Part 7

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. 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." 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.

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.

Narrative of Surprising Conversions, edition of 1808, 13.

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

Dwight, Life of Edwards, 307, 336, 410, 413.

Ibid., 649.

Ibid., 495.

Green, History of Springfield.

Ibid., 255.

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.

Whitefield's Seventh Journal, 28.

History of Harvard University, 52.

History of Harvard University, 23, 26.

Whitefield's Journal, seventh part, 28.

Historical Magazine, new series, IX. 227, April, 1871.

W.B. Sprague, Annals of the Unitarian Pulpit, II.

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."

Seasonable Thoughts, 337.

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.

Grace Defended, 43.

Ibid., 60.

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

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

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 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.