793, the Reverend David Tappan, professor of divinity in Harvard College, preached a sermon that indicated the trend of a clerical mind.[197] In language not unmarked by vagueness, he called upon his hearers to bear witness to the present corrupted state of religion, due to the bold advance and rapid diffusion of “sceptical, deistical, and other loose and pernicious sentiments.” Waxing more confident, he continued: “May I not add that a species of atheistical philosophy, which has of late triumphantly reared its head in Europe, and which affects to be the offspring and the nurse of sound reason, science, and liberty, seems in danger of infecting some of the more sprightly and free-thinking geniuses of America.”[198]

Something more than a year later, a pulpit deliverance was made at Medford, Massachusetts, on the occasion of the annual state Thanksgiving, which supplied ample evidence that clerical fears were rapidly gathering force. Medford’s minister, the Reverend David Osgood,[199] was heard in a vigorous discussion of the leading political and religious concerns of the day.[200] First taking occasion to eulogize the Federal government by way of atonement for the failure of Governor Samuel Adams to make reference to the same in his Thanksgiving proclamation, the reverend gentleman thereupon launched into a vehement denunciation of the Democratic Societies,[201] because of their subservience to foreign emissaries, and because of the outrageous activities of Minister Genet. Not content with this, he proceeded to lay heavy emphasis upon the ferocious zeal and desperate fury which the French were manifesting in their attacks upon the institutions of religion, the far-reaching import of which, he declared, was already apparent in the fact that, under the power of their blind devotion to the French cause, not a few American citizens were casting off their allegiance to the Christian religion.[202]

The notes of warning sounded by Osgood in this sermon were both clear and loud. They fell on numerous sympathetic and responsive ears. Committed promptly to type, the sermon passed rapidly through six editions, a sufficient proof of the extent of the sensation which it produced. Its author’s reputation was established; but beyond this, and what is more to the point, the shibboleths of future clerical pronouncements had been uttered. Henceforth the public utterances of the Federal clergy were to be characterized by a violent antagonism to the French Revolution and the spread of French influence in America.[203]

The chorus of clerical complaint on account of the dangers that threatened the cause of religion, either because of the progress of the Revolution abroad or the overt and secret diffusion of infidel principles at home, grew steadily in volume. One or two added instances of this type of pulpit utterance will suffice.

Tappan was again heard from, in February, 1795, on the day set for the observance of the national thanksgiving.[204] He dealt with the political situation at length, and emphasized particularly the destructive effects of French influence. Before his sermon was committed to the hands of the printer, Tappan was made acquainted with the fact that the minister of Rowley, the Reverend Ebenezer Bradford, had made certain apologetic comments, on the occasion of the national thanksgiving, respecting the importance of French success to the peace and tranquility of America, and the propriety of seeking the reason for the recent insurrection in western Pennsylvania in “impolitic laws” rather than in French influence exerted through Democratic Clubs,[205] as Federalists had made bold to claim.[206] To these observations Tappan made the following sharp retort:

The destructive effects of them [_i. e._, secret political clubs]
in France have been noticed in the preceding discourse. Their
unhappy influence in this country is sufficiently exemplified in
that spirit of falsehood, of party and faction, which some of them,
at least, assiduously and too successfully promote, and especially
in the late dangerous and expensive western insurrection, which
may be evidently traced, in a great degree, to the inflammatory
representations and proceedings of these clubs, their abettors and
friends.[207]

Medford’s minister acquitted himself with something more than his customary fiery earnestness on the occasion of this same national festival. Mounting his pulpit, he pictured to his hearers “the reign of a ferocious and atheistical anarchy in France,” whose authors had “formed the design of bringing other nations to fraternize with them in their infernal principles and conduct.”[208] Their emissaries, Osgood argued, have spread themselves abroad and entered into every country open to them. In Geneva these abandoned creatures have been “horribly successful in overthrowing a free government but lately established, and in bringing on, in imitation of what had happened in their own country, one revolution after another.” The same identical agents have found their way into the United States and have begun here their poisonous fraternizing system.[209] The sermon as a whole could scarcely have been more violent in tone. It is very clear that Osgood had resolved to do what he could to rouse the country.

