HISTORY

OF THE

CHRISTIAN CHURCH

BY

GEORGE H. DRYER

Volume IV

THE PURITAN REFORM AND THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL 1648-1800 A. D.

PREFACE.

The Divine government of the world is an historic fact. It is not a speculation of the intellect. It is not the conclusion of a logical process of reasoning.

Our acceptance of the existence of prehistoric life, and of forms of animal and vegetable life now long extinct, does not depend upon the speculation of some great thinker, or the result of reasonings from what is to what may have been, but upon the testimony of the geologic strata themselves. Imprinted upon those pages are the facts concerning that life, and the unmistakable evidence of the progression of animate life until its culmination in man. So, imbedded in the historic record are great master facts which unmistakably assure the tendency of the developing historic life of man. These facts can not be denied without denying the record, which is as sure as that of the rocks which have been the framework and staging for the mighty scene. The evidence of progression and tendency is as clear in the one as in the other. Indeed, it is of the same kind in one respect; that is, it is not discernible in brief periods, but in the procession of the ages emergent as the law of that life which they record.

The Coliseum at Rome and the ruins of Pompeii are historic facts. Their witness as to the moral life of antiquity is undeniable. It is an historic fact that at the date when the Coliseum was completed and Vesuvius overwhelmed Pompeii and Herculaneum, the main part of the New Testament had been completed and was in written form. It is also an undeniable fact of history that, where it became the basis of a new society, the old abysmal horrors of the proudest and best civilization the world had yet seen, the horrors of the Roman gladiatorial games, of Roman slavery, and of Roman prostitution, ceased to be. It may be justifiably replied that there was a better side to pagan life and to the Roman world which no historic inquirer can afford to ignore. This is at once granted, but then is seen the impressive dominance of the new moral force and intellectual life which is based upon the Christian Scriptures.

The government, the society, the language, the race which had longest and, on the whole, best governed the world, perished; but the spirit of Christianity and the rule of the Christian Church preserved to our ancestors and to us all that was best in Roman law, Roman organization, and Roman discipline, as well as most valuable in the literatures and languages which ruled from Athens and from the Seven Hills upon the Tiber. There is no parallel record of a conquest so subversive and complete which so eliminated the evil and preserved the great gains of a prior civilization. These, with other equally controlling facts, definitely declare the Christian life, its Scriptures, its institutions, and its spirit to be the chief factors in the education of the human race. This is as apparent in its contact with mediaeval life as with that of the ancient world. Viking raids, private war, feudalism, and the torture and burnings of the Inquisition, from Innocent III to the stake of Giordano Bruno, have passed away as completely as the cruelty and moral baseness of pagan Rome. On the other hand, the better elements of mediaeval life, its respect for woman, for the family life, its endeavor to find a Christian basis for the relations of Church and State, for business and society—in a word, for the people’s weal, however partially successful—have their undecaying inspiration and value for us. So the cataclysm of the Reformation illustrates the same eliminating and assimilating power of the Christian life and the Christian spirit. That great movement brought in a hundred years of wars of religion, than which few things can be more destructive of what is essentially Christian. Yet there is no question that with all, and most grievous, losses the moral and religious life of Christendom stood higher in 1648 than in 1517. There has never been another Pope Alexander VI, or even a Leo X. The corruption of the Roman Curia has never since been either so potent or so widespread. The Christian Scriptures became the heritage of Christian peoples in a good and an increasing part of Christendom, and a moral earnestness unknown for four hundred years came to the Church of Rome.

Upon such a scene opens our period. It is marked by the action of powerful and divergent forces. The powerful Christian force was felt in both the Evangelical and Roman Catholic communions. It was the effort for the deeper, more widespread, and more controlling moral life in Christendom. It would have the religious life more personal, more inward, and more strict in its requirements. This endeavor to give a higher ethical value to the profession of the Christian faith took the different forms of Puritanism, Pietism, and Jansenism. They failed in much for which they sought; but their influence, after all faults and failures, is undying, and in many respects was never more potent than to-day. The Evangelical Revival broadened the basis of this endeavor in making the keyword of the movement conscious fellowship with God. It built upon the ethical basis of Puritanism, and in a spirit more humane and more loving sought a wider realization of its nobler ideals. The record of the nineteenth century will show in how far it failed and how far it succeeded.

The Antichristian force rejected the Christian revelation and all doctrines and institutions distinctly connected with it. This was known in England as Deism, in France as Skepticism, and in Germany as Rationalism. An impartial judgment will allow that the official representatives of Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church on the Continent and the State Churches of Germany and England, gave much occasion for this movement, and in the crisis failed, sometimes, as in France, shamefully, in the defense of the Christian faith. Such a judgment will also grant that with all this movement went oftentimes a passionate love for humanity and for intellectual and civil liberty. Yet this most powerful concerted attack upon Christianity since the Mohammedan conquests has failed. Neither the Christian revelation, the Christian faith, nor the Christian Church, has been overthrown. Never have they been so potent. Never have they been so widely or so intelligently accepted. Never have they so ruled in the world outside of Christendom. To this result most powerfully contributed the Puritan Reform and the Evangelical Revival. This is their title to undying fame. They showed, amid all defects and narrowness, a nobler Christendom. They prepared the way for a Christendom fit to live and rule. This progression and tendency are the vital fact in the history of the Christian Church; that is, that the Christian Church was securely planted in a vast continent, and saved in the crisis of a terrible revolution, mainly through the efforts of a great religious revival, a movement which began in the resistance to the Stuart kings and episcopal tyranny, and which was carried on by the Evangelical Revival on purely religious lines. A phrase may characterize the whole movement—the purification and the intensification of the religious life.

It may be pertinent here to consider briefly the method of this revival. The one long-accustomed means of awakening the religious life of a nominally Christian people in all ages has been preaching. A man with soul on fire makes the people hear the voice of God. To prevent the effect of such preaching being as evanescent as that of Savonarola, three methods have been employed. The first is the means favored by the Church of Rome, the founding of religious orders. Men and women of more than ordinary ability, zeal, and spiritual influence, in the prime of life, and animated by the same spirit, are banded together under a common rule of life. They are relieved from all cares of the world, of society, and of the family, and given to this one thing. The religious orders, almost without exception, are born of a revival of the religious life and mightily promote it for a time. This was true of the Franciscans and Dominicans, of the Theatines, and the order founded by Loyola, and true also of those in France founded by St. Francis de Sales and St. Vincent de Paul.

Another method was favored by Philip Jacob Spener and by Nicolas Louis Zinzendorf. This aimed to preserve the unity of the Church, which was held to be essential by the religious orders, and at the same time to awaken the whole Church by the process of the leaven. This did not require separation from the family and the world, but insisted on a better religious life for all Christians. This means was the formation of societies, or little Churches, in the Church itself. This was the method favored and used by John Wesley. Only with the greatest reluctance did he give anything like assent to the third method.

The third method is the formation of sects; that is, of those who usually hold the great body of Christian truth, but feel that they are called upon to emphasize some one vital truth or form of truth, and to this they are so committed that they form a Church fellowship for themselves, and refuse Christian communion, often, to all others. This seems repellent at once, and has often been made the reproach of the Reformation. It is at least as old as Montanism, a hundred years before Constantine. We must grant, at the beginning, a sect seems to promise much less than a new religious order; but the after course does not show the same superiority. The zeal and power of the initial impulse in neither case can be prolonged through the generations. In the case of the order the form is rigid, and persists; the spirit dies, and both religion and society have an enemy instead of a friend. There is not a Roman Catholic State but which, in the last hundred years, has been compelled on these grounds to deal with the religious orders. The case of the Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Recollects in the Philippines, though exaggerated in some respects, is typical and illustrative of the degeneration of the orders everywhere. On the other hand, a sect outgrows its excesses, becomes more intelligent and more tolerant, or it dwindles and dies. If it persists, in the great majority of cases it merges into the common life of Christendom, or often becomes a constitutive factor of the same, and has the marks and worthily bears the name of a Christian Church.

The history of the Christian Church in this era makes clear what, on theoretical grounds, to many, seems difficult of justification. Those who base the unity of the Church upon a common organization, or at least a presumed common succession from the apostles, like the Greek Catholic and the Roman Catholic Churches and the Church of England, are most offended and grieved at the rise of sectarian divisions. Yet, to take the typical instance afforded by this volume—the planting of the Christian Church in North America, destined next to Asia to be the most populous of the grand divisions of the globe—supposing it had been left to the three Churches claiming apostolic succession, when would its Christianization have been effected? If it were ever accomplished, it would not be before the end of centuries yet to come. The Greek Catholic Church by circumstances was ruled out, so until the second quarter of the nineteenth century was the Roman Catholic Church, in all English-speaking communities. The main portion of the work, then, must have fallen upon those who were in communion with the Church of England. These are most scandalized at sectarian divisions. Yet may there not be some mistake in the definitions? In 1841, Cardinal Newman was anxiously looking for some evidence of the catholicity of the Church of England, and he wrote: “Look across the Atlantic to the daughter Churches of England in the States: ‘shall one that is barren bear a child in her old age?’ Yet ‘the barren hath borne seven/ Schismatic branches put out their leaves at once in an expiring effort; our Church has waited three centuries, and then blossoms like Aaron’s rod, budding and blooming and yielding fruit while the rest are dry.” However much the argument is worth, it certainly has far wider application. There are now, probably, in Germany and Scandinavia more Baptists and Methodists than at the above writing there were members in the Protestant Episcopal Church. There are certainly more that speak the German and Scandinavian tongues. In the generation now living there will probably be more in Latin lands, which, until within fifty years, were shut against Evangelical teaching. There are certainly a larger number in those two communions won from paganism than those which seemed in 1841 to give such decisive proof of catholicity to the Church of England.

It is, therefore, as the record of the founding of the Christian Church in North America by Christian communions, neither prizing nor desiring a presumed apostolic succession, that this volume has unique value. The facts are undeniable, nor is it possible to mistake their meaning. In scope and influence, the greatest conquest made by the Christian Church since the conversion of the Roman Empire, and one which in difficulty far surpassed the conversion of the Teutonic and Scandinavian peoples, has been mainly made and is mainly in the possession of Christian communions outside of the presumed apostolic succession: communions which, in character, in devotion, in learning, and in good works, need no patronizing condescension to be admitted into the full fellowship in Christendom as Churches of the Lord Jesus Christ, and who, like Paul, have the seals of an apostolic ministry.

The question recurs, Have these Churches been doing the work of God, and has he blessed them in it ? Has the signal honor he has put upon them made them worthy to bear the name of Christian Churches ? Does not Peter’s test, the reception of the Holy Ghost, make small all other conditions of fellowship in the Christian Church? Does not the striking and impressive record given in this volume show that we are all one, and have one Father, even God, and one Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ? This question the record here presented seems to answer. Indeed, it may be evident that the foundation of the true Christian confederation of the future was laid in the settlement and planting of the Christian Church in North America.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Part 3Ttrat THE PURITAN REFORM—1648-1720.

I.

The Puritan Reform in England.

The Men of the Puritan Reform—Achievements of the Puritan Reform—Contrast between the Renaissance and the Puritan Reform—Points of Contact—The Peculiarly English Character of the Puritan Reform—The Reformation and the Puritan Reform—What was the Puritan Reform?— What its Method?—Results: 1. Education ; 2. Authority of Reason; 3. Trend toward Democracy—The Dominant Note in the Puritan Reform—Puritan Doctrine—Human Equality—The Puritan Spirit Masculine—The Millenary Petition, 1603—The Conference at Hampton Court—Bishop Andrews and Bishop Neile—The Puritans become a Political Party—Sir John Eliot—Eliot on Religion, the Church, the Bishops, Danger of the Church; His Career—Close of Parliament 1629—Eliot in Prison—John Hampden—Scheme to Establish the Absolute Power of the Kingdom—William Prynne—Burton, Bastwick, and Prynne—Lilburne— Hampden and Ship Money—The Long Parliament—Hampden and the Long Parliament—John Pym—Pym and the Long Parliament—The Grand Remonstrance—The Arrest of the Five Members—Oliver Cromwell—Religious Condition of England—The Clergy—The People—The Puritans—The Independents, or Congregationalists—The Baptists—The Calvinistic Baptists—The Quakers—George Fox—Fox Organized His People—The Seekers—The Ranters—The Herberts—Lord Cherbury—George Herbert— Thomas Hobbes—Execution of Charles I—Cromwell’s Vol. 4    x

2

Table of Contents.

Conquest of Ireland and Scotland—Dissolution of the Long Parliament—The Church of England—Henry Hammond—Robert Sanderson—Jeremy Taylor—James Ussher —The Puritan Divines—John Owen—John Howe—Richard Baxter—The Restoration—The Savoy Conference—The Act of Uniformity—The Restored English Episcopate— William Juxon—Gilbert Sheldon—The Policy of Persecution—Anti-Puritan Legislation: Corporation Act, Conventicle Act, Five-mile Act, Test Act—Richard Baxter uuder the Restoration—The Church of England and James II— William Sancroft—The Declaration of Indulgence—William and Mary—The Bill of Rights—The Act of Toleration—Baxter’s Death—John Milton—John Bunyan—The End of the Puritan Movement—Defects of Puritanism.

15-119

II.

The Pilgrims.

The Home of the Pilgrims—The Training of the Pilgrims— Training and Its Results—The Leaders: John Robinson, William Brewster, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, Miles Standish—The Aim of the Pilgrims—The Sifting of the Pilgrim Church—The Pilgrims in America, . 120-138

III.

THE PURITAN IN NEW ENGLAND.

The Colony of Massachusetts Bay.

The Founding—The Charter—The Migration—The Church Constitution—The Leaders: John Endicott, John Win-throp—The Town Meeting, Courts—The Body of Liberties—Education : Founding of Harvard College, Common Schools—The Press—The Ministry—Church Life—The Services—The Church Government—Roger Williams— Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy—The Opening of the Controversy—The Baptists—The Baptists in Massachusetts—The Quakers—Salem Witchcraft—The Half-way Covenant—The Creeds of Congregationalism— John Eliot—Increase Mather,..........139-191

Vol. 4

Table of Contents.

3

IV.

Other Evangelical American Churches.

The Reformed Churches: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware—Lutherans—William Penn—Maryland—Virginia—Rev. James Blair—North Carolina—South Carolina,....................192-216

V.

Church of Scotland and Church of England to 1720-Church of England 1689-1725.

The English Latitudinarians—Lord Falkland—John Hales— William Chillingworth—Cambridge Platonists—Ralph Cudworth—John Tillotson—Isaac Barrow—Thomas Teni-son—The Non-Jurors,.............217-239

VI.

German Pietism.

Forerunners of Spener—Grossgebauer—Philip Jacob Spener— Spener’s Preparation for Leadership—Court Preacher at Dresden—August Hermann Francke,......240-253

VII.

The Glory and Shame of the Church of France, 1648-1720.

The Congregation of St. Maur—Port Royal—Antoine Arnauld —Blaise Pascal—Alexandre Natalis—Pierre de Marca— Richard Simon—Louis Ellies Dupin—The Church and the Court—Bossuet—Bossuet’s Studies—Scriptures—Habits of Study—As a Spiritual Director—The Gallican Articles— Archbishop Fenelon — Madame Guyon — Bourdaloue— Massillon—Morals of Louis XIV—Jansen—St. Cyran— Quesnel’s “Reflections”—The Huguenots—The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes—The Applause of France— Condemnation of Due de St. Simon—The Ministers— Blanche Gammond—The Tower of Constance—The War of Cevennes—Antoine Court,..........254-305

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4

Table of Contents.

viii.

The Papacy.

Alexander VII—Clement IX—Clement X—Innocent XI—Alexander VIII—Innocent XII—Clement XI,.....306-310

IX.

Roman Cathouc Missions in America.

Bartolomew Las Casas—Missions in Florida—Missions in New Mexico and Arizona—Missions in the Northwest—Eastern Missions, ...................311-326

$art

THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL, 1720-1800.

I.

Eighteenth Century.

Eighteenth Century,................329-335

II.

Church of England and English Deism.

Unitarians—Universalists—Shakers—English Deism—Christian Deists—Anti-Christian Deists—Bishop Butler, 336-349

III.

The Church of France and French Skepticism.

The Fight of the Jesuits for the Enforcement of the Bull Unigenitus—Fall of the Jesuits—The Restoration of the Reformed Church of France—Paul Rabaut—Jean Calas— The Overthrow of the Church of France and of Christianity by the French Revolution—Skepticism in France— Voltaire—Montesquieu—Rousseau—Diderot, . . 350-366

IV.

The Evangeucai, Church in Germany and German Rationalism.

Religion in Germany—The Moravians—Count von Zinzen-dorf— Emanuel Swedenborg — Rationalism — Lessing— Semler—Kant,.................367-377

Vol. 4

Table of Contents.

5

v.

The Papacy—The Greek Church—1720-1800.

The Roman Catholic Church—Febronianism—The Fall of the Jesuits—Innocent XIII—Benedict XIII—Clement XII— Benedict XIV—Clement XIII—Clement XIV—Pius VI— The Greek Church,...............378-389

VI.

The Evangeucai, Revival.

The Evangelical Revival and the Puritan Reform—The Evangelical Revival and the French Revolution—England at the Outbreak of the Revival—John Wesley—Wesley, a Representative Englishman—Wesley, the Child of His Time—Wesley as the Embodiment of the Evangelical Spirit—Wesley and Luther—Wesley and Calvin—Wesley’s Mission and Service—Wesley’s Birth and Parentage—His Education—The Holy Club—Wesley in Georgia—Wesley’s Religious Transformation—Wesley in Germany—George Whitefield—Charles Wesley—The Spiritual Purpose of the Revival—The Course of the Revival—Separations—Lay Preaching—The Class-meeting—Wesley’s Platform—The Itinerants—John Nelson—Thomas Walsh—William Grim-shaw—John Berridge—Wesley and the Mobs—The Mob at Wednesbury—The Mob at Falmouth—Lady Huntingdon —Wesley’s Marriage—The Calvinistic Controversy—John Fletcher—Wesley in Ireland—Wesley on Separation from the Church of England—Wesley and America—Wesley’s Old Age—Death of Wesley—Characteristics—Nonconforming Churches—Children of the Evangelical Revival*

390-467

VII.

The Christian Churches in America.

Jonathan Edwards—The Great Awakening—Opposers—The Congregationalists—The Baptists—The Episcopalians— Dutch Reformed Church—American Ordinations—Livingston—The German Reformed Church—George M. Weiss— Ephrata—Michael Schlatter—Philip William Otterbein— Franklin College—Lutheran Church—Henry Melchoir Vol. 4

6

Table of Contents.

Muhlenberg—The Moravians—Wachovia—The Presbyterians—The Tennents—Princeton College—John Witherspoon—Work Among the Indians—Presbyterian Divisions—The Growth of the Church—The Baptists—The Quakers—The Episcopalians—Founding of the American Episcopal Church—Bishop William White—Roman Catholic Church—California Missions—Growth of the Roman Catholic Church—John Carroll,.........468-502

The American Church of the Evangeucai, Revival.

The Itinerants—Apostolic Poverty—First American Methodists—Philip Embury—Captain Thomas Webb—Robert Strawbridge—The Revolutionary War and Methodism— Judge White—Christmas Conference—Thomas Coke— Richard Whatcoat — Thomas Vasey — Francis Asbury — Hardship of the Itinerant’s Life—Asbury’s Habits—His Poverty and Generosity — William Watters — Freeborn Garrettson—Jesse Lee—O’Kelly’s Secession, . . 503-552

Ren6 des Cartes—Baruch Spinosa—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz—Isaac Newton—John Locke—George Berkeley— David Hume—Adam Smith—Thomas Reid—Immanuel Kant—Some Singers of the English Nonconformist Churches—Isaac Watts—Philip Doddridge, . . . 553-576

VIII.

The Thinkers.

Appendix I.

The Gallican Articles,

577-579

Appendix II. General Rules of the United Societies,

580-583

Appendix III.

Wesley’s Rules for His Preachers, . Vol. 4

584-585

THE LITERATURE.

The Puritan Reform.

Sources.

“ The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Reformation,” 1628-1660, S. R. Gardiner; “Life and Speeches of Sir John Eliot,” Forster, 2 vols., 1872; “The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell,” Thomas Carlyle, 2 vols., 1859; “The Prose Works of John Milton,” 2 vols., 1845; “Poetical Works of John Milton,” 1 vol.; “Works of John Bunyan;” “Works of Richard Baxter;” “Journal of George Fox;” “Works of John Howe,” 2 vols.; “Works of Francis Bacon,” Ed. Spedding; “Works of William Shakespeare;” “Essay on the Human * Understanding,” John Locke; “Works of Jeremy Taylor,” especially “ Holy Living,” “ Holy Dying,” and “ Sermons;” “Works of Isaac Barrow,” 3 vols., 1845; “Sermons,” Robert South, 4 vols.

Histories.

“History of England, 1603-1642,” S. R. Gardiner, 10 vols.; “History of Civil War and Protectorate,” S. R. Gardiner, 4 vols.; “ Essays,” and Introduction to first volume of “ History of England,” T. B. Macaulay; “ History of England,” 5 vols.; “ Puritan England,” J. R. Green; “ Essays Historical and Theological,” J. B. Mozeley, 2 vols., 1878;—Tory view of Strafford, Laud, and Cromwell; “Revolution d’Angleterre,” F. Guizot, 2 vols., 1846; “Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth;”—R. Barclay a val-

VOL. 4    7

8

The Literature.

uable study; “The Ecclesiastical History of England During the Civil Wars and the Revolution,” John Stoughton, 8 vols.; “English Puritanism and its Leaders,” John Tulloch; “ Rational Theology in England During the Seventeenth Century,” John Tulloch,

2 vols., 1872.

Noteworthy Studies.

“History of the Friends,” William Sewel, 2 vols.; “History of the Church of England,” G. G. Perry.

V/££For local color under the Restoration, Pepys’s “Diary” and “Memoirs Due de Gramont,” and also the dramatic poets of the day—all these are drawn from in “History of England, 1685-1702,” Thomas B. Macaulay, 5 vols., 1853-1864. Not judicial, but in the main accurate, and as a narrative never surpassed. It will always be a matter of regret that such a splendid painter had no nobler subjects. “Dictionary of English Biography,” L. Stephen; “History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution,” Robert Woodrow, 4 vols. An accurate portrayal of the Covenanters and their sufferings. “ An Ecclesiastical History of Scotland from 400 to 1861,” George Grubb, 4 vols.

The Pilgrims.

Sources.

“The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers, 1606-1623, as told by Themselves, their Friends, and their Enemies: edited from the original texts,” Edwin Arber; “ History of the Plymouth Plantation,” William Bradford;—the most valuable single source in our colonial history. “The Works of John Robinson, the Pilgrim Father,” Ashton, 3 vols.; “The Pilgrim Republic,” John A. Gordon;—the best history. “The Beginners of a Nation,” Edward Eggleston; “The

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The Literature.

9

Pilgrim Fathers in Old England,” John Brown;—a good study of the subject, and popular.

The Puritans in New England.

Sources.

“History of New England, 1631-1649,” John Win-throp, Ed. Savage, 1853, 2 vols.;—second only to Bradford. “Life and Letters of John Winthrop,” Robert C. Winthrop. Publications of Massachusetts Historical Society.

Histories.

“The Bay Colony: A Civil, Social, and Religious History of the Massachusetts Colony and its Settlements, 1624-1640,” William D. Northend;—the most valuable single volume on the subject. “ Three Episodes in Massachusetts History,” C. F. Adams, 2 vols.; —very valuable. “ The Sabbath in Puritan New England,” Alice Morse Earle;—makes Puritan New England alive again.

General Histories.

Bancroft’s “History of the United States,” 6 vols.; “ Genesis of the United States,” Alexander Brown, 2 vols.; “History of New England,” J. G. Palfrey, 5 vols.; “The English Colonies in America,” J. A. Doyle, 3 vols;—a careful work, and a good one to read with Palfrey. “A Short History of the English Colonies in America,” H. C. Lodge; “ The Puritan Colonies,” John Fisk, 2 vols.; “Epochs of American History,” Thwaits, Hart, Wilson, 3 vols.; “ The Puritan in England and New England,” E. H. Byington; “ The Puritan as a Colonist and Reformer,” E. H. Byington; “The Puritan Age in Massachusetts,” G. E. Ellis;—of little value. “ Historical Discourses,” Leonard Bacon; “Ten New England Leaders,” Williston Walker; “Some Aspects of Religious Life in New

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The Literature.

England,” G. L. Walker; “Congregationalism as seen in its Literature,” H. M. Dexter;—a monumental work. “ The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism,” Williston Walker, 1883. A work of great value. “ Peter Stuyvesant;” “Pioneers of France in the New World,” F. Parkman; “La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West,” F. Parkman; “The Jesuit in North America,” F. Parkman ; “ The Dutch and Quaker Colonies,” John Fiske, 2 vols.; “Old Virginia and her Neighbors,” John Fiske, 2 vols.; “Virginia,” John Esten Cooke; “Maryland,” William Hand Brown;—these last are from the History of States Series;—they are much better than Fiske’s account. “John Winthrop,” Edwin Twichell; “Cotton Mather,” Bassett Wendell; “John Eliot,” Convers Francis.

The Glory and Shame of the Church of France.

Sources.

“Histoire Generale de Traites de Paris, 1648-1815,” Comte de Garden, 14 vols.; “Histoire de France,” H. Martin, 1865, 2 vols.; Louis XIV, Eng. trans.; “The Huguenots and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,” H. M. Baird, 2 vols.; “The Huguenot Emigration to America,” C. W. Baird, 2 vols.; Pascal’s “Thoughts;” Pascal’s “Provincial Letters;” Fenelon’s “Tele-maque;” Fenelon’s “Spiritual Letters;” Bossuet’s “Discourses;” “Bossuet and his Contemporaries,” author of “St. Francis of Sales;” “History of Port Royal,” Ste. Beuve, 3 vols.

German Pietism.

Sources.

“ Philip Jacob Spener’s Leben und Theologie,” Reinhold, 2 vols. Articles on Francke and Zinzeii-dorf.

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The Literature.

ii

English Deism.

General Histories.

“A History of England in the Eighteenth Century,” W. E. H. Lecky, 8 vols.; “The Early History of Charles James Fox,” G. 0. Trevelyan ; “ Period VI, European History, 1715-1789,” A. Hassall. Accurate, but dry. “ The Church of England in the Eighteenth Century,” C. J. Abbey and J. H. Overton ; “Religion under Queen Anne and the Georges,” John Stoughton, 2 vols.; Works of Bolingbroke, Hume, Gibbon, and Pope’s “ Essay on Man;” “ The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature,” Joseph Butler; “Nature of Virtue, and Sermons,” Joseph Butler; “Life of Bishop Butler,” W. A. Spooner, 1901.

French Skepticism.

Sources.

Selections from the works of Voltaire and Rousseau; “CEuvres de Montesquieu,” 8 vols., 1826; “History of the Eighteenth Century to 1815,” F. C. Schlosser, 8 vols., 1843-1852 ; “ History of the Church of France,” W. H. Jervis, 2 vols.; “The Ancient Regime,” H. A. Taine, 1876, Eng. trans.; “Histoire de France,” H. Martin; “The King’s Secret,” Due de Broglie, 1879.

German Rationalism.

Sources.

Works of Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, Kant, and Semler; “History of the Eighteenth Century,” F. C. Schlosser, 8 vols., Eng. trans.; “ Geschichte der Deutschen Literatur im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert,” H. Hettner, 3 vols.; “Church History of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” K. R. Hagenbach, 2 vols., 1869, Eng. trans.; “History of Rationalism in

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The Literature.

Europe,” W. E. H. Lecky, 2 vols., 1868; “History of Rationalism,” J. F. Hurst, 1865; “ Liebesthatigkeit in der Christlichen Kirche seit der Reformation,” Vol. Ill, Ulhorn.

General Histories.

“History of Friedrich II, called Frederick the Great,” Thomas Carlyle, 6 vols., 1858-1866; “History of Prussia,” Herbert A. Tuttle, 3 vols. A crowd of popular histories of Germany have been read which are not worth naming. “Storia d’ltalia,” 1534-1814, Carlo Botta, 14 vols.; “Annali d’ltalia,” 1750-1819, A. Coppi, 6 vols.; “Lettere ed altere Opere di Clemente XIV,” 2 vols.; “ Opere di Paolo Sarpi,” 4 vols.; “Opere Morale di Sant’ Alfonso Maria de Liguori,” 6 vols.; “Stato e Chiesa sotto Leopoldo I, Granduca di Toscana,” 1765-1790, F. Scaduto; “Storia di Clemente XIV,” A. Theiner, 4 vols.

The Evangelical Revival.

Sources.

“Sermons,” John Wesley, 2 vols.; “Notes on the New Testament,” John Wesley, 2 vols.; “Journals,” John Wesley, 2 vols.; no better source for the life of the time as well as Wesley’s work. “ Checks to Anti-nomianism,” John Fletcher; “Life of John Wesley,” Luke Tyerman, 3 vols.; “ Life of Wesley,” J. Telford; “The Living Wesley,” Rigg; “Life of Fletcher,” Benson; “Life of Mrs. Fletcher,” Moore; “Life of Charles Wesley,” Jackson; “Life of Whitefield,” Gillies: Lives of Nelson, Walsh, and Benson; “Life of Lady Huntingdon;” “History of the Church of England,” G. G. Perry; “History of Methodism,” A. Stevens, 3 vols,; Hymns of the Wesleys, Toplady, and others.

VOL 4

The Literature.

13

The: American Church op the Evangelical Revival.

General Histories.

“ History of the United States,” Bancroft, 6 vols.; “History of the United States,” Richard Hildreth, 6 vols.; “History of the United States,” J. B. McMas-ters,” Vols. I and II; “The Federalist;” “The Rise of the Republic,” R. Frothingham; an excellent work. “The Critical Period in American History,” John Fiske; “The American Revolution,” John Fiske.

hi the American Statesman's Series.

“Life of Washington,” Lodge; also lives by John Marshall and Washington Irving. “Life of Jefferson;” “Life of John Adams;” “Life of Alexander Hamilton;” “Life of James Madison.”

American Church History Series.

Congregationalists, Williston Walker; Baptists, A. H. Newman; Lutherans, G. E. Jacobs; Presbyterians, R. E. Thompson; Dutch and German Reformed; Episcopalians, C. C. Tiffany; Roman Catholics, O. Gorman; “ The Journals of Rev. Francis Asbury,” 3 vols.; Lives of Ware, Gatch, Garrettson, and Jesse Lee; “History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1766-1840,” Nathan Bangs, 4 vols., 1841; “History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1766-1820,” Abel Stevens, 4 vols., 1864.

Philosophy.

Sources.

“History of Philosophy,” Ueberweg, 2 vols., 1884; “ History of Philosophy,” J. H. Erdmann, 3 vols.; the best. “History of Philosophy,” Hoffding; “History of Philosophy,” Lectures, Prof. Paulsen, of Berlin.

VOL 4

?ari First.

THE PURITAN REFORM, 1648-1720.

15

Chapter I.

THE PURITAN REFORM IN ENGLAND.

The; Renaissance opens the period of the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The Puritan Reform is the most significant and permanent of any religious movement in Christendom in the seventeenth century.

The Puritan Reform, like the Renaissance, must be judged by the character it produced and the result it achieved. These assure the quality and _TheMen value of that bequest of which we are the of the Puritan

.    t’ i* i    e •    r Reform.

inheritors. If there were men of genius, ot grace, and charm who made illustrious the Renaissance, there did not lack in the Puritan Reform men of rare gifts, of supreme qualities for government, of noble spirit, and of high personal character. Few orators have known better how to evoke the magic charm of English speech than Sir John Eliot, and none better how to endure and die for the principles he maintained.

An English Parliament has never had an abler or more influential leader than John Pym, who, in resolution, in knowledge of the enemies’ plans, and in power to command a deliberative assembly, was unequaled, and who proved stronger than the combined influence of Strafford, Laud, and the king. While English liberties survive, men will revere the name of John Hampden, who risked his fortune to resist the illegal imposition of ship-money, and gave his life to

18 History of the Christian Church.

his country on Chalgrove field. Macaulay voiced the verdict of history when he called Oliver Cromwell “the greatest prince that ever sat on the throne of the Plantagenets.” We in a later generation only add that he is the most typical Englishmen the centuries have produced. While men speak of the founders of nations, they will name with reverence William Bradford, of Plymouth, and John Winthrop, of Massachusetts Bay.

When we turn from great services rendered to civil liberty and the State to men eminent in literature and religion, the list does not lose in distinction or lessen in length. We may name but two. While the name of John Milton lives, no man can afford to sneer at the Puritan cause. As a poet he is second only to Shakespeare, and in certain high qualities of melody and might his “organ tone” has never been matched in English song. As a prose writer, for weight of thought and beauty of expression he stands, and not inferior to either, with Hooker and with Burke. While men dream dreams, and sinful souls struggle heavenward, the visions of John Bunyan’s jail and his matchless Saxon speech will live in the heart and upon the lips of English-speaking men.

A movement which trained and gave to the race such men needs no apology, but has lasting claim upon our thought and attention.

When we think of our heritage from the Renaissance, and see again Angelo’s Sybils, Raphael’s Madonnas, and the Lord’s Supper of Leonardo, we think of the new birth of intellectual life and culture in Europe. The movements of the Puritan Reform are different, but they mold the life of every one of us,

The Puritan Reform in England. 19

and are the great foundation stones of modern nations; they are the most sacred safeguards and the dearest treasures of the civil and religious liberty of Englishmen. Such are: The Petition of ^o^thT"*⁸ Right wrung from Charles I; the abolition P^uri*an r«-of the Courts of High Commission and of the Star Chamber; the Habeas Corpus Act, which ended arbitrary imprisonment a century before elsewhere in Europe; the second and greater Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights; and the Act of Toleration, giving freedom of religious worship. Greater achievements than these are to the credit of few religious movements. That they are rightfully to the credit of the Puritan Reform is settled by asking which of these great gains would have been ours if, in the decisive struggle, the principles of their adversaries had prevailed as in France and Spain.

It would be difficult to conceive of two movements more opposite in spirit and tendency than the Renaissance and the Puritan Reform. The ,, .

_>    Contrast

one was of this world. It sought to know between the

the world and man; it delighted in the ^Re_a^I1_n^a_cJ⁸_t^s^"^ce beauty and splendor which appealed to eye Puritan Re-and heart; it felt the charm of the beauty ^form* of the human body; it rejoiced in the possession and use of the treasures of art and literature from the heathen world. The Renaissance sought as its end the culture of the mind, artistic development, and the enjoyment of life. Its standards of thought and conduct were more often heathen than Christian.

The Puritan Reform was the reverse of all this. It sought to make man know God; to know God as an individual, without the intervention of priest, sacrifice,

20 History of the Christian Church.

or historic Church. The only mediation which it recognized in this personal knowledge of God was the Holy Scriptures. To the Puritan God is the great reality. The world and man are opposed to God. Happiness and salvation are ours only as this opposition is overcome. The will of God is the supreme law. This world and all in it, including man himself, are of value only as they are subdued and, being purged, come into harmony with this will.

The aim of the Puritan Reform was twofold—to teach men to know the will of God for themselves without gloss, interpretation, or mediation; and to conform to that will in all conduct, in public, as well as in private life. To them, God and his Word were the chief delight and the immeasurable inheritance of man. Their chief aim was to know and be in harmony with God’s law revealed in this Word. That law governed in all worlds, and conformity to it only could give to man happiness and the dominion God designed him to exercise in this world. Hence no religious movement was ever more lofty in theory or more definite in practice than the Puritan Reform.

The dominant note of the Renaissance was self development and self enjoyment; that of the Puritan Reform was self conquest and the realiza-Ckmtact! ^^on ^^le    G°cL Yet in the two

movements there are points of contact. The appeal of the Puritan to the Scriptures in their original tongues would have been in vain but for the access to them made possible by the men of the Renaissance. Hence the Puritan was a man of intellect as well as conscience. The great intellectual achievements of antiquity, though heathen, were cherished.

The Puritan Reform in England. 21

Education, the highest as well as the lowest, was everywhere fostered by him. It may well be said that, though religion was his chief concern, he built upon the foundation of the Renaissance. Its learning and intellectual freedom were essential to his work. On the other hand, in the education of the race the Puritan Reform supplied the greatest defect of the Renaissance.

To the Reformation, of course, it stood in more immediate connection. All the first movement rejected of Roman Catholic doctrine and worship,

r    , 1 •    , -r, • The Reforma-

of papal authority and discipline, the Fun- tion and tan rejected with the added vehemence of ^th* ^Puritan

, .    .    .    ... Reform.

his stern and passionate nature, and his militant spirit. Festivals as innocent as Christmas, and symbols as revered as the cross, were intolerable to him. All priestly vestments were but the garments of the Babylonish harlot, and kneeling at the reception of the Lord’s Supper but a relic of the idolatry of the mass. But far more important than these things was the influence of the Puritan upon the Christian Church.

The Reformation had stopped half way, leaving the State supreme in Church government and discipline. To Rome had succeeded the State in Lutheran Germany and in England. In Scotland and among the Reformed States of the Continent there was the same State supremacy, though the Church controlled the State rather than the State the Church. The Puritan Reform proclaimed the independence of the Church and its obligation to conform to Scriptural standards, both of government and discipline. While not directly seeking it, the freedom as well as the independence of the Church came through this great movement. But

22 History of the Christian Church.

chiefly the Puritan Reform first made the spiritual life of the Evangelical faith and its standards of conduct to prevail among the people, and control the popular opinion of communities. The State Church, with its liturgical worship and lax discipline, yet claiming spiritual authority resting upon compulsion, left the people generally with little but the outward forms of Christian profession or worship. The Puritan Reform made Evangelical religion inward, personal, and pervading all classes of people. For this reason it has been called the Second Reformation.

It may be also remarked that the Puritan Reform was the most peculiarly English of any great movement which had as yet influenced the history of ^TheEngii8h^^r,y ^^ie Christian Church. The English Refor-Character of mation under the Tudors was but the carry-^tIRefornif^{n out} ^^{le same} effort made on the Consent to place the State, so far as desirable or possible, in the vacant authority of Rome. It had retained the Episcopal government, but so had the Scandinavian Kingdoms. It had translated from Rome much of the liturgy which it retained, but so had the Lutheran Church. It retained the priestly apparel, but the Archbishop of Upsala could surpass any English prelate in the splendor of his vestments. So far as there was distinction in theology, in worship, or government of the Church of England from the other Churches of the Reformation, it was owing to circumstance and not to a deliberate endeavor of the Church itself.

The Puritan Reform was deliberately intended and conscious of its aim. Circumstances and authority could not answer for the soul; it must answer for itself. The Puritans had the liveliest sympathy with their

The Puritan Reform in England. 23

fellow-believers of the Reformed faith on the Continent. Thanksgivings for the success of Gustavus Adolphus, and fasts as the news came of the defeats of the following years, were held in the Puritan settlements of Massachusetts Bay. Yet the influence of the Puritan Reform outside of England, and the sphere of her power in Ireland and the Colonies, were remarkably small. Cromwell checked the persecution of the Waldenses when their extermination was all but accomplished, and for a time rendered more tolerable the position of the Huguenots in France; that was all. Had his triumph come ten years earlier the case would have been different.

The Puritan Reform and its great men have been even less understood and appreciated on the Continent than in England, where traditional prejudice and misrepresentation were not dissipated for two hundred years. Yet, perhaps none the less on this account, the Puritan element has been an increasingly potent factor in the political, social, and religious life of the English race. The Puritan Reform was not only the unique but the great contribution of Englishmen to the life of the Christian Church. Thrusting its roots back into the work of Wyclif, Tyndale, and Latimer, its struggle caused its adversaries in the Church of England to take up a distinctive position in the life of Christendom. As the political ideas and power of the English race make their vast conquests, the importance may be seen of an understanding of the spirit, leaders, defects, and results of the Puritan Reform.

What was that movement? It was the attempt practically to realize the will of God in the individual and the collective life of man. The peculiarity of the

24 History of the Christian Church.

movement was the method of its realization. This was by the application of the Christian Scriptures to the religious experience and personal conduct the^Puritan    individual, and then, in turn, to the

Reform? family, the Church in its worship, govern-MetKbd? ^ment, and discipline, and finally to the community or the State. The characteristic of this method was that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were treated as of equal obligation, and that these Scriptures were to be interpreted according to the strictest teachings of the theology of Calvin. The will of God was to be realized in the practical application of the Scriptures; but it must be the Puritan's interpretation which should secure this result. The Puritan assumed that this interpretation was not only the right one, but that it was so plainly taught in the Scriptures that any one who could read would be convinced of it, especially if guided in the difficult places by a learned ministry well skilled in Greek and Hebrew.

From this came that inestimable blessing of Puritan influence, the insistence upon the education of the children of the people, and also of schools i. Education. ^i&^^er education for the perpetuation and training of a learned ministry. If the clergy were often the leaders of the people, they were at least men of no ordinary training or character.

But from this came also the determination of all claims to spiritual or ecclesiastical authority, not by an arbitrary assertion of a person or a body %f^ARe^ta8°on!^y individuals, but by a Book. And this Book was intended to be understood by and to instruct the common man. Arguments as to

The Puritan Reform in England. 25

its intent and interpretation must be addressed to the reason, and so power came to find its basis in reason and conscience, and not, as in the Roman Catholic Church, in tradition and will.

The systematic arrangement of the principles and teachings of the Scriptures is theology. The Puritan theology was unshrinkingly Calvinistic. If it varied from its original form it was to make its harsher features harsher still.

Next to Roman Catholicism the Puritan hated Armin-ianism. The cardinal doctrines of Calvin which the Puritan delighted in were the sovereignty of God, the utter inability of the human will, and the doctrine of election and reprobation, which were deduced from the two former.

There were some marked results from this teaching. The Divine sovereignty was so exalted that all other relations of man were of little conse- _Reg_U|_tS: quence compared with his relation to God. 1. Human Hence the man in right relations with God ^E(i^uanty* adjusts himself rightly in all human relationships, including those with the State and with its temporal rulers. So the man free before God was no slave to man. No teaching like this of personal, direct access to the sovereign God of earth and heaven, so exalts the humblest, and prepares the weakest to claim and exercise the rights and freedom of his personality, as a part of his liberty as one of the children of God.

The Calvinistic teaching in its doctrine of election, as in its original form of Church government, was decidedly aristocratic. But all human distinctions fell before the sovereign God; these changed with passing time; but in man, in any man standing in God’s pres

26 History of the Christian Church.

ence, there was an eternal value. This eternal value is that which is common to us as men. Hence from a. Trend ^t^^{ie same} teaching which justified the harsh toward decrees of election came that humbling of Democracy. _ajj temporal distinctions and exaltation of our common humanity which, in the onward course of Puritanism, led to the assertion of popular rights and of popular government. This assertion found no abler advocate than John Milton. With the progress of time it could not fail to take on the form of a democracy.

Hence, also, the spirit of the Puritan Reform was that which always and everywhere exalted personal accountability to God; a God angered

The Dominant . .    .111    1    •

Note in against sin, and reconciled through Christ

the Puritan j-₀ those repenting of sin. Hence the funda-Reform.    ^r    ,    ...

mental note and the all-prevailmg characteristic is ethical. Moral distinctions are eternal. Moral conduct and moral character are the great goods of the human spirit in both worlds. A peculiar tribute to the all-pervasive spirit of this great movement as affecting thought and civilization is found in the statement of a Roman Catholic journal at the opening of the twentieth century, which declares that the condemnation of a rich man for gambling at Monte Carlo “is only an outcropping of the latent Puritanism.” To the Puritan, moral distinctions were unchangeable, and upon these he built his character and his State.

One more characteristic should be noted. The Puritan spirit and ideals were masculine. In the Puritan scheme there was little place for distinctively feminine qualities. Courage, endurance, heroism,—these were Puritan qualities, rather than beauty, grace or charm. No Puritan ever felt the need of a Madonna. So

The Puritan Reform in England. 27

women have small place in Puritan story. When they emerge into notice they often have a peculiar attractiveness, as in Margaret Winthrop, _{The Purltan} Ellen Hutchinson, and Elizabeth Bunyan. spirit They seem like Alpine flowers, which, from ^Mascul,ne* the scant soil of rocky crags and in the high altitudes, have by nature’s alchemy distilled a rare and unforgettable fragrance.

The origin of the Puritan movement under Queen Elizabeth has been fully treated in the preceding volume of this history. Its progress under the The first two Stuarts has been more lightly sketched. It remains to be filled in some- 1603. what in this sketch, and to show the Puritan Reform in England in its triumph and its fall. On the accession of James I the Puritans thought, and their adversaries feared, that he would be favorable to the establishment of the Presbyterian discipline in the Church of England. Both were greatly mistaken. The taste James had had of the discipline of the Scotch Kirk from early infancy gave him no love for it. On the other hand, his desire for absolute power made him favor the bishops, who never tired of extolling the royal authority. The Puritan clergy drew up what was known as the Millenary Petition to the king. It obtained the signatures of seven hundred and fifty clergymen of the Church of England, and was presented to the king on his way to London, in April, 1603. Its requests were placed under four heads, viz.:

“1. Concerning Church Service.—It prayed that the cross in baptism, the interrogatories to infants, baptism by women, and confirmation should be done away; that the cap and surplice should not be en

28 History of the Christian Church.

forced; that examination should precede communion; that the ring in marriage should be dispensed with;

that the Lord’s-day should be strictly ob-^PetitJonf served; that church music should be moderated and the service abridged; that there should be no bowing at the name of Jesus; and that none but Canonical Scriptures should be read.

“2. Concerning Ministers.—It prayed that none hereafter be admitted to the ministry but able and sufficient men, and those to preach diligently and especially upon the Lord’s-day; that non-residence be forbidden, and the lawfulness of the marriage of the clergy fully recognized.

“3. Concerning Church Livings.—It required that bishops leave their commendams, some holding parsonages, some prebends, some vicarages, with their bishoprics; that double-beneficed men be not suffered to hold some two, some three benefices with cure, and some two, three, or four dignities besides; that impropriations annexed to bishoprics and colleges be demised only to the preachers’ incumbents for the old rent; that the impropriations of laymen’s fees be charged, with a sixth or seventh of their worth, to the maintenance of the preaching minister.

“4. Church Discipline.—That the discipline and excommunication be administered according to Christ’s institution, or, at least, that enormities may be redressed; as, namely, that excommunication come not forth under the name of lay persons, chancellors, officials, etc.; that men be not excommunicated for trifles and twelve-penny matters.”

The demands concerning church services were the old ones of Elizabeth’s time, but the body of the pe

The Puritan Reform in England. 29

tition deals with obvious abuses,—unfit, non-resident, and non-preaching ministers; with the accumulation of benefices and the misuse of the revenues of the Church; and with the misuse of the power of excommunication. These touched every man, and their formulation may be called the Puritan platform.

At the Hampton Court Conference the next January four Puritan divines appeared before the king to meet nine bishops, eight deans, and two _Confer,_nce other theologians. The requests of the at Hampton Puritans were denied. One, however, took ^Court-effect,—the request for a new translation of the Bible. From this came our version of 1611. Meanwhile the subserviency of the bishops to the desire of the king to reign without legal control grew from year to year.

Few things, perhaps, could better illustrate it than a conversation between the king and two bishops, in which Bishop Neile represented the tone of the Episcopate, while the language of _And^^h_e°^p_and Bishop Andrewes was a marked exception. Bishop Neiie.

Launcelot Andrewes (1555-1626) was a great preacher, and celebrated for his book of private devotions or “Prayers.” A scholar, he knew fifteen languages and was especially versed in the writings of the fathers. As a bishop he was diligent and conscientious. Though the founder of the High-Church school, he was broadminded and no bigot. Bishop Andrewes remained unmarried. He was ascetic in his habits, and loved an ornate ritual in his private devotions. Unquestionably he was the most distinguished bishop in the reign of James I.

One day, after 1619 as Waller relates, “My lords,” said King James to the bishops, Neile of Durham and

30 History of the Christian Church.

Andrewes of Winchester, as they stood behind his chair at dinner, “Can not I take my subjects’ money when I want it, without all this formality in Parliament ?” “God forbid, sir, but you should,” said Bishop Neile; “you are the breath of our nostrils.” Andrewes replied that he had “no skill in Parliamentary cases/’ but being pressed, “Then, sir/’ said he, “I think it lawful for you to take my Brother Neile’s money, because he offers it.”

The denials of the requests of the Puritans, who were large in numbers and of high character, and the absolutist tone of the Episcopate, which,

The Puritans    , ,    ,    . f. , . , ...

become a as a whole, did not rank high in ability or

Poiiticai piety, made the cause of the rights of the English Parliament and of the English people as against the arbitrary power of the crown necessarily the cause of the Puritan party. Men who had no quarrel with the Church of England on account of vestments and ritual, but who could not endure the arrogance and tyranny of the bishops, their refusal to abate manifest abuses, and their support of the most arbitrary demands of the king, became Puritans. When the day of reckoning came they demanded the abolition of the Episcopal order, rather than that the liberties of England should be prostrate at the feet of a faithless king.

One of these men, and the leader in that great struggle which secured a place among the statutes of sir John    ^real^m f°^r the Petition of Rights, was

Eiiot. Sir John Eliot. His attitude toward re-1592-1632. ijgj_{on> t}h_e Church, the Episcopate, and the crisis of his time, may be best gathered from his own words.

The Puritan Reform in England. 31

“Religion/’ said he at the opening of Parliament in March, 1628, “is the chief virtue of a man, devotion of religion; and of devotion, prayer and fasting are the chief characters. Let them Re«gion. be corrupted in their use, and the devotion is corrupt. If the devotion be once tainted, the religion is impure. It then, denying the power of godliness, becomes but an outward form; and, as it is concluded in the text, a religion that is vain. ... It is not a Xord! Lord!’ that will carry us into heaven, but the doing the will of our Father which is in heaven. And to undo our country is not to do that will. It is not the Father’s will that we should betray that mother. Religion, repentance, and prayer,—these are not private contracts to the public breach and prejudice. There must be sincerity in all; a throughout integrity and perfection, that our words and works be answerable. If our actions correspond not to our words, our successes will not be better than our hearts.”

It would be difficult to state better the political and religious creed of the Puritans. The particular points at issue in the Church and his relations to them may be further stated in his own language, in a speech delivered in January, 1629;

“The gospel is that truth which from all antiquity is derived; that pure truth which admits no mixture or corruption; that truth in which this _TheChurch kingdom has been happy through a long and rare prosperity. This ground, therefore, let us lay for the foundation of our building; that that truth, not with words, but with actions, we will maintain. Sir, the sense in which our Church still receives that truth is contained in the Articles [Thirty-nine, of

32 History of the Christian Church.

Church of England]. There shall we find that which the acts of Parliament have established against all the practice of our adversaries. Not that it is the truth because confirmed by Parliament, but confirmed by Parliament because it is the truth.”

Concerning the bishops he says: “I remember a character and observation I have seen in a diary of _ . Edward VI, where that young prince of

The Bishops. _r    ’    , , .    , i .

famous memory, under his own handwriting of the quality of the bishops of his time, says that, ‘some for sloth, some for age, some for ignorance, some for luxury, some for popery, and some for all of these, were unfit for discipline and government/ I hope it is not so with ours. I make no application. But we know not what may be hereafter; and this is intended to the order and not the persons/’

Further in the same speech occurs this eloquent passage, which is a fine example of his style:

“I speak not by way of aspersion of our Church. Far be it from me to blemish that reputation I would vindicate. I am not such a son to seek the ^Church!**⁶ dishonor of my mother. She has such children in the hierarchy as may be fathers to all ages; who shine in virtue like those faithful witnesses in heaven ; and of whom we may use that eulogy of Seneca on Canius, that it is no prejudice to their merits quod nostris temporibus nati sint (because they are born in our times). But they are not all such, I fear. Witness those two, complained of in the last Remonstrance we exhibited, Doctors Laud and Neile; and you know what place they have. Witness likewise Montagu, so newly now preferred. I reverence the order, though I honor not the man. Others may be

The Puritan Reform in England. 33

named, too, of the same bark and leaven; to whose judgments, if our religion were committed, it might be easily discerned what resolutions they would give; whereof even the procuring of this reference, this manifesto to be made, is a perfect demonstration.

“This, sir, I have given you as my apprehension in this point, moved both by my duty to your service and religion; and therein, as a symbol of my heart, I will say, by way of addition and for testimony, that whensoever any opposition may come, I trust to maintain the true religion we profess, as that wherein we have been born and bred, and if cause be, hope to die. Some of our adversaries, you know, are masters of forms and ceremonies [a slant at Laud]. Well, I would grant to their honor even the admission at our worship of some of those great idols which they worship. There is a ceremony used in the Eastern churches of standing at the repetition of the Creed to testify their purpose to maintain it, and, as some had it, not only with their bodies upright, but with their swords drawn! Give me leave to call that custom very commendable! It signified the constancy and readiness of their resolution to live and die in that profession; and that resolution I hope we have with as much constancy assumed, and on all occasions shall as faithfully discharge; not valuing our lives where the adventure may be necessary, for the defense of our sovereign, for the defense of our country, for the defense of our religion.”

Sir John Eliot, the foremost Parliamentary orator of the Stuart reigns, was born of a family of wealth and influence in Devon in 1592. Three years were spent at Oxford (1607-1610). He left without a degree, and, as the custom was, studied law for some

3

34 History of the Christian Church.

time in London. In 1611 he married, and lived in happy wedded life until the death of his wife in 1628.

She bore him nine children, six of whom

His Career.    ....    . . .

survived their parents. Before his marriage he traveled on the Continent, where he met George Villiers, afterward Duke of Buckingham, the favorite and minister of both the Stuart kings. This friendship with Buckingham endured for the next sixteen years, until Eliot’s final break with him in 1626. In 1614, at the age of twenty-two, the young husband entered Parliament. He was a member of each succeeding Parliament until his death, except that of 1621. In 1618 he was knighted, and the next year was made Vice-Admiral of Devon. As vice-admiral he captured a noted pirate, Captain Nutt. But the pirate had a long purse, and bought his way at court. The result was that the pirate escaped, but Eliot went to prison in July, 1623. He was released through Buckingham’s influence the last of December. In an interview, July 8, 1625, Buckingham unguardedly let Eliot understand his intention to provoke a quarrel with Parliament. At last, March 26, 1626, Eliot attacked Buckingham in the House of Commons for his illegal and arbitrary government, and carried the bill for his impeachment the 8th of May. Two days later Eliot opened the impeachment before the House of Lords, and in an eloquent speech compared Buckingham to Sejanus, the favorite of the Emperor Tiberius. The king sent Eliot to the Tower the next day; but as the Houses refused to do business in his absence, he was released after a week’s imprisonment. The king, finding he could not hinder the impeachment of his minister, on June 15th dissolved the Parliament. The

The Puritan Reform in England. 35

office of vice-admiral was then taken from Eliot. A year later, as he refused to pay a forced loan, Eliot was imprisoned for seven months, until writs were issued for a new Parliament in January, 1628. This confinement affected the health of the prisoner, and one of Eliot’s friends said, “He never after did look like the same man he was before.” The famous Parliament of 1628 opened the nth of March. In this session Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterward Earl of Strafford, deserted his former political allies and went over to the king. In spite of this, however, the work of the Parliament culminated in the famous Petition of Rights, to which Charles I gave his formal assent, June 7, 1628.

This Petition, after reciting the precedents of English constitutional history, culminates in provisions in the form of a request which should put an end to such outrages as those suffered by Sir John Eliot. This was as follows: “They do therefore humbly pray your Most Excellent Majesty, that no man hereafter be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge, without common consent by act of Parliament; and that none be called to make answer, or take such oath, or to give attendance, or to be confined, or otherwise molested or disquieted concerning the same, or for refusal thereof; and that no freeman, in any such manner as is herebefore mentioned, be imprisoned or detained; and that Your Majesty would be pleased to remove the said soldiers and mariners, and that your people may not be hindered in time to come [quartering soldiers on the people] ; and that the aforesaid commissions for proceeding by martial law may be revoked and annulled; and

36 History of the Christian Church.

that hereafter no commissions of like nature may issue forth to any person or persons whatsoever to be executed as aforesaid, lest by color of them any of Your Majesty’s subjects be destroyed or put to death contrary to the laws and franchise of the land.” To have laid this great corner-stone of modern English liberty is glory enough for one life, and is an eternal honor to the party which the great leader led.

The Parliament prorogued in June, 1628, met January 20, 1629. It closed in a memorable scene which Close of ended the public life of Sir John Eliot. On Parliament, March 2d, Sir John Eliot offered a remon-March, 1629. _{strance on} illegal levy of tonnage and

poundage, which the Speaker, Sir John Finch, refused to receive. Then, standing on a high bench in the back of the room, Eliot threw the declaration toward the speaker to be read by the clerk. The speaker was requested to put the motion whether the paper he had refused to receive should be read. He replied, “He is commanded otherwise by the king.” John Selden rose and said: “If you will not put the question which we command you, we must sit still and shall never be able to do anything. We sit here by command of the king under the Great Seal; and as for you, you are, by His Majesty, siting in his royal chair before both Houses, appointed our speaker; and do you now refuse to be a speaker?” The speaker replied, “He had an express command from the king to rise as soon as he had delivered his message.” He rose and left the chair, but was drawn to it again by several members. The speaker said with tears, “I will not say I will not, but I dare not.” Mr. Selden said: “He ever loved his per

The Puritan Reform in England. 37

son well, yet could not choose but much blame him now, that he, being the servant of the House, should refuse their command under any color; and that his obstinacy would be a precedent to posterity, if it should go unpunished. For that, hereafter, if we should meet a dishonest speaker (and we can not promise ourselves to the contrary), he might, under pretense of the king’s command, refuse to propose the business and intendment of the House. He therefore wished him to proceed.” Holies, Valentine, and Long, as he sought to rise, forced him into the chair. Strode then said, “Let all who desire this declaration read and put to a vote, stand up/’ The motion was enthusiastically carried. Then, as Eliot’s paper was destroyed, Holies read three short articles condemning innovation in religion, and the levying or payment of tonnage or poundage. During these proceedings the mace had been taken from the sergeant-at-arms, and the door locked against the king’s officer, Black Rod. The action having been taken, the House adjourned. In the absence of the Commons the angered king in the House of Lords, March 10, 1629, dissolved Parliament. No other sat in Westminster for eleven years.

Sir John Eliot was held justly as the chief mover in these proceedings. He had the warmth of feeling of the true orator, and, like such men, his convictions were stronger than his judgment. He had not been altogether just in his estimate of Buckingham. In the question of tonnage and poundage he had made a matter of Parliamentary privilege of that which concerned every Englishman. Pym well said: “The liberties of this House are inferior to the liberties of this kingdom.

38 History of the Christian Church.

To determine the privilege of this House is but a mean matter, and the main end is to establish possession of the subjects.”

While the words of Selden state the indispensable liberties of any deliberative body, yet it may be questioned whether the end sought was recompense for the means used. Certain it is that neither Pym nor Hampden were concerned in these proceedings. Of one thing there was no question, the resolution of Sir John Eliot. He closed his last speech in Parliament with this memorable sentence, than which nothing he ever said better characterizes the man: “If my fortune be ever again to meet in this honorable assembly, where I now leave

I will begin again.”

On March 4th Eliot was committed to the Tower. Until the next January he was kept in prison without bail. Then he was cited for trial; but he Prison” refused to plead to any charge based on what was done or said in Parliament. On February 12, 1630, he was sentenced to pay a fine of £2,000 and to be imprisoned until he had made submission and acknowledgment of his offense. A word would have set him free. Sir John Eliot claimed he had done no wrong, and that in his person was represented the liberty of the Parliament of England. So he lingered in harsh confinement for one stricken with consumption, and in the flower of his age, November 27, 1632, passed from the judgment of men to his chief place among the noble army of martyrs for human liberty. His last letter shows his confident, joyous, Christian faith and the tinge of Puritan piety. The enmity of Charles I never ceased. The eldest son of the illustrious sufferer desired to bring the remains

The Puritan Reform in England. 39

to be buried with his ancestors in Devon. The king answered, “Let Sir John Eliot’s body be buried in the church of the parish where he died.” It lies undistinguished, but never to be forgotten, with the distinguished dust of London Tower. Valentine and Strode lay in prison eleven long years until England again had a Parliament. Thus was settled forever the right of the House of Commons to command its speaker, to determine its business and adjournment, and that no member can be called to account in any other place for words spoken within its walls. Thus was well done the work of the great Puritan orator.

The best loved Englishman of his time was John Hampden. He was the intimate and tried friend in his public and prison life, and the guardian _John of the children, of Sir John Eliot. Unlike Hampden. Eliot, he was not an orator. His eminence ^,594"^,<S43* rested upon sterling abilities unselfishly used, and a rare temper and devotion to public duty united to a stainless character. Hampden had the modesty, diligence, and balance of judgment and character which distinguished Winthrop and Washington. Little of his thought is left on record, but his name is the most revered of any man in political life in that changeful century. His moderation and firmness, his integrity and capacity for friendship, made the man the potent force he was and is.

John Hampden, born of an old country family and a cousin of Oliver Cromwell, was, like Eliot, at Oxford for three years (1610-1613). Like his friend, he left without taking his degree, and studied law in London. Both men were good students, and studied law that they might better discharge their duties as English

40 History of the Christian Church.

country gentlemen. Hampden was married in 1619; his wife died in 1634, leaving him nine children. He was elected to the Parliament of 1621, and from then until his death was a member of every Parliament of England. He was most diligent and successful in his work in committees; but he did not come into any great public notice until after the death of Sir John Eliot, whom he followed, and who greatly prized his counsel.

The personal government of Charles I brought John Hampden before the English people as the defender of their rights as against the abso-EstaWLsh the ^^ute P^ower claimed by the crown. In the Absolute eleven years of this government the arbi-^P°^WKTn°J.^{the trar}y ^and cruel punishments of the Courts of High Commission and the Star Chamber treasured up wrath for the day of wrath. The influence of Laud in these prosecutions was especially vexatious and often cruel. Laud, with Strafford, was carrying out a scheme of absolute government which should completely overthrow the constitutional liberties of Englishmen, as similar liberties had been overthrown in France and Spain. Strafford sought to build up in Ireland, where he was lord lieutenant, a strong and beneficent despotism. His aim was so to increase the revenues and the army as to make this rule absolutely independent of popular consent. To this model England and Scotland was to be brought. Laud was to intimidate and repress every manifestation of popular dislike, while Charles, his Council, and his judges, were to provide means to carry on the government in England without the aid of Parliament. This scheme Laud and Strafford called, in their familiar corre

The Puritan Reform in England. 41

spondence, the Thorough. However upright in moral character were these men, and however honest in their political opinions, their success would have been the death-knell of constitutional liberty throughout Christendom.

In pursuit of this policy, minute and unsparing, was the cruel punishment of Alexander Leighton. Alexander Leighton was a graduate of St. Andrews, a preacher in Durham, a physician in Leyden, a Puritan writer in London, and the father of the celebrated Archbishop Leighton, of Scotland. His second work was entitled “An Appeal to Parliament; or, Zion’s Plea against Prelacy.” It was a fierce attack on the bishops and an appeal to political Presbyterianism. Leighton was arrested February, 1630, the book having been secretly published the year preceding. In June he was sentenced to be publicly whipped at Westminster, and set in pillory, to have one side of his nose slit, and one ear cut off, and one cheek branded with a hot iron; to undergo a similar punishment the next week at Cheap-side, and then to undergo perpetual imprisonment. A fine of £10,000 was remitted, and probably one-half of the mutilation, but the rest was brutal enough. His wife stood by his side as he suffered. Bleeding and fainting, he was carried to his prison.

The stage-plays of the time had fallen far below the level set by Shakespeare, and in suggestion, plot, and even title, were an incitement to vice.

William Prynne, a learned Puritan lawyer, published in 1632 a book he had been at least eight years in preparing, and which extended to a thousand pages, against the wickedness of the English stage. The “Histriomastix” was as unmeasured in its

42 History of the Christian Church.

invective as in its extent. One passage was held to reflect upon the queen, who had recently taken part in a court play. In February, 1634, Prynne was arrested, and, when tried, sentenced by the Star Chamber to be expelled from his profession and his university, to pay a fine of £5,000, to be set in pillory, and to have both ears cut off. The sentence was carried out in May, 1634. Nevertheless the stage felt the lasting influence of the criticism of Prynne.

Laud carried to the last extreme his war against the unlicensed press. He reduced the number of Burton, presses in London to twenty. Still the at-Bastwick, and tack upon him and his policy increased in Prynne. _num]_;)er) virulence, and popularity. Prynne, after his punishment, wrote against the king's “Declaration of Sports” and against the bishops; Henry Burton had published two sermons against the Laudian ceremonies; and John Bastwick, educated at Cambridge, who had served on the Continent as soldier and physician, published a bitter attack on the prelates. These three were tried before the Star Chamber in June, 1637. They were fined £5,000 each, sentenced to lose their ears, and then to perpetual imprisonment. Prynne was mutilated a second time and his cheeks branded. The crowds surrounded them at the pillory and punishment, and cheered them with their sympathy. Bastwick was the first to suffer. His wife mounted the scaffold by his side, and kissed him on the ears and mouth. Then turning to descend she said: “Farewell, my dearest. Be of good comfort; I am nothing dismayed.” Later they were immured in prisons, one on the Scilly Islands, one in Guernsey, and Prynne in Jersey.

The Puritan Reform in England.

43

In December, 1637, John Lilburne was arrested for printing Puritan books, and brought before the Star Chamber. He refused to answer, and was sentenced to be whipped from the Fleet to the Palace

1 , ,    . Lilburne.

Yard, and then to be placed in pillory. At the pillory he scattered some of Bastwick’s pamphlets among the crowd. He was ordered to be gagged and thrown into irons on his return to prison. There he was nearly starved to death, going a week at a time without food, and saved only by the help of prisoners a little less wretched than himself. At these trials Laud was present as the prosecuting party, and once at least, when one of the most cruel sentences was pronounced, gave thanks to God. No wonder Puritanism grew apace. It is with such a background that we must read Milton’s “Areopagitica, or Plea for Unlicensed Printing,” and the record of John Hampden’s resistance to the payment of ship-money.

In 1637, John Hampden refused to pay a tax of twenty shillings illegally levied as ship-money. The cruelties of the Star Chamber reached com- _Ham_Pden paratively few; but the illegal tax reached and ship-every man owning property in England, ^money-and there was no limit to its application and extent. Hence the popular interest and excitement was intense. The case against Hampden was argued in the Court of the Exchequer in November, 1637. The pleadings were an education of the people in defense of English liberty. The arguments for the crown were such as disgusted its firmest supporters. Of the twelve judges, five were for the defense. Seven, including the chief-justice, who was the originator of this tax, decided against Hampden. Never, perhaps, had the crown won

44 History of the Christian Church.

a costlier victory. Hampden became the leader, not of a party, but of the people.

The crisis came when, in July, 1637, Laud sought to force the English Liturgy upon Scotland. The stool hurled by Jenny Geddes in the Cathedral of St. Giles, in Edinburgh, overthrew eleven years’ work for the Thorough. War was declared against the rebellious Scots. For war the king had no resources, and Charles was forced to call the Parliament to his aid in an intolerable situation. The Parliament met in April, 1640. It was moderate and loyal, but insisted, first of all, upon a redress of grievances; whereupon, after a session of three weeks, Charles dissolved this short-lived Parliament. Charles found the task of subduing the Scots with an ill-paid and disaffected army impossible. The Scots invaded England. The defeat of the royal forces at Newburn made inevitable the election and assembling of a new Parliament.

The famous Long Parliament, which met in November, 1640, gathered in a determined mood. For fifteen years Charles had reigned disregarding Parliament, and for eleven of these without Parliament. The time for trifling was now past. The day of decision had come, when it was to be settled whether England was to be ruled with or without her Parliament. No longer could it be left to the judgment of her sovereign. That this great question was rightly determined we, and all men, owe to the Long Parliament.

In that Parliament for three eventful years John Pym was the leader, but John Hampden was the controlling mind. One of its first acts was to cancel the judgment against him for refusing to pay ship-money.

The Puritan Reform in England. 45

Hampden advocated all the great measures of that Parliament until it became evident that the decision must be made on the battlefield. He then raised _{Hmnpden in} one of the best regiments of horse in the the Long Parliamentary army, and was its colonel. ^Par,iament-On July 18, 1643, Hampden’s horse encountered a body of Prince Rupert’s cavalry on Chalgrove field. Hampden rode off from the field sorely wounded by a bullet in the shoulder. Six days later he died, leaving a fame for pure and unselfish patriotism dear to all Englishmen and to every lover of constitutional liberty. Throughout his life Hampden had been a convinced and consistent Puritan, as earnest and stainless in his religious profession as in his struggle for the liberties of England. The great Puritan patriot had left his name with the immortals.

John Pym was educated at Oxford, where he resided from 1599 to 1602. He is said to have held a small office in the Exchequer, and there to have acquired those business habits which stood him in good stead in later years. The Earl of Bedford opened his way into public life. He entered Parliament in 1621, and was a member of each succeeding one during his life. In his first Parliament he became prominent by proposing an oath of association for all loyal Protestants to guard against the manchinations of those inclined to Rome. In 1626 he was, with Eliot, one of the managers of the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham. He strove with Eliot and Selden for the Petition of Right; but though on the question of tonnage and poundage he followed Eliot, his judgment favored a broader basis for the policy of resistance to the arbitrary power of the king.

46 History of the Christian Church.

As he was not concerned in the violent scenes of March, 1629, while Sir John Eliot died in prison, and Selden lay there four years, Pym was free. We hear nothing from him in the eleven years in which England had no Parliament. When again Parliament convened, Pym was its acknowledged leader. He discerned its spirit and wishes, and knew how to give them effect. Pym was assiduous in his attendance upon committees, and knew how to prepare and carry through Parliamentary business. Perhaps at this time he rendered no greater service than in keeping thoroughly informed of the doings of the king and queen and of the schemes of the royalist party.

The opportunity for leadership which the Short Parliament made abortive came when its successor assembled. Of the Long Parliament his _Pyminthe leadership was the soul. Pym led it in the Long annulment of the judgment against Hamp- ^ParIiament-den; Prynne and the other victims of Laud were liberated. He led it in the abolition of the Courts of High Commission, the Star Chamber, and the Council of the North. He opposed the Root and Branch Bill against Episcopacy, and it died in Committee. He led in the impeachment of Strafford and the arrest of Laud. Pym favored the bills providing that Parliament should meet once in three years, and that the Parliament then in session should not be dissolved without its consent, and also the one excluding the bishops from the House of Lords. In his leadership he would have favored a moderate Episcopacy; but when the attempt to arrest the five members showed the disposition of the king, he went with the more advanced and stronger party.

The Puritan Reform in England. 47

This event, indeed, was the turning point, not only in the fate of Charles, but in the career of Pym.

To unite the Commons and to secure the gains already made, in November, 1641, Pym led in the formulation and passage of the Grand Remonstrance, which was really an appeal to the_Re^₀^e_n°^r“^d_ce nation. This formidable document consists of 206 articles. The first 104 are an enumeration of the instances of the king’s misgovernment for the first fifteen years of his reign; articles 105-142 describe the abuses corrected and the reforms made by Parliament; those from 142-180 recount the obstructions to these reforms, evil counselors, army plots, and the Irish rebellion; those from 180-191 set forth the plan for the reform of the Church; those from 192-206 make clear the safeguards demanded by the Parliament,—a responsible ministry, a better administration of justice, and security against the Roman Catholics.

The part which concerns us is that connected with the reform of the Church. The Remonstrance demanded a reduction of the power of the bishops, and that they be deprived of a vote in the House of Lords; that there be no relaxation of Church discipline, and there be assembled “a General Synod of the most grave, pious, learned, and judicious divines of this island, . . . who may consider of all things necessary for the peace and good government of the Church.” Their results were then to receive the confirmation of Parliament, and thus become the law of the land. This was the origin of the celebrated Westminster Assembly.

It would be difficult to conceive of a sorrier device in a time of revolution. It was at once intolerant and

43 History of the Christian Church.

indefinite. Proposing a rigid law, it made necessary a period of anarchy before that law could become effective. The work of the Assembly was further invalidated for the English people by the absence of representatives who favored Episcopacy or the Prayer-book, even if reformed. The predominant influence and intolerance of the representatives of the Scotch Church rendered all else in vain.

This Remonstrance was carried by the small majority of eleven in a vote of three hundred. Oliver Cromwell said if it had not carried, “he would have sold all that he had the next morning, and never have seen England more. He knew there were many other honest men of the same resolution.”

Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, had written against the Grand Remonstrance, and was made Solicitor General. He, with Colepepper and pfve Members. Falkland, were asked to guide the king’s party in the Commons. This would have given to the king a responsible ministry, but was the furthest from his thoughts. On January 3, 1642, the king accused Lord Kimbolton and five members of the House of Commons—viz., Hampden, Pym, Holies, Haselrig, and Strode—of treason. The king’s sergeant-at-arms required that they be given up. The House sent a deputation “stating that an answer should be returned as speedily as so important a matter would allow, but meanwhile the members were ready to answer all legal charges/’ The members were commanded by the speaker to remain in daily attendance.

On the next day the House sat from eight in the morning until twelve. The accused members defended themselves against the impeachment. The House ad

The Puritan Reform in England. 49

journed for dinner. On reassembling all were in their places. The king set out from Whitehall for Westminster. The House understanding that force was to be used to take those accused, they were commanded to absent themselves. They went down by the river stairs and by boat into the city. The king, with his guard, came to the door. He commanded the soldiers to remain in the hall, and notified the House of his presence. The House commanded the speaker to sit still in his chair with his mace lying before him. The king then entered. The members removed their hats as did the king. Charles went toward the speaker’s chair; the speaker stepped out to meet him. Charles stood irresolute; for some time he looked about, and then said he would not break their privileges, but treason had no privilege; “he came for those five gentlemen, for he expected obedience yesterday, and not an answer.” He asked by name if the accused were present, but none answered. He then turned to the speaker. Lenthall fell upon his knees, and said, “He was a servant of the House, and had neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in that place but as the House was pleased to direct.” The king said his “birds had flown,” and moved toward the door. Cries of “Privilege !” “Privilege!” accompanied his retreating steps. The king had attempted violence and failed. If that was the form the contest was to take, Parliament would not be found unprepared. The accused members returned in triumph amid salutes of cannon and cheering crowds. Charles did not wait for their return.

The Parliament appointed its own commander for the Tower. The Lords gave their assent to the Bill excluding the bishops from their House. The queen,

4

50 History of the Christian Church.

taking the jewels of the crown, went to Holland. The question turned on the command and control of the army. The king would not yield, and war was practically begun, though the royal standard was not raised until August 22, 1642. The war dragged indecisively on. Negotiations in February, 1643, were abortive. Pym saw that a decisive weight must be thrown into the scale. In this struggle, England and Scotland must stand together. This could only be assured if the alliance be religious as well as political. Accordingly, in September, 1643, Solemn League and Covenant was drawn up and passed by the Westminster Assembly. It was taken by the Commons September 25th, and by the Lords October 15, 1643. In February, 1644, it was made obligatory on all Englishmen over eighteen years of age. The main portion of this oath of interest to us is its first provision, viz.: “That we shall sincerely, really, and constantly, through the grace of God, endeavor in our several places and callings the preservation of the Reformed religion in the Church of Scotland, in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government, against our common enemies; the reformation of religion in the Kingdoms of England and Ireland, in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government, according to the W^Tord of God and the example of the best Reformed Churches; and we shall endeavor to bring the Churches of God in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, Confession of Faith, form of Church government, directory for worships and catechising, that we, and our posterity after us, may, as brethren, live in faith and love, and the Lord may delight to dwell .in the minds of us.”

The Puritan Reform in England. 51

This alliance seemed essential to the triumph of the Puritan cause; it was the first step toward its ruin. It was as foolish to impose a Scotch directory of worship and discipline upon the English people as for Laud to attempt the reverse upon Scotland. Both were doomed to failure. Pym swore to the Covenant; but before it had been made a universal obligation he had passed to his reward. The Great Commoner of the seventeenth century died December 8, 1643. He had been a sincere and earnest Puritan. Eliot, Hampden, and Pym were gone, but a mightier than they arose to dominate the scene.

Oliver Cromwell was the general and ruler of the Puritan Reform as well as Lord Protector of England. His early life, his personal appearance, and _0Iiver his career as a soldier until 1648, has been cromweii. sketched in the preceding volume. We ^l599"^658, have now to deal with him in his great task as the conservator of the liberties of England in Church and State, through the troubled and eventful years that remained to him. In the years of the two civil wars, which he brought to a victorious conclusion, he was more than a military leader; his devotion was to the State rather than to the army, and to religion rather than to the State.

Oliver Cromwell was a man of profound religious convictions. If these were narrow; if he was unsympathetic toward the English Prayer-book, and stern toward the Roman Catholics and all relics of their worship, he was yet the most just and tolerant ruler of his time, and more so in practice than in theory. In Oliver Cromwell there had been wrought a great change in his religious life. He had a personal religious experi

52 History of the Christian Church.

ence. The things of the Spirit, the intercourse of man with God, were the great verities to him. A man of prayer, he also preached and exhorted as occasion offered. Neither the bishops nor the Presbyterians believed in lay preaching; Cromwell did. Hence it is needless to say that he was an Independent.

A sketch of the condition of the Church of England and of the use of the Independent or Congre-Reiigious gationalist, and Baptist Churches, will en-Condition of able us to see something of the religious England.    ^    people.

Richard Baxter gives a picture of the clergy and people as he knew them in his youth; that is, 16201635. There is reason to believe that we do no violence to truth when we take this as a type of the religious condition of the majority of the parishes of England :

“The rector of the parish was eighty years of age. He had never preached, and yet he held two livings The ciergy *^wenty ^mil^es apart. He repeated the * prayers by heart; but, unable to read the lessons from his failing sight, he got first a common thresher and day-laborer, and then a tailor, to perform this duty for him. At length a kinsman of his own, who had been a stage-player and a gamester, got ordination, and assisted him. The clergy of the neighborhood were no better. In High Ercall there were four readers successively in six years’ time—ignorant men, and two of them immoral in their lives. A neighbor’s son, who had been awhile at school, turned minister, and even ventured to distinguish himself from others by preaching; but it was at length discovered that his orders were forged by the ingenious kinsman of the

The Puritan Reform in England. 53

incumbent of the parish, who had been a stage-player. After him another neighbor’s son took orders, who had been awhile an attorney’s clerk, and a common drunkard, and tippled himself into so great poverty that he had no other way to live. It was feared that he, and more of them, came by their orders the same way as the forementioned person.” These, he says, were the schoolmasters of his youth. They “read Common Prayer on Sundays and holy days, and taught school and tippled on week days, and whipped the boys when they were drunk, so that we changed them very oft.”

“The generality seemed to mind nothing seriously but the body and the world. They went to church, and would answer the parson in responses,

1 1    , t    1 The People.

and thence to dinner, and then to play.

They never prayed in their families; but some of them, going to bed, would say over the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, and some of them the ‘Hail, Mary/ All the year long, not a serious word of holy things, or the life to come, that I could hear of, proceeded from them. They read not the Scriptures nor any good book or Catechism. Few of them could read or had a Bible. They were of two ranks. The greater part were good husbands, as they called them, and savored of nothing but their business or interest in the world; the rest were drunkards; most were swearers, but not equally. Both sorts seemed utter strangers to any more of religion than I have named, and loved not to hear any serious talk of God, or duty, or sin, or the gospel, or judgment, or the life to come; but some more hated it than others.

“The other sort were such as had their consciences

54 History of the Christian Church.

awakened to some regard to God and their everlasting state; and, according to the various measures of their understanding, did speak and live as seri-Puritans. ^ous *ⁿ Christian faith, and would inquire what was duty and what was sin, and how to please God and to make sure of salvation. They read the Scriptures, and such books as ‘The Practice of Piety/ and Dent’s ‘Plain Man’s Pathway,’ and Dod ‘On the Commandments/ They used to pray in their families and alone; some on the book, and some without. They would not swear, nor curse, nor take God’s name lightly. They feared all known sin. They would go to the nearest parish church to hear a sermon when they had none at their own; would read the Scriptures on the Lord’s-day when others were playing. There were, where I lived, about the number of two or three families in twenty, and these by the rest were called Puritans, and derided as hypocrites and precisians, who would take on them to be holy. Yet not one of them ever scrupled conformity to bishops, liturgy, or ceremonies, and it was godly conformable ministers that they went from home to hear.”

Into such an England, largely ignorant and irreligious, came the great Puritan Revolution which overthrew the throne and the Episcopate. The majority of the clergy adhered to the king. They stood by the bishops and the Prayer-book. They did all they could to aid the royal cause, often furnishing money and raising troops.

Nevertheless the oath to the Solemn League and Covenant was a mistake. From the petitions sent up in 1642, it seems that the English people, except, perhaps, in the eastern countries and London, while re-

The Puritan Reform in England. 55

joicing in the breaking of the Episcopal coercive jurisdiction, were yet attached to the old form of Church government and worship. In the nine thousand parishes of England, some two thousand or two thousand five hundred were made vacant. For nearly a year no provision was made to fill these vacancies. This ecclesiastical anarchy prepared the way for the immense increase in the activity of those sects which owed no allegiance to the Church of England as by law established. The chief of these were the Independents and the Baptists. Meanwhile the Westminster Assembly provided a form for ordination, September 22, 1644, and a Directory of Worship for use in England, January 3, 1645. It was enacted in Parliament, in August, 1645, any one using the Book of Common Prayer, either privately or publicly, was to be fined five pounds for the first offense, ten for the second, and for the third a year’s imprisonment. Any minister not using the Directory of Worship was fined forty shillings for each offense. '

The Separatist, or Independent, Church of London, of which Francis Johnson was the pastor, emigrated, after the execution of Barrow, to

*    1    •    /th „ . ₁    The in-

Amsterdam, in 1593. The Gainsborough dependents, or and then the Scrooby Churches joined congre-

1    * . ^    ^ rx t 1 1    gationahsts.

them there in 1607 or 1608. In the latter

year, John Smyth baptized himself, recognizing only

adult baptism; this baptism was not by immersion.

These Amsterdam Churches soon divided. Smyth, a saintly man, died of consumption in 1612, and his Church became absorbed by the Dutch Mennonites in January, 1615. Nevertheless, Smyth, as we shall see, became indirectly the founder of the English Baptists.

56 History of the Christian Church.

The Pilgrim Church of Scrooby, under John Robinson, in 1609, migrated to Leyden. The Amsterdam mother Church was rent with divisions, and, after a rather inglorious history, was merged in the Church life of the Dutch metropolis. From this Church, however, went forth Henry Jacob, who founded an Independent congregation in London, in 1616. The persecution of Archbishop Bancroft had been so sharp that not only were the Pilgrim congregations driven beyond the sea, but there was no organized Separatism left. Jacob revived it; but the general sentiment was so strong against Separatism that, probably, there were but a few hundred Independents in England in 1630. The Puritan party were attached to the Church of England and to a compulsory relation to that Church. Their ideal was the National Church reformed according to the Millenary Petition. The thing furthest from their thoughts or desire wac separation. This paucity in the numbers of the English Separatists was one strong reason for the slow growth of the Plymouth Colony as compared with that of Massachusetts Bay.

But when the revolution came; when the stern hand of Laud was removed; when the Westminster Assembly brought in, first anarchy, and then a foreign and hated form of worship, enforced with all the old Episcopal intolerance, then, with the intense type of religious conviction and feeling, came the opportunity of the Independents.

In their estimate of the Scriptures and their adherence to the Calvinistic theology they were one with the divines of the Westminster Assembly; but they believed in the government and discipline of the Church by the congregation, and not by outside patron, or

The Puritan Reform in England. 57

bishop, or presbyters. They also believed in and practiced lay preaching. Naturally this type of Church life commended itself to the Puritan Saints of the New Model Army. Cromwell and the chief officers of the army were Independents, and so were the majority of the rank and file. These men would never put their necks under the Presbyterian yoke. The army sided with the Independents, and the army ruled England. Henceforth, while Cromwell lived, no scheme of intolerance could prevail. The Independents had secured their permanent place beside the State Church.

Thomas Helwys was co-pastor with John Smyth in Holland. He and John Murton became convinced that they could not build up the kingdom of God

, >1 .    , , . ,-a , , < _r The Baptists.

by fleeing and leaving England to her fate.

They came back to England in 1611 or 1612. They were Arminian in theology, and founded, after the Mennonite model, the General Baptist Church. They rejected infant baptism, but did not immerse. By 1626 they had congregations in London, Lincoln, Salisbury, Coventry, and Tiverton. In 1644 they had forty-one churches, and in 1660, twenty thousand members.

The General Baptists took their theology from Holland and the Mennonites. Those Baptists who came from the English Independents and retained the Calvinistic theology were called Par-" ^p¹^*¹⁰ ticular Baptists. Their first Church was organized in London, September 12, 1633, with John Spilsbury as minister. In 1641 they began to practice immersion.

“Mr. Blount baptized Mr. Blacklock, that was a teacher amongst them; and, Mr. Blount being baptized, he and Mr. Blacklock baptized the rest of their

58 History of the Christian Church.

friends that were so minded; and, many being added to them, they increased much.” William Kniffin, their ablest leader in that century, joined them in 1642; he adopted restricted communion. By 1644 there were seven Particular Baptist Churches. They increased rapidly from 1645 ^to 1688. At the latter date they had about one hundred churches. The Baptists were congregational in their Church discipline and government. There was more lay preaching and freedom of spirit among them than among the Independents. Their ministry could not compare in ability or learning with that led by Owen and Howe. There were few, if any, university men among them, and their mission was to the common people.

There arose at this time a body of Christian believers who went much further than the Independents ,,, ^ . or the Baptists in rejecting the current

The Quakers.    f    . . ^J °

usages of the Christian Church.

George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends —or Quakers, as they were popularly called—was no George Fox. ordinary man and wrought no ordinary 1624-1690. _work i_n the Christian Church. We are

struck as were his contemporaries with the things he rejected in the current society and Church of his time. The man who had no use for churches, but called them steeple-houses or idol temples; who cared nothing for any ordained ministry of any kind, but called all such hireling priests; who regarded Sunday as not much different from other days; who never observed among his people either baptism or the Lord’s Supper; who would not take an oath in a court of justice, or under any pretext bear arms, was sure to attract attention, and that not of the most agreeable kind.

The Puritan Reform in England. 59

No man or people live long on what they deny. Only affirmations, and strong ones, give life. The followers of George Fox did not live by the peculiarities of their affirmation, by their somber garb, their use of thee and thou for you in ordinary conversation, or their always wearing their hats. George Fox had a spiritual experience, and out of that experience were born great affirmations which were a blessing to that and succeeding generations.

Fox was born of a Puritan family, who attended the service of the Church of England. His father was so noted for his uprightness that he was called “Righteous Christer,” as his name was Christopher. George Fox was born at Dayton, Leicestershire, in July, 1624. Little schooling came to him, and all his life he was a poor writer and an ill speller. He was apprenticed to a shoemaker, but his time was mainly spent in keeping shop. Fox had little of that the world covets; neither wealth, nor position, nor learning; but he had that the world most needs, a sensitive spirit, a tender conscience, and an immeasurable longing after God. His crisis did not come, as did John Bunyan’s at about the same time, from any wild or wayward course of life. He says: “While I was a child I was taught how to walk so as to be kept sure. The Lord taught me to be faithful in all things; to act faithfully two ways, viz., inwardly to God, and outwardly to man; and to keep yea and nay in all things.”

When, in his nineteenth year, he was attending a fair, a cousin of his and another asked him if he would drink a jug of beer with them. Being thirsty, he said yes, and went with them to an inn. After each had drunk a glass, they began to drink healths, and said

6o History of the Christian Church.

that he that would not drink should pay for all. This grieved him much, seeing that people who professed to be religious so behaved. He took a groat and laid it on the table, saying, “If it be so, I ’11 leave you,” and so went away. That night he did not go to bed, but prayed all night, and seemed to hear these words spoken to him: “Thou seest how young people go together into vanity, and old people into the earth; therefore thou must forsake all, both young and old, and be as a stranger unto them.”

He accordingly left home on September 9, 1643, and did not return until the next summer. He fasted, read the Scriptures, and led a solitary life. He visited an uncle in London who was a Baptist, and advised with several clergymen. One advised him to use tobacco, another to sing psalms, and another to be bled. His temptation and trouble of spirit lasted for nearly three years after his return home.

All this time he had that sensitiveness to sin in others which we have remarked in Ignatius Loyola. He says: “My troubles were so great that I could have wished I had been born blind, that I might never have seen wickedness or vanity; and deaf, that I might never have heard vain or wicked words, or the Lord’s name blasphemed.”

In the midst of these spiritual conflicts hours of refreshing came to him. After one of these he says: “All honor or glory be to thee, O Lord of glory! The knowledge of thee in the spirit is life.” Finally Fox understood the voice of the Lord, assuring him that his name was written in the Lamb’s Book of Life; and as the Lord spoke so he believed, and was certain of the new birth. His struggles were over and his mis-

The Puritan Reform in England. 61

sion began. In these years of loneliness and intense conflict George Fox had learned some things. He had learned to pray. There is no greater gift for a Christian or a Christian minister. William Penn said of him after his death: “Above all, he excelled in prayer. The inwardness and weight of his spirit, the reverence and solemnity of his address and behavior, the fewness and fullness of his words, have often struck even strangers with admiration, as they used to reach others with consolation. The most awful, living, reverent frame I ever felt or beheld, I must say, was his in prayer. And truly it was a testimony that he knew and lived nearer to the Lord than other men.”

George Fox learned to know the Scriptures. Much , of them he doubtless misunderstood, but he had mastered them so that they were his for use. He had not merely studied them, but he had lived in them and lived them into him. He had looked into his own heart, and had known the Inward Light God can give, and had heard the still small voice which never ceases to speak to men.

George Fox had looked with calm and unshrinking gaze upon the Church of his time, and found it did not stand the New Testament test. He demanded a higher Christian life. He says: “Of all the sects in Christendom (so called) that I discoursed with, I found none who could bear to be told that any should come to Adam’s perfection; into that image of God, that righteousness and holiness that Adam was in before he fell; to be clean and pure without sin as he was. Therefore, how should they bear being told that any should grow up to the measure of the stature of the fullness of

62 History of the Christian Church.

Christ, when they can not bear to hear that any shall come, whilst upon earth, into the same power and spirit that the prophets and apostles were in? Though it be a certain truth that none can understand their writings aright without the same Spirit by which they were written.” There is no weightier truth for Christian teachers than this last sentence. If it had ruled in the Church most of the controversies and heresies would never have arisen, and half of the theological literature of the world would have been unwritten.

Fox looked out upon the world around him. He saw its vanity, its wars, its multiplied tests, civil and ecclesiastical, by oaths, and he denounced war, and refused oaths, and believed that the people of God should be plain and sincere in their dress and speech. He listened to the current theological teaching, and he turned from the prevailing Calvinism. He believed that “Christ died for all men,” that “the grace of God, if it be minded [obeyed], will bring every man unto salvation;” and that they were “so ordained that no act of theirs could change their destiny, was a corrupt doctrine, spread over all Scotland and the most of England.”

. Thus he was qualified to be a preacher of repentance such as should stir England. Fox says: “About this time I was exercised in going to courts to cry for justice; in speaking and writing to judges and justices to do justly; in warning such as kept public houses for entertainment that they should not let people have more drink than would do them good; in testifying against wakes, feasts, May-games, sports, plays, and shows, which trained people up for vanity and mirth, and led them from the fear of God, and the days set

The Puritan Reform in England.

63

forth for holy days were usually the times wherein they most dishonored God by these things. In fairs also, and in markets, I was made to declare against their deceitful merchandise, cheating and cozening; warning all to do justly, to speak the truth, to let their yea be yea, and their nay be nay, and to do to others as they would have others do unto them, forewarning them of the great and terrible day of the Lord that would come upon all. I was moved also to cry out against all sorts of music, and against mountebanks playing tricks on their stages; for they burdened the pure life and stirred up the minds of the people to vanity. I was also much exercised with school masters and mistresses, warning them to teach children sobriety in the fear of the Lord, that they might not be trained up in lightness and vanity and wantonness. I was made to warn masters and mistresses, fathers and mothers, in private families, to take care that their children and servants might be brought up in the fear of the Lord, and that they themselves should be examples of sobriety and virtue unto them.^,,

This, then, was Fox’s message. He was first imprisoned at Nottingham, in 1648, for speaking in the church. The next year, at Mansfield Woodhouse, he attempted to speak in the church; but the people fell upon him, and beat him with fists, sticks, and even the Bible. Then they put him in the stocks, and finally stoned him out of the town. He was so hurt that he was scarcely able to stand or walk.

In 1650 he spent most of the year in prison, six months for preaching, and six months for refusing to accept the office of captain and serve in the army. In that year Justice Gervas Bennet first called the Friends

64 History of the Christian Church.

Quakers, because George Fox bade him tremble at the word of the Lord. In 1651 he carried on his work without considerable interruption. In 1652 he was mobbed at Tickhill, and in that year met Judge Fell, of Swarthmore Hall. Margaret Fell, his wife, was no ordinary woman. She was descended from Anne Askew, who was martyred under Henry VIII. She became a devoted follower of George Fox, and from this time Swarthmore Hall became a kind of headquarters of the Friends. Judge Fell died in 1658, his wife remained a widow for eleven years, and then, though ten years his senior, married George Fox.

In 1653, Fox was imprisoned in a most filthy den in Carlisle jail. In 1654 he was carried to Cromwell in London. They conversed much on religion. As Fox was leaving him, Cromwell took his hand and said: “Come again to my house; for if thou and I were together but an hour a day, we should be nearer to one another. I wish thee no more ill than I do to my own soul.”

The next two years Fox was preaching diligently throughout England. At the close of 1655 he was arrested at St. Ives, and kept in a damp and filthy dungeon. In the July following he was again at large. Fox was again preaching, and in the next two years visited Scotland and Wales. He preached regeneration as well as repentance, saying, “These are members of the true Church who know the work of regeneration in the operation and feeling of it, and, being come to be members of the Church of God, they are indeed members one of another in the power of God.” In

1659 he preached throughout England, and in 1660 was in prison twenty weeks, being released in October,

The Puritan Reform in England. 65

1660. In 1663-6 he was in prison most of the time at Lancaster and Scarborough. In 1669 he was in Ireland. In 1671 he went to Barbadoes, and then to Jamaica, and from there sailed to Maryland. From Maryland he traveled to Rhode Island, and then back through Virginia, and into Carolina, and finally back to England. He spent considerable time on Long Island and in Delaware; there was no Pennsylvania then. In 1673 he was arrested and confined in Worcester jail for fourteen months. In 1677, and again in 1684, he visited Holland. He died in London, January 13, 1691. His wife, who at different times spent ten years in prison, survived him.

There was much that was extravagant and irritating about the Quaker evangel. Some scandalous acts were connected with the movement. Women walking naked and barefoot, for example, as happened both in England and America, was carrying literalism to an extreme. Though the demeanor of the Quakers was calm and peaceful, they could use as exasperating epithets and denunciations as ingenuity could devise.

The first monthly meeting was held at Swarthmore Hall in 1653; the first yearly meeting in January, 1669. Two years before, its ablest advocate,

Robert Barclay, joined the society, and a^F^, ®p*“pj*®^d year later its most distinguished convert,

William Penn, became a member. To the lasting credit of the movement may be placed the stand it has ever made for pure morality, for truthfulness and uprightness, for benevolence and the care of their poor. Their stand against war is an everlasting honor to them, and a vindication of Christ’s teachings. On the other hand, they who were raised up to witness to the

5

66 History of the Christian Church.

power of the Spirit against formalism became, through their speech and garb, the most formal among Christians. Their history shows that an aggressive Christianity needs the Church, the ministry, sacraments, and sacred song, as well as the gospel; but also that the might of meekness and the strength of simplicity have been far too much undervalued in the Church as in the world.

Besides the Quakers, there were other sects who rejected the visible Church and her offices. Such were the Seekers, of whom Richard Baxter says:

The Seekers. ,    . . . ,    « .

These maintained that our Scriptures were uncertain; that present miracles were necessary to faith; that our ministry is null and without authority, and our worship and ordinances unnecessary and vain, the true Church ministry, Scripture, and ordinances being lost, for which they are now seeking.”

There were those who rejected, not only Christian ordinances, but Christian morality. Such were the Ranters. Baxter says: “They called men

The Ranters. , ,    .    . ... ,    ,

to hearken to the Christ within them; but in that they enjoined the accursed doctrine of libertinism, which brought them to all abominable filthiness of life.” Baxter spoke of these from personal knowledge. There were then, also, a few who rejected, not the Church so much, as the Christian revelation itself.

In the strange and changeful England of that time, hurrying on to the Revolution, there were few stranger contrasts than in two brothers, both 110

The Herberts.    ^    _TT « _/T ■.

common men. Edward Herbert (Lord Cherbury) was educated at Oxford, 1596-1600, and married young, as the custom was among the gentry,

The Puritan Reform in England. 67

in 1599. He traveled on the Continent, 1608-10 and 1615-17. He was English ambassador at Paris, 16191624. He did not take any active part in _Lord the civil wars, being at Castle Montgomery, Cherbury. 1640-1644, and at London from the latter 's⁸³"'⁶*⁸-year until his death in 1648. His “De Veritate” was the first metaphysical work by an Englishman. In his religious works he rejects revelation, and so is the first of the Deists, though he has no genetic connection with their movement. When dying he offered to receive the sacrament on the ground that it would do him no hurt if it did him no good. But Archbishop Ussher would not administer it to him. Able, vain, arrogant, and unsettled intellectually and morally is the impression he makes upon us.

His brother, George Herbert, sought at first a career at court. He was a poet-scholar. He ministered, unordained, at Leighton, 1626-1629. I11 _George the latter year he married, and the next year Herbert, was ordained. The three brief years left ^l593"'⁶³³* to him he was rector of Bemerton, 1630-1633. He published his “Temple” and other poems. They seem to us marred often by artificialities and queer conceits, but they are a mirror of as Christlike a soul and mind as the England of that day offered to the world.

Thomas Hobbes went further still than Lord Cherbury. Strong and crude in reasoning, he was a materialist in philosophy, a determinist in _Thomas morals, and an absolutist in politics and Hobbes, government. A lifelong student and vigor- ^,s88"'^679, ous thinker, he was timid in the extreme, and partook of the sacrament to guarantee his orthodoxy. Almost his whole life was passed in the fellowship of the noble

68 History of the Christian Church.

family of Cavendish, Dukes of Devonshire. His “Leviathan” was published in 1651. Its conclusions led directly to Atheism.

To these sects and aberrant thinkers must be added those which were more political than religious. Such were the Levelers and the Fifth Monarchy men. The Levelers sought to go back to the natural rights of man. They believed in popular sovereignty, universal suffrage, a democratic republic, and the separation of Church and State. The Fifth Monarchy men looked for the millennial reign of Christ, and would acknowledge no king but King Jesus.

On the other hand, the clergy who were true to the Church of England, looked upon the Protectorate as a usurpation, and upon Cromwell as the man of blood and the murderer of their king. Doubtless the most conscientious, as the most active of the clergy, were among those deprived for their loyalty to the king, the bishops, and the Book of Common Prayer. They were not molested nor imprisoned; nor were they harshly dealt with until the Edict of November 24, 1655. That provided that no ejected or sequestered clergyman or fellow could after the first of next January act as chaplain in a private family, or keep a school, public or private, or administer baptism, the Lord’s Supper, or celebrate marriage, or preach, or use the Book of Common Prayer, except in his own family. This was a blow at the Episcopal clergy which cut off their previous sources of income; but most of them were cared for by the charity of friends or of pious laymen.

Cromwell would not be tolerant to those whom he felt to be enemies of the State, and such he counted the

The Puritan Reform in England. 69

Roman Catholics and the ejected Episcopal clergy. It was in this welter of confusion that Cromwell took up his task. The Scots made the taking of the Covenant an indispensable condition of their aid. Before that, there might have been some chance of compromise if any one could trust the word of the king. After the king was overthrown and a prisoner, the Presbyterian majority in Parliament were afraid of their own work, and incapable of preserving what they had gained. They had the upper hand, but never did a great party so shatter its chances by intolerance and indecision as the Presbyterians from 1640 to 1648. They had no grasp of the situation and no power to govern.

When Cromwell came to the front he, at least, was free from this intolerance and prejudice, and able to look things in the face. The first question to decide was the fate of the king. The Charles",⁰¹ word of no English Stuart could be relied upon, but in faithlessness Charles I led the evil procession. Eight years of duplicity and perfidy left him without any party willing to trust him. Cromwell would have been glad to do so, but experience taught him its impossibility. The army was clamoring for the blood of the Grand Delinquent. Pym had based the impeachment of Strafford and Laud upon the principle “that to endeavor the subversion of the laws of this kingdom was treason of the highest nature.” There was no question but they had done this. Therefore only justice had been wrought in their death. But the same reasoning included Charles. He had broken his coronation oath, and constantly his solemn pledge in the Petition of Rights. Therefore, in justice, he ought to die. It would have been better upon every

70 History of the Christian Church.

ground of expediency that he should join his queen in France. But Puritan leaders had a keen sense of justice and small regard for mercy. So the High Court of Justice was organized, and the head of Charles Stuart was severed from his body before the banqueting hall of his Palace of Whitehall, January 30, 1649. He died with composure and dignity as did Strafford and Laud; but his death could not make right either his life or his cause. It only left an ineffaceable stain of blood between England’s past and every attempt of her present rulers to build thereupon. That was one condition of Cromwell’s problem.

After quelling the mutiny of the Levelers, Cromwell set out for Ireland. Having besieged Drogheda „    for a week, he summoned the garrison to

Cromwell’s    ’    ^&

conquest surrender; when they refused, the place

of Ireland and _was stormed and every man put to the Scotland.    .    ^{J    r}

sword. In nine months he had avenged the cruel massacre of 1642 and thoroughly pacified Ireland. But it was the pacification of a ruthless conquest. Forty thousand of her ablest and most turbulent sons were driven abroad to enlist in foreign armies, while nine thousand were sent as slaves to the West Indies. Thus the native population was reduced to seven hundred thousand, as against one hundred and fifty thousand English and Scotch. Then the native population was driven across the Shannon into Connaught. This policy, like his war, was cruel, and for the time successful; but the curse of its bitterness lies to-day on two great races who live in and strive to govern Ireland.

Charles II had come to Scotland and taken the Covenant. The Scotch had rallied to him against the

The Puritan Reform in England. 71

“usurper.” On September 3, 1650, the Scots were thoroughly defeated at Dunbar, and one year from that day the last Stuart army to oppose Cromwell was utterly destroyed at Worcester. Cromwell’s militar}' career was now at an end. As a general his great merit was in making an army at once godly and victorious. That army was unique in its discipline and invincible in every campaign. Other generals have attempted greater tasks, none ever more thoroughly accomplished what he undertook. Nor was he less successful in civil life, judged by ordinary standards. His success on the sea was equal to that on land. He made the name of England great and respected at home and abroad as no other sovereign since Henry V.

Cromwell wished securely to establish this great rule on the basis of the old, accustomed Parliamentary Government. February 6, 1649, the House of Peers had been abolished, and “the office of king” on the day following. The government was lodged in a Council of State of forty-one members, most of them eminent for abilities and character. February 4, 1652, an amnesty was granted to all who would pledge themselves to be faithful to the Commonwealth as now established.

The Long Parliament having lost ninety-six of its members by Pride’s Purge, December 6, 1648, and having lost more in character and influence _{DissoIution of} than in membership in the years following, the Long was dissolved and dispersed, April 20, 1653, ^ParI,ament-by Oliver Cromwell in person. There were but fifty-three members present when Cromwell stamped with his foot and soldiers came in and cleared the House. Then he took up the mace, and said: “What shall we

72 History of the Christian Church.

do with this bauble? Here, take it away.” Then he added: “It is you that have forced me to do this. I have sought the Lord night and day that he would rather slay me than put me upon the doing of this work.” No legislative body that makes itself permanent is fit to exist; it then, of course, ceases to be representative. The Long Parliament had long outlived its usefulness. The pity was that it had not patriotism enough to provide for a legitimate successor. This it might have done; this Cromwell could not do. Parliament could give Cromwell legitimate title to his power; Cromwell could not give a legitimate title to a Parliament. Here was another intractable condition to his problem. Cromwell and his officers nominated one hundred and forty persons, who came together July 4, 1653, and were known as the Little Parliament. It remained in session until December 12th. Through it some legal reforms were accomplished, and it attempted a legal revolution through the abolition of the Court of Chancery.

A council of officers and others chose Cromwell as Lord High Protector of the Commonwealth, and he was installed December 16, 1653. Writs were issued for the election of a new Parliament under an Instrument of Government, which was an enlightened written Constitution. All voters must have a property qualification of £200, and none who had sided with the king in the Civil Wars, or had not repented, could vote or be voted for. In this Parliament England had three hundred and forty members, Scotland thirty, and Ireland thirty. As, instead of considering the needs of the government, it spent months in debating the Instrument of Government which called it into being,

The Puritan Reform in England. 73

Cromwell dissolved it January 22, 1655. the spring of this year England was divided into ten districts, each of them being governed by a major-general. Oliver’s third Parliament met September 1, 1656. About one hundred members were excluded from it by the Council of State. It continued in session until February 14, 1658. It offered the crown to Oliver, but he refused it; the army was opposed to the project. The House refused to acknowledge Oliver’s House of Peers, and it was dissolved. The work of the Protector to found a legitimate basis to his rule failed; but that did not prevent that rule from being wise, tolerant, and successful, in spite of assassination plots and Royalist conspiracies, as have been few reigns in English history.

In March, 1654, Cromwell put an end to the ecclesiastical chaos by appointing thirty-five Commissioners or Triers of Candidates for benefices or lectureships. They did their work with a good degree of ability and impartiality. But they could not reconcile the Episcopal clergy nor that large portion of the population sincerely attached to the Prayer-book. Here was a third intractable condition to Cromwell’s problem. Yet, nevertheless, on land and sea, in Church and State, the Protector made his wisdom, his tolerance, and his power to prevail.

The greatness of a great ruler may be estimated in part by the character of the great men of his reign and the relations he sustains to them. This is true in Church as well as State. We can not better, perhaps, estimate the character and influence of the Church of England which was displaced by the Puritan revolution than by considering the career and character of

74 History of the Christian Church.

three or four of the most eminent of her sons among the clergy.

Its fabric as an organization was well-nigh dissolved. Some of its bishops were in exile with the proscribed royal house, some were dead, of England. ^and ^a^ ^{were a}g'ⁿg f^ast- Yet this period, for many of her ablest clergy, was one of leisure from care and office, and of literary production, which has given to their names a lasting memory. One

Henry    the most influential of these was Henry

Hammond. Hammond. Educated at Oxford, he was 1605 1660. _or(j_aj_ne(j j_n j5₂9. As rector of Penshurst, in Kent, he spent ten years, 1633-1643, when he was made Archdeacon of Chichester. In 1643 he helped to raise a troop of horse for the king. The next year he wrote his famous “Practical Catechism.” In 1645 he was royal chaplain with the king. His scholarship and high character caused him to be named as a member of the Westminster Assembly, but he never attended its sessions. He had been a leading member of the Royalist party, and so was deprived in 1648. No persecution followed. He lived in retirement at Westwood, the seat of Sir John Packington, the rest of his days, dying but a month before the Restoration. Hammond was noted for his charity and zeal in assisting the ejected clergy cut off from their support. He and Robert Sanderson were the main pillars of their Church in these troublous times. Hammond’s “Annotations on the New Testament” was an excellent exegetical work for its time. His charity, unselfish and devout life will always make fragrant his name.

Robert Sanderson was an older man, and the theologian of his party. Trained at Oxford, he received

The Puritan Reform in England. 75

ordination in 1611, was made prebendary of Southwell in 1619, royal chaplain in 1631, and Regius Professor of Divinity in 1642. Though an _Robert ardent Royalist, his ability and weight of Sanderson, character kept him in office until 1648. The ^{587 3} following twelve years he lived in retirement, laboring with Hammond to keep together the shaken fabric of the Church of England. In 1660, Sanderson was reinstated at Oxford, and in October of that year made Bishop of Lincoln, where he died, January 29, 1663.

Of a wider fame was Jeremy Taylor. Educated and a Fellow at Cambridge, he was translated to an Oxford Fellowship in 1636. Two years _Jeremy later he received the living of Uppingham. Taylor. There he was occupied until the outbreak ^{16,3 l667}‘ of the Civil War. Taylor took active part on the side of the king, and was deprived in 1644. For twelve years, 1645-1657, he lived in retirement at Golden Grove, in Wales. There he wrote his “Liberty of Prophesying,” a plea for a free press, remarkable as coming from his party, but inferior to Milton’s “Areo-pagitica.” Here were written his celebrated devotional works, “Holy Living” and “Holy Dying,” and that monument of wide and thorough study, the “Doctor Dubitantium.” Yet his fame will rest more upon his sermons which show rare use of the imagination and an exuberant display of the treasures of English speech. The death of two of his children from smallpox drove him from his retirement, and he went to London. He seems to have been on good terms with Cromwell, and was allowed to go to Portmore, Ireland, in 1658. On the Restoration he was not given place in England as was fitting and as he merited. In January, 1661, he

76 History of the Christian Church.

was made Bishop of Down and Connor, and the See of Dromore was added in June. Taylor was little fitted for the strenuous life with Roman Catholics and stubborn Presbyterians, but died worn out in futile endeavor in 1667.

A man of more lasting claim upon human remembrance was James Ussher, Primate of Ireland. Ussher James ^was born '^m Dublin, and entered Trinity Ussher. College in 1594. Five years later he was 1581-1656. _macj_{e Qne 0}£ j_ts pillows. Th_{e nex}t eighteen years he devoted to reading the Fathers of the Christian Church. These he made his own. Ordained in 1601, he was made Professor of Divinity in 1607. In 1621 he was made Bishop of Meath, and in 1625 Archbishop of Armagh, which See had been held by his uncle, Henry Ussher. He was in warm and friendly correspondence with Laud from 1628 to 1640. He first visited England in 1602, and again in 1606. From that time he made triennial visits until he left Ireland forever in 1640. Though a firm Royalist, he was selected for the Westminster Assembly, but refused to sit. Ussher was an extreme Calvinist, as is shown by his Irish articles of 1615. He was devoted to the Stuart cause, but he believed in a modified Episcopacy. From 1646 to 1656 he was the guest in London of the Countess of Peterborough, and from 1647 ^was ^^ec" turer to the Temple. Carrying on his learned labors, he was highly esteemed by the Protector. Ussher had not pre-eminent gifts of government, and he was not a success as a ruler of the Church in a turbulent time. But as a scholar, in range and weight of learning, in soundness of historical method and judgment as applied to the history of the Christian Scriptures

The Puritan Reform in England. 77

and Church, he has rarely been surpassed among men of English speech. Others with better opportunities and sources of information have gone beyond him, but all use the fruit of his labors. As a controversialist with Rome he was the best-equipped man of his generation.

These are the great names of the Church of England of this time. Not inferior to them in ability and weight of character were the ^Divines?⁰ Puritan theologian, John Owen, the Puritan preacher, John Howe, and the Puritan saint, Richard Baxter.

John Owen was educated at Oxford, 1631-1637, when Laud’s statutes drove him from the university. His sympathies were at first with the Presbyterians, but he became an Independent in 1646. He held the rectory of Fordham,

1642-1646, and that of Coggeshall, 1646-1651. In 1646 he preached before Parliament, and again the day after the execution of the king, without once referring to that tragical event. Owen had been the friend of Fairfax, and now Cromwell took him as his chaplain to Ireland, where he set in order the affairs of Trinity College. Afterwards he accompanied the Protector to Scotland. In March, 1651, he was made dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and the next year vice-chancellor of the university. For eight years he ruled Oxford. A vigorous, enlightened, and tolerant rule it was. His firmness, moderation, and learning made memorable the Puritan rule of Oxford. Owen was the theologian of his party, and was often in controversy. He wrote first against the Arminians, who ever continued his dearest foes_; and the Socinians. Later his pen was

78 History of the Christian Church.

directed against the Roman Catholics, and against Stil-lingfleet, in defense of Nonconformity to the Church of England. In 1667 he published the first part of his monumental work on the Epistle to the Hebrews. In dignity of character and sound learning he had no superiors. When the evil days came he refused the presidency of Harvard College, and of a Dutch university, as he had already refused greater honors in the Church of England. In Owen large learning, various and profound, was joined to great gifts of government. Though a sturdy controversionalist, he was ever an enlightened advocate of toleration. To us, his style and his theology seem antiquated; but while men remember great abilities nobly used his name will not be forgotten.

John Howe was the son of an English clergyman, who was ejected for his Puritan opinions, and who, when his son was but five years of age, ^630^706.* ^{went to} I^reland. In 1641 the family returned to England. Young Howe entered Cambridge, 1647, ^and was at Oxford, 1649-1652, where he was Fellow, 1652-1655. He was rector of Great Torrington, Devon, 1654-1656. In the latter year he was chosen domestic chaplain to Cromwell while retaining Great Torrington. Howe proved an admirable court preacher, showing himself a true Christian and befriending many of the Episcopal clergy. His good offices at this time, Ward, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, and Fuller, the Church historian, were not ashamed to recall after the Restoration. St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1662, Howe was deprived of Great Torrington. For six years, from 1669, he lived as chaplain at Antrim Castle, Ireland, and there began the chiefest

The Puritan Reform in England. 79

of his works, “The Living Temple.” In 1676 he returned to London to become the pastor of a Nonconforming congregation. Here he enjoyed the friendship of the best men of the Church of England; but when persecution began to be too sharp, he traveled for a year on the Continent with Lord Wharton. For the next two years he settled as pastor of an English congregation at Utrecht. In 1687 he returned to London, and the next year welcomed William of Orange. Thenceforth London was the scene of his labors until his death. As a deep and sagacious thinker, a preacher of both warmth and breadth, and in attractiveness of style, he had no superior among his Puritan contemporaries.

But the most eminent preacher, pastor, and theologian combined, of this time, was Richard Baxter. He was more than all these; he was the Richard Puritan saint. His was the single mind; Baxter, his life was throughout a rare example of ^,6,s-^,69*. disinterestedness. Physical sufferings, which never left him, he bore with composure and fortitude. The pride of power, the injustice of those who were pledged to better things, the insolence of tribunals which made a mock of justice, frequent, vexatious, and long imprisonment, did not change the sweetness of his temper or lessen his charity. Less tolerant than Cromwell, yet within the bounds set by his conscience, no man had more warmth of Christian love or more earnestly sought breadth of Christian fellowship. No man of that day excelled him in the pulpit. No man more delighted in study; and yet evangelical fervor and pastoral zeal were the distinguishing qualities of his career.

Baxter’s father was a Puritan. The son did not go

8o History of the Chrisiian Church.

to either Oxford or Cambridge, but acquired a scholarship equaled by few university graduates of his generation. In 1633 he was sent to London with the idea of making his way at court, where he had a place under Sir Henry Herbert, master of revels. Soon he returned, with any longing for court life completely cured. The next year his mother died. His health gave way, and he expected to die. Then came a settled determination to the work of the Christian ministry. The Bishop of Worcester ordained him in 1638, and he became assistant at Bridgenorth. The famous Et Cetera Oath caused him to resign this place, and placed him from thenceforth among the Nonconformists, though he would have been well content with a modified Episcopacy on the plan of Bishop Ussher. In 1641 he accepted a call to a Puritan lectureship at Kidderminster, the second town in size in Worcestershire, and nearly midway between Worcester and Birmingham. This, with considerable interruption during the Civil War, was the scene of his labors for the next twenty years. For three years, 1642-1645, Baxter was at Coventry, and preached both in the city and to the soldiers. The ecclesiastical anarchy of those times was abhorrent to Baxter, who believed in the Presbyterian rule. In 1646 he withdrew from the army, and, on account of ill health, from active work, but in 1647 he returned to Kidderminster. Cromwell, Baxter did not like, though he could not but acknowledge his high aim. He says: “I perceived that it was his design to do good in the main, and to promote the gospel and the interests of godliness more than any had done before him, except in those particulars which were against his own interest. The powerful means

The Puritan Reform in England. 81

that henceforth he trusted to for his establishment was doing good, that the people might love him, or, at least, be willing to have his government for that good, who were against it because it was usurpation.” The “usurpation” and the military government were too much for Baxter.

But that did not hinder his work at Kidderminster. The description shall be from Baxter himself. Before the war he preached twice each Lord’s-day; but afterward but once, and once every Thursday, besides occasional sermons. Two days every week (Monday and Tuesday) he and his assistant took fourteen families between them for private catechism and conference. He spent about an hour with a family, and admitted no others to be present. He devoted the afternoon to this work, and the forenoon to study. On the evening of Thursdays he met with his neighbors at his house, when one of them repeated the sermon, and then they propounded any doubt or inquiries that occurred to them, and he “resolved their doubts.” On the first Wednesday of every month he held a meeting for parish discipline and disputation; and in those disputations it fell to his lot to be almost constant moderator, when he usually prepared a written determination. Such was his popularity as a preacher that they built five galleries in the large church for the increased congregation. On Sunday “you might hear an hundred families singing psalms and repeating sermons as you passed through the streets. In a word, when I came thither first, there was about one family in a street that worshiped God and called on his name; and when I came away there were some streets where there was not found one family on the side of a street that did

6

S2 History of the Christian Church.

not do so.” Of his six hundred communicants he says, “There were not twelve that I had not good hopes as to their sincerity.” “Some of the poor men did competently understand the body of divinity, and some were able to judge in difficult controversies. Some of them were so able in prayer that very few ministers did match them in order, and fullness, and apt expressions, and holy oratory with fervency. Abundance of them were able to pray very laudably with their families, or with others. The temper of their minds and the innocency of their lives were much more laudable than their pasts.” In the year preceding his return to Kidderminster he wrote the book by which he is best remembered, “The Saints’ Everlasting Rest.” The memory of his labors after two hundred years is fragrant at Kidderminster, and in 1875 ^a statue was unveiled to his memory.

In these days came the great change. The brain and arm that held up the Commonwealth failed. Cromwell died, and broken was the heart and might of Puritan England. So great was his power that his son succeeded him as quietly as any monarch’s son to the English throne. All went on as before for a time; but the mighty motive force was gone; the wheels revolved with ever-lessening velocity, then stood still; then dissolution came to the disorganized mechanism of the State. Charles II was at hand, and Puritan England was overthrown.

In February, 1658, Cromwell’s son-in-law, the grandson of the Earl of Warwick, died a few months from his wedding-day. In April the grandfather, an old and tried friend of Oliver’s, finished his course. In July his favorite daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, for

The Puritan Reform in England. 83

some time an invalid, rapidly grew worse. For two weeks the Protector was at her bedside, “unable to attend to any public business whatever.” August 6th she died. Cromwell was taken sick the next day. He had Eph. iv, n-13, read to him, and said, “This Scripture did once save my life when my eldest son died, which went as a dagger to my heart; indeed it did.” August 24th he returned from Hampton Court to Whitehall, and was soon confined to his bed. On September 2d he asked, “Is it possible to fall from grace?” The minister said, “It is not possible.” “Then I am safe, for I know that I was once in grace,” said the dying ruler. Then he prayed. This prayer of these last days offered by the great Puritan Protector is the best mirror of the inward man. It was taken down by those who heard it. Read it, and see if we can fail to reverence the great ideal and the great soul that shines through it. So he prayed: “Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am in covenant with thee through grace; and I may, I will, come to thee for thy people. Thou hast made me, though unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and thee service; and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though others wish and would be glad of my death. Lord, however thou do dispose of me, continue and go on to do good for them. Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love; and go on to deliver them, and with the work of reformation; and make the name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much on thy instruments, to depend more on thyself. Pardon such as desire to trample on the dust of a poor worm, for they are thy people too. And pardon the folly of this short

84 History of the Christian Church

prayer: even for Jesus Christ’s sake. And give us a good night, if it be thy pleasure. Amen.”

In the night of September 2d he frequently said, “God is good.” As he was restless, some drink was offered him, when he said, “It is not my design to drink or sleep; but my design is, to make what haste I can to be gone.” When the sun of September 3d arose, the day of Dunbar and Worcester, he was speechless, and, soon after it passed the meridian, the greatest ruler England ever had lay dead.

How great he was may be judged from the ruin which followed. Painted harlots, French and English, ruled the king and the State. English honor, and, as far as the king could do it, England’s independence was bartered for French gold. The puissant England of Cromwell’s day sank to a satellite of Louis XIV, that her ignoble king might have money to lavish upon his pleasures.

The queen was a Roman Catholic; so were the chief of the king’s mistresses. The king’s brother, and heir to the throne, became a Roman Catholic, and in that Church at last died the royal libertine. There was no more Puritan preaching or Puritan morality at the court, but such a tide of ribaldry, licentiousness, and general immorality as has never disgraced England before or since. Her bravest and best died upon the scaffold, or went into banishment, or lingered in loathsome prisons. A crowd of little men, in the main vile, and with few exceptions venal, rustled around in the great offices of the State. Cromwell did not succeed in his task; that was beyond human power. It has been suggested that if he had gone further he might have fitrnly established the Puritan dominion and made

The Puritan Reform in England. 85

impossible the shame that followed. If, that is, he had confiscated the landed property of England as that of France was confiscated by the Revolution of 1789* ^an<^ had given it to the Puritans, the result might have been different. Yes, it might; and how different the Puritans’ settlement of Ireland shows—an age-long feud, with the majority successful in the end. The truth is, that, with all the excellencies of the Puritan scheme and government, it did not win the heart of England. So in his high aim Oliver failed. It is his merit, however, that he put off the Royalist reaction for a dozen years, and in the meantime pointed out the onward path for England’s greatness. Amid all after loss, the man remains. England has had great soldiers since, in Marlborough and Wellington; but neither of them formed or commanded such an army as Cromwell’s. And since, but two statesmen, in love for England and wisdom to make her great, have arisen to compare with Oliver Cromwell; in love for her glory the elder Pitt, and in devotion to those sovereign ideals of freedom and morality which elevate the political life of the race, Gladstone. While England’s greatness serves the weal of mankind, men will honor the name of her great Protector, who broke the force of absolute kingly power in England, in the world militant Puritanism was dead.

During the civil wars and under the Protector’s rule came into organized existence several of the great American Churches. The Congregationalists, or Independents, in England and America became a great religious force. The Baptists began their career of successful evangelism. The Quakers, or Friends, came into being as a religious society; while the Presby

86 History of the Christian Church.

terians at this time formulated their religious creed in the Westminster Confession, and the Church of England took up the distinctive position which she has since occupied. Oliver Cromwell was dead; but the England of his time shaped the future as have few generations of Englishmen. Nowhere is this more plainly seen than in the history of the Christian Church in the new Nation beyond the Atlantic Ocean.

Military government was hateful to the English people. To most of them the rule of law was bound up with the monarchy. Therefore, when Restoration. Monk with the army moved on London, men of all parties, with the Presbyterians well in the lead, sought the return of Charles II as England’s legitimate king.

These men did not wish the revival of the abuses in Church and State which led to the Revolution. The Stuarts were all facile promisers when it was for their interest, and none more so, or less faithful, than the second Charles. In the Declaration of Breda, delivered to the Constitution Parliament, May I, 1660, he said: “Because the passion and uncharitableness of the times have produced several opinions in religion by which men are engaged in parties and animosities against each other, which, when they shall hereafter unite in a freedom of conversation, will be composed or better understood, we do declare a liberty to tender consciences, and that no man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matters of religion which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom ; and that we shall be ready to consent to such an Act of Parliament as, upon mature deliberation, shall be offered to us for the full granting of that indul

The Puritan Reform in England. 87

gence.” English prisons for the next twenty-five years were to witness a strange “liberty to tender consciences.” The king was false; but the Church of England had her revenge, and the tender mercies of her bishops and laity were cruel.

To carry out this project of conciliation a Conference was called by royal order at the Savoy in London in April, 1661. Between the last Declaration and the Conference a new Parliament had been elected, which met in May. This Parliament was burning to avenge the injuries of Churchmen and Royalists, and intolerant of any compromise in the liturgy and discipline of the Church. Twelve bishops and twelve Presbyterian divines, with nine assistants on each side, were called to this Conference. Sheldon, Bishop of London, took the lead. He at once declared that the Church party had no concession to offer, and desired the other party to present their proposed alterations in writing. At the end of two weeks, Baxter presented his “Reformed Liturgy,” which he offered as a substitute for the Book of Common Prayer when the minister pleased. The other Presbyterians presented their proposed alterations. By refusing to present any modifications the bishops took the attitude of judges. Baxter’s rashness played into the hands of his adversaries by making the Presbyterians appear to ask for impossible concessions. Who would displace a liturgy hallowed by a century of use and memorable associations for one prepared by a single man in two weeks’ time. Of course, in such a condition, there could be no true Conference and no agreement. Yet if the State Church was to be the Church of the nation and not of a party, no censure

88 History of the Christian Church.

can be too severe for the diplomacy of Sheldon which secured this result. From the spirit which dictated this sharp practice came the shame of the succeeding years of persecution.

The Commons passed an Act for Uniformity before the Savoy Conference adjourned, but the Lords made The Act of haste more slowly. Finally the amended uniformity, Prayer-book was prepared and attached to ^l662, the bill. The changes were mainly from the hand of Bishop Cosin, and, so far from “easing tender consciences,” the intention and the effect were to drive these from the ministry of the English Church. May 19, 1662, the Act of Uniformity, with the amended Prayer-book attached, was passed. All who did not declare their “unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed in and by the book,” as well as all who were not Episcopally ordained priests or deacons, were to be deprived of all ministry or office in the Church of England by St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1662. Dr. Reynolds was offered a bishopric, and accepted it. The same offer was made to Baxter and Calamy, and high preferment to Owen, if they would conform, but they refused. In

1660 one thousand of the Puritan clergy were displaced as intruders upon the benefices of the Royalist clergy still living. By the Act of Uniformity two thousand more were deprived, who might have remained if they would have conformed. Their adherence to principle and duty was a lasting honor to the Puritan cause. It is not true that this action was but a just requital for ejecting the Royalist clergy during the Civil War. In that case the clergy who were molested were disloyal to the Parliament, and actively engaged in subverting

The Puritan Reform in England. 89

its authority. In the case of the Puritan clergy of 1662 there was no question but they were as loyal to Charles

II as the men who took their places.

Meanwhile the English Episcopate was reorganized. The Archbishopric of Canterbury had been vacant since the death of Laud. The va- The Restored cancy was supplied by the consecration of English. William Juxon, Bishop of London, to the ^EpiscODate* vacant primacy, in September, 1660. Juxon had been High Treasurer of England, and stood by Charles I when on the scaffold, and was now nearly _Will!am eighty years old. He was a man of medi- juxon. ocre ability, but of such character and dis- ^,s⁸²“ⁱ⁶⁶3-position as commanded the respect of his opponents. He survived his elevation to Canterbury but three years.

Gilbert Sheldon was appointed his successor. Sheldon went to Oxford in 1614, and was chosen Fellow in 1622. In the latter year he was ordained, _Qllbert and held rectorships from 1633 to 1639. Sheldon. He was a friend of Falkland and Hyde, but ^l598“^l677* sided strongly with the king in the Civil Wars. In 1648 he was ejected from his place as warden of AllSoul’s College at Oxford. The next twelve years he lived quietly with friends in the midland counties of England. Political changes reinstated him at Oxford, and in 1660 he was made Bishop of London. For fourteen eventful years he occupied the See of Canterbury. He had little influence upon a ribald and licentious court, for he was too worldly himself; but he had great influence in keeping in English prisons such men as Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, and George Fox. Sheldon gave away £70,000 and built the Sheldonian

90 History of the Christian Church.

Theater at Oxford. With Sheldon in his policy of persecution were associated George Morley, chaplain to the royal family in their exile, and Bishop of Winchester, 1662-1682; and John Cosin, who was chaplain to Queen Henrietta, 1642-1660, and Bishop of Durham, 1660-1672, where he showed himself an able and munificent administrator of a great See, as well as a bitter persecutor.

The Cavaliers of the first Parliament of the Restoration were eager to humble to the utmost extent the Puritans, and to retaliate upon those who Persecution! ^^ie Prayer-book to the tails of their horses, and defaced and destroyed the pictured glass of the noblest of English churches, in which work, however, they were aided, and sometimes surpassed, by the Royalist troopers, who stabled their horses in the cathedrals. Yet upon these bishops rests the responsibility for the shameful and despicable persecution of the Puritans under Charles II. The relief within the Church which had been expressly promised by the king they denied. Then they stooped to any device and penalty which should keep those who were deceived within its pale. The bishops could have restrained the Commons, but they had no wish to do so. The policy the Commons adopted was their policy. They strove still to carry out the Church ideals of Laud. This policy resulted in the Five-mile and Conventicle Acts, the last which made Nonconformity a crime in England, and the last which sought to bring the Church of Laud upon all Englishmen.

The Parliament in May, 1661, passed the “Corporation Act,” which provided that any mayor, alderman, or other municipal officer who should refuse to swear

The Puritan Reform in England. 91

that he “declares and believes that it is not lawful,

upon any pretense whatsoever, to take arms against

the king, and that he does abhor that trait. .    - , 1 .    * 1 •    Antl-Purltan

orous position of taking arms by his au- _Legig|_ation. thority against his person, or against those The corpora-who are commissioned by him,” and also °||_6l ’ renounces the Solemn League and Covenant, and takes the sacrament according to the ritual of the Church of England, should lose his office. This was aimed at the Puritans in the towns where they had been strongest for a century. The noteworthy fact is, that though this act was not enforced during the latter part of the eighteenth century, Fox could not carry its repeal in 1787, and that it disgraced, until 1828, the statutes of England.

In 1664 the first Conventicle Act was passed. It required that “every person above sixteen years of age who should be present at any meeting, _TheCon_ under color or pretense of any exercise of venticieAct, religion in any other manner than is al- ^l664->67<>. lowed by the liturgy or practice of the Church of England, where there are five persons more than the household, shall be liable to fine and imprisonment.” For the third offense they could be transported to the West Indies; and if they returned without leave, the penalty was death. What would we say now to the penalty of perpetual banishment for attending a prayer-meeting three times!

In October, 1665, the Five-mile Act was passed, which required the same oath to be taken by Nonconforming ministers as that prescribed in the Corporation Act; and also, “And all such person or persons as shall take upon them to

92 History of the Christian Church.

preach in any unlawful assembly, conventicle, or meeting, under color or pretense of any exercise of religion contrary to the laws and statutes of this kingdom, shall not, at any time after March 24, 1665, unless only in passing upon the road, come or be within five miles of any city or town corporate, or borough or parish,” where they have ever officiated, under penalty of £40 for each offense. The same oath, and attendance upon the services of the Church of England, were required to teach any kind of school.

The Conventicle Act of 1664 was in force for only three years; but in 1670 a second Conventicle Act was passed which lessened the penalties, but was more searching and severe in its provisions. Sheldon, recommending the clergy to see to the thorough execution of this infamous law, said it would be “to the glory of God, the welfare of the Church, the praise of His Majesty and government, and the happiness of the whole kingdom.”

The king having tried to dispense from the enforcement of these Acts, the Commons repelled the claim, and passed the Test Act applying to all offi-^TIAct!^{5St cers an}^ military in the realm of England. It was aimed at the Roman Catholics, whom the king sought to favor by his dispensing power. It provided that in addition to taking the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy these officers shall partake of the sacrament according to the order of the Church of England, and also subscribe to all the following oath: “I do declare that I do believe that there is not any transubstantiation in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, or in the elements of the bread and wine, at or after the consecration thereof by any person

The Puritan Reform in England. 93

whatsoever.” This profanation of the Lord’s Supper to serve the purpose of a test for political and civil offices remained upon the English statute-book until 1828. Thus all officers of the kingdom, municipal, military, or civil, were to be kept solely for the com-munciants of the Church of England. Puritan intolerance in England was tolerance indeed beside this.

How this worked can be seen by referring to the cases of George Fox and John Bunyan, and now of Richard Baxter, the most eminent of the Nonconformists. In 1662, Baxter at the _Baxter under age of forty-seven married a girl of twenty- the Restora-two, of good family and noble character,

Margaret Charlton. The marriage was in every respect a happy one, and her memory has an eloquent tribute in her husband’s “Breviate” of her life. For the years 1662-1670 Baxter lived quietly engaged in his studies at Acton, as the neighbor of Sir Matthew Hale, and with the respect of such men as Stilling-fleet and Tillotson. In the latter year he was thrust into prison, but secured his release on a writ of habeas corpus. He then removed to Totteridge, near Burnet, and two years later to London. November 19, 1672, he tells us, is the first day he preached after ten years’ silence. For the next twelve years he was “hunted by informers and worried by persecutors wherever he went.” At one time officers watched for twenty-four Sundays his chapel door to seize him. He says he was kept for twelve years from his books, and when he “had paid dear for their carriage, after two or three years was forced to sell them.” In 1682, while sick, he was arrested. His physician made oath that he could not be removed to prison without danger of

94 History of the Christian Church.

death, and Charles II said, “Let him die in his bed.” But they took his books and goods, and even the bed whereon he lay, and sold them. In 1684, when very ill, he was again arrested, and carried to the court, where he had to give bonds for £400 for good behavior. In February, 1685, he was arrested and sent to prison; he was released on bail until May 30th. His trial was one of the most iniquitous and revolting of all the judicial mockeries of Chief-Justice Jeffreys. Baxter was condemned to a fine of 500 marks and to be imprisoned until it was paid. For two years he remained in prison. From 1687 Baxter had peace and honor. The love and reverence of friends and intercourse with the best in the land were his portion.

But in these later years of Baxter’s persecution The Church of Church of England reaped the harvest England and sown for her by her cruel and shortsighted James ii. _rui_ers> James II was a Roman Catholic, and sought, by the usual Stuart means of fraud and violence, to make his religion that of the English people.

William Sancroft was educated at Emanuel College, Cambridge, entering in 1633. There he was wiiiiam Fellow, 1642-1651, and for the next nine sancroft. years lived in retirement with his brother. 1617-1693. j_{n 1}q£_>2 j_{le was ma(}|_e master of his old college, and in 1664 Dean of St. Paul’s. The great fire destroyed the old cathedral, and the work of erecting the present edifice, with Sir Christopher Wren as architect, fell upon Sancroft. In January, 1678, he was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. The new primate was conscientious, earnest, and pious; but he was hampered in his defense of his Church by his work

The Puritan Reform in England. 95

published in 1684 declaring against any possible resistance of the royal power. In the time of testing, San-croft showed himself a timid leader. Many, alas! of the bishops were found to do the king’s bidding. Crewe of Durham, Sprat of Rochester, and Turner of Ely, showed themselves thoroughly obsequious. Others were in no condition to stand in defense of the Church. Barlow of Lincoln was described as the bishop who never saw Lincoln; Wood of Lichfield was suspended for gross immorality; Watson of St. David’s was afterwards deprived for simony; of Cartwright of Chester, his character was said to be so bad that anything might be expected of him. This accounts for a large fraction of the Episcopate.

In April, 1687, James II had issued a Declaration of Indulgence. James determined to punish and humiliate the clergy, and, encouraged by their _ _ .

.    _r    .    , , , . The Declare-

doctrine of non-resistance, ordered this tion of Declaration to be reissued and read in all indulgence.

1687=1688.

the pulpits of London and Westminster the 20th and 27th of May, 1688, and on June 3d and 10th in the rest of the kingdom. The bishops of the Church of England since Grindal’s day had not been remarkable for heroism in resisting the power of the king. Their subserviency now would have been her ruin, and in the crisis the timid became courageous. Ken of Bath and Wells, and Compton of London, had been manly and outspoken. Now Turner of Ely stood with his nobler brethren. Sancroft and six bishops—Lloyd of St. Asaph, Turner of Ely, Lake of Chichester, Ken of Bath and Wells, White of Peterborough, and Tre-lawney of Bristol—signed a respectful petition to the king, in which they refused to read the Declaration.

96 History of the Christian Church.

On the first Sunday in but four churches in London was the Declaration read, Sprat of Rochester being one of the readers. Not more than two hundred in England read it. On the 8th of June, Sancroft and the bishops were called before the Council. Every effort had been made to cause them to yield; but as they continued obstinate, they were committed to the Tower. June 15th they were brought to Westminster Hall to plead to an indictment of seditious libel. June 29th the trial began. Half the peers of England came with them into the court. Of the four judges, two pronounced the petition libelous, and two ruled that it was not; then the case went to the jury. After being locked up all night, at ten the next morning, June 30, 1688, they came into the court to report that they had agreed upon a verdict. They were polled and answered, “Not guilty.” The bishops became the most popular men in the nation, and the throne of the Stuarts tottered toward its final fall.

William of Orange landed at Torquay. James, after days of vacillation, finally left London. By the WiHiam Convention Parliament, the throne was de-and clared vacant, and William and Mary were ^Mary* proclaimed sovereigns of England. With this change in the succession to the throne went two great measures—one in the State, and one in the Church—which secured for all time the gains of the Puritan movement, Englishmen’s rights to men of English speech. They were the Bill of Rights and the Act of Toleration.

The Bill of Rights incorporated, made more definite, and enlarged the gains embodied in the Petition of Rights of 1628, the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679,

The Puritan Reform in England. 97

and the chief reforms of the Long Parliament. Its chief provisions are as follows: 1. That all suspension of the laws without the consent of Parliament is illegal; 2. That all dispensing of ^TJ^_ghts.°^f the execution of the laws is illegal; 3. That all ecclesiastical commissions are illegal and pernicious;

4. That levying money for the use of the crown without grant of Parliament is illegal; 5. That it is the right of subjects to petition the king; 6. Raising or keeping a standing army without the consent of Parliament is against the law; 7. Subjects, who are Protestants may bear and keep arms; 8. Elections of members of Parliament ought to be free; 9. Freedom of speech in Parliament not to be called in question; 10. Provides against excessive bails, or fines, or cruel or unusual punishments; n. Jurors in cases of treason should be freeholders; 12. All grants of fines or forfeitures of persons before conviction are illegal and void; 13. Parliaments ought to be held frequently. It was also provided that no Roman Catholic could be either King or Queen of England. These provisions, except the last, appear in all written constitutions in English-speaking communities, and are regarded as the corner-stones of constitutional government throughout the world.

The Act of Toleration was passed in May, 1689. It relieved all Protestant Dissenters and their ministers from any persecution, provided they took the oath of allegiance. Thus Presby- xoiera«₀n! terians, Baptists, and Quakers came under the shelter of the law, but not Roman Catholics. Justice to them was long in coming.

Thus was ended the great struggle for the civil and

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religious liberties of Englishmen. Militant Puritanism ended its reign in the overthrow which followed the death of its great leader, Oliver Cromwell. Political Puritanism took up the fight for the rights of Englishmen against the crown under the first Stuart king, and carried it to a successful end, after the last one had been driven from the throne, in the enactment of the Bill of Rights. Ecclesiastical Puritanism failed to bring the Church of England to accept its worship, government, and discipline. But Puritanism secured a legal standing for that large and increasing portion of the English people who accept the Evangelical faith, but are outside the Church of England.

Richard Baxter lived to see this great end achieved, dying December 8, 1691. His published works fill sixty-eight volumes. Few men under such ^BDeath.^S difficulties have wrought so much. Isaac Barrow said, “His practical writings have never been mended, and his controversial ones seldom confutedwhile Bishop Wilkins declared, “If he had lived in the primitive time he would have been one of the Fathers of the Church; besides this, he was easily the first Evangelical preacher of his day in England.” No account of Puritanism and its influence could be adequate which does not make stand out in bold relief the figures of its poet and its seer. ^1608-1674!* N° others represent as John Milton and John Bunyan the ideals and the life of the great Puritan Reform. John Milton was born in London, December 9, 1608. His grandfather was a Roman Catholic, and the poet’s father was disinherited because of his adherence to the new faith. He became an attorney and a convinced Puritan. Milton had a happy

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home, where music, as well as religion, were abiding guests. At St. Paul’s school, Colet’s foundation, he prepared for the university and entered Christ’s College, Cambridge, February 12, 1625. There he lived for seven fruitful years, leaving Cambridge with his Master’s degree in 1632. He had mastered, besides the usual Greek and Latin, French, Italian, and Hebrew, and added fencing to his other accomplishments. Milton had intended to enter the ministry of the English Church, but Laud’s tyranny put an end to this. From 1632 to 1638 he lived with his father at Horton. While at college he had written his “Ode on the Nativity.” In the quiet days of studious leisure at Horton he wrote “L’Allegro,” “II Penseroso,” “Lycidas,” and “Comus.” Few men have had happier surroundings or made better use of them. As child and youth, John Milton was remarkable for great personal beauty; his mind and spirit had equal grace, while they took possession of the intellectual treasures of the world. Milton had a refinement and sensitiveness of perception and disposition, a purity of life and character, unexcelled by any other poet of our tongue, while at the same time in learning, in a certain virile imagination and lofty idealism, and in power to evoke the grandest music of English speech, whether in prose or verse, he stands unapproached and alone.

In 1638 and 1639 he traveled on the Continent. Paris was visited and Florence—where he had a delightful sojourn with its literary men, including Galileo—Rome, Naples, Venice, and Geneva, and so back by Paris to London. Everywhere he was received as became his person and his genius. These years at Horton and these Italian days were such inspiration and

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memories as come to few, even of the chief singers of the race.

On returning to London he began life for himself as a tutor for boys, in 1640. The next year he entered the field of ecclesiastical controversy with his treatise, “Of Reformation in England.” It was a vehement attack upon the bishops. Milton was roused by their pride, their pomp, their wealth, the abuse and insolence of their office, and their total neglect of Christian discipline. Milton held that there is a certain definite and obligatory form of Church government given in the New Testament, and that “Prelacy,” as he called it, is both unscriptural and unchristian. This treatise of May was followed in June by one entitled “Of Prelat-ical Episcopacy,” and the month following by “Animadversion upon “The Remonstrant’s Defense.” The next March he published the “Apology for Smectym-nuus,” and, weightiest of all, in the month preceding, his “Reason for Church Government.” Seldom is so large and important literary production compressed into the space of one year.

In 1643 occurred an event which changed the course of Milton’s life. Apparently after little acquaintance with the family, and that more with the father in relation to an inherited debt, Milton married Mary, the eldest daughter of Richard Powell, a strong Royalist. Milton was now thirty-five. As few men have, he had been master of himself, his time, and his surroundings. Besides, he was from first to last an idealist and a scholar. Very probably he, like John Wesley, was too sufficient for himself, and too centered in study and work to need or to make happy a wife. The bride was a young girl seventeen years of age, frivolous, and not

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intelligent; not in the least the mate for a man like Milton. She came to London with a group of relatives, and when they left she grew homesick in the house that was more of a study than a home. After a few weeks she went to her father’s for a visit, and in July, 1643, ^s^^e refused to return to her husband.

This was a cruel blow to the Puritan idealist. He resented the crude and sordid reality, and in the next two years published no less than four treatises upon “Divorce.” In these days he published his unrivaled “Areopagitica, or Plea for Unlicensed Printing,” addressed to the Long Parliament, and his tractate on “Education.” In July, 1645, Milton was visiting a relative, when his wife, who had concealed herself in an inner room, stepped out and threw herself at his feet and implored his forgiveness. Milton relented, and took her to his home in the Barbican. His wife’s family, who had been ruined in the Civil Wars, now made their home with the poet, and here his eldest daughter was born, in July, 1646. Here also, the next January, Milton’s father-in-law died, and in March his own father at the age of eighty-four. Here the second daughter was born in October, 1648. After 1643, Milton became a convinced and determined Independent and advocate of toleration. After May, 1652, at the age of forty-four, he was totally blind. The eyes retained their appearance, but the optic nerve was fatally injured. In March, 1651, a son was born, who died the next year. In the summer of 1652 his wife died, soon after the birth of his third daughter.

On November 12, 1656, the blind poet married Katherine Woodcock, and knew the joy of a happy marriage; but that joy was brief, as she died in child

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birth in February, 1658. Five years later Elizabeth Minshull became his third wife. His daughters, the oldest seventeen and the youngest eleven, had not looked after him as his blindness deserved, and were growing up willful and undisciplined. Milton’s last wife was but twenty-five, and he thirty years her senior, but she made a happy home for the poet in his darkness and need for the eleven years that were left to him. Up to the Restoration, Milton was a man of large means, and, after all losses, died worth $13,000 in our money.

Two weeks after the death of Charles I, Milton published his “Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,” defending the execution of the king. In March, 1649, he was offered the Latin secretaryship of the Council of State at a salary worth now $5,000. This post he held for the next eleven years, though the salary, after April, 1655, was reduced thirty per cent.

Always Milton was delivered from the drudgery of routine, and was consulted on extraordinary occasions, such as the Vaudois massacres. In these years he maintained his high rank as the ablest writer of English prose of the century. In October, 1649, he published his “Eikonoclastes,” against Gauden’s “Eikon Basilike.” Salmasius, then professor at Leyden, and reputed the greatest scholar in Europe, in December, 1649, published in Latin “A Defense of King Charles I.” In April following, also in Latin, appeared Milton’s crushing rejoinder entitled “A Defense of the People of England.” In May, 1654, in the same tongue, appeared his “Second Defense of the People of England.” In August, 1655, in Latin, appeared his “Defense for Himself.” These were published of course in their mother tongue, and there is no more

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vigorous English. It was said that Cromwell’s battles and Milton’s books established the Commonwealth. Certainly the “Defenses” gave Milton an immense European reputation. They are well worth reading now, though, as with Luther’s, we can only regret their ferocity and personal abuse.

Milton was an admirer of Cromwell, but a thorough republican, when, after the anarchy set in, he did all in his power to the very last to prevent the Restoration. By the influence of powerful friends he escaped the scaffold and the dungeon. He lived obscurely, having fallen on evil days and evil tongues, in darkness and solitude. But now began the great work of his life. In 1640 he had the idea of “Paradise Lost” as a tragedy, and in 1659 he had abandoned the tragic for the epic form. Now he gave himself to the completion of this great masterpiece. By 1665 the task was finished, and two years later it was published. The name of the proscribed republican and justifier of regicide was now seen, both in England and throughout Europe, to stand at the head of the poets and prose-writers of the age. His great epic took at once its place side by side with the “Divina Commedia” of Dante. If the study of the one be necessary to the understanding of the Middle Ages, so is that of the other to the understanding of the Puritan thought and spirit. In 1671 appeared “Paradise Regained” and “Samson Ago-nistes,” which only added luster to a great reputation. Henceforth, in the procession of the English poets, Milton’s place is assured as second only to the greatest dramatist of the Christian centuries. Few among the sons of men have been nobler in thought and speech than the great poet of the Puritan movement.

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November 8, 1674, John Milton died, and the most powerful and melodious voice that ever spoke for England and her liberties was hushed. There are spots even on the sun, and Milton had his faults. He lacked sympathy. This is shown in his estimate of woman, in his treatment after his death of Charles I, and in the violence of his language in controversy. His views of morals and religion were by far too individualistic, as is shown in his writings upon divorce and his rebound from Calvinism to Arianism. But while men admire courage and fortitude, great gifts consecrated to high purposes, a life as stainless as its ideals, and noblest thoughts in most fitting speech, the name of John Milton will be an inspiration.

This is too busy an age to read epic poetry, and Milton’s prose belongs to battles that have been fought out, whose victories and gains are our inherited possessions. Yet we should know something of the greatest genius who has spoken English speech since Shakespeare died. A little of what he said will reveal him more than much written about him.

Of himself he says: “The difficult labors of the Church, to whose service, by the intentions of my parents and friends, I was destined as a child, and in mine own resolutions, till coming to some maturity of years and perceiving what tyranny had invaded the Church, and that he who would take orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a conscience that would retch, he must either straight perjure or split his faith,—I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing.”

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Thus nobly he speaks of his ideal: “I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem.” And thus of his lofty aim: “That by labor and intense study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps have something so written to after times as they should not willingly let it die.”

He prizes, as “the best treasures and solace of a good old age,” “the honest liberty of free speech from my youth.” He says of the Church, “If she lift up her drooping head and prosper, among those that have something more than wished for her welfare, I have my charter and freehold of rejoicing to me and my heirs.” His preference, like Calvin’s when he met Farel at Geneva, was for study and literary work. He esteemed “a good book (as) the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” From such work he was drawn to political controversy for nearly twenty years. He tells us why, when he says, “That neither envy nor gall hath entered me upon this controversy, but the omitting of this duty should be against me, when I would store up to myself the good provision of peaceful hours.”

The Bible was the text-book of Milton’s life, and worthily he speaks of it. Of Canticles and the Revelation he says: “The Scripture also affords us a divine pastoral drama in the Song of Solomon, consisting of two persons and a double chorus, as Origen rightly judges. And the Apocalypse of St. John is the majestic image of a high and stately tragedy, shutting up

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and intermingling her solemn scenes and acts with a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies.”

In its light he sees the office of the poet is “to im-breed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility; to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God’s almightiness, and what he works and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his Church; to hear victorious armies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and States from justice and God’s true worship.”

The Puritans had been blamed for their zeal, yet of zeal he writes: “Zeal, whose substance is ethereal, arming in complete diamond, ascends his fiery chariot, drawn with two blazing meteors figured like beasts, out of a higher breed than any the zodiac yields, resembling two of those four which Ezekiel and St. John saw; the one visaged like a lion, to express power, high authority, and indignation; the other of countenance like a man to cast derision and scorn upon perverse and fraudulent seducers. With these the invincible warrior, Zeal, shaking loosely the slack reins, drives over the heads of scarlet prelates and such as are insolent to maintain traditions, bruising their stiff necks under his flaming wheels.” Hence he concludes, although most mistakenly, “that there may be a sanctified bitterness against the enemies of the truth.”

Who has more grandly expressed the Puritan’s

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confidence in Truth and her power than Milton saying: “Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing. . . . For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious.” Milton was filled with the sense of the inestimable value of truth and liberty. His soul revolted against prelacy because, “under (its) inquisitorious and tyrannical duncery, no free and splendid wit can flourish.” This made him a true democrat in Church and State. So in his “Tenure of Kings and Magistrates” he writes: “It being thus manifest that the power of kings and magistrates is nothing else but what is only derivative, transferred, and committed to them in trust from the people to the common good of them all, in whom the power yet remains fundamentally, and can not be taken from them, without a violation of their natural birthright.”

So in the Church he lays the ax at the root of all priestly authority in words that seem to sum up the essence of the Puritan movement: “But when every good Christian, thoroughly acquainted with all those glorious privileges of sanctification and adoption which render him more sacred than any dedicated altar 01* element, shall be restored to his right in the Church, and not excluded from such place of spiritual government as his Christian abilities and his approved good life in the eye and testimony of the Church shall prefer

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him to, this, and nothing sooner, will open his eyes to a wise and true valuation of himself (which is so requisite and high a point in Christianity), and will stir him up to walk worthy the honorable and grave employment wherewith God and the Church hath dignified him; not fearing lest he should meet with some outward holy thing in religion which his lay touch or presence might profane, but lest something unholy from within his own heart should dishonor and profane in himself that priestly unction and clergy-right whereto Christ hath entitled him. Then would the congregation of the Lord soon recover the true likeness and visage of what she is indeed, a holy generation, a royal priesthood, a saintly communion, the household and city of God.”

The last two quotations show the modern spirit coming to consciousness in the great strife of the seventeenth century. There is a kinship to Luther, but what an advance upon Luther’s position! The two concluding quotations are of all times, but are the loftiest tribute to the Puritan leader, and protest against the persecution carried on from the days of Francis I until the last Protestant was banished from the soil of France as the Reformation had been crushed in Spain and Italy.

Ouver Cromweix, 1653.

“Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud,

Not of war only, but detractions rude,

Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,

To peace and truth thy glorious way hast plowed,

And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud

Hast reared God’s trophies, and His work pursued; While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued,

And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud,

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And Worcester’s laureate wreath; yet much remains To conquer still. Peace hath her victories,

No less renowned than War: new foes arise Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains.

Help us to save free conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw!”

On the: Late; Massacre; in Piedmont, 1655.

“Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;

Ev’n them who kept thy truth so pure of old,

When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones, Forget not; in thy book record their groans Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To Heaven. Their martyr’d blood and ashes sow O’er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple tyrant; that from these may grow A hundred-fold, who, having learned thy way,

Early may fly the Babylonian woe!”