As a direct result of this kind of pulpit utterance—a result that doubtless had much to do with persuading the clergy that an alarming decline of religion was under way in New England—the charge of “political preaching” rapidly developed into one of the standing accusations of the day. The bitterness of party strife grew apace. Opposition to Federalist measures of government, such as Jay’s Treaty and the handling of diplomatic relations with France, mounted steadily higher. In consequence, the Federal clergy found themselves drawn farther and farther into the maelstrom of political discussion. Out of this developed the sentiments entertained by the opposition that the clergy were the tools of the Federalists, and that public occasions were eagerly pounced upon by them and used to promote the cause of party advantage.

This shaft struck home; and yet not so much in the nature of a personal affront as an added proof that a state of deep impiety had settled down upon the land. Well might the clergy lament, not that they had been so foully slandered, but that they were called upon to reckon with a people who had drifted out so far upon the sea of irreverence and disrespect. To illustrate: The Reverend Jeremy Belknap was before the convention of the clergy of Massachusetts, in May, 1796, to preach the convention sermon. His mind turned to this new burden which had lately fallen on the already heavily-laden shoulders of the ministry. Thus he sought to mollify the wounded feelings of his brethren:

Another of the afflictions to which we are exposed, is the
resentment of pretended patriots, when we oppose their views in
endeavoring to serve our country. There is a monopolizing spirit in
some politicians, which would exclude clergymen from all attention
to matters of state and government; which would prohibit us from
bringing political subjects into the pulpit, and even threaten us
with the loss of our livings if we move at all in the political
Sphere. But, my brethren, I consider politics as intimately
connected with morality, and both with religion.... How liberal are
some tongues, some pens, and some presses, with their abuse, when
we appear warm and zealous in the cause of our country! When we
speak or write in support of its liberties, its constitution, its
peace and its honor, we are stigmatized as busy-bodies, as tools of
a party, as meddling with what does not belong to us, and usurping
authority over our brethren.[210]

A couple of years later another staunch clerical supporter of Federalist policies, the Reverend John Thornton Kirkland, minister of the New South Church in Boston, came somewhat closer to the main point. The spirit of the times, he urged, had greatly changed, and that for the worse. Clergymen now were being severely censured for what only a few years earlier they had been warmly commended for as constituting a peculiar merit. The leaders of the American Revolution, for example, had praised the clergy for throwing the weight of their influence into the political scale, recognizing that there exists a moral and religious as well as a civil obligation on the part of ministers to warn the people of the dangers which threaten their liberty and happiness. But now, however, at a time when the dearest interests of religion and patriotism, of church and state, are fiercely assailed and imperiled, the clergy are met with calumny and insult when they venture to speak out. Only the debasement of morals and piety could explain so lamentable a transformation.[211]

A growing sensitiveness to the objections of Republican partisans that they were stepping aside from the legitimate responsibilities of their calling and prostituting the functions of their sacred office to unworthy ends, is apparent on the part of the clergy;[212] but when the very slander and abuse which they suffered supplied added evidence, if that were needed, that the institutions of religion and of government were being rapidly undermined, there could be no damping of their spirit nor turning back from the performance of a service, however unappreciated, to which by tradition and by present necessity they believed themselves bound.

Thus matters stood with the clergy of the Standing Order in New England at the close of the eighteenth century. Whether they were mistaken or not, a state of general irreligion seemed to them to have been ushered in. On all sides the positions of traditional orthodoxy were being called in question. The cause of revealed religion had found new enemies, and the cause of natural religion new agencies for its promotion. The French Revolution had given a terrifying exhibition of what might be expected to happen to a nation in which radical and sceptical opinions were allowed to have complete expression. As for the progress of impiety at home, the youth of the land were contaminated, the state of public morals was unsound, opposition to measures of government was increasing in power and virulence, the institutions of religion were commanding less and less respect, the clergy were treated with a coldness and criticalness of spirit they had never faced before. Seeking for the causes of this baneful condition of affairs, the clergy believed they were to be found mainly in the dissemination of revolutionary opinions issuing from France, but in part also in native tendencies to exalt reason and throw off the restraints of government in church and state.

Before taking leave of the subject, a few final illustrations may be considered by way of fixing upon the mind the strength of this general impression which the New England clergy entertained.