The great Puritan poet spoke to the highest thought and learning of his time. The great dreamer of the Puritan movement spoke to the heart and _John conscience of all time. No other book be- Bunyan. sides the Bible has so appealed to the com- ^,628“⁶⁸⁸-mon people as the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Born of the struggles of the soul for purity and peace, saturated with the spirit of the English Bible, filled with the imagery and symbols of military life, inspired with the martyr spirit of the heroic age of the Christian faith, vivid with the power of a great imagination at once intense, controlled, and unifying, and using the mother tongue as the greatest master of Saxon speech

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who has breathed English air, the truth and charm of the great dream are as unfading as human nature and human speech. Bunyan’s life is in this book, and that makes it so real to men. Bunyan was Christian escaping from the City of Destruction. He had lived the military life as a common soldier; he had suffered for righteousness’ sake a twelve years’ imprisonment; the majesty of the Hebrew prophets, the eternal verities of the Scriptures, the triumphant sufferings of Fox’s Martyrs, the life of his own time, of which “there was not a keener observer in England,”—these all give reality and power to this wonderful dream.

To know the vision we must know the man. John Bunyan was born at Elstow, a mile from Bedford, in November, 1628. His father was a tinker, but above the average of those who followed that calling, as he had a settled home and a little property. At the age of sixteen, Bunyan enlisted in the army, and was with the colors until the army disbanded. He seems to have been like the average youth of his time in outward behavior. He kept himself free from licentiousness and drunkenness, but was remarkable for his profanity. At the age of twenty, without so much as a spoon, he says, between them, Bunyan married. We do not even know the name of his wife; but she was a religious woman, and brought with her two good books, “The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven” and the “Practice of Piety,” which, with her example, brought a change in Bunyan’s life. The rebuke of a loose and godless woman broke him of his habit of swearing. For a year or more he was outwardly religious, but with no inward experience. One day, however, he heard “three or four poor women sitting at a door of one of the streets of

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Bedford. Their talk was about a new birth, the work of God in their hearts, as also how they were convinced of their miserable state by nature. They talked of how God had visited their souls with his love in the Lord Jesus, and with what words and promises they had been refreshed, comforted, and supported against the temptations of the devil; and, methought, they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture language and with such appearances of grace in all they said, that they were to me as if I had found a new world. At this I felt my own heart begin to shake; for I saw that, in all my thoughts about religion and salvation, the new birth did never enter into my mind.” The new life for Bunyan had begun, but years elapsed before he found settled peace. At length he felt as if his sins could be forgiven. He says: “Yea, I was now so taken with the love and mercy of God that I remember that I could not tell how to contain till I got home. I thought I could have spoken of his love, and have told of his mercy to me, even to the very crows that sat in the plowed lands before me.”

Then came the severest temptation of all, one that brought him near to insanity. It was the temptation to commit the unpardonable sin by selling Christ. Finally the temptation was unusually fierce, coining upon him before he had arisen in the morning, when he felt the thought pass through his mind, “Let him go if he will,” and was sure his doom was sealed. The promises would come and give him some relief; but it was not until 1653, after fearful struggles prolonged for three years, that he found peace. As one day he was passing into the field, suddenly the text came to him, “Thy righteousness is in the heavens,” and he

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says: “Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. I was loosened from my afflictions and irons; my temptations also fled away. . . . ’T was glorious to me to see his exaltation, and the worth and prevalency of all his benefits; and that because now I could look from myself to him, and would reckon that all those graces that now were green on me were yet like those cracked groats and fourpence half-pennies that rich men carry in their purses when their gold is in their trunks at home! In Christ my Lord and Savior. Now Christ was all, all my righteousness, all my sanctification, and all my redemption.”

Bunyan now joined the Church of which Mr. Gifford was pastor. Gifford had been a major in the Royalist army. He had befen condemned to death, and had escaped. His life was still wild and wicked, when he was suddenly converted and became the pastor of the Church at Bedford. Gifford is said to have been a Baptist, and Bunyan is classed as one of that denomination. But infant baptism seems to have been continuously practiced in that Church, and Bunyan’s children were baptized in infancy. The fact seems to be that Bunyan was an Independent, and that he believed in a Church membership of regenerate persons; but, though sympathizing with the Baptist people, he put no stress upon, if he believed in, their peculiarities. He was in open communion with Independents and Presbyterians, and had little to say about baptism.

In 1655 his wife died, leaving him four children, and in the same year Bunyan began preaching. He was formally set apart for this work in 1657, when he was twenty-nine years of age. Two years later he again married, and Elizabeth Bunyan proved herself a

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true Puritan heroine. Before the Restoration he had published two books against the Quakers and a sermon on the fate of Dives. The Restoration brought evil times for Bunyan. For awhile he preached wherever he could find hearers—under the trees, if not in private houses or barns. John Bunyan was no ordinary preacher. Crowds flocked to hear him, and so, November 12, 1660, he was cast into prison. There he remained, but for a short interval in 1666, for the next twelve years. He would have been set free at any time upon promising to stop preaching. But he said, “If you let me out to-day, I will preach again to-morrow.” He liked not the liturgy of the English Church. He said, “Those who have most of the spirit of prayer are found in jail; and those who have most zeal for the form of prayer are all to be found at the ale-houses.” Elizabeth Bunyan was a true wife. She presented a petition for his speedy trial or release to Sir Matthew Hale personally; then to him and his fellow judges when upon the bench; then she went to London and spoke to one of the House of Lords; and then again to the judges and gentry when in chambers,—but without avail. Like a true Puritan she said, “I could not but break forth into tears, not so much because they were so hard-hearted against me and my husband, but to think what a sad account such poor creatures will have to give at the coming of the Lord, when they shall then answer for all things.”

After his release in 1672, Bunyan was again in Bedford jail for some time in 1675, ^and ran the risk of a further imprisonment in 1685. In 1666, Bunyan published his religious autobiography entitled “Grace Abounding,” a religious classic of Christian experi-

8

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ence. “Pilgrim’s Progress” came out in 1678, 1679, and 1680, enlarged in the different editions, and the second part in 1684. His “Holy War,” a great allegory if not overshadowed by a greater one, was published in 1682. Bunyan preached and traveled constantly from 1672 until his death sixteen years later. So extensive and varied were his labors that he was called Bishop Bunyan. He was also a prolific author. There are some fifty publications from his pen, but the three above mentioned alone have made secure their claim to immortality.

Of his personal appearance we are told by his friend: “He appeared in countenance to be of a stern and rough temper. He had a sharp, quick eye, accomplished, with an excellent discerning of persons. As for his person, he was tall of stature, strong boned, though not corpulent; somewhat of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes, wearing his hair on the upper lip after the old British fashion; his hair reddish, but in his later days time had sprinkled it with gray; his nose well set, but not declining or bending, and his mouth moderately large; his forehead something high, and his habit always plain and robust.”

In person, in his religious experience, in his poetic imagination, and in his use of the speech of the common people, Bunyan at once suggests Martin Luther. Luther’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians was of great use to him in his spiritual struggles. So in his death, like Luther, he sought in his last work on earth to reconcile a family quarrel; like him he took cold, and in a few days, August 31, 1688, John Bunyan was not, for God took him. Bunyan dwelt upon his lowly origin, and had no training or culture from the

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schools; but if we were to seek for a true English nobleman in that generation, we should not have found him among the courtiers at Whitehall or Hampton Court, but in Bedford jail. Bunyan had the courage, the endurance, the tenderness, and the sturdy good sense which are typical of the English race, and he had the faith, the purity, and the joy of overcoming, which mark the Christian. His character, like his dream, is a precious inheritance.

At the accession of William and Mary, the final exile of the house of Stuart, and the passage of the Act of Toleration, the Puritan movement _TheEndof in England reached its end. Its dominance the Puritan under military leadership had been broken M⁰''®”¹⁶"** by the death of Cromwell. Its ideals then changed, and the dream of England united under Puritan sway passed. The folly and intolerance of James II brought the mass of the English people to the support of the principles of constitutional and Parliamentary government for which the Puritan leaders, like Eliot and Hampden, fought and died. The Bill of Rights and the Act of Toleration realized all that was best in the Puritan movement so far as it affected the political or politico-religious life of England. As a party its life was dead; henceforth it had neither great leaders nor great aims. It had lost through its divisions, its intolerance, its formalism, the hypocrisy of those who adhered to it for the loaves and fishes; but its great principles had become pervasive in the national life of England.

Let us note, then, some of the defects of the Puritan movement which rendered impossible its complete triumph.

n6 History of the Christian Church.

1.    Its view of God. To the Puritan the law and the prophets declared the sovereign God, not Christ,

the living, loving Father. The Calvinistic Puritenism. teaching of election and reprobation colored the whole movement, though the General Baptists, Quakers, and some Independents, like John Goodwin, were Arminian in their theology. In their thinking and daily life, Sinai predominated over Calvary, and there was little room for Pentecost. The Puritan God ruled with inflexible justice, but he did not draw men to love him. Indeed, to the mass of men, passed by in the Divine decrees, this was an eternal impossibility. No wonder that intellectual Puritanism often took the swift descent to Arianism and Uni-tarianism; it seemed the only way to save the humanity of our Lord.

2.    The Puritan erred in his conception of the Bible. To him, in it there was no historical unfolding of Divine truth and human salvation. All was alike and equally inspired. Perhaps because of its greater bulk, and its minute directions where the New gave only principles, there was a marked predominance of the Old Testament in Puritan life. Protesting against the legalism of Rome, it did not escape the legalism of the Old Covenant.

3.    The Puritan had no conception of historic perspective,—of history as an organic whole. The whole scheme of things was static, not dynamic. There was no allowance made for the change of ideas, ideals, and circumstances. Milton, in his argument against Episcopacy, assumes his view of the government of the early Church as perfectly beyond question, with all the easy complacency of Roman Catholic and High

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Anglican writers. All the historic life of Christendom between the apostles and the Reformers dropped out without a thought. Perhaps the experiment was worth trying. The lesson from its failure is certainly impressive. There is a continuity of Christian thought and of Christian life, a Divine purpose in human society and institutions, of which the Puritan never dreamed. The fatal doctrine that God cared only for the elect “and we are the elect,” when applied to human history, could have but one result.

4.    Puritanism had no place for art. Of course, to this, Milton was an exception. Milton was a supreme artist, but in tone and idea, not in form and color. But even in music what great religious movement left so slight a trace upon the worship and praise of the Church ? Compare this for a moment with those begun by Luther or Wesley, or even those of the German Pietists, or Moravians, or the English Tractarians. For art, for play, for beauty, there was little sense or need to the Puritan.

5.    The prime defect of the Puritan was that he lacked sympathy. When oppressed or resisting tyranny he showed at his best; and yet then there was too much of Milton’s “sanctified bitterness,” the curse of the Church in all ages. The Puritans could fight and conquer, they could rule with wisdom and increasing power, but they could not win the heart of England. Sternness and rigor have their place; but they can not blot out the sunshine, nor make live Churches or nations. The Puritan thought much of the Divine Sovereignty, but little of the Christ going about doing good. He was rigid in his ethical code, but little intent upon or successful in missions to the heathen.

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6. There was no effort to understand the Roman Catholic Church as anything other than an enemy to the Gospel, and its adherents as something worse than heathen. When we think of Philip II and Alva, of Mary Tudor and Bonner, of Louis XIV and the Huguenot dragonnades, of the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War and the Irish massacre, we can understand it; but we nevertheless regret it. Bigotry and blindness prevent seeing or adhering to the truth no less in a Puritan than in a Roman Catholic. Roman Catholics, like Bossuet, dreamed of the conversion of entire Evangelical Christendom to allegiance to the See of Rome. Puritans dreamed that entire Roman Catholic Christendom would be converted to the Evangelical faith, or be blotted out. Both dreams are impossible. The kingdom of God must come in and through both of these great sections of our common Christendom. To each must be cheerfully accorded the praise due for the truth it holds, the good it does, with a mutual respect for all just rights and claims as Christian believers. Yet both sides must stand by conscientious convictions and dissents. On this foundation the future must build. May it make each better; for all wrought in the other in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

Such were some of the defects of the Puritan movement and its great endeavor to make England a Christian State and nation after its model. If in this Puritanism failed, yet it is not dead. Indeed, as a great world movement pervading the Christian Church and Christian civilization, it was never more powerful than to-day. Puritanism stands for the supremacy of conscience; it was an ethical revival. It stands for the eternal difference between truth and lies, no matter

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what the motive of the lie. It marks the ineffaceable difference between righteousness and wickedness. It believes in self-conquest, not self-indulgence. It believes everywhere in the whole man given wholly to God; it has no differing standards of obligation. Puritanism has merged into the general life of the Church and of the world, and wherever it has gone it has elevated the standards of moral life, enhanced the value of truth, and enlarged the sphere of human liberty.

The great contribution of the Puritan movement for the help and inspiration of men of aftertimes, is the great men true to great ideals amid great sacrifices which it produced. Such were Eliot and Hampden; such were Milton and Baxter and Bunyan. If we say great in fortitude and labors and resolution, we at once add Pym and Cromwell.

But the after course of human history was affected probably far more by the Puritan migration to New England than by the Puritan dominance in the mother country, and to any just estimate of the Puritan movement as a whole we must turn to the consideration of its greater factor in its life and work on American soil. If not abounding in such great characters, it raised the average man to a higher level, and in the work it undertook it did not fail, but remained, not only unconquered, but the most potent factor in the building up of the freedom, the prosperity, and the dominion of the great American Republic.

Chapter II.

THE PILGRIMS.

The hamlet of Scrooby, with its two hundred inhabitants, lies a mile and a half south from the railway The Home station of Bawtry. This station is in York-of the shire, while Scrooby is in Nottinghamshire. Pilgrims. About a mile north of Bawtry is Auster-field, with its three and a half hundred people living in little brick cottages crowded together along the highway. Scrooby is forever connected with the name of William Brewster, and Austerfield with that of William Bradford. A dozen miles east is Gainsborough, where, probably in 1602, was formed the Separatist Church of the first emigration under John Smyth, who afterward became the first of English Baptists. A few miles farther to the northeast lies Epworth, made ever memorable by the Wesleys. The river Idle runs by Scrooby, and, after a course of ten or twelve miles, falls into the Trent. Gainsborough is half way between Scrooby and Lincoln with its famous minster, while Lincoln is about half way between Scrooby and Boston on the Witham, from which the metropolis of New England takes its name.

Scrooby Manor was owned by the Archbishop of York. It was rented to, and the manor-house was occupied by, William Brewster, who held the responsible and lucrative position of master of the post at Scrooby for seventeen years, from 1590 to 1607. At

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this manor-house, under the patronage of William Brewster, arose a Separatist society. They met and formed their Church about 1606. The _{The TrainIng} Archbishop of York who controlled Scrooby of the Manor was Edwin Sandys, whose son, Sir ^Pl,£^r,ms* Edwin Sandys, was a friend of Richard Hooker, and honorably distinguished by his connection with Virginia colonization. James I, with Bancroft’s assistance, was doing his best to harry Nonconforming Puritans out of the land. What toleration, then, could be extended to avowed Separatists, who would have no fellowship with the Church of England? Rather than to give up their religious opinions and observances; rather than to go to jail—which was fast becoming the only refuge in Engand for such as they— they chose to follow the example of the Gainsborough Church, which had emigrated to Holland in 1606, and as the London Separatist congregation, after the execution of Penry and Barrow under Francis Johnson, had done in 1593.

Brewster resigned his charge of the post in September, 1607, and in that month, or the next, they chartered a Dutch vessel to take them to Amsterdam. The captain betrayed them, and, when they were all gathered together to embark, the officers of the law seized them, and, searching them and taking their valuables from them, committed Brewster and six others, who were chief among them, to the Boston jail. The magistrate of Boston sympathized with them, and procured an order of the Council for their release. The next spring the persecuted Church again sought to embark for Holland. The women were upon a boat which the tide left in the mud; the men were strolling on the

122 History of the Christian Church.

bank. The Dutch skipper ordered the men to embark before the tide would allow the women to come to the ship. Scarcely had they done so when the English officers of the peace appeared to apprehend the fleeing congregation. The Dutch captain immediately set sail with the men, among whom was William Bradford. The distress of the men and anguish of the women may be imagined. The latter were taken from place to place, until the authorities tired of the useless misery they caused, and let them go. In groups, as they could, the little Church reached Holland. There they began life again in a strange land, whose people spoke a strange tongue, and where the very means of subsistence must be gained by trades and occupations to which these simple agricultural villagers were utter strangers.

For about a year the Pilgrim Church remained at Amsterdam, when, in May, 1609, they removed to the university town of Leyden. This was their home until they left Holland eleven years later. Their chances of gaining a livelihood were less in Leyden, and their economic conditions more severe than in Amsterdam; but the moral and intellectual atmosphere was better, and left its ineffaceable influence upon the leaders of the movement. By 1617 the society was considering the change of their location from Holland to America. Toward this change they were driven by religious, social, and economic conditions, but most of all because they wished their children to be English Christians, speaking the English tongue. After three years of negotiations, mostly in England, but at one time with the Dutch West India Company, which offered them most favorable terms, they completed their arrangements with a company of merchant adventurers of

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London, and bought the Specdzvell of sixty tons, in June, 1620, to take them from Holland to Southampton, where they were to be joined by the Mayflower of one hundred and eighty tons burden.

Let us notice now the training of this Pilgrim Church. They had walked, according to the light of their own conscience as they searched the _{The Xra}|_ning Word of God, for two years as a persecuted and its Church in the manor-house at Scrooby, and ^Resu,ts* during the dispersion, from the fall of 1607 to the spring of 1608, they had learned to adapt themselves to a strange environment for a year at Amsterdam. During eleven years’ residence at Leyden they had gained the respect and esteem of a people well able to read character, among whom they dwelt, and who showed them much kindness. Still their lot was so hard that, though some prospered and all were above want, yet many who sympathized with them preferred an English jail to sharing their life in Holland.

In all these changes they believed they were the Lord’s people, that they were in his keeping and under his direction. This was the corner-stone on which all else was built, and this conviction had deepened in fourteen years of trial. They had learned adaptation as only dwellers in a foreign country can. They “had been weaned from the delicate milk of the mother country,” and possessed the patience which comes from overcoming great difficulties. There was among them as high an average of industry and frugality as in “any company of people in the world.” They were bound together by a “sacred covenant with the Lord,” and “do hold ourselves straitly tied to all cares of each other’s good, and of the whole by every one, and so

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mutually.” This was no theory, but the fixed principle of years of common life which became the stable basis of an enduring commonwealth. These years of training, not of a few leaders, but of the whole people, made them such that their pastor could say of them, they were not “men whom small things could discourage, or small discontentments cause to wish themselves home again.” Indeed, in going they embarked all without hope of return. In addition to this, the life in Holland had given them a breadth of view and a charity toward other religious opinions and different Christian communions which markedly distinguished them from other Separatists from the Church of England, and from their fellow-colonists of Nonconforming Puritan England. Surely, not in vain had been God’s training of these three hundred souls of the Pilgrim Church at Leyden.

Nor were the leaders unworthy of this flock or of „ , ^ this providential mission.

The Leaders.    ^Jv    .

John Robinson was nobly fitted to be the pastor of such a Church. He was a graduate of Cambridge, matriculating in 1592, and becoming a

John Eellow of the University in 1598. In 1604 Robinson, he came to Scrooby, and two years later, 1575-1625. _{Qn the or}g_ani_zation of the Church, he was chosen assistant to Richard Clyfton, the pastor. In 1609, Clyfton refused to go to Leyden, and Robinson became sole pastor to a united and flourishing congregation, and such he continued to be until his death in 1625. In 1615 he was made a member of Leyden University, and in 1618 he opposed Episcopius in defending Calvin’s opinions against those of Arminius. Bail-lie, not a friendly critic, said, “Robinson was a man of

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excellent parts, and the most learned, polished spirit that ever separated from the Church of England.” So the Dutch called him upright, learned, and modest. His three volumes which have come down to us show his familiarity with classic authors and with the early Fathers of the Christian Church. This learning did not separate him from, but endeared him to, his flock. To them he was guide and counselor in all the hard necessities of earning their bread in a foreign land. The striking trait in Robinson’s character is, that he grew in toleration and charity with his experience of life. He invited to communion with him all members of the Church of England who professed piety, and also Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Swiss, French, and Dutch Protestants. He was certainly larger than the men of his time and creed in his English home.

The true monument to John Robinson was the life of his Church and its immeasurable influence over the infant colony and Church during its formative years. Of that life William Bradford says in his history: “I know not but it may be spoken to the honor of God, and without prejudice to any, that such was the true piety, the humble zeal, and fervent love of this people (whilst they thus lived together) toward God and his ways, and the single-heartedness and sincere affection one toward another, that they came as near the primitive pattern of the first Churches as any other Church of these later times has done, according to their rank and quality.”

Of this Pilgrim Church William Brewster was the ruling elder. He was chosen to this office at its organization, and held it until his death. Brewster’s father was master of the post at Scrooby, and the son was

126 History of the Christian Church.

some time at the University of Cambridge, which he left without graduation. Then he was for some time william ^a*- ^t^^{le cour}t of Queen Elizabeth, and in Brewster. Holland as the trusted servant of William 1560-1643. £)_avi_sonj Secretary of State. When his master fell into disgrace after the execution of Mary, Queen of Scotts, 1587, Brewster left the court forever. He then took charge of the post at Scrooby for a year and a half before his father’s death, and succeeded to the position in 1589. This office brought an income of several thousand dollars in our money annually. William Brewster was the providential man for this Church. It was organized, and met, in his house. He was a man of means who put his ability and money at the service of the little flock. He knew Holland, the language and the customs of the people. English, French, and Dutch he spoke fluently, while he read Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. His endowments were greater than his acquirements. His power of individual initiative is shown in the fact that, after forty years of age, he earned a compentency, first in teaching English at Leyden, and then as a publisher of religious books prohibited in England. While Robinson remained at Leyden, on the sailing for America Brewster became the leader of the Pilgrim band. For nine years he was its religious leader and teacher, preaching twice each Sunday, but without administering the sacraments. But greater than his endowments and acquirements were his Christian virtues.

He was one of the seven who were strong enough to nurse the sick and to bury the dead in the first dreadful winter; his tenderness and care the survivors never forgot. He had given and sacrificed most for

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the cause, and he who had served in the royal court was content to labor in the field with the humblest of them. In the days of famine, when clams were his only food and water his drink, having neither corn nor bread for many months, he could still thank God that he could “suck of the abundance of the seas and of treasures hid in the sand.”

^ Bradford thus paints him for us: “He was wise and discreet and well spoken, having a grave and deliberate utterance; of a very cheerful spirit, very sociable and pleasant amongst his friends; of a humble and modest mind, and of a peaceable disposition; undervaluing himself and his own abilities, and sometimes overvaluing others; inoffensive and modest in his life and conversation, which gained him the love of all those without as well as those within; yet he would tell them plainly of their faults and evils, both publicly and privately , but in such a manner as was usually well taken from him. He was tender-hearted and compassionate of such as were in misery, but especially of such as had been of good estate and rank and were fallen into want and poverty, either for goodness’ or religion’s sake, or by the injury or oppression of others; he would say, of all men, these deserved to be pitied the most. And none did more offend or displease him than such as would haughtily carry or lift up themselves, being risen from nothing, and having little else in them to commend them but a few fine clothes, or a little riches more than others. In teaching he was very moving and stirring of affections, also very plain and distinct in what he taught; by which means he became the more profitable to the hearers. . . . Many were brought to God by his ministry. He did more in their behalf in

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a year than many, that have their hundreds a year, do in all their lives.”

The governor of the Pilgrim Colony was William Bradford. William Bradford was a yeoman’s son, who William died when the boy was but a year old. The Bradford, lad was brought up, first by his grand-1590=1657.    _ancj jhgH ky _unci_eSt The family

was of some note at Austerfield, and Bradford inherited quite a property. When only a youth he attended the meetings at Scrooby Manor-house, and at the age of eighteen went to Holland. He had been bred to husbandry, but learned the trade of a silk-weaver, and was admitted as one of the freemen of the city of Leyden. On the death of John Carver he was chosen governor of Plymouth Colony at the age of thirty-one, and held the office for thirty-two years, or for the remainder of his life, except when for three years Edward Winslow was chosen, and two, when the choice fell upon Thomas Prince. It was an office which he never sought, and he was unfeignedly glad when another was chosen in his stead. He was first governor of an English community elected by the suffrages of his fellow-citizens on American soil. He was the first American historian who wrote in the English tongue, and well does he lead their vanguard. There is a modesty, a directness, an impartiality, which all may covet, and a vividness of language given to few. His were the gifts of government, and greatly tested were those gifts. Bradford was never intolerant, or petulent, or selfish. Resolute and patient, he was also peaceable and glad of the prosperity of others. The largeness of his vision came from his associations in Holland, and honorably distinguished his rule from that of Winthrop and Endi-

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cott. In these early years the record of his life is almost the history of the colony.

The diplomatist of the colony was Edward Winslow. In 1617, Winslow, a young man of property, talent, and education, from Droitwich, in Edward Worcestershire, joined the Pilgrim Church winsiow. at Leyden. For three years he served the ^,595’^,655‘ colony as governor. He was of utmost value in winning the friendship of Massasoit through his medical skill. From 1624 he was the colony’s agent at London. On his return that year he brought the first cattle to New England. After 1646 he resided constantly at London as the agent at court for both the Plymouth and Massachusetts Colonies, to whom he rendered great service.

He was highly esteemed by Oliver Cromwell, and when the expedition sailed which resulted in the capture of Jamaica he was appointed one of the commissioners to go with the fleet. He died in the West Indies, and was buried at sea. Of him alone of the Puritan fathers is a portrait preserved.

The Pilgrim Colony needed a leader capable of using its means of defense, and such was Miles Stan-dish. Miles Standish was born of the _M1Ie5 landed gentry, from the family possessing standish. Duxbury Hall in Lancashire, England. He ^,s84“^l656* had served in the English army in Holland, and, though not then or afterwards a member of the Church, out of good will, or a desire to share their fortunes, he joined the Pilgrim company. In the February after their landing he was chosen captain of the military forces of the colony, and held that office until his death in 1556. Standish’s services were invaluable in keep-

9

130 History of the Christian Church.

ing the little colony in a state of defense and in checking Indian conspiracy. War enters but little into the history of the Plymouth Colony; but the necessity of preparation to resist attack was never absent. Stan-dish made his name and influence honored in the Colony, and his oldest son married the daughter of John Alden.

What, then, was the aim of these Colonists and their leaders. The aim of the Pilgrims was not simply The Aim ^to g° where they could worship God accord-

of the ing to the dictates of their own conscience, Pilgrims. _ag ._{g go 0}f_{ten sa}j^ _to f_ounci _an(j permanently establish a Scriptural Church and a Christian State, a State Christian in discipline and morals, as well as in belief. The Jesuit ideal was a few trained leaders to guide and rule the people and the State. The greater the intellectual difference between the masses and these leaders the better. The Pilgrim and Puritan idea was for every man to read, heed, and obey the Word of God, and for this purpose to wait upon the ministry of that Word. The greater the intellectual apprehension and fellowship between this ministry and the people the better. The intellectual and ethical aim was well defined and distinctly accepted.

At the beginning of great movements we may well pause and ask what is the aim larger than that of those who initiated and controlled it. If the biologist tracing organic life from simplest beginnings to manifold complexities finds the tendency of the movement, and then the form which is the crown, and so the consummation of the whole process, thus indicating a purposed end; then in the same manner may we well from the recorded phenomena of man’s

The Pilgrims.

historic life speak of a Divine purpose in history. From this standpoint what was the contribution which the Pilgrim Fathers brought to the life of Christendom? What distinctive from the Puritan movement, whose course we have traced in England ? We answer, the germ and unfolding of modern democracy upon a Christian, an evangelical, and an ethical basis. They were the fathers of modern democracy in America, and from America the movement has pervaded the modern world. But it was no abstract principle of popular government to which the Pilgrim colonist held. It was a concrete, practical, living exemplification of popular rule. But for them, duties were quite as evident and more insisted upon than rights. The value of the whole structure depended upon its foundation, and that was Biblical and ethical. They called the moral standards of the Christian Scriptures from the cloisters and the pulpits, and enthroned them as the decisive tests of the life of the community. They did not regard the life of the State or the public life of man as given over to the devil; they believed it to be the largest field for the united action of Christian men. They were destined under the severe conditions of their providential training to show the most conspicuous example of selfdependence and self-help that history knows. Thus they became fitted to bear the main part in the settlement and civilization of that vast territory from the Hudson to the Mississippi, and from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean. It is not too much to say that their ideals, and the endeavor to realize them, have affected entire Christendom from the Pope of Rome to the humblest Evangelical missionary in Asiatic heathendom. It must not be understood that they held

132 History of the Christian Church.

all the truth; but they held what they held so that more could reach them, and laid such emphasis upon these aspects of it as to place under obligation to these humble English farming folk the Christian world of all aftertime.

From the days of Gideon to our own, no band of men called to a high mission have been more thor-The sifting oughly sifted to separate the chaff from the Pilgrim, wheat. The story of these testings and the Church, devotion and heroism they called forth will never cease to be of interest and inspiration to living men. Those chosen from the Pilgrim Church at Leyden to found a new Church and Nation held a farewell feast with their brethren, July 30, 1620. They then journeyed to Delfthaven, some twenty-five miles by canal, and observed the last day of July as a fast-day, John Robinson, the pastor, preaching to them a sermon. The next day they embarked, and then the words Winslow ascribes to Robinson, and which do him so much honor, were spoken:

“Brethren, we are now quickly to part from one another, and whether I may ever live to see your faces on earth any more, the God of heaven only knows. But whether the Lord hath appointed that 01* not, I charge you before God and his blessed angels that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry; for I am verily persuaded that the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of his Holy W^rord. For my part, I can not sufficiently bewail the condition of the Reformed Churches, who are come to a period in religion,

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and will go at present no further than the instruments of their reformation. The Lutherans can not be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw. Whatever part of his will our good God has revealed to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it. And the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things.

“This is a misery much to be lamented; for though they were burning and shining lights, yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God, but, were they now living, would be as willing to embrace further light as that which they first received. I beseech you to remember that it is an article of your Church covenant ‘that you be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to you from the written Word of God/ But I must herewithal exhort you to take heed what you receive as truth. Examine it, consider it, and compare it with other Scriptures of truth before you receive it; for it is not possible that the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick Antichristian darkness, and perfection of knowledge should break forth at once.”

They sailed on the Speedwell, which probably arrived at Southampton, August 5th. There they were joined by the Mayflower, from London. Here their agent, Weston, deserted them, and they had to sell most of their butter to pay port dues. On the 15th the two ships sailed from Southampton. They passed down the channel, and when a hundred leagues from land the Speedwell sprung a leak; they had been nine days out from port. The ship had been overmasted; carried too much sail. Both ships put back to Plymouth. The Speedwell took back such of the passengers as did not

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wish to continue the voyage, probably about twenty. This was the first sifting. All the rest embarked on the Mayflower, making the Pilgrim band, including children and servants, one hundred and two. Again they sailed, after three weeks detention, September 16th. Then there was before them a long and stormy voyage. On November 19th they sighted Cape Cod, and came to anchor in what is now Provincetown Harbor, November 21st.

On November 21st, in the cabin of the Mayflower, was signed the Pilgrim Compact as follows:

“In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of ™ America.* God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc., having undertaken, for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern parts of Virginia; (we) do, by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and, by virtue hereof, to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which, we promise all due submission and obedience.

“In virtue whereof, we have hereinunder subscribed our names.” Hereafter followed the date and the names.

They spent a month exploring the coast and decid-

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ing upon a place for their settlement. At last they landed at Plymouth on Monday, December 21, 1620. They at once went to work. It was over four months since they left Southampton. Winter had come, and they were to make their own welcome and habitations. By January 19th their common house, 20x20, was nearly finished; but five days later its thatched roof was burned off. Miles Standish was chosen captain, February 2d, and soon four pieces of artillery were landed. The winter had been unusually mild, and the May-Hozver remained the home for the Pilgrims until the last of March, or seven and a half months from the first sailing. But the ship-scurvy, the continued wettings in going to and coming from the ship in the winter season, with the other hardships, brought on a prevailing sickness, which left but seven men to nurse the sick or bury the dead. In April, Governor John Carver died, and his wife in June. On the voyage one had died, and one, Peregrine White, was born in December in Cape Cod harbor, the first Englishman born in New England. He set the pace for a good record of longevity in the new country, as he died at the age of eighty-four.

When the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth harbor there were in their band eighteen husbands; in June but eight were left; there were eighteen wives, all but four died. Of eleven girls one died, and of fifteen boys six. Of one hundred and two passengers, fifty-one, just one-half, were buried in graves that the survivors hastened to level with the surrounding soil, that the Indian might not know their fearful loss. Thus was the little band again and again terribly sifted before set to its great task.

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In the exploration before landing they had come upon some Indian corn which the natives had buried. This they took, and afterward, when they found the owners, paid them for it. This it seems saved the lives of the survivors, as it gave them seed for planting. The English grain they sowed did not ripen. On the 26th of March an Indian speaking some English came to them. Soon he brought another, who had lived three years in England. This Indian, Squanto, taught them how to plant and till Indian corn. So, with fishing and what they could raise, they managed to subsist until November 9, 1621, when the ship Fortune arrived at Plymouth harbor, and landed thirty-five passengers with little or no provisions, not even a barrel of meal. The whole settlement was put on the strictest rations at once; but by the end of May all the provisions were eaten, even the seed-corn. Some of the fishing fleet went to Maine for food; but by the end of June the Charity and Swan arrived, and brought supplies which lasted until the harvest of 1622.

The summer of 1623 proved one of famine, which lasted from early in June until late in July, when there arrived, on the Anne and Little James, ninety-six settlers and abundant provisions. Then, on a day of prayer for rain, the long drought was broken, and the crop was saved. From that time the colony never knew want. After the first winter the health of the colony was unusually good, and the survivors of that time of trial lived to a good old age.

There was no ordained minister in the colony. Elder Brewster preached, but, on the advice of Robinson, did not administer the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The first pastors proved unfortunate, one be

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coming insane. Ralph Smith, who came in 1629, was the first settled pastor. Smith was a man of small abilities. After six years the colonists’ endurance came to an end. John Norton, a man of unusual fitness for his work, remained with them but one winter. Mr. Rayner, a man of mediocre talent, was with them for two years, and he was followed by Mr. Charles Chauncy, a man of eminent abilities, but who became an immersionist, and remained with them but three years. This made the influence of the clergy of much less importance than in the Bay Colony. The leader of the first migration remained the chief man in the colony until his death. Marriage was, and remained until well 011 in the eighteenth century, a civil ceremony performed by the magistrate. There was no religious ceremony at a funeral until the last of the seventeenth century, and it did not become common until 1720. The population was never large. About three hundred in 1630, it may have been four thousand in 1643. But in industry, in love of peace, in charity which suffereth long and is kind, in faithfulness to all commercial engagements amid great difficulties, the Plymouth Colony set an example worthy of imitation. In the moral life there was but little drunkenness, no blasphemy, and in seventy-two years but six divorces were granted. They were true friends to the Indians, whom they never abused nor oppressed. They were orderly and just in their government.

The Pilgrims no more than the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay relinquished their right to banish disturbers of the peace; but they were much more tolerant than their wealthier neighbors. Only once did they mar a record unrivaled at that time, except by Roger

138 History of the Christian Church.

Williams, among English-speaking people. In the years from 1657 to 1661 ten Friends, or Quakers, were banished and five were whipped. They were punished, not for belief, but for disturbance of the peace, which in others would have been punished quite as severely. We fear that the same can not be said of fines imposed. Yet the lesson learned in Holland should have prevented this punishment. But, alas! the old leaders were all gone! To their everlasting honor be it recorded that in the two cases of witchcraft in 1661 and 1677, both ended in acquittal.

What, then, was the inestimable service rendered by the Pilgrim Fathers? (1) They were the first to settle permanently in New England, when others had failed and declared it impracticable; (2) Amid sickness and famine, and upon unfertile soil, they staid and won success; (3) They were true to their ideals; (4) Their loyalty to these ideals, and the sacrifice, persistence, and good sense which gave them success, made their Christian democracy to prevail in Church and State in the New England Colonies.

Chapter III.

THE PURITANS IN NEW ENGLAND.

The Colony of Massachusetts Bay.

Rev. John White, pastor of Trinity Parish, Dorchester, England, is the patron of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. Dorchester merchants founded The a settlement on Cape Ann in 1624; fourteen ^Foundins* remained over winter. In 1625, Roger Conant removed from Plymouth to Cape Ann. Thirty-two men from the fishing fleet spent there the winter of 1625-1626. In the spring of the latter year three vessels came to the settlement, one of which bore cattle and provisions. In the fall of 1626 the governor, Roger Conant, removed the colony to Naumkeag, which he called Salem. From the beginning the enterprise had been greatly encouraged by Rev. John White, yet to this date it had only achieved failure. This but increased the endeavors of Pastor White, who was a leader among the Puritans as well as among the Dorchester people. In March, 1628, John Endicott and others obtained from the Council for New England a patent for territory extending from three miles north of the Merrimac to three miles south of the Charles River, and extending west from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. Endicott, with twenty or thirty settlers, sailed from England in June, and arrived at Salem September 5, 1628. They found about thirty settlers there under Conant.

139

140 History of the Christian Church.

A royal charter for the Massachusetts Bay Colony was granted March 4, 1629, and under this charter the

The colony was governed until 1686. The rec-Charter, _orcj_{s t}^_e Massachusetts Bay Company begin February 23, 1629. At a session of its General Court, or Committee of the Whole, July 13, 1629, its governor, Matthew Craddock, proposed “to transfer the government of the plantation to those that inhabit there.” August 26, 1629, at Cambridge, by a written agreement, Sir Richard Saltonstall, John Winthrop, Isaac Johnson, Thomas Dudley, John Humphrey, William Pyncheon, Increase Nowell, Thomas Sharp, William Vassall, and others, agreed to emigrate the next spring, if, before the last of September, “the whole government, with the patent, be legally transferred and established to remain with them and others who should inhabit upon the same plantation.” This transfer was dated the 29th of August.

Of the above, Isaac Johnson and John Humphrey married sisters of the Earl of Lincoln. Thomas Dudley had been for a long time his steward. John Winthrop possessed an annual income of £700, equal to $10,000 now. Isaac Johnson was the wealthiest man in the colony. Craddock resigned the governorship, and John Winthrop was chosen in his stead; henceforth he became the soul and leader of the colony.

Very different was the company and outfit from that which sailed across wintry seas in the Mayflower.

The Six ships brought three hundred men, with Migration. _{over one} hundred women and children; one hundred and forty cattle, with goats, swine, and arms, and all needful tools and implements. They arrived at

The Puritans.

14:

Salem the last of May and early in June. At once they settled Charlestown.

Before the arrival of Winthrop, Samuel Fuller, of Plymouth, had visited Endicott and won him over to their views of Church government and usage. In spite of Winthrop’s address to co^tu^tion. the Church of England as those “who esteem it our honor to call her our dear mother,” these strong Puritans, who had for two generations abhorred “Brownists and Separatists,” by July 20, 1630, were forming their Church, and so the later Churches of the colony, on the Separatist model. On that day a Congregational Church was formed, and Mr. Skelton was chosen pastor, and Mr. Higginson teacher. These men had been ordained clergymen of the Church of England, but they were first consecrated and then ordained to the charge of this Separatist Church. Of course, with this rejection of ordination went the rejection of the Prayer-book. Two of the leading men of the colony, named Browne, who clung to the English liturgy, were summarily shipped back to England on the return of the vessels which brought them, in the summer of 1630, by Endicott. Evidently in the colony the only toleration was one of inclusion, or exclusion.

Before Christmas, 1630, one thousand settlers arrived; but the sickness induced by the voyage swept away two hundred, while half as many more returned home discouraged. In August or September, Isaac Johnson settled in Boston, and early in November Winthrop followed. Settlements were made the first year in eight places—Salem, Lynn, Charlestown, Watertown, Mystic, Boston, Roxbury, and Dorchester—and

142 History of the Christian Church.

the next spring Cambridge was founded. Emigrants came by the thousand in 1634 and the year following. By 1643 it was estimated that 21,200 emigrants had arrived, settling in seventeen towns. The cost of their transportation was estimated at over $400,000.

If we ask the reason for such a large influx of emigrants we find the answer in one name, Archbishop Laud. His tyranny, minute, vexatious, and cruel, drove the Puritans from England. The same persecuting violence turned the Puritan colonists from children of the English Church to those who would have none of her liturgy because they feared and hated her government. The intolerance of Laud forbade that they should tolerate an adherent of the Church of England among them. The twelve years’ rule of Laud and the arbitrary government of Charles made New England. When they ceased, the emigration was over.

The Colony of Massachusetts Bay had different leaders and a different spirit from that of Plymouth.

The The Bay Colony prospered from the first, Leaders. _{as 0}f Plymouth never did. One reason for this was that the English Separatists were so few and feeble that they never were able, had they desired, to send a re-enforcement to Plymouth. On the other hand, the ablest and most courageous ministers and laymen among the Puritans helped the Bay Colony by their means when they did not in person emigrate. Many of the Puritan aristocracy were expected to cast in their lot with the colonists, and strong, though futile, efforts were made to establish large landed estates to be tilled by a tenant class, and also an hereditary Upper House for colonial government. Circumstances were against these schemes, but, more than all else, the in-

The Puritans.

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expugnable record of success of the Colony of Plymouth in adhering to democratic principles. The Bay Colony was, in instincts and traditions, aristocratic. It was only by unceasing and overwhelming pressure that the Plymouth democracy prevailed in Massachusetts, in the State as well as the Church.

Of the leaders, John Endicott was first on the ground, and was elected governor more often than any other man in the colonial era. Affable and passionate, he was bigoted, intolerant, hard, _En^J_d°ic"_tt. narrow, capable of close dealing and unmanly fawning. Sincere and honest, he yet represents the least attractive side of the Puritan character.

The true leader and founder of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay was John Winthrop. He deserves high honor among the constructive statesmen of _John the English race who have laid enduring winthrop. foundations for great commonwealths. As ^|s^88=l649-unselfish and public-spirited as Washington, he was more religious. Clear in his thought, judicial in temper, and knowing how to take defeat as well as how to use victory, from his election as governor in England until his death he was ever the leading man in the colony. The uprightness of his life, the sincerity of his religious profession, the weight of his judgment and character, commanded universal respect. Nor was he wanting in urbanity or in sympathy with religious difficulties or physical needs. On the other hand, he was narrow, and in his antipathies hard, growing more intolerant with age.

John Winthrop was born at Groton, in Suffolk, England. His grandfather had been enriched with abbey lands by Henry VIII. His homestead sold in

144 History of the Christian Church.

1631 for $22,500, equal to three times that value now. For two years he was at Cambridge University, and then, at seventeen, perhaps because he was an only son, in 1604 he married Mary Forth. They lived in happy wedlock for eleven years, in which she bore him six children, four of whom survived the mother, but only one, John Winthrop, Jr., Governor of Connecticut, survived him. After a year as a widower, he married a second time, and in another year he was again a widower. In 1618 he married Margaret Tyndale, who proved the stay of his life until her death in 1647.

Few letters of husband and wife have the sweetness and devotion, the dignity and charm, of these of Margaret and John Winthrop. Hers are superior to his; but let any who doubt whether there was a fount of tenderness in the hearts of these Puritan founders read these last words which the husband sent before leaving England forever. This was in April, and it was not until a year from the next November that Margaret Winthrop set foot on New England soil. The letter begins, “My Love, my Joy, my Faithful One,” and these are its closing sentences:

“I know it will be sufficient for thy present comfort to hear of our welfare; and this is the third letter I have written to thee, since I came to Hampton [Southampton] in requital of those two I received from thee, which I do often read with much delight, apprehending so much love and sweet affection in them as I am never satisfied with reading, nor can read them without tears; but whether they proceed from joy, sorrow, or desire, or from that consent of affection which I always hold with thee, I can not conceive. Ah, my dear heart, I ever hold thee in high esteem, as thy love and goodness

The Puritans.

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hath well deserved; but (if it be possible) I shall yet prize thy virtue at a greater rate, and long more to enjoy thy sweet society than ever before. I am sure that thou art not short of me in this desire. Let us pray hard, and pray in faith, and our God, in his good time, will accomplish our desire. O, how loath I am to bid thee farewell! But since it must be, farewell, my sweet love, farewell! Farewell, my dear children and family! The Lord bless you all, and grant me to see your faces once again.”

For the first four and a half years of the life of the colony John Winthrop was governor. This office he filled without pay, and spent upon the colony from his own purse £1,200. Again he served from 1637 to 1640, and from 1642, with the exception of two years, until his death. His training and practice as a lawyer in the Court of Wards in England doubtless fitted him for this long service, but more than all, his sound sense and sterling character.

Let us see now what was that social structure which these Puritans reared on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. Our attention is first drawn to the _Xheaovern. government of the colony. Winthrop, from ment of th© his antecedents, and like Washington and ^CoIony‘ Hamilton, was no democrat. He held that, of the people, “The best part is always the least, and of the best part the wiser is always the lesser.”

By the charter, the government of the colony was committed to a governor, a deputy-governor, and eighteen assistants. These were to be chosen annually by the freemen of the corporation or colony. The governor or deputy-governor and seven assistants made a legal quorum for the transaction of business. These

146 History of the Christian Church.

meetings were to be held at least four times each year, and were styled “The General Court.” The General Court for Elections was held in the spring, usually in May.

With Winthrop’s views, the fact that at the session of the General Court in October, 1630, one hundred and nine persons applied to be admitted as freemen was alarming. The administration, therefore, proposed and carried the measure by which the freemen were to elect, as heretofore, the assistants, but that the assistants were to elect from their number the governor and deputy-governor, “who, with the assistants, should have the power of making laws and choosing officers to execute the same.” No freemen were, however, admitted at this session. The next May this measure was strengthened by two others; one, which provided that the assistants already in office should be retained except for misbehavior; and the second, that only Church members could be freemen or hold office. There were then one hundred and sixteen admitted as freemen.

The string, however, had been strung too taut. In the session of the General Court in May, 1632, it was decided that the election of governor and deputy-gov-ernor should be taken from the assistants and given again to the freemen, and the assistants were to be chosen annually by the freemen. In 1631, by the “advice of their ministers publicly given,” the people of Watertown refused to pay a tax which had been publicly laid without consulting them. Governor Winthrop caused them to withdraw their opposition; but it was a question that would not down, and in 1632 there was ordered the appointment of a committee of two or three of each of the eight plantations “to confer with the

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court about the raising of a public stock (or fund), so as what they should agree upon should bind all.” Here we have the beginning of legislation by representatives chosen for that purpose.

In 1634 it was ordered that none but the General Court have power to make or establish laws, or to elect or appoint officers, or to raise money or taxes, or to dispose of lands. This brought the power back into the hands of the freemen. It was also ordered that “the freemen of each town may choose two or three persons to represent them at the sessions of the General Court, except in elections which shall be by the freemen/’ In 1644 it was ordered that the General Court “should be divided in their consultations, the magistrates (governor, deputy-governor, and assistants) by themselves, and the deputies (representatives) by themselves, what the one agreed upon they should send to the other, and if both agreed, then to pass.” From 1636 on, the freemen were allowed to vote for the magistrates by proxy. The franchise, both for representatives and in the towns, was confined to Church members, that is to members of the Congregational Church.

In the manner above outlined the people came to have a voice in the legislation and the election of officers for the colony. A step of even greater importance was taken in March, 1636, when to the freemen of every town, or the majority of them, was committed the power over all matters of local administration and authority, and the choice of all officers to execute the same. The town meetings were held in the meeting-houses or churches, and non-attendance was punished by fine. Thus was established the freest and most efficient local govern

148 History of the Christian Church.

ment and local democracy the world had seen. In this manner the way was prepared for a genuine democracy, when the test of Church membership for the franchise was removed in 1686.

The laws thus made were enforced by a series of courts. Petty causes could be tried before a single _ „ ^ magistrate, or, where there was no magis-

The Courts.    ,    .

trate, by three selectmen in each town, this answering to our justice of the peace. The Quarter Courts were like our County Courts, and included all matter of probate. The Court of Assistants was like our State Supreme Courts, and had jurisdiction in all criminal cases extendng to “life, or limb’, or banishment/’ and concurrent jurisdiction with the county courts in civil cases where the damages were over $500, and appellate jurisdiction from the same. The General Court, or Legislature, was the Court of Appeals from the Court of Assistants, and had supervision over all the courts.

The common law of England and the common sense of the judges and juries, without the intervention of lawyers, for whom the colony had no use, ombertiM. ^were relied upon to secure substantial justice until the end of the government under the charter. The need of a code to prevent conflicting decisions was deeply felt. Rev. John Cotton drew up one called “Moses, his Judicials;” but it did not find favor. A code called a “Body of Liberties,” by Rev. Nathaniel Ward, had better success. Its author had been bred to the law, and had practiced in England some time. This code was in substance adopted at every subsequent codification of the laws of the colony; some of them even being in force at the present time, while

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others form the basis of existing laws in the State. The criminal laws, being taken principally from the Mosaic code, seem to us to-day harsh if not cruel; yet they were, as a whole, milder than the similar laws of England. The number of capital crimes was reduced from one hundred and thirty-two to twelve. The spirit of the later Bill of Rights breathes through the whole.

The government of the colony, thus constituted, showed an enlightened spirit in regard to education unsurpassed, if equaled, at that time. In Education. October, 1636, the General Court voted an F°“^ndins ^of

. .    , ,    , , r    Harvard

appropriation of ±400 toward the founding college, of a college, one-half to be paid the next ^,636* year, and the rest when the work was finished. In November, 1637, it was decided that the college be established at Newton, and the next year the name of the seat of the college was changed to Cambridge. In this year Rev. John Harvard, minister of the town, and a graduate of the English Cambridge, died, and left half of his estate and his library to the infant college. The college received £3,700 from this bequest, and in 1639 the General Court ordered that institution to bear the name of Harvard College. It was opened for students in 1638, and its first class of nine members graduated in 1642. Cotton Mather, in 1696, gives a list of one hundred and twenty-one Congregational ministers serving Churches, and says that all but eleven were Harvard graduates. This shows something of the influence of the college in the Colony.

But the Puritan founders were not satisfied with founding a college in the wilderness. However aristocratic they might be in temper, they were Evangelical in their faith, and, as such, they believed in popular

150 History of the Christian Church.

education, in the ability of all the people to read the Christian Scriptures. At an early period schools were established in most of the towns; but in schools” November, 1647, the General Court ordered that every township containing fifty householders should establish a common school, and every township of one hundred householders should establish a grammar school which should prepare students for the university. The preamble of this Act shows the spirit and motive of the whole movement for popular education. It is as follows: “It being one chief object of the old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading from the use of tongues, so that at least the true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded by false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers, that learning may not be buried in the graves of our fathers in the Church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors:—It is therefore ordered,” etc. This Act was enforced by fine on the township for noncompliance. Thus was laid the foundation for the American system of free common schools.

An English printer, named Day, brought the first press to Boston, in 1638. In 1639 ^^s productions ^ ^ were printed, the “Ereemen’s Oath,” and

The Press.    ^r

the “Bay Psalm-book.” There were no newspapers until 1704.

In a community where there were no lawyers and few physicians, and those not over skillful, and where ^    the ministers were by far the best educated

The Ministry.    ^J _{r n}

as well as the ablest members of the community, their influence could not fail to be great.

The Puritans.

Where, however, the State was theocratic in its constitution, and the Old Testament was the recognized source of its principles of policy and of its criminal law, that influence would in the main be a controlling one.

The General Court, in cases of difficulty, as in construing the charter and in the application of the laws, referred the cases to the ministers, or “elders,” as they were called, for their opinions, just as the Legislature of Massachusetts now can call upon the Supreme Court judges for advice in matters of legal difficulty. The opinions of the elders were given in writing. A high authority says those “which have been preserved, are very able, and will, in logic and sound reasoning, bear a not unfavorable comparison with opinions of the justices, given under the [State] constitution.”

The ministers of the early days would have been men of mark anywhere. Among them were John Cotton (1585-1652), pastor of Boston in England; Richard Mather (1596-1669); John Norton, theologian; Nathanael Ward, the author of the “Body of Liberties;” and John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians. Men of distinction and ability were the founders of Connecticut and New Haven—Rev. Thomas Hooker and Rev. John Davenport.

These men, while doubtless fond of the power their station and character gave them, nevertheless wished unselfishly to serve the best interests of the community. They were not only trained in the English universities, they were progressive men. It was the ministers of Watertown in 1631 who incited the first American protest against taxation without representation. They were thus the first who initiated the movement for popular representative government on that basis. It was

152 History of the Christian Church.

a minister whose bequest founded the first American college. It was a minister, Cotton Mather, of witchcraft fame, but nevertheless a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, who braved the insults of a Boston mob and began the practice of inoculation for smallpox on his own children. The presence of a man of education and literary tastes and culture in the poorest and most secluded community before the days of newspapers was of inestimable value in preserving the life and elevating the tone intellectually as well as morally, of the entire society of the colony.

They had their faults, doubtless. They were a class, and their government was the rule of a class. Their ideas were drawn rather from the Old than the New Testament, and the system of Calvin, of which they were devoted adherents, had softened neither their tempers, their principles, nor the application of them. Yet they were men of high character, of unswerving integrity, and who never shunned self-sacrifice where duty was involved. Narrow, harsh, and bigoted they often were, but they were men of lofty ethical ideals, and they not only made these ideals rule the life of their time, but built them into the very structure of New England life and character until this day.

The religious thinking of the Puritans, clergy and people, was Calvinistic of the strenuous type. The

The cardinal article of faith was the Divine Theology. Sovereignty. This was ever and always absolute and irresistible. Says John Norton: “God doth not will things because they are just; but things are therefore just because God willeth them. . . . What reasonable man but will yield that the being of the Moral Law hath no necessary connection with the

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Being of God; . . . that the actions of men not conformable to this law should be sin; that death should be the punishment of sin ? . . . These are the constitutions of God, proceeding from him, not by way of necessity of nature, but freely, as effects and products of his eternal good pleasure.”

A recent Congregationalist author says: “This sovereignty, supreme over all moral distinctions, embraced irresistibly all events, the infinitely minute as well as the transcendently important. In its presence there could be no free human choice. Over all of life there was a fatalistic cast.”

From this flowed, of course, the complementary doctrine of human helplessness. In all that affected his relation with God or his soul’s salvation man was absolutely passive. This Norton calls “a fundamental truth of the Gospel.” Hence the doctrine of election assures that God, from all eternity, elected, or chose, some to eternal life, and some he passed by so that they are forever under the sentence of eternal death. If God had so passed him by, no efforts of man could secure the reversal of the terrible sentence. If, however, he were one of the elect, then, in spite of his own sin and devils in hell, he would infallibly reign in light. No man could know, this side of the grave, whether or not he were one of the elect. But there were certain signs whereby he might infer that he was truly regenerate, and hence an heir of salvation. Thomas Hooker, founder of Connecticut, says: “Just so it is with the soul of a man; a man’s heart will have his sin; there is an inward combination between his soul and sin; now all means, as the Word, and the like, are outward, and could do no good in this kind. They can not break the

154 History of the Christian Church.

union between a man’s heart and his corruptions, . . . unless the Lord, by his Almighty power and infinite wisdom, makes a separation between sin and the soul, and dissolves this union.” Such work was effectual; but who could know that it was wrought in himself? Thomas Shepard, son-in-law to Hooker, says: “Now, do not shift it from thyself, and say, God is merciful. True, but it is to a very few, as it shall be proved. ’T is a thousand to one if ever thou be one of that small number whom God hath picked out to escape this wrath to come.” Nay, further, the consequence of this pitiless creed was logically carried out, and the damnation of non-elect infants was plainly, if rarely, taught. Hence men labored hard to prepare themselves to accept Christ, and by the most minute and serious introspection sought to find evidence of their aceptance with him. This coming to Christ was judged to be a prolonged and painful process, and every one, on joining the Church, must give a relation of his experience in this respect. The Scriptures, it is needless to say, without any recognition of varying degrees of value or obligation, were the great guide to conduct as well as the inspiration of life.

When we look at these requirements, we do not wonder that, at the beginning, not one-half of the adult males were Church members, nor that, sixty years later, but one in five were so connected; and when we think of the hardships of the early settlers, and the fearful possibilities of such an eternal future, that one may have been of the non-elect before birth, and that the babe dying in the mother’s arms may have been passed by and forever damned, we do not wonder at the frequent cases of insanity and suicide.

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But at least there was here no accommodation of the Divine law and the requirements of the Divine holiness to the taste or the convenience of men. To become a Christian was a very real and all-pervading experience. Nathanael Ward said once to Thomas Hooker: “Mr. Hooker, you make as good Christians before men are in Christ as ever they are after. Would I were but as good a Christian now as you make men while they are but preparing for Christ!” The life centered in God, and the mind and heart in fellowship with eternal realities and values,—this was the Puritan ideal.

The Church life showed at once the rude conditions and the stern teachings of the times, but was still the central force in the life of the community.

The edifice where religious services were ^The_L^^rch held was not called a church, but a meetinghouse. In it was transacted the business of the town meeting and of the Legislature. It was never heated in winter, and was unshaded in summer. The town supply of powder was often stored under its rafters regardless of pulpit thunders. Outside of the cities it was often located on some eminence which would command the widest view of the country and of approaching Indians. Both exterior and interior were as plain and devoid of ornament as the carpenter could make them. If there were any way in which the surroundings could be at once ugly and uncomfortable, the Puritans seem to have chosen it for their place of assembly. Dorchester had a church-bell in 1662, and Plymouth in 1679, but until that time they had used drums. The larger places were supplied before; Salem in 1638, and Boston in 1646. Bells made necessary

156 History of the Christian Church.

the construction of steeples. The oldest colonial church now existing in Massachusetts is that of Hingham, built in 1681. This had a steeple and a bell, but the construction was such that the bell-rope came down in the center of the building, and the sexton officiated midway between the entrance and the pulpit.

There was no lack for a congregation, as nonattendance was punished with fine; but for this there was little need, as the meeting-house was the sole supply for the social needs of a community, which, in the stern struggle with the forest, stubborn soil, and cruel foe, felt social cravings of no ordinary force. The Puritan was no hermit or recluse.

The services were held in the morning and afternoon, with an intermission between. There was no

„ evening service. There were no lights but

The Services.    .

candles. There were no prayer-meetings or Sunday-schools. On Thursday morning or afternoon, there was a lecture or exposition by the pastor. The order of service on Sunday was as follows: The people assembled at nine o’clock A. M. A prayer of about fifteen minutes opened the service; then the Bible was read and expounded. By 1700, in the -larger city churches, reading was allowed without comment; but in most of the churches all Scripture reading came to be omitted. Then a psalm was lined off and sung. There was no singing by note until after 1714-35. After the singing came the sermon, usually an hour in length. After 1725 sermons came to be read. The sermon was followed by a short prayer. After 1700 a second psalm was sung. The benediction followed the prayer or the psalm. The same order was followed in the afternoon service, except that then a collection

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was taken. Prayers and sermons were long. The sermons were written, and at first generally committed. They were elaborate, doctrinal, and logical, abounding in Scriptural quotations, but otherwise as bare of ornament as the building in which they were preached. There was singing also; but probably nowhere else in Christendom had the words so little poetical merit or the singing so little music. But life was there in the meeting-house; there gathered men, grave and reverend through the long experience of life; men in the vigor of years, that had conquered the wilderness and the savage. Fresh young life was there—the lover and the maid, and the mischievous life of children. Here, amid painfully crude surroundings, life was trained for right conduct, and principles ripened into character.

The Church government was a democracy. Candidates for membership were examined before the whole Church. Occasionally the testimony of the pastor was taken in regard to the religious J₀^hv_ernment. experience of the timid; later, generally, in the case of women. Infant baptism was practiced where either parent was a Church member. Each Church was a self-governing body, though in cases of difficulty a council of neighboring Churches could be called to advise or mediate, but with no coercive authority. The Church ordered excommunications as well as admissions. The pastor was called by vote of the Church, and after 1793, in Massachusetts, taxpayers as well as Church members had a vote on such occasions. Taxes for ministerial support were levied in Massachusetts from 1638 to 1835; in Connecticut, from 1644 t° 1818; in Plymouth, from 1655 to 1833; New Haven, 1656 to 1818; and in Maine and New

158 History of the Christian Church.

Hampshire during the colonial period. There was never taxation for the support of the ministry in Rhode Island. The taxes, of course, were paid for the support of the Congregational ministry alone. The Church officers were the pastor and the teachers, who were called elders; the ruling elders, who were called deacons. Soon the only officers recognized were the pastor and the deacons. The latter looked after the temporal affairs of the Church. In such a form of Church government the pastors and deacons controlled; it has been very happily called “A speaking aristocracy in the presence of a silent democracyP

Roger Williams was the first who tried the principles and patience of the Puritan founders of Massa-Roger chusetts. In that age of contradictions Williams, there were few stranger than that embodied 1600=1684. *_n R₀g_er Williams. Intolerant with an intolerance that went beyond Endicott, he was the author of complete religious liberty on American soil. Contentious, visionary, and impracticable, he had a sweetness of disposition, a generosity and kindness of heart, and an enduring patience which make his memory blessed. A radical Separatist of the narrowest stripe, he became the first American Baptist, for a few months, and then was a lifelong “Come-outer.” Living among Indians in exile, and glad to share their scanty fare, he was afterwards welcomed at Cromweirs table. Banished from Massachusetts, he later rendered the most signal service to that colony and to those of Connecticut and New Haven. Next to John Eliot he knew best the Indian language, life, and character. No man wrought more unselfishly, or with less reward, for the common weal of all the colonies.

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Roger Williams arrived at Boston from England in February, 1631. He was probably of Cornish descent, and born about 1600. He went to London, where, by his skill as a reporter, he attracted the notice of Sir Edward Coke, who sent him to Charterhouse School. From there he went to Cambridge, graduating in 1627. He began the study of law, but gave that up and began the study of theology. Doubtless the rigor of Laud drove him to America. On his arrival he went from Boston to Salem, where he was called to the office of teacher, made vacant by the death of Hig-ginson. This the court at Boston disapproved, because, when at Boston, Williams had taught that the magistrates should not punish the violation of the first five of the Ten Commandments, and that he would not join in communion with the Boston Church because they, when in England, communed with the Church of England, and for this had never made public declaration of repentance. Soon after this refusal, Williams left Salem and went to Plymouth. There he remained until the fall of 1633. At Plymouth he joined the Church, and his teaching was “well approved,” except one notable eccentricity. Upon his return to Salem he was chosen assistant to Mr. Skelton, and on the death of the latter, in August, 1634, Williams was made his successor. This action was without the consent or approval of the magistrates, who had before objected to his holding office.

Williams had returned, with all of his pugnacity available for use. The ministers of Boston and Lynn had been accustomed to meet in turn at their houses once a fortnight. This was opposed by Williams at Salem, because “it might grow in time to a presbytery,

160 History of the Christian Church.

or superintendency, to the prejudice of the Church’s liberties.” Soon after his second election at Salem, the Court of Assistants summoned him to give account of a paper he had written at Plymouth, in which he asserted that, in the charter, King James told “a solemn public lie” and was guilty of blasphemy in calling Europe Christendom. Such statements could make no end of trouble with the settlers and at the English court. For once Williams yielded and made satisfaction. A month or two after Williams’s election, Endi-cott cut the cross out of the English flag. It is said Williams incited him to that act. Williams was summoned to appear at the Court of Assistants in April, ^j635, to explain errors in his preaching. He appeared, but would not yield, and so was summoned before the General Court in May of that year.

Williams was then charged with his denial of the right of the magistrates to punish breaches of the first table as before, and also that an oath ought not to be tendered to an unregenerate man, which would release more than half of the men of the colony from their allegiance; that no one should pray with an unregenerate person, though they were wife or child; and that a man ought not to give thanks after sacrament, nor after meat. The magistrates and ministers denounced these as dangerous errors, and he and the Church were required to give satisfaction at the next session of the General Court.

In the meantime the “Salem men preferred a pe-tion to the General Court for some land at Marblehead,” which they claimed belonged to Salem. But because of the relation of Williams to the General Court the matter was postponed. The Church at Salem

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then, moved by Williams, wrote a letter to the other Churches denouncing this as a heinous sin. But, moved by the chief men of the colony, the majority of the Salem Church refused to further the designs of Williams. This angered him, and on Sunday, August 29, 1636, he sent a letter to the Church, in which he said he could not communicate with the other Churches of the colony, nor would he communicate with the Salem Church except it should refuse communion with the rest. He never preached in the church again, but held meetings in his house with the disaffected members. As his wife continued to attend the meetings of the Church, he refused even to pray with her.

In September, 1635, the General Court took action on the letter sent by Salem to the other Churches. Endicott “acknowledged his fault” in connection therewith, but no acknowledgment could be gotten from Williams. Wherefore the court passed the following order: “Whereas, Mr. Roger Williams, one of the elders of the Church of Salem, hath broached and divulged divers new and strange opinions against the authority of magistrates; as also writ letters of defamation, both of the magistrates and Churches here, and that before any conviction, and yet maintaineth the same without retraction, it is therefore ordered, that the same Mr. Williams shall depart out of this jurisdiction within six weeks now next ensuing, which, if he neglect to perform, it shall be lawful for the governor and two of the magistrates to send him to some place out of this jurisdiction, not to return any more without license from the court.”

Williams was granted permission to stay through the winter, on condition that he did “not go about to

11

162 History of the Christian Church.

draw others to his opinions.” This he did not keep, but held meetings in his own house, having drawn about twenty persons to his opinions. Hence the Court of Assistants, in January, 1636, ordered him to be sent to England “by a ship then ready to depart.” A warrant was sent to Salem for him to come to Boston. Williams replied that he could not on account of sickness. Then they sent a pinnace for him, but before this arrived he had left. The rest of the winter he and some of his adherents spent with the Indians at what is now Warren, Rhode Island. The next spring, 1636, he founded Providence. At that time he proclaimed thorough freedom of conscience in the new colony, “even for Jew, Turk, or Hindoo, so long as no one molested another.” It is the imperishable glory of Roger Williams that never until his death, though often severely tried, was he disloyal in any public or private act to the great principle he then laid down.

But how are we to think of the conduct of the Puritan rulers of Massachusetts in regard to Roger Williams? We must say that they had the legal right to banish disturbers under their charter; and if any man could have shown himself a disturber worthy of banishment without overt act, such had been Roger Williams. Few men, personally, more genial or more generous in that generation trod the shores of Massachusetts Bay, but also none more intractable, or in opinion more intolerant. The authorities seem to have been both patient and kind, if unyielding. There seems to be no excuse for considering the banishment of Roger Williams a case of religious persecution.

The Puritan met its second test less successfully. Its conduct in the contest with the most gifted woman

The Puritans.-

of New England colonial history, while carried by it to a victorious issue, yet left upon it a stigma of passion, injustice, and intolerance surpassed _Anne by no other event of the Puritan rule. This Hutchinson conflict has gone down into history as the ^anVthe*^ Antinomian Controversy, and at the time Antinomian the adversaries of Mrs. Hutchinson strove ^Controver8y* to make out that she was one with John of Leyden and the Munster fanatics of 1536. Certain it is there could be no graver mistake. Neither in conduct nor in doctrine was Mrs. Hutchinson less moral or less orthodox than those who drove her into banishment.

Anne Hutchinson was a woman of no ordinary endowments or character. Warm-hearted, sympathetic, and devoutly religious, she had personal magnetism and intellectual gifts which made her a social leader and a force in the religious life of the colony. That hers was no spirit of strife, or her teachings or practice such as class her with those who rejected Puritan principles, may be seen from the two earlier years of her life in Boston, when she was noted for her works of mercy and her assemblies had the commendation of the clergy. Nor, if these were in themselves of an offensive or questionable character, would she have had the unshrinking support of men like Vane and, almost without exception, the chief citizens of Boston.

What, then, was the issue? One able writer states the truth on its practical side thus: “It was the custom of the ministers to preach that justification, the indwelling of the Spirit of God in the individual, was evidenced by his outward conduct and observances, including his walk, his dress, and the fashion of his hair. Mrs. Hutchinson maintained that such conduct and

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observances did not furnish satisfactory evidence of Christian piety, as they could be practiced by hypocrites, and that the best evidence of sincere piety was from the inner light and assurance, and that the individual alone could judge of the operation of the Spirit of God in his own heart.” On this statement of the case there is no question but the verdict of history is for Mrs. Hutchinson.

Another author, writing out of an exhaustive study of the subject, states the issue thus: “The claim of Mrs. Hutchinson to have any light or assurance beyond that which may be intellectually inferred from the text of the Christian Scriptures, or from a like induction from outward life, was to assert a superiority in what was the very soul of their [the Puritan clergy’s] calling. Her course, therefore, lowered their standing as a class, and exalted those of their number, or even those outside of their caste, to whom should be given a larger measure of the Divine Spirit.” This made the issue one between her and the Puritan clergy.

To us the issue seems to be this : The Puritan clergy claimed that, only by inference from the Scriptures and the orthodox interpretation of them, together with the facts of life, could there be assurance or guidance for the Christian. Mrs. Hutchinson claimed that the Holy Spirit had not ceased his ministry when the sacred canon closed, but that he directly ministered to human need and the soul’s illumination and comfort, as in the early days of the Christian Church. Correlative with this went the teaching of the higher Christian life, and of a spiritual experience of regenerate Christians, which made a difference between the life and work before and after it.

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That there was danger in this teaching, and in such a community, there is little need to point out. Only men and women deeply humble can walk in the ways of the Spirit; and spiritual pride, censoriousness, and divisions, not seldom, have accompanied this type of doctrine. Yet what is the Christian life or teaching without this deep, fundamental, and perennial inspiration? Nothing can be more lifeless than the preaching and doctrinal discussions of those times. In intellectual aridity the Puritan orthodoxy vied with that of Lutheran scholasticism, or that of the school of Calvin. Only the Spirit of God could make these dry bones live. When he came upon Jonathan Edwards, the mightiest of her sons, there was a new era in the spiritual life of New England.

It was not strange that Mrs. Hutchinson was not free from error in her teaching and her conduct; but she showed far more of the Christian spirit than her persecutors, and history has made evident that the regeneration of Puritan theology can come only by making room in it for the life of the Spirit as well as of the intellect.

Mrs. Hutchinson and her husband arrived at Boston September 16, 1634. They were people of means from Alford, not far from Boston, England. _{The 0penIn2} There she had enjoyed the preaching of of the Rev. John Cotton, and one motive for com- ^Controversy* ing to New England was that she might still have this privilege. Her husband was a good man, of average abilities, but overshadowed by the intellectual superiority of his wife, who was said to be a niece of the poet Dryden. For two years they lived happily in their Boston home, directly across from the house of Gov

166 History of the Christian Church.

ernor Winthrop. Mrs. Hutchinson made herself beloved by ministering to the ailments and necessities of those of her own sex, the more appreciated from the lack of medical advice or care in the colony. It had been the custom for the men to gather in the week-time and discuss the sermons of the previous Sunday. Mrs. Hutchinson began the same custom with the women, some sixty or seventy assembling at her house, where she presided.

These proceedings had the approbation of the Boston Church, of which she was a member, and of Rev. John Cotton, teacher. Two men, however, did not join in the popular approval, which included the most intellectual and influential laymen in the colony. John Wilson, the pastor of the Church, was narrow, heavy, ungenerous, and cruel. Thoroughly honest and kind in his way, his mediocre talents had been eclipsed by the brilliant ones of his colleague, Rev. John Cotton. To deepen his humiliation, Cotton’s ardent admirer, Mrs. Hutchinson, a woman, had made him a poor third in popular favor. Wilson, coarse in fiber, and both set and slow, was the antithesis to his quickwitted and sympathetic parishioner. Mrs. Hutchinson could not help feeling a preference for Mr. Cotton, and she showed it.

Governor Winthrop never liked strongminded women. He especially disliked Mrs. Hutchinson. His journal shows against no one with whom he came in contact an equal weight of adverse judgment. Here personal feeling has evidently deepened the condemnation. Winthrop had suffered a large diminution of his well-earned popularity. This was doubtless owing to his preference for a more aristocratic government.

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Thomas Dudley had been elected governor in his place in 1634, and John Haynes in 1635. Young Sir Henry Vane, a son of a privy counselor who was a close friend of Charles I, came to Boston in October, 1635, ^and was chosen governor in May, 1636. Winthrop, the ablest man in the colony, and much fitter for the office than Sir Henry Vane, had been thrice rejected. Now, Vane was a devout adherent of Mrs. Hutchinson.

That which brought all these latent elements of strife into conflict was the arrival at Boston of Rev. John Wheelwright (1592-1678). He was a graduate of Cambridge, and had been for ten years Vicar of Bilsby when he was silenced by Laud in 1633. Wheelwright was a man of some property, and had married the sister of the husband of Anne Hutchinson. When he landed in Boston, July, 1636, he was welcomed to the home of his brother-in-law. John Wheelwright was a strong, narrow, and contentious man. Brave and honest, he loved controversies and lawsuits. After his arrival, Wheelwright was suggested as a teacher for the Church in Boston. This could be only gall and wormwood to John Wilson, and Winthrop was far too skilled in reading character to think that such leadership would conduce to the peace of the colony. This opened the drama. It proceeded with the celerity and certainty of Greek fate. Winthrop alone objected, and his objection prevented the election of Wheelwright, October 30, 1636. At the December session of the General Court, Wilson made “a sad discourse” on the division in the colony, aimed at Sir Henry Vane and his followers, as well as Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson. Wilson disingenuously denied the application, but very narrowly escaped censure by the Church. On

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January 29, 1637, Wheelwright preached a sermon in Wilson’s church which was a censure on Wilson, and a call to those who opposed the pastor to contend for the faith delivered to them. The sermon was neither courteous nor wise, but it was not seditious. The General Court sat March 29th, and Wheelwright was tried for sedition. The evidence was taken in public, and sharp practice was used to make Wheelwright convict either himself or the whole body of the clergy. After the evidence was in, the court debated two days and then decided, by a majority of two, that Wheelwright was guilty, but the sentence was deferred. So closed the first act.

The next opened at the May election, where John Wilson harangued the electors from a tree, and where John Winthrop was elected to succeed Sir Henry Vane. This broke the political power of the Boston Church; its doom, in this sense, was sealed when Vane sailed for England in August. Politically, the victory and power were in the hands of Winthrop and the clergy. The purpose of the third act was to separate Rev. John Cotton, the ablest and most influential minister, from the cause of Mrs. Hutchinson. This was accomplished by a Synod which sat from September 9th to October 2d, and followed faithfully the bad precedent of ages of persecution by presenting a list of eighty heresies to be deduced from the teachings of Mrs. Hutchinson and W^Theelwright, not one of the Synod believing the list to have more justification than to call names and try to blacken the character. This now put not only the political but the ecclesiastical power into the hands of the adversaries of Wheelwright and his sister-in-law. They were now without defenders.

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The fourth act opened when the court sat in November. On the 14th it banished Wheelwright. In March the Boston Church presented a respectful but earnest petition against the sentence of Wheelwright. The signers of that paper were declared guilty of sedition; that is, guilty of what never entered into their thought. This is sedition by construction. As guilty of this constructive sedition some were fined, some disfranchised, some were banished, and some were disarmed. This outrageous proceeding reached some of the most eminent citizens of the colony, but it crushed all opposition.

Three days later, Mrs. Hutchinson was tried and condemned. The sentence ran as follows: “Mrs. Hutchinson, being convicted for traducing the ministers and the ministry in this country/’ was banished, and was committed to Mr. Joseph Weld until the court shall dispose of her. Never did John Winthrop appear to less advantage than in this trial, where every safeguard of justice was overthrown to secure the conviction of the accused in vain; and finally, after bearing with both dignity and advantage the injustice and insults of the court, she admitted that she believed God had given her a direct revelation, whereupon she was at once condemned as worse than the most rebellious and fanatical Anabaptist. Mrs. Hutchinson, on account of her health, was kept at Mr. Weld’s house until spring. She honestly sought an accommodation with the clergy through Mr. Cotton, and would seem to have made all needful acknowledgments, but the purpose was to humiliate her so as to destroy her influence altogether.

So the fifth act came on in a trial before the Boston

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Church for heresy, with all the leading clergy of the colony as her prosecutors except Mr. Cotton, and in the test he deserted her. To secure her conviction, her son and son-in-law, by the most outrageous perversion of justice, were disfranchised. Finally she was charged with falsehood in her answers, and, though she replied with “great restraint and humility, saying she had spoken 'rashly and unadvisedly/ as they could not move her farther, and she said, ‘My judgment is not altered, though my expression alters/ they condemned her, and John Wilson pronounced the sentence of excommunication.” As she passed out of the crowded meeting-house, Mary Dyer rose up and walked out by her side. As they passed, one by the door said to Mrs. Hutchinson, “The Lord sanctify this unto you.” She replied: “The Lord judgeth not as man judgeth. Better to be cast out of the Church than to deny Christ.” The climax of the tragedy was yet to come. On April 7th Mrs. Hutchinson left Boston. She, with her family, settled in Rhode Island on the site of Newport. Then her husband died, and she, with her son-in-law, moved with their families to Long Island, near Hell-gate, in the spring of 1642. Soon after they were set upon by the Indians, and the whole household of sixteen persons were killed. A little girl of eight years alone escaped, and five years later was ransomed and brought to Boston.

One more scene completes the action of the play. Mary Dyer had stood beside Anne Hutchinson in her condemnation. In May, 1660, twelve years later, as a banished Quaker, who returned, Mary Dyer hung on a scaffold on Boston Common. Thus ended the grim Puritan tragedy.

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The third occasion in which the Puritan administration met its test was in its conflict with the Baptists. Roger Williams was the founder of the American Baptists. There is no traceable ^{The BaptU,s}-connection between the English and American Baptists. Governor Winthrop, in his “History of New England,” gives this account of the origin of this great Church on American soil: “At Providence things grew still worse; for a sister of Mrs. Hutchinson, the wife of one Scott, being infected with Anabaptistry, and going last year to live at Providence, Mr. Williams was taken (or rather emboldened) by her to make open profession thereof, and accordingly was rebaptized by Holyman, _a poor man, late of Salem. Then Mr. Williams rebaptized him and some ten more. They also denied the baptizing of infants, and would have no magistrates.”

This was in March, 1639. Then says Richard bcott, a Baptist pioneer: “I walked with him in the Baptist way about three or four months, when he broke from the society and declared at length the grounds and reasons for it,—that their baptism could not be right, because it was not administered by an apostle.”

Williams remained outside of all membership in the Christian Church until his death in 1684. These years were years of great service to Rhode Island and to the United Colonies. Williams went to England in i6zu returning in 1644.

Providence, Newport, Portsmouth, and Warwick

Tw^dn^Und<^ ^{3 Charter} '^{n l647}' ^{After the} usurpation of William Coddington, Williams was sent to England

again, 1652-1653, where he was on terms of intimacy

172 History of the Christian Church\

with Cromwell. Roger Williams rendered great service to the United Colonies at the Pequod war and in the Federation formed in 1643. For the prosperity he founded for others, he was left in his old age to the care of his sons; but his life was cheerful and loving to the last. Roger Williams was a great founder. He founded the city of Providence, the Colony of Rhode Island, the American Baptist Church, and complete religious liberty in America. Nothing more characteristic, perhaps, came from his pen than these sentences from a letter to John Whipple written in 1669. Gregory Dexter had refused to pay his taxes on the ground of conscientious scruples, which Williams regarded as insufficient; but he says: “However, I commend that man, whether Jew, Turk, or Papist, or whoever, that steers no otherwise than his conscience dare, till his conscience tells him that God gives him a greater latitude. For, neighbor, you shall find it rare to meet with men of conscience—men that for fear of God dare not lie, nor be drunk, nor be contentious, nor steal, nor be covetous, nor voluptuous, nor ambitious, nor lazy bodies, nor busy bodies, nor displease God by omitting either service or suffering, though of reproach, imprisonment, banishment, and death, because of the fear and love of God.”

There were those who joined with Roger Williams in fellowship as Baptist Christians who did not go back as he did, and many were added to them. These included some of the ablest men of the colony—men like Chad Brown the pastor, and William Wickenden the assistant pastor, of the first Baptist Church in America; that of Providence, founded in 1642. Brown was the ancestor of the Brown brothers who, in the next cen™

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tury, did so much for the Baptist Church in Providence, and from whom Brown University took its name, in 1804. Associated with them was Gregory Dexter, a printer, and president of the colony in 1653.

An abler man than these, the ablest American Baptist of the century, the physician and preacher, was John Clarke, the founder of the first Baptist Church at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1644, and its pastor, 1664-1676, when he died. Clarke was in England from 1652 to 1664, and while there secured the Rhode Island Charter of 1663, under which the colony and State prospered for more than one hundred and fifty years. Before going to England he had an experience of Puritan intolerance in Boston which had lasting results.

John Endicott was governor of Massachusetts Bay. John Clarke, a young man of twenty-eight, came to Boston in 1637, and joined Roger Wil- _{The Baptlsts} liams the next year, and founded Newport in Massa-two years later. He had become a leading ^chu8etts* Baptist pastor. In 1651 he returned to Boston. With him were John Crandall and Obadiah Holmes. Almost on their arrival they were arrested. They were compelled to attend service, but were not allowed to address the congregation. By a law passed seven years before it was made a crime to deny the validity of infant baptism. On the trial, Endicott showed his brutality by telling the prisoners that they deserved to die. In the meanwhile John Wilson, the persecutor of Mrs. Hutchinson, showed his cruel temper unchanged, and a lessened sense of decency, in striking and cursing one of the prisoners before the judgment seat. They were sentenced to be fined—Clarke £20, Crandall £5, and Holmes £30—and to be whipped in default of payment.

174 History of the Christian Church.

They refused to pay, as they would not acknowledge that they had been guilty of any crime. Some unknown friends paid the fine of Clarke, and Crandall was released on bail. But Holmes suffered the full penalty of the law. After his thirty stripes, he turned to the magistrates, “with joyfulness in his heart and cheerfulness in his countenance,” and assured them that he had been “struck with roses.” Two bystanders turned and shook hands with him, for which they were fined. But not in this way are religious convictions and opinions eradicated.

Henry Dunster was, perhaps, the most learned man in the colony. He graduated M. A. from Cambridge in 1634, and came to Boston in 1640. In August of that year he was made president of Harvard College, a position he held and honored for fourteen years. On the question of infant baptism he adopted Baptist principles in 1653, and on that account resigned the presidency of the college the next year. In 1655 he became pastor of the Congregationalist Church at Scituate, which he held until his death in February, 1659. The first Baptist Church in Boston was organized in 1655. Before 1667, J°hn Myles, a fervid Welsh Baptist, had organized a Baptist Church at Rehoboth, and in October of the same year another one at Swansea, of which he remained pastor until 1681. Persecution visited Massachusetts for the last time in 1680, when, by order of the General Court, the doors of their Church were nailed up; but the storm was soon overpast. In 1682 a Baptist Church was organized in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and in Kittery, Maine. In 1694 there were two Indian Churches on Martha’s Vineyard. In Rhode Island there came a division among the Baptists

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in 1652. In England in 1646 arose the Six-Principle Baptists, who interpreted Heb. vi, 1, 2, as requiring the laying on of hands as much as belief in the resurrection, or the other five principles there enumerated, in which they agreed with other Evangelical Christians, especially the Baptists. Hence six years later arose a division. The leading men and congregations among the Baptists accepted this doctrine, such being Wicken-den, Dexter, and Chad Brown. John Clarke remained true to the Particular (Calvinistic) faith, and kept with him the Newport Church. But a Six-Principle Baptist Church was founded in Newport in 1656, and one in Groton, Connecticut, founded in 1705, was the first Baptist Church in that colony. A Seventh-day Baptist Church was founded in Newport in 1671, the first this side of the ocean. The first in England was organized in 1656.

What was the especial contribution of the early Baptist Church to religious and Church life? They stood for a literal interpretation and application of the Scriptures; for a Church membership of regenerate people; for entire separation of Church and State and the resultant freedom of conscience; and for the utmost democracy in Church government, and preferred it in the State. The Providence Plantation, in 1641, “ordered, and unanimously agreed, that the government which this body politic doth attend unto in this Island, and the jurisdiction thereof in favor of our prince, is a democracy or popular government.” It was further ordered “that none be accounted for a delinquent for doctrine, provided it be not directly repugnant to the government or laws established,” and in September, 1641, it was ordered “that the law of the last court,

176 History of the Christian Church.

made concerning liberty of conscience in point of doctrine, is perpetuated.”

In the preamble to the code of laws for the colony, in 1647, ^ is stated “that the form of government established in the Providence Plantation is democratical; that is to say, a government held by the free and voluntary consent of all or the greater part of the free inhabitants.”

The Baptists took the place occupied by the Con-gregationalists in the other colonies in Rhode Island. Here there was never an established Church. The Baptists carried out to their logical conclusion the Congregational principles of a Church of regenerate members and of a democratic form of Church government. It is not, therefore, strange that in the Boston from which they were driven in 1651, they should now be perhaps the most aggressive Evangelical religious force.

The last test of the theocratical government of the Puritans came from its contest with the Quakers and The Quakers *^ts l^amentable consequences. The first of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, who visited Massachusetts came from the Barbadoes in May, 1656. They were two women, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher. The same year Elizabeth Harris came to Virginia, and the next year Robert Hodgson and four others came to New York, and Josiah Coale and Thomas Thurston to Virginia. In each of these cases the authorities of New York and Virginia imprisoned and banished these followers of George Fox. Those of Massachusetts went further. The two women who came to Boston in 1656 were probably the first Quakers to visit the territory of the United States. There was as yet 110 law against them; but they were imprisoned

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and their books burned, and their bodies were examined for signs of witchcraft upon them. Finally, after five weeks detention, they were shipped out of the country. Governor Endicott, who was absent, expressed his regret that they had not been whipped. Soon eight more Quakers landed, who were imprisoned, and then banished. The General Court then ordered that, in the future, they should be imprisoned and whipped. The rulers of Rhode Island refused to join in the persecution, saying wisely that, “Surely we find they do delight to be persecuted by the civil power, and, when they are so, gain more adherents by the conceit of their patient sufferings than by consent to their pernicious sayings/’ Far from being instructed by this wise counsel, Massachusetts increased the severity of her penalties; banished Quakers who returned should lose their ears, and on the third offense have the tongue bored through with a hot iron. In October, 1658, death was pronounced on such as dared return, though for a long time the representatives resisted the enactment of the law. Before this date, over thirty Quakers had suffered the penalties of the law in Massachusetts. In

1659 banishment was often enforced. In September,

1659, four Quakers were banished. William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson went to Salem; Mary Dyer, the wife of the Secretary of Rhode Island and the friend of Anne Hutchinson, went to Rhode Island. Within a month she was back again in Boston. There she was joined by Robinson and Stevenson. It must be admitted that the Quakers were peculiarly offensive to the Puritan rulers. Their doctrine of the inner light was the thing detested by the Puritans. The Quakers showed little reverence for the letter of the Scriptures,

12

178 History of the Christian Church.

and open contempt for “steeple houses” and a “hireling ministry,” and no respect for magistrates. Two young women, one in Newbury and one in Salem, walked the streets naked “for a sign.” They not seldom interrupted religious services and railed at magistrates. If Anne Hutchinson’s offense was unbearable, what of those open contemners of the ministers and magistrates? If the sentence against Mrs. Hutchinson was the green tree, what should be done in the dry?

The Quakers were arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. John Wilson showed himself true to his bad record and cruel nature. He said, “Hang them, or else—” and he drew his fingers across his throat. On October 2, 1659, they were led to execution through the town by a back street, lest the crowd should sympathize with them. At the gallows, Wilson taunted and railed at them. Mary Dyer, during the execution, sat at the foot of the scaffold, but was respited, and returned to Rhode Island. In May, 1660, she returned to bear witness by her death. She made no defense, but was condemned and hanged. Soon after, William Leddra was arrested; he had been banished and returned. He was imprisoned four months. He was offered his liberty if he would leave the colony; he refused, and was hanged. Just before this execution, Wenlock Christison, who had been banished, returned. After three months imprisonment he was brought to trial. Charles II had been restored, and hanging Quakers was a more dangerous pastime than it had been, for Endicott and the Puritan leaders. Christison and twenty-seven others were brought out of prison. Two were scourged, and the rest were banished. These Quaker martyrs had won the fight, and the days of the

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intolerance of the Puritan theocracy were over. The Quakers, however, often suffered from fines, and the Congregational remained the established Church until well on into the nineteenth century. The Quakers increased, and became a strong religious force in Rhode Island and adjacent towns in Massachusetts until our day. They brought to the religious life of America the hatred of war and oppression, especially African slavery. They emphasized the personal communion with God, and showed the might of weakness in overcoming evil and persecution by passive resistance.

^ In 1692 came the great tragedy of the Puritan rule in New England. In its disregard of the necessary canons of evidence and rules of justice it

did not differ from such trials everywhere ^{The SaIem} 1 Ti    .    ^J    Witchcraft,

else. It was not a feature of New England

life so much as the life of that time in all Western Europe. These were the last executions for witchcraft in English America; the last in England and Scotland did not come until well on into the next century.

The outbreak came in what was then called Salem village, now Danvers, Massachusetts. There had been cases of witchcraft before in the colonies, and at least two of the so-called witches had suffered death. In 1688 a case of the children of one Goodwin had attracted attention, and had been widely known through the zealous activity of Increase Mather and his son, Cotton Mather, who regarded such cases of the power of the devil as establishing beyond all doubt or cavil the existence of the invisible world. Their description of this case was widely circulated through the publication of Cotton Mather's “Late Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions,” pub

i8o History of the Christian Church.

lished at Boston, 1689. Of even greater influence was Increase Mather’s “Illustrious Providences in New England,” published five years before.

Within three years from the date of this work an even more remarkable series of occurrences began in Beginning the household of the minister of Salem vil-of the lage. Samuel Parris was a man of ability, Delusion. ^ perverse and ill-tempered. There had broken out a feud at his installation, which subsequently had not grown less, but which had divided neighbors and families. The trouble began with three girls—the daughter of the pastor, Elizabeth Parris, aged nine; his niece, Abigail Parris, aged eleven; and the daughter of the parish clerk, Ann Putnam, aged twelve. With these were associated several other young women, two of whom were twenty years of age. The girls went through all the antics and outcries which were well understood to be signs of being bewitched, and finally “cried out” upon three persons as the cause of their torment. These were Tibuta, a servant in the Parris household, half Indian and half Negro, brought from the West Indies; Sarah Good, an old woman wretchedly poor; and Sarah Osborn, who had been once well-to-do, but who was now separated from her husband; she was bedridden, and did not bear a good reputation. Then two others were named. These latter were both Church members and women of unblemished character—Martha Carey and Rebecca Nourse. Soon to these were added a child of Sarah Good and a sister of Mrs. Nourse. Then those were named who stood higher—Philip English, a leading merchant of Salem; and George Burroughs, a graduate of Harvard, and now pastor at Wells, Maine, who had been the rival

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of Parris for the Church at Salem village. George Jacobs, an old man, and his granddaughter were both accused and arrested.

Governor Phipps, carried away with the excitement, illegally constituted a special commission of seven magistrates to try the accused, at the head of which was Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton, a hard and narrow man. A hundred had been arrested when the commission was appointed. On June 2, 1692, it condemned its first victim, Bridget Bishop, who had been tried and acquitted a dozen years before on a like charge. Eight days later she was hanged. On the 30th of the month they sentenced five other women. On August 5th four women were condemned, and also George Burroughs, who had been brought from Maine to be tried. He was hanged August 19th, his behavior being such as to move all capable of pity. He concluded his devotions on the scaffold with the Lord’s Prayer. It was the conviction of the time that no one so in league with evil could repeat it correctly; but when Burroughs did this, then those who pressed on these proceedings said the devil stood by and dictated the words. In September, fourteen were condemned, of whom eight were hanged. The list of those executed included George Jacobs. Rebecca Nourse was acquitted by the jury, but Stoughton sent them back to reconsider their verdict. She was a woman of eminent piety, and Governor Phipps would have pardoned her; but Parris had a grudge against her and prevented it. Giles Corey, eighty years of age, refused to plead, and was pressed to death. When September ended twenty had been put to death, Corey, and nineteen others who were hanged. Fifty had been pardoned on confessing their guilt, and one

182 History of the Christian Church.

hundred and fifty were in prison awaiting trial, besides whom there were charges against two hundred more, including some of the most reputable people in the colony.

On October 12, 1692, the General Court convened, and at once superseded the special commission. The madness was now at an end. Some others were condemned, but all were released. The revulsion was powerful and permanent. Parris, amid general indignation, was driven from his place. Noyes, pastor of First Church, Salem, caused the cruel excommunication against Mrs. Nourse to be retracted. Ann Putnam, thirteen years later, confessed her grief and shame. The General Court, twenty years after the trials, reversed the convictions and attainders, and made grants of money to the heirs to cover their losses. Chief-Justice Sewell, one of the commission, openly acknowledged his shame and guilt before the whole congregation of his Church, and kept annually a day of fasting and prayer in remembrance of the saddest event in his public life. What other community gone mad, on the recovery of its senses, has shown equal shame and repentance?

A change more vital in the policy of the Puritan Church and commonwealth than those occasioned by these outbreaks of intolerance and terror _The came through the natural development of Haif-way the contradiction inherent in their original ^Covenant* conception of a Church. According to this conception a Church was composed of a body of regenerate persons who entered into covenant with God and with each other. Their distinguishing marks were regeneration and the covenant. Unfortunately for the consistency

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of the idea, the covenant included the children of all “visible saints.” These were accepted as candidates for infant baptism, and no others. The consequence of this contradiction was not long in showing itself. The children of Church members were baptized, and were members under the covenant, though without full communion. These, in many cases, did not possess an experience of Christian regeneration so as to pass the required tests and enter the Church. These non-church members, but under the covenant by baptism and by personal “owning of the covenant” so far as intellectual assent to the teachings of the Church is concerned, had children of their own. What now is the status of these children ? May they be baptized ? Have they any share in the benefits of the covenant ?

With this religious question of pressing importance, and made more urgent by the fact that all Episcopal, Reformed, and Lutheran Churches never thought of demanding that Churches should be composed of regenerate persons only, and insisted that all children should be baptized, were joined other weighty considerations.

The Puritan discipline was quite as dear to the Churches as their faith. The Puritan discipline could hardly be efficiently exercised if confined solely to Church members. In 1643, ^m Massachusetts and Plymouth, not over one-tenth of the population were Church members. Children under the covenant by baptism were under the discipline and care of the Church, and immensely helped to strengthen it. They desired this discipline and care for their children as fitting them for an upright life and a firm moral character even if they should not be regenerates.

184 History of the Christian Church.

Again the question involved the political rights of the colonists. Only Church members could vote and hold office. The basis of political power threatened to become too small for safety. The Presbyterian element, led by Dr. Child and Vassall, one of the first assistants, sought to use this situation to bring in the Presbyterian discipline. This was one of the chief reasons for the calling of the Cambridge Synod of 1647. The ^turn of the tide in England against the Presbyterians made abortive their efforts.

But the situation was such that some solution must be obtained. An assembly of representative ministers, thirteen from Massachusetts and four from Connecticut, met at Boston, June 4-19, 1657. They decided that “the children of visible saints” could transmit their privilege to their descendants so that they could receive baptism, but not the Lord’s Supper, nor could they vote in Church affairs. This decision was confirmed by a Synod of ministers which met in Boston in 1662. The right to baptism carried with it that of Church watch-care and discipline and also the civil franchise. This seemed to meet the emergency. But what of those who were neither children nor descendants of “visible saints,” now becoming a larger number in every community? In time these were allowed to present their children for baptism on condition of promising proper religious training. About the beginning of the eighteenth century Solomon Stoddard was an able and a pious pastor at Northampton (16691726), whose ministry had been blessed with a succession of revivals. He taught that the Lord’s Supper should be administered to “all adult members who are not scandalous,” “for their saving good, and conse

The Puritans.

i3₅

quently for their conversion.” This began to be practiced in his own Church in 1706, and during the century spread through western Massachusetts and Connecticut. Thus the Half-way Covenant of 1657 and

1662 brought back almost the practical results of that State Church system against which Congregationalism was originally the most earnest and thoroughgoing protest. The ideal of a regenerate Church membership seemed only to be found among the Baptists at that time. At the same time the examination for admission to Church communion relaxed their former rigor, and largely the public examinations ceased to be required. The type of preaching also changed, and moral duties were more insisted upon than Christian privileges. The whole result was a decided retrogression in the moral and religious life of the Puritan Colonies.

To this contributed political causes: the overthrow of the Massachusetts charter in 1686; the establishment of a royal governor in Boston with an Episcopal Church, Kings Chapel, marking a grave constitutional change; and the admission of the strong element foreign to the life and ideas of the Puritans. With this came the disaster of the almost twenty years’ war against the French and Indians during the reigns of King William and Queen Anne. The horror and devastation were the most marked of anything in Puritan annals. The massacres at Deerfield and Haverhill were never forgotten while Frenchman or Jesuit had power to lead or stir up an Indian foray. The demoralization of these long years of warfare (1689-1713) was great and evident.

It has been truly said that it could not be expected that the second and third generations should have the

186 History of the Christian Church.

same lofty ideals and religious fervor as the Puritan founders. The contrast goes further. The leaders and the clergy of the first generation were university men, and knew at its best the varied life of a great and powerful nation, filled with the results and memorials of a long Christian civilization. Their sons, if trained at all beyond the common school, knew the narrow beginnings of Harvard, the forces of nature, the rude life of the forest clearings, the fierce struggle with savage beasts and with savage men. The only evidence to them of the existence of a Christian civilization was that which they themselves bore into the wilderness. The necessaries of life were reduced to their lowest terms, and of comforts there were few or none. It was no question of increasing or even of preserving the refinements of life. But they did subdue the forest, till the clearing, and make possible the physical basis for the future civilization. The true heroes and founders of the American commonwealths are not those of the first generation; they left and lost much; they made the beginning; they bore and reared the men and women who were the true founders of America in Church and State and civilization. Men and women were rude, less polished, less ideal, less influential in higher spheres than their fathers, but men and women who adapted themselves to the conditions, and they were hard, and conquered them. These were the first real Americans. They made their children and descendants heirs of their hardihood, of their stubborn courage and unwearied toil, of their quick inventive genius, and of a moral fiber and strenuous ideals which have made them, in enterprise and achievement, pre-eminent in

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187

the modern world. The Half-way Covenant, the unfavorable political situation, the hard conditions of frontier life, all led to a religious declension. These made necessary and prepared the way for the Great Awakening of the middle of the eighteenth century, which forms the turning point of the religious life of the English Colonies in America.

The Cambridge Platform of 1648 reaffirmed, for substance of doctrine, the Westminster Confession of Faith. The Synod of 1680 adopted the _{The Creeds} Savoy Confession of 1662, with a few un- of congrega-important changes. This was a slightly ^tiona,lsin* modified form of the Westminster Confession. The Saybrook Platform of 1708 reaffirmed the Confession of 1680. The first Congregational Association of the Congregational clergy was formed at Boston in 1690. They became a permanent feature of the Church life. There were five Associations by 1705, and they established a system of ministerial licensure for entrance into the ministry. The Saybrook Platform provided for County Associations, and Ministerial Associations with the right of licensure, and also for Annual Delegated General Associations of the whole colony. Thus the Connecticut Congregationalists were more highly organized than those of the other colonies. Against this tendency John Wise wrote, in 1710 and 1717, two powerful tracts. They claim as a natural right a democratic basis of Church policy. “Power is originally from the people.” This theory prevailed in Eastern Massachusetts; also throughout the State it was the practice for the society of taxpayers to vote as to the choice of pastor. But wherever the Congregational

188 History of the Christian Church.

Church went the worship was non-liturgical, and it stood for an educated ministry and a strenuous moral discipline.

Two men among the Congregational clergy of this period were of such eminence that they deserve special mention. They are John Eliot and Increase *1604-^690*. Mather. John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, was born at Nasin, Essex, England, in 1604. He graduated, probably at Cambridge, and for a season taught in a school with Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. At the age of twenty-seven, in November, 1631, he arrived at Boston. The pastor being away, he took up ministerial duties with the First Church of Boston. That Church would fain have retained him, but he considered himself bound by an agreement made in England to those settled in Rox-bury. His bride came over the year after his arrival, and they were married in October, 1632. The marriage proved a happy one, and to the parents were born five sons and six daughters. One son and one daughter survived the father. After fifty-five years the union was broken by the death of Mrs. Eliot, who proved a true helpmeet to one who greatly needed one. It is said that he was so absorbed in his studies that he did not know his own cows when before his door.

The young husband was installed “teacher” at Rox-bury in the month following the marriage, and continued to serve that Church until his death, fifty-eight years later. For many years there was little to distinguish his work from that of the ordinary pastorate; but in 1644 he began to study to master the Indian language. Two years later he began preaching to the Indians, and in 1651 he founded the Indian town of

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Natick. In October of the following year he organized the first Indian Church. This Church and the Indian settlements he carefully tended and taught. By

1660 he deemed them advanced enough to receive baptism and the Lord’s Supper. In the meantime Eliot carried on his immense labor of translating the Bible into the language of the Indians. The cost of publishing was borne by friends in England, amounting in all to $25,000. In 1661 appeared the New Testament; in

1663 the Old Testament. New editions were published of the former in 1680, and of the latter in 1685. In all, probably, some thirty-five hundred copies were printed. Eliot also published a Catechism and Psalter and four religious books in the Indian language; also an Indian Grammar and an Indian “Logick Primer.” Eliot’s was the first Bible printed in America. From the above some idea may be gained of the unwearied diligence of the man.

By 1674 there were fourteen Indian towns, two Churches, and eleven hundred praying Indians under Eliot’s care. Nor was he alone in this work. It was estimated that there were seven hundred praying Indians in the Plymouth Colony—three hundred on Nantucket and fifteen hundred on Martha’s Vineyard— the fruit of the labors of the Mayhews; in all thirty-six hundred praying Indians. Then came King Philip’s War, which in two years destroyed the work of thirty. How strong a temptation it was to the praying Indians to join their brethren may be gathered from the fact that James Printer, an educated Indian, who corrected the proof-sheets of Eliot’s Bible, joined the Indian warriors. On the other hand, those praying Indians who were faithful to the whites received, on account of fear

190 History of the Christian Church.

and suspicion, anything but generous usage. The captured Indians were in great part executed for murder; but the mass of them were, against Eliot’s earnest protest, sold into slavery. Two Indians finished the course at Harvard College; but one was drowned, and the other soon died of consumption. In spite of all these drawbacks, Eliot has been called the most successful missionary that ever preached the gospel to the Indians. In 1684 there were four settlements of praying Indians, which dwindled in numbers until, in the next century, they became practically extinct. Eliot’s love for men came out strongly in his old age, when he sought to teach the Negroes near him, and then undertook in his own house the education of a blind boy.

Two sayings of Eliot’s depict the man for us as no painter’s brush could do. In his Indian Grammar he says what may almost be taken as the motto of his life: “Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.” In his last days he said: “Alas! I have lost everything. My understanding leaves me; my memory fails me; my utterance fails; but, I thank God, my charity holds out still; I find that rather grows than fails.” Pious, humble, devoted John Eliot closed a life of unwearied toil, full of honor, May 20, 1690.

Increase Mather was the son of Richard Mather, pastor at Boston, and was born at Dorchester, Massa-increase chusetts, 1639. Graduating from Harvard Mather, in 1656, he spent the next four years in *639 1723. j£_ngi_anc[^ j_n X654 h_{e was} chosen teacher in the Second Church of Boston, a position which he held for the next fifty-nine years. When the Revolution in 1688 brought in a new policy at the English court, Increase Mather went to England and remained

The Puritans.    _I9I

there three years. It was owing to his unceasing efforts and his influence that the new charter for Massachusetts retained the liberal provisions of the old one, although the governor was henceforth appointed by the king. It is doubtful if any other man could have rendered to Massachusetts the service which Increase Mather did at this crisis. In 1685 he was chosen president of Harvard College, a position which he held during the next sixteen years. In character, ability, learning, eloquence, and influence he was doubtless the most noted man of his generation in New England. He and his son, Cotton Mather, were implicated, the son much more than the father, in the Salem witchcraft excitement. People are apt to forget that through them arose the ministerial associations which proved such a strong feature of New England life; also that Cotton Mather procured the gift from Elihu Yale which established Yale College, founded in 1701, and gave it his name. Thus ended the life and work of the second generation of Puritans born on New England soil.

Chapter IV.

OTHER EVANGELICAL AMERICAN CHURCHES.

The: great advantages of the Congregational system for the work of founding the Christian Church in America at that time are evident when we compare its well-ordered and systematic Reformed activity which provided a Church and ^Churches-school for every settlement from the first, ^{New York}*

New Jersey,

with the experience of the Reformed, the Pennsyi- * Lutheran, and Episcopal Churches. The ^vania* ^and

,    . .    Delaware.

Longregationahst saw that a minister accompanied, or was called to the settlement or town as soon as it was organized. The work of Harvard, and afterward of Yale, provided educated men for this work. These men were native Americans who understood the people, the conditions, and how to minister to the Churches so unlike those of Europe. Then the ministers did not need to cross the seas to be ordained, nor were the Churches under a foreign jurisdiction. The reverse was the case with the other Evangelical Churches, except the Baptists and the Quakers.

The Dutch established themselves around trading-posts on the Hudson River, and in 1614 and 1623 began settlements at Fort Orange (Albany) and on Manhattan Island. The first clergyman of the Reformed Church in America, and the first of any Church in New York, was Jonas Michaelius, who arrived in 1628, when

192

Other Evangelical Churches.

there was a population on Manhattan Island of 270. He organized a Church, and was followed by Ever-ardus Bogardus, 1633-1647. The congregation first worshiped in a loft over the horse-mill. Later a wooden church, “like a barn,^,, was built. Finally a stone church in the fort was erected in 1642. Bogardus married Anneke Jans, then a widow, for his second wife, in 1638. On a voyage to Holland, where he wished to visit, Bogardus and the whole company were lost at sea in 1647.

The most noted clergyman of the Dutch regime at Manhattan was John Mecklenburg, or Magapolensis, a convert from the Roman Catholic faith. He served at Fort Orange, 1642-1649, where he taught the Indians and saved the life of the Iroquois captive, the Jesuit Father Jogues, the first Roman Catholic priest to visit New York. He built a church at Fort Orange in 1643. Six years later he removed to New Amsterdam, and was pastor there from 1649 until 1670. With him served Samuel Drusius, who, as well as Magapolensis, was a man of learning, and preached both in Dutch and French. Until 1747 all ordinations took place in Holland, and during the Colonial period the whole Church was under the jurisdiction of the Classis of Amsterdam. The Dutch immigration was not large, and that was one reason why the colony fell to the English. In 1647 there were in New Amsterdam 150 houses and 700 people; in 1664, 220 houses and 1,400 people; ten years later there was a population of 3,000, and in 1700 of 4>4°°- The last Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant, stood for good morals, and in 1656 strict Sunday laws were enacted. Unfortunately he and the ministers were intolerant. A Lutheran preacher was 13

194 History of the Christian Church.

shipped back to Holland in 1658; but a Church had been organized, and an edifice was erected in 1671, though the society did not have any active existence until the eighteenth century. Quakers were fined and imprisoned in 1662, but the next year all intolerance ceased.

In 1664, when the English took possession, there were twelve Dutch Reformed Churches in the colony, eight of which were about New York, one at Albany, one at Bergen, New Jersey, and one at New Castle, Delaware.

In 1685 there came quite a large Huguenot emigration, which in no small way influenced the social and political life of the colony. Their leader was Pierre Daille, formerly professor in the theological school at Samur, France. He exercised his ministry in New York, 1682-1696. In 1688 a French church was built in New York. Daille removed to Boston in 1696, where he served the French Church until his death in 1715In 1693 there were about three thousand families in the colony, half of which were Dutch, and were rich. Most of the rest were English in blood, and Presbyterian or Congregationalist in their religious views, with a few Quakers, all being moderately well-to-do. There were some French, who, as might be expected of such recently-arrived refugees, were yet poor, though they soon prospered. The Reformed Dutch Church obtained a legal charter in May, 1696. Trinity Church was chartered one year later. The first rector of Trinity Church was William Vesey, a Harvard graduate of 1693 and a Congregational minister, who went to London, and was ordained in the Church of England

Other Evangelical Churches.

in 1697. He served Trinity Church, 1697-1745. He was an able and pious man, and lived on good terms with the other Churches and their pastors. Trinity Charity School opened in 1709.

In 1700 there were in the colony of New York fifty churches. Of these, there was one Episcopalian, two Lutheran, four Congregationalist, nine Presbyterian, one German, four French Reformed, and twenty-nine Dutch Reformed; that is, practically forty-three of the fifty were Reformed. Governor Fletcher favored the Episcopal Church, and Governor Cornbury sought to make it, by a misinterpretation of the law of 1693, the established Church. To escape this tyranny, many of the Dutch Reformed settled in Northern New Jersey, which from that time has been the stronghold of that Church in the United States.

This loss of the Dutch Reformed from the colony was made up by the immigration of the Palatines in 1709, who settled in the Mohawk Valley. Their leader was John Frederick Hager. He arrived in New York in May, 1709, with two thousand one hundred and thirty-eight Palatine emigrants. In December of that year he received a recognition equivalent to an ordination (he was a licentiate in Germany), and the support of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. He is venerated as the founder of the German Reformed Church in the Mohawk and Hudson Valleys. The date of his death is not exactly known, but it is about 1723.

In New Jersey, besides the strong Dutch Reformed element, there were Quakers, who came first in 1663. The Baptists formed a Church in New Jersey in 1689. Keith and Talbot labored as ^NewJersey* Episcopal missionaries in 1704, and St. Mary’s, Bur

196 History of the Christian Church.

lington, was founded that year. From that time until his death in 1723, Talbot was an apostle to the Episcopal Churches of New Jersey.

The first Christian ministers and Churches in Delaware were Swedish Lutherans. Reorus Torkellius _ .    accompanied the Swedish expedition of

Delaware. , . . . ^    ^r . .

colonization in 1639, ^an(* remained at Christiania until 1643. During his stay a church was built. He was succeeded by John Campanius, 16431648. He learned the language of the Delaware Indians, and translated into it Luther’s Shorter Catechism. Campanius wrote a description of the country which is of great value. These first Lutheran ministers were able and godly men, of whom any Church might be proud. The Old Swedes Church at Wilmington was dedicated in 1699, and the Gloria Dei Church in the same city the next year.

Pennsylvania had a distinguished man for a founder, a romantic history, and, as the founder’s principle of toleration was never departed from, ^Pvan?a.*” except as to allowing the English Corporation and Test Acts to have force in a certain range of offices from 1705, it had more diverse elements of population, with stronger marked and more permanent characteristics, than any other colony.

William Penn, son of Admiral Penn, was born in London, October 14, 1644. He entered Oxford in

1660, but was sent away for Nonconform-fry* ^cure    thk* fr°^{m a} social and

political standpoint, peculiarly annoying characteristic, his father sent him to Paris in 1661. In France he studied under the Reformed Professor Amy-rault, 1661-1664. He was in Turin in 1664, and the

Other Evangelical Churches. 197

same year returned to London. He entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1665, but spent two years (1666-1668) in Ireland, where he became acquainted with some Quakers and adopted their belief. In 1668 he wrote “Truth Exalted” and “Sandy Foundation Shaken,” and the next year his most famous work, “No Cross, 110 Crown.” Penn was imprisoned in the Tower from December, 1668, to July, 1669. Then he went to Ireland. Returning from Ireland in 1670, he was sent to Newgate; but his father paid his fine and he was released. The next year he spent six months in Newgate, and the rest of the year in Holland and Germany. His father dying in 1671, he was left property which brought him an income of $7,500, worth three times that amount of to-day. He now began the life of a country gentleman.

Penn’s connection with America began on this wise: He became trustee of West Jersey in 1676, specially in behalf of the Quakers residing there. In 1680 he bought East Jersey. In default of the payment of $80,000 which the crown owed his father, Charles II, March 4, 1681, granted him in fee simple all of Pennsylvania west of the Delaware River. The next year, in August, Delaware was added to this grant, so that Penn was proprietor of all that the King of England could grant in Delaware and Pennsylvania, owned East Jersey by purchase, and was trustee of West Jersey. No Englishman ever owned so much of American soil.

Penn wrote an “Account of the Province of Pennsylvania” in 1681 to stimulate emigration, and sailed with a large company in September, 1682. No colony, except possibly Massachusetts, grew so rapidly from the start. Penn founded Philadelphia, November 8,

198 History of the Christian Church.

1682. From the first he proclaimed complete religious toleration. By his Great Law of December 4, 1682, only murder was punishable with death. The next year the Germans under a Lutheran pastor, Pistorius, came and founded Germantown. This tide never ceased, and brought to Pennsylvania, before 1750, between seventy thousand and eighty thousand people. About half of these were Reformed, and there were Mennonites and Dunkards and Moravians, as well as Lutherans. Most of the thirty thousand Palatines who emigrated in 1709 came to Pennsylvania. The first Lutheran Church in the colony was formed at Fack-ner’s Swamp in 1703. The Baptists formed their first Church in New Jersey in 1684, and in Philadelphia in 1698. The Baptist Association of Philadelphia was formed in 1707* Jedediah Andrews was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry at Philadelphia in 1701. The Philadelphia Presbytery was organized in 1705 with five pastors. This Church became strong through the Scotch-Irish immigration which began in 1713.

Meanwhile Penn returned to England in 1684. There he was in high favor with James II during his short reign. In 1686 he visited Holland. On the fall of James he fell under suspicion of Jacobite tendencies. His government of Pennsylvania was taken from him in October, 1692, but was restored in August, 1694. From this time, for some years, Penn gave his time to preaching. In 1697 he preached before Peter the Great. The next year he was in Ireland. In December, 1699, he was again in Pennsylvania, where he remained two years. Retiring to England, he lived in his later years in broken health, until his death in 1718.

Other Evangelical Churches.

Penn lived and taught a religion of justice, righteousness, gentleness, simplicity, and sobriety. He made a great experiment and achieved such success as no other man has done. He cut loose from the historic life of Christendom, and hence could not have large and permanent success; but he came nearer the ideal society for the life of the community than any other founder of an American commonwealth.

The Colony of Pennsylvania was not the first proprietary colony founded by Englishmen in North America. There is scarcely a more romantic beginning of any English colony than ^Maryland* that of Maryland. Until the death of the last Lord Baltimore in 1771 without issue, it was a proprietary colony, though that government was suspended and its functions exercised by the English crown from 1692 under William and Mary until the proprietor was a Protestant, in 1715. George Calvert was born in Yorkshire in 1582, and educated at Oxford. Under James he became principal secretary of state and was knighted, receiving at the same time a large grant of land in Ireland. He was deeply concerned in the projected Spanish match for Charles I. When that failed he announced himself a Roman Catholic, and resigned his office of secretary of state. James made him Baron Baltimore, of Baltimore County, Longford, in Ireland. Late in 1622, and probably after he had become a Roman Catholic, he procured a charter for a colony in Newfoundland. In 1627 he visited this Colony of Avalon, and in the year following moved there with his wife and about a hundred colonists. Baltimore spent $150,000 (worth three times that now) upon this colony, and broke his health; but French, Puri

200 History of the Christian Church.

tans, and the rigors of the climate made the attempt a failure.

Finding this result inevitable, Baltimore sailed with his wife to Virginia in 1629. He met with a cool reception from the colonists, and returned to England, where he obtained from the king the grant of the territory north of the Potomac River, which he called Maryland. The first Lord Baltimore died before the grant of the charter. This, however, was made out to his son, Csecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, and dated June 20, 1632. The grant made Lord Baltimore a Prince Palatine, owing only feudal allegiance to the crown of England, in which he was lord proprietary, and paid annually to the crown two Indian arrows and one-fifth of all the gold and silver mined. Thus Maryland from the start was independent and self-governing so far as the mother country was concerned. The proprietor might have made his absolute power felt to the injury of the colony and the peril of the inhabitants. Three things hindered such a result: First, with all exemptions, allegiance was due to the English crown, and the English people and government were throughout this century strongly Protestant; second, the majority of the inhabitants, probably from the very first, certainly after 1643, were Evangelical Christians; third, the second and third Lords Baltimore, who were the first and second proprietors of the Maryland Palatinate, seem to have been men of eminent wisdom, justice, and humanity.

Csecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, fitted out an expedition of about twenty gentlemen and between two hundred and three hundred laboring men in the Ark and the Dove, which landed on the soil of the

Other Evangelical Churches. 201

colony, March 25, 1634. Probably the most of the gentlemen were Roman Catholics, and the majority of the laborers were Protestants. The expedition had cost about $200,000, most of it paid by Lord Baltimore. Leonard Calvert, brother of the proprietor, went out as governor, and with him went two Jesuit priests, John White and John Altham. They settled at St. Mary’s, and prospered from the first. From 1636 the governor took the following oath: “I will not, by myself or by any other, directly or indirectly, trouble, molest, or discountenance any person professing to believe in Jesus Christ, for or in respect of religion; I will make no differences of persons in conferring offices, favors, or rewards, for or in respect of religion, but merely as they shall be found faithful and well deserving, and endued with moral virtues and abilities. My aim shall be public unity, and if any person or officer shall molest any person professing to believe in Jesus Christ, on account of his religion, I will protect the person molested and punish the offender.” This was a year before Roger Williams’s founding of Providence; but Williams’s platform of religious freedom was much broader. From the foundation of the colony, so far as we know, no one under Baltimore’s rule suffered or was molested on account of his religion. In another respect Lord Baltimore showed himself a wise and far-seeing ruler, imbued with the modern spirit, and no slave to the theories of priestly absolutism. The Jesuits had obtained large grants of land from the Indian chiefs, and wished to hold it free from taxes and from all control of the civil power. Lord Baltimore at once sent to Rome to have the Jesuits removed from the province, and compromised only when the Jesuits had released all the lands they had acquired from the

202 History of the Christian Church.

Indians. In 1641 it was provided that no society or corporation could receive lands by gift or bequest without the consent of the proprietary.

In 1643 the Colony of Virginia banished the Nonconforming or Puritan settlers. On account of their industry and their character they found a warm welcome in Maryland. From this time onward the Evangelical Christians were in a large majority, and Maryland was a Roman Catholic colony only in name. There probably was no Evangelical clergyman in the colony until after 1642. Meanwhile troubles broke out in England. Leonard Calvert went to England in April, 1643, ^and returned in September of the next year. In 1645, Claiborne, who had made a settlement on Kent’s Island before 1634, and who felt himself ill-used by Calvert’s government, seized St. Mary’s, and drove Calvert from the colony. In the last of 1646, Leonard Calvert from his refuge in Virginia found the time opportune to drive out his opponents and restore the proprietary government. It was his last service for his brother; for on June 9th of the following year he died, having, on the whole, ruled Maryland wisely and well since its founding in 1634. The next year Lord Baltimore made William Stone, a Protestant, governor. In the year following there was passed an Act of Religious Toleration, which gave liberty of conscience in all matters of religion except to those who denied the Trinity. In 1650 the Assembly was organized into two Houses, the governor, the secretary, and one or more of the Council composing the Upper House, and the burgesses, or representatives, the Lower House. The Upper House was appointed by the proprietary, and the assent of both Houses was

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necessary to pass a bill. In this same year, while Governor Stone was absent, his deputy committed the folly of proclaiming Charles II. The Parliamentary Commissioners, who were in Virginia, Claiborne and Ben-net, under this pretext, overthrew the government of the proprietary, and called an election for a new Assembly. One of the acts of this Assembly was the repeal of the Act of Toleration so that it should not apply to any favoring “popery or prelacy, nor to such as, under the profession of Christ, hold forth and practice licentiousness,” which latter might be made to include Quakers and Baptists.

Lord Baltimore rebuked Governor Stone for submitting so easily to the invasion. Thus incited, Stone attacked his opponents; but was defeated and captured, March 24, 1655. The victors executed in cold blood four of the prisoners. Oliver Cromwell was England’s ruler. Lord Baltimore had from the first recognized the Parliamentary, and afterward the Protector’s, government. In 1656 the government of Maryland was restored by the decision of the Commissioners of Plantations to Lord Baltimore, an amnesty was declared, and the Toleration Act of 1649 ^was made perpetual, March 23, 1658. Some Quakers came to Maryland in 1657, and they were arrested and banished; but there were no persecutions after 1660.

So matters went on until the death of the first proprietary in 1675. Few colonial founders have left a better record. Without the breadth of view of Roger Williams and William Penn, and with strong external reasons for tolerance, it was a man of no common ability who could maintain a Roman Catholic principality in the times of the Long Parliament and of the Pro

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tectorate. The secret seems to be that his policy was one of his choice, and his character was proof of his sincerity. At his death the Protestants outnumbered the Roman Catholics in the colony twelve to one, and there were but three of the clergy of the Church of England among them.

The Roman Catholics did not largely increase by immigration. In 1669 there were but two priests in the colony, and the Roman Catholic population was estimated at two thousand. Under James II (1685-1688) there were but four Franciscans and a few Jesuits in the colony. When William and Mary came to the throne it was held that no Roman Catholic could hold office and be loyal to the Protestant succession. Thus, in 1692, the rights of the proprietary were held to have reverted to the crown, and royal governors were appointed. This, of course, signified an attempt to establish by law the Church of England. It could not succeed in the New England or the Middle Colonies, though by a trick it was sought to be made effective in New York. Although in Maryland only a small minority of the Protestants were Episcopalians, yet unfortunately the attempt succeeded. In 1692 that Church was established, and each inhabitant was taxed forty pounds of tobacco for building Episcopal churches and maintaining their clergy. In 1702 it was re-enacted, and Dissenters and Quakers were allowed to have separate meeting-houses, provided they paid the tax of tobacco. The phases of religious toleration in Maryland have never been better summed up than in these words: “The toleration of the proprietaries lasted fifty years, and under it all believers in Christ were equal before the law, and all support of Churches or min

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isters was voluntary. The Puritan toleration lasted six years, and included all but Papists, Prelatists, and those who held objectionable doctrines. The Anglican toleration lasted eighty years, and had glebes and churches for the Establishment, connivance for Dissenters, the penal laws for [Roman] Catholics, and for all the forty [pounds of tobacco] per poll.” No Roman Catholic attorney was allowed to practice in the province. In 1697 there were reported to be nine chapels in Maryland, with five priests. In 1708, out of between forty thousand to fifty thousand population, there were less than three thousand Roman Catholics, while there were eight thousand Negro slaves. The colony that from the first had practiced toleration had lost it; and Roman Catholics found toleration only in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

Governor Nicholson, in 1696, established King William’s School at Annapolis, the first high school in the province. Dr. Bray, founder of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge and for the Propagation of the Gospel, and Commissary of the Bishop of London, came to Maryland in 1700. He did something to restore discipline among the clergy, and established many parish libraries among them; but the clergy came from England; they were sure of a support. And so men who could have no place in Church or society in England were sent to Maryland, and with more impunity than in Virginia, because the Church was weak relatively to the population.

Charles, third Lord Baltimore, followed in the steps of the first proprietary in his relations to the colony. Two years before his death in 1715, his son and heir became a Protestant. As a Protestant he was given

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back the rights which the proprietary had had under the charter. These he enjoyed but two months, when he died, and left his estates and title to a minor son, who died in 1757. The sixth Lord Baltimore, the last of his race, and unworthy of his ancestry, died without issue in 1771.

The earliest of the English colonies in America had more than the usual vicissitudes of suffering and misfortune. Founded in 1607, it did not seem

Virginia.

firmly rooted until after the recovery from the Indian massacre of 1622. In motive it sought commercial gain and the power of England. Though without special religious impulse, it sought for the conversion of the Indians, and was accompanied by “an honest, religious, and courageous divine,” Rev. Robert Hunt, the first Evangelical clergyman in America. In the troubled times of the first years he was the mainstay of the colony, being a peacemaker and one who ' never complained. He succumbed to the hardships of those days, dying some time before 1610.

The expedition which was to found the Colony of Virginia left England December 19, 1606, on three vessels, the Discovery, Good Speed, and Constant, of twenty, forty, and one hundred tons. They carried about one hundred colonists. Bartholomew Gosnold and John Smith were the only men with the qualities of leadership, though George Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland, was of the company. One-half of them were “gentlementhat is, persons unused to manual labor. They sailed by the Bermudas, and reached Virginia, April 26, 1607. They landed at what they named Jamestown, May 13th, of that year. Rev. Robert Hunt administered the Lord’s Supper for the

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first time to the colonists the 21st of June. The first church was an “old rotten tent,” but soon they stretched an awning among the trees, and a bar nailed to two of them served as the first pulpit. By 1610 they had a church sixty feet long by twenty-four feet in breadth.

With July came the heat and the malaria from the swamps. George Perey says: “Burning fevers destroyed them; some departed suddenly; but, for the most part, they died of mere famine. There were never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as we were in this new discovered Virginia.” Men were heard “groaning in every corner of the fort most pitiful to hear. ... If there were any consciences in men it would make their hearts bleed to hear the pitiful murmurings and outcries; . . . some departing out of the world, sometimes three or four in a night; in the morning their bodies trailed out of the cabins like dogs to be buried.” By September famine and fever had brought half of the colony to death. In the fall health returned, but with the winter famine returned also. Gosnold died in the summer, leaving Captain John Smith the one capable leader in the devastated colony. In December, 1607, Smith was captured by the Indians. However much may be deducted from the details of Captain Smth’s narrative of his rescue from immediate death, this is certain, that the little band of settlers was saved from starvation that winter by corn brought to them by Pocahontas.

In 1608 came a second expedition, which, on its return, took back Captain Smith’s “True Relation of Virginia,” the first book written by an Englishman in America. The same year he sailed three thousand miles, thoroughly exploring Chesapeake Bay, and mak

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ing of it an excellent map. Toward winter another ship brought two women, Mistress Forest and her maid, Anne Burras. The maid married John Laydon, making the first English marriage in the New World. In the winter of 1608 famine again threatened the extinction of the colony. There were now two hundred men without food. Smith boldly seized the brother of Pocahontas in the midst of his warriors, and, threatening him with instant death, he obtained enough corn from the Indians to carry them through the winter. The next spring, Smith made the idlers work by enforcing the simple rule, “He that will not work shall not eat.” After much suffering the colony had not yet taken root. In spite of the mild climate and the fertile soil, they had not been able to raise enough to keep them from hunger. They had no such apprenticeship to toil as the Pilgrim Fathers had in Holland; they had no home ties such as animated the men of the Mayflower. Idleness and faction reigned among them. Seldom has a colony been cursed with more incapable leaders, and never were there colonists more dependent upon wise and energetic leadership. The only man capable of bringing order out of chaos, Captain Smith, sailed for England in September, 1609. When Smith left, there were nearly five hundred persons in the colony. There was now no head to the settlement, and sickness, famine, and the Indians began rapidly to thin their numbers. Six months later “there remained not past sixty men, women, and children, most miserable, poor creatures.” This was long remembered as the “Starving Time.” Never was shown more clearly the value of leadership. With Smith, or Standish, or Bradford, or Brewster, things could never have come to

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such a pass three years after the founding of the colony.

In the last of May, 1610, they reckoned that in ten days not a soul would be left alive. In this extremity, Admiral Somers and Sir Thomas Gates arrived. They had not food enough to sustain the colony, so they resolved to take the colonists on board and sail for the fishing grounds, and thence to England. All had embarked, the colony was abandoned, and the ships were anchored for the night, when a row-boat brought word of the approach of the expedition of Lord Delaware. He brought provisions to sustain all for a year. His company and the colonists landed, June 10, 1610, and Virginia was saved as an English colony. The next March, Lord Delaware returned to England. In May came Sir Thomas Dale, who ruled the colony with military severity for five years. He put an end to misrule and disorder, and made the idle work; but his temper was merciless and his punishments cruel. It was not the life of a growing colony, but the intolerable servitude of a military camp. When he left in 1616, there were three hundred and twenty-six men and twenty-five women and children, with six horses, one hundred and forty-nine cattle, sixteen goats, and abundance of swine. Dale had Been just, if stern. His successor, Argali (1617-1619) was as mercenary as any pirate, and robbed on every hand as he had opportunity, yet had influence enough to escape punishment.

This dreary record of incompetency, faction, and failure has thrown across the Virginia colony the gleam of unfading romance. In 1612, Argali seized Pocahontas, the favorite child of Powhatan, and held her as a hostage. Her father was deeply incensed, and

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resolved on revenge. But in the midst of his plans it transpired that Pocahontas desired to marry an Englishman. John Rolfe was a widower and well spoken of. He had for a year been paying addresses to the Indian maid, who did not reject them. They were married in April, 1613. In 1616 she and her husband went to England, where she was royally entertained, but, taking cold, she died in March, 1617, about twenty-two years of age. Her husband returned to Virginia, where he became prominent in the official life of the colony, and was the first to experiment, in 1618, with the culture of tobacco, which Governor Yardley later made a financial success, and which gave for the first time a solid, economic basis for the life of the colony. Her son was brought up in England, and married an English lady. He was known as Lieutenant Rolfe, and commanded a fort on the James River. He became a man of position and fortune, and many prominent Virginia families are descended from him.

Rev. Mr. Burke succeeded Robert Hunt as pastor at Jamestown. We know little of him except that he was a graduate of Oxford, and acted as chaplain at the opening of the first Virginia Assembly. A more influential man was Rev. Alexander Whittaker, “the apostle of Virginia.” He was the son of the Puritan master of St. John’s of Cambridge, and, sharing in his father’s opinions, was educated in his college. He came to Virginia with Sir Thomas Dale in 1611. He baptized, and probably married, Pocahontas. He was the author of “Good News from Virginia,” published in 1613. In 1617 he was drowned in James River. Two sentences depict the man. Of himself and of his future he said, “I abide in my vocation until I be lawfully called from

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hence.” No thought of desertion or change for more personal advantage! He concludes his “Good News from Virginia” by saying, “Awake, you true-hearted Englishmen! Remember the plantation is God’s, and the reward your country’s.” His successor, George Keith, was a Puritan like himself.

November 13, 1618, the Virginia Company granted to the colonists a “Great Charter of Commissions of Privileges, Orders, and Lawes.” This established a legislative body, and limited the power of the governor, being the germ of the American colonial and State system. The first Legislative Assembly met at Jamestown, July 30, 1619. This was the first American Legislature. There were twenty-two members of the House of Burgesses, representing eleven communities. They met with the governor and council in the church at Jamestown, and finished their labors in August. This Assembly established the Church of England, and gave to each clergyman a glebe and a salary. In 1622 the salary was fixed at one thousand five hundred pounds of tobacco and sixteen barrels of corn. There were then five clergymen in the colony.

In the meantime the colony was taking measures to become rooted in the soil. In 1619 arrived the first shipload of ninety maids, who soon became wives of the settlers, and such shipments continued until 1632. Their children became the first native Virginians. King James added also a hundred felons to the colony, and in August, 1619, were landed the first Negro slaves.

In the spring of 1622 there was a general attack on all the settlements by the Indians. Three hundred and forty-seven whites were massacred, and of eighty plantations, but eight remained. The English quickly ral

2i2 History of the Christian Church.

lied, and forever broke the power of the Indians in Eastern Virginia. From 1607 to 1623 there had come to Virginia more than six thousand people. In 1624 there were but one thousand two hundred and seventy-five living in the colony. Four-fifths of the emigrants perished.

The society of Virginia was aristocratic in its structure. The deep rivers made it possible for trading vessels to load from the plantation wharf, and the price of tobacco made a large income. The planter bought direct from the ships the European goods for his family and plantation. The style of living was patriarchal, and the hospitality profuse. There were, therefore, no manufacturers or small traders to build up towns or a citizen class; so the laborers, like the slaves, were a class by themselves. This aristocratic tone was increased by the English Civil Wars; for the Virginian society stood strongly by the Church and the king. Hence many cavaliers who found Puritan England rather warm for them sailed for Virginia, where they found the heartiest welcome.

An imposing figure of this time, and representing Virginian prejudices and convictions, was Governor Sir William Berkeley. He became governor in 1642. Soon he declared that all Nonconforming ministers must leave the colony. They and their flocks crossed the Potomac to Roman Catholic Maryland. The execution of Charles I was a grievous blow to Governor Berkeley, who proclaimed his son, and refused to acknowledge Parliament. Parliamentary Commissioners arrived in 1652, and deposed Berkeley, but dealt gently with him, allowing him to live in Virginia unmolested. In March, 1660, he was reinstated as governor, and

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ruled until the end of his life. In 1671 he reported a population of forty thousand, including two thousand Negro slaves, and six thousand white servants, and said: “There are forty-eight parishes and ministers well paid. The clergy, by my consent, would be better if they would pray oftener and preach less. But of all other commodities so of this, the worst is sent us. But I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have, these hundred years.” Here spoke the fanatical royalist, and the theories of the Stuart despotism in their logical consequence. This made the kindly and upright Sir William Berkeley a cruel tyrant when Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion, justly provoked, broke out a few years later. Twenty-three were executed, and the estates of fifty were confiscated. Charles II, who, with all his faults, was not bloodthirsty, said, “That old fool has hanged more men in that naked country than I have done for the murder of my father.” Berkeley was recalled by the king, who delayed giving him audience and broke his heart. He died in London, July 13, 1677.

All was not prosperous in the Church more than in the State. Rev. Morgan Goodwin in a letter to Berkeley describes “the parishes as extending, some of them, sixty or seventy miles in length, and lying void [vacant] for many years to save charges [taxes].” Jamestown itself, he states, had, with short intervals, been thus destitute for twenty years. In the interregnum of Berkeley’s rule the Quakers first came to Virginia— Elizabeth Harris in 1656, and Josiah Coale and Thomas Thurston in 1657. They were imprisoned and banished. After 1661, Quakers were punished with a fine.

The most noted clergyman in Virginia in this period

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was James Blair. He was a Scotchman, who came to Virginia in 1685. Returning to England he raised over $20,000, and procured a charter for James Biair. ^^ie College of William and Mary, February 8, 1693. The attitude of many English statesmen to the colonists may be seen in the reply of Sir Edward Seymour, the attorney-general, to Blair, as he was urging him to prepare the charter. Blair begged him to consider that the people in Virginia had souls to save as well as the people in England. Seymour answered: “Souls! Damn your souls ! Make tobacco.” In this reply is the secret and the necessity for the American Revolution.

Blair was made the first president of the college, an office which he retained for forty-nine years. For fifty years he was member of the King’s Council, and for fifty-five years commissary of the Bishop of London for Virginia. When, in 1742, he died at the age of eighty-eight, the Episcopal Church owed to him an incalculable debt of gratitude. Neverthless, the college was never largely attended. For the first seventy years of its existence it rarely had at one time more than twenty students in attendance. The contrast with Harvard is very strong, and shows the effect of the necessity, for lack of episcopal ordination, of importing the clergy from beyond the sea.

There was quite a Huguenot immigration in 1698

1699, and taxes were remitted to the immigrants for seven years; likewise to the larger German element, in 1713, for ten years.

In 1710, Rev. Henry Hoeger, of the German Reformed Church, came with a colony to North Carolina. They were broken up and massacred by the Indians

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215

in 1711, when Hoeger and fifty survivors came to Virginia. In 1714 the first Baptist Church was formed at Burleigh, Virginia.

In 1720 there were forty-four parishes of the Episcopal Church in Virginia. There was a church in each parish, and in some several chapels, or seventy church-buildings in all. Each parish had a parsonage, with two hundred and fifty acres of land. More than half had clergymen, the rest lay readers. There was little learning and less discipline. The state of religion was low, and many of the clergy were unworthy. As in all the colonies, the smallpox was a fearful scourge.

Roger Greene, from Virginia in 1653, settled in Chowan, on the north shore of Albemarle Sound. In 1662, George Durant settled just east of Chowan. This Albemarle colony was given _c^_r°nna. a settled form in 1664. Clarendon, on Cape Fear River, was settled in 1665. For years North Carolina was a refuge for those who did not do well, or wished to evade the laws of Virginia. In 1690 the Clarendon colony was abandoned. Joseph Archdale, a Quaker, governed successfully the two Carolinas in 1695. After one year he left the office to his friend, Joseph Blake, nephew of Admiral Blake, who died in

1700. The first clergyman came to North Carolina in 1703; though the Quakers were there as early as 1671, and George Fox in 1672. There was the same effort made in North as in South Carolina to establish the Episcopal Church at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but it miscarried in both cases. From 1700 to 1710 many Huguenots settled on the Taw River, and Swiss and Germans under Baron de Graffenried founded New Berne. The Tuscaroras arose, and, Sep

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tember 22-24, ^I7^II> massacred the whites with every horrible torture known to them. Some hundreds were butchered, one hundred and thirty at New Berne alone. The Indians were cut to pieces, and withdrew to Western New York.

In North Carolina society was the rudest and religion the lowest in any of the colonies. Under Governor Eden, founder of Edenton (1714-1722), liberty of conscience was secured to Dissenters, and Quakers were allowed to affirm.

Charleston was settled in 1670, but changed to its present site in 1680. It then had a population of two thousand five hundred. Port Royal was Carolina, settled by the Scotch in 1683. There was a larger Huguenot element at Charleston than in any other Southern colony from 1685. English and Scotch-Irish came in 1683. Negro slaves were first imported in 1671. The Huguenots took a prominent place in society, and were given the rights of Englishmen in 1699. The Episcopal Church of St. Philips was founded in 1682. Atkin Williamson was its first pastor (1681-96). He was succeeded by an able man, Samuel Marshall (1696-1699). Samuel Thomas and Dr. Le Jean, Episcopal missionaries, labored among the Indians. There was an Indian uprising in 1715 in South Carolina, in which four hundred whites were massacred, and the Indians were driven from the colony. A revolution in 1719 overthrew the power of the proprietaries, and the crown purchased their rights in 1729 for about $250,000.

The first Baptist church in Charleston was built in 1700. Thus was begun the life of the Evangelical Churches in North America.

Chapter V.

THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND UNTIL 1720.

While Puritanism was having its last struggle with the Established Church in England, a strife far more bitter was being waged in Scotland.

Charles II had taken the Solemn League Scotland? and Covenant in 1650, and sworn to it at his coronation at Scone in 1651; but when he came to the throne it appeared that oaths sat lightly on him, and he liked the Presbyterian form of Church government and discipline no better than his father and grandfather. In August, 1661, an Act Recessory was passed, which annulled all acts of Parliament passed since 1640, declaring the right of Church government inherent in the crown, and so restoring Episcopacy. A fit tool for this work was found in James Sharp, who was appointed Archbishop of St. Andrews. He, with three others, among whom was the saintly Robert Leighton, were consecrated to Scottish Sees, December 15, 1661, at London. Afterward nine other Sees were filled. Only two of the new bishops were remarkable for either piety or learning. Thus was the Church of Scotland turned into an Episcopal establishment. Sharp, who had betrayed the Presbyterians, now ruled with a rod of iron. He re-established the Court of High Commission. Three hundred and fifty of the Presbyterian clergy were deprived, and all laymen absent

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from the church, or attending other services, were fined. The deprived clergy ministered to their flocks as they could, and so, to put down field preaching, soldiers were quartered upon the inhabitants. In this way ten thousand soldiers, mostly Highlanders, were quartered on the western shires. Before 1678 it is estimated that seventeen thousand persons were fined or imprisoned.

The leader among those who frequented the field preaching was Richard Cameron, who taught that King Charles, having violated his oath to the Covenant, had thereby released his subjects from their allegiance. He taught also that the State could not prescribe the government for the Church, but that the Solemn League and Covenant was of perpetual validity. Hence they were called Covenanters. Archbishop Sharp was inquisitorial, malicious, and cruel. In 1672 death was prescribed as the penalty for a minister who should preach in the fields or conventicles. This did not stop the preaching, but it deepened the hatred against Sharp. On May 3, 1679, ^{on a} moor a few miles from St. Andrews, the coach of the archbishop was stopped, and he was taken out and killed in the presence of his daughter.

This, of course, increased the persecution, and field conventicles were declared treasonable. The point of resistance had now been reached. Graham of Claver-house, afterward Viscount of Dundee, was defeated at Drumclog, June 1, 1679. Cameron, who had been rebuked by the clergy at Edinburgh in 1677 and retired to Holland, had returned. The opponents of the government, through their dissensions and want of conduct, were overthrown at Bothwell Bridge, June 22, 1679. A reign of terror now ensued. Confiscation,

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torture, and death became the lot of all who could be implicated in the abortive rising. Cameron proclaimed at Sanquhar, June 22, 1680, that Charles II had forfeited his crown, and was killed in a skirmish at Airds-more the 22d of July following. A leader quite as resolute took his place, Donald Cargill. On June 3, 1680, an attempt was made to arrest him at Queensferry. Cargill escaped, but his companion, Henry Hall, was killed. On his person was found a document called the Queensferry Paper, which took extreme positions in politics and religion verging on republicanism. Cargill had been at Bothwell Bridge, and had joined in the Sanquhar Declaration. In September, 1680, he excommunicated the king and his brother, the Duke of York.

He was at length apprehended and executed, Tulv 2 1681.    ^J ’

With the accession of James II the persecution became more universal and more cruel. In many respects it vied with that which Louis was visiting on his Huguenot subjects in these years. Two or three instances, well attested, will suffice to make clear the misery of the situation. John Bell was the only son of the heiress of Whiteside, who married for her second husband the Viscount of Kenmuir. Mr. Bell was a gentleman of estate, sensible and pious. In 1681, Claverhouse came to his home and staid with his troopers for several weeks until they had eaten up all that was there, even to the meadows. The sheep and horses were all taken, and the growing crop given to the Episcopal curate, who took possession of it. Then what they could not use up or carry oft they broke down or spoiled, breaking up and burning the very timber of the house. But worse was to come. In Feb

220 History of the Christian Church.

ruary, 1685, the dragoons surprised him and four others on Kirkconnel Hill, and, though they had been promised quarter and surrendered, all were instantly shot without time to offer prayer.

In May, Claverhouse, unprovoked, cruelly murdered John Brown of Priesthill. For his piety Brown was known as the Christian Carrier. The only offense that could be alleged against him was, that he did not attend the Episcopal service. Claverhouse ordered him to be brought to his own door, his wife with a young infant standing by. Brown was given time to pray, which he did in a most moving manner. The very dragoons were affected. Not one of them would obey Claverhouse’s command, so he shot him with his own hand. The stricken wife said, “Well, sir, you must give an account of what you have done.” Claverhouse answered, “To men I can be answerable; and as for God, I ’11 take him into mine own hand/’ It is said Claverhouse never shook off the impression of Brown’s prayer on that fatal day.

On May nth in the next year, Margaret Mc-Lauchlan, a widow of sixty-three years of age, and Margaret Wilson, a young girl of eighteen, were staked before the incoming tide at Wigton. The older woman was staked farther out that Margaret Wilson might see her die, and, being tempted, submit. Once the water was over the young girl, and she was drawn up and asked if she would swear to the king. She said: “I will not. I am one of Christ’s children. Let me go.” Thus, for no crime but refusing an oath of allegiance to one who they believed had forfeited the crown, both passed from beyond all violence and clamor, where there is peace for the children of God.

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The accession of William and Mary brought an end to these scenes of horror; but the remembrance of them has never died from the Scottish people. The Declaration and Claim of Right, analogous to the English Bill of Rights, forbade forever their repetition. Now the tables were turned, June 3, 1690. The Estates established the Church of Scotland on the basis of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the full Presbyterian government and discipline. The bishops, under whom simple country people and even women were put to death for refusing to swear allegiance to King Charles or to King James, now refused to swear to King William. They suffered the loss of their incomes, but no other punishment. They remained quiet and in obscurity, but they formed the backbone of the Jacobite party. Their number dwindled down to five at the death of Archbishop Ross in 1704. Then they came together, and resolved to continue the succession; but their fortunes were bound up with those of the Jacobite party until after the final defeat in 1745. On the other hand, the Covenanters, or Cameronians, could not accept the settlement of the Church of 1690. It was done by the State and not by the Church itself, which was against their cardinal principle. The Covenant was not even mentioned in that act. Then, again, the comprehension was made so wide that many, or most, of the Episcopal clergy could retain their places in the Establishment by taking the oath of allegiance. Thus men with the blood of the Covenanters on their hands were permitted to remain in the ministry of the Church of Scotland. All this was an offense to the Covenanters, who formed the majority in the western shires, and who had not loved their lives unto the death.

222 History of the Christian Church.

They remained Dissenters from the Church of Scotland, and were without a single ordained minister until 1707, or enough to form a Presbytery until 1743. This was the origin of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. The great body of the nation and nearly all the clergy remained in the Established Church.

The Church of England, 1689-1725.

In the midst of the preparation for the fearful strife in which the Church of England should go down as her The English primate and king laid their heads upon the Latitudi- block of the executioner, and the Puritan narians. p_arf-y _were to come to rule England and at the same time to break into so many sects as to shatter forever the dream of enforced religious unity among men of English speech, there was forming a group of independent thinkers who hated equally the political oppression of Laud and the religious dogmatism of the Puritans. These men were the Latitudinarians. They loved religious liberty and they hated theological strife. They did not realize the necessary connection between civil and religious liberty; they did not see that, with all the hardness and narrowness of the Puritans, the hopes of the future liberty and weal of England were with them, and not with their opponents. They clave to the party of the king. They were thinkers, not the guiders of parties or nations; but, though late, they came into their heritage. By a strange turn of circumstances their school ruled the English Church for a century succeeding the overthrow of the Puritan party and the Act of Toleration. The defects of the school and the great movement it led will later come under our notice; it is sufficient now to call attention to the

Churches of Scotland and England. 223

admirable characters which illustrated it, to the principles which they maintained, and to the significance of these principles in the history of English Christianity.

These thinkers group themselves around the radiant figure of young Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, who laid down his life for the Royalist cause _Lord on the field of Newbury in September, Falkland.

1643, iⁿ ^e thirty-fourth year of his age. ^,6lo“^l643' Falkland had come to favor with the Stuart king and was ennobled, and later, in 1622, made Deputy, or, as we would say, Lord Lieutenant, of Ireland, when his son Lucius was but twelve years of age. There he remained for the next seven years, and there young Cary received his education at Trinity College, Dublin, and proved himself no ordinary scholar. Strafford replaced Falkland in 1629. Out of favor and with broken fortunes the father returned to London, and four years later death came, a welcome release. Meanwhile things ripened rapidly for the precocious son. Before he was of age he married Lettice, the sister of his dearest friend, Sir Henry Morrison. This marriage, which separated father and son, proved a singularly happy one. The same year the father of the young husband’s mother died, and left him a large property, including a country seat at Great Tew. On his return from Ireland he was welcomed by a group of poets who made their headquarters at the Apollo, a room in a London tavern. Here, with Ben Jonson at their head, met Carew, Waller, Davenant, Suckling, and others. In 1631, Cary broke away from this circle of wits, and, with his young wife, lived a year in Holland. Returning the next year, he retired from public life and from London, and made his home at Great Tew. Here he gave himself

224 History of the Christian Church.

to the study of the classics and of the Fathers of the Church, at the same time gathering around him such a circle of friends noted for their wit and their learning as could not at that day be duplicated in Europe. Besides his friends of the Apollo, who were always welcome, there came men already known to us, Selden and Hobbes; and the Anglican divines, Hammond, Sheldon, and Morley; and two more intimate than any of these with the young Lord Falkland, John Hales of Eton, and William Chillingworth, who for years made his home at Great Tew. Clarendon, who was a welcome friend and guest of the master, thus describes the life at Great Tew. He says it was “within ten or twelve miles of the university [Oxford] ; looked like the university itself by the company that was always found there.” All “found their lodgings there as readily as in the colleges; nor did the lord of the house know of their coming or going, nor who were in his house, till he came to dinner or supper, where all still met; otherwise there was no trouble, ceremony, or restraint, to forbid men to come to the house, or to make them weary of staying there; so that many came thither to study in a better air, finding all the books they could desire in his library, and all the persons together whose company they could wish, and could not find in any other society.”

This charming society was broken up when Falkland, as a volunteer, accompanied the expedition against the Scotch in 1639. The next year he sat in the Short Parliament, and was a member of its famous successor. In the Long Parliament he went with the popular party until the execution of Strafford. He was eager in all that concerned the doing away

Churches of Scotland and England. 225

of abuses, including those of the bishops. He advocated the execution of Strafford. But when he saw that the popular movement meant the overthrow of Episcopacy, he paused. He voted for the measures which abolished the Bishops’ Courts, and excluded them from the House of Lords. He said expressly that he did not believe in the Divine right of the bishops; but he did not believe it was wise or right to abolish the office; that he would purge it of abuses, but would retain it; nor did he believe in the Divine right of presbyters. On the abolition of the Episcopacy and the Grand Remonstrance, he parted from Hampden and Pym. In January, 1642, notwithstanding the arrest of the five members, of which plan he was ignorant, he took office under the king as secretary of state. This he held until his death, but all the while longing for peace, peace in years that knew only bitterness, contention, and devastating civil war, in which went down the king, the kingdom, and the Church, to all of which he was tenderly attached.

Notable among those who gathered at Great Tew was John Hales, “the ever-memorable John Hales, of Eton.” John Hales was born at Bath in 1584. He early went to Oxford, where he ^J°₅g" ”5*“’ became a prodigy of learning, and was chosen Fellow in 1605. His favorite studies were philosophy and Greek. In 1612 he was made Greek professor. In 1618 he was in Holland, and attended the Synod of Dort, where, as we remember, he bade John Calvin “Good-night.” On his return he lived as Fellow of Eton until the civil wars. He had one of the finest libraries in England, and was often at Great Tew. Undoubtedly his thought and life were

15

226 History of the Christian Church.

much influenced by the great provost of Eton at this time, 1624-1639.

Sir Henry Wotton came of a distinguished English family, and was educated at Oxford. From thence he passed to the Continent, where he studied six years, becoming proficient in German and Italian, as well as in the university studies of the time. He entered the service of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and while there was able to perform signal service for James I, then in Scotland. On that king’s accession, Wotton was knighted and made ambassador to Venice. He remained in diplomatic positions for the next twenty years, becoming finally ambassador to Vienna. Fiom this service he returned to England, and was made provost at Eton, having previously taken deacon's orders in 1624. The wide experience and the deep religious feeling of Sir Henry Wotton could not fail to impress such a man as John Hales. His spirit and temper are shown by some anecdotes which Wotton has preserved for us, and which have value yet for the Church. Being asked “whether a papist may be saved,” he answered: “You may be saved without knowing that; look to yourself.” Hearing one rail against the papists, he said: “Pray, sir, forbear till you have studied the points better; for the wise Italians have this proverb, ‘He that understands amiss, concludes worse.’ And take heed of thinking that the further you go from the Church of Rome the nearer you are to God.” At Rome a priest invited him to hear vesper music at his church. The priest, seeing him stand in a corner, sent a choir-boy to him with this question in writing, “Where was your religion to be found before Luther?” Sir Henry wrote in

Churches of Scotland and England. 227

reply, “My religion was to be found then where yours is not to be found now, in the written Word of Gcd.” He knew well Arminius, and attested that “he was a man of most rare learning; and I know him to be of a most strict life and of a most meek spirit.”

Wotton died before the evil days came. Hales lived to see poverty and the loss of those dearest to him. He sold his library, but gave most of the proceeds away. He is known to us by a tract on “Schism,” and a treatise “On the Lord’s Supper” and “The Power of the Keys.” Hales was a thinker of most penetrating intellect, and his thought went to the center of the question at issue. His main position was, that theological differences are not religious differences, and should not prevent a common unity in faith and worship. In the Lord’s Supper he saw two things, the commemoration of the death and passion of the Son of God and witness to our union with Christ and our communion one with another. On the power of the keys he says, “Every one, of what state or condition soever, that hath any occasion offered him to serve another in the ways of life, clergy or lay, male or female, whatever he be, hath these keys, not only for himself, but for the benefit of others; ... to save a soul every man is a priest.”

The ablest member of this group of like-minded and noble-minded friends was William Chillingworth, the author of “The Religion of Protestants,

⁰    William

a Safe Way to Salvation.” Chillingworth chiiiing-was born at Oxford in October, 1602. worth.

1602-1644.