On the occasion of the general fast, May 4, 1797, at West Springfield, Massachusetts, the Reverend Joseph Lathrop preached a sermon to which he gave the expressive title, _God’s Challenge to Infidels to Defend Their Cause_.[213] The inspiration of the discourse was drawn from the conviction that “this is a day when infidelity appears with unusual boldness, and advances with threatening progress, to the hazard of our national freedom and happiness, as well as to the danger of our future salvation.”[214] According to this interpreter of the signs of the times, the dissemination of infidelity was to be regarded as the outstanding fact in the life of America, as well as in the life of the world.

An unusually lugubrious view of the situation was that taken by the Reverend Nathan Strong, in the sermon which he preached, April 6, 1798, on the occasion of the Connecticut state fast. In the eyes of this modern Jeremiah, the situation was desperate almost beyond remedy:

There are dark and ominous appearances. I do not mean the wrath
and threatening of any foreign nations whatever, for if we please
God and procure him on our side, we may bless his providence,
and hear human threatenings without emotion. But the dark omens
are to be found at home. In our hearts, in our homes, in our
practice, and in a licentious spirit disposed to break down civil
and religious order. In affecting to depend on reason in the
things of religion, more than the word of God; so as to reject
all evangelical holiness, faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
and the ministrations of the spirit in the heart. In substituting
anarchy and licentiousness, in the room of rational and just
liberty. In supposing that freedom consists in men’s doing what
is right in their own eyes; even though their eyes look through
the mist of wicked ambition and lust. Here is our real danger, and
these are the omens that augur ill to us.[215]

Far less subjective in its analysis was the sermon which the now celebrated minister of Medford, the Reverend David Osgood, preached not many days later, on the occasion of the national fast.[216] Once more the eyes of his hearers were invited to contemplate the horrible spectacle abroad. It had now become certain that the legislators of France had abolished the Christian religion. Preposterous indeed was the idea of those who supposed that they were engaged in anything so beneficent as “stripping the whore of Babylon, pulling down the man of sin, destroying popery,”[217] and making way for the introduction of the millennium. That which they had set their hearts upon was to bring it to pass that Christ and His religion should no longer be remembered upon the earth. The French republicans were so many infernals who had broken loose from the pit below.[218] Their profession of principles of liberty and philanthropy were deceptive in the highest degree. They sought to fraternize with other nations merely to seduce them. Their emissaries employed the arts of intrigue and corruption, they were charged to stir up factions, seditions, rebellions, so as to disorganize established governments and make them more readily the prey of the infamous French government.[219]

That these were not the pulpit utterances of men of peculiarly morbid dispositions, who stood apart from the main currents of thought and life in their day, would seem to be proved by the following instances of formal declarations issued by associations of churches.

On the 17th of May, 1798, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, then in session in the city of Philadelphia, issued an address to the members of its various congregations scattered throughout the country, urging attention to the extraordinarily gloomy aspect of affairs. The situation was interpreted as follows:

The aspect of divine providence, and the extraordinary situation
of the world, at the present time, indicate that a solemn
admonition, by the ministers of religion and other church officers
in General Assembly convened, has become our indispensable duty.
When formidable innovations and convulsions in Europe threaten
destruction to morals and religion; when scenes of devastation
and bloodshed, unexampled in the history of modern nations, have
convulsed the world; and when our own country is threatened with
similar calamities, insensibility in us would be stupidity; silence
would be criminal. The watchmen on Zion’s walls are bound by their
commission to sound a general alarm, at the approach of danger. We
therefore desire to direct your awakened attention, towards that
bursting stream, which threatens to sweep before it the religious
principles, institutions, and morals of our people. We are filled
with a deep concern and an awful dread, whilst we announce it as
our real conviction, that the eternal God has a controversy with
our nation, and is about to visit us in his sore displeasure. A
solemn crisis has arrived, in which we are called to the most
serious contemplation of the moral causes which have produced it,
and the measures which it becomes us to pursue.[220]

As to the “moral causes” referred to, the address proceeds to define them as “a general defection from God and corruption of the public principles and morals,” the evidences whereof are such as a general dereliction of religious principle and practice, a departure from the faith and simple purity of manners for which the fathers were remarkable, a visible and prevailing impiety, contempt for the laws and institutions of religion, and “an abounding infidelity.”[221]