Laud was his godfather. He was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, where he took his Master’s degree at twenty-one, and five years later was made

228 History of the Christian Church.

Fellow. At Oxford, we are told, “he was the readiest and nimblest disputant in the university.” When about thirty years of age, the Jesuits, who had perverted the Duchess of Buckingham and also the mother of Lord Falkland and his younger brothers, brought Chilling-worth, too, into their toils. The argument ran thus: “There must be one Church that is infallible in matters of faith; that Church can only be the Church of Rome.” This is the old and familiar argument. Chil-lingworth thought that he had sufficient reason to believe this, and went to the Jesuit college at Douay. But his reasonings did not stop. From a Roman Catholic divine he learned that the Church’s freedom from error was limited to things necessary. He doubted whether the differences between the Roman Catholics and the Evangelicals were touching things necessary. But he was told it was for the Church to decide whether they were necessary. The ground of this was, that only Scripture or the Church could decide, and that the Scripture depended for its authority upon the Church. But upon examination he concluded that the Scripture was to be received as the Word of God, not on the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, but on “the general consent of Christians of all nations and ages—a far greater company than the Church of Rome.” He came also to the further conviction that an infallible interpreter of the Scriptures is not necessary to human salvation, because “it is unreasonable to think that any one reading Scripture Svith no other end but to find the will of God/ should have it imputed to him as a fault that in any respect he mistook that will.” Thus he reasoned himself back to the Evangelical faith. In 1631, when he returned to Lon

Churches of Scotland and England. 229

don, this change had already taken place. Of course, he met with denunciations from those who, like him, had gone to the Roman Catholics, but, unlike him, remained there. To one of these he wrote: “Is it a crime to endeavor with all my understanding to find your religion true, and not to be able to do so? Is it a crime to employ all my reason in justification of the infallibility of the Roman Church, and to find it impossible to be justified? I will call God to witness, who knows my heart better than you, that I have evened the scale of my judgment as much as possibly I could, and have not willingly allowed any one grain of worldly motives on either side, but have weighed the reasons for your religion and against, with such indifference as if there were nothing in the world but God and myself, and is it my fault that the scale goes down which hath the most weight in If; that that building falls which hath a false foundation? . . . If you can convince me of willful opposition against known truth, of negligence in seeking it, of unwillingness to find it, of preferring temporal respects before it, or of any other fault which it is in my power to amend, if I amend it not, be as angry with me as you please.”

He also remarks in another place, what experience in our time abundantly confirms, “that the Roman religion is much more exorbitant in the general practice of it than it is in the doctrine published in the books of controversy, where it is delivered with much caution and moderation—nay, cunning and dissimulation—that it may be the better to win and engage proselytes.”

Chillingworth’s great work was written in reply to two books by the Jesuit Knott, who endeavored to

230 History of the Christian Church.

prove that Protestants could not be saved. This “monument of Christian genius” was written at Great Tew, 1635 to 1637, and published in the latter year. This great book has not the interest which it had then. Few are concerned to prove that on the position of the Roman Catholics themselves the Evangelical Christians may hope for salvation. The words of the Scripture and the witness of the Holy Spirit are to us greater evidence of salvation than any absolution ministered by the Roman Catholic Church can afford. Yet some words of Chillingworth will never die from the Church, and bear the stamp of perennial truth. His saying, “The Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of the Protestants,” expresses the mission in all generations of Evangelical Christianity. So he disposes of the necessity of an infallible Church in these memorable words: “They that err and they that do not err may both be saved. So that those places which contain things necessary, and where no error was dangerous, need no infallible interpreter, because they are plain; and those that are obscure need none, because they contain not things that are necessary; neither is error in them dangerous.”

Chillingworth, hating bitterness and strife, like his friends, threw in his lot with the royal cause. He was taken prisoner at Arundel Castle, and in January,

1644, a few months after his friend Falkland, passed to eternal peace. Thus left the world amid unseemly strife about his dying bed, the keenest wit, the most magnanimous controversialist, and the most catholic spirit of his time.

A school of thinkers made themselves felt after the Restoration who shared, with the thinkers of the

Churches of Scotland and England. 231

group which centered about Falkland, an equal hatred for the Puritan narrowness and harshness and for the persecuting spirit of the restored Church. _The These men. had studied at the Puritan col- Cambridge lege of Emmanuel, and lived and taught at ^PIaton,sts-Cambridge. The earlier group were connected with Oxford. They were concerned with questions which centered in the Church, and they wished a truly national and comprehensive Church, which should know no compulsion of the conscience or of the intellect. The Cambridge Platonists sought to show the essential harmony of reason and religion, of culture and piety. They sought as their philosophic basis the Platonic philosophy, especially as interpreted in the age of Origen. They were not men of the breadth of experience and the knowledge of the world, or social charm, of the group at Great Tew, but they dealt with deeper and more fundamental problems. The former dealt with the Church, these with the foundations and essence of religion itself. That the fashionable materialism of Hobbes did not prevail in English thought we owe largely to their labors. Though they followed in the steps of their Oxford predecessors from the Puritan side, in which they were nurtured, to them was first applied the term Latitudinarians, which characterizes the whole movement.

The most noted men of this circle were Benjamin Whichcote, John Smith, Ralph Cud worth, and Henry More. Ralph Cudworth alone can claim our attention, and that especially for his refutation of the fundamental positions of Hobbes and for the enduring foundation which he laid for Christian Theism.

Ralph Cudworth was born in 1617. He took his

232 History of the Christian Church.

M. A. degree in 1639, ^an^ took rank at once for his thorough and comprehensive knowledge of philosophy

Ralph shown in his first publication, published

cudwortb. in 1642. In 1645 he was made Regius

i6i7"i688

⁷’ * Professor of Hebrew, and nine years later master of Christchurch College. This he held, with some clerical preferment, until his death in 1688.

The importance of Cudworth is seen in his master work, “The True Intellectual System of the Universe,” published in 1678. The school to which Cudworth belonged owed its influence to the use of reason in the fundamental problems of religious thought. Cudworth did this thoroughly and comprehensively as against materialistic Atheism, and the denial of the basis of morality in the freedom of the human will. He went to the root of the matter, and vindicated the reality of mind or spiritual existence, and that moral judgment is the spiritual affirmation of the soul itself. He sums up the whole subject thus: “These three things are the fundamentals or essentials of true religion ; namely, that all things do not float without a head or governor, but there is an omnipotent, understanding Being presiding over all; that God hath an essential goodness and justice; and that the differences of good and evil, moral and immoral, honest and dishonest, are not by mere will and law only, but by nature; and, consequently, that the Deity can not act, influence, and necessitate men to such things as are in their own nature evil; and, lastly, that necessity is not intrinsical to the nature of everything, but that men have such a liberty or power over their own actions as may render them accountable for the same, and blameworthy when they do amiss; and, consequently,

Churches of Scotland and England. 233

that there is a justice distributive of rewards and punishments running through the world.”

The Oxford group sought to reduce to its lowest essential terms the meaning and definition of the Church, in order to broaden the basis of Christian fellowship and common worship. The Cambridge circle sought to define and establish the essential fundamentals of the Christian religion, in order to refute Atheism and Determinism, and to draw men alienated by the dogmatism of conflicting parties and creeds to the Christian faith. This was a most valuable and important work at the time, but it had its dangers. There is danger in exaggerating the content and demands of the Christian faith; there is danger, also, in minimizing them. The latter became apparent in the progress of the Latitudinarian movement.

The movement thus begun for broadening the basis for Christian belief and fellowship beyond the bounds of the traditional dogma found able advocacy in Edward Stillingfleet (1635-1699), Dean of St. Paul’s, 1678-1689; Bishop of Worcester, 1689-1699. He is known to us as a catholic-minded and able preacher and scholar. His chief works are “Irenicum,” “Origines Sacrse,” and “Origines Britannicse.

Of even greater influence were two great preachers, John Tillotson (1630-1694), and Isaac Barrow (1630-1677). Tillotson was educated at _John

Cambridge, where he was made Fellow in niiotson.

•    1630-1604.

1651. He soon made a great reputation as

a preacher, and preached to the lawyers of Lincoln’s

Inn for almost thirty years, 1662-1691. He was made

Dean of Canterbury in 1672, and of St. Paul’s in 1691;

he succeeded Sancroft as Archbishop of Canterbury

234 History of the Christian Church.

in May, 1692, and died November 22, 1694. Tillotson was the most popular preacher of his time. Though he began life as a Puritan, and did not part from the Presbyterians until 1662, none doubted his sincerity. His candor, moderation, and the clearness of his style, as contrasted with the harsh and dogmatic teaching which prevailed, gave audience and favor. His sermons, modeled on Chrysostom, which were not profound in thought or vivid in imagination, brought in a new style of pulpit oratory.

Isaac Barrow, one of the noblest of English scholars, thinkers, and preachers, was born in London,

Isaac October, 1630. He was educated at the Barrow. Charterhouse school, later the school of 1630-1677. John Wesley. In this school, though rather small in size, he was noted for his love of fighting rather than for study. He, however, received a thorough training at Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduation he traveled in France, Italy, and in the East to Smyrna. On the voyage he fought with the utmost bravery, beating off an Algerine pirate. A year he resided in Constantinople, where he studied Chrysostom, whom he preferred to any of the Fathers. From Constantinople he voyaged to Venice; thence through Germany and Holland to London, arriving in 1659. In 1660 he received ordination, and the same year was appointed Professor of Greek in Cambridge. Two years later this chair was exchanged for that of Geometry. The following year, at its first election, the Royal Society chose him as a member. In 1669 he resigned his chair of Mathematics to his great pupil, Isaac Newton. In 1672 he was made master of Trinity College, and three years iater vice-chancellor of the

Churches of Scotland and England. 235

university. In mathematics he had shown himself able and clear, but no original genius, like Des Cartes or Leibnitz or Newton. As a thinker and writer, within the limits of the knowledge of the time, and commanding that knowledge to its furthest circumference, Barrow is unexcelled. In a certain breadth of view, largeness of knowledge, and soundness of judgment, he stands unapproached with Hooker and Butler. In style he has neither the brilliancy of Hooker nor the obscurity of Butler. Few are the men who can read Barrow and not learn from him. Those who do not, wish another order of knowledge; for no man was more thorough master of his own vast field. The author owes to him a debt which he can acknowledge, but never repay.

Tillotson was succeeded as Archbishop of Canterbury by Thomas Tenison. Tenison was educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in 1657, Thomas and was made Fellow in 1662. After re- Tenison. ceiving preferment in Huntingdonshire and Norwich, he went to London as rector of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields in 1680. He became Bishop of Lincoln in 1692, and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1694. He had the full confidence of the king, and under him the Whig clergy came to the Episcopate. They were learned and moderate. They had a bitter opposition from the Jacobites and Non jurors and from the High Church clergy.

Ken, the noblest of the Non jurors, did not wish new ordinations which should prolong the schism; but this was secured by the joint action of Lloyd, formerly of St. Asaph, Turner of Ely, and White of Peterborough, in 1694. Thus the schism, which could not

236 History of the Christian Church.

possibly effect anything except in the event of a second Stuart restoration, dragged on a feeble and inglorious course for the next hundred years. For Nonjurors. ^el^even years Convocation was not called.

Finally it met, and it was regularly called with the opening of the sessions of Parliament from 1701 to 1717. There are no more disgraceful records of squabbles and intrigues, personal and political, in the records of Church assemblies than those of the High Church clergy in the Lower House in conflict with the Upper, or House of Bishops, in the Convocation. If any legislative body ever earned loss of power through misuse of it, it was the Convocation of the Church of England in the first seventeen years of the eighteenth century. In fact, the clergy entered with zeal into the politics of the time on the Tory side. They strove for the passage of the bill against occasional conformity by Dissenters, which was to shut them, under the Test Act, from every civil or military oflice in England. In this they were unsuccessful in 1701, 1702, and 1703. The queen, who, in ecclesiastical matters, was governed by Sharp, Archbishop of York, a High Churchman, desired the passage of the bill. Under the influence of Marlborough and a Whig majority in the Commons, she could not aid very much the High Church party. All the greater was their violence and bitterness.

On November 5, 1709, Dr. Sacheverell preached before the lord mayor and aldermen of London a scurrilous political sermon in favor of the Tory interest. Forty thousand copies of it were sold. Very unwisely, the ministry impeached the preacher at the bar of the House of Lords, and on March 20th he

Churches of Scotland and England. 237

was pronounced guilty. He was so plainly the idol of the people that only the mild sentence of three years suspension was pronounced. The queen conferred upon him two livings. Parliament was dissolved. The Tories and High Churchmen were in a large majority in the new Parliament. The bill against occasional conformity was passed, and also a more disgraceful measure which forbade any Dissenter from teaching a school under the absurd cry that the Church was in danger. The Churchmen around the queen could not cure her of her habit of strong drink, which brought on dropsy. They also failed in bringing in, though they used their utmost endeavors, her Roman Catholic half-brother as her successor. The clergy had had their day of power; no one could say that they had used it either with moderation or common sense.

One finds it difficult to blame them for not liking the idea of the thoroughly alien Elector of Hanover as an English king. From the death of Elizabeth to the reign of Victoria, England never had a sovereign who identified himself with the interests and sympathies of the English people. The only exception would be the uncrowned Cromwell. For two hundred and thirty years the English sovereigns were aliens, or faithless, or incompetent. This for a proud people was a lot hard to bear; but it doubtless helped English liberty and English power. During this period, in 1698, was founded the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge to give gratuitous instruction to the poor, and- to publish cheap Bibles and religious books. Its work has wrought untold good until this day. In

1701, through the efforts of Dr. Thomas Bray, one of the five who formed the above society, was organ

238 History of the Christian Church.

ized the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which has been of such invaluable assistance to the Church of England in her colonies. Charity schools also were established, five hundred in the opening years of the century. In 1710, Parliament voted to build fifty new churches. Many local societies for moral improvement and for devotional purposes came into existence, and were a kind of prototype of the societies founded by Wesley later in the century.

Some men of abiding influence illustrated the life of the Church at this time. Such were Humphrey Prideaux, author of “The Connection of Sacred and Profane History;” Joseph Bingham, who has put in his debt all succeeding students of Christian archaeology in his “Antiquities of the Christian Church.” Such, as theologians, were George Bull, William Beveridge, and Daniel Waterland.

In 1714, George I came to the throne. The insurrection in favor of the son of James II proved abortive. In December, 1715, Archbishop Tenison died, and he was succeeded in January, 1716, in the See of Canterbury, by William Wake (1657-1737). The new archbishop was a graduate of Christchurch, Oxford, where he took his Master’s degree in 1679. *682 he went to Paris as chaplain of a special embassy. Three years later he was named preacher at Gray's Inn. In 1689 he was made canon of Christ Church, and in 1693 rector of St. James, Westminster. In 1705 he became Bishop of London, and as such he distinguished himself as a defender of the position of the Upper House in the Convocation controversy. Wake was learned, broadminded, and moderate in his opinions. Convocation was allowed to sit under the

Churches of Scotland and England. 239

new reign. George Hoadly, Bishop of Bangor, was a keen and able controvertialist. In the preceding reign he had argued strenuously, against passive obedience, much to the disgust of the High Church party. Now he preached, in March, 1717, a sermon before the king, in which he declared against the notion of any visible Church or the necessity of fellowship with the same, sincerity being sufficient. Convocation took the matter up in May, and reported censuring the doctrine preached. Upon this the Convocation was ordered prorogued by the Whig ministry, and no Convocation of the clergy of the Church of England met again for more than one hundred and thirty years. This was, no doubt, an injury both to the Church and people of England; but if any body of clergy in their assemblies neglected religion and played politics, it was the English clergy after the Revolution of 1688.

Chapter VI.

GERMAN PIETISM.

Germany,, after the Thirty Years’ War, felt the lacerations and corruptions of the national life and of the people in religion and morals, as well 1675^*7. ^as *ⁿ economic resources and intellectual life. There must be a renewal and rein-vigoration in the religious life if there was to be a future for Germany. The outward conditions were little favorable. The predominant influence of Louis XIV, and the still greater influence of the fashions, the refinement, and the licentiousness of his court, made the need greater, and harder the task of a thoroughly religious revival. The Lutheran Church was given mainly to an intellectual adjustment of the truths of Scripture and the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord according to the Scholastic method, and to a fierce scrutiny of all within its fold for heretical declination from Lutheran orthodoxy, and polemical warfare against all opposers, Reformed or Roman Catholics.

The Church was under the control of the State; that is, of the innumerable German princelings and their Councils, many of whom in life and conduct were examples of what Christians should not be; notably the first Lutheran princes of the age, the Electors of Saxony. The laity had no part in the Church life,

240

German Pietism.

241

except through the above-named Council, and in singing and private confession.

The motto of the Lutheran Church was the Word and the sacraments. If these be given to the people in their purity, then the clergy and the Church can do no more. The people believed if they were baptized and received the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and were neither Calvinists nor Roman Catholic in their faith, but were true orthodox Lutherans, they would be saved. They did not think that either a personal religious experience or correct morals were essential. The clergy in many cases were the exponents and-exemplification of this belief. In general, the Lutheran Church was in the lethargy of a dead orthodoxy. There was need of the voice of Christ through human lips which should awaken to spiritual life. This came through the noblest and most influential Christian teacher in Germany in the seventeenth century, Philip Jacob Spener.

It is true that others had preceded him in calling for an awakened spiritual life in the Lutheran Church. Reinhold recounts the names, labors, and influence of ninety theologians, teachers, ^spen^!* lawyers, and princes, who, in the half century before Spener, felt the needs of the Church and cried for its revival. There was one even earlier John Arndt (1555-1621), a student of medicine and afterwards a learned theologian, who served as pastor in Anhalt and Quedlinburg, 1583-1599; at St. Martin’s Church, Brunswick, 1599-1611; and in Liineburg as pastor and court chaplain, 1611-1631. In 1605-1609 he published his “True Christianity,” directing the Christians to the Book of Scripture, the Book of Life

16

242 History of the Christian Church.

in imitation of the Savior, the Book of Nature, through God’s works to himself. This book had a wide circulation comparable with “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Perhaps it is the most popular of any German devotional classic. It ever remained a favorite with Spener.

Another forerunner was that rigid Lutheran, Paul Gerhardt, who left the St. Nicholai Church in Berlin rather than seem to incline from his strict orthodoxy to the Calvinistic Electoral House. Born in Thuringia in 1607, he served as a tutor in Berlin after completing his theological studies. Then he received his first pastoral appointment in a little town near Berlin, in 1651. Six years later he was called to the chief Church in Berlin; but refusing to accept an edict of the elector intended to pave the way for better relations between the Lutheran and the Reformed in 1664, two years later he was deprived. The next year, unconditionally restored, he would not remain. From 1668 to his death in 1676 he was Archdeacon of Lubben in Saxony. Gerhardt was the greatest hymn-writer of the German tongue, and has been called the greatest hymn-writer of Europe. Many others have been more prolific, but none have surpassed him in depth, tenderness, and power. All are familiar through translations with his rendering of St. Bernard’s hymn, “O sacred Head, now wounded”—a translation that improves the original, and makes it the great passion hymn of the Church—and “Give to the winds thy fears.” Gerhardt’s hymns helped toward the spiritual revival which Germany needed as she needed nothing else. These, “011 account of their spirit and power,'¹ Spener preferred to all others.

Another was a brilliant preacher and professor at

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Rostock, who finished his brief course at the age of thirty-four—Theophil Grossgebauer (1626-1661). In his “Watch-cries out of Wasted Zion,”

1661, he regretted that theological students ^Gross^^ebauer were trained for controversy to the neglect of the inner spiritual life, the lack of Church discipline, of Synods in which the duty should be represented, and the abuse of funeral sermons when persons of rank, no matter what their life had been, were preached straight to heaven. This, more than any other book, influenced Spener.

When the night is darkest the dayspring is at hand. Philip Jacob Spener was born at Rappoltsweiler, in Alsace, January 23, 1635. Spener’s father was Hofmeister and counselor for the Lord of Rappoltsweiler for forty years until his death in 1657. The Countess of Rappoltsweiler was godmother of his son Philip. This rearing in the household of the nobility had important influence upon Spener’s future life and work. The first to exercise a religious influence over him was this godmother. These impressions were deepened into convictions through the court preacher Joachim Stoll (1615-1678), who married Spener’s sister.

To these influences are to be added his contact with English Puritanism through reading, as a boy, translations of Thompson’s “Golden Jewel of the Children of God,” Bayly’s “Practice of Piety,” and, later in his youth, Dykes’s ‘ ‘ Know Thyself or Self-deceit ’ ’ and Baxter’s “Self-denial.” To these books of practical piety and self-examination he added later Joseph Hall’s “Enochism,” and Thomas Goodwin’s “Spiritual Writings to the translation of the latter in the later

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years of his life he wrote a preface. The earnestness of these Puritan writers, their self-testing and warnings against self-satisfaction and self-deceit, and their emphasis upon self-denial and Sunday observance, made a lasting impression on Spener. These, with Arndt’s “True Christianity,” a favorite from his boyhood, formed the basis of his views of the practical character of a genuine religious life. It is most interesting to trace this direct connection of the great Pie-tistic movement with English Puritanism.

Having been early prepared at home for the university, Spener spent a year at the gymnasium of Colmar, and then, in 1651, began his eight years’ residence at the University of Strasburg, where he laid the solid foundation of his after scholarship, and where he came to know and admire the writings of Hugo Grotius, the Holland Arminian and statesman. After finishing his course at Strasburg he studied for more than half a year each at Basel and Geneva, and visited Lyons, Freiburg, Mompelgard, and then four months at Tubingen. The residence at Geneva undoubtedly awakened in him a desire that the Lutheran laity should have a greater part in the life of the Church.

In 1662, Spener began to lecture at the University of Strasburg, and in March was appointed preacher, without pastoral charge, at the cathedral. In the course of this year he preached upon regeneration, holding a man could lose it, and require another than baptismal regeneration. While at Strasburg, and now twenty-nine years of age, he had his relatives choose for him a bride. He submitted to their urgency, though he thought himself that he ought not yet to marry, and certainly not a young bride. It would

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be best if he could marry a widow whose first husband had been a bad man; such a one would accommodate herself better to him. Fortunately, Spener’s relatives had better judgment, and chose for him the twenty-year-old daughter of a wealthy family. She bore all the cares of the household for him as well as eleven children, and allowed him to be, as always before, a man of books and public duties rather than of the family and society.

In 1666, Spener began a ministry of extraordinary fruitfulness and influence, which occupied the next twenty years, as senior pastor of the imperial free city of Frankfort-on-the-Main. The condition of the religion was low, and as the civil authority supervised the Churches, Church discipline was difficult. But here Spener began that reform which was so thoroughly to affect the Lutheran Church and Germany. Spener took up diligently the work of catechising the youth. Finally, in 1669, in a sermon he said: “O, how much good would be wrought if on Sunday, when good friends come together, instead of glasses, cards, or dice, they should take a book out of which to read something for the edification of all, or to repeat what they heard from the sermon! When together, they should speak of the Divine mysteries; he to whom God has given more should seek to instruct therewith his weaker brethren. But where they do not fully resolve the case, they should speak to a preacher to make the matter clear. Ah, if this should come to pass, how would so much evil on every hand be taken away, as together the holy Sunday should be hallowed by all with greater edification and marked usefulness! In this respect it is certain that we preachers from the

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pulpit are not able to instruct the people so much as is necessary, unless also other people from the Church, who, by the Divine grace, better understand Christianity, in the power of the common Christian calling, busy themselves along with and under us, as they are able, according to the measure of their gifts and simplicity, so much to make better and to prepare (for a religious life) their neighbors.”

This was Spener’s original idea of “collegia pietatis,” or, as we should say, prayer-meetings. Something like this he had known as a student on a visit to Amsterdam and later at Miihlheim, both Reformed; but Spener gave to the movement a scope and significance unknown, and that in the Lutheran Church. Spener’s sermon in this year on the false righteousness of the Pharisees and the little edifying intercourse of polite society, caused his more earnest hearers to come together, and, to avoid misconstruction, he invited them to meet in his house. From the summer of 1670 they met twice a week. The meeting opened with prayer, when the Sunday sermon was repealed or a section from some devotional book read and commented upon. Women were permitted in an adjoining room, but only men could speak. After 1675 only the Scriptures were read and commented upon, and this was followed by Christian conversation. These grew to the attendance of more than a hundred persons, and in 1682 there was granted them the use of a church.

This was followed, in 1675, by his epoch-making book, “Pia Desideria,” or “Heart’s Desires,” for the betterment of the ever true catechetical Church. This book consists of three parts.

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The first sets forth the lifeless condition of the Evangelical Church, and the way authorities neglect their duties and use their power to their own advantage rather than that of the Churches. The clergy not less require a self-denial, the proof of the Spirit and power. They content themselves with scholastic theology, and fall into fruitless contrivances. Among the people reign sins and vices of all sorts, and, what is most significant, drunkenness is not once recognized as a sin. The performance of religious duties is external and superficial.

In the second part, Spener contends, on the ground of the unfulfilled promises and in the mirror of the iife of the early Church, that there is the possibility for a better condition.

The third part is given to practical means to secure this fulfillment: I. The collegia pietatis. 2. The use of the common spiritual priesthood of all Christians to teach, exhort, convert, and edify one another. Thus shall there be formed centers for the betterment of the Christian Church (little Churches in the Church). 3. It must be impressed upon the people that Christianity is not in knowing, but in doing and in love. 4. Religious controversies should be limited and conducted in the right spirit. 5. A better education for the candidates for the ministry. They should have not only learning, but reverence and piety, and should be acquainted with Thomas a Kempis and Tauler. They should have meetings for mutual edification as well as lectures. 6. Preaching should be more directed to edification and the formation of a true inward Christianity. The sermons of Arndt are a standard for imitation.

248 History of the Christian Church.

Spener also condemned card-playing, dancing, and theaters as marks of a worldly mind and unreligions heart.

This shows the aim of Spener’s work. The book was so well received that the author could publish more than ninety letters of commendation from theologians. But attacks and excesses were not far off.

Let us now consider Spener’s qualifications as a leader in this movement. First, his spotless life, his Spener’s    character, his genuine piety, and the

Preparations frankness and gentleness of his disposition. Leadership    years of controversy, even in his

most intimate correspondence, there is not an angry or an unkind word. His motto to guard himself so he sin not, he faithfully observed. Then, in learning and ability he was second to no contemporary. He held to the Lutheran standards, and had attacked the Reformed in his earlier ministry with a sharpness which he afterward regretted. All of his positions he fortified with abundant citations from the most approved Lutheran authorities.

As a preacher he was throughout his life without a peer in Scriptural exposition and practical applications. Didactic in form, the impression was powerful and abiding. Spener was a tireless worker with his pen. His published writings fill one hundred and thirteen volumes; indeed, he was far too verbose for good style. In addition, he was in correspondence with all the most influential men in the Church, and with those in the State who had the interests of the Church at heart. He received fifteen hundred letters each year. His early training, his tastes, and published works on

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heraldry, made him well known to the princely and aristocratic world. Frankfort was also a center of intercourse for all Germany, and Spener’s character, ability, bearing, and influence became known throughout the land. He had also the qualities for leadership of a party in that he stood by his friends when he could not wholly approve them, and no man was a better defender of the party principle. In his writings and extended correspondence he kept in touch with the whole movement.

Spener could well pray, like many another leader, to be delivered from his friends, and those who separated from the State Church at Frankfort _Court and formed a separate organization greatly Preacher weakened his position there, so that he was ^{at D^e8de^}• willing to leave this loved home for the position of court preacher at Dresden to the Elector of Saxony. This was the most prominent position in the Lutheran Church in Germany. There he remained from 1686 to 1691.

The faithfulness with which Spener dealt with the private life of the elector in his illness at Frankfort, which commended him to that prince, did not fail him at Dresden. This plain dealing and the fierce attacks of the theologians at Wittenberg and Leipzig made his office, in spite of his friendship with the Saxon princesses, of little fruitfulness or value. Therefore he accepted, in 1691, a call from the Elector of Brandenburg to the St. Nicholai Church as court preacher in Berlin. This place he held with increasing honor until his death. The years from 1691 to 1700 were filled with controversy; but by that time Spener’s cause

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was fully established, and even his enemies expressed their admiration of his character. Peacefully, in 1705, he passed to his rest.

In 1683, to Dresden came a young student who for two months lived at Spener’s house, and to whom fell the leadership of the Pietistic movement nermann at Spener’s death. August Hermann Francke. Francke was the son of a jurist of upright-

1663-1727.    .

ness and reputation, who died in the service of the duke as superintendent of the churches and schools, at Gotha, in 1770. His son was born at Liibeck, March 22, 1663. He was a precocious and brilliant student, being prepared for the university at fourteen. For two years longer he studied at home, and became especially proficient in Greek. He then studied at the universities of Erfurth, Kiel, and Leipzig, and studied Hebrew at Hamburg. In two years he read through the whole Hebrew Bible six times. In 1685, with a friend, he established at Leipzig a Collegium Philobiblicum for the practical and exe-getical study of the Bible. This met with success, but also aroused opposition. For financial reasons, in 1687, he went to Liineburg, where he continued his studies and began preaching, and where he was converted. His life had always been correct, but now the power of the Spirit came upon him. In 1688 he taught at Hamburg, where he laid the foundation for his work as a trainer of teachers. From thence he went to be with Spener at Dresden. He returned to Leipzig in 1689, and began to read lectures on Paul’s Epistles. There hundreds of students crowded his lecture-rooms, and the Collegia flourished. Finally, in 1690, the Faculty forbade his lectures. He went to preach at

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Erfurth, but such crowds of Roman Catholics attended his sermons that the Elector of Mainz bade him leave in twenty-four hours. In 1691 he went to Halle as pastor of the suburb of Glaucha and as first professor in the new university, in 1694, of Oriental Languages, and, in 1698, of Theology. In 1694 he married, and the next year opened a school for poor children. In 1698 was laid the first stone of this Orphan House, which grew to two rows of buildings, each eight hundred feet long.

Spener took the liveliest interest in this work, and his wide acquaintance and influence, ripening for thirty years, brought large supplies for the support of the great undertakings of Francke. A chemist, dying, left him the formula for compounding several medicines, the sale of which brought the Orphan House from twenty to thirty thousand dollars a year. Then his periodicals told of his work, and brought for its furtherance large contributions from the godly people of all Germany. But Francke could not foresee all this. He simply saw God’s opportunity, and embraced it. He put himself, all his talent, and all he had into the work. 1. His Orphan House branched out into many departments. The main building was six stories high and one hundred and fifty feet long. It cared for five hundred orphans. 2. The Normal Seminary, an institution of immense influence in Germany, as Francke was a true teacher and reformer in pedagogical methods. 3. The Theological School, which especially assisted poor students. 4. The seven day schools for children of Halle, with eight hundred students and seventy teachers. 5. The Royal Pedagogium, for sons of noble families and men of wealth. 6. Collegium

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Orientale, for the study of the Oriental tongues as connected with the critical understanding of the Old Testament. 7. The institution to provide free board for poor students. 8. Bookstore and publishing department, publishing school-books, religious books, and Bibles, with the best font of type of Oriental languages in Germany. 9. Chemical laboratory and pharmacy; and, besides these, an infirmary, a home for widows, for beggars, and for the poor of Glaucha. This work was too much for the unwearied diligence even of Francke; but he found fitting helpers. Frelinghuysen, who married his daughter, joined in the work in 1696; then his son, who succeeded him, and other helpers. In 1705, Francke took a trip to Holland for his health. In 1714 he was made pastor of St. Ulrich’s, and in 1716 prorector of the university. He died June

8, 1727.

Francke was noted for his practical ability as teacher, preacher, and professor. A man of thorough learning, he was much more than a scholar. He had a practical organizing talent, a gift for selecting his assistants, and tact in managing large enterprises given to but few. In sympathy for the poor, and in practical knowledge of how to help them, Francke is the Evangelical St. Vincent de Paul. Like him, he knew how to secure the interest of the wealthy and the noble, but beyond him, he was the first to learn how to use printer’s ink to secure popular support for a great religious enterprise. Above all, he was a man of faith. He said that his life would show that man may dare to venture on God. The emblem at the gate of his Orphan House is two eagles, and between them the words, “They that wait upon the Lord shall mount

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up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.”

Pietism became the ruling influence in the Lutheran Church. It prevailed, not only at Halle, but at the universities at Giessen, Jena, and Konigsberg. In the first thirty years at Halle were trained six thousand and thirty-four theologians. The revival had come, and Germany entered upon a new course of advancement.

Chapter VII.

THE GLORY AND THE SHAME OF THE CHURCH OF FRANCE, 1648-1720.

The dominant power in Christendom in this period was France. She emerged from the Thirty Years’ War more than taking the place formerly occupied by Spain as the strongest monarchy in Europe. It was the era of Louis XIV, the Grand Monarch, who set the style for all the kings and princelings of the Continent, and whose letters, even on matters of faith, the Pope obeyed as no other French king had been obeyed since the return from Avignon. If Louis was a great king, he was the king of a great nation. French power and glory attained then their summit under the old regime. It was the era of great ministers, Colbert and Louvois, unexcelled in finance and in organizing victory; of great marshals, Turenne, the great Conde, Luxembourg and Catinat, Vendome and Villars. It was the great era of French literature, the era of Corneille, Racine, and Moliere, of Madame de Sevigne, La Rochefoucauld, La Fontaine, and Boileau. Around them were gathered the most illustrious group of scholars and men of science the world then knew; while Versailles and Les Invalides are the lasting monuments of the art of that time. If Louis were every inch a king, and took for his emblem the royal sun, it must be admitted that he was the center of what his historian has called “the most brilliant and

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charming society the world has ever seen.” Certainly in talent, in wit, in polished manner and in esprit there has been no aristocratic society in Europe to equal it. There was no Shakespeare or Milton at that court, and certainly in artistic and literary achievement it does not compare with the Athens of Pericles or the Florence of Lorenzo de Medici; but in the combined qualities of influence in government and war, in literature, and in brilliant and delightful social intercourse, no court since has so worthily filled the vast palace at Versailles, or its retreats from too dazzling splendor at Marly or Fontainebleau.

What, then, of the Church of France at this era of splendid national development? We must say that in learning, in eloquence, in lasting influence, it has not since been equaled in any succeeding generation in the Roman Catholic Church. The great names of her history since the Reformation are thickly clustered here. In the last three centuries there has not been a greater name in influence than Bossuet, or a more saintly prelate than Fenelon, or preachers that surpassed them, except perhaps their contemporaries, Bourdaloue and Massillon. Nor are there companies of scholars who have left more illustrious names than those that make resplendent the congregation of St. Maur, and the monastery of Port Royal.

These last-named institutions will first claim our attention. The congregation of St. Maur was a reformed congregation of the Benedictine or- _{The Con-}der, formed by Laurent Bernard, prior of gregation of the College of Clugny at Paris, in 1618. ^st‘ ^Maur‘ Five brothers, men of distinction, came with him from St. Vannes. The first monastery was founded at Paris,

256 History of the Christian Church.

September 5, 1618, and called Blancs Manteaux, or the White Cloaks. Within two years the founder died at the age of forty-seven. He was a man of learning and unusual ability and weight of character.

The Congregation required of candidates a novitiate of one year; then two years of systematic study; and following these five years given to the study of philosophy and theology, of the Fathers, and of the interpretation of the Scriptures. After this, one year was given to strict retirement and devotion. Dom Jean Gregoire Tarisse became the first superior-general of the Congregation in 1630 to 1648. He was a friend of Richelieu’s, and began the work,—the erudition and the literary achievement forever associated with St. Maur.

The year following his election the splendid abbey of St. Germain des Pres at St. Denis, the wealthiest in France, adopted the rule of the Congregation. From that time it became the residence of the superior-general of St. Maur. Its abbot must always be a nobleman; hence it was held in commendam; that is, by some secular prince, usually of the royal house. His income was 170,000 livres, while that of the monastery was 350,000 livres.

Only a few of the great names and the great works of the Congregation of St. Maur can find mention here. Dom Jean Luc d’Achery (1609-1685) joined the Congregation soon after 1632, and was made curator of its library. He made a collection of materials for the Church history of the Middle Ages, known as d’Achery’s “Spicilegium,” a collection in thirteen volumes, consisting of chronicles, acts of Councils, lives of saints, and grants and letters.

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Jean Mabillon (1632-1707) joined the Congregation in 1653, and was called to St. Germain des Pres in 1665, where he made his home until his death. He published the “Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict” in nine volumes folio, 1688-1701. In 1681 appeared his “De Re Diplomatica,” giving the principles by which true and false ancient charters and documents may be determined. This was the founding of a new science of great value to the historian in his criticism of the sources of historical knowledge, or diplomatics.

Edmund Martene (1654-1739) joined the Congregation in 1672. He early began the study of the antiquities of the monastic life. In 1708 he was sent to search through France in all the libraries for documents for a new “Gallia Christiana.” This work he pursued for seven years, and published the result in 1717. A second like journey of some years was concluded in 1724, and the result published in nine volumes folio, 1724-1733. He fell into disgrace for his opposition to the Bull Unigenitus, in 1734.

A name quite as great as these is that of Bernard de Montfaucon (1655-1741). He joined the Congregation at an early age. His “Palseographia Grseca” founded the science of Palaeography. His “Antiquity Illustrated,” with plates in ten volumes folio, is a monumental work, unsurpassed in its time, and still of value. His “Monuments of the French Monarchy,” in five volumes folio, showed his great powers of research. Montfaucon is also noted for his edition of the Fathers, Athanasius, Origen, and Chrysostom, which are monuments of varied and exact learning.

The Congregation devoted itself especially to the

17

258 History of the Christian Church.

history of France and of the Church. They bought the rarest manuscripts and books, visited foreign libraries, and corresponded with foreign scholars. Their presswork and paper are admirable after two hundred years. They were friendly with Port Royal, and refused to indorse the attacks of the Jesuits, including the Bull Unigenitus, upon the Jansenists.

The Abbey of Port-Royal-in-the-Fields was founded in 1204, near Chevreuse, fifteen miles southwest of Paris. Jacqueline Marie Arnauld, daugh-Port Royal. ^ ^ ^ distinguished advocate of Paris, was born in 1591, and became coadjutor to the abbess of Port Royal—which, of course, involved the right to succeed—at the age of eight years. In the same year her sister Agnes was elected abbess of St. Cyr. But over the young Marie, or Mere Angelique, as she was henceforth called, there came a great change in Lent, 1608, when she was seventeen years of age. She was converted, and soon began a life of religious strictness for herself and her convent. She forbade the nuns going from the house or receiving visits. On September 25, 1609, she refused admission to her own father and mother. Later she was sent to reform Maubisson, which for years had been a scandal under the administration of Angelique d’Estres, a sister of Gabrielle, mistress of Henry IV. This occupied her from 1618 to 1623. In the former year she became acquainted with St. Francis de Sales, and he became her confessor. The next year began her acquaintance with Madame Chantal, which was only broken by death. In 1626 she occupied a house in the capital, called Port Royal de Paris, with eighty-four nuns. This house the next year was placed under the charge

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of the Archbishop of Paris. In 1629, Mere Angelique secured the change in the constitution of the house so that the superior was no longer nominated by the crown, as she had been even when a child, but elected by the nuns every three years. In the meantime Mere Angelique became the head of the “House of the Holy Sacrament,” and her sister Agnes joined her there. Agnes, former abbess of St. Cyr, composed a book of private devotion called “The Chaplet of the Holy Sacrament,” which, with the approval of the bishop, Zamet, was published. This book was bitterly attacked by the Jesuit Binnet, and ably defended by the abbot St. Cyran. Thus began the bitter war between the Jesuits and Port Royal, which never ended until not one stone of the famous monastery was left upon another, and the very graves of the sainted dead were forced to give to impious hands their precious trust. Thus, through St. Cyran, began that connection with Jansenism which was to color all the rest of its fateful history. The book was condemned by the Sor-bonne, June 18, 1633. St. Cyran then obtained the approval for it of Jansenius and another Doctor of Louvain. The case was appealed to Rome, where the book was pronounced orthodox, but inexpedient. St. Cyran became confessor of Mere Angelique in 1635, and she was again chosen abbess in 1636. In the following years St. Cyran gathered a group of brilliant young men about him, who began to live as studious recluses at a grange, or farmhouse, near Port-Royal-in-the-Fields. These were known as the Gentlemen of Port Royal. Among them was Antoine Le Maistre, a barrister of twenty-six, with a most brilliant career before him; his brother, Le Maistre de Sericourt; An

26o History of the Christian Church.

toine Singlin, who became confessor of the nuns of Port Royal; Claude Lancelot; Arnauld d’Andilly, a nephew of Mere Angelique; and the Orientalist and Biblical scholar, Isaac Le Maistre de Sacy. But greater than all these were two men who will always make famous the name of Port Royal. These were Antoine Arnauld and Blaise Pascal.

Antoine Arnauld was the youngest and twentieth child of his parents, the brother of Mere Angelique, Antoine ^an<^^{j next to} Bossuet, the most celebrated Arnauld. man in the Church of France in that age.

1613-1694. A-fter his death, Cardinal d’Aguisse said in the Consistory at Rome that, “Although he [Arnauld] had never attained any more elevated title of dignity in the Church than that of priest, he did not hesitate to rank him higher than any living prelate, and to place him on the level with the most celebrated and most saintly ecclesiastics of antiquity.” His father had successfully defended the University of Paris in a suit brought against it by the Jesuits. From that time there was no love lost between the Arnauld family and the Jesuits. Arnauld studied for the law, but finally was won to the Church. He studied at the Sorbonne, 1638-1640, and was made Doctor of Divinity in 1641. In the same year he published his first work, “The Necessity of the Faith,” and in 1643 he also published, against the Jesuits and their lax practice in receiving the sacrament, a treatise “Concerning Frequent Communion.” In these years he made Port Royal famous as an educational center by his textbooks written in connection with Pierre Nicole (1625-^I^95), on logic or “The Art to Think,” geometry, and others. In 1643 he published also his observations on

The Church of France.

the Papal Bull condemning Jansenius’s book, “Augustinus. In the next two years came his first *and second “Apologies for Jansenius.” In 1656 he was expelled, in consequence of these “Apologies,” from the Sorbonne, and deprived of his degree. Arnauld resisted subscription to the formula condemning Jansenius m 1661. He was in retirement from 1661 to 1668, when the Peace of Clement IX gave him rest. In 1669 appeared, against the Huguenots, the three-volume work written in collaboration with Pierre Nicole, entitled “The Perpetuity of the Faith of the Catholic Church Concerning the Eucharist,” a very thorough and able work. Arnauld retired to Belgium m 1679, and lived there and in Holland most of the time until his death. In 1669-1694 he published, in three volumes, his “Moral Practice of the Jesuits.” Arnauld died in Brussels, August 8, 1694.

Arnauld was a clear and vigorous thinker, and made valuable contributions to the science of psychology. He loved controversy, and in it was unsurpassed. His moral and religious character was the highest, and he never bent toward Rome. His style is free from pedantry, clear and direct. He was a voluminous writer, his works filling forty-five volumes.

An altogether different order of man was Blaise Pascal, an original genius, and the ablest literary pamphleteer that any time or tongue has known. Pascal had wonderful mathematical genius, and invented a good part of ^,623-'662. the science known as conic sections when but sixteen years old. He showed by a barometer the lessened pressure of the atmosphere as we ascend from

262 History of the Christian Church.

the earth, and he was a founder of hydromechanics. Pascal became a Jansenist in 1646. In 1650 his sister Jacqueline entered Port Royal. In 1647, Pascal published his work on “Vision.” In 1654 occurred his personal conversion, and he went to live at Port Royal, but under no vow. He.had but two years left of indifferent health and six years of life, four of which were one long disease; yet in this space he won undying fame. Pascal’s eighteen “Provincial Letters” were written between January, 1656, and January, 1657. They immediately achieved immense popularity. They are unequaled in their kind of controversy, and are perfect specimens of French style. Though containing some inaccuracies, they inflicted an incurable wound on the Society of Jesus. Pascal’s “Thoughts” are broken fragments, often of great beauty and suggestiveness. They reveal an original and powerful but rather, as from his long disease might be expected, a melancholy thinker. His works are not great in bulk, but they are the common possession of educated men in all lands.

Besides these men, wrought at Port Royal Louis Sebastian le Nain de Tillemont (1637-1698), perhaps the most valuable writer on the early history of the Church that France has produced. His solid erudition and accurate knowledge make valuable to-day his “History of the Roman Emperors,” four volumes, published 1690-1701, and his “Ecclesiastical History of the First Six Centuries,” published in 1693 in sixteen volumes quarto.

An eccelesiastical historian of merit and learning, but dry and of less value, was the Dominican Alexandre Natalis. He wrote a Church History coming

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down to 1563, in twenty-four volumes, published 1677-1686. He also wrote an “Ecclesiastical History of the Old and New Testaments,” 1699.

This was condemned at Rome; but Natalis Natalia, sturdily refused to retract, and Benedict '639-«724. XII removed the censure. He was made provincial of his order in 1706.

Pierre de Marca was a man of weight of learning, trained for the law. He was made councilor at Pau in 1613, and afterwards president of its . Parliament. In 1632 his wife died, and de Marca. he entered the priesthood. His noted work, > 594-1662. “The Concord of the Sacerdotal and Imperial Power,” was published in 1641, and gave great offense at Rome. He was made Bishop of Conservans in 1643, Archbishop of Toulouse in 1652, and Archbishop of Paris soon after, until his death in 1662.

Two other learned men deserve mention, though they were more cursed than blessed in their own time. They are Richard Simon and Louis Ellies Dupin.

Richard Simon, born 1638, early entered the congregation of the oratory. Simon criticised some passages in Arnauld’s “Perpetuity of the Catholic Faith Concerning the Eucharist,” and Simon, secured the ill-will of the author’s friends. *638-1713. In his “Critical History of the Text and Versions of the New Testament” he laid the solid foundation of the science of Biblical Criticism, or, as often called, of Biblical Introduction. Simon was a man of immense reading, powerful memory, sharp temper, and sarcastic disposition.

Louis Ellies Dupin, born 1657, became Doctor of the Sorbonne in 1684. He gave himself to the study

264 History of the Christian Church.

of ecclesiastical history and literature. His “New History of Ecclesiastical Writers: Their Lives, Catalogue, Critique, and Chronology of Their Works.”

Louis Ellies    .    ...    ,

Dupin. -Pans, 1688, is in forty-seven volumes oc-

■657-1719. tavo; London edition, 1693-1707, is in seventeen volumes folio. This work is essential to any large library, and is free and impartial. He was a voluminous author of many other works of less importance on his favorite subjects. In the case of conscience he stood by his signature, was censured at Rome, and lost his professorship. He had a very interesting correspondence with Archbishop Wake, 1715-1719, on the terms of a union between the Church of England and the Church of France.

The great preacher of the age of Louis XIV who was conspicuous for his learning and piety, for the solidity and penetration of his judgment,

The Church    *    ^F    11

and the as for the power of his reason, as well as

Court. hjs _SUp_erb eloquence, was Bossuet. He, as no other, had the confidence of the king from 1670 until death broke their relations in 1704, and upon him the king relied on all great matters of controversy. No such funeral orations were ever heard by any court as those of Bossuet upon Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I, and her daughter, the Duchess of Orleans; upon Marie Theresa, the Queen of Louis XIV, and upon the Great Conde. The man, the message, and the event were in harmony. The impression was, and is, ineffaceable. He was a great preacher for a great court, but he was also much more.

Jacques Benigne Bossuet was born at Dijon, September 28, 1627. His father was a lawyer, and his son Jacques he educated at the Jesuit College of Dijon.

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For what reason we do not know, but certainly he was never an admirer of the order founded by Loyola. He studied in the College of Navarre, in Paris, 1642-1648, and took his Doctorate in Bossuet.

1627.1704.

the Sorbonne in 1652. In the same year he was ordained priest and made Archdeacon of Metz. Bossuet had a solid foundation of learning, great natural gifts of oratory, and was immediately sought after as a preacher. He wisely remained at Metz for the next seventeen years, ripening his powers and becoming prominent and successful in the details of his work. These years of study are the key to the after success of the great Bishop of Meaux.

First of all, he studied his life long the Holy Scriptures. We are told that wherever he went he was never without his Bible or a New Testa- ^ ,

Bossuet s

ment, whether traveling from place to place, studies; in society, walking, and even during the ^Th_t^e_u^^c_s^rip’ long intervals of High Mass, he would be seen with his hand closed upon the book and his forefinger between the leaves, pondering the words he had just read. His secretary says, almost every time Bossuet entered his study, his first act was to take a pen and write down the thoughts and impressions which came to him. Continually he quoted St. Jerome’s words, “Let this Sacred Book never leave your hands.” Bossuet used to say that he had ever found it “the source of all doctrine and all holiness of life.” His secretary says he can not remember any day to have passed in which he did not see Bossuet making fresh notes and annotations on the pages of his Bible, though he certainly knew the entire text almost by heart. Yet even to old age he read and studied it perpetually

266 History of the Christian Church.

afresh. Wherever he might be, a Bible and a concordance must always be at hand on his writing-table. “I can not live without that/’ he used to say. These habits account for the abundant use and happy command of Scripture evident in his sermons and writings.

Bossuet also thoroughly knew the great Fathers of the Christian Church. For him Chrysostom was the master of all pulpit eloquence, the greatest preacher of the Church, and then Origen. But the master of Bossuet was Augustine. From him, he said, above all others, the very first and fundamental principles of theology were to be gathered. His secretary says that from Augustine he proved every doctrine, taught every lesson, and answered every difficulty, and found therein whatever was needful for the defense of the faith or confirming of practice. When preparing to preach he required no books but the Bible and St. Augustine. He was familiar also with the other Fathers, the Councils and historians of the Church, and the classic authors.

Not only did Bossuet make this thorough preparation for his life-work, but he was a lifelong and diligent student. From 1681, when he was ^Hstudy?^# fifty-four years of age, his biographer says it was his habit to get up during the night for devotion and study. He always kept a lamp burning in his room for this purpose, even when traveling; and after a few hours’ sleep on first going to bed, he used to get up, alike in summer and winter, however sharp the cold might be. Two dressing-gowns and a sort of bag made of bearskin, into which he used to get and draw it around his waist, met this difficulty; and thus armed, the Bishop of Meaux used to say

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Matins and Lauds amid the stillness of the night, and, that done, he went to his literary work. Everything was put ready over night, and so he betook himself to his books and papers for as long a time as his brain worked clearly and vigorously. When he began to feel exhausted he would lie down again and fall asleep at once.

His secretary describes his work in his bishopric, going about from parish to parish with the Gospel in his hand, and giving his whole prayerful attention as much to the simplest country congregation as to the most learned Parisian audience, not lowering himself to the humble, but raising them by the clearness and simplicity of his thoughts and expressions, thundering—for he was a most vehement orator—in the morning against the deadly sins, the enmities and frauds of some town district, and in the evening confirming in some religious house, and speaking words of the sweetest and most rapt mysticism to the saintly women there assembled. If there were a mission, or revival, in his diocese, Bossuet was sure to be there and have part in it.

As a spiritual director Bossuet retained largely that sanity of mind and that evangelical spirit which distinguished him. All Christians are in ac- _{As a} cord with him when he writes to a lady spiritual under his care: “The great and only proof ^D,rector-of true prayer is a change of life. The object of prayer is not to make us spend a few hours sweetly with God, but that our whole life may feel the effect and become better/’

Again, to Evangelical Christians he gives the strongest counsel against the confessional when he says

268 History of the Christian Church.

to another lady: “In the beginning of the ninth book of Augustine’s ‘Confessions’ there is a very striking silence. For my own part, I think the saints said very little about these personal matters; they were kept a secret between God and their own souls. ‘Enter into thy closet,’ as you are told in the Gospel. One of the great faults of devotion in the present day is, that it is too self-conscious, and talks about itself too much. It is different perhaps for those whom God puts under a director (confessor), and who want to be sure of their path; but even then I am very much disposed to leave a great deal to God, and not be so much afraid of illusions. It is best to open one’s heart honestly, and then to be at rest. Above all, do not imitate those persons who are forever wanting to test and judge their prayer. I do not like that way of making out everything by rule and line, or of laying down the law to God, dictating what he has to do at each step, and deciding that this belongs to one state, and that to another.”

Thus in some manner having got the man before us, we may better sketch his public life. In 1669, Bossuet was called to Paris and made Bishop of Condom, a title without cure. The next year he was made the preceptor to the dauphin, or heir to the throne, and the year following member of the French Academy. His preceptorship kept him at court the next eleven years. It can not be said that he made a success of his work for his royal pupil. Bossuet made great preparations and wrought hard at the task, but although he wrote text-books for him, among them his “Universal History,” yet the distance between pupil and teacher was never bridged. Bossuet, one of the

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strongest minds of his age, was too much above the average man, and the dauphin was certainly much below. But Bossuet served Louis XIV better in the great affairs of Church and State than in the education of his son.

The Assembly of the French Clergy met November

9, 1681. The burning question before them was the dispute between the king and the Pope concerning the regal, or the revenues of vacant Article", sees and first-fruits. Bossuet preached the opening sermon before the Assembly. It was on the unity of the Church. It was a marvel of clear and ordered statement, sound reasoning, and prudent address in a difficult crisis. In January, 1682, the king issued a royal edict claiming his rights. This edict was confirmed by the French clergy. Finally, March

19, 1682, the four Gallican Articles, drawn by Bossuet, were subscribed by the clergy.*

These Articles are the famous platform of the Gallican Church. Unfortunately they were never supported on critical occasions; and, secondly, the whole constitution of the French Church was too aristocratic as to its personnel, and too much under the absolute power of the king, for any sort of genuine liberty to flourish. The Revolution had to come to make the air breathable, and then, through concordat and reaction, the Church and clergy sought a stricter servitude rather than the liberty and influence of the Gallican Church.

The Pope was bitterly offended at these Articles, and refused to institute any bishops until the reconciliation with Innocent XII in 1693. Then they were virtually set aside, though not retracted. Their po

*See Appendix I.

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sition was undermined by the decision in the case of Fenelon. Bossuet’s defense of these Articles, written in 1685, but not published until 1745, is called the noblest and most renowned of his works. Pope Benedict XIV, perhaps the most learned Pope of modern times, in 1748, declared it to be Bossuet’s, and said, “It is not to be condemned.”

Bossuet wrote, in 1670, a treatise on “The Knowledge of God and Ourselves,” which showed his power of thought, but was not published until the next century. In 1681 he was appointed Bishop of Meaux, and left Paris to reside in his diocese. His life for the next twenty years will be best considered in relation to Fenelon and the Jansenist controversy.

The greatest prelate of that time, next to Bossuet, was Fenelon. For more than twenty years they were intimate friends. Then Bossuet became his bitter enemy. Fenelon was a man of penetration, of refinement, of rare grace and tact in social intercourse, with wit and charm of literary style which age does not impair, and a warmth, genuineness, and elevation of the spiritual life which never ceases to attract.

The father of Fenelon was Count Pons de Salignac, and the future Archbishop of Cambray was the only child of his second marriage. He was born d^saHgnac ^at f^amily chateau of Fenelon, August de la Mothe 6, 1651. His father’s brother, the Marquis i65”-i7i5. fenelon, was a distinguished soldier and a decided Christian. He became the first president of the Society for the Suppression of Dueling. This, in the age of Louis XIV, speaks much for the atmosphere in which Fenelon was reared. The

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daughter of the marquis, later Mme. Montmorencie Laval, was Fenelon’s most intimate friend. Educated at home until he was twelve years of age, after a short time at the College at Cahors he went to Paris, where he completed the course in the Jesuit College Du Plessis. Like Bossuet, he preached to admiring audiences when he was but fifteen. Like him, he had wise friends, who gave him first a thorough course in theology, and then a subordinate position in which his powers could ripen before they were largely drawn upon. He took a thorough course in the seminary of St. Sulpice under the learned and saintly teacher, Tronson.

In scholarship, if not in profound thought, he was the equal of Bossuet. After his graduation he wished first to go as a missionary to Canada or to Greece; but on account of his health, never strong, his relatives dissuaded him. He then became superior of a house of “New Catholics/’ formed for the instruction of women converted from the Reformed faith. This post he occupied from 1675 till ^x685- Here he made a large circle of friends, and wrote his first work on “The Education of Girls,” which still has value.

In 1685, Fenelon was sent as a missionary to the strong Huguenot section of Poitou and Saintonge, then much disturbed by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He made two conditions: that no troops should be used, and that he should choose his own assistants. He met with as much success as the circumstances allowed, writing, more than a year later, “Our converts get on very slowly; it is no easy matter to change the opinions of a whole people.” As Harlai,

272 History of the Christian Church.

Archbishop of Paris, could not use him, he would not promote him, saying, “It seems you wish to be forgotten, and you shall be.”

But in 1689 he was called to be preceptor of the son of the dauphin. Fenelon held this post for eight years, and his pupil remained his lifelong friend. Indeed, with the son his success was as conspicuous as was Bossuet’s failure with the father, for Fenelon had the highest gifts of a teacher. To patience, tact, and sweetness of temper he added fixed principles and unswerving firmness. Seldom has a governor of a royal pupil had a more difficult task. The Due du Bourgogne was a much brighter child than his father, but he also had an ungovernable temper. The way this was overcome is a lesson of great interest -in pedagogics, but too long to transcribe. At this point, when he was at the height of his career and the favorite of Mme. de Maintenon, who disposed of all ecclesiastical positions, let us see Fenelon as St. Simon paints him.

Saint Simon says that he was a “tall, thin, well-made man, with a large nose, eyes whence fire and wit streamed forth as in a torrent, and a countenance which none I have ever seen resembled, and which one could not forget if once one had seen it, it was such a combination of different things, and yet the opposite characteristics were all so blended. It was grave and cheerful, serious and lively; it was alike in keeping with the theologian, the bishop, and the grand seigneur. In every expression, as in every action, finesse, wit, gracefulness, decorum, and, above all, a noble bearing prevailed. One could not leave off looking at him. His pictures are all alike, but without having caught the perfect harmony of the original, or the singular delicacy

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of his countenance. His manners were exactly corresponding to his face, full of an ease which imparted itself to others, and of that grace and good taste which only comes from familiarity with the world and its best society—a grace with which all his conversation was intuitively marked.”

In 1693, Fenelon was made a member of the French Academy, and in 1695 he became Archbishop of Cam-bray. This was one of the highest dignities in the Church of France. Since 1674, Fenelon had been on terms of the most intimate friendship with Bossuet. That friendship between two most eminent prelates in the Roman Catholic Church was broken by a woman.

Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Mothe Guyon was born in 1648. At sixteen she was married to Mr. Jacques Guyon. It was a marriage to a rich man _M .

.    ^&    Madams

without love. She dated her conversion Quyon. from the age of twenty, when a Franciscan ^l6^7n-monk taught her to look within, instead of without, for peace, and to seek God in her heart. Eight years later her husband died, leaving her three young children. Meanwhile her religious life deepened in intensity. In 1672 she made a marriage contract with Christ, and signed it with her own blood. In 1681 she says, “My soul was perfectly delivered from all its pains.” She had formed an intimate acquaintance with a Barnabite, Pere La Combe. She went to Paris, and then to Geneva, to convert the Reformed, and from thence to Gex to found an establishment for converts from the Evangelical faith, all in this year. In the same year she yielded to the solicitations of her family, and gave to them all her fortune, except a pittance for her own support and the care of her children. She

18

274 History of the Christian Church.

was then at Gex, and came under the spiritual direction of La Combe, having visions of the ecstatic life, and began to preach “that indifference to life, to heaven, to hell, in the entire union of the soul with God,” which is the essence of Quietism. For three years she was in Piedmont and Southern France, mainly at Grenoble, 1683-1686. Her explanation of Solomon’s Song and The Revelation appeared at Grenoble in 1684. In July, 1686, with Father La Combe, she went to Paris. La Combe was a weak Mystic, who finally became insane. There was not the least taint of impurity in his relations with Mme. Guyon, though no one could commend them. The Pope condemned the writings of Michel Molinos, a Spanish Mystic, in 1687, and he spent the rest of his life in prison, though his teachings seem but the legitimate consequence of the approved teaching of St. Theresa and other Spanish Mystics. It was in these years that Fenelon met Mme. Guyon. As he himself says, he was not specially attracted to her, and much in her teaching he disapproved; but, on the other hand, Fenelon knew well the Mystic theology of the Roman Catholic Church, and was also convinced of the genuine Christian character and the holy life of Mme. Guyon, despite what he did not like. In 1688, at the instigation of her brother, a Barnabite monk, she was shut up eight months in a convent. In 1689, through the influence of Mme. de Maintenon, who had come under her sway, she was released.

The Archbishop of Paris, Harlai, and other bishops condemned her writings. Through Mme. de Maintenon, she demanded of the king an examination of them. Bossuet, Fenelon, and Tronson were appointed

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on this commission. Bossuet went into the matter with his accustomed thoroughness. As he was not extensively read in the writings of the Mystic theologians, Fenelon furnished him with extracts from them. After eight months⁵ consideration the Articles of Issy were drawn up and signed. To one or two Fenelon stated his reservations, and refused to condemn Mme. Guyon. Mme. Guyon went to Issy, and signed the Articles, and Bossuet expressed himself satisfied with her. But in December, 1695, she was arrested, much to Bossuet’s delight, as he believed she taught con-traiy to the Articles of Issy. Mme. Guyon was imprisoned first at Vincennes, and then in the Bastile, until 1701. She endured the harshest treatment and repeated examinations. After her release she lived with her daughter in quiet and repose, her days filled with acts of mercy and good deeds, until her death in 17*7* -No reproach of her enemies or persecutors ever fell from her lips, and she was loved by all who knew her. John Wesley, after recounting her faults, says, speaking of her meekness, resignation, and humility, “Upon the whole, I know not whether we may not search many centuries to find another woman who was such a pattern of true holiness.”

In the midst of the conferences of Issy, Fenelon became Archbishop of Cambray. Perhaps some envy unconsciously came into the heart of the older prelate at the promotion of his friend. Fenelon could not subscribe to Bossuet’s condemnation of Mme. Guyon. Finally, upon Bossuet’s “Instruction upon the States of Prayer,” Fenelon wrote, to define his position, “Explanations of the Maxims of the Saints on the Inner Life. This work was shown before its publication

276 History of the Christian Church.

to Cardinal Noailles, to Tronson, and M. Pirot, a theologian much in the confidence of Bossuet, but not to Bossuet. Those who saw the manuscript pronounced it “a golden book.” It was published in 1697. The outcry against it was immense. Bossuet, denying the fundamental principle of disinterested love, saw his hitherto unquestioned authority impugned. From this time he left nothing undone to injure his former friend. He went personally to Louis XIV and to Mme. de Maintenon, and told them that Fenelon was tainted with the heresy of Molinos, condemned by the Holy See, and made Louis bitterly repent that he had appointed a heretic to the See of Cambray. Fenelon appealed to Rome. This was according to the principles of the Jesuits to exalt the Papal See, and directly against the Gallican Articles. Bossuet, in his eagerness for the condemnation of Fenelon, did not hesitate to follow the appeal, and use all arts of intrigue, insinuation, and defamation, and finally the royal command—for it amounted to no less—to extort from the reluctant Pope the desired condemnation. The letters which he received from his nephew at Rome, and the letter which he caused Louis XIV to send to the Pope, remain grave stains upon a great character. Let the just word be spoken: in the main issue Bossuet was right. The disregard of the necessary limitation of our nature has caused no little abuse. But on the other hand, Fenelon’s position was a leaning to virtue’s side, and one to which not many in any age will be greatly inclined; and, secondly, in the condemnation of Fenelon must be included the theological Mystics and some of the saintliest men and women of the Christian ages. It may be questioned whether, in the

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struggles with the worldly spirit in the Church, the Mystic piety is not a necessity to its truest life. The decision was made March 12, 1699. Fenelon, without a minute’s hesitation, and without reservation, submitted to the papal decree, which condemned twenty-three passages in his books. Though Bossuet had gained his cause, there was no question in France which was the greater man or truer Christian.

Perhaps Fenelon now might have made his peace with the court but for an act of treachery which forever banished him from it. In 1699, Fenelon wrote and sent to his former pupil, for whose sole use it was intended, his famous “Telemaque.” His secretary secretly took a copy, and had it published in Holland. The courtiers pretended to see in it a satire on Louis XIV and his court. Fenelon denied that there were any personal allusions in the work. He was right in the denial, but no appeal to a prince to rule according to principles of liberty and justice, and with limited instead of absolute power, could fail to reflect upon the court and government of Louis. Fenelon had been commanded to leave Versailles and to retire to his diocese, August 1, 1697. After 1697 he was commanded to remain in his diocese, and to cease all communication with the Duke of Burgundy. The remainder of his life was spent in the duties of his diocese, in kindness toward his enemies, in alleviating the miseries of war, in generous hospitality, and in living a saintly life.

For Christians of all times Fenelon will be remembered by his “Spiritual Letters.” In that select library of devotional classics which includes three names, they stand with Thomas a Kempis’s “Imita

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tion of Christ” and John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” None others attain unto these first three. The keenness of insight and the analysis of motive have never been surpassed, while the useful and helpful teaching and grace of style commend the work to thoughtful minds seeking better to know God.

Louis Bourdaloue at sixteen entered the Society of Jesus, of which he was by far the most distinguished ornament in the Church of France. At the ^33-1704? ^a£^e thirty-seven he was called to preach in Paris. Within the next thirteen years he preached ten Advent, or Lenten, series of sermons before the court. No other preacher was called more than twice. Bourdaloue is the model of a great preacher who was nothing else. The uprightness and frankness of his character was such that it was said he was the best answer to Pascal’s “Provincial Letters.” His style was natural and clear, and equaled only by the gentleness of his manners. These all added to the impressiveness of the force of his reasoning. His works fill eighteen volumes.

Jean Baptiste Massillon was the last of the great preachers of the golden age of French pulpit eloquence.

Some have thought him superior to the others. His sermons are more often found

1003-1742.    _>

in English, and one who has read his funeral sermon over Louis XIV will not soon forget it. In attractiveness and grace he has no superior; but there is no such power of reasoning or weight of intellect or total impression as with his predecessors. He was at court from 1699 to 1717, when he was appointed to the See of Clermont. From thence he went occasionally to Paris until 1723, when he preached be-

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fore the court for the last time. He was assiduous in the care of his diocese until his death.

This age of great preachers and prelates and scholars was also the age when Vincent de Paul carried on, in its opening years, his work in perfecting his orders of the Priests of the Mission, or Lazarists, of the Sisters of Charity, and conferences for the young men about to receive ordination. No Evangelical Christian can glance over the brief sketch of these men and their work and not acknowledge the greatness of the Church of France in this great era. But there were shadows in this picture, and these justify the heading to this section.

The first of these was the life of the king. Between

1661 and 1683 Louis XIV was the father of three families of children: one by the queen, of whom only a son, the pupil of Bossuet, sur- _L^„,^r“ x,y vived; another by Louise La Valliere; and still another, the result of a double adultery, by Madam de Montespan. What a protector of the Church, and what an auditor for Bossuet! The latter labored unceasingly to detach him from Louise La Valliere, and was greatly rejoiced when she took the veil in the strict order of the Carmelites, in 1675. By an ambiguous statement, Bossuet was deceived into giving the king the sacrament while he still continued his illicit relations with De Montespan. Finally, in 1683, the king began to tire of De Montespan, and even of Mile. Fontanges; and, as his wife died that year, in January, 1686, he married Franqoise d’Aubigne, the granddaughter of a noble Huguenot general who was a friend of Henry IV. She was the daughter of Marshal d’Aubigne’s disreputable son, and was the widow of the

280 History of the Christian Church.

poet Scarron. She was three years older than Louis, and has been called the most influential woman in French history. She knew perfectly how to adapt herself to the king and to interest and please him, and for that she spared herself no self-denial. Henceforth, so far as Louis’s conduct was concerned, the court was moral; but what a taint when these illegitimate children were married into the proudest families of the aristocracy of France! The confessor of the king was the Jesuit La Chaise until his death, in 1709, when he was replaced by Le Tellier. Louis had a poor education, and his religious nature never came to any strong development. He loved nothing more than himself, neither God nor man; but he feared hell, and of this fear the Jesuit confessor made good use. It is said that, as a partial reparation for his sensuality, he decided to revoke the Edict of Nantes. From this time forth he was morbidly religious. The wars of Louis XIV, after 1673, were neither politic nor just, and they drained the resources of the monarchy. Yet never did Louis XIV show himself more the great king than when, in 1711, in his old age, the allies threatened to march upon Paris, and there seemed little to resist them. The desertion of the Grand Alliance by England and the victory of Villars saved him from the last humiliation of seeing a foreign enemy in his capital. In 1713-1714 came the Peace of Utrecht, and in 1715 the king died. He had made France great and respected. He had seated his grandson on the throne of Spain, but he had rendered inevitable the ruin of the monarchy.

Of much greater permanent result was the rise and condemnation of the Jansenist party in the Church

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of France. This was part of the great movement in the State Churches of England, Germany, and France for a return to a religious life that signified

.    Jansenism.

a strictness of morals which separated a genuine Christian from the world, or from one whose faith was merely intellectual and whose profession was in word only. This movement resulted in Puritanism in England, in Pietism in Germany, and in Jansenism in France. In all three countries it has powerfully modified the religious life, both by its action and reaction, until our day.

Seldom in the history of the Church have two friends inaugurated a greater movement in theology, in practical life, and in the government of the Church, than that which arose from two 1585-1638. young men who were in Paris in 1610. ^st* ^cy^ran* Cornelius Jansen was born in Holland in 1585. His uncle was Bishop of Ghent; he had been a pupil of the extreme Augustinian Bajus, whose opinions had been condemned at Rome. The bishop was the tutor of Jansen when he studied at Louvain, 1602-1604. There he met Jean Duvergier deHauranne (1581-1643), who was four years his senior. Jansen’s health being poor, he went to Paris, where he supported himself by teaching, and met this school friend. There they determined to go to the home of Duvergier at Bayonne. In close fellowship for five years they studied together the works of St. Augustine. Alike they believed that a reformation of the Church was a necessity, and that it should take place on the lines of the teaching of St. Augustine. They both detested the Jesuits and their morals, and accepted, as against Luis Molina— who taught that God’s predestination was conditioned

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upon his foreknowledge of the life and character of the individual, and that his foreknowledge knew contingent events as contingent, and so did not determine the human will—the vigorous predestinarian determinism of Augustine; also the Augustinian idea of the supremacy of the Church, to which they and their followers were true in all the changes of the fateful years following; but they did not confound the supremacy of the Church with that of the Papal See.

In 1617, Jansen was recalled to Louvain to accept a professorship. Two years later he was made Doctor of Divinity. In 1624 and 1626 he visited Spain, and successfully defended his university against the encroachments of the Jesuits.

In 1621, Duvergier was at Louvain, and the two friends resolved to undertake the necessary reformation. Jansen was to take the field of Doctrine, and Duvergier that of Organization and Life. The relation between these was essential in their view. They held that life stands in the closest relation with practical doctrinal precepts; that true spiritual and Christian life comes only with the acceptance of this, teaching which alone brings true humility.

Duvergier was given, in 1611, a canonry in Bayonne, and in 1616 one at Poitiers; in 1620 he was made Abbe of St. Cyran, Poitiers, and was henceforth called St. Cyran. This was a Benedictine house, and he restored the rule to all, or more than, its primitive rigor. But after a while he was called to England by Queen Henrietta Maria. He declined preferment under Richelieu, and in 1633 published his “Petrus Aurelius.” This work was approved with praise by the Assembly of the French Clergy in 1635. They pub

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lished a new edition at their own expense in 1641, and a third edition was published five years later. The clergy were, however, by political influences, compelled to retract their eulogy in 1656. In the meantime he became acquainted with the inmates of Port Royal, and wrote, in 1633, in favor of Agnes Arnauld’s “Chaplet of the Holy Sacrament” In 1635 he became the confessor of Mere Angelique, and from that time the fortunes of Port Royal and of Jansenism are inseparable.

In these years the life of Jansen was running its course. He was respected by all who knew him for his character and learning. In 1630 he was made Professor of Biblical Exegesis at Louvain. In 1635 he wrote “Mars Gallicus” against the policy of Richelieu in allowing France to be in alliance with Evangelical Sweden. In return, Spain made him Bishop of Ypres, in 1636. He died May 6, 1638, leaving a work upon which he had spent twenty-two years of labor. This was the celebrated “Augustinus.” Dying, he wrote these words, which seem pathetic in view of the resulting strife: “I feel that it would be very difficult to make any changes in it; yet should the Holy See require such, remember that I am an obedient son, and willing to submit to the Church in which I have lived until death.”

The fundamental proposition of the work is that “Since the fall of Adam, free agency exists no longer in man, pure works are a mere gratuitous gift of God, and the predestination of the elect is not an effect of his prescience of our works, but of his free volition.” This work was published in 1640. Meanwhile, as the “Mars Gallicus” was translated into French in 1638,

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and as St. Cyran was known to be his friend, Richelieu caused St. Cyran’s arrest and confinement in Vincennes. There he wrote his-“Spiritual Letters,” and there he won to Port Royal and to Jansenism Antoine Arnauld. There he remained while the great cardinal lived. In 1642 he was released, but died October 10, 1643. The two friends were dead, but their work had just begun.

On the appearance of “Augustinus” the Jesuits used all their influence to procure its condemnation at Rome. Its positions were represented as the same as those of Bajus, condemned by the Papal See. The Bull “In Eminenti” bore date of March 6, 1642, and condemned the book. The Port Royalists would not receive the Bull; nor was it received in Flanders and France. Arnauld defended Jansen’s work. In 1649, Cornet, the syndic of the Sorbonne, presented five propositions which he declared to be in “Augustinus,” and submitted them to the Sarbonne and afterward at Rome. Innocent X condemned them in his Bull “Cum Occasione,” May 31, 1653.

Antoine Arnauld from this time on became the leader of the Jansenist party. He held that the five propositions were rightly condemned, but that they were never held, at least in a heretical sense, by Jansen. The French bishops decided in March, 1654, that they were contained in the “Augustinus.”

In May, 1655, Mazarin advised the odious measure of requiring a universal subscription by the clergy to the Bull condemning Jansen.

A Jesuit confessor refused absolution to the Due de Liancour unless he would renounce association with Port Royal. This called forth two works from Ar-

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nauld, “Letters to a Person of Quality,” and “Letters to a Peer of France.” In these he made the celebrated distinction between the question of right and of fact. He held that the See of Rome has authority to decide with respect to doctrine, and every good Catholic must submit to its decree; but the Holy See may misapprehend fact (as in the papal condemnation of Galileo’s theory of planetary movement), whether a book contains certain statements or not; the meaning of a writer may be so misunderstood. “Let the five propositions be heretical, yet, with the exception of the first, they are to be found neither in letter nor spirit in Jansen.” It is sad to see a bold and independent spirit, as Arnauld, by his love for what he held to be truth, and truth of the utmost value to the Church, by his theory of the necessity of obedience to the decisions of the Papal See, reduced to such miserable shifts of interpretation. Better any number of sectarian divisions than a union at the cost of straightforward dealing with truth and fact. The Propositions were in “Augustinus,” unless you give to the words an unnatural sense. In their usual sense they came under the papal condemnation; but so also came many passages from Augustine himself. The Sorbonne expelled Arnauld and sixty other Doctors. Better for the Church of France if they had taken up a tenable position without these evasions. To this it came at last. But, of course, neither manly independence in the Church nor existence outside of it could be tolerated by Louis XIV. Thus was narrowed and embittered the Puritanism of the Roman Catholic Church.

Meanwhile Pascal’s “Provincial Letters” turned the ridicule of society and the polite world on the Jesuits

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and their undertakings in 1656. The Assembly of the French Clergy and Council of State made the subscription to the formula of condemnation of universal obligation, February 1, 1661. In April, Jacqueline Pascal signed the formulary, and died of a broken heart in October, 1661.

Alexander VII declared, in a Bull of October 16, 1656, that the propositions in a heretical sense were found in Jansen. Arnauld and the Jansenists resisted subscription. All the inmates were expelled from the two convents of Port Royal, and the schools closed in April, 1661. Finally, with reservation, the nuns of Port-Royal-in-the-Fields signed, June 23, 1661. Mere Angelique died August 6, 1661.

Pierre de Marca, Archbishop of Paris, died June 27, 1662. Hardouin de Beaumont de Perefixe succeeded him, April 20, 1664. In April, 1664, Louis XIV decreed that all ecclesiastics, regular and secular, must sign the formulary within one month or be deprived. The nuns of Port Royal, having withdrawn their subscription, were again expelled from both convents in 1664. The Pope also required subscription by a Bull, in February, 1665. Four Jansenist prelates, Pavilion, Bishop of Alet, one of the noblest men in the episcopate in that century; Henry Arnauld, Bishop of Angers, a brother of the great Arnauld; and the Bishops of Pamiers and Beauvais, refused to subscribe. Alexander VII died in May, 1667, and was succeeded by Clement IX. The new Pope made the way for a compromise known as the Peace of Clement IX, by which the Jansenists were left in peace, substantially on the basis of the distinction of right and fact, January 19, 1669. Perefixe, Archbishop of Paris,

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died December 31, 1670, and was succeeded by Harlai (1670-1695), an able, unscrupulous, and profligate prelate.

In May, 1676, the Peace of Clement IX was broken by a mandate of Henry Arnauld, Bishop of Angers, in which he sought to impose the tolerated views on all the clergy. The bishop retracted his mandate, but the mischief was done. Henceforth Louis XIV was set against the Jansenists as against the Huguenots.

Port Royal lost two of its ablest defenders when Arnauld retired to Belgium in June, 1679, and the Duchess de Longueville died in April of the same year. The nuns and novices of Port Royal were reduced in number, and after its sudden revival in 1669, it now began its final decline in 1679. Pere la Chaise became confessor to Louis in 1675. The Edict of Nantes was revoked in October, 1685. Arnauld denounced “Philosophic Sin” in 1690, and died in 1694. Archbishop d^JHarlai died in August, 1695, aged seventy. He was succeeded by Louis Antoine de Noailles, Bishop of Chalons (1695-1729). The place should have gone to Bossuet as the worthy crown of a distinguished career; but Louis could bestow it only upon a man of noble birth. Then it should have gone to Fenelon, recently made Archbishop of Cambray. Sloailles was a striking instance of a good, weak man, whose acts were as injurious to the Church of France as if he had been wicked. Weakness in high station is often the worst kind of badness.

Pasquier Quesnel, a priest of the oratory, published in 1671 his “Moral Reflections on the New Testament,” which book was greatly enlarged in 1693. Noailles had warmly approved the book, as Bishop of

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Chalons. The Sorbonne approved of it, and Clement XI commended it, as did Archbishop Harlai. In the Quesners Assembly of the Clergy, Probabilism was “Refiec- censured in 1700. The censure dealt thoroughly with the case, and was written by Bossuet. The question of conscience, 1702, was whether a reverential silence was sufficient obedience to the Holy See. This was severely condemned, February 12, 1703. Finally the Bull “Vineam Domini/’ July, 1705, confirmed and renewed all preceding condemnations of the Five Propositions of Jansen. In 1704, Bossuet passed away, and there was no influence strong enough to thwart Jesuit intrigues with Louis XIV, least of all the Archbishop of Paris.

Quesnel was censured at Rome, and Port Royal was suppressed by a Bull in 1708. October 24, 1709, the nuns were driven from the convent of Port-Royal-in-the-Fields. The succeeding January was finished the final act in the tragedy when the church, convent, and buildings were demolished, and the graves of the dead desecrated.

Pere la Chaise died in 1709, and his place was taken by the Jesuit Le Tellier. Le Tellier set it as his aim to procure the papal condemnation of Quesnel’s “Reflections.” In December, 1711, Louis demanded of Clement a Bull distinctly condemning the book. September 8, 1713, came the Bull “Unigenitus Dei Filius,” condemning in the harshest terms one hundred and one propositions taken from the “Reflections,” and at once dividing the Church of France. This Bull was extorted from Clement against his better judgment by Le Tellier’s causing Louis to bring pressure upon the Pope. The French bishops refused to agree

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to a reception of the Bull. Archbishop Noailles, though he had assented to the destruction of Port Royal, now led the opposition. Louis XIV died while the case was undecided by the French Episcopate. Noailles appealed to a General Council. Four bishops and many minor ecclesiastics joined in this appeal, and were called appellants. Le Tellier died in disgrace, hated by his own order as the author of this confusion, in 1715. The court was against the Bull until 1719, when Cardinal Noailles refused to ordain the notorious Abbe Dubois, who became Archbishop of Cambray and cardinal, as well as prime minister, under the Regent Orleans. Dubois now began the work for the reception of the Bull. He procured the pacification or accom-modement of August, 1720.

But a deeper shame than that arising from the persecution and destruction of Port Royal and the enforcement of the Bull Unigenitus rests upon the Church of France. This was the _Huguenot# fact that the prelates of that Church, without exception, joined in commending that breach of national faith, pledged by three successive sovereigns to the French of the Reformed faith, known as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; and, secondly, that none of them protested against, but all took part in, or applauded, the shameless violence with which it was preceded and afterwards carried out.

It is impossible to read the infamous record of broken faith, and unbridled violence, and more than bestial cruelty to the dead, as well as the living, and think that such men as Bossuet and Fenelon, as Bour-daloue and Massillon, as well as the brilliant circle of learned men from Antoine Arnauld down, never once

19

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lifted up their voices against that policy which gave the deepest wound to the French State and the French Church, and from which the French people have not yet recovered. The stability and progress of every government and society has been most largely due to the middle class. Without such a class it seems almost impossible to have successful constitutional government, or effective and permanent political representation. Since the overthrow of La Rochelle the Huguenots ceased to form a political party; but they did form an influential, upright, and enlightened middle class. They had in their hands a large share of the manufactories and the major portion of the commerce of the kingdom. This class was driven out of the realm. Its enlightenment and resources enriched the neighbors and the enemies of France. When the absolutism of the old regime reached its limit and the Revolution must come, the one influence that could have restrained its excesses and led its wild passions into paths of peace and prosperity was gone. Slowly, in the nineteenth century, that class has been built up and become influential in France; but it is due to truth to say that it has not preserved the moral uprightness and independence which distinguished the men and the class whom France drove forth beyond her borders in the great Huguenot emigration. Never was there a more senseless political crime, and seldom has a political crime brought a more bitter punishment.

Upon coming to the throne, July 8, 1643, Louis XIV pledged his faith to maintain the Edict of Nantes. In all the years since 1620, all social and court influences were brought to bear to win to the Roman Catholic Church the leading men in the Reformed

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Church. This effort succeeded with many, including Marshal Turenne, but failed with Marshal Schomberg and De Ruvigny. Money was raised and plentifully paid to ministers or clergymen who would renounce the Reformed faith.

Then began that series of infractions of the Edict of Nantes which could only end in its utter abrogation. In March, 1661, a decree of the Council of State fixed the age at which Huguenot children might lawfully turn from the faith of their parents at twelve years in the case of girls, and at fourteen in the case of boys. In June, 1681, another decree forbade parents from seeking to persuade their children against this change, and their sending them out of the country to educate them; and then fixed the age of conversion at seven years. The Catholic population, with the priests leading, did all that they could to make this most iniquitous law successful in breaking up families. The distress and terror of Huguenot parents may be imagined. No Huguenot could act as guardian of orphan children, although their parents might have been Huguenots. They were systematically excluded, after 1662, from all civil and municipal offices, from the learned professions, or being printers, or booksellers, and from many crafts. Huguenot women could not be milliners, laundresses, or midwives.

So also they were debarred from all but a Roman Catholic education. In 1664 the new buildings which the Reformed had erected at their college at Nismes were given to the Jesuits, and the school placed under the authority of a Jesuit rector. In 1666, Huguenot nobles were forbidden to maintain academies for the instruction of their children in preference to Roman

292 History of the Christian Church.

Catholic schools. In 1670, Huguenot schoolmasters were forbidden to teach anything except reading, writing, and arithmetic. In 1671 it was ordered that there should be but one school in any place where the Reformed religion was allowed, and but one teacher in each school. In 1681 began the extinction of the great schools of the Reformed faith. In that year the Council of State suppressed the Academy founded by Coligni at Chatillon-sur-Loing, and that of Sedan founded by Henry IV. In 1684 the same fate came to the Academy of Die. In January, 1685, followed the Academy of Samer, whose learning had illuminated all Europe, and which was to cross to the New World with Daillie to New York and Boston. In March, 1685, the last, the Academy of Montauban, was crushed out.

The hatred against Huguenot churches or “temples” was even more intense. They were the perpetual reminders that France was not united in religion. In

1662 twenty-three out of twenty-five Reformed churches in Gex were shut up. From that date until the final Revocation, each year, and upon any, and often the most frivolous pretexts, Huguenot churches were destroyed; because some one of the worshipers, coming out of the church, failed to remove the hat as the consecrated host was passing; because some sang psalms on their way to church; because the church was too near that of the Roman Catholic; but often no excuse was given. When all had been demolished, it was a crime to meet under the open sky.

These means all not accomplishing the desired result so soon or so thoroughly as desired, a last measure was persistently used to the everlasting shame of the

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king, the government, and the Church. This was the famous Dragonnades; that is, the military occupation of the communities and homes of the Huguenot people. The king wrote, “If, according to a fair distribution, they could entertain as many as ten apiece, you may assign them twenty.” A contemporary historian, who knew, says: “The dragoons did, in order to compel these people to turn Catholic, all that soldiers are accustomed to do in an enemy’s country, for the purpose of forcing their hosts to give up their money, or to reveal the place where they have hidden their goods. They spared neither men, women, nor children; neither the poor, the sick, nor the aged.” These Dragonnades began in Poitou in June, 1681. From that year began the Huguenot emigration. Benoist thus describes it:

“Of those who lived near the seaboard, some would conceal themselves in bales of merchandise, or under loads of charcoal, or in empty hogsheads. Others were stowed in the holds of vessels, where they lay in heaps, men, women, and children, coming forth only in the dead of the night to breathe the air. Some would risk themselves in frail barks for a voyage, the very thought of which would once have made them shudder with fear. The guards placed by the king to watch the coast sometimes became softened, and found such opportunities of gain in favoring the flight of the Protestants that they even went so far as to assist them. The captains of cruisers, who had orders to intercept any vessels that might carry fugitives, themselves conveyed great numbers of them out of the kingdom; and in almost every seaport, the admiralty officers, tempted

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by the profits which the shipmasters shared with them, allowed many persons to pass, whose hiding-places they would not have found it very difficult to discover.

“There were families that paid from four to six or eight thousand livres for their escape. The same thing occurred on the landward side of the kingdom. Persons stationed to guard the roads and passages would furnish guides, at a certain price, to those whom they had been instructed to arrest, and would even serve in this capacity themselves. As for such as could not avail themselves of these advantages, for want of skill or lack of means, they contrived a thousand ways to elude the vigilance of the countless sentinels appointed to prevent their flight. Often they disguised themselves as peasants, driving cattle before them; or carrying bundles, as if on their way to some market; or as soldiers, returning to their garrison in some town of Holland or Germany; or as servants, in the livery of their masters. Never before have there been seen so many merchants called by pressing business into foreign parts. But where no such expedients were practicable, the fugitives betook themselves to unfrequented and difficult roads. They traveled by night only; they crossed the rivers by fords scarcely known, or unused because of danger; they spent the day in forests and in caverns, or concealed in barns and in haystacks. Women resorted to the same artifices with the men, and fled under all sorts of disguises. They dressed themselves as servants, as peasants, as nurses. They trundled wheelbarrows; they carried hods; they bore burdens. They passed themselves off as the wives of their guides. They dressed in men’s clothes, and followed on foot as lackeys, while their guides rode

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on horseback, as persons of quality. Men and women disguised themselves as mendicants, and passed through the places where they were most exposed to suspicion, in tattered garments, begging their bread from door to door.” All seamen and craftsmen were forbidden to leave the country with their families under penalty of the galleys, May 8, 1682.

In the Council of State, Colbert, the ablest minister Louis XIV ever had, resisted the violent measures; but he was now dead. Louvois, the minister of war, Le Tellier, the chancellor, ^^Edict and, above all, Pere La Chaise, pushed of Nante«, through the project. It was signed by Louis, October 17, and registered in Parliament, October 22, 1685. The Edict of Revocation provided for the immediate demolition of all places of worship of the Reformed. They were prohibited from assembling in any house or locality whatsoever for the exercise of their religion. Their ministers, if they did not embrace the Roman Catholic faith, were commanded to leave the kingdom within fifteen days after the publication of this Edict. If they performed any function of their office, the penalty was the galleys. Private schools for the instruction of children of the Reformed religion were abolished, “as well as all things in general that might denote any concession whatsoever in favor of the said religion.” Parents, under heavy penalties, must present their infants for Roman Catholic baptism. All persons professing the Reformed religion were forbidden to leave the kingdom under penalty of confiscation of their goods, and imprisonment for the women, and the galleys for the men. Such, in outline, were the provisions of this

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master-stroke of Louis XIV, as contemporary France thus regarded it. Very different is the opinion of the Due de St. Simon.

The Revocation was applauded throughout France. Madame de Sevigne wrote: “You have doubtless seen the edict by which the king revokes the ^FranL?¹ Edict of Nantes. Nothing is so beautiful as all that it contains, and never has any king done, none ever will do, anything more memorable.” La Fontaine and La Bruyere coincide with Madame Scudery and Madame Sevigne. Le Tellier, the aged chancellor, used the words of St. Simeon, “Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” Bossuet could not praise enough the piety of the new Constantine and Theodosius; nor did he hesitate personally to take part in the persecution. Innocent XI was not on good terms with Louis XIV since 1682, and delayed a letter of congratulations—his brief, dated November 13, 1685. Later, in a solemn Consistory, he gave public expressions to his joy. A gorgeous celebration was held at the Church Sta. Trinita Del Monte, and a medal was struck in commemoration. Alone, Queen Christina of Sweden, the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, in Rome, had a better mind. She wrote: “I should not wish to have set to my account all the sacrileges which these Catholics commit, found by missionaries, who treat too carelessly our holy mysteries. Soldiers are strange apostles. I believe them better suited for killing, violating, and robbing than for persuading.”

The Due de St. Simon enforces this condemnation : “The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, without the slightest pretext or the least necessity, as well as

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the various proclamations that followed, were the fruits of that horrible conspiracy which depopulated a fourth part of the kingdom, ruined its trade, weak- _Condemna_ ened it throughout, surrendered it for so tionofDucde long a time to open and avowed pillage ' ' by the dragoons, and authorized the torments and sufferings by means of which they procured the death of so many persons of both sexes and by thousands together ; a plot that brought ruin upon so great a body of people, that tore asunder countless families, arraying relatives against relatives, for the purpose of getting possession of their goods, whereupon they left them to starve; a plot that caused our manufactures to pass over into the hands of foreigners, made their States to flourish and grow populous at the expense of our own, and enabled them to build new cities; a plot that presented to the nations the spectacle of so vast a multitude of people, who had committed no crime, proscribed, denuded, fleeing, wandering, seeking an asylum afar from their country; a plot that consigned the noble, the wealthy, the aged—those highly esteemed in many cases for their piety, their learning, their virtue, those accustomed to a life of ease, frail, delicate—to hard labor in the galleys, under the drivers’ lash, and for no reason save that of their religion; a plot that, to crown all other horrors, filled every province of the kingdom with perjury and sacrilege, inasmuch as while the land rang with the cries of these unhappy victims of error, so many others sacrificed their consciences for their worldly goods and their comfort, purchasing both by means of feigned recantations, recantations from the very act of which they were dragged, without a moment’s interval, to

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adore what they did not believe in, and to receive what was really the Divine Body of the Most Holy One, while they still remained convinced that they were eating nothing but bread, and bread which they were in duty bound to abhor. Such was the general abomination begotten of flattery and cruelty. Between the rack and recantation, between recantation and the Holy Communion, it did not often happen that four and twenty hours intervened; and the torturers served as conductors, as witnesses. Those who seemed afterwards to make the change with greater deliberation were not slow to belie their pretended conversion by the tenor of their lives, or by flight.”

It is supposed that one-half of the Huguenot population left the kingdom. Those who estimate that population at one million five hundred thousand think seven hundred and fifty thousand emigrated. Others place the number at four hundred thousand. Probably this figure is near the truth. Of these, it has been estimated that one-third went to Germany and Switzerland, one-third to the Netherlands, one hundred thousand to Great Britain, Ireland, and America, and the remainder to the rest of Europe. In Normandy, we are told that one hundred and eighty-four thousand Huguenots deserted the country, leaving vacant twenty-six thousand houses, and that the population of Rouen, the capital, fell from eighty to sixty thousand; that by the official census of Paris, in 1697, of one thousand nine hundred and thirty-three Huguenot families, one thousand two hundred and two had emigrated, and but seven hundred and thirty-one were left. The quality of those who left was much more significant than the

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numbers. Vauban, the most celebrated engineer of his time, in 1689, .advocated the recall of the Huguenots. He said, in an official paper, that since 1685 the Revocation had added eight to nine thousand of the best sailors in the kingdom to the fleets of the enemies of France, and five to six hundred officers and ten to twelve thousand soldiers to their armies.

In 1700, Mesnager, deputy of Rouen, said, “The greater part of our manufacturing establishments have been transported by Protestant refugees to foreign lands, so that now we receive from abroad more than we send thither,” making the balance of trade against France ten millions of francs a year. The deputy from Lyons said, at the same date, that a prominent cause of the decline of French trade was “the flight of Protestants, who have carried off much money, good heads, capable of carrying on commerce, and good arms, in the large number of workmen they took with them— persons who, by reason of their trades, have found a settlement among foreigners at the expense of their own country; a settlement accompanied with exceptional privileges.”

Of the eight hundred ministers of the Reformed Church in 1680, it is estimated that two hundred emigrated before the Revocation, and five hundred immediately after. About one hun- _Mlnist*_rs. dred apostatized and forsook their religion, one-quarter of whom returned to their former faith. Some others staid or returned to carry on their ministry. We have the names of about fifty who thus laid down their lives in the thirty years that followed the Revocation. Their ministry was short, and almost

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invariably ended on the scaffold or in perpetual imprisonment, where they were dead indeed to all they had ever known.

It was proclaimed by Bossuet, Maimbourg, Brueys, and others, that the Huguenots came into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church freely and without compulsion. We can scarcely blame Pierre Jurieu when he says: “These gentlemen have foreheads of brass, and blush at nothing. . . . All France has seen it, all Europe has witnessed it, and they dare affirm the contrary to what your eyes have seen. Do you think that these gentlemen dare not lie about the ages past, when they speak to you of tradition and of things said and done a thousand or twelve hundred years ago ?”

We may not pause to recount the sufferings of those who did not leave their native land. An instance or two must suffice. Blanche Gammond Blanche _was taken from the dungeons of Grenoble

Gammond.    .

to the hospital of Valence. The governor was Herapine. On the evening of her first day at the hospital Blanche refused to attend Roman Catholic prayers. Three or four women at once seized her and dragged her before Sister Marie, under whose direction, with blows and kicks, she was forced into the chapel, the nun saying, “Beggar, dog of a Huguenot, you will not go to church!” The next day she was brought before the governor, who said: “You are stubborn rebels against the king and against God; but you will have to change, or you will die under the blows. I shall bring you over, cursed race of vipers, by means of floggings; for I know my business by rote. I am fifty-six years old. I shall make you obey, knaves, better than any other man in the kingdom.

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The hospital is not made for you; but you are here to obey the orders of the hospital, and this is the command of my lord, the Bishop of Valence. You shall sweep from morning till night; and if you fail, you shall have a hundred blows with a stick. After that, I will see that you are thrust into a dungeon, where I shall let you die of hunger. But in order that you may linger the more, you will have a little bread and water, and it is impossible that you shall be able to withstand the blows you shall receive. In the end you will be dead in thirty or forty days at the most. We know it, for we have tried the experiment. After all that, you will be cast into the common sewer, and the king will be rid of a bad subject. There will be a dead dog, wretched in this life, and damned :n the next.” The deeds were as brutal as the words; and no martyr ever showed greater constancy or fortitude than Blanche Gammond under repeated and horrible floggings.

There was a circular tower built at Aigues-Mortes by Louis IX. It was ninety feet in height, and ninety-six feet in diameter. The walls were eighteen feet thick; the interior was divided into ^Tower

.    of Constance.

two great, circular, vaulted chambers, one above the other. The only light was through a few loopholes and a circular opening in the ceiling connecting the lower chambers with the upper one and the upper chamber with the terrace. Here Huguenot women, in the eighteenth century, were imprisoned for their faith. Women remained here thirty and forty years in a living grave, for no other crime than attending the worship of the Reformed religion. Sharper in suffering was the fate of those condemned to the

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galleys. If they served their time, they were not liberated. It was practically a life sentence they received. Some hundreds were liberated by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.

But these things did not crush out the Reformed faith in France. In the year of Revocation, Cardinal Le Camus wrote to the Bishop of Lugon: “The women have showed themselves much more attached to their religion than the men. Their psalms, the notes of their Bibles, and the book of their ministers strengthen them in their views, and we see no way but in taking their books away from them. We have been promised books (of our own), but none have been sent us to substitute in the place of theirs. They hold small secret meetings, at which they read some chapter from their Bibles and their prayers. After that, the most able of their number makes an address. In a word they do just what they did at the birth of heresy. They have an insuperable aversion to a service in an unknown tongue and to our ceremonies. I have sent our missionaries. They can not abide monks. . . . The rest have accomplished very little, and I have been obliged to go in every direction to calm their minds and to soothe them. But as one can not be everywhere present, what one fancies done is undone within three days.”

Soon it was understood that the law prohibiting Reformed worship was no dead letter, and in 1686 the punishment for attendance upon Protestant service was made death. In February, 1686, Francis Teissier, a royal judge in the Cevennes, attended such worship, in which psalms were sung and prayers offered. He was brought before the intendant, Basville, and tried and sentenced to death. Then he said: “I shall die as

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did my Master. My body is at your disposal, gentlemen; but my soul belongs to God.” The priest who accompanied him to the scaffold, and besought him to accept the Roman Catholic faith, was so impressed by his heroism and joy in death that he became converted to the Evangelical faith. We pass over the use of the water torture and the disinterring and dragging of ^f.he remains of the dead from their graves, if they had not died in the Roman Catholic faith, and throwing them into the common sewer, to that uprising of a feeble people known by the War in the Cevennes.

The ministers were either driven out or silenced, but the worship did not cease. In the territory of the Cevennes the worshipers, in their excited _

. .    ^r ’    The War

imaginations, thought they heard heavenly inthe voices chanting psalms. Among them arose ^Cevennes. those who had ecstatic visions and were called prophets. Many of these were women. Thus there was kindled a fervor of enthusiasm unknown in peaceful times. The dangers and persecutions intensified their faith. For seventeen years the chief agent in the persecution among them was Abbe Du Chayla. In his youth he had been a missionary in Siam. Now he made his dwelling a torture-chamber for his unfortunate victims. He had apprehended a band of Huguenots and imprisoned them in his house, and refused money, which he sometimes took, for their ransom. Their friends appealed to the Huguenots assembled for worship for their release. In the evening of July 23, 1702, they broke into his house. Infuriated by the sight of his tortured victims, they set the house on fire, and, when they discovered him, avenged seventeen years of outrage in fifty-two wounds upon his body, twenty-

304 History of the Christian Church.

four of which were mortal. Then opened the war of Cevennes, in which these simple mountain villagers were to defeat the plans of the marshals of France backed by forty thousand troops.

For nearly two years they successfully resisted Marshal de Broglie and Marshal Montrevel, burning churches and the houses of priests. On the other hand, Montrevel adopted the policy of devastation, and burned four hundred and sixty-six villages in the upper Cevennes. He then proposed to deport all the inhabitants; but here Louis XIV called a halt, and sent one of his ablest soldiers, Marshal Villars, to end this war in the heart of his kingdom. He used conciliatory tactics, and won to an armistice and treaty Jean Cavalier, the most renowned of their leaders. Cavalier was outwitted. He went to Switzerland, became a colonel in the British army, and died governor of Jersey. The majority of the Camisards, as they were called, rejected the terms offered to Cavalier. But they were divided, their arsenals and storehouses in the caves of the Cevennes were discovered, and their heroic young leader, Roland, was surprised and killed. By January, 1705, the revolt had been put down. An attempt to revive it was made in 1709, but the last embers were quenched in 1711. On March 8, 1715, Louis XIV pronounced the Evangelical faith extinct in France. In the same year, August 21, 1715, was held the first Synod of the Churches of the Desert, the beginning of the new life of the Reformed Church in France. Louis XIV was as far wrong in 1715 as in 1685.

The instrument in this momentous revival was Antoine Court. He was born in 1696, and his father died

The Church of France.

305

when he was five years old. At fifteen he began to preach. He found the first, the hardest, and most necessary work was to restore discipline in those flocks unshepherded for thirty years. _Co„^^toj"®₆ This he did, and put down the prophets, their fanaticism and rebellion. He received the support of laymen in the Synods, and by 1729 there were one hundred and twenty congregations, attended by scores of thousands of worshipers. Let no one suppose that this was done with the connivance of the France of the Regency. Soon after appeared, in 1724, the Edict of Louis XV, confirming all the severities of the former reign. For years Antoine Court had a price set upon his head. Finally he was convinced that there must be a school for the education of the Reformed clergy for France. In 1730 he left the scene of his labors and his perils, and founded at Lausanne the school for which he saw there was so great need. At its head he remained until his death in 1760. Few causes have had more heroism, unselfish, indefatigable, or wiser leadership than Antoine Court gave the Church of the Desert of France.

So the kings had set themselves, and the resources of the mightiest kingdom in Europe had been used to eradicate the Reformed Church, the Huguenots of France. The work, so far as they were concerned, was in vain; but the evil wrought in the Church and Kingdom of France was immeasurable. A century of revolutions has not atoned for it.

20

Chapter VIII.

THE PAPACY.

The policy of the papacy during this period had two centers of interest. The one was its relations with Louis XIV, the most powerful and imperi-The Papacy, ous monarch of the time, and the other its 1648-1720. _rej_atj_ons    ^ gociety of Jesus. Both

of these have been set forth in considering the Church of France. Besides these, there were important interests connected with the missionary work of the Roman Catholic Church in India, China, and especially in North and South America.

No pope of this era was a remarkable man. They seem to represent the average of the Italian cardinals in learning and ability. In uprightness and morality they were above the average of their predecessors.

Fabio Chigi, born at Sienna, 1599, had served as

papal nuncio in Germany, 1639-1651, where he bitterly

opposed the Peace of Westphalia. On his

Alexander vii. _return i_nn0cent X made him cardinal and 1655-1667.

papal secretary of state. It was through his influence that the Five Propositions of Jensenius were condemned, which opened the hundred years’ strife in the Church of France. Innocent died January 7, 1655. Alexander was not elected until the next April. He frowned upon nepotism for one brief year, when the Jesuits brought him back into the old well-trodden paths. He not only favored the Jesuits in their quarrel with Jansenism, but he succeeded in having them again

306

The Papacy.

307

admitted to Venice, from which they had been banished for fifty years.

In this pontificate it was a matter of great rejoicing at the Papal Court that the daughter of the great Gus-tavus Adolphus, Queen Christina of Sweden, became a Roman Catholic, and upon doing so she not only left her throne, but took up her residence at Rome. On the other hand, Alexander, in a quarrel on account of privileges claimed by the French ambassador, had a quarrel with Louis XIV, and was compelled to sign a humiliating peace at Pisa in 1664. He, like his predecessor, would not confirm the Portuguese bishops, thus recognizing the independence of Portugal from Spain, and the bishoprics were administered by the king. Alexander appreciated learning; he was the center of a circle of literary and learned men, of whom Pallavicini, the historian of the Council of Trent, was the chief. Alexander died May 22, 1667.

Giulio Rospigliosi was born at Pistoija in 1600. He was made cardinal in 1657, and elected pope June

20, 1667. He restored the finances, and both he and his relatives lived economically, clement ix.* He was on good terms with Louis XIV, ¹⁶⁶⁷ '⁶⁶⁹‘ and urged the latter to the Peace of Aix la Chapelle in 1668. He also gave to the French Church a truce, at least, in the strife between the Jesuits and Jansenists in the Peace of Clement of 1668. He confirmed the Portuguese bishops, 1669, ^and died December 9, 1669.

Again there was a long strife in the conclave. It finally resulted, April 29, 1670, in the choice of Emilio Altieri, born at Rome in Clement x. 1590. In his pontificate began the strife '⁶⁷° '⁶⁷⁶* with Louis XIV over the Regal. Cardinal Paluzzi

308 History of the Christian Church.

bore the burden of the business of this reign, including the promotions even to the cardinalate. Clement died July 22, 1676.

Benedetto Odescalchi, born at Como in 1611, was one of the most distinguished popes of the century.

He was elected September 21, 1676. He was a man of firmness, courage, and of strict morals. He allowed no nepotism. His nephew lived plainly in Rome as a private person. He set himself against lax popular morals, even doing away with theaters. He also condemned fifty-five propositions taken from the popular manuals of the Jesuit morals (Rosenbaum and Escobar). He adhered to his predecessor’s position in regard to the Regal in dispute with Louis XIV. This resulted in the Gal-lican Articles of 1682. Clement condemned them, and declared void the proceedings of the Council, April 11, 1682. He also refused to confirm the promotion to the episcopate of any who took part in this Council. He annulled the ambassadors’ right of asylum for offenders against the papal or city laws, a measure most just and wise. Louis carried on the contest for a year and a half; but the pope would not receive his ambassador until the king renounced this right. The matter was not adjusted until after the pope’s death. Innocent naturally favored the enemies of Louis XIV. Through his influence Joseph Clement of Bavaria, a friend of the Emperor Leopold, was chosen Archbishop of Cologne against the candidate of the French king. So Innocent had little favor for James II of England as the tool of Louis and the Jesuits, and looked with complacency upon the success of William III. In 1676 he forbade the Jesuits receiving any

The Papacy.

309

novices into their order, and in 1686 condemned Moli-nos. He favored also the attempts of Spinola and Leibnitz to find some ground of union for the Evangelical and Roman Catholic Churches. He died August 8, 1689.

Pietro Ottoboni was born at Venice in 1610. Under Innocent X he became cardinal and datary. He was the choice of the French party, and was    ^

x-    Alexander

elected October 6, 1689. He came to an vm. accommodation with Louis XIV in regard *689-1691. to the right of asylum, but would not yield in regard to the confirmation of the French bishops. He was abounding in charities, but he also restored nepotism to its full vigor. In 1690 he condemned “Philosophic Sin” against the Jesuits. He also acquired for the Vatican library the precious manuscripts from the library of Queen Christina of Sweden. He died February 1, 1691.

Antonio Pignatelli was born at Naples in 1615. Under Innocent XI he was made cardinal and Archbishop of Naples. He was elected July 12,

1691. He took the title of his friend, whom ^,n^^{ocent xn}-

. .    1691-1700.

he resembled in character and administration. Intending to do away with the purchase of offices, he paid back large sums paid for them, that they might be free for worthier disposal. Personally he was economical, and allowed no nepotism, the incomes of the cardinals were limited, and he guarded for the future against the chiefest abuses of nepotism. Strict in the administration of justice, he was abundant in charities, so that he was called the Father of the Poor. He reached an accommodation with Louis XIV on the Gallican Articles. The bishops expressed regret

310 History of the Christian Church.

for what they had done, when the Pope confirmed them, and the obnoxious Articles were not required to be taught in the Roman Catholic seminaries in France. He condemned Fenelon’s “Maxims of the Saints,” and favored Charles II of Spain in making the grandson of Louis XIV his heir. Hence all the woes of the War of the Spanish Succession. He died September 27, 1700. He built the aqueducts at Civita Vecchia, the harbor at Porto d’Anzio, and the palace at Monte Citorio in Rome, and also the asylum, school, and penitentiary of San Michele.

Giovanni Francesco, Count of Albano, was born at Pesaro, July 22, 1649. He was papal secretary under

Innocent XI, Alexander VIII, and Inno-ciement xi. _cenj. xil _an(j _{was ma(}j_e cardinal in 1690.

1700-1721.    ⁷    ^

As a man of ability and energy he was elected November 22, 1700. He ended the disputes concerning the ambassadors’ quarter at Rome, but in his other measures he was less fortunate. He recognized Philip V of Spain, but was compelled to recognize his rival in 1709. He lost Parma and Placencia, and was utterly disregarded at the Peace of Utrecht. He resisted the coronation of the first Prussian king only to his discredit. Nor was he more fortunate in the Church. He denounced Jansenism in 1705, and formally abolished Port Royal, and embroiled the Church of France in a bitter controversy, which was never healed, by his Bull “Unigenitus” condemning Quesnel’s “Moral Reflections on the New Testament.” He paid dearly for his friendship to France and the Jesuits. He was a friend of science and art, and procured for the Vatican library the valuable Assemani Oriental manuscripts. He died March 19, 1721.

Chapter IX.

ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS IN AMERICA.

No history of the Church of this period would be complete without a sketch of the founding of the Roman Catholic Church in America, and of the labors and sacrifices of her missionaries, among whom are some as noble and heroic men as have adorned any page of the history of the Christian Church.

The first discoverers, whether Spaniards or Portuguese, were sincere Roman Catholics. Luther’s Theses were not nailed on the church-door at Wittenberg until twenty-five years after the discovery of America. Whatever Evangelical tendencies there were afterward in Spain were soon crushed out in blood and flame. It was the Mediaeval Church, a Church which allowed no dissent, which came to Spanish America. There were grand inquisitors and dungeons of the inquisitors in Mexico and at Lima, as at Madrid and Seville. Still there was in the New World little except political occasion for autos da fe.

With the settlement of the Spaniards came the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. As soon as a settled government with capital and royal governor was established there was founded an Episcopal See. This had a regular graduation of clerical offices from the pastors of a country village or chaplain of a wealthy land-owner to the chapter of the cathedral. Thus the See of San Domingo was founded in 1512, Santiago de

311

312 History of the Christian Church.

Cuba in 1522, and Mexico in 1530. Long before this the monks of the different orders followed hard on the footsteps of the first explorers. They were the great missionaries. Distinguished among them were the Franciscans and the Dominicans, and later the Jesuits and the Recollets.

The Franciscans were early in the field, and furnished the most laborers; but to the Dominicans belonged Montesino and Las Casas and the honor of abolishing Indian slavery in the New World—a slavery of shorter duration, but as cruel and destructive as any ever known. That its course was so brief was mainly due to one of the noblest men of the age of Latimer and Luther, Bartolome Las Casas.

Las Casas was born of a noble Spanish family in 1474. His father sailed with Columbus on his second

Bartolome ^v°y^a&^e- On return, in 1497, he brought Las Casas, to his home a young Indian. On the next •474-1566. _VOy_ag_{e 0}f Columbus the following year both the father and son accompanied him. The father acquired an estate in Hispaniola, or Hayti, and the son returned to settle upon it in 1502. Las Casas had been educated in philosophy, theology, and law at Salamanca, and in 1510, at the age of thirty-six, he was ordained priest.

Meanwhile the system of Indian slavery had become firmly established wherever the flag of Spain floated over American soil. It began under Columbus. The Cannibal Caribs would raid the settlements. Such as were caught were made slaves. He argued that it was better for the Indian thus to be brought in contact with Christianity, and it was profitable for the Spaniards. At first Columbus ordered each person over fourteen years of age to pay a slight tribute, and this

Roman Catholic Missions.    313

payment could be rendered by personal service in the fields or with the herds of the Spaniards. By 1499 villages of Indians under their chiefs were ordered to till the ground for the benefit of some Spaniard or Spaniards. This was peonage. In 1502, Columbus was superseded by Ovando, a human tiger in his dealings with the Indians.

Soon the “allotments” of Indian serfdom were changed into the “commanderies” of absolute slavery. In 1503, Ferdinand and Isabella gave the governor power to compel the Indians to work for wages. They were deeded in lots of fifty, one hundred, or five hundred to individual Spaniards, on these terms, “To you, such a one, is given an encomienda (commandery) of so many Indians, and you are to teach them in the things of our holy Catholic faith.” The instruction, like the wages, was remarkable for its absence. This slavery in an agricultural community was harsh enough; but when the mines were opened, it became more profitable to kill than to care for the enslaved. Soon the native population of Hispaniola were depleted, and raids for slaves were made to the neighboring islands.

All this deviltry excited rebellion, and that was put down with incredible cruelty. Once Ovando invited the chiefs of a commandery to a house to see a tournament. At a signal they were seized and burned alive in the house, while their queen was hanged. Once, “in honor and reverence of Christ and his twelve apostles,” thirteen Indians were hanged in a row, so that their toes would just touch the ground, and then picked to death with the points of swords. Indians were impaled, burned alive, or torn to pieces by bloodhounds. In 1510 there came to Hispaniola a colony of Domin

314 History of the Christian Church.

ican monks, among whom was the pioneer American Abolitionist, Father Antonio Montesino. On a Sunday in 1511 he preached a sermon in the church at San Domingo. His words were “very piercing and terrible.” He told the Spaniards they were living in mortal sin, and that their greed and cruelty barred them from heaven as certainly as if they were Moors or Turks. The leading citizens demanded a retraction, but Montesino was as little inclined to retract as Luther. The next Sunday, amid great excitement, the church was crowded, and Father Antonio, more terrible still in speech, threatened eternal torments, and refused confession to any who should maltreat the Indians, or be implicated in the slave-trade. Montesino went to Spain to plead the same cause, and made a strong impression on Ferdinand, but was able to accomplish little. He had, however, won a man who could.

Las Casas could not shake off the influence of the sermons of Montesino, though he thought he had gone too far. In the same year he went with Velasquez in his conquest of Cuba. The inhabitants were divided up in encomiendas, and Las Casas, like a thrifty settler, with a partner, had one. But God does not allow sincere and earnest men who are teachable to be long withheld from a vision of the truth. In 1514, at Pentecost, it was the duty of Las Casas to preach. In searching for a text, these words from the thirty-fourth chapter of Ecclesiasticus fell beneath his eye: “The Most High is not pleased with the offerings of the wicked; neither is he pacified for sin by the multitude of sacrifices. The bread of the needy is their life; he that defraudeth them thereof is a man of blood. He that taketh away his neighbor’s living slayeth him, and he that defraudeth a laborer of his hire is a shedder of

Roman Catholic Missions.    315

blood.” These words opened the eyes of Las Casas. He saw the truth. That truth made him and the Indians of Spanish America free. Slavery was wrong— forever wrong. He and his partner freed their own slaves. Las Casas, like Montesino, sailed for Spain to right the wrong at headquarters. He arrived in 1516, after the death of King Ferdinand. The great Cardinal Ximenes was regent. In an interview Las Casas asked, after detailing the situation, “With what justice can such things be done, whether the Indians are free or not?” But the cardinal replied: “With no justice whatever. What! are not the Indians free ? Who doubts about their being free?” Las Casas had won the great minister. He appointed a commission of Jeronymite friars to investigate the case, and to accompany Las Casas. To the latter was given the title of Protector of the Indians. It was also ordered that the Indians must be paid and taught, but enforced labor was not abandoned. In the discussion about this, Las Casas said, “If it were to be used, the Negroes could stand it much better than the Indians.” He later lamented the rash statement, and denounced all slavery as wrong in principle, saying, “The Negroes had been made slaves unjustly and tyrannically, and the same reason holds good of them as of the Indians.”

Negro slavery was not a considerable factor in American life until long after the completion of Las Casas's labors in America. Las Casas was back in Spain in 1517. Ximenes was dying; but the indefatigable apostle of the Indians won over Charles V. Las Casas then undertook to gather fifty Spaniards, who, in a special uniform, should establish a kind of brotherhood for colonization, and who should show how the problem of settlement in the New World could be

316 History of the Christian Church.

solved without slavery. He obtained a grant from the emperor of land on the Pearl Coast of Central America. In 1520 he returned to Hispaniola, and the next year went to the Pearl Coast. A piratical kidnaper had preceded him. Soon after the colony of Las Casas had been founded, while the founder was absent in Hispaniola, the Indians fell upon the settlement, and left not a white man alive on the Pearl Coast. Then dejection seized the much enduring man. He began to wonder if his work was in accordance with the Divine purpose. He said, “Perhaps the Spaniards are not to be saved from the commission of great wickedness and the decay of their power.” In 1522 he joined the Dominicans, and for the next eight years remained in their monastery at San Domingo, studying theology and the Fathers. In these years Mexico and Central America had been added to the realm of Charles V, and now Pizarro was to embark on his final voyage to Peru.

The next six years, 1530-1536, Las Casas was in Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Guatemala. A friend of his had been appointed bishop of the latter See. Las Casas was then fifty-six years old, and was just at the threshold of his career.

In 1530 he had gone to Spain and procured a decree from the emperor forbidding Pizarro and Almagro to enslave the Indians. While in the monastery he had written a work called “The Only Way of Becoming a Christian,” in which he held that only reason and persuasion can bring men to Christ. This book was circulated in Spain in manuscript, and attracted much notice. Las Casas’ notions were denounced as impracticable ; he determined to show they were not.

In Guatemala his opportunity came. There was

Roman Ca tholic Missions.    317

north of that country a mountainous region inhabited by fierce Indian tribes, over whom the Spaniards had been unable to gain any advantage. Las Casas proposed to go to these intractable savages and put his theories in practice. First he obtained from the governor of Guatemala an agreement, signed May 2, 1537, that “If Las Casas, or any of his monks, can bring these Indians into conditions of peace, so that they shall recognize the Spanish monarch for their lord paramount, and pay him any moderate tribute, he, the governor, will place those provinces under His Majesty in chief, and will not give them to any private Spaniard in encomiendas. Moreover, no lay Spaniard, under heavy penalties, except the governor himself in person, shall be allowed for five years to enter into that territory.”

Then Las Casas began his task. He had, with his monks, learned the language of the people. Now he put the main facts and truths of Christianity into couplets, and set them to the music of Indian tunes. They sent four traders then to the most powerful chief in the country, well provided with mirrors, bells, and knives. After selling their wares, they called for Mexican drums or timbrels, and chanted these couplets. The people were interested, and wished to hear more. They told the people about the monks. The chief’s brother went back with them to see if what they said was true, and, if it was, to invite one of the missionary monks to return with him. So the Dominican, Luis de Barbastro, accepted the invitation. After living there six months, the chief and his principal men were converted : human sacrifices were abolished, and a church was built. Then Las Casas and another monk came.

3i8 History of the Christian Church.

The heathen party raged in vain. Within a year idolatry was renounced, and cannibalism given up; the chiefs agreed, though they had three times defeated the Spaniards, not to make war unless their land was invaded. More than this, the chiefs agreed to recognize Charles V, and Las Casas promised, what he ever kept, that not a Spaniard should enter the country without permission of the monks. This accomplished, Las Casas went to Spain in 1539, where Charles V confirmed the agreement he had made. The Land of War became the Land of Peace. In 1537, Paul III, in a brief, forbade any further enslavement of the Indians under penalty of excommunication.

From 1539 to 1544 Las Casas was in Spain. He then wrote his appalling narrative, “Brief Relation of the Destruction of the Indians.” In 1542 he gained from Charles V the enactment of this provision in his New Laws: “Item: we order and command that henceforward, for no cause whatever, whether of war, rebellion, ransom, or in any other manner, can any Indian be made a slave.” This was never repealed; it stopped the spread of slavery. Other clauses which were to uproot it altogether, proved impossible of enforcement. The compromise made allowance for the encomiendas to run for two lives, and then to fall to the crown, when the slaves were freed. The encomi-enda became an “allotment,” and the slave a serf. The heritability was afterward extended to the fourth life; but the serfdom was dying out, and was abolished in the middle of the eighteenth century. Before the death of Las Casas there was, all through Spanish America, a staff of officers of the crown charged to protect the interests of the crown in the reversion of encomiendas.

Roman Ca tholic Missions:    319

To Las Casas it was due that the horrors of the earlier years of Spanish settlement before 1535 were forever at an end.

In 1544, Las Casas, after refusing the See of Cuzco, accepted that of Chiapa, in Guatemala, the very center and stronghold of the slave interest. His tact and dignity won his cause, so that, in 1547, he could safely lay down his charge and return to Spain. He had crossed the Atlantic fourteen times, and voyaged on the Pacific to Peru; four times he had traveled to Germany to gain the attention and authority of the emperor. In 1550 he had a controversy with Sepulveda, in which he upheld his doctrine that there was but one way in which men could be won to Christianity. In word, Sepulveda won, because the record of the inquisitor and of Spain was on his side; but, in effect, Las Casas carried the day so far as the Indians were concerned. When Philip II came to the throne and more money was wanted, he was advised to sell the reversion of the encomiendas. Las Casas, more than eighty years old, came to the rescue, and the name of Philip II was at least saved from an added infamy. In the college at Valladolid in 1561, when he was eighty-seven, Las Casas finished his “History of the Indies,” which had occupied him for nine years, and which he brought down to 1522. Five years more he lived and wrought, in his ninetieth year finishing a valuable work on Peruvian affairs. At last, after a few days’ illness, he died at Madrid in 1566, aged ninety-two. Bartolome Las Casas would have been a remarkable man in any age or station. As a man of business, diplomatist, preacher, and historian, he showed vast and varied ability. Fiske, to whom this sketch is largely due, pronounced

320 History of the Christian Church.

him “absolutely fearless and absolutely true.” His strength of character and success as a reformer scarcely find a parallel. As a man he ennobled our humanity, ' and few careers have wrought greater good to both races. He was an example of a man to whom God gave quietude of mind and length of days, in which unhastingly to do a great work.

All Roman Catholic missionaries were not equal to Las Casas in nobility of character, in tact, or success; but there did not fail men of devotion and martyrs in company with the early explorers. Missionary priests accompanied Narvaez in 1527, and De Soto in his march of devastation and starvation in 1538. So in Coronado’s expedition from Mexico to Kansas in 1542 there were three Franciscan friars—John of Nizza, John of Padilla, and John of the Cross—who remained behind, and were massacred by the Indians.

A like fate in 1549 befell three Dominican friars who landed on the beach near Tampa Bay, Florida, who, seeking to address the savages, were Missions in set upon and slain while on their knees Florida. p_rayj_ng j_n sight of their countrymen in their ships, who were powerless to aid them. In 1566 a Jesuit missionary was massacred at Cumberland Island, Florida. Two years later, in Florida, ten Jesuits lost their lives, and in 1570 eight more Jesuits were slain by the Indians on the banks of the Potomac. These attempts at mission work among the savage Indians lacked knowledge and wisdom, but they did not lack courage and devotion. These losses discouraged the Jesuits, so that they withdrew from Florida to Mexico as a more promising field.

The Franciscans took their place in 1577. Twenty

Roman Catholic Missions.    321

years later the Indians broke out in an insurrection, and six Franciscans were murdered. But now came a period of marked prosperity for the Indian missions in Florida. In 1612 and 1627, Father Francis Pareja published two catechisms in the Timuguan language of the Florida Indians. These were printed in Mexico, one of them eight years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. In 1634 there were in Florida forty-four missions, with thirty-five Franciscan missionaries, and between twenty-five and thirty thousand Christian Indians. There were some three hundred people at St. Augustine, a Franciscan convent church, and two hospitals. Peace and prosperity prevailed for seventy-five years, until 1700. In 1674 the Bishop of Santiago de Cuba confirmed over thirteen thousand.

The mission life under the friars never came to independent action and Christian life. The people were kept in pupilage, and when great disaster came, there was no power of recovery. England and Spain were at war. In 1702 and 1704, Governor Moore, of South Carolina, attacked the Spaniards in Florida. Two Franciscan priests were martyred by the Indian allies of the English, and a thousand Christian Indians were made slaves. In 1727 there were only a thousand Christian Indians left. These dwindled to about a tenth of that number twenty-five years later.

In New Mexico and Arizona at the time of the Spanish conquest there were perhaps thirty or thirty-five thousand Indians. In 1581, New

Missions In

Mexico was discovered and named. When New Mexico the expedition returned, three Franciscans ^{and Arizona}* were massacred by the Indians. The country was reconquered in 1598, and ten years later there had been 21

322 History of the Christian Church.

eight thousand Indian baptisms. Santa Fe was founded in 1605. In 1620 the See of Durango was erected. These missions prospered so well that in 1630 there were twenty-five missions and thirty-five thousand Christian Indians. These seemed to flourish until the terrible Indian insurrection of 1680, a few years after King Philip’s War, which blasted the work of John Eliot. This insurrection ruined the missions. In a few weeks not a Spaniard was left north of the El Paso. Many of the Christian Indians proved only baptized heathens. In the renewed insurrection of 1694 five missionaries were massacred. In 1700 the reconquest was completed, but the Roman Catholic Church never regained its former power. The Moquis became entirely pagan, while the Zunis were partially so. There had been lack of episcopal supervision and discipline, and quarrels between the friars and the governor. The Apaches were an ever-present enemy, while the merely external conversion of so many left no foundation to build upon.

In Arizona lived and labored a remarkable man, Father Kuhn, or Kino, a Jesuit, called the Xavier of Northern Mexico. He traveled more than twenty thousand miles, and baptized thousands of Indians between 1687 and 1711.

Spanish rule began in Texas in 1689, and the same year the first mission was established; but all missions were abandoned in 1693, and were not resumed until nearly twenty-five years later. The noted names in Roman Catholic missionary annals in North America in the seventeenth century are French. In I534> Cartier discovered the St. Lawrence. Samuel de Champlain, an able and pious man, came to Canada in 1604,

Roman Catholic Missions.    323

and founded Quebec four years later. In 1609, Champlain attacked the Iroquois, and shot one man. That set the Iroquois against them. The Iroquois were the ruling Indian confederation in North America. Their enmity made impossible the aim of the one hundred and fifty years’ effort to found a French State in North America.

In 1613, Champlain was on the Ottawa. In the next year four Recollets landed at Quebec. They were followed by the Jesuits in 1625. In 1644, Maisonneuve founded Montreal. Jean Nicollet paddled from Quebec to Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 1634. The Recollets were on Niagara river in 1623-25. The Jesuits founded the Huron Mission in 1626. The Iroquois destroyed the Hurons in 1649. But the great age of French discovery in America was the era of Louis XIV. The Jesuit father Menard was at Kenewan Bay in 1661, and was murdered by the Indians the same year Claude Allonez was at Ashland, Wisconsin, in 1665. Three years later came Pere Marquette; and Ashland, Sault Ste. Marie, Mackinaw, and Green Bay became centers of missionary work. There were eighteen thousand Christian Indians gathered at Mackinaw in 1677. In 1670, Father Druillette, whom twenty years before we found with John Eliot, was at Sault Ste. Marie. In May, 1673, Marquette and Joliet set out from Mackinaw. They went to Green Bay, then up the Fox River, then across to the Wisconsin, and down this stream to the Mississippi, thence to the Arkansas. Then they turned up stream until they came to the Illinois, then up the Illinois to Chicago and to Green Bay, in four months traveling twenty-seven hundred miles, making one of the most adventurous quests

324 History of the Christian Church.

in the history of discovery. Marquette died on the shores of Lake Michigan, north of the St. Joseph River, May 18, 1675.

An even greater man than these intrepid explorers was Robert Cavalier Sieur de la Salle. He was born at Rouen in 1643, ^and sailed for Canada in 1666. Starting from Montreal, he came to the mouth of the Genesee River in 1669. He went to France, 1674-1677. In 1679 he sailed the length of Ontario to the mouth of the Niagara, where he built Fort Niagara; he then went on through Lake Erie, Lake Huron, and Lake Michigan, reaching the Illinois River, January 1, 1683. On that river he built Fort Crevecoeur, and then leav-his lieutenant, Tonty, forced his way back through pathless wilds and amid incredible hardships to Kingston, where he arrived in August, 1681. Again he retraced the long and familiar path to the Illinois. He found Fort Crevecoeur deserted. Then he sailed on down the Illinois, and down the Mississippi to its mouth, which he reached April 9, 1682. From thence he sailed to France. Equipping an expedition, he sailed for the mouth of the Mississippi in 1684. The incapacity of the naval commander ruined the expedition. They went past the Mississippi to Texas, where, three years later, La Salle was murdered. The noblest and bravest of the French discoverers was dead at the age of forty-four.

Father Hennepin, a Recollet friar, was with La Salle in 1679-1680. February 29, 1680, he started up the Mississippi from the mouth of the Illinois River until he reached St. Paul, and finally Mille Lacs, where he arrived May 5, 1680. In September, 1680, he went up the Wisconsin, then across and down the Fox

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River to Green Bay and Mackinaw. In 1681 he went to Quebec, and thence to France, where he lived until 1697, when he was banished and went to Holland. In 1690, missions were founded on the St. Croix River, Wisconsin, and the St. Joseph, Michigan, and in 1701 Detroit Mission was founded. Cadillac, commander at Detroit, drew all the Christian Indians from Michigan and Wisconsin to Detroit. This was against the Jesuit policy, which preferred isolated missions where they could better control the Indians. In 1721, Charlevoix, traveling from Quebec to New Orleans, found the old missions at Green Bay, Mackinaw, and St. Joseph nearly deserted. Allonez was at Fort Staved Rock, on the Illinois, 1684-1687. In 1692, Father Rale, from Maine, was there. Ten years later the mission began to decline. Kaskaskia, on the Mississippi, was founded about 1700, Peoria in 1707, and Vincennes in 1719. Iberville went to Louisiana in 1698. Mobile was founded in 1702, and New Orleans in 1717.

This is a wonderful record of discovery, and of mission work which met temporary success and final failure. The daring, resource, and fortitude of those who opened up the Great West, the heart of the continent, can never be forgotten.

It remains only to sketch the Eastern missions. Those to the Abenakis, in Maine, were the most important. Port Royal, on the St. Croix, was settled in 1604, but abandoned three years later. The Jesuits settled at Mount Desert,

1613, but the English broke up the settlement the next year. Father Baird visited the Abenakis in 1612. Father Druillette was with them in 1646-1647, and again in 1650. After he left in 1652, there were no mission

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aries among them until 1688. The Jesuits took charge of them in 1700. They were with them when they ravaged Deerfield and Haverhill, and at the burning of Schenectady. The resentment then kindled never was allayed while the French flag floated over a foot of soil north of New England. Sebastian Rale, a missionary, came to America in 1689, at the age of thirty-two. He labored first among the emigrants of Canada, then among the Abenakis. He wrote a dictionary of the Abenakis language, which was published by Harvard College in 1833. I^{n I}7²²» ^war broke out, and in August, 1724, the mission was surprised, and Rale was brutally slain.

3’art Sramd.

THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL, 1720-1800.

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Chapter I.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

No one who reads can doubt that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had marked characteristics and made most important contributions to Christian civilization. The sixteenth century brought in Christian liberty to read and use the Christian Scriptures. The seventeenth century brought in civil liberty and religious toleration among the English-speaking people. It was the age of the Puritans, of the founding of the North American Colonies, and of Louis XIV.

The century which followed has a life as peculiar and as characteristic. It was the century of emancipation from all authority, custom, and tradition; it made the great break with the past; it was the century of destruction. It abolished many abuses, introduced many reforms, but ended in a great catastrophe. It was the beginning of the science of chemistry, of electrical physics, and of political economy. It largely completed the discovery of the islands of all seas and the mapping of the shores of all continents. It was the century of Watt and the steam engine, of Arkwright and the spinning-jenny. To it belonged Priestley and Lavoisier, Franklin and Galvani, Adam Smith and Vico. It was the century of common sense and of the wildest dreams of human perfectibility. To put it briefly, on its destructive side it was godless, utilitarian, superficial, and sentimental. It was a godless century.

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The great masters of literature, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Diderot in France, Hume and Gibbon in England, Lessing and Goethe in Germany, did not believe in the Christian religion. It is true that none of these, except Diderot, denied the existence of God; but the God they believed in was God only as an initial term of the universe, a Great First Cause, who dwelt alone, and who knew little and cared less about the affairs of men. He could be patronized by men of wit, and if he had any laws they could be transgressed with impunity. In the seventeenth century all questions were religious, and turned upon man’s relation to God. In the next the full reaction came; it seemed to be the effort of men to find what would be left in human life and human society if God were eliminated from them. In ridicule and ribaldry, in denial and blasphemy, license of tongue and sense, it has an evil pre-eminence among the Christian centuries. In skepticism and atheism it surpassed all others, and garnered their ripened fruit in the French Revolution. Yes, it was a godless age; the Time Spirit knew no reverence for God, nor aught that was sacred and holy among men.

It was a utilitarian century. It broke with all other standards, and made this the test: What is the present use of this law, or institution, or social custom, or art, or science, or religion? What could be shown to belong to that category was to be retained; what did not was banished without the least thought as to the vital connection of parts so widely separated. The standard of present utility was first set by good society and the leaders in current thought and literature; but it was soon understood that, as the profoundest

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problems of being and of human life were brought to the test of common sense in the age of reason, every man had the innate right to decide for himself what was useless and should be destroyed, that it should no longer hinder the advancing perfection of the race.

It was a superficial century. It did not take kindly to either hard thinking or accurate knowledge. If progress were made in these directions, it was by the isolated thinkers like Priestley and Kant. The philosophy of Bolingbroke, the poetry of Pope, the gibes of Voltaire, and the doctrinaire theories of Rousseau mirror the thought and life of the age. There was a poverty of exact knowledge and an equal lack of understanding of the necessary relations or relative values of what was known. It was an age, not of inductive thinking, but of the crudest and rashest experiment. It invented the balloon, and most of its most vaunted discoveries in politics, society, or religion had about the same relation to the facts of life that the balloon has to the transportation of merchandise and the great transactions of commerce.

It was a sentimental century. The thought was not profound nor the feelings deep, but they were easily moved, and anything which moved them thus without calling forth any appropriate action was keenly enjoyed. This accounts for the popularity of “Tristram Shandy” and of much of Rousseau. They played and they danced, they admired Watteau and Dresden shepherdesses, and the court enacted pastoral scenes at Marly until the flood of the French Revolution came and drowned them all. All this flow of sentiment and enlightenment only loosened the ties of moral obligation. It was the age of Frederick II of Prussia,

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whose seizure of Silesia was as bold an act of a political highwayman as Europe had ever seen, until he, and his likeminded compeer in religion and ethics, Catherine II of Russia, joined in the partition of Poland. These deeds of political immorality brought their punishment, first in the Seven Years’ War with Austria and her allies, and then in the conquests and humiliation of Napoleon. The sentimental had little connection with the moral.

These predominant tendencies in the life of a great age, great even in its wickedness, could not but show themselves in the higher spheres of the life of the individual and of society. The eighteenth century had no place for great poetry or artistic creations of the imagination. Nature never stirred the most artificial society of Christian Europe. This, which was true of works of the imagination, was true of its reconstruction of the past. Hume’s History is readable,—only it is not history. Gibbon has both a noble historic style and an informed and able historic judgment, where his prejudices are not concerned. Comparatively few of his statements of fact are unreliable, but what a mournful procession the centuries make to nowhere in the stately pages of his magnificent prose! What excuse have they for being, or has he for the writing of them? But, as a rule, the thought of the age only turned to history to show its superior enlightenment, and to pour ridicule upon all that preceding centuries had worshiped or revered. The limitations of the age are still more clearly seen in art, and especially in architecture. There were some memorable portrait-painters, but no art that spoke to the soul of man. In architecture it was the age of the rococo and the

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very lowest limit of bad taste; as a rule, if you find a sham gothic or a building of supreme ugliness, you are safe in assigning it to the eighteenth century.

The dormant religion of the eighteenth century was mainly given to emphasizing morality, and illustrated well the sentence of Mark Pattison that the age in which morality was most exclusively preached was the most immoral. The dominant religion hated all mysteries. Everything in earth and heaven should be made plain to reason and to common sense. It had no perception of a greatness, a perfection, and a value which these could neither fathom nor fully understand. The age was a self-indulgent one in religion as in all else, and self-denial was not in its list of virtues. The easy-going, tolerant, average morality never greatly moved, nor greatly expecting beyond the range of temporal vision, was the ruling tone where the moral practice was not much worse. This dark and destructive shadow, however, is but part of the picture of a great century which had its high lights and grand figures as well.

The eighteenth century was the century of toleration. What had been gained in England in the last decade of the preceding age had now become the heritage of Christian Europe. It was the century of the fall of the Jesuits and the fall of the Bastile; one an organization that lived for intolerance, the other a stronghold and prison of absolute power. It was a century with an immense enthusiasm for liberty. Shackles were shackles, no matter how honorable or how revered, and they were there only to be broken. Shackles on the human spirit were quite as noxious as upon the human limbs. A chance for free breath

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and action was the cry. So down went the age-long social convention, the industrial organizations and guilds, religious persecution and political tyranny. It was the century of an immense enthusiasm for humanity; for man divested of all accidents of rank and station. In that century was coined our word humane, with its modern signification. It saw the end of burning for witchcraft, and of torture in judicial proceedings in most of Europe.

It was the age of John Howard and of prison reform, of immense reforms in popular education connected with the names of Pestalozzi and Froebel. It marked an era in the treatment of the insane. It was the age of Burns’s “A man ’s a man for a’ that.” It was an age in which arose two great powers new to European politics on the grand scale, and yet which were more largely to affect the map of Europe and Asia than all other powers in the century which followed ; two powers, beside which the conquests of Napoleon seem but a dream in the night, and the English conquests of both India and Egypt seem but the grasping of the far lesser part of the great Asiatic Continent. Prussia and Russia became great powers in the eighteenth century.

But these are not the great and ending achievements of the eighteenth century. In politics, that unquestionably was the founding of the American Republic, with such restraint and such wisdom, and such popular intelligence and morality, such lofty patriotism and unlimitable resources as demonstrated the success of popular government, and revolutionized the basis of political power throughout the civilized world. In religion it was the Evangelical revival which made

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God’s salvation, in spite of popes and theologians, accessible to the common man.

These, added to the spirit of the age which brought all learning and science to the home of the humblest with popular education and the daily press, made possible the rule of the people, the democracy of the nineteenth century. In spite of its sins, its follies, and its crimes, without the eighteenth century, the century of John Wesley and of George Washington, the nineteenth century could not have wrought its work, nor garnered its magnificent harvest.

Chapter II.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND ENGLISH DEISM.

_t The; Church of England in this period felt the spirit of the age demanding that reason should be the standard of all things, especially in religion, so that a large section of the clergy were Arian in belief. Dr. Samud Clarke prepared an Arian prayer-book, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Herring, gave it his approval, while those who did not go so far were often latitudinarians in practice and in doctrine of a very liberal kind. Moral platitudes formed the staple of the sermons, while in polite circles skepticism, licentiousness, and venality held high carnival, and among the lower classes an ignorance and brutality that made it seem as if England had forgotten that serious, godly men had lived and wrought for a nobler England, and that there had ever been a Puritan Reform. But there came a great awakening, and soon the religion of the English people broke into the flame of the Evangelical revival.

The Archbishops of Canterbury of this period, with the exception of John Potter (1737-1747), were undistinguished for their learning, and his was not a very strenuous kind; nor for their piety, except Thomas Seeker (1758-1768). The others, Thomas Herring (17471757), Matthew Hutton (1757-1758), Frederick Cornwallis (1768-1783), and John Moore (1783-1805), were

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persons who attained to high station through no fitness for the service of the needs of the Church, but through family or political influence. Nor was there in this high office a man of mark, or a man to compare favorably with the occupants of the English primacy from the days of Matthew Parker to those of William Wake.

The Arian views held by Milton, Locke, and Sir Isaac Newton, and which so largely pervaded the Dissenting and Established clergy during the earlier half of the eighteenth century, cul- ^Unitariaa5* minated in the formation of a separate Unitarian society in London in 1774, under Dr. Theophilus Lindsey, who resigned his living in the Church of England for the purpose of undertaking its leadership. A more noted man was Dr. Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), the discoverer of oxygen. In 1755, at the age of twenty-two, he became pastor of a small Dissenting congregation. In 1758 he removed to Nantwich, and established a school. From 1761 to 1767 he was classical tutor at Warrington, where, in scientific studies, he passed his happiest years. In 1767 he became pastor of a Dissenting chapel at Leeds, and here became a pronounced Socinian. Later his views were Necessarian and materialistic, though he did not deny immortality. While at Leeds he discovered oxygen. He was also the first to prepare nitric oxide, nitrous oxide, and hydrochloric acid. In 1771 he became library companion to Lord Shelburne, and traveled in Holland and Germany, spending some time in Paris. In 1780 he removed to Birmingham as the pastor of a Unitarian congregation. He had sympathized with the American Revolution, as he now did with the French. Totally unprovoked, in 1791 a brutal 22

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British mob tore down his chapel and his house, and burned his books and papers. It was a cruel blow to a writer and scholar. He removed to Hackney, near London, and in 1794 to Northumberland, in Pennsylvania, where he died in 1804.

There were one or two Universalist societies organized in the latter part of the century in Scotland and England; but they soon lost Universaiists. _t}_le*_r independent existence, their membership generally being absorbed into the Unitarian congregations.

A peculiar form of Christianity was that initiated at London by the French Camisard prophets in 1705, who taught a direct leadership of the Holy Shakers. Q^ost and the immediate approach of the millennial age. In 1747 a Quaker, James Wardley, formed a congregation on these principles. In 1757 this society was joined by Mrs. Standish, or Ann Lee. She became its leader. They said, “The work which God promised to accomplish in the latter day was eminently marked out by the prophets to be a work of shaking,” so they took the name of Shakers. From 1770, when Mrs. Standish claimed to have received a special revelation, she was called Mother Lee, and regarded by the society as the equal of Jesus Christ. She separated from her husband, who married again. She came to America in 1774. They settled near Albany. Mrs. Standish died in 1784. James Whittaker, who came from England with her, founded the Shaker settlement at New Lebanon, N. Y., where their first house of worship was erected in 1785.

English Deism was the further rebound of the movement begun by the Latitudinarians in reaction

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against the excessive emphasis placed upon the Divine element and especially the Divine Sovereignty in Christianity by the Puritan teaching. This left little place for the human will and English human reason. The will and reason that guides and determines the universe, of which we are a part, can not be human, must be Divine. Here the Puritan thinking was within its rights; but, on the other hand, the standards of judgment and the power by which we act must be human. In all intelligent religious thinking and service there must be room for the right exercise of the human will and human reason ; without this, religion may be the assent to an authoritative creed, a participation in an established ritual of worship, and observance of disciplinary requirements, but there can be no personal religion consciously allying the soul to God. Chillingworth and Cudworth showed the right which reason had in religion; the English Deists sought to make it supreme, and the effort proved its impossibility.

The first who broke the way for those who entirely rejected Christian revelation were pronounced Christian believers who strove to show the reasonableness of Christianity. This was Christian

.    Deists.

the title of a work by John Locke, published in 1695. In this he held that the chief importance of the Christian revelation is, that it arrives at the same conclusion at which the most eminent of the race have come after prolonged investigation and thought in regard to the fundamental truths of religion, and that it comes to men with an authority which no mere human thinking could possess. Dr. Samuel Clarke, who was so possessed by the rational

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istic spirit of the age that he sought to demonstrate Christian truth as you would propositions in geometry, divides the Deists whom he sought to combat into four classes: (i) Those who believe that God made, but does not govern, the world; (2) Those who believe that he governs, but that there is no essential distinction between right and wrong, and hence that he has no moral nature; (3) Those who believe in God and in his moral nature, but deny the immortality of the soul, and who hold that justice and righteousness in God may be different in kind from those qualities in men ; (4) Those who hold all the above, but who deny the need or possibility of a Divine revelation.

The men who represented these opinions were Charles Blount, a scoffing infidel, who published in Anti-chris- 1680 “The Oracles of Reason,” which at-tian Deists, tempted to throw ridicule on the miracles of the Old and New Testaments. The work was not important, and was answered by Leslie in his “Short Method with Deists,” published in 1697. In 1696, John Toland published, in a far different spirit, “Christianity not Mysterious,” in which he professed to desire to rid Christianity of its excrescences and accretions. His standard was that we can accept of Christianity only such truths as we can form clear ideas of, and can fully and firmly grasp. He fully rejected a personal God and the immortality of the soul.

Matthew Tindal, in 1730, published “Christianity as Old as the Creation.” His main position is, that God in his perfect nature is immutable, and that man’s nature also is unchangeable, and therefore that God’s law for man is perfect and unalterable. This law is known through the reason and conscience of mankind.

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The light of nature is sufficient, and any revelation is impossible as contradicting the nature of God and man.

Anthony Collins, in 1713, published “A Discourse on Freethinking,” in which he sought to prove that in every question which had been submitted to free inquiry the decision had always been against the existence of anything supernatural, and also made a point upon the various readings of the New Testament text. Collins was completely answered by the great classical scholar, Richard Bentley. Then he attacked prophecy in “A Discourse of the Ground and Reason of the Christian Religion,” published in 1726.

Miracles were attacked by Thomas Woolston in “Six Discourses on the Miracles of our Savior. He assumes that the Gospel narratives are preposterous, and assails them with profanity and ribaldry, so as to place it outside of the pale of serious criticism.

William Wollaston, in “Religion of Nature Delineated,” did not oppose revelation, but had neither need nor room for it. His definition of religion is characteristic of the thought of the century, “The pursuit of happiness by the practice of reason and truth. This could only be a religion as devoid of life as is Confucian morality.

Thomas Morgan published, in 1737, “The Moral Philosopher, a Dialogue between a Christian Deist and a Christian Jew,” in which he claims that the religion of reason alone is divine, and that the Christian religion is a mere human device and invention. Morgan would have only morality, and no religion.

Bernard de Mandeville, in his “Fable of the Bees, 1706, held that man is a mere sensual being, that vice

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nourishes prosperity, and that private vices are public virtues.

The man who made Deism popular in England and the source of the French skepticism was Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke. He was a man of noble birth, a leader of fashion, an orator, and an able English statesman, but unprincipled and licentious. His writings are clear, witty, and vigorous in style. He ridiculed everything pedantic and antiquated. In his political life he was as shifty a politician as ever made alliance and served two dynasties at the same time, and finally met the merited fate of the rider standing upon two horses going in opposite directions. He ridiculed the Old Testament history and all connected with it, and had no use for Christian theology, upon which he made unsparing attacks, nor for the Christian revelation, concerning which he was more reticent. His philosophy was a cold, calculating selfishness as the source of all benevolence or patriotism. He had the contempt for the lower classes which pervaded his aristocratic and scoffing circle. His philosophy gained great popular circulation through Pope’s “Essay on Man,” which was based upon it.

So much space has been spent on men, most of whose names and works are forgotten except when revived by some Christian apologist or historian—first, because they were the forerunners and furnished the weapons of that French skepticism which dominated the century, and which has worked and does still work incalculable harm in preventing serious thought upon religion and its fundamental truths among intelligent men of the Latin race; and, secondly, because only by knowing the objections raised by the Deists is it pos-

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sible to understand the great work of the “wisest of English Christians/’ Joseph Butler. His “Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature,” was published in 1736. It may be called a resume of the whole Deistic controversy, and it unanswerably and forever disposed of English Deism, whose doctrines found nourishment and flourished on other than English soil, not only to the loss of Christendom, but to the immeasurable harm of human civilization.

From Collins, from Tindal, and Toland, and Wool-ston the French skeptics drew their arguments and objections; and from Mandeville and Bolingbroke they drew their ridicule and ribaldry, and their sensual ethics or selfish philosophy.

Joseph Butler was born at Wantage, May 18, 1692. His father was a Presbyterian, and Butler was educated in mathematics and classics, in logic and Hebrew, in the famous Dissenting ^B*^shop Butler. Academy at Tewkesbury, conducted by ' ⁹² '⁷⁵²* Samuel Jones. While at school, at the age of twenty-one, Butler entered into correspondence with Dr. Samuel Clarke in regard to some of the proofs he had adduced for the existence of God. The force, fairness, and candor of his mind impressed Dr. Clarke, and led to his appointment as preacher at the Rolls Chapel soon after leaving the university. In 1714, Butler went over to the Church of England. In March of that year he entered Oriel College, Oxford, where he remained for the next four years. He was ordained in 1718, and in a few months received the lucrative appointment above mentioned. At the Rolls, Butler remained until 1725, when he received the rich living

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of Stanhope. Here he wrote his immortal “Analogy.” In 1736 he was made clerk of the closet, or private chaplain to Queen Caroline. He was made Bishop of Bristol in 1737. In 1740, having been made Dean of St. Paul’s, he resigned the living of Stanhope. In 1750 he was made Bishop of Durham, the wealthiest See in England. He died July 16, 1752.

Joseph Butler, from his start in life, was well provided for in this world’s goods. He never married. It is not easy to conceive of a life which kept a more even tenor. He was a man of noble character, and apparently a careful administrator. No man of his time seems to have left less of a personal impression. His monument is two volumes of sermons and his “Analogy.” They require close attention and careful thinking to understand them; but he who masters them has won 110 inconsiderable element in a liberal education. No man can measure English thinking on the most fundamental themes without having lived in Bishop Butler’s thought.

Bishop Butler was a model in method for a Christian controversialist. Nothing flippant, or of mere temporal interest, or in any way personal, ever left his pen. Nothing can be fairer than his treatment of his opponents. He puts himself in their place. He says that, allowing that our objections to the Christian revelation are well founded as being in a measure incomprehensible, the difficulties are not such as render it incredible, but are only such as meet us in nature around us, and therefore it is only fair to presume that the Author of the one is the Author of the other. Butler is a peculiarly English thinker. He does not deal in general conceptions and ideal systems, but he

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sticks close to the facts. He takes the things evident to every observer, and shows how incomprehensible they are to our unaided reason, and the unsolved problems which they present to us. One reason why Butler appeals with such force to judicial minds, and why the value of his argument is seldom impaired, but often strengthened, by the increasing knowledge of later generations, is that he generally understates the force of his arguments, and the decisive nature of his evidence. Such an opponent is very difficult to confute, and the attempt has never been made with the argument of Bishop Butler. The Deist had declared that only such portion of Christian truth as was clearly within the limits of entire comprehension by human reason was to be received; all else was to be tacitly or scornfully rejected. In his Preface he says: “It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious; and accordingly they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals, for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world. On the contrary, thus much at least will be here found not taken for granted but proved, that any reasonable man who will thoroughly consider the matter may be as much assured as he is of his own being that it is not, however, so clear a case that there is nothing in it.”

Bishop Butler struck at the root of the objection, and showed forever, while he gave'to reason her every

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rightful prerogative, that she could not pretend to measure and fathom the universe we see. In other words, we are a part of the scheme of things which we can but imperfectly comprehend. Things which from our little corner, and related to our small concerns, seem objectionable, we, if we could see the larger whole, might find to be means to desirable ends. His love of truth and the pith of his argument are seen in the following extract: “Let reason be kept too; and if any part of the Scripture account of the redemption of the world by Christ can be shown to be really contrary to it, let the Scripture, in the name of God, be given up; but let not such poor creatures as we go on objecting against an infinite scheme, that we do not see the necessity or usefulness of all its parts, and call this reasoning; and, which still further heightens the absurdity in the present case, parts which we are not actively concerned in.” And further 011 he says: “For, after all, that which is true must be admitted, though it should show us the shortness of our faculties, and that we are in no wise judges of many things of which we are apt to think ourselves very competent ones.”

It is a fact of great interest, showing the continuity of Christian thought and the impossibility of understanding Christianity apart from its history, that the argument of the “Analogy” was suggested to its author by a passage from Origen. The two greatest thinkers of the early Church and of the English Church find here their point of union. Origen said: “He who believes the Scripture to have proceeded from Him who is the Author of nature, may well expect to find the same sort of difficulties in it as are found in the con

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stitution of nature.” Origen stated the argument; Butler elaborated and completed it with a patience and perfection such as have been given to the thinking of but few of the sons of men. Akin to Origen’s thought is that fine passage in Butler: “For virtue, from the very nature of it, is a principle and bond of union, in some degree, among all who are endued with it and known to each other; so as that by it a good man can not but recommend himself to the favor and protection of all virtuous beings throughout the whole universe, who can be acquainted with his character, and can any way interpose in his behalf in any part of his duration.”

Butler was, before all, a thinker. In his life, given to purely intellectual reflection, he reminds us of the other great thinker of the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant. One had more of the world to know and use than the other, but both were men who, without family and with a very narrow circle of friends, lived with their thoughts. Both were men of high character; both revolutionized the thinking of their countrymen; both were deep thinkers, thinking around as well as into a subject; and both were abstruse, not to say obscure, in their expression. Few educated men can fail to feel the force of their thought, which has entered in innumerable ways into the thinking of succeeding ages. If Kant is the more penetrating, inspiring, and the more revolutionary in his thought, more of it has proved invalid to the touchstone of the historic march of the human mind; wliile, on the other hand, Butler’s massive soundness of thought stands little changed and more impressive with the lapse of time. The warm Christian quality of Butler’s thought in contrast to

348 History of the Christian Church.

the cold morality of Kant comes out finely in the following passage: “As our capacities of perception improve, we shall have, perhaps by some faculty entirely new, a perception of God’s presence with us in a nearer and stricter way; since it is certain he is more intimately present with us than anything else can be. Proof of the existence and presence of any being is quite different from the immediate perception, the consciousness of it. What, then, will be the joy of heart which his presence, and ‘the light of his countenance,’ who is the Life of the universe, will inspire good men with, when they shall have a sensation that he is the Sustainer of their being, that they exist in him; when they shall feel his influence to cheer and enliven and support their frame, in a manner of which we have now no conception? He will be, in a literal sense, their Strength and their Portion forever.”