The same year, on May 31, the Congregational clergy of Massachusetts, assembled in annual convention, “without a dissenting vote” adopted an address to their churches, wherein they expressed their deep sorrow and concern on account of “those atheistical, licentious and disorganizing principles which have been avowed and zealously propagated by the philosophers and politicians of France; which have produced the greatest crimes and miseries in that unhappy country, and like a mortal pestilence are diffusing their baneful influence even to distant nations.”[222] A year later the same body of clergy, again assembled in their annual convention, formulated and later published an address similar in tone, but strongly emphasizing the American aspects of the case. The growing disbelief and contempt of the Gospel are loudly lamented; the lack of exemplary piety and morality even among the members of churches, and the dissipation, irreligion, and licentiousness prevalent among the youth of the day, are accounted to be of so much weight as to constitute a national apostasy. “The voice of God to us in these events,” continues the address, “is emphatically this: Come out of the infidel, antichristian world, my people; that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”[223]

To a very considerable number of earnest lovers of religion in New England and elsewhere throughout the nation, the century’s sun seemed to be setting amid black and sullen clouds of the most ominous character.

FOOTNOTES:

[152] Quoted by Walker, in his _History of the Congregational Churches in the United States_, p. 216.

[153] Green, _Life_, pp. 224, 225.

[154] _Cf. supra_, pp. 36 and 37 _et seq._

[155] See Walker, _Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism_, p. 287.

[156] The lowest point of religious decline in the history of New England was reached in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The absence of vital piety was generally remarked. The prevailing type of religious experience was unemotional and formal. The adoption of the Half-Way Covenant in the third quarter of the previous century helped to precipitate a state of things wherein the ordinary distinctions between the converted and the unconverted were largely obscured. Emphasis came to be laid heavily upon the cultivation of morality as a means of promoting spiritual life. Prayer, the reading of the Bible, and church attendance were other “means”. In other words, man’s part in the acquisition of religious experience came prominently into view. The promoters of the revival attacked these notions, asserting that repentance and faith were still fundamentally necessary and that the experience of conversion, _i. e._, the conscious sense of a change in one’s relation to God, was the prime test of one’s hope of salvation. Charles Chauncy, minister of the First Church, Boston, in his _Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England_ (1743), championed the former position; the great Edwards came to the defence of the latter.

[157] Channing, _Memoirs_, vol. i. pp. 287–290, 387. _Cf._ also Goddard, _Studies in New England Transcendentalism_, pp. 13 _et seq._

[158] Riley, _American Philosophy_, p. 192. Note: It is not here maintained that radical religious ideas in New England had their earliest roots, or found their sole stimulus, in the controversy which the theological formulations incident to the Great Awakening provoked. Incipient religious liberalism is distinguishable as far back as the publication of Cotton Mather’s _Reasonable Religion_, in 1713. In his erudite essay on “The Beginnings of Arminianism in New England,” F. A. Christie adopts the position that prior to the Great Awakening there were rumor and alarm over the mere arrival of Arminian doctrines in this country; but that after 1742 the heresy spread rapidly, chiefly due to the growth of the Episcopal church, with its marked leanings to the Arminian theology. _Cf._ _Papers of the American Society of Church History, Second Series_, vol. iii, pp. 168 _et seq._ But however that may be, the cause of Arminianism during the eighteenth century was promoted by men in New England who drew at least a part of their inspiration from the writings of leaders of thought in the mother country whose theological positions inclined strongly toward rationalism. _Cf._ Cooke, _Unitarianism in America_, pp. 39, 44 _et seq._, 79. Harvard College, from the close of the seventeenth century on, was increasingly recognized as a center of liberalizing tendencies, although none will dispute that the kernel of intellectual independence was found, all too frequently, well hidden within the tough shell of traditional conceits. _Cf._ Quincy, _The History of Harvard University_, vol. i, pp. 44–57, 199 _et seq._ Independent impulses were largely responsible for the following events which mark the definite emergence of Unitarianism in America: the organization of the first New England Unitarian congregation at Gloucester, Mass., in 1779; the publication in this country, five years later, of the London edition of Dr. Charles Chauncy’s _Salvation for All Men_; and the defection from Trinitarian standards of King’s Chapel, Boston, in 1785–87. Still it must be maintained that the controversies which raged around the doctrines of the New Calvinism beyond all other factors stiffened the inclinations and tendencies of the century toward liberal thinking. Such terms as “Arminianism”, “Pelagianism”, “Socinianism”, “Arianism”, _etc._, which occur with ever-increasing frequency from the fourth decade of the century on, are in themselves suggestive of the divergencies in religious opinion which the doctrinal discussion incident to the Great Awakening provoked. _Cf._ Fiske, _A Century of Science and Other Essays_: “The Origins of Liberal Thought in America”, pp. 148 _et seq._