If Deism never recovered from the attack of Butler, French infidelity, born of Deism, returned to England with David Hume and Edward Gibbon. Hume was a deep thinker, a philosophic skeptic, showing in his criticism of the doctrine of cause that, accepting his premises and method, we can never find a ground of certainty. Kant learned of him, but followed a better path. Hume’s “History of England,” in England then, and more on the Continent, the great authority on its subject, is written in a clear and readable style, but seems, in the light of larger knowledge, one of the most superficial and wrong-headed books ever written by an able man. How impossible it was for a philosopher of the eighteenth century to understand historic cause and continuity is clearly seen in David

The Church of England.

Hume. Hume believed there was a God within and about us; but as to the Christian revelation he was as skeptical as Voltaire, and had his chief friends in the circle of the materialists of the age before the catastrophe of the French Revolution..

Edward Gibbon, as a historian, is a much greater man than Hume. But in his flippant skepticism; in his assumed philosophic superiority; in his nauseous obscenity, hidden often in a foreign tongue; in his superficial treatment of the Christian religion and all that pertains to it, he was a true child of the Parisian salons of his time. That the opinion of Hume and Gibbon, and the coarser infidelity of Thomas Paine, had no larger or more permanent effect upon the English people was due, not only to the philosophic thinker, and to his reputation as a correct reasoner, but to the Evangelical Revival led by John Wesley.

Chapter III.

THE CHURCH OF FRANCE AND FRENCH SKEPTICISM.

In this period the moral decline of the Church of France reached its lowest depth. It would seem hard even to acquit the See of Rome of the guilt and shame of making such men as the Abbe Dubois and Tencin cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church. But what must be said of the Church of France that was made to ask for such promotions? What of that rapid ancT progressive deterioration of her prelates until it was said at the Revolution there were not more than five of the one hundred and thirty-five members of her Episcopate who were believing Christians? What of that fanatical Jesuitism that pursued the enforcement of the Bull “Unigenitus” as if it were the chief end for the being of the Church and the world? What, also, of that Jansenism whose spiritual life expired among the convulsionaires of Saint Medard, and whose political alliance with the Parliament did so little good and wrought so much evil to France? What but that the moral downfall preceded the political and the material ruin of the Church of France? There were thousands of pious and devoted priests in that Church. What they were capable of was shown during the persecution of the French Revolution; but they had little influence on the life of the Church whose characteristics, as seen by the men of that time, were

350

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35i

bigotry and intolerance, sloth and luxury, unbelief and immorality. From the consequences of this most shameful and fatal defect in duty by the French Church, neither the nation nor French Christianity has yet recovered.

In March, 1724, died both Cardinal Dubois and Pope Innocent XIII, who had given him that dignity. In April, 1735, Pope Benedict XIII had accepted a compromise suggested by Arch- The Fight of bishop Noailles, but afterward he went ^th|₀jl^e_t⁸_h^u_e^its over to the other side, and published a brief Enforcement confirming in all its rigor the Bull “Uni-genitus.” The next year Jean Soanen,

Bishop of Senez, published a pastoral against the “Unigenitus.” Cardinal Fleury came to the direction of the affairs of France, 1726-1743. Fleury, though a moderate man and loving peace, was a friend of the Jesuits. In September, 1727, Bishop Soanen was condemned by the Council of Embrun, and suspended from his office. He died thirteen years later at the age of ninety-five.

In May, 1729, Cardinal Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, closed his long, troubled, and little glorious career, in which, amid all failures, he had made a good fight for truth and Christian liberty. His successor was an Ultramontane, favoring the Jesuits and the “Unigenitus,” Charles Gaspard de Vintmille. An edict requiring the acceptance of the “Unigenitus” was registered by royal command, April 3, 1730. The Parliament of Paris protested against this arbitrary act, and from this time the cause of the Parliament was one with that of the opponents of the “Unigenitus.” In this political phase, Jansenism opposed the

352 History of the Christian Church.

crown and the hierarchy, but drew to the support of its principles the leading members of the French bar.

Meanwhile at the tomb of Francois de Paris, in Saint-Medard, from 1729, miracles were wrought of the kind usual at Lourdes and kindred resorts in our time. Paris had been a devoted and unselfish layman who died in 1727. The fanaticism generated amid such scenes led to the nervous excitement and excesses of the female Convulsionaires, who went into convulsions, and allowed their bodies to be pierced, and even to be crucified, while in hypnotic trances; this ended the influence of Jansenism as a religious force in France.

Meanwhile changes came in the French Episcopate. In 1739, Tencin, Archbishop of Embrun, who owed his promotion to the harlotry of the canoness, his sister, and whose own life was no better than hers, was made a cardinal of the Church of Rome. In 1742 died the greatest ornament of the French Episcopate since the death of Louis XIV, Massillon, Bishop of Clermont. He left no successor of equal ability, character, and courage, though there were rare exceptions.

Francois, Due de Fitz-James, Bishop of Soissons, was son of one of the greatest marshals of France in that century, the Duke of Berwick. Berwick himself was an illegitimate son of James II of England and the sister of the Duke of Marlborough. The sins of his grandfather did not make him indulgent to those of the much greater sinner, Louis XV. In 1744, as first chaplain of the king, he compelled the king’s mistress to go into exile. The victory for decency and righteousness was short-lived. In 1748 he was de

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prived of his chaplaincy. As an ardent Jansenist he lived in his diocese at Soissons from 1744 until his death in 1765. Meanwhile the Archbishop of Paris died, and after a few weeks of the rule of Bellefonds, Archbishop of Arles, which was cut short by death, Christopher de Beaumont, Archbishop of Vienne, came to the primacy of the French Church, 1746. De Beaumont was pious and a man of high character, but a persecutor, narrow and bigoted in the extreme, and without any perception of the great crisis that was impending, but to the last insisting upon the privileges of his order. In those times he but added oil to the flames.

The triumph of the Jesuits was short. For their commercial malversation they were condemned by the Parliament of Paris in May, 1761. The final sentence which banished the members ^{The FflI1 of} of the order from France was given in 1762-1773.’ August, 1762. They must renounce the order or leave France. Of four thousand Jesuits in France, but twenty-five chose the first alternative. In November, 1764, the king suppressed the order in France. Like action was taken by the other Bourbon courts, and in 1773 the Pope pronounced the order dissolved. The hundred years’ war between the Jan-senists and the Jesuits had ended in the overthrow of the former and the utter ruin of the latter.

While these old rivals were thus work- ^T{|* ***' ing their common destruction, the perse- Reformed cuted Church of the Desert was preparing to show to Christendom the resurrection of the Church whose ministers and members had for one hundred years pronounced the sentence of death

23

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upon themselves every time they joined in her worship on the soil of France.

We have seen the effect of the ministry of Antoine Court, which reached far into this period. His work was taken up and carried on by Paul Rabaut.

Paul Rabaut, on whose tomb is engraved the inscription “The Apostle of the Desert,” was born of Huguenot parents, January, 1718. At the ^P^l^794^' age of twenty he began to preach. It was during the ministry of Cardinal Fleury, the seventeen years of whose rule was one unbroken persecution. Paul Rabaut counted the cost, and took for the motto on his seal “Born to suffer and to die.” After the death of the cardinal in 1743, for two years there was comparative toleration. Rabaut preached to congregations of ten thousand people. Two years later the persecution was renewed, fiercer than ever. Rabaut wrote: “I am worth more than I was a while ago. A sum of six thousand livres was the price set on my head; now it is ten thousand; and, instead of the halter, I am threatened with the wheel.” This great persecution continued for seven years. Pastors like Louis Ranc and Jacques Roger, and theological students as well, were put to death; fines amounting to confiscation were imposed upon the parents whose children were baptized by the Reformed pastors. The last pastor of the persecuted Church to suffer upon the scaffold was Francois Rochette, executed February 19, 1762. With him died the three brothers Grenier, for the offense of having planned his rescue.

In 1763, Voltaire brought to the attention of the world the judicial murder of Jean Calas, executed

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March io, 1762. After three years of unremitting endeavor, Voltaire succeeded in having the judges annul the sentence, March 9, 1765* After

. ,    '    Jean Calas.

that date none were sent to the galleys

for worshiping in the open air according to the usage

of the Reformed Church.

While Voltaire pleaded for toleration, no word of help came from Rousseau, though he was of the Reformed faith by birth; on the other hand, the first statesman of the age, Turgot, espoused the cause of religious liberty. In 1785, Lafayette visited Paul Rabaut, and induced his son, the famous Rabaut Saint Etienne, himself a Reformed pastor, to go to Paris to plead for toleration. In the Assembly of Notables at Versailles, May 23, 1787, he proposed the removal of the disabilities from the Evangelical Christians in France. The Bishop of Langres seconded it. The Edict of Toleration was granted November 19, 1787* and registered in Parliament January 29, 1788. The Pope of Rome reproved Louis for the Edict, and required him to confess his fault; but Europe applauded him. The Revolution advanced this with other good causes. Rabaut Saint Etienne was president of the Constituent Assembly from March 13 to 28, I79°* July, 1790, the Assembly passed a decree giving back to the heirs of those whose property had been confiscated because of their religion, what remained in the custody of the State. Thus was at length undone, after one hundred years of suffering, the work of Louis XIV and the French clergy, in endeavoring vainly to destroy the Reformed Church of France.

The ruin of the greatest, the wealthiest, and the most privileged corporation and order in France—the

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Church and the clergy—drew on apace. The States-General was summoned in 1789, and the French Revolution began. June 22, 1789, the clergy, with few _The exceptions, joined the Third Estate; on the Overthrow of 9th of August tithes were abolished; on the the Church of    ₀f October, Talleyrand, Bishop of

France and    .    .

of Christianity Autun, made his famous motion 1 hat by the French goods the Church should be con-

Revolution. .    • >» atm •

sidered the property of the nation. lhis was passed the ioth of November, 1789. Since that day the wealthiest Church in Europe has been the poorest. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the work mainly of the Jansenists, was passed July 12, 1790, and signed by the king, August 24th. The Assembly required the clergy to take oath to this constitution, November 27, 1790. There was no greater mistake made by the Revolution. The first constitutional bishops were consecrated January 25, I79¹* The nonjuring priests were Vanished, of whom some forty thousand left France. Many of them were killed; nearly three hundred perished in the massacre of September 2, 1792. Christianity was proscribed, and in Notre Dame, November 10, 1793, began the worship of Reason, impersonated by Mile. Maillard. In the year of the Terror, Atheism was triumphant. Paul Rabaut, who for fifty years escaped Roman Catholic persecution, was imprisoned by the Terrorists. The Republican calendar was the public abjuration , of Christianity. This madness in a measure subsided, and a decree of religious toleration was passed February 21, 1795. The century closed with not only the ancient Church of France, but Christianity itself, prostrate before the Revolution.

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35 7

Skepticism in France.

The English infidelity found in its Deistic advocates no men of great talent or ability. The sole exceptions would be Bolingbroke and his disciple, Pope. The signal defeat inflicted by Bishop Butler made the position that Christianity was only an object of ridicule no longer tenable. It was otherwise in France. There the infidelity of the polite society found its triumphant expression in the person and writings of the most eminent man of letters of the eighteenth century, Voltaire. His influence in this respect was aided by the author of the greatest single work written by a Frenchman in that century ,JVtonte_squieu, and by writings which moved Europe far more than these, those of Rousseau. From these came the literary sect's of the philosophers who gave the tone to all French / society and thinking, and of whom irreligion was the distinguishing mark. From this sect came the later-developed crowd of materialists who denied manhood as they had denied God, and exalted only the beast in man. The stream became a torrent, the torrent a flood which swept all away in a carnival of blood and terror. Against this flood there were no efficient barriers as in England, by a convincing defense of Christianity addressed to the intellect as by Butler, and to the soul as by Wesley. On the contrary, many of the chief scoffers held high places in the Roman Catholic Church of France. The godfather of Voltaire, j his first instructor in letters and irreligion, was an abbe of the Church. Such also was Condillac, the author of the most complete system of philosophic j materialism. The ablest Frenchman of the times of

358 History of the Christian Church.

the Revolution, and one of the most corrupt, was Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, while princes of the Church, like Cardinal de Rohan, could be detected in intrigues as vile and scandalous as those of the diamond necklace. It is only truth to say that the unbelief and the licentiousness of the higher clergy of France from the days of Cardinal Dubois, the notorious profligate of the Regency, down, did as much to discredit Christianity as all the ridicule of literary France. Nor was there any religious awakening among the people to counteract this universal skepticism. There seemed nowhere to be a living faith which appealed to men of intelligence. This was so general that foreigners, like Pitt, the great English prime minister, deemed the Roman Catholic Church in Europe near her final fall.

The first and, in many respects, most influential 1 leader in this skeptical movement which has overflowed all Latin lands was Francois Marie 1694-^778. Arouet de Voltaire, who was born in Paris, November, 1694. His father was a notary, and his mother died when he was but seven years of age. His godfather, Abbe de Chateauneuf, introduced him to polite society and to the notorious Ninon de l’Enclos, who left him 2,000 livres to buy books when he was but eleven. From his tenth to his seventeenth ( year he was educated by the Jesuits in the College of Louis le Grand. He early developed an unsurpassed facility in French verse, flowing and correct. In his twenty-first year he wrote a poem, “Epistle to Urania,” in which he renounced Christianity, and treated with the greatest contempt the Jewish history, the Gospel narratives, and all matters of the Christian faith. He

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also indulged in lampoons upon the government. These, through his wit and sarcasm, which did not lack sting, caused him to be exiled from Paris in 1716, and to be confined in the Bastile for eleven months, from May of the next year. In this prison he began the “Henriade,” which was published in England ten years later. Obtaining his release, in November of the same year was acted his play of “CEdipe,” which brought him notice and quite a sum of money. From this time, amid all changes of personal fortune, by means honorable and by means with which no man of honor would have to do, Voltaire amassed riches. He probably made more money in a distinctively literary career than any other man before his time in Europe. He now sought the society of the nobles of the court, and held some position as diplomatic spy of the government. In 1721 his enemy, Beauregard, caught him and beat him for some slanderous remark; but the event that cut short his career as a seeker of governmental favors in France occurred in 1725. The Due de Rohan resented a sharp remark of Voltaire’s in return for insults he had given, and had his lackeys entrap him and beat him in the duke’s presence. No one took Voltaire’s part, not even the host whose guest he was. De Rohan was too high in position to be reached by either law or social justice. At last Voltaire challenged him. De Rohan accepted; but on the day set for the duel Voltaire was arrested and sent to the Bastile. After three months he was released, and went to England, where he remained for the next three years.

He returned in 1729, and published in succeeding years his “Charles XII,” “Letters upon the English,”

360 History of the Christian Church.

and the best of his plays, “Zaire.” His “Philosophic Letters upon the English” were condemned and burnt in 1743; but he had a place of retreat at Cirey, in Lorraine, where he lived with Madame du Chastelet for the next fifteen years. His mistress’s husband did not object to an arrangement intolerable to Anglo-Saxon morals irrespective of creed. In these years “Mahomet” and “Merope” were produced, with many other works of lesser note, and he was elected to the French Academy. From 1750 to 1753, Voltaire was with Frederick the Great as his guest at Berlin, but more often at the summer palace of Sans Souci, at Potsdam. In 1754 he removed to Geneva to be out of the clutches of autocrats, whether at Paris or Berlin. In 1758 he established himself at Ferney, near Geneva, where he lived as a large landed proprietor and a patriarch of letters for the next thirty years. In this period of his life fall those honorable efforts for the overthrow of decrees of injustice and oppression connected with the names of Calas, of Servir, and of De Lally. In the winter of 1778, after an absence of more than a quarter of a century, he returned to Paris. He was received with honors like a god. At his age, the acclaim and its consequences were too great. He died May 3, 1778.

In amount and versatility of work and in uniform excellence of style, Voltaire stands almost alone among literary men. His wide information, acute mind, the clearness and ease of his style, the wit and point conspicuous in all his varied writings, made his works familiar to all who could read. In his superficiality, in his utter dearth of any great or original ideas; in his lack of perception of any historic values and of art-

The Church of France.    361

istic taste, he was the true child of his century. To that century he gave direction as the impersonation of that mocking spirit which reverenced nothing human or divine, in earth or heaven. Often licentious in thought and artificial in style, it is his inaccessibility to ideas either great or profound that marks him off from the larger life of the later time. Ridicule and ribaldry never construct, and there was nothing constructive about Voltaire. He had only contempt for the common people, and he even patronized God. His philosophy was that of an enlightened and comfortable selfishness. Yet he hated oppression and pedantry. He made history readable, although he left it inaccurate and without a trace of philosophic perception or meaning. His merit is that of a scoffer who unveiled the abuses and denounced the oppression of his time; his defect, that for decades he made barren the intellectual soil of France and of Latin lands of all reverence, and all great ideals of self-sacrifice and devotion, as if sown with salt. Their restoration came only with the restoration of the faith he aimed to destroy. Vanity and falsehood were his besetting sins. Voltaire not seldom communed, and sought and obtained a relic from the Pope for his new church “To God.”

In religion Voltaire was a Deist, though his god and immortality were too far off to affect human conduct or human hope. Christianity was always the butt of his ridicule, though his famous “abolish the infamy” did not refer to Christianity itself, but to the whole persecuting system as he knew it.

Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, was born at La Brede, near Bordeaux, in January, 1689. Like Voltaire, his mother died, leaving him

362 History of the Christian Church.

at the early age of seven. He was at school under the Oratorians, 1700-1705. In 1713 he became a counselor of the Parliament of Bordeaux. ‘ The next year he married a wealthy Protestant heiress, and, his uncle dying, he became president of the Parliament, an office which he held for the next twelve years. Thus he became one of the most wealthy noblemen of his district. Characteristic of his age, for his wife he professed neither affection nor fidelity. In 1721, at the age of thirty-three, appeared his celebrated “Persian Letters.” They abound in sharp criticism of the existing order of things, and criticise the Christian religion as not more authentic than the legends of the Koran.

The study of comparative religions, and the progress in Biblical criticism and archaeological research, have at least made such comparisons impossible to all educated men. The “Letters” do not fail of the licentious taint of the time, but they abound in bright and witty social and literary satire as well. In 1728 he was made member of the French Academy. From 1728 he traveled in Europe, visiting Hungary and Italy and spending a year and a half in England. I11 1734 appeared his essay on “The Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans,” a work of originality and power.

His great work, “The Spirit of Laws,” was begun in 1743, and published five years later. It is the honest effort of an able man to investigate, not only the abuses of absolute government, but the means by which they may be remedied as deduced from a philosophic consideration of the history of nations. It was constructive in its thought and aim, and if the French of that

Montesquieu ' 1689.1755.

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age had little use for it, so much the worse for them in the presence of the threatening catastrophe. It will always have value to the serious thinker, and these three works place Montesquieu, as a writer, only second to Voltaire in the French literature of the century. In regard to religion, Montesquieu recognized the political importance and influence of Christianity in his latest work, though probably his personal relation to it never changed.

Jean Jacques ^Rousseau more immediately and deeply affected Europg^than either of the writers last named. Voltaire was all intellect and a mocking wit; Montesquieu was concerned ,*^"-*778* chiefly with laws and economics as related to national weal; Rousseau spoke to the soul, and spoke with the fire of genius. Not only Schiller and Goethe and Byron, but Renan and Ruskin, are children of Rousseau. His was a far-echoing voice, for it was the voice of a living soul speaking its sincerest thought. Rousseau was born in Geneva, June 28, 1712. His father was a watchmaker of dissolute habits, who abandoned him when he was ten years old. His mother, the daughter of an Evangelical pastor, died at his birth. He was apprenticed first to a notary, who found him incapable, and then to an engraver, from whom he ran away at the age of sixteen. He went to Italy, and after a series of remarkable adventures, if we may believe his “Confessions/’ abjured the Evangelical faith and became a Roman Catholic, at Turin, some time between his sixteenth and nineteenth year. At the age of twenty, Madame de Warens, a married woman, became his mistress, and with her he lived for the next eight years. For the next five

364 History of the Christian Church.

years he was in Lyons and Paris and Venice, in the latter city staying eighteen months. About this time he met Therese Levasseur, an uneducated servant at an inn. With her he lived some time, and she bore him five children, who were all sent to the foundling asylum; about 1770 he married her. In 1749 he wrote his famous essay on the question “Whether the Progress of the Sciences and the Arts has contributed to corrupt or to purify Morals,” which won the prize offered by the Academy of Dijon. From this time Rousseau saw the only remedy for the evils of the time in a return to an original state of simplicity and innocence. From this came his “New Heloise,” his “Social Contract,” and his “Emile.” In 1754 he abjured the Roman Catholic faith, and became a citizen of Geneva. In 1756, Madame d’Epinay prepared for him a country house called the Hermitage. From 1758 until 1762 he lived at Mount Louis near Montmorency with the Lavasseurs. In 1766, David Hume took him to England, where he remained nearly a year and a half. As Hume said, he was “a man without a skin,” and hence always sensitive and suspicious. He could not be happy at either Geneva or Paris, and for the last years of his life was evidently partially insane. In 1763 he wrote a sharp criticism on the aristocratic government of Geneva, which found wide acceptance among political liberals.

Rousseau came from the people. He appealed to them as no other writer of his age. His cry was back

Ito nature. Neither nature nor history did he understand, but he knew the human heart, and he showed how that heart responds to nature’s grander moods. His was a gospel level to the understanding of all,

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and he gave a reformatory program instead of mere ridicule of abuses. Rousseau had a program, and he had the power which makes a program effective. No one can read Rousseau’s French and not feel the note of sincerity.

In a scoffing age, Rousseau never scoffed; amid triflers and dreamers of all kinds, here was an earnest soul, with a gospel for the times. This idealist and fanatic was also a genius. With no musical education, he was a natural musician of rare refinement and taste. With no training in letters, he wrote French with a lucidity and power unsurpassed. In political theory he made his ideal state a collective despotism, trampling on the rights of conscience, and responsible for many of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. In religion he was a Deist, who believed in God, human liberty, and immortality. He quarreled with the atheism and materialism which had taken the lead in the salons of Paris. Dreamer as he was, and fallacious as were his dreams, he, as no other, awakened Europe out of her sleep, and, by teaching the natural equality of men, made way for the democratic era in Europe.

Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau were Deists. Such at first was Denys Diderot, the editor of the great skeptical French Encyclopedia. But he adopted a materialistic philosophy, and became in the end a complete Atheist. He was a writer of a wide range of knowledge and great versatility; his importance is as the organ of the skeptical and materialistic thinking of his time.

So ran the current in France. The eminent prelates of the Church were unbelievers; those who were not

366 History of the Christian Church.

were unable to stem the overwhelming tide which was to bury the monarchy and the whole social fabric. Christianity had been but the object of scoffs and jeers; it was now proclaimed that the foundations were destroyed. The materialistic and mechanical view of nature and of life showed, as they claimed, to a demonstration, that there was no God, no immortality, and no soul in man. It was to be seen whether purging fires would reveal a remnant from whom, at least, a Christian France might some day trace its descent.

Chapter IV.

THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH IN GERMANY AND GERMAN RATIONALISM.

The Pietism, of which Halle was the center, bore good fruit in this period, but lacked able leadership, and ceased to be the intellectual force _{ReIIgion in} it had been in the earlier period. iLjie- Germany, o-pnpratf>d intnJrtrm, and was overwhelmed, ^,720“^,8°⁰* in the Rationalistic movement which    the

century in Germany. In 1706 the Halle Pietists had founded a foreign mission in Hindoostan. In the years from 1730 to 1776 they were active in supporting the work of pastors among the Germans in Pennsylvania and other English colonies, as was the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for the Church of England. The orphanages were carried on at Halle. They showed their genuine Christian spirit in their welcome and care of the Salzburgers.

In the university the decline was noted in the lack of research and learning and in narrowness and bigotry. Spener and Franke were the ablest men of their time in the Lutheran Church in Germany. This could not be said of their successors. Intellectual sloth and living in the lives of their forefathers rather than living in their own time and meeting its needs, caused the downfall of Pietism.

In 1722 occurred an event which has left a lasting impress upon the religious history of that century and

367

368 History of the Christian Church.

of succeeding times. The rise of the Bohemian Brethren and their relation to Luther has been mentioned in preceding volumes. In 1627, Ferdinand Moravians. ^ crushed them out, and they emigrated to Hungary and Prussia, but especially to Poland. They became largely merged in the Reformed Churches of those countries, but kept up their episcopal succession and ordination. Many of them, especially in Moravia, kept up their secret worship and adherence to the Evangelical faith. In 1722 the persecution waxed hotter than was wont. Two of a family named Neisser took flight. They and others, led by Christian David, a carpenter, and the leader of the movement, found refuge on the estate of Count von Zinzendorf, at Berthelsdorf, in Upper Lusatia, not far from the Moravian frontier. Within seven years three hundred came, and the village of Herrnhut, the “Watch of the Lord,” was built. This doubled in the next five years, and by 1732 a mission had been started among the Negroes of St. Thomas in the West Indies by David Nitschmann, whom Wesley knew in Georgia. The year following a successful mission was begun in Greenland, and, in 1743, one to the Indians of North America.

Nicholas Louis, Count von Zinzendorf, was born in Dresden. His father died when he was but a few Count von ^wee^s old, and four years later his mother Zinzendorf. married a distinguished Prussian field-1700-1760.    as pious as he was brave. The

young count was brought up by his grandmother, Catherine von Gersdorf, who was intelligent, but also devoted to religion. Nicholas was educated at Halle, and from sixteen to nineteen studied law at Witten-

Evangelical Church in Germany. 369

berg. Then he traveled for two years on the Continent, and at twenty-one married, and instead of following diplomacy as a profession, for which he had been educated, he determined to settle down upon his estates at Berthelsdorf. At first he paid little attention to the Moravians beyond allowing them to settle upon his land; but in a few years he identified himself and his family entirely with them.

Zinzendorf was sincerely attached to the Lutheran Church, in which he ranked as a Doctor of Divinity on examination at Tubingen. Hence he never wished the Moravian Brethren to become a large separate Church, but rather a Church in the State Church after Spener’s model. In 1741-1742, Zinzendorf visited America, and sought to realize an impracticable union of the feeble beginnings of the different Evangelical Churches. In 1735, David Nitschmann had been consecrated bishop among the Moravians. Soon after this time there arose a sentimental, sensuous kind of teaching and worship, which led Zinzendorf to take matters sternly in hand, in 1747. He succeeded in purging out the obnoxious leaven, but gave the Church its trend for the next century. It has been eminently a missionary Church; but its system of settlements and exclusion from the world, and its use of the lot in the choice of ministers and in marriage, has always kept small the number of its adherents. Zinzendorf himself was not a little erratic, and, after traveling in many lands, died on May 9, 1760. The Moravian movement is of especial importance through its relation to John Wesley. The peculiarity in them which impressed him was not only their humility and unfeigned piety, but their consciousness of personal acceptance with

24

370 History of the Christian Church.

God, which they believed to be the privilege of every believer.

In 1734 the reigning prince, Archbishop Leopold Anton, of Salzburg, in the Austrian dominions, determined, in 1731, to drive from his estates his Evangelical subjects. In that year and the next, thirty thousand were sent into banishment. Their going was almost like a triumphal procession. It made evident for the first time the moral unity of Evangelical Germany. It gave Prussia an opportunity for leadership, which found its consummation in the founding of the German Empire in 1870. The King of Prussia welcomed them in person, and settled twenty thousand of them in East Prussia. Nine thousand of them went to England, where four hundred thousand dollars had been raised for their relief. Many of them came to New York and Pennsylvania, and some went to Georgia. Goethe’s “Hermann and Dorothea” is founded upon an incident in that migration. One is glad to know that the archbishop, who began the persecution as a revenue measure, found that it brought upon him a never-renewed loss of prosperity and a debt of over five million dollars.

Another rare appearance for the age of rationalism in the Lutheran Church was Emanuel Swendenborg.

Emanuel -^^{e was} born ^at Stockholm, January 29, Swedenborg. 1688. His father was a theological pro-1688-1772. £_essor^ _an^ _after 1719, Bishop of Skara. The son was a man of eminent intellectual attainments, and from childhood of a deeply religious nature. After a thorough training in mathematics and the natural sciences, as well as the languages, he took his Ph. D. from Upsala, and then studied a year at Oxford.

Evangelical Church in Germany. 371

Afterward he traveled in Holland, France, and Germany. In 1716 he was appointed assessor, or consulting engineer, to the Swedish Board of Mines. This place he held for more than thirty years. In this work he visited the mines of Saxony, Bohemia, and Austria. In pursuit of the best knowledge in regard to the human body he visited France, Italy, and Germany. He sought through natural science to find the unity of the world. These efforts ended in 1743, when there came to him a great spiritual change. He called it the “introduction into the spiritual world” and the “manifestation of the Lord to him in person.”

He believed later that, in a vision, he heard the words, “I am God the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer of the world. I have chosen thee to unfold the spiritual sense of the Holy Scripture. I will myself dictate to thee what thou shalt write.” So he believed he received a direct and special revelation from God. He believed that, in 1757, he saw the last judgment and the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. At that time, he asserted, was founded the New Church, or the New Jerusalem. His chief teachings have been summed up as: (1) The Lord Jesus Christ is the only God; in him is the Trinity. (2) The Father in his eternal humanity descended as the Lord Jesus Christ, and assumed our fallen nature, that he might conquer hell and deliver mankind from its influence. (3) The Scriptures are the true Word of God, the key to their interpretation being the Word of God revealed to Swedenborg. (4) Man is not saved by faith alone, but by a life in accord with the Decalogue. (5) Heaven is made up of those who keep God’s commandments and love him and his kingdom; hell of those who love

37 2 History of the Christian Church.

themselves and the world. (6) The spiritual world— heaven and hell—hold the same relation to the natural world and its inhabitants as the soul to the body, and, being in and around the natural world and its life, after the death of the body the spirit continues to live in the spiritual world it had previously, though unconsciously, inhabited.

Swedenborg was a learned man, of great natural abilities, of profound thought, and of high character. He was always at home with the best men and women of his own and other countries. Much of his work is occupied with wild and fanciful imaginings; but he sought the fundamental unity of things in the spiritual life, and the last two of the above positions have greatly affected Christian thinking since.

The skepticism of France overran Germany. There was the general spirit of the age and special causes in Germany that aided it; but the influence

Rationalism.    ^

of skeptical France upon Germany was quite as great as of Deistic England upon France. The movement in Germany took the specific form of Rationalism.

One of the first to lead in this direction was Christian Thomasius. He was the first, in 1688, to lecture in the university in German instead of Latin. He, a learned jurist, was the first to raise his voice in Germany against the prosecution for witchcraft and against the use of torture in criminal trials. In religion he followed the views of Bolingbroke and his fellow Deists.

A man of far wider influence made Rationalism the popular form of religious thought in Germany. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born in the home of a

Evangelical Church in Germany. 373

Lutheran pastor in Upper Lusatia, in Saxony. He received a sound training at the Princes’ School at Meissen (1741-1746). From thence he went to the University of Leipzig (17461748), and then to Berlin (1748-1751).

While in Berlin he began his career as a writer and critic. In his last year at Berlin he came into relations with Voltaire, but soon saw through the vanity and falsity of his nature. In 1751 he went to Wittenberg, where, the next April, he took his degree in medicine. For the next three years he was in Berlin in intimate relations with Mendelssohn, Nicolai, and Michaelis. The next few months he was at Leipzig, and from there traveled to Holland, but turned back to Leipzig, where he remained until May, 1758. The next two years he was again in Berlin.

For more than four years (1760-1765) he was secretary to General Tauentzien, at Breslau. The next two years he was in Berlin, where he wrote the first part of “Laocoon.” For three years (1761-1770) he was at Hamburg as a dramatic critic, making himself a name as the first man of letters of his day in Germany. In 1767 appeared “Minna von Barnhelm.” In 1771 he married the widow of a merchant in Hamburg who had been his friend. His happiness did not last long, for in two years she was dead. He accepted the post as librarian at Wolfenbiittel in 1771. Here he staid for the next seven years on a salary which never gave a comfortable support. While here he published a treatise of Berenger of Tours, in which his history was as wrong as most of that written in the eighteenth century. Here also (1773-1778) he published the “Wolfenbiittel Fragments,” written mostly

374 History of the Christian Church.

by his dead friend Reimarus. These were a violent attack upon the Christian religion, and though Lessing expressly disowned the authorship, still came down upon him the reprobation of those who cared for the Christian faith. In 1775 he was at Berlin, Vienna, Dresden, and in the next year married a lady in the latter city. In 1776 he traveled in Italy. In 1778 he published his “Anti-Goeze,” in 1779 “Nathan the Wise,” *and in 1780 his “Education of the Human Race.” Lessing was the best aesthetic critic of the eighteenth century and the first great writer in German literature. The pitiful poverty which was his lot, and his many disappointments, can not fail to touch our hearts. He wrote German with clearness, freshness, and beauty, and was the first to show its high qualities as a literary language. Lessing was not a Christian. For him all revealed religions were but steps in the progress of natural religion, and he expected another revelation, when man would do good because it was good. Though not in any sense a man of the people, yet his influence was immense in Germany.

The man who applied the rationalistic philosophy of the century to theology was John Solomon Semler.

He was born in Saalfeld in 1775, and edu-1735^791. ^cated under the Pietistic regime at Halle

(1743-1750). His recollections of it show how lifeless is the form when the spirit has departed. After a brief residence at Altorf, Semler returned to Halle, where he lectured as Professor of Theology for forty years (1751-1791). After the death of Baum-garten (1757), Semler was the leader of'the school of Rationalistic theology. He held that essential Chris-

Evangelical Church in Germany. 375

tianity consists in that portion of the Scriptures which “contributes to our moral improvement,” a subjective standard of wide indefiniteness. It also made known “new and better principles of the inner references of God.” All revelation was but the natural advance of reason. A more self-contradicting and barren scheme can scarcely be imagined. His services as the founder of historical Biblical criticism should not be forgotten.

The great thinker of the eighteenth century, and one of the greatest of all the centuries, was Immanuel Kant. He was the son of a saddler of |_mnianue, Scotch descent, and was born at Konigs- Kant, berg, April 22, 1724. He early began a '7³4^-,8°4-thorough scholastic training at the Collegium Fred-ericianum in his native town, where he distinguished himself in the classics. At sixteen he entered the university, and gave special attention to mathematics and philosophy. In 1746 the death of his father caused him to leave the university and for nine years to teach as a private tutor in noble families near Konigsberg. In 1755 he took his degree, and then labored on fifteen years before he attained to a professorship. He then obtained the chair of Logic and Metaphysics, which he held for the next twenty-seven years. In 1781, after twelve years’ preparation, he published his “Critique of Pure Reason.” In 1788 appeared his “Critique of the Practical Reason,” and two years later his “Critique of Judgment.” In 1794 was published his “Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Only.” These are the events in the life of Kant. His life was that of a thinker. His power in analyzing our intellectual processes, especially the sources of our conceptions of things, has never been surpassed, and has

376 History of the Christian Church.

revolutionized philosophic thinking. He was a small man, scarcely five feet in height, but his thinking moved the world. We are especially concerned with his attitude toward the Christian religion. Kant had been brought up under Pietistic influences, and to them he pays this tribute: “Say what you will of Pietism, no one can deny the real worth of the characters which it formed. They preserved the highest which a man can possess—a peace, a cheerfulness, an inner harmony with self, which was disturbed by no passion.” Kant was a Rationalist, but, unlike the French skeptics, he could not do without religion. He made Rousseau’s fundamental truths, God, freedom, immortality, the postulates of the practical reason, and to them added duty as the categorical imperative.

In the view of Kant, an historical revelation is necessary as an introduction to the pure truths of reason. Religion differs from morality only in that duties are commands of God. Christianity is a religion of reason and morals, and has no inner connection with the life of the Spirit. In his Deistic conception, God appeared as a stranger whose action upon the human spirit threatened its freedom. Christ is the ideal of the religion of reason, but he has little relation to the historic Jesus. The Church is the fellowship of virtue, and as such is necessary. Redemption is solely our own work. The Bible is of value as it contains the truths of reason. The time will come when all religion, revelation, Bible, and theology will be unnecessary, but the pure truth of reason will rule all. From this standpoint, of course, any personal communion with God is impossible. A more cheerless and comfortless, and indeed lifeless, philosophy has seldom

Evangelical Church in Germany,. 377

been labeled religion. There is in it 110 place for self-forgetting and self-denying love any more than for the human spirit to find God. Thus we see that the first literary man of the time, the leading theologian, and the greatest philosopher of the century, all led the movement away from the Christian faith. Goethe and Schiller were greatly influenced by Kant. The current swept nearly all with it. Religion, taste, and morality reached their lowest points in Germany. The aridity and platitudes of the sermons and emasculations of the hymns were beyond belief. The religion of reason is dead past resurrection. Those who want any kind of religion do not want that. The purifying fires of the war against Napoleon alone could show the way out from the barrenness and bitterness of those evil days. Perhaps the reader will ask, Why take so much space with the characteristics of unbelief in England, France, and Germany? For several reasons. The Christian faith evidently lost ground in the eighteenth century; we may well ask why. It was largely regained in the next century; we may well ask how. Few lessons in Christian history are more instructive. Only as we know the extent and power of this Antichristian movement can we understand the dark background of the Evangelical revival, and what it meant for Christianity. Only with this in mind is it possible to understand the French Revolution and the significance of the reaction which followed.

Chapter V.

THE PAPACY—THE GREEK CHURCH.

I72Q-l800.

The Roman Catholic Church during this period had lost much of its aggressiveness, and both as a The Roman poetical ^an^ a religious institution felt the Catholic breath of the new time. There was less Church. _zea^ _an(j _aj_SQ j_esg p_erseclltion₃ that of the

Salzburgers being the most conspicuous. There was no acknowledgment of the rights of conscience, either by the pope or by any Roman Catholic prince. The most learned pope of the century, Benedict XIV, was the most tolerant.

The most memorable events, as affecting the whole Church, were the movement known as Febronianism, and the Dissolution of the Society of Jesus. Either would have marked an epoch. They now show how completely efforts to reform the papacy have failed.

John Nicholas Hontheim, of Treves, came of an influential ecclesiastical family, and received the tonsure and a prebend at the age of thir-

Ftbronianism.    _m    .

teen. He studied at Treves, Louvam, Leyden, and the Collegium Germanicum at Rome. In 1728 he was ordained priest. In 1732 he was made professor at Treves. In 1749 he was elected Bishop Coadjutor of Treves, a position which he resigned in 1779. In 1763, under the signature of Febronius, he published his “De Statu Ecclesise,” the most

373

The Papacy—The Greek Church. 379

fundamental and influential attack upon the papacy from within the Roman Catholic Church of that century. There was little in it that was new to well-informed scholars, but Hontheim’s abundant and exact learning enabled him to fortify unanswerably every position, and the facts were marshaled in the most convincing manner. He clearly distinguished between the spiritual and ecclesiastical power of the Roman See. He showed how the ecclesiastical and political primacy of the Papal See had grown up. What were the human elements in that growth ? He laid especial stress upon the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, and also upon the usurpations of the nuncios and the illegitimate influence of the mendicant orders. He called for a restoration of the constitution of the Church to the condition before the canons of the false Isidore had been given the force of law. This would, of course, mean a large increase of authority and independence of the Metropolitanate of the Roman Catholic countries, and also of the royal power. Hence this teaching found eager acceptance with the Prince Archbishops of the German Empire and with the Bourbon Courts. It was determinedly resisted at Rome. It formed part of the foundation for the demand for the abolition of the Jesuits. That was granted, and the Pope felt safe, now that the author was known, to bring the well-known Roman pressure to bear to secure a retraction. Hontheim’s relatives were dismissed from their offices, his life was made miserable, he was seventy-seven years old, and he was no Dollinger. He made his submission in 1778. It was not submissive enough, and a papal form of retraction was drawn up, which he was compelled to sign. In the Papal Con

380 History of the Christian Church.

sistory, December 25, 1778, Pius VI rejoiced, as he read this form, that Hontheim had made it wholly of his own motion and without other suggestion. Soon the Universal Gazette of Florence published in parallel columns the retraction Hontheim offered and the one he was compelled to sign, and convicted Pius VI before all Europe of what Roger Williams called “a solemn public lie.” Hontheim did not conceal the fact that his opinion was unchanged. Soon an emperor came to the throne who had a mind to see Hontheim’s positions realized in the relations between Rome and the empire. Just before the French Revolution, August, 1786, the Electoral Archbishop of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves, and the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg met at Ems in Congress, and laid down principles accordant with the teaching of Febronianism. They had the hearty support of the Emperor Joseph II. Rome left no stone unturned to defeat this attack. The elector of Mainz was old, and desired to nominate his successor. Rome using this lever, and favored by the anti-Austrian politics of Prussia, succeeded in detaching him from the Alliance, December 1, 1788. Soon the other three Archbishops had to follow. The papal reply to the resolutions of the Congress at Ems was delayed until November 14, 1789. The attempt failed, and, truth to tell, it deserved to fail. Live States and live Churches can not live on a return to mediaeval conditions. The German Empire itself had for two hundred years been an anachronism. The old Metropolitan constitution was as much unfitted for modern life. Doubtless a larger national development, and a corresponding limitation of the papal power, would be an immense gain for the Roman Catholic

The Papacy—The Greek Church. 381

Church; but it could never come by way of the Congress of Ems. The Reform projects and Synod of Ricci, at Pistoja, in Tuscany, with the approbation of the Grand Duke Leopold, were much more feasible and desirable. The Synod was held September 18-28, 1786. The grand duke gave them his signal approval; but when he became emperor, on the death of his brother Joseph II, February 20, 1798, Ricci lost his firm support. His successor allowed Rome to have her way. Ricci was compelled to resign, and the Pope condemned the decrees of the Synod, August 28, 1794In 1799, Ricci submitted to Rome, the excesses of the French Revolution having their effect. He died in 1810. Rome had pursued her usual policy of delay and of dividing, that she might conquer in both cases, and it was successful. Joseph II’s reforms were on the same line, and limited the interference of Rome, and made the monastic orders amenable to the State. The priests in Belgium stirred up a revolt, Joseph’s reform went to the ground, and the French Revolution overwhelmed both of the contending parties. Portugal carried out the same principles, and the Papal Court did not dare to protest.

No organization of the Christian Church ever accumulated the amount of hatred and detestation which fell to the lot of the Society of Jesus after

r    •    t 1 • 1 *    The Fall

a career of two centuries, it is also true _{of the Jesuits}. that during this time it had been more than once the mainstay of the papacy, the main agent of the Counter Reformation, and at all times devoted to exalting the authority of the Roman See. It had also always been a bitter and unrelenting persecutor; it knew not even the name of religious toleration. Its

382 History of the Christian Church.

complicity in more than one plot of royal assassination, as well as the Gunpowder Plot, and its absolute power, its secrecy, its lax teachings, and its ceaseless political intrigues, rendered its ruin certain on a suitable occasion. It had ruined Jansenism, but only to increase its enemies. It stood too high, with too influential and embittered foes, not to fall. The attack began in an unexpected quarter. If there had been a kingdom which, from the founding of the order, had been a Jesuit preserve, that kingdom was Portugal. In 1750, Sebastian Joseph de Carvalho, Marquis of Pombal, became prime minister. Pombal was a determined enemy of the Jesuits. In 1757 he caused the three Jesuit confessors of the king to be replaced by similar priests. An attempt was made to assassinate the king, September 3, 1758. The husband of the king’s mistress and others of high rank were executed. Whether justly or not, the Jesuits were implicated in the plot, as they certainly were in the rebellion in Paraguay. Pombal secured the suppression of the Society of Portugal by a royal decree, September 1, 1759-

There had been complaint made of the commercial dealings of the Jesuits in Portugal; now came striking proof of their unscrupulousness from France. The Jesuit administrator of Martinique, Father Lavalette, failed for two million four hundred thousand francs, and brought ruin to some prominent commercial houses in France. The society was sued, and, with a shortsightedness born only of long success in State intrigues, disclaimed financial responsibility for its official representative. The creditor sued Ricci, the general of the order, and he appealed to the Parliament of

The Papacy—The Greek Church. 383

Paris. The Parliament required the constitution of the order to be produced in court. This caused an immense sensation. An ecclesiastical commission of fifty-seven French prelates declared the absolute authority of the general inconsistent with the laws of France. The Parliament gave its final sentence against the Society of Jesus, August 6, 1762. An attempt was made to modify the constitution so that a resident vicar should have control of the society’s operations in France, when Ricci made his famous reply, “Sint ut sunt aut non sint”—“Let them be as they are, or let them not be.” The king suppressed the order in France in November, 1764, and the members were finally expelled in 1767. In Spain every Jesuit house and all Jesuit property throughout the kingdom and the Spanish colonies were taken possession of by royal officers, April 2, 1767. Six thousand Jesuit priests were expelled from Spain. They were not suffered to land in Italy, and many of them suffered miserably. Naples, Sicily, and Parma also expelled the Jesuits, like the other Bourbon monarchies. Clement XIII sought to compel the submission of Parma, when all the Bourbon courts informed the Pope that they made common cause with Parma. The shock caused by this brought on an attack of apoplexy, which ended in the Pope’s death, February 2, 1769. The Bourbon courts demanded the suppression of the order, and neither Maria Theresa nor Joseph II, her son, would protect them. After long delay, Clement XIV yielded to the inevitable and to his sense of justice, and the Bull “Dominus ac Redemptor,” the most notable reformatory effort of the Papal Court in modern times, was issued, July 21, 1773. The Society of Jesus was abol

384 History of the Christian Church.

ished, and the sons of Loyola sought refuge in the non-Roman Catholic countries, England and the United States, and especially in Prussia and Russia, where, in defiance of the Papal Bull, they maintained their organization. They whose first vow was obedience showed how to disobey. Doubtless they felt that, secretly at least, the new Pope sympathized with them.

Michael Angelo Conti was born at Rome, May 8, 1655. He was made cardinal in 1706; and he was elected Pope May 8, 1721, to succeed ⁱⁿ.7⁰₂^C«^e-"7₂^X₄ⁿⁱ‘ Clement XI, and took the title of Innocent XIII. He was urged to annul the Bull “Unigenitus,” but refused. He was no friend of the Jesuits, and it is believed that he had intended their suppression, when he died, March 7, 1724. Nothing can excuse his elevating the notorious Dubois to the cardinalate.

Vicenzo Marco Orsini, of Naples, was born of the noble family of that name, February 21, 1649. He entered the Dominican Order of Venice in ^BC|734^1730!¹* ^x667- Orsini studied theology at Venice and Bologna, and philosophy at Naples. In 1672 he was created cardinal. For thirty-eight years (1686-1724), with marked ability, he administered the affairs of the See of Benevento, of which he was archbishop. He was elected to the papacy almost unanimously, and took the title of Benedict XIII, May 22, 1724. He confirmed the Bull “Unigenitus,” and endeavored to limit the luxury and pomp of the clergy and cardinals, but largely in vain. Cardinal Coscia was an avaricious and fraudulent oppressor, hated by the Roman people. All foreign affairs were given over to him. He embroiled the papacy with Naples, Sar

The Papacy—The Greek: Church. 385

dinia, Lucerne, and Portugal. Benedict proclaimed the heroes of the Roman Catholic Church, Hildebrand and John Nepomuck, saints. No one would have thought it but for the Pope’s vouching for them.

Lorenzo Corsini was born in Florence, April 7, 1652. He was elected Pope July 12, 1730. His attempt on Parma in 1731, and on San Marino eight years later, miscarried. He followed in the steps of Clement XI. In his pontificate the papal finances were improved, vengeance was taken on Cardinal Coscia, and Rome and its churches were beautified.

Benedict XIV is the greatest as well as the most learned Pope of this century. Prospero Laurentine Lambertini was born in Bologna, 1675, and went to Rome as a student in 1693. As a jurist he held offices and promotions in the Roman Curia until 1727. In 1728 he was made Archbishop of Ancona, and in 1731 Archbishop of Bologna, where he won the people by his mildness and generosity, and proved himself a good upper shepherd of the clergy. Elected Pope August 17, 1740, he took the title of Benedict XIV. His chief personal qualities were earnestness and conscientiousness, though joined with a keen sense of humor. His concessions and economy made him a good ruler of the Papal States. He aimed to secure reform and a strict life for the clergy. In politics he composed the strifes lasting from the time of Benedict XIII in Portugal, Naples, and Sardinia. In Spain he conceded all benefices except fifty-two to the king. A favorable treaty was also made with Austria. Benedict was tolerant toward the Evangelical Christians. He ac-

25

386 History oi the Christian Church.

knowledged the ruler of Prussia as a king, and authorized the Archbishop of Breslau to decide all strifes in Silesia without reference to the Pope. He would not persecute the Jansenists, and in his Encyclical of 1756 would not allow a declaration on suspicion of Jansenism to be required before administering the Eucharist. He condemned, in 1741 and 1744, the Chinese and Malabar rites allowed by the Jesuits. The society bore him no love. He proposed a reform of the Society of Jesus in the year of his death. The number of Church festivals that clog upon industry in Roman Catholic countries was lessened by Benedict. The Jubilee of 1750 was observed. In his thought he was strictly scientific, and delighted in intercourse with the learned. His most noted work was upon “Diocesan Synods.” Benedict founded learned academies, and sought for them members like Muratori and Winckel-man. By his aid a catalogue of the Vatican library was carried on. He died May 3, 1758.

Carlo Rezzonico was born at Venice, March 7, 1693. He became cardinal in 1757, and was elected Pope

July 6, 1758. He was pious and good-^c“"'- humored. Clement XIII was a firm friend

I758-I769*

of the Jesuits. In a Bull of 1765 he confirmed the order, and in another, “Animarum Saluti,” as a reply to the attacks upon them, praises the order. The united and firm stand of the Bourbon courts was a disagreeable surprise to him. He called a Consistory to consider it, but died the day before it was to meet.

Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio Ganganelli was born near Rimini, October 31, 1705. He was educated under the Jesuits and the Piarists, and in 1723 entered the Franciscan order. He taught theology in several

The Papacy—The Greek Church. 387

of their schools. In 1741 he gained the attention and confidence of Benedict XIV, who made him (i745) assistant, and the next year consulter of the

.    . , _T .    _TT    ClementXIV.

congregation of the Inquisition. He was 1769*1774. made cardinal in 1759. He was elected Pope, May 19, 1769. His first endeavor was to restore good relations between the papacy and the Bourbon courts. He then sought to limit rather than destroy the Jesuits. In October, 1772, he closed the famous Collegium Romanum. At last he issued, July 21, I773> the famous Bull dissolving the order of the Jesuits. There is no doubt that Clement feared the Jesuits would take his life, and that he believed his sickness was due to them; but there is no further proof. He died September 19, 1774. In character and disposition Clement XIV was one of the most estimable men who have ever occupied the papal chair. He was also a polished scholar and writer, as his letters attest.

Giovanni Angelo Braschi was born at Cesena, December 27, 1717. Benedict XIV, in 1755, elevated him to the Episcopate. In 1766 he was    ^

made keeper of the papal exchequer. He ,775^,799. was elected Pope February 15, !775* Pi^us was a man of fine presence and agreeable manners. In 1780, Joseph II came to the throne, and the next year began his Church reforms. Pius left for Vienna in February, and did not return until August, 1782. He was treated respectfully, but did not accomplish anything. Joseph returned the visit in Rome, December, 1783, to January, 1784. Pius sympathized in the troubles which came upon the French clergy during the Revolution, and received and cared for two thousand of them. He showed little tact or wisdom in his

388 History of the Christian Church.

dealing with a situation which called for the utmost of both. The Roman Republic was proclaimed February 15, 1798, and five days later Pius was sent out of Rome a prisoner. He died at Valence, August 29, 1799. He will be remembered by all who know Rome for his efforts to drain the Pontine marshes and to restore the Appian Way.

At the close of this period, amid the general chaos and dissolution of European political and ecclesiastical institutions through the French Revolution, the condition of the papacy and of the Roman Catholic Church seemed most desperate. That a hundred years later both should be in many respects more influential than for centuries, is one of the astonishing developments of the nineteenth century. To those who look below the surface, it may seem that it springs from the same source as the Evangelical Revival,—the inappeasable religious instinct of the human heart. For this, political and social reform is no substitute. Men must learn and recognize God is in his universe before they can aid in making, or can rightly say, all is well in the world.

The: Gre:e:k Church.

The Greek Church in the Turkish dominions knew no reformatory movements in this period, after the death of Cyril Lucaris. In the north it was different. In 1598, Job, Metropolitan of Moscow, was made Patriarch of Russia. In 1657 the other patriarchs agreed that it was not necessary for the Patriarch of Moscow to obtain the confirmation of the Patriarch of Constantinople.

The Patriarchate of Nikon (1652-1657) was re-

The Papacy—The Greek Church. 389

markable for the advent and downfall of one of the great characters of Christendom and a reformer of the Russian Church. Nikon called in the old Sclavonic service-books, and used a corrected version, whereby he caused the schism of the Raskolniks, which has remained until this day.

Peter the Great laid his reforming hand on the Church as on all else that was Russian. He introduced Episcopal seminaries for the training of priests, and raised the standard of morals in the monastery, and of decorum in the service of the Church. His greatest change, however, was that, on the death of the Patriarch Hadrian in 1702, he left the office vacant for eighteen years, and then carried through an arrangement whereby the prerogatives of the patriarch should be exercised by the Holy Synod. This was constituted in 1721. It is a body partly clerical and partly lay. Originally there were twelve clerical members from the different orders of the clergy. The oldest metropolitan presided. The procurator of the Holy Synod, a layman, represented the emperor. The Russian Church, which was the most independent in Europe, by this step became the most dependent on the State. Catherine II endeavored to foster education and elevate in some degree the character of the clergy. The Church in this century was marked by intense conservatism. Peter the Great could make the nobility and gentry shave off their beards, but quailed before the Russian clergy, who have retained to this day their flowing beards.

The Russian clergy and Church, like the Russian people, have yet to awake. When that hour comes, a great force will be added to the energies of Christendom.

Chapter VI.

THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL.

The; most important event in the history of the Christian Church in the eighteenth century was the Evangelical Revival. Its direct and indirect, continuous, expanding, and even accelerating influence, render it second to no other movement in the Christian Church since Luther’s defiance of the Papal Church.

The Evangelical Revival stands midway between the Puritan Reform and the French Revolution. Though never in any sense a Evangelical political movement, it stands in vital re-Revivai and lations to both. The Puritan Reform ^thReform.^an strove f°^r the control of the Church of England. Through faults not its own, as well as those which were, it plunged into revolution; it lost its prize, and found its place outside of the Establishment. But it had gained forever the civil and political liberties of Englishmen, and left an historic record of undying renown. Morally it raised the standards of personal and public life, so that all the license and corruption of the Restoration and a disputed succession—a hundred years, nearly, of political treachery and venality—could not make these cease to be the great standards for England’s judgment of herself and of her people. Religiously, in spite of all aberration and divisions, it made religion a mat-

390

The Evangelical Revival.    391

ter of personal concern; it brought the gospel nearer to the people, and God to the heart of man.

This work the Evangelical Revival took up and carried forward. Without the Puritan Reform, not^ only can we not understand the Evangelical Revival, we can not conceive it possible. Its ethical platform was the necessary presupposition for the latter movement. The liberty which it made the inheritance of that generation of Englishmen was as essential to the Evangelical Revival as the atmosphere is to a living man. Conceive, if you can, of Wesley’s lay preachers under Elizabeth or Charles II; the idea is absurd. The victories of Puritanism made them possible. So, while the Evangelical Revival under Wesley stood theologically for many things abhorrent to the Puritan, religiously it simply carried on the work of the Puritan Reform. Like the Puritans, the Evangelical Revival brought the Scriptures to the common people; but, unlike them, it brought them without any binding interpretation of John Calvin or of the Westminster Confession. Never before in Christendom was the gospel preached to the poor as by John Wesley and his associates in the Great Revival. Never before did it come to all men as in Charles Wesley’s hymns and in the preaching of universal redemption. Wesley’s method was very different from the Puritan rigor; but his discipline was its noble development, and was quite as effective. On the pedestal of the Puritan Reform stands the statue of the Evangelical Revival.

The relation of that Revival to the French Revolution is mainly one of contrast and of antagonism, though it does not fail in points of contact. The s Revival stood for the Christian faith and for Chris

392 History of the Christian Church.

tian morality. The Revolution rejected both. The Revival believed in such evil in human nature as only the sacrifice of Christ could purge out and Evangelical ^ma^^e fit f°^r Christian society; the Revolu-Revivai and tion, that human nature is essentially good, Revolution! that *^{ts ev}^ ^{1S ow}iⁿg ^onty to circumstances, and that it is certainly perfected by its own unaided efforts. The Revival sought to make saints; the Revolution did make furious beasts.

In spite of this evident antagonism, the Revival and the Revolution both addressed, ministered to, served, and guided the socially and politically disinherited, the common people. The movement of the Revival was a popular movement not less than that of the Revolution. No orator in the tribune of the Convention hated oppression more than did the men of the Revival. If the Revolution broke the bonds of feudalism over the greater part of Continental Europe, the Revival broke the shackles from the Negro and abolished the African slave-trade. Wesley anticipated the Revolution in denouncing slavery, and went beyond it in denouncing the liquor-traffic. In all improvements in the condition of the poor or 'the defective classes, the men of the Revival were quite as earnest and quite as wise as the men of the Revolution. In sincere interest, in social well-being, they were alike. The Revolution directly advocated democracy; the Revival indirectly promoted it. The Revolution proclaimed the rights of man; the Revival enforced his duties, without which his rights are but a mocking mirage. The Revolution broke with all the past, and despised all that history could teach; the Revival sought close connection with the past, and broke from

The Evangelical Revival.    393

it, even when the parting seemed necessary, with regret.

In contrast with both the Puritan Reform and the ^ Revolution, the Revival never sought political power, but confined itself to moral and religious aims and their necessary social consequences. As a result, the Re- ^ vival knew a tolerance to which both of the other movements were strangers. It is from this characteristic that the leaders ot the Revival who shall pass before us, and who, in no small degree, changed the face of England and of Christendom, will include no. generals, or Parliamentary orators, or party leaders, or great scholars, or philosophers. In clear light will stand the leaders of the great religious reform, and, besides these, its heroes will be the men of the common people, who through faith wrought righteousness, overthrew the strongholds of Satan, and made real the kingdom of Christ in the hearts of men. The Evangelical Revival carried on the work which in the Puritan Reform had ceased, and, while accessible through its popular sympathies and knowledge of the people to all of the good in the French Revolution, was effective as its counterpoise and unsurmounted barrier.

It was high time that in England there should come a genuine revival of the religious life and of the primitive power of the Christian religion. The _EngIand political life of England since the Restora- atthe tion until the accession of George II outbreak of

. ⁰ .    the Revival.

(1727), was a record of treachery, intrigue, and corruption uparalleled in her history. With the more settled establishment of the House of Hanover, and the clergy of the Church of England becoming more loyal to the Protestant succession and less open

394 History of the Christian Church.

to the intrigues of the Jacobites, there seems to have been an improvement in political morality. But we must remember that the years from 1721 to 1742, thus including the years up to, and the outbreak of, the Revival, were those of the Administration of Sir Robert Walpole. The maxim of his policy and the principle of his Administration was, that “Every man has his price,” and never since has the English Parliament been so venal. Of the minister* himself it is said, “Politics and obscenity were his tastes/’

Socially and morally the unbelief and dissoluteness of the higher classes has been already touched upon. If further information is required of a later period in the century, reference is made to Trevelyan’s “Early Life of Charles James Fox,” than which there is no better authority. In the lower classes the deterioration was equally evident. In regard to the drinking habits of the people Mr. Lecky tells us: “The habit of gin-drinking—the master curse of English life, to which most of the crime and an immense proportion of the misery of the nation may be ascribed—if it did not absolutely originate, at least became for the first time a national vice, in the early Hanoverian period. . . . About 1724 that passion for gin-drinking appears to have infected the masses of the population, and it spread with the rapidity and violence of an epidemic. Small as is the place which this occupies in English history, it was probably, if we consider all the consequences which have flowed from it, the most momentous in that of the eighteenth century; incomparably more so than any event in the purely political or military annals of the country. . . . Retailers of gin were accustomed to hang out painted boards an-

The Evangelical Revival.    395

nouncing that their customers could be made drunk for a penny, and dead drunk for twopence, and should have straw for nothing; and cellars strewn with straw were accordingly provided, into which those who had become insensible were dragged, and where they remained until they had sufficiently recovered to renew their orgies.”

Those who wish a contemporary and realistic picture of England during the early years of the Evangelical Revival have only to read Fielding’s “Tom Jones.” The hard drinking of Squire Western, and the contempt for the clergy shown in marrying a cast-off mistress to a vicar, are evidence of the all-pervading coarseness and unrelieved sensuality. The impression on the reader is most depressing. What must it have been to have lived in the midst of it? The shadows are even deeper in Sir Walter Besant’s “The World Went Very Well Then,” as he deals also with the criminal classes. Sir Walter, though of course not a contemporary, writes as a man thoroughly well-informed in regard to the life of the time. This was a time when those exposed to the pillory not infrequently died from the ill-treatment of the mob, when every six weeks the procession of condemned criminals to Tyburn was one of the great festivals of London, and when rotting corpses hung on gibbets along the highroad.

Wesley was not wrong when he wrote, “What is the present characteristic of the English nation ? It is ungodliness. Ungodliness in our universal, our constant, our peculiar character.” Of course, with this increase of immorality there should have come an increased effort on the part of the clergv and the Church. That

396 History of the Christian Church.

was not the case. Of the clergy Bishop Burnet says: “Our ember-days are the burden and grief of my life. The much greater part of those who come to be ordained are ignorant to a degree not to be apprehended by those who are not obliged to know it. The easiest part of knowledge is that to which they are the greatest strangers. Those who have read some few books, yet never seem to have read the Scriptures. Many can not give a tolerable account even of the Catechism itself, how short and plain soever. This does often tear my heart. The case is not much better in many who, having got into orders, come for instruction, and can not make it appear that they have read the Scriptures, or any one good book since they were ordained, so that the small measure of knowledge upon which they got into holy orders, not being improved, is in a way to be quite lost; and then they think it a great hardship if they are told they must know the Scriptures and the body of Divinity better before they can be trusted with the care of souls.”

Isaac Watts besought “every one to use all possible efforts for the recovery of dying religion in the world.” Bishop Burnet declared that the lives of the clergy were not scandalous, but that they were not exemplary, and that they would never regain their influence until they lived better and labored more. Was it not high time for the Revival ? If it should break out, who, fearing God, would dare to stop it, even if it did lead to field-preaching and lay itinerants ?

The man of the Evangelical Revival, the leader of this great movement, was John Wesley. Wesley was a true son of the English race, and a true child of his century. He was more; he was the embodiment of the

The Evangelical Revival.

397

spirit of the Evangelical Revival. As an Englishman, with all his training and all his prejudices, Wesley had that close adherence to facts and

that preference for inductive thinking John Wesley.

.....    ,    _T i703-«79i.

which distinguished his countrymen, in speech, as well as in methods, Wesley was eminently cautious and moderate. The ends he so sought were practical ones, which commended themselves to every man’s conscience; the means he used were

Wesley a

so sane and well-considered that they ad- Representa-vanced his cause with thoughtful men, who ^{tive En}g^,ish"

f 1    j    m®n.

could wait to take counsel of the event and not of men’s prejudices and fears. It has been charged -that Wesley was incapable of suspending his judgment. Those who make this charge can have but slightly read his Journals. Wesley, as few other men, for long years suspended his judgment on questions of the greatest importance. It was the result of his * ever-gathering data and of his inductive method. Though he believed in witchcraft and in demoniacal possession, yet he criticised Baxter’s account of Apparitions, and never came to a decided opinion as to the cause of those frequent physical manifestations which accompanied his preaching, especially at the beginning of his work. He believed in entire sanctification, and in the believer overcoming sin and living -without sin, while he defined sin as a willful transgression of a known law of God,—a very important J h condition too often overlooked. But he did not formulate any clear and distinct philosophy of this experience, nor profess in distinct terms that he himself enjoyed it. He was a devoted son and minister of the ^ Church of England; but though too clear-sighted not

398 History of the Christian Church.

to see where his societies must drift in the presence of the utter indifference of the English Episcopate, yet he held this question for years in suspense, not only in regard to England, but also, in regard to America. Certainly few leaders in any great work longer suspended their judgment on important questions, or were more open to conviction or more patiently bided the teaching of time, which, Lord Bacon says, “is the wisest thing in the world.”

John Wesley was also a child of his century. He had a broad horizon and a tolerant mind. He read wesiey g°°d books, but he also read “The Prince” the child of of Machiavelli, and Bernard de Mande-HisTime. _vjjj_e»_s “F_aki_{e 0}f the Bees;” read them to execrate them, but he execrated them intelligently. In advanced life he read Homer’s “Odyssey,” Ariosto’s “Jerusalem Delivered,” and made notes on Shakespeare. He read also Voltaire and Rousseau and David Hume, and read more than once Butler’s “Analogy of Religion.” He knew the life and thought of his time. So, with strong personal convictions, he had no liking for controversy, and tolerated differences of opinion if men wrought together with God for the inward kingdom. He had a well-founded belief that the best cure for religious dissensions, where they did not touch great fundamentals, was a common endeavor after holiness of heart in ourselves and others. Wesley loved liberty as much as he prized order, and no man of his century was quicker touched by human suffering or more ready to devise and furnish means for its relief.

Wesley was the embodiment of the spirit of the ^ Revival. He had himself passed through those ex-

The Evangelical Revival.    399

periences of condemnation and pardon, of seeking after God and knowing assuredly he had found him, which he preached so vividly to others. This change had in him produced the same Embodiment⁶ quenchless zeal which was to animate his of the humble itinerants. With a self-denial and ^Ev|p,^lⁱ_>^cal sacrifice and a tireless industry which made him easily the model for all workers in this field for fifty years, he never ceased to animate and inspire his followers, and was himself the greatest itinerant ever seen between the British seas.

Instinctively we seek for resemblances between Wesley and the founders of the two great Churches of the Reformation. Like Luther, Wesley, wesiey though a scholar, was a man of the people. and Facing mobs and the frowns and ridicule of ^Luther* polite society, he had all Luther’s courage. In love of music he was not inferior, and having sung with the congregation for half a century, sang a hymn of praise in death. Like Luther, the press made his writings household words among his people. Unlike him, however, were his dislike of controversy, and his thorough control of himself and his passions.

Like Calvin, Wesley was an organizer, with rare gifts of government. Like him, also, he was a keen logician. In unwearied, systematic, and _Wesi_ey unparalleled industry among the men of and their time, they were alike ; they were alike ^{a v n}* also in an influence after their death surpassing that of their life, both by their spirit and teachings informing and actuating increasing numbers of men after their removal from the scene. Calvin’s tastes and sympathies were aristocratic; Wesley’s were with the

400 History of the Christian Church.

people. Calvin was an adherent of a system, and was essentially intolerant. Wesley cared more for facts than for the systematic arrangement of intellectual conceptions; his interest was far more in the practical religious life than in any theological statement of Christian truths. In thought and life, Wesley was tolerant and humane.

What, then, was the distinctive mission and service of John Wesley in the history of the Christian Church?

Wesley’s Wesley, as he himself says, was a High Mission and Churchman and the son of a High Church-

Service. _man> jt _may be added that he was a Tory and the son of a Tory; his father being credited with the authorship of that famous sermon of Dr. Sach-everell’s which occasioned the overthrow of the Whig party. It was this lifelong political sympathy which allied him to Dr. Samuel Johnson, and made him take Dr. Johnson’s view of the struggle between the mother country and the colonies in the War of the American Revolution. Yet, in spite of this, Wesley’s mission was that of the Apostle of the Religious Democracy. He, in larger measure than any before or since, made the gospel reach the masses; he, more than any other, evangelized the English people. His immense service is that, though the means he used during a long lifetime was preaching, yet he did not stop with preaching; but he organized his work, kept it under competent supervision, and by a thorough and strict discipline made the Evangelical Revival mean a genuine advance in holiness of heart and life among the English people.

Wesley was born at Epworth, Lincolnshire, June 17, (June 28, New Style) 1703. His father, Samuel Wesley, was descended from a Somerset family, dating back

The Evangelical Revival.    401

to 1350, and from a branch of which came Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington. Samuel Wesley’s greatgrandfather was Sir Herbert Wesley, of wesiey’s Devon. Sir Herbert’s son, Bartholomew Birth and Wesley, like his father, was educated at Ox- ^Parentage* ford. He became rector of Catherson and Charmouth, in Dorset, in 1640. Refusing to confirm, he was ejected with the other Puritan clergy in 1662, and practiced medicine in Charmouth until his death in 1678. The father of Samuel Wesley was also a Puritan clergyman of the Church of England. John Wesley (1636-1670) was the man whom his celebrated grandson and namesake, the babe of the Epworth rectory, resembled more in his education, his love for the common people, and his utter self-abnegation, than any other ancestor. This John Wesley was not only a Puritan, but he married the daughter of the celebrated John White, well known to us as the patriarch of Dorchester, and one of the most influential founders of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. This John Wesley studied at Oxford, where he was proficient in the Oriental languages, and a friend of the Puritan vice-chancellor, Dr. Owen. In 1658 he was chosen pastor of Winterbourn-Whitchurch; here he was a successful soul-winner, caring for his humble fisher-folk. But the evil days were at hand. In 1661 he was imprisoned for refusing to use the Book of Common Prayer; and in 1662, like his father and the other Puritan clergy, he was deprived. Four times after this he was imprisoned while acting as a Nonconformist pastor of his little flock at Poole. Nevertheless he was no bigot; he attended the services of the Church of England, and wished to go as a missionary to America. Yet a conversation which has

20

402 History of the Christian Church.

been preserved between him and the Bishop of Bristol shows that he was a thorough and convinced Puritan. In 1678, the same year in which his father died, in his forty-second year, his work was finished. He left a large family in charge of their Puritan mother.

Samuel Wesley (1663-1735) was trained in Dissenting schools until twenty years of age. He was then, as having some poetic talent, asked to write against the Church of England. This led him to read up the points in dispute, and caused him to change his opinion from those of his family. Knowing how distasteful this would be to his mother, without her knowledge he set off on foot for Oxford. There he entered, in classic shades familiar to his ancestors, as a servitor in Exeter College. He was five years at Oxford; and during these years he received five shillings from his family and friends. He entered with a little over two pounds in his pocket, and graduated with three pounds in his possession. His pen had materially assisted him. After serving a year as chaplain on a man-of-war, and in a small curacy, in 1689, his income from his curacy being thirty pounds and from his pen thirty pounds more, he married Susannah Annesley. Dr. Annesley, her father, was called the St. Paul of the Nonconformists; so she was of Puritan blood and training. Her uncle was the first Earl of Anglesea. She was the twenty-fourth child. About the same time as her husband, through reading and reflection, she joined the Church of England.

Susannah Wesley (1669-1742) was a remarkable woman, and in intelligence, breadth of view, practical ability, and tact, as well as in devoted piety and high character, she was the head of the Epworth house-

The Evangelical Revival.    403

hold, to which she brought nineteen children, of whom John Wesley was the fifteenth child, and Charles Wesley the youngest son. In 1691, Samuel Wesley was made rector of South Ormsby by the patron, the Marquis of Normanby. The marquis and his friend, Lord Castleton, expected the rector’s family to receive into their home, without invitation, these noblemen's mistresses. This was too much for the ancestral Puritanism of the incumbents of the rectory. In the summer of 1696 things came to a crisis. The rector found his patron’s mistress intruding on his wife, and he showed her the door. This caused him to resign his living. In 1697, Samuel Wesley became the rector of Epworth, the principal town in the old island of Axholm, having a population of ten thousand, of whom two thousand lived in Epworth. The inhabitants were fenmen and Hollanders, sent to reclaim these lands through draining them, to the disgust of the former inhabitants. They formed a wild, rude, and stubborn people. With them Samuel Wesley, like his predecessor, was often at enmity, and in thirty years of service saw little fruit among them; but from his planting his son reaped an abundant harvest. In 1707, Charles Wesley was born in the rectory. Samuel Wesley was always poor, having a large family and helping to care for his widowed mother on a salary never more than a thousand dollars. But this home was one of order, of intelligence, and of refinement. Susannah Wesley was a lady, and her children were well bred.

On February 9, 1709, when John was five years -old, the rectory was burned down. The nurse had caught the youngest child in her arms, and, calling the others to follow, had left John sound asleep. Wakened

404 History of the Christian Church.

by the fire, John found that the flames made escape by the door impossible. The father had tried in vain to fight his way through the fire. The child climbed up 011 a chest and appeared at the window. Some one called out, “Go for a ladder;” another said it would be too late. The father commended the soul of his child to God. Some neighbors stood together, and one mounted on their shoulders. At the first attempt he fell. The second was more successful, and as he caught the child in his arms the roof fell in. If it had fallen outward, rescued and rescuers would have perished. Indeed, as Wesley himself says, he was “a brand plucked from the burning.” When the father received his son he said : “Come, neighbors, let us kneel down; let us give thanks to God. He has given me all my eight children. Let the house go; I am rich enough.”

The question with the family was the education of the children. Through the influence of relatives of ^v rank and wealth, the elder son, Samuel, obtained admission to the aristocratic school of Westminster,' where he later became usher, and where he was able to make a place for Charles. John Wesley, however, was sent to the much less fashionable school of the Charterhouse, founded by Thomas Sutton in 1611, on the site of the Charterhouse monastery, which was confiscated by Henry VIII in 1536, and which he granted to the Duke of Norfolk. It was the town house of the Howards until sold to Sutton for sixty-five thousand dollars for this school.

Here John Wesley lived from his eleventh until his seventeenth year. He had thorough training and a spare diet. He says that for four years of this time he had little to eat but bread, and not plenty of that.

The Evangelical Revival.    405

As he came to be an upper-form boy his fare improved.

- He was so proficient in his studies that he won an exhibition, or scholarship, in Christ Church College, Oxford, the wealthy and aristocratic foundation of Cardinal Wolsey. Samuel Wesley was a servitor at Exeter; John, and afterwards Charles Wesley, like their brother Samuel, were gentlemen of Christ’s. Yet in spite of John Wesley’s scholarship he found it hard to make ends meet, and was assisted from his father’s scanty earnings in his earlier years at Oxford. Wesley was at Christ Church from 1720 until he took his M. A. degree in 1727. Two years before he resolved to become a clergyman, he read Thomas a Kempis, and Taylor’s “Holy Living and Dying;” also Law’s “Serious Call” and “Christian Perfection,” and began a strict course of life. In 1730 he began, comparatively, to be a man of one book, and that the Bible. In 1728 he began the habit of rising at four in the morning, which he kept up for sixty years. An incident in his college life left its impress upon him. In 1724, while feeling the pressure of his financial difficulties, he spoke to the college porter, who had but one coat, and that day no food but a drink of water, and said: “You thank God when you have nothing to eat, nothing to wear, and no bed to lie on. What else do you thank him for?” The porter replied, “I thank him that he has given me my life and being and a heart to love him and a desire to serve him.” So John Wesley came to know the power of an inward religion superior to the most unfavorable circumstances.

Having been ordained deacon in 1725, he became a priest, or presbyter, in 1728. He had already been placed beyond the pinch of financial stress by his elec-

406 History oi the Christian Church.

tion as Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, which position he retained until 1751. From August, 1727, to November, 1729, he was curate for his father at Wroote, in Epworth parish. These two years were all -the pastoral experience John Wesley ever had in England, and doubtless they were invaluable to him in his later work. In 1729 he came back to Oxford, and found that his brother Charles, who came to Oxford in 1726, had already organized the “Holy Club,” and ^v that its members were already also called Methodists. ^ John Wesley at once took his place as its acknowledged leader. About this time (1727), his fellow-student Kirkham hailed him as his prospective brother-in-law, and Wesley carried on a correspondence with Miss Betty for the next three years. In 1731 she married another, and soon after died. For the six years from 1729 to 1735, John Wesley was faithful to his duties as Fellow and tutor in Lincoln College. He lectured on logic, Greek, and philosophy, and was moderator in the disputations held six times a week. He began his work with eleven pupils, but his income steadily increased by thirty pounds a year. During these years, as all his life, he was extremely systematic in the use of his time. In his scheme for study he gave Monday and Tuesday to Greek and Latin classics, Wednesday to logic and ethics, Thursday to Hebrew and Arabic, Friday to metaphysics and natural philosophy, Saturday to oratory and poetry, and Sunday to divinity, with French to fill up the intervals.