[159] As a typical illustration the comment of Lyman Beecher may be cited: “The Deistic controversy was an existing thing, and the battle was hot, the crisis exciting.” (_Autobiography, Correspondence, etc._ vol. i, p. 52.) The date is about 1798. In the same connection President Dwight of Yale is referred to as “the great stirrer-up of that [_i. e._, the deistic] controversy on this side the Atlantic.” (_Ibid._) It is certain that Dwight had some acquaintance with the works of the leading English deists, and that he opposed their views. _Cf._ _Travels in New England and New York_, vol. iv, p. 362; but his main target was infidelity of the French school. Beecher fails to distinguish between the two.

[160] One discovers no convincing evidence that the deistical views of Benjamin Franklin produced any direct effect upon the thought of New England. As respects Thomas Jefferson the case was different. But New England Federalists were so successful in keeping public attention fixed on Jefferson’s fondness for French political and religious philosophy, that his alleged “French infidelity” rather than his opinions concerning natural religion became and continued to be the bone of contention. That he was regarded as a deist is, however, not to be questioned. Bentley, _Diary_, vol. iii, p. 20.

[161] Allen’s book of some 477 pages bore the following pretentious and rambling title: _Reason the only Oracle of Man, or a Compendius System of Natural Religion. Alternately Adorned with Confutations of a Variety of Doctrines incompatible to it; Deduced from the Most Exalted Ideas which we are able to form of the Divine and Human Characters, and from the Universe in General_. _By Ethan Allen, Esq. Bennington, State of Vermont._ The Preface is dated July 2, 1782. Evans records the fact that the entire edition, except about thirty copies, was destroyed by fire, said to have been caused by lightning, an event which the orthodox construed as a judgment from heaven on account of the nature of the book. _Cf._ _American Bibliography_, vol. vi, p. 266. The author’s aim has been interpreted as an effort “to build up a system of natural religion on the basis of a deity expressed in the external universe, as interpreted by the reason of man, in which the author includes the moral consciousness.” (Moncure D. Conway in _Open Court_ [magazine], January 28, 1892, article: “Ethan Allen’s Oracles of Reason,” p. 3119.)

[162] _The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles_, vol. iii, p. 345. The comment of Yale’s president is fairly representative: “And the 13th Inst died in Vermont the profane & impious Deist Gen Ethan Allen, Author of the Oracles of Reason, a Book replete with scurrilous Reflexions on Revelation. ‘And in Hell he lift up his Eyes being in Torments.’” (_Ibid._) In 1787, at Litchfield, Connecticut, where Allen’s home had once been, there was published an anonymous sermon, from the text: “And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat.” (Luke 15: 16.) The sermon was planned to counteract the effect produced by the “prophane, prayerless, graceless infidel,” Allen, through the publication of the book in question. The author, “Common Sense” (apparently Josiah Sherman), adopts for his sermon the caption, “_A Sermon to Swine_,” and explains in the Advertisement the temper of his mood: “By way of apology, I hope Gen. Allen will pardon any reproach that may be supposable, in comparing him to the Prodigal Son, sent by the Citizen into his fields to feed Swine with husks, when he considers, what an infinitely greater reproach he casts upon the holy oracles of God, and upon his Prophets, Apostles and Ministers, and upon the Lord of life and glory himself; at whose tribunal we must all shortly appear; when he represents Him as an impostor and cheat, and all the blessed doctrines of the gospel as falsehood and lies.” (_A Sermon to Swine: From Luke xv: 16 ... Containing a concise, but sufficient answer to General Allen’s Oracles of Reason._ By Common Sense, A. M., Litchfield, 1787.)