The same methodical exactness with which Wesley pursued his studies he carried into his religious life. This is proved by the directions he drew up for his own personal improvement in Christian graces and

The Evangelical Revival.    407

work, and in his leadership of the Holy Club. The club at first included but four—John and Charles Wesley, the latter now a college tutor; Robert Kirkham, of Merton College; and William _HoJ^hc,_ub. Morgan, of Christ Church. They met in each other’s rooms, from six to nine at first, on Sunday evening, and then two evenings each week, and finally on every evening. They opened their meeting with prayer, and then studied the Greek Testament and classics; then they reviewed the work of the day and their plans for the morrow. After prayers they had supper, and talked of charity; and after supper, John Wesley read to them from some book. They fasted on Wednesday and Friday, and received the Lord’s Supper each week, daily conducting a searching selfexamination. They used hourly short ejaculatory prayers, and repeated collects at nine, twelve, and three, and had stated times for private meditation and prayer.

In August, 1730, William Morgan began visiting the jail at Oxford, in which the others assisted him. John-Wesley’s father wrote that he highly approved of it, having exercised the same ministry himself when at Oxford, but advising that they should place themselves under the chaplain of the prison, which they did. Robert Kirkham left in 1731, to be his uncle’s curate, and William Morgan died at Dublin of consumption in August, 1732; but soon others were added. In 1731, Benjamin Ingham and Thomas Broughton joined the club; the next year John Clayton, and the year following John Gambold, James Hervey, and George White-field. The club was open for members to join or leave, ✓ and so others had a temporary connection with these earnest students. Of the number, John and Charles

408 History of the Christian Church.

Wesley and George Whitefield were men of mark. John Gambold joined the Moravians in 1732, and was made bishop among them in 1744. He died in 1771, leaving a record as a fervent, humble, and disinterested minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Benjamin Ingham was a man of fine personal ap- ^ pearance. He went with the Wesleys to Georgia, and was two years in America. He accompanied John Wesley in his visit to Herrnhut, and when the Fetter Lane Society broke up (1739) he remained with the Moravians. He formed a kind of Moravian Methodist society in Yorkshire, and was on friendly terms with Wesley’s itinerants. His societies grew until they numbered over eighty, when, in 1759, he sent two of his ministers to Scotland to visit Robert Sandeman. They returned firmly attached to his views. Dissension was soon ripe in the societies, and, in spite of the efforts of Lady Huntingdon, soon only thirteen were left, and these were gradually absorbed by other associations. Ingham married Lady Margaret Hastings, the sister of the Earl of Huntingdon. It was through her that her brother’s widow, the Countess of Huntingdon, first came to know the Methodists. She died, in 1767, a triumphant death; four years after which her husband followed her.

James Hervey was a clergyman in the Church of England from 1735 to 1758. In the separation from ^ Wesley he adhered to the Calvinistic side. In 1746 he published “Meditations,” and in 1755 “Theron and Aspasia.” These books were turgid in style, but very popular. He died in 1758 at the age of forty-five. He is the only member of the club who seems to have been bitter against Wesley. John Clayton, a Jacobite,

The Evangelical Revival.    409

remained a stiff High Churchman. These men were not great intellectually, but they were earnest and good men, not one of whom left a record to cause a blush to the brothers of the Holy Club.

Charity was fervent with these young men, few and poor. Their leader, John Wesley, reduced his living expense to a fixed sum, and all above this was given away. With an income of thirty pounds, he gave away two. The next year, with an income of sixty pounds, he gave away thirty-two. The year following, with an income of ninety pounds, he gave away sixty-two; and the year succeeding, with an income of one hundred and twenty, he gave away ninety-two. An incident will show his spirit. The members of the club gathered together some poor children, and hired a teacher for them. One cold day one of these children, a young girl, came to Wesley’s room. He saw her pinched look and her linen gown, and asked if she had no warmer clothing for winter. When she answered no, he put his hand in his pocket for some money to give her, but found he had little there. Then he thought, “Will thy Master say, Well done, good and faithful steward? Thou hast adorned thy walls with money which might have screened this poor creature from the cold. O Justice! O Mercy! are not these pictures the blood of the poor creature?” In 1731, and again in 1732, Wesley was in London. In 1733 and 1734 he preached before the University of Oxford. On New-Year’s Day, 1733, he preached his sermon on “Circumcision of the Heart,” which he said, thirty years later, “contained all I now teach concerning salvation from sin and loving God with all the heart.”

410 History of the Christian Church.

The health of the rector of Epworth was visibly failing. For family reasons he desired his son to succeed him; but John Wesley was averse, believing that he could do more good at Oxford. An application was, however, made for him, but he was unsuccessful. Samuel Wesley, at the age of seventy-two, died April ²5> ¹735- His dying charge to his son seems like a prophecy. He said to Charles Wesley: “Be steady. The Christian faith will surely revive in this kingdom. You shall see it, though I shall not.” Thus passed away a man sorely tried, but single-hearted to his Lord.

The home at Epworth, the spot in after years dearer than any on earth to John Wesley, was now broken up.

This, doubtless, had something to do with Georgia" resolution of John and Charles Wesley

to accept the offer of Governor Oglethorpe, -/ and embark for Georgia in October of the same year.

It was during this Oxford residence (1730-1734) that John Wesley was in correspondence with one of the social leaders of the century, a woman of rare intelligence, tact, and high character. Mrs. Pendarves was a young widow, who afterward became the wife of Dr. Delany, the Dean of Down, in Ireland. The correspondence shows that, if propinquity had been given, and if God had not had other plans for John Wesley, the acquaintance might easily have led to marriage, and such, doubtless, was Wesley’s desire.

The Wesleys, with two friends, Benjamin Ingham and Charles Delamotte, sailed for Georgia. On the same vessel were twenty-six Moravians, with their bishop, David Nitschmann. The Wesleys learned German from them. The voyage was very stormy. The

The Evangelical Revival. 411

calmness and fearlessness in danger of the Moravians, so different from the other passengers, greatly impressed John Wesley. February 5, 1736, Wesley arrived at Savannah. The Moravian minister at that place, Spangenberg, came and met Wesley. His first question was, “Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit that you are a child of God?” Wesley did not know how to answer; but then Spangenberg asked, “Do you know Jesus Christ?”- Wesley replied, “I know he is the Savior of the world.” Spangenberg said, “True; but do you know he has saved you?” “I hope he has died to save us,” said Wesley. But Spangenberg asked, “Do you know yourself?” Wesley said, “I do;” but he adds, “I fear they were vain words.” In this short catechism lay the germ and power of the Great Revival. Only men with intense conviction of the personal experience of the things which the New Testament says the Christian may know could lead and inspire the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century.

The experience of the Wesleys in Georgia was a grievous disappointment. Charles Wesley, who went out as secretary to Governor Oglethorpe, returned in August. John Wesley began his ministry in March, 1736. No man could labor more faithfully and self-denyingly. He read prayers in German, French, and Italian, as well as preached in English. To encourage the poor people he went barefooted. On the other hand, in no place were his High Church prejudices and practices less fitting, and few men have shown less tact, or even common sense. The tender passion and its results brought things to a crisis.

Mr. Causton, a leading man in the community,

412 History of the Christian Church.

thought an excellent way in which to ally Mr. Wesley to the colony would be for him to marry. He thought that a suitable person would be his niece, Miss Sophia Hopkey. Miss Sophia entertained the same opinion, and made herself exceedingly agreeable to the young ascetic by her devoutness and her sympathy. Wesley’s friend, Charles Delamotte, pretended to see through the artfulness of Miss Sophia. He warned against the match, and said so much that Wesley agreed to leave the decision to the Moravian elders. Delamotte labored with the elders to bring them to the right point of view. So they decided against the marriage. Wesley was summoning up courage to break the news to the young lady, when, seeing how things were going, she took matters into her own hands. March 8, 1737, she engaged herself to Mr. Williamson, a man of no great account, and married him four days later. Wesley was deeply hurt. Forty-nine years afterward he remembered the smart. In his after course, Wesley kept within the law, and the legal proceedings were simply a persecution; but ordinary prudence would have kept him from repelling Mrs. Williamson from the communion-table as he did the next August. Mr. Causton had Wesley indicted, and then had the trial postponed. Wesley sought to force the issue, but finally left the colony, December 2, 1737. Wesley had been pained and humiliated. Perhaps no lesson of his life was more needed; but he forgot all in his sense of religious need. On his return voyage he wrote, “I went to America to convert the Indians; but O, who shall convert me ?” Wesley landed February 1, 1738, and two days later he was in London. There he met the Moravian, Peter Bohler. The middle of that month John and

The Evangelical Revival.    413

Charles Wesley went to Oxford. Early in March, Wesley was clearly convinced of his lack of saving faith, and desired to cease from preaching. _WesIey,_s Bohler strongly advised against this. He Religious said, “Preach faith till you have it; and Transforma-then, because you have it, you will preach faith.” When praying in prison with a condemned felon, Wesley decided to give up being confined to forms of prayer. A little society of those seeking God was formed, and met first at the house of James Hutton, and afterward in rooms at Fetter Lane. James Hutton (1715-1795) went to Herrnhut and became a Moravian. For fifty years his untiring assiduity and high character made him the leader of the Moravians in England. Peter Bohler sailed for America, May 4, 1738, John Wesley experienced the great spiritual transformation, which he thus describes:

“But I could not understand what he said of an instantaneous work. I could not understand how this faith should be given in a moment; how a man could at once be turned from darkness to light, from sin and misery to righteousness and joy in the Holy Ghost. I searched the Scriptures again touching this very thing, particularly the Acts of the Apostles; but, to iny utter astonishment, found scarcely any instance there of other than instantaneous conversion; scarce any so slow as that of St. Paul, who was three days in the pangs of the new birth. I had but one retreat left; namely, ‘Thus I grant God wrought in the first ages of Christianity; but the times are changed. What reason have I to believe that he works in the same manner now ?’

“But on Sunday, the 23d, I was beat out of this

414 History of the Christian Church.

retreat too, by the concurring evidence of several living witnesses, who testified God had thus wrought in themselves, giving them in a moment such a faith in the blood of his Son as translated them out of darkness into light, out of sin and fear into holiness and happiness. Here ended my disputing. I could now only cry out, ‘Lord, help thou my unbelief!’

“May 24th, Wednesday.—I think it was about five this morning that I opened my Testament (Greek) on these words (2 Pet. i, 4) : ‘There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that ye should be partakers of the Divine nature/ Just as I went out I opened it on these words, ‘Thou art not far from the kingdom of God/ In the afternoon I was asked to go to St. Paul’s. The anthem was, ‘Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice: O let thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint. If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord, who may abide it? For there is mercy with thee; therefore shalt thou be feared. O Israel, trust in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem Israel from all his sins/ In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Alders-gate Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for my salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

After the transformation of that May evening, John

The Evangelical Revival.    415

Wesley began at once to preach in the power of a new life the gospel of Jesus Christ. The next Sunday he preached at St. George’s, Bloomsbury, from “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith,” and at the chapel in Long Acre from God justifying the ungodly.

On June 14th he sailed to Rotterdam, and from thence went to Utrecht, Cologne, and Frankfort; to Marienborn, where he met Count Zinzen- _{WegJe Jn} dorf. Thence by way of Jena to Halle,

Qermany.

where he visited Francke’s Orphan House;

Leipzig and Dresden, to Herrnhut, thirty miles south of the latter place. At Herrnhut he remained two weeks, and when he left he said, “I would gladly have spent my life here.” Wesley, though never a Moravian, learned much from them.

The truths Wesley emphasized in his preaching seldom have found more clear and concise expression than in Zinzendorfs hymn,

“Jesus, thy blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress,”

which Wesley translated and taught his people to sing. The spirit and discipline of Hernnhut made a lasting impression on Wesley. From the Moravians he derived his observance of love-feasts, band and religious class-meetings; his value of discipline, and perhaps his ascetic tinge in regard to dress; and afterward he differed decidedly from them in regard to quietism and a certain sensuousness which marred their religious phraseology, and found their disregard of the sacraments and of good works positively harmful to the religious life; yet he always had a high regard for them. After the withdrawal of his people from them, he wrote:

4i6 History of the Christian Church.

“Next to the members of the Church of England, the body of the Moravian Church, however mistaken some of them are, are in the main, of all whom I have seen, the best Christians in the world.”

John and Charles Wesley spent the time from the former’s return from Germany in September, 1738, until the next February, in London and Oxford, preaching as opportunity offered. December 12, 1738, Wesley met Whitefield returning from Georgia. The Wesleys, Whitefield, Ingham, and others, held a love-feast at Fetter Lane, January 1, 1739. This was the birth year of the great Revival. Whitefield went to Bristol in February, and crowds attended his preaching. February 17, 1739, he preached in the open air to the colliers of Kingswood, near Bristol. At the first sermon there were two hundred present; at the second, thousands. Whitefield, worn out with constant preaching in evangelistic services for six weeks, sent to John Wesley for his help. Wesley went to Bristol March 31st, and April 2d he preached for the first time in the open air on a little eminence in the suburbs of Bristol. Wesley remained in the work at Bristol until June nth. May 12, 1739, was laid at Bristol the foundation of the first Methodist Church in the world. The great Evangelical Revival had begun. Its initial date is that of Whitefield’s first sermon at Kingswood; it came to conscious existence with the erection of its first house of worship.

Let us now look at the preparation of its leader, and the special gifts of the men who were to prove the chief assistants in this great work.

At this time John Wesley was thirty-six years of age,—two years older than Luther when he nailed his

The Evangelical Revival.    417

Theses on the church door at Wittenberg; three years older than Calvin on his return from his banishment from Geneva; and nine years younger than Loyola when he formed his Society of Jesus at Paris. In learning and intellectual discipline he was inferior to none of these men. For six years he was a scholar at the Charterhouse; for thirteen years he had lived at Oxford. He had mastered what the university had to impart, and had taught for six years, and so had thorough use of what the classics and philosophy could do for him, and had an exceptional skill in logic. Besides this, he had added knowledge of Hebrew, and was thoroughly conversant with German, French, and Italian, and he read Spanish. There were few more thoroughly disciplined minds in England, and few with more various learning. To his full stores of information he added each year, as, his life long, he was a busy reader. To nineteen years of scholastic training he added two years’ experience as his father’s curate, and nearly two more as a missionary in Georgia, and two months of exceptional interest spent in Germany and Holland. Besides, he was born in an atmosphere of scholastic and literary tastes and social refinement, as well as devout piety. But at thirty-six John Wesley had done nothing to make his name remembered, and, as things go, his life promised little but failure. So far, therefore, his life had been but a preparation for his great work, and there remained more than fifty years before him of such labor as rarely is given to any man to accomplish. For this he had some special gifts. He was unmarried, and desired to remain so; nothing hindered the singleness of his course or devotion to his work. He had learned self-denial and

27

413 History of the Christian Church

how to endure hardness as a boy, and in the later years from 1730 to 1739. His personal needs were few, and a little sufficed for them. But his great gifts were his own, and did not depend on training or circumstances. After long seeking he came to a conscious knowledge of the salvation in Jesus Christ, and could adopt the personal language of St. Paul and St. John in speaking of it. He had a love for men ; not for humanity, but for individual men; for the plain people and the poor people; for the lost sheep.

In 1759 he wrote: “It is well a few of the rich and noble are called. O that God would increase their number! But I should rejoice (were it the will of God) if it were done by the ministry of others. If I might choose, I should still (as I have done hitherto) preach the gospel to the poor.” In 1771 he wrote, “Everywhere we find the laboring part of mankind the readiest to receive the gospel;” and in 1784 again, “How swiftly does the work of God spread among those who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow!” He had a knowledge of men and power to lead, to influence, and to govern men second to no other Englishman of his time. Disinterested, impartial, just, ever courteous and kind, his patience and sagacity were unfailing, and fitted him for a work more difficult and more lasting than that of founding an empire.

John Wesley loved preaching; it was his instrument of power; and because he loved men he loved to declare to them the law and the love of God. He preached to more people than any other man of his century; perhaps than any other in the history of the Church. Wesley loved poetry and song. His own hymns are above the average, while his translations

The Evangelical Revival.    419

of German hymns have never been excelled. Wherever he was, the congregation sang; and if there were none other to do so, he could lead them.

To aid John Wesley in this work were given the greatest preacher of the age, influencing great congregations, and the chief hymn-writer of the personal religious life in the Christian Church.

George Whitefield was the son of an innkeeper of Gloucester. There he was born, December 16, 1714. His father died while he was a young lad, _George and his mother, by strenuous exertion, was whitefield. able to have him prepared so that he en- ^li'4^mX77°-tered as a servitor at Pembroke Hall, Oxford, in 1733. He at once became a member of the Holy Club. After a severe sickness he was ordained deacon in 1736. He was in Georgia from May to August, 1738, and on his return began the remarkable work in Bristol to which w^re have referred.

George Whitefield was a man of high character and simple purpose, but had great natural gifts. He was tall, and had a frank, manly bearing, and a voice of wonderful compass, melody, and pathos. He was, perhaps, the most powerful dramatic pulpit orator the Christian ages have ever seen. He reached and moved men of all classes, Chesterfield and Franklin, as well as the colliers of Kingswood. Everywhere from the first Whitefield had immense congregations. Whitefield was not a scholar or a leader; he was a sincere Christian, and, for the time, the greatest preacher who has ever spoken the English tongue. His published works, we are told by those who heard his sermons, give no idea of his power.

Charles Wesley had a thorough training at West

420 History of the Christian Church.

minster and Oxford, and was the founder of the Holy Club. Devoted and earnest, his was no small part in Charles ^^ie £^reat Revival. As a preacher he was wesiey. pathetic, and stirred the emotions of his 1707-1788. _aU(ii_ences. He had a rare gift in leading men to an instant decision. But Charles Wesley was born a poet. The man who could publish four thousand hymns and write two thousand more, among which are some of the greatest of the Church, was no ordinary man. The truths which John Wesley preached, Charles Wesley sung.

Charles Wesley was the poet of the Revival. He taught the great congregation to sing, “Blow ye the trumpet, blow/’ “Come, sinners, to the gospel feast,” “Arise, my soul, arise,” and “O how happy are they who their Savior obey!” He sang and answered the question, “How can a sinner know his sins on earth forgiven?” and “Spirit of faith, come down; reveal the things of God.” He sang of joy, “O joyful sound of gospel grace,” and “Love Divine all love excelling,” “O love Divine, how sweet thou art!” “O glorious hope of perfect love!” and “Jesus, thine all victorious love;” these hymns mark the new era in Christian experience as in Christian song. It is not strange, therefore, that “Jesus, Lover of my soul,” has become a hymn of the Church universal, and has but one competitor as the most popular hymn in the English language. Charles Wesley wrote hymns for itinerants, and seldom does a Methodist Conference close without voices joining in some lyric of the master singer of the Revival which stirred and cheered the hearts of the fathers. He wrote funeral hymns, and “Servant of God, well done,” and “Come, let us join our friends above, who have

The evangelical Revival. 421

obtained the prize,” will never be forgotten. His “Wrestling Jacob” and “Stand the omnipotent decree” touch the highest limits of English hymnology.

No man can understand the Evangelical Revival, its verve, its attractive power, and its triumphant joy who does not acquaint himself with its hymns. The remarkable thing about the movement is not only the facility and excellence of Charles Wesley, but the number of his associates who wrote hymns and the high value of their work. Not only did John and Charles Wesley write hymns, but so did John Gambold and James Hervey, of the Holy Club; and so did the lay itinerants, John Cennick and Thomas Olivers, and Wesley’s friend and helper, Edward Perronet. So did the Calvinistic Methodists—the Countess of Huntingdon; her nephew, Walter Shirley, and the great trio, John Newton, Augustus M. Toplady, and William Cowper.

To the men named above we owe the sublime hymns, “The God of Abraham praise,” “All hail the power of Jesus’ name,” “There is a fountain filled with blood,” and “Rock of Ages.” What other religious movement ever greeted the world with such a burst of song? What other movement so taught the gospel in song, and so taught the people to sing?

Of the character of this work Wesley wrote at the * time: “Such a work this hath been, in many respects, as neither we nor our fathers have known. Not a few of those whose sins were of the most flagrant kind, drunkards, swearers, thieves, whoremongers, adulterers, have been brought ‘from darkness into light, and from the power of Satan unto God.’ Many of these were rooted in their wickedness, having long gloried

422 History of the Christian Church.

in their shame, perhaps for a course of many years— yea, even to hoary hairs. Many had not so much as a national faith, being Jews, Arians, Deists, or Atheists. Nor has God only made bare his arm in these last days, in behalf of open publicans and sinners; but many ‘of the Pharisees also’ have believed on him, of the ‘righteous that needed no repentance,’ and having received ‘the sentence of death in themselves,’ have then heard the voice that raiseth the dead; have been made partakers of an inward, vital religion, even ‘righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’ The manner wherein God hath wrought this work in many souls is as strange as the work itself. It has generally, if not always, been wrought in one moment. ‘As the lightning shining from heaven,’ so was ‘the coming of the Son of man,’ either to bring peace or a sword; either to wound or heal; either to convince of sin, or to give remission of sins in his blood. And the other circumstances attending it have been equally remote from what human wisdom would have expected; so true is that word, ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.’ ”

John Wesley says in his diary: “In the evening I reached Bristol, and met Mr. Whitefield there. I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he set me an example on Sunday; having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin, if it had not been done in a church.” The first of April he writes: “In the evening (Mr. Whitefield being gone) I began expounding our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount (one pretty remarkable precedent

The Evangelical Revival.    423

of field preaching, though I suppose there were churches at that time also) to a little society which was accustomed to meet once or twice a week in Nicholas Street.”

The spirit and the purpose of the Evangelical Revival, in accord with its hymns, Wesley admirably summed up in his “Earnest Appeal to Men The v/ of Reason and Religion,” where he says: p^^Mhe “This religion we long to see established in Revival, the world; a religion of love, joy, and peace, having its seat in the inmost soul, but ever showing itself by it^ fruits, continually springing forth, not only in all innocence, ‘for love worketh no ill to his neighbor/ but likewise in every kind of beneficence, spreading virtue and happiness all around it. . . . In this we find that love of God and all mankind which we have elsewhere sought in vain. This, we know and feel, and therefore can not but declare, saves every one that partakes of it both from sin and misery, and from every unhappy and unholy temper.”

The earnestness of his appeal appears from a sentence or two from the Preface to his “Sermons:” “I have thought, I am a creature of a day, passing through life, as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God; just hovering over the great gulf, till, a few moments hence, I am no more seen. I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing, the way to heaven.”

From Bristol Wesley returned to London, and preached in the open air at Blackheath, Moorfields, and Kennington Common. In this field preaching Whitefield preceded him, and Charles Wesley followed him. We have to consider, to estimate rightly the

424 History of the Christian Church.

effects of their preaching, the flagrant vice and the prevalent immorality and ungodliness of the time. In

these great congregations were heard

The course of _shri_eks of terror, sobs, and cries, and the Revival.    *    ’    *

cataleptic trances were seen on every side. It seemed remarkable that John Wesley, who was the least impassioned of the three evangelists, should have much more of these physical demonstrations under his preaching than his brethren. He was puzzled by these manifestations, and gave the subject a thorough and patient examination. He noticed that, generally, those who came out of such trances had an experience of joy and peace, and lived afterwards new lives. After much reflection he came to the conclusion that some of the phenomena were the work of the Spirit of God, some of the Prince of Darkness to discredit the work; some were simulated, and some the result of a nervous organization. This last could not cover many of the cases, if we reckon the strong stout men who felt as if struck by a bolt of lightning. Wesley was careful and cautious, and concluded that these manifestations were not to be desired, nor were they any certain signs of the work of the Spirit of God. If Wesley had had the advantage of what a hundred and fifty years has added to our knowledge of the effect of the mind upon the body, he would have decided differently, doubtless. But it is only within the last thirty years that clearer views have prevailed, and the entire subject is not yet cleared from difficulty. As years went on, these physical effects were less noticeable. But in every view of the preaching of the early years of the great Revival they must be taken into account. They were not the great result and effect of all the preaching and

The Evangelical Revival.    425

singing and prayers, but this effect was seen in men and women by thousands translated out of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, and from a life of sin and works of evil to a life of righteousness and works accordant therewith. It was no ordinary preaching and no ordinary experience in the great Revival. The triumphant joy and blessed fellowship of those days have not been surpassed since apostolic times. No wonder that in such love and fervor there was an attractive power, and that in the purifying flames of a great devotion, born of the blessed experience of a conquering love, the sinful dross and corruptions should be purged from many souls. But Wesley knew human nature and the temptations which come to the soul of man too well to leave the work as it was when the congregation went away. Those who were seeking God or had found him were at once taken into the society and placed under pastoral oversight. For these a place of meeting had to be provided. In November, 1739, an old foundry was purchased in London, and fitted up for the use of the society. The chapel, after the repairs had been completed, would seat fifteen hundred people.

Here John Wesley came to have a home; and hither came Susannah Wesley to spend her last years, and with her wise counsels to strengthen her son in his work. In the same month was formed the first Board of Stewards among the Methodists to look after the temporal concerns of the congregation. In August of this year Whitefield sailed for America, where, for the next two years, he preached in those wonderful evangelistic tours from Savannah to Boston.

In 1740, in addition to the love-feasts, Wesley in

426 History oi the Christian Church.

stituted the watch-nights; that is, continuous services from 8.30 to 12 P. M. They were held once each month. These, with preaching as nearly as possible daily at 5 A. M., served at least to keep the people awake.

In July, 1740, the congregation at Fetter Lane resolved that Wesley should not again be invited to preach to them; and a week later all who ’* would follow Wesley, some seventy-five in all, left the society. Ingham, Gambold, Delamotte, of the Oxford days, and Hutton, Stonehouse, and Wesley Hall, friends of the later time, joined with the Moravians. John and Charles Wesley were left alone.

In 1740, Wesley preached his sermon on “Free Grace.” A copy was sent to Whitefield in America. There Whitefield had become a convinced Calvinist. Whitefield wrote a letter criticising the sermon; this, against his will, was published. On Whitefield’s return, in spite of Wesley’s dissuasions, Whitefield separated from him. Wesley had been obliged to send away John Cennick from Kingswood school, where he was in charge, for sowing dissension on the subject of the decrees. Yet while Wesley excluded freely from his society all who were guilty of moral delinquencies, he declared he never excluded one who did not agree with him on the points in dispute between Calvin and Arminius. John Wesley continued personally friendly to Mr. Whitefield, but relations involving co-operation were not resumed until 1754.

The year 1742 proved a memorable one for the cause of the Revival. The year before began lay preaching, and the first Conference of the itinerants was held in 1744. There were present four clergymen,

The Evangelical Revival.    427

besides the Wesleys, and four Methodist preachers. Wesley had appointed Thomas Maxfield to take charge of the Foundry during his absence in Bristol. In that interval he began to preach, _Prea*hing. and it was reported to Wesley. On Wesley’s return his mother saw that he was displeased. All his High Church prejudices were roused. He answered shortly, “Thomas Maxfield has turned preacher, I find.” She reminded him of her own scruples, and that she could not be expected to be favorable to any such innovation. Then she added, “Take care what you do respecting that young man, for he is as assuredly called of God to preach as you are.” She advised him to hear Maxfield for himself. This he did, and then said, “It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth to him good.” Thus itinerant lay preachers came to be one of the great, if not the greatest, factors in the work of the Evangelical Revival. Maxfield married a wealthy lady, and assisted Wesley until 1763, when he left, and formed a society of his own, which lasted his life. He died about 1785-

Equal in importance to lay preaching in its influence upon the permanent results of the Revival was the founding of the class-meeting. This arose in this way: When the chapel was _CIas8._meeting. built at Bristol the whole financial burden fell upon Wesley, and those who supported him obliged him to take the title in his name. This was the case with the other societies. Thus Wesley came to be closely connected with their financial affairs as well as their spiritual interests. When at Bristol, February 15, 1742, they consulted together about some way to pay their debt. A certain Captain Foy proposed that

428 History of the Christian Church.

every member should give a penny a week until the debt was paid.

Some one objected that many of the members were not able to pay a penny. Captain Foy replied: “Then put eleven of the poorest with me, and if they can give anything, well. I will call on them weekly, and if they can give nothing, I will give for them as well as for myself. And each of you call on eleven of your neighbors weekly; receive what they give, and make up what is wanting.” Wesley had in London eleven hundred members scattered through the city. The question of pastoral care was a pressing one. He saw at once how the Bristol model might be made useful. The person having charge of the contributions was directed to inquire into the spiritual welfare of the members of the class, and see that their walk was according to the Gospel and the rules of the society. The person in charge was called a leader; those under his care were called a class, and they met once a week in a class-meeting. Those who were not present the leader was expected to see during the week. Thus was organized the most efficient lay pastoral supervision ever seen in the Christian Church.

A further organization was the select bands. These never had the extent or permanence of the classes. There were four; the unmarried men and women composing two, and the married men and women the two others. Their members were to be those seeking or enjoying a deeper religious experience. They were first formed at the Foundry.

In May, 1742, Wesley visited Newcastle. The people in the street were drunken and profane. Wesley got their attention, won converts, and formed here a

The Evangelical Revival. 429

society that delighted his heart. The foundation of their chapel was laid December, 1742. The society at Bristol was the first, and the school at Kingswood made very important the work in what was then the second city of the kingdom; that of London was the largest, and in spiritual growth led the others; that at Newcastle, however, had a warmth and heartiness about it that, with the beauty of the city for situation, made Wesley long, there, if he might choose anywhere, to end his days.

From Newcastle Wesley went to Epworth on Saturday, June 5, 1742. He stopped at an inn. An old servant of his father’s found him, and she assured him that she knew God’s pardon and peace. On Sunday he went to the church, and offered to assist the curate, but was refused. As the people were leaving the church, John Taylor stood in the churchyard and gave notice, “Mr. Wesley, not being permitted to preach in the church, designs to preach here at six o’clock.”

At that hour there assembled such a congregation as Epworth never saw before. Wesley stood upon his father’s tombstone, and preached to the great crowd from “The kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink; but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” The interest was so great that Wesley gave up the plans he had formed, and for a full week, at eight in the evening of each day, he took his stand on his father’s tomb, and preached to crowds of attentive hearers the gospel in the power of the Spirit. Now began the harvest of forty years’ sowing, and Epworth, for the remainder of his long life, ever gladly greeted her most distinguished son. This is the most dramatic

430 History of the Christian Church.

incident in the life of John Wesley. As Luther’s defense before the Diet of Worms is the great scenic representation of the keynote of his career, his defiance of papal Rome, so Wesley’s preaching at Ep-worth is the striking representation of the keynote to his career—his bringing the gospel to the great unchurched masses of the English people, under the shadow of the church, but outside of it, in utter selfsacrifice, but connected with the dearest tradition of English family life. Wesley’s appeal from his father’s tomb struck a deep and responsive chord in the heart of the English people and of the Christian world. A representation of this scene, with the motto underneath, “The world is my parish,” fitly commemorates John Wesley in Westminster Abbey.

This news from Epworth must have cheered the last days of Susannah Wesley. July 23, 1742, she finished her course, and a life of remarkable usefulness. Her last request when dying was, “Children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm of praise to God.”

Wesley’s creed was that of the Church of England. He objected to the Calvinistic Articles, and by omitting them reduced the thirty-nine to twenty-piatform ^^our ^^or Methodists in America. A twenty-fifth was added afterwards by Bishop Asbury, with the concurrence of the Governing Conference. The platform of the Wesleyan Movement was no distinctive creed. The General Rules for the United Societies under his care were adopted in 1743, and are a part of the Constitution of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

These were the standards by which to try the life of the people called Methodists. Wesley, until his

The Evangelical Revival.    431

latest day was proud that there was no condition for joining in his societies but a desire to be saved from sin. In 1788 he wrote: “There is no other religious society under heaven which requires nothing of men in order to their admission to it, but a desire to save their souls. Look all around you, you can not be admitted into the Church, or society of the Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Quakers, or any others, unless you hold the same opinions with them, and adhere to the same mode of worship. The Methodists alone do not insist on your holding this or that opinion; but they think and let think. Neither do they impose any particular mode of worship; but you may continue to worship in your former manner, be it what it may. Now, I do not know any other religious society, either ancient or modern, wherein such liberty of conscience is now allowed, or has been allowed, since the age of the apostles. Here is our glorying, and a glorying peculiar to us. What society shares it with us ?”

He also declared he had been faithful to his allegiance to the Church of England, and had never varied from her discipline even, except where necessity was laid upon him in the answer of a good conscience to his Lord. So of the City Road Conference of 1788 he writes: “The sum of a long conversation was: (1) That, in a course of fifty years, we had neither prematurely nor willingly varied from it in one article either of doctrine or discipline. (2) That we were not yet conscious of varying from it in any point of doctrine. (3) That we have, in a course of years, out of necessity, not of choice, slowly and warily varied in some points of discipline, by preaching in the fields, by extemporary prayer, by employing lay preachers,

432 History of the Christian Church.

by forming and regulating societies, and by holding yearly Conferences. But we did none of these things till we were convinced we could 110 longer omit them but at the peril of our souls.”

This was the platform for the laity, and Wesley saw that its provisions were enforced by strict discipline. After preaching, he met the leaders and the society. He inquired who walked disorderly, and would not be reproved, and at once struck their names from the list of the members of the society. If there were doubt as to a question of fact, the parties came face to face before him. Often from one-quarter to one-third of the membership were cut off at one visit. This, when we consider the materials gathered and the former life of the converts, is not surprising. But the more efficient the discipline, the more the numbers increased. Men and women in earnest to live godly lives believed in, and found help in, a society faithful to standards so plain, and yet so high.

For the preachers Wesley devised Twelve Rules that, like the General Rules, have found place in every Methodist Discipline for the past one hundred and fifty years.

The organization of the societies was as follows: Wesley was at the head, though, as long as Charles Wesley lived, his name was signed with his brother’s to the Rules of the society. The lay preachers were called “helpers,” and were stationed by Wesley generally in the Annual Conference. A number of societies were grouped together in a circuit. The helper first named in the Minutes was called the assistant; he had charge of the circuit, both of the preachers and the members. He arranged the work of the preachers and

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excluded the members subject only to appeal to Mr. Wesley. In each society there was a steward for the poor, and one for the current expenses. In the larger societies there was more than one. These, with the leaders, formed the Leaders’ and Stewards’ Meeting. The meeting of the helpers, the leaders, and stewards of the entire circuit formed the Quarterly Conference, the supreme body for the government of local Methodism.

The success and growth of the Methodist movement depended upon the character, the labors, and sacrifices of the lay itinerants. These were men without school training whom Wesley, ..^Tho

°    ; Itinerants.

while he utilized their natural gifts, taught to train their minds. The privations of these useful men it would take long to recount. Their reward was in the fruit of their labors and the love of their people. Some of these were remarkable men. Such were John Nelson and Thomas Walsh.

John Nelson was born at the close of the preceding century. He was moral in his life and serious in his disposition. A stonemason by trade, he was

,    , ....... «    Jo^hn Nelson.

often urged to join in drinking bouts with his companions. He quietly but firmly refused; but he could find relief from his tormentors only when he had knocked some of them down. Nelson was troubled about his soul, and could find no relief, though he attended congregations of Dissenters and Quakers and the preaching of Whitefield. At last hearing John Wesley, the word took hold of him as soon as the sermon began. John Nelson at once began to lead a new life. Some of the family with whom he boarded came to hear Wesley and found peace. Nelson was work-

28

434 History of the Christian Church.

ing on the new Exchequer Building, and the contractor ordered him to work on Sunday, as the king’s business required haste. Nelson replied he would work for no man in England on Sunday except to put out fire or like urgent necessity. The contractor threatened to discharge him. Nelson replied he would rather starve than offend God. The contractor said: “What hast thou done that thou makest such an ado about religion? I always took thee for an honest man, and could trust thee with five hundred pounds.” Nelson returned, “So you might, and not have lost one penny by me.” “But,” replied the contractor, “I have a worse opinion of thee than ever.” Nelson answered, “Master, I have the odds of you there; for I have a much worse opinion of myself than you can have.” He was not dismissed, nor was any work done on Sunday.

Nelson read the Scriptures, and soon had a score of texts to confute the adversaries and to comfort and console. He fasted once a week, and gave the food to the poor. He went to his home in Birstall, Yorkshire, and won two brothers, an aunt, and two cousins. He read, exhorted, and prayed in his own house, and his neighbors came to hear. So many came that he was compelled to stand in the door and speak to them. Six or seven were converted weekly, and the alehouses were deserted. Wesley came to Bristol, and found waiting for him a society and preacher. Nelson worked days at his trade, and preached nights. He now began to itinerate. John Nelson was one of Nature’s noblemen in mind and body. He generally won the leaders of the mob to be his devoted friends. At Nottingham a sergeant of the army came to him in tears, and said: “In the presence of God and all this

The Evangelical Revival.    435

people I beg your pardon, for I came 011 purpose to mob you; but when I could get no one to assist me, I stood to hear you, and am convinced of the deplorable state of my soul. I believe you are a servant of the living God.” Nelson says, “He then kissed me, and went away weeping.”

At Epworth both the clergyman and the clerk were drunkards. The clerk ran into the congregation where Nelson was preaching to seize him and take him to the ale-house before the curate; but the crowd rose up and threw out the intruder. Nelson founded Methodism at Leeds, and at Bristol the ale-house keepers lamented their loss of custom. So at the instigation of the Bristol vicar he was pressed into the army as a vagrant. The vicar and his associates refused to hear Nelson’s defense, who said to them, “I am as able to get my living by my hands as any man of my trade in England is, and you know it.” He was marched to Bradford, and plunged in a dungeon into which ran blood and filth from a slaughter-house above it; so that Nelson says, “It smelt like a pigsty; but my soul was so filled with the love of God it was like paradise to me.” There was neither chair nor stool, and no bed but rotting straw. The people were touched, and brought him food, which he shared with those in like condition. The next morning came the wife of John Nelson. She had two children, and was soon to be confined, but she called to her husband through the hole in the door, and said: “Fear not; the cause is God’s for which you are here, and he will plead it himself. Therefore be not concerned about me and the children, for he that feeds the young ravens will be mindful of us. He will give you strength for your

436 History of the Christian Church.

day; and after we have suffered a while he will perfect what is lacking in our souls, and bring us where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.”

Nelson was true to his Lord, though made a gazing-stock of men. When at York they swarmed around him to deride him, he says, “The Lord made my brow like brass, so that I could look down upon them as grasshoppers, and pass through the city as if there had been none in it but God and me.”

A stripling ensign, whom Nelson had rebuked for profanity, delighted in tormenting him. He put him in prison and threatened to whip him. Nelson says: “It caused a sore temptation to arise in me to think that a wicked, ignorant man should thus torment me, and I able to tie his head and heels together. I found an old man’s bone in me; but the Lord lifted up a standard when anger was coming in like a flood, or else I should have wrung his neck to the ground and set my foot upon him.” After three months of persecution he was released through the influence of Lady Huntingdon.

Nelson, though free from military tormentors, was not free from the brutality of his fellow-countrymen. He was a tireless itinerant evangelist. In one of his tours he came to Nottingham. The mob rushed on him as he was preaching. One came up behind him and filled his mouth with dirt. Nelson says, “I never felt myself so near being choked in my life; but when I had got the dirt out I spoke on.” The ringleader of the mob now turned and said, “Let him alone, for he is right, and we are wrong; and if any one of you

The Evangelical Revival.    437

touch him I will knock him down.” He guarded Nelson to his lodgings, and asked his prayers.

A harder fate overtook the faithful itinerant on Hepworth Moor. Standing on a table, he was preaching in the open air. A shower of stones fell around him, but he was unharmed. As he turned to descend he was struck by a brick on the back of the head, and fell bleeding. Being lifted up he staggered on, the crowd threatening to kill him. The blood ran down his back to his shoes; finally he found a surgeon, who dressed his wound. John Nelson did not stop at trifles when on his Master’s business. The same day he went to Acomb to preach. A coach of young ruffians, who passed as gentlemen, and among whom was the brother of the clergyman of the parish, drew up to the congregation. Two of the strongest of them came up to the preacher. One of them stripped off his coat, and swore he would kill him. He started for Nelson, who stepped aside, when the bully fell on his head. This occurred the second time, but at the third attempt the preacher was thrown down. Then leaping upon him, his wound was reopened, and he was beaten until he was senseless. Afterward about twenty of them came to him and got him into the street. Then one of them knocked him down. This was repeated until he had been knocked down eight times. Then, as he was unable to rise, they dragged him by the hair over the stones for twenty yards, kicking him as they went. Finally six of them stood upon him to “tread the Holy Ghost out of him.” Then they ordered him to call his horse and leave the place. Nelson replied: “I will not; for you intend to kill me in private, that you may

438 History of the Christian Church.

escape justice; but if you do murder me it shall be in public, and it may be the gallows will bring you to repentance, and your souls may be saved from the wrath to come.” They then proposed to throw him into a well; but a woman defended him, and prevented them. Some ladies who knew them, now driving by, they slunk away.

Only a frame of iron could resist such assaults; but such a one had God given to John Nelson. The next day he rode forty miles to hear John Wesley preach, and was greatly comforted. Nelson was in many another mob, and with Wesley himself; but he lived to be held in honor wherever he wrought, not only in Yorkshire, but in Lancashire, Cornwall, and Lincoln. In 1774 the end came; the heroic soul of John Nelson entered into rest. A funeral procession half a mile long bore the remains from Leeds to his home in Birstall, where lies all that is mortal of the apostle of the Evangelical Revival in Yorkshire.

Thomas Walsh was a son of Erin. Erse was his native tongue, in which he often preached. At eight Thomas    l^earned English, and afterward studied

waish, Latin. His family were Roman Catholics;

*730-1758. ^ hi_s older brother, a schoolteacher, became a member of the Church of England. Until his eighteenth year he was a devout Roman Catholic, fasting, praying, and rigorously examining his life. Then, after a conversation with his brother and friends of like mind, and prayer continued until the morning, he was convinced there is but one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, and resolved never again to pray to saint or angel. He united with the Church of England, but did not find

The Evangelical Revival.    439

God’s peace until he heard a Methodist itinerant, Robert Swindelle, preach on the parade-ground at Limerick from “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden.” The rest promised came to him, and Thomas Walsh became a new man. Few lives more self-sacrificing or more saintly are on the records of any Church in Christendom. He was everywhere a flaming evangel. Wesley said, “I do not remember ever to have known a preacher who, in so few years as he remained upon the earth, was an instrument of converting so many sinners.”

Walsh began his ministry in 1750. Often he was mobbed. A countryman of the Roman Catholic faith started to attack him, saying, although he should be shot for it, he would receive satisfaction, and, with an oath, declaring, “Thou shalt never deceive another, for I am resolved to be the death of thee just now.” Walsh reproved him in Irish. “Why didst thou not speak so to me in the beginning?” said the man. Walsh said: “The lion became as a lamb while I let him know in Irish what Christ had done for sinners. He departed with a broken heart.” Wesley had Walsh preach at three different times in London, living at one time two years in Wesley’s house. He was indefatigable in ministering to his countrymen, in pastoral visitations, and in ministering to the sick, his preaching then bringing great crowds and rich fruits as in his native land. Here he applied himself to Greek and Hebrew, so that he became a living concordance to the Scriptures in their original tongues, especially the Hebrew, which he preferred, and through which he would converse with the Jews. Walsh was not only assiduous in his labors, but ascetic in his habits, much

440 History of the Christian Church.

given to fasting and taking little sleep. Wesley thought his lack of restraint in the use of his voice cut short his days. After a blessed ministry of nine years he finished his course, leaving an impressive lesson to all of Wesley’s preachers of the necessity of care and the right use of the body as well as the soul, but also a name fragrant with piety and good works.

Wesley’s work was extended and carried on, not only by his itinerants, but by clergymen of the Church of England who sympathized with him. Eminent among these was William Grimshaw, curate of Haworth, in Yorkshire, in the following century the home of the father of Charlotte Bronte and his family. Grimshaw was a graduate of the University of Cambridge, but after admission to clerical orders he became corrupt in morals and unbelieving. Through a great religious crisis he found the peace promised in the gospel. This was before he knew any Methodist; but when he knew them he could not but be in sympathy with them. He came to Haworth in 1742, and three years later enrolled himself as one of Wesley’s assistants. He had charge of two circuits, on each of which he itinerated for two weeks every month, preaching often thirty times in the week. He also had his experience with mobs. Once he was with Wesley while the latter was preaching at Roughlee. The mob came upon them. Wesley received a severe blow in the face, as they were borne by the mob to Barrowford. There the magistrate sought to make them promise that they would not come there again. Wesley said he would rather cut off his right hand than to make such a promise. As they left the house, Grimshaw was tossed to and fro, covered with mud and dirt, and knocked

The Evangelical Revilal.    441

down. They requested the leader of the mob to conduct them back to Roughlee, which he did. Wesley was knocked down on the way, and his companions were misused.

Grimshaw was a natural orator. He was recklessly liberal, denying himself of all but the sheerest necessities of life that he might give to the poor.

He was as humble as he was prayerful. _G^shaw. For sixteen years, until his death, he was ceaseless in his efforts to win men from their sins to know God. Most marked of all was his love for all Christians. He used to say, “I love Christians, true Christians of all parties; I do love them, I will love them, and none shall make me do otherwise.”

In 1758, Wesley met John Berridge, the Vicar of Everton. Berridge became a revival preacher of remarkable power, and second only to Grimshaw as an itinerant. In a great revival Berridge. which broke out at Everton there were as unusual physical demonstrations as anything under Wesley’s preaching. In one year there were four thousand converted in the revival at Everton. In his itinerant tours, which he kept up for more than twenty years, Berridge often preached to ten thousand people. He was rich, and gave liberally to support the work. As he was a decided Calvinist, he allied himself with Lady Huntingdon’s connection. With Berridge were associated William Romaine, lecturer at St. George’s, Hanover Square, a most earnest and eloquent preacher, Martin Madan, chaplain to the Lock Hospital, and Henry Venn, curate of Clapham. These were all successful evangelists while clergymen in the Church of England. They also were Calvinists in their views.

442 History of the Christian Church.

Vincent Perronet, Vicar of Shoreham, Wesley’s lifelong friend, was equally evangelistic, though, like Grimshaw, a decided Arminian.

In these years Wesley faced mobs with a serenity and a courage which won the hearts of those who saw wesiey and ^or heard of him. Men knew that in John the Mobs. Wesley piety was no sign of weakness. «739-'7s6. jyj₀k_{s reS}p_ect_ed his persistence and his pluck. They recognized his sincerity, and admired his heroism. Of the numberless encounters of those years we have space to mention but two.

October 20, 1743, Wesley had preached at Wednes-bury. A crowd had gathered and had gone away.

Wesley thought this was a good time to wedJesbury. ^^eave before they should recruit their forces and return. But his friends pressed him so that, for fear of offending them, he concluded to remain. Before five in the afternoon the mob returned and surrounded the house. They cried, “Bring out the minister.” Wesley sent one out to speak to the captain of the mob and invite him in. He came in, and Wesley pacified him; the same course was taken with two other leaders. Then Wesley called for a chair, and went out to the people. Standing on the chair, he called, “What do any of you want with me?” Some said, “We want you to go with us to the justice.” “That I will, with all my heart,” said Wesley. They set out, some two or three hundred following. Night came on and it rained. They went two miles to Justice Lane’s. He was in bed, and refused to get up, but advised the mob to go home. They then decided to go to Justice Persehouse, at Walsall. He also sent word that he was in bed, and this was about

The Evangelical Revival.    443

seven in the evening. Then they thought they would return to Wednesbury. Soon after they started, the Walsall mob was upon them. He was carried from one end of the town to the other, amid cries of “Down with him!” “Kill him!” “Knock his brains out!” Wesley strove to speak to the mad sea of raging peo-/ pie. Finally his voice failed him; when again it returned he broke out in prayer. Now a leader of the mob turned and said, “Sir, I will spend my life for you; follow me, and not one soul here shall touch a hair of your head.” Others said, “Shame! let him go.” The mob fell back, and three or four men carried him through them all. On the bridge the mob rallied; but they went by the mill-dam and the meadows, and reached Wednesbury by ten o’clock. In all this tumult Wesley says he was as calm as if sitting in his study. Not once did he slip or trip; if he had fallen, the mob would have been on top of him. One rushed up and raised his arm to strike, but let it fall, and only stroked Wesley’s head, saying, “What soft hair he has!” A stout man struck at him several times with a large oak stick; if he had hit him the blow would have been fatal. How it was turned aside none knew. Wesley lost one flap of his waistcoat and the other half torn off, but was otherwise unharmed. Charles Wesley said his brother looked like a good soldier of Christ Jesus, his clothes being nearly torn off from him. In after years Wesley had a large society in Wednesbury.

July 4, 1745, Wesley went to Falmouth. The story was circulated that Wesley had been a long time in France and Spain, and was sent there by the Pretender, and that Wesley’s societies were in league with him. At this time, also, there were in Falmouth the

444 History of the Christian Church.

crews of several privateers. Wesley, about three in the afternoon, went to call on a lady who was sick.

A wild mob soon surrounded the house.

Fahnouth* They cried, “Bring out the Canorum !”•— a word for Methodists. There being no answer, they forced the outside door, and soon filled the hallway. There was but a wainscot partition between them and Wesley. He thought it would not stand long, and took down a large mirror which hung against it. There was no one with him but a maid. She said, “O sir, what must we do?” Wesley replied, “We must pray.” She said, “But, sir, is it not better for you to hide yourself, to get into the closet?” “No,” replied Wesley; “it is better for me to stand just where I am.” Those outside now set their shoulders to the inside door, crying, “Avast, lads, avast!” The door immediately giving way, Wesley stepped into the midst of them, saying: “Here I am, which of you has anything to say to me? To which of you have I done any wrong? To you? Or you? Or you?” So talking, he came bareheaded into the middle of the street. Then he cried, “Neighbors, countrymen! do you desire to hear me speak?” Some cried, “Yes, yes; he shall speak.” Standing on the ground, not many could hear him; but he spoke without stopping until one or two of their captains swore no man should touch him. Then a clergyman came up, and said, “Are you not ashamed to use a stranger thus ?” An alderman seconded him, two or three gentlemen joined him, and took him to a house where he took boat for his next appointment. Wesley himself thought the danger at Falmouth much greater than at Wednesbury, as no one was with him but the maid. Wesley said that

The Evangelical Revival. 445

English law should protect him and his people, as Roman law did St. Paul. Some heavy fines on magistrates and rioters convinced them that mobbing Methodists, pulling down their houses, and breaking their furniture, was not quite such excellent sport as they supposed, when they thought of them as quite defenseless. After 1756 there were no more mobs. The Revival had won its hearing with the English people. Cornwall, where at first the mobs were quite frequent, became the most Methodistic of the English counties.

While the Evangelical Revival was thus winning its way to the people, its power was felt in the highest aristocratic circles in London. While it gathered many able and devoted men in Huntingdon, its ministry, it also won one woman of high character, remarkable talents, and extraordinary generosity, as well as sincere piety. Selina Shirley was the daughter of the Earl of Ferrers, and married the Earl of Huntingdon. His sisters, Betty and Margaret Hastings, knew the Oxford Methodists. As already related, Margaret became the wife of Benjamin Ingham. She early introduced her brother’s wife to her Methodist friends. Lady Huntingdon met with the early Moravian societies, but when Wesley parted from them, she ceased her fellowship with them. She seems from the first to have been more influenced by Whitefield than by Wesley, though the latter often preached by invitation at her house in Donnington Park, and she thoroughly approved of Wesley’s lay preachers. She was Calvinistic in her opinions, and so the head of the party led by Whitefield, Berridge, Romaine, Venn, and later Toplady and the Hills. Lady Huntingdon’s husband died in 1746.

446 History oi the Christian Church.

She had several children, all of whom died, four sons in youth or young manhood.

Whitefield returned from his third visit to America in 1748. His affairs had suffered in his absence, and he was in debt. At once Lady Huntingdon came to his relief, and made him one of her chaplains. At her house he preached to the great and noble of the land. Chesterfield heard and complimented the preacher; better still, his wife and her sister were converted. Bolingbroke was an interested listener, and his brother became an earnest Christian. Even David Hume said he would go twenty miles to hear Whitefield. Lady Huntingdon did all she could, and successfully, to bring Wesley and Whitefield to co-operate, and also took a great interest in the work of the Revival in Wales. This work had broken out almost simultaneously in three counties in Wales before Wesley’s return from Georgia. This shows, like similar occurrences in America, how widespread was this movement independent of its chief leaders. Howell Harris, an eloquent, wealthy, and liberal Welshman living in Trevecca, was the leading man in this movement. Lady Huntingdon saw the necessity of training the ministers called for by this Revival. She founded a college at Trevecca in 1763, of which Fletcher was president, and Benson, the commentator, its first tutor. Lady Huntingdon had rare gifts of administration. Her chapels and Wesley’s alone survived the pressure brought upon them. Welsh Cal-vinistic Methodism almost died out at the close of the century for lack of organization. Lady Huntingdon gave away half a million of dollars. She retrenched every unnecessary expense to do this. When she died

The Evangelical Revival. 447

she left twenty thousand dollars in charities, and all the rest of her fortune to her sixty-four chapels. The outbreak of the Calvinistic controversy in 1770 was a grief to her. She never met Wesley after that time. In the same year Whitefield died, and made her the heir of all his property, including his slaves connected with his Orphan House at Savannah. Like Wesley, she never intended that either herself or her people should leave the Church of England; but in 1779 she found, in order to retain control of her property, she must register her chapels as Dissenting places of worship. Such Episcopal shortsightedness could hardly have occurred one hundred years later. Three months after Wesley, Lady Huntingdon died, having influenced English Christianity more than any other woman of the eighteenth century, unless it was Susannah Wesley.

Charles Wesley married Sarah Gwynne in 1749. The marriage proved a very happy one; two of their sons were eminent musicians, and the son of one of them became a royal chaplain to Carriage. Queen Victoria. John Wesley believed that the time for his long-deferred happiness had come. He was now forty-three. He believed that the Lord had been preparing a helpmeet for him. Mrs. Grace Murray was a widow of rare gifts, and had charge of the preachers' house at Newcastle. She was eleven years younger than Wesley. When Wesley spoke to her, she declared her happiness would be too great if his hope should be realized. Soon after this, one of the preachers, John Bennett, was taken very ill. Grace Murray nursed him back to life, and in reward for his gratitude gave some kind of promise of marriage. Wesley heard of it, and told Mrs. Murray of the effect

448 History of the Christian Church.

it must have on their relations. She declared that he must save her from it. Matters seem then to have been arranged between her and Wesley, though Bennett was urging his suit, and Mrs. Murray once sent Wesley’s letters to her to Bennett. Finally Mrs. Murray accompanied Wesley on a three months’ trip to Ireland, and on their return she signed, at Dublin, a contract of marriage with Wesley. For two months longer she visited with him societies in England and Wales, and signed a second contract of marriage. Meanwhile Bennett was not idle. Mrs. Murray begged Wesley to marry her and end it all. This he should have done. Overcaution is not the most desirable quality in arranging for marriage. But Wesley was ever cautious; he did not wish to offend his friends or the societies, and so he desired to prepare the way for the reception of the news. Wesley told a friend; that friend told Charles Wesley. He and Whitefield hastened to Newcastle. Charles Wesley had married a wealthy lady, and he believed Grace Murray not to be socially the woman that his brother should marry. In the absence of John Wesley, they saw that Grace Murray became the wife of John Bennett. Her husband lived eight years. She had several sons, who lived to do her honor. John Bennett left the societies of Wesley and started a sect of his own. After his death his widow returned to the fellowship of the Methodists. She lived to be eighty-nine, and proved by life and deeds she would have been worthy of Wesley’s name and work. Wesley saw her but once afterward, and that but a few years before his death. He kept himself well in hand, but the scar was there. Few letters written by great men are more pathetic than the

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449

letter John Wesley wrote to his friend when this cup he had raised to his lips was dashed to the ground. And sadder than the loss it records is the humiliation from which it would have saved him.

Two years later Wesley fell, and was disabled for a couple of weeks, having injured his leg. He was cared for at the house of Mrs. Mary Vazeille, a widow with a handsome fortune and three children. Wesley insisted that her fortune should be settled on her children, so that he should not profit by it to the extent of a penny. Then he did not wait as he did at Newcastle ; he married her at once, to the consternation of his brother Charles. Mary Wesley was jealous, ill-tempered, and false to every interest of, or care for, her husband. There seems little doubt that she was insane. Samuel Bradburn told his son he came upon her when she was dragging her venerable spouse around the room by the hair of the head. His letter to her, written some years after their marriage, is a calm statement of an unhappy home life. When in

1771, after repeated separations, she announced this was final, he wrote in his Journal: “I have not sent her away; I have not left her; I will not recall her.” Ten years later she died, and her husband was not notified of her funeral.

But, like Lincoln, this affliction turned to Wesley strength and blessing. Charles Wesley had a happy home, but ceased to itinerate in 1756, and aged much younger than his brother. In all the years of Wesley’s unpopularity and malignant opposition, there was never a word by his most bitter enemy against his character. He made his home with his people, and no man in the history of the Church ever lived to receive a larger 29

450 History of the Christian Church.

measure of love and veneration than did this homeless man.

In 1757, John William Fletcher, a Swiss, just ordained in the Church of England, came to Wesley’s help. He is the saint of the Evangelical ^ Caivintstic Revival, and its ablest controversialist. He Controversy, was born at Nyon in 1729. He joined in ^J°i729^78st^r* Wesley’s work in London; he was offered the living of Dunham, with a salary of $2,000 a year; but he decided that it was too much money for too little work. He chose the parish of Madeley, a mining and manufacturing center, with an unusually degraded population. At first he met the bitter opposition usual in that time to those who sought earnestly the reformation of their neighbors. But by apostolic labors, a saintly life, and extraordinary preaching he wrought a change in Madeley comparable to that which Baxter records at Kidderminster. He established preaching appointments at most of the places within ten miles of Madeley. Southey said of him, “No age or country has ever produced a man of-⁷ more fervent piety or more perfect charity; no Church has ever possessed a more apostolic minister.” Henry Venn, a Calvinist in his views, said, “I have known all the great men for these fifty years, but I have known none like him.” At the Conference in 1770, Wesley proposed a minute on justification and good works to guard against Antinomian tendencies which he found in the societies. The wording was very concise, and could have been better phrased. On the publication " of the Minutes, the Methodists of the Calvinistic opinions took the alarm, especially Rev. Walter Shirley and his sister, the Countess of Huntingdon. Benson,

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45i

at Trevecca, defended the minute. This caused the -resignation of both Fletcher and Benson. Lady Huntingdon and her brother then issued a circular calling for all interested in their view of truth to meet at the seat of the Conference, and force a retraction of the minute. This, of course, gave just offense. On August 6, 1771, Walter Shirley appeared by invitation, and retracted what was offensive in the circular, and Wesley and fifty-three preachers signed a declaration drawn up by Shirley as to the intent of the minute, and good feeling seemed restored. But before the Conference sat, Wesley had committed the case to Fletcher. He had written “Letters” to Shirley and his first “Check to Antinomianism.” These were already printed. Fletcher wrote to ask that they be not circulated ; but as Wesley had left orders before the Conference, they were issued at once, and thus began the controversy. Fletcher was the Arminian defender, and, in true Christian spirit, he defended the truth as he saw it. On the other side were first Shirley, who wrote in love, not in anger, Augustus Toplady, Sir Richard and Rowland Hill. It would not be true to say that they abated any of the ancient bitterness and even abuse of theological polemics. Few read now the books that seemed so important then. Whatever be our individual opinion, yet it is true that Fletcher wrote for the occasion; he laid the foundation of that form of theological statement which has made the largest number of converts from non-Christian classes in the nineteenth century. Few who do not agree with him to-day would agree with the position taken by Toplady and the brothers Hill. The controversy ended in 1777. Soon, on account of his health, Fletcher went to

452 History of the Christian Church.

Switzerland, where he remained for nearly four years, returning in 1781. In that year he married Miss Mary Bosanquet, a lady of intelligence, ability, and social station, but a teacher and a preacher among the Methodists, for whom she had suffered the loss of all things. It proved an ideal marriage; but Fletcher’s saintly spirit was in a fragile vessel, and in 1785 he went to his Lord.

In 1778, Wesley met Thomas Coke, a graduate of Oxford, ordained in the Church of England, but expelled from his curacy by his parishioners for his Methodism, and a man of considerable wealth. He became a trusted helper of Wesley, and through him was founded the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Wesleyan Missionary Society. In 1814 this earnest and devoted worker found a grave in the Indian Ocean as he sought India on a missionary journey.

In 1771 was dedicated City Road Chapel, the cathedral of Methodism in the Old World. This marked the decisive establishment of the work of Wesley on a basis equal to independence; this he did not desire, and determined should not come in his life. But his statements in his Journal show that he felt it must come.

In the settlement of 1689, the penal laws against the Roman Catholics in Ireland were made atrociously severe. Two-thirds of the real estate was in^ireiand.    hands of the Protestant minority.

No papist could teach a school or any child but his own, nor could he send his children abroad. Mixed marriages were not allowed to persons of property, and their children might be forced to be brought up Protestants, The eldest son of a landed proprietor,

The Evangelical Revival.

if a Protestant, could make his Roman Catholic father a tenant for life. The intent of the legislation was to make the children Protestants, but it failed. It was the same kind of legislation which the Roman Catholics used in Poland, but it stopped short of the persecutions used by Ferdinand II in Austria. If a Roman Catholic inherited an estate, he must become a Protestant within six months, or the next Protestant heir could claim the inheritance. Property was to go into Protestant hands. If a Roman Catholic had a good ^ horse, a Protestant could claim it on tendering twenty-five dollars. The laws though evaded, were successful ✓ in a large degree; after a century of these infamous laws, but one-tenth of the land was in the hands of Roman Catholics. Foreign priests were banished, and declared traitors if they returned. All priests were required to register, and remain in their own parish. No Roman Catholic was allowed to keep arms. ” Thus was sowed the harvest which England reaped in the nineteenth century.

John Wesley came to Ireland when the penal legislation had been in force about fifty years. He at once declared its injustice and its failure. Wesley loved the Irish, and between his first and last visits, 1747-1789, he crossed the channel forty-two times to visit them. Some of his most successful ministers were from among them, including Philip Embury and Robert Straw- * bridge, the founders of the Methodist Church in America.

Wesley’s attitude toward the Church of England is shown in these extracts from his Journal:

“I met the classes at Deptford, and was vehemently importuned to order the Sunday service in our room,

454 History of the Christiaa Church.

at the same time with that of the Church. It was easy to see that this would be a formal separation from Wesley the Church. We fixed both our morning on separation and evening service all over England at churehof ^suc^ times ^{as not} to interfere with the England, Church, with this very design—that those of 1786, Oct. 24. Church if they chose it, might attend both the one and the other. But to fix it at the same hour is obliging them to separate either from the Church or us; and this I judge to be not only inexpedient, but totally unlawful for me to do.”

“January 2, 1787, I went over to Deptford; but it seemed, I was got into a den of lions. Most of the leading men of the society were mad for separating from the Church. I endeavored to reason with them, but in vain; they had neither sense nor good manners left. At length, after meeting the whole society, I told them, ‘If you are resolved, you may have your service in ' Church hours; but, remember, from this time you will see my face no more.’ This struck deep; and from that hour, I have heard no more of separating from the Church.”

“July 6, 1788, I came to Epworth before the Church service began; and was glad to observe the seriousness with which Mr. Gibson read prayers, and preached a plain, useful sermon; but was sorry to see scarce twenty communicants, half of whom came on my account. I was informed likewise that scarce fifty persons used to attend the Sunday service. What can be done to remedy this dire evil ? I fain would prevent the members from leaving the Church; but can not do it. As Mr. G. is not a pious man, but rather an enemy to piety, who frequently preaches against the truth

The Evangelical Revival.    455

and those who hold and love it, I can not with all my influence persuade them either to hear him, or to attend the sacrament administered by him. If I can not carry this point even while I live, who can do it when I die? And the case of Epworth is the case of every Church, where the minister neither loves nor preaches the gospel. The Methodists will not attend his ministrations. What then is to be done ?”

This was the fact, and the solution did not come in Wesley’s time. If the authorities in the Church of England had been as anxious to prevent a separation as was Wesley, it would not have come. Perhaps it was better that in blindness they wrought.

August 4, 1788, Mr. Wesley, in London, further considered the subject. “One of the most important points considered at this Conference was that of leaving the Church. The sum of a long conversation was: 1. That in a course of fifty years we had neither premeditatedly nor willingly varied from it in one article either of doctrine or discipline. 2. That we were not yet conscious of varying from it in any point of doctrine. 3. That we have in a course of years, out of necessity, not choice, slowly and warily varied in some points of discipline, by preaching in the fields, by extemporary prayer, by employing lay preachers, by forming and regulating societies, and by holding yearly Conferences. But we did none of these things till we were convinced we could no longer omit them but at the peril of our souls.”

No better defense for Wesley’s course could be made. It was sufficient then, and has been since.

In 1784, Wesley, mindful of the change that must come, by a deed of Declaration vested all his property

456 History of the Christian Church.

in chapels, preachers’ houses, schools, etc., in a hundred members of the Annual Conference, known in England as the Legal Hundred. This formed a constitution of a working society after his death.

Wesley, from reading in 1745 the works of Lord Chancellor King on the “Primitive Church,” became convinced that presbyters and bishops are s ^America"*^{1 same} order; later, that apostolic succession is a claim that never can be proved, and is not true, and that he was as much a Scriptural 1/ Episcopos as any man in England. Holding these views, he, on September 2, 1784, ordained Thomas Coke as a bishop or superintendent for America, and Thomas Vasey and Richard Whatcoat as presbyters with him, to go to America and ordain Francis Asbury . as bishop and superintendent.

The justification of this act is, first, in the necessity of the case: some one must minister the Christian sacraments to those thousands of Christ’s unshepherded ^ sheep in the wilderness; and, secondly, to the refusal of the Bishop of London to ordain any one for that work. This seems to be all that is required to those who believe that Christ is as really in his Church now as in the apostolic age, and that his guidance is now as real as then.

In 1788, Charles Wesley died at the age of eighty-one. For eight years he had been very feeble. After ceasing to travel in 1756, he often became oid*Age? ^very melancholy, and his brother’s ordinations were a great offense him, as he was very rigid in his adherence to the Church of England. Yet it was Charles Wesley, not his brother, who began holding services in London and Bristol in Meth-

The Evangelical Revival. 457

odist chapels in the hours of service of the Church of England, and in those chapels administering the Lord’s Supper. What was granted to those societies could not be long withheld from the other societies of Wesley.

In the years after 1780, Wesley reaped such a harvest of a life unselfishly spent as falls to but few. He still kept up his itinerant tours and his daily preaching. At five o’clock he began the day with a sermon, having risen at four. Then he rode to the next town, and in the afternoon preached again. Then, in the evening, he preached and met the classes, and preached in the same town the next morning at five. If the interest demanded, he sometimes staid longer; but, as a rule, he adhered closely to his plan. Where the places were small, he traveled from one to another between the afternoon and the evening service. This itinerating was kept up in winter and summer, irrespective of the weather. In the earlier years he rode on horseback, but in 1772 his friends bought him a chaise, and from that time he rode in this carriage. The roads were at times bad beyond description, but nothing stopped the unwearied itinerant. In his chaise, as on horseback, Wesley was an indefatigable reader. Systematically he employed his time for eighteen hours a day for sixty years. In this life of constant work and riding in the open air he had, with rare exceptions, constant good health. In his Oxford days he-' had a bad cough and spitting of blood, but his Georgia residence cured that. In 1753 he was laid up, unable to travel for months, and in this enforced leisure wrote his “Notes on the New Testament.” He was supposed to be dying of consumption, but made a complete re-

458 History of the Christian Church.

covery. Though Wesley slept but six hours in twenty-four, he slept well. At eighty-five he said he could not remember that he ever lost a single night’s sleep. To this good health and constant occupation, as well as his continual sense of the Divine presence and of acceptance with God, was due his uniform serenity and cheerfulness. Wesley was never in a hurry, and he never worried. His old age was one of the most beautiful on record. Alexander Knox, who visited him at eighty-six, said: “So fine an old man I never saw! The happiness of his mind beamed forth in his countenance. Every look showed how fully he enjoyed the gay remembrance of a life well spent.” This cheerfulness has been the characteristic of his ministers and people. Grave they may often have been, but a sour Methodist is a contradiction in terms. On the faces of the early Methodists was the joy of the victorious life.

In these later years his journeys, especially after the death of Charles Wesley, were a constant ovation. In 1789, though feeling decaying strength, he visited Cornwall and Kingswood. He preached, as he had done so often before, in the natural amphitheater at Gwenap, where often he had spoken to twenty-five thousand people. Again he was in Ireland, and rejoiced in the prosperity of the work in that island, in which he ever took a peculiar interest.

Wesley made out his usual itinerary for March,

1791, but took cold, and on Tuesday, February 22d, preached at Leatherhead his last sermon, from the text, “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found; call ye upon him while he is near.” Two days later he wrote his last letter; it was addressed to William Wilber-

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459

force, and there could be no worthier close to a beneficent career. It was as follows:

“London, February 24, 1791.

“My Dear Sir,—Unless the Divine Power has raised you up to be as Athanasius, contra mundum, I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils; but if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O, ‘be not weary in well-doing !* Go on, in the name of God and in power of his might, till even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall vanish away before it.

“Reading this morning a tract, wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a law in our colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this!

“That He who has guided you from your youth up may continue to strengthen you in this and all things,

is the prayer of, dear sir,

“Your affectionate servant,

“John Wesley."

The next day he returned to City Road Chapel to die. He had a high fever. On Sunday, Death of February 27th, he sat up. After a restless ^WesIey* night, on Tuesday morning he began to sing,

“All glory to God in the sky,

And peace upon earth be restored.”

460 History of the Christian Church.

After a while he asked for pen and ink. He tried to write, but could not. Miss Ritchie said, “Let me write for you, sir; tell me what you would say.” He replied, “Nothing but that God is with us.”

In the afternoon he began singing with vigor, “I ’11 praise my Maker while I ’ve breath.” Afterwards, with a weak voice, he said: “Lord, thou givest strength to those who can speak and to those who can not. Speak, Lord, to all our hearts, and let them know that thou loosest the tongue.” Then he sang his last hymn,

“To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,

Who sweetly all agree.”

His voice then failed, but he said: “Now we have done. Let us all go.” For the last time he was laid on his bed. The friends in the house were called together, and prayer was offered. He responded heartily, “Amen.” Then he took their hands and said, “Farewell, farewell.” Finding that he could not make himself understood, he summoned all his remaining strength and cried out, “The best of all is, God is with us.” Then, lifting his arm, he cried again, “The best of all is, God is with us.” The next morning at ten o’clock, March 2, 1791, he died. His last word was “Farewell.” There lay a man who trusted the living God, who trusted to him his all for both worlds. A long life and a triumphant death showed he had made no mistake. At his death, in Great Britain, Ireland, and America, there were one hundred and twenty v thousand gathered into his societies, and his preachers declared the truth and ministered to souls on one hundred and eight circuits in the Old World, and the same number in America. It is certain that the years since

The Evangelical Revival. 461

have not lessened the value and influence of his work, nor the luster of his fame.

Let us now turn to some characteristics of his person and work. John Wesley, like all his family, was a small man, not quite five feet six inches in height, and his weight for many years ^Chj3^.^er’ was one hundred and twenty-two pounds.

His hair and his eyes were dark, his forehead clear and smooth, his nose aquiline. The face was fine. In age the hair became white as snow; it was always worn long, at first because he could not afford the money to keep it trimmed, and afterwards by preference. To the last his eye was peculiarly bright and piercing. He was neat but plain in his dress, and extremely punctual in his habits.

- Wesley was an exceptional scholar. His thorough knowledge of Greek and his acquaintance with the work of Bengel gave permanent value to his “Notes on the New Testament.” At the same time it is to be regretted that his view of the Biblical statements on the subject made him believe in witchcraft. Yet it should be noted that he welcomed scientific discoveries, and was interested in electricity and in all that could advance the science or practice of medicine.

Wesley loved beautiful scenery, and especially delighted in landscape gardening. But he was a true child of his century and nation in his lack of knowledge or appreciation of art. Indeed, beauty of person or appearance he felt to be a snare. In his buildings he necessarily sought the largest service at the least cost. In them there was little room, and he did not desire more, for the artistic.

The man and his work stand out before us. A

462 History of the Christian Church.

word should be given to his defects. It has been said «-that John Wesley had not a philosophic mind, and made no original contributions to philosophy or theology. Suppose it should be granted. What is that but to say that the greatness of his mind was of a different order? We are not surprised that no such contribu- ^v-tions came from Richelieu, or Marlborough, or Washington ; yet Wesley’s original gifts were of the same kind as theirs. Nevertheless it must be granted that no man since the Reformation has so profoundly affected Evangelical theology. He gave to the teachings of Arminius life and power. He made the world understand, so that to-day all parties acknowledge it, that a man may be intensely Evangelical and a revivalist, and yet an Arminian. He shattered the^ monopoly Calvinistic preachers claimed to possess of “preaching the gospel.” John Wesley made all Evangelical theology more humane, and all Evangelical religion more ethical.

John Wesley framed no theological system. There are those who think this is largely of the unspeakable mercy of God. But it should be observed that the cast of his mind was inductive; that his tendency was to make sure of facts and truths, without troubling himself about putting them and all else into a system. The latter course would be a necessity to a man whose mind worked deductively; but Wesley was an indue-tive thinker.

Wesley has been charged with personal ambition; * but that charge has long since been withdrawn. He was a great administrator, and, like all administrators, made mistakes. His over-caution lost him Grace Murray; it also made worse the separation of 1763, on

The Evangelical Revival. 463

account of the fanatical excesses of George Bell and others. Doubtless his attitude toward the Church of England weakened his societies in England for a hundred years after his death. His prejudice and his patriotism made him take the wrong side in the War of the Revolution, and take too favorable a view of^ George III; but he was frank and sincere in it. He ruled his societies with firmness, and sometimes imperiously, but always with kindness. He never knew rancor, and his people needed a close organization and a firm rule. Those societies of the Revival that had it not, soon left scarcely a name.

His abiding faults were those of his movement and his age. Wesley viewed religion solely from an individualistic standpoint. We concede that the salvation of the individual is the foundation of all else, but it is not the whole structure. In Wesley’s time, also, it must be allowed that the work demanded of the Church was this foundation laying.

Wesley’s work was that of a leader of societies rather than the founder of a Church. The expectation he had of large defections and backslidings, and the ruthlessness with which he cut off disorderly walkers, are appalling, and reveal a weak side of the Evangelical Revival. The same may be said of the reliance upon states of feeling rather than upon the formation of Christian character.

There was little place for childhood in Wesley’s ~ scheme of Christian life, though he rejoiced in Sunday- -schools from the beginning. Much as Wesley loved children, he never understood the religious life, or, it may be said, the developing life, of a child. In Evangelical services the individual is the unit; in the life of the

464 History of the Christian Church.

Church the family is the unit, and there must be room in it for young men and maidens, and for the children, of whom the Savior said, “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.” The revival also has reference solely to the spiritual relation of man; but man has social, civil, and physical relations and needs. Wesley was not narrow in regard to these; but the Church must put more emphasis upon them as completing the work of the Evangelical Revival.

But with these defects, Wesley’s work is a marvel in the history of the Christian Church. He believed in education. He gave his itinerants the best system of compulsory lay study yet devised in the Church— a system perfected and effective to-day. He founded Kingswood School, and allied it thoroughly with the work of the Church. He believed in the press, and was the founder of modern cheap and periodical religious literature for the people. He made his press the educator for his people, and a source of popular intelligence and increasing strength to religious work, with accelerating influence in all branches of the Christian Church until our day. Beginning with the publication of Charles Wesley’s hymns and cheap tracts against popular vices and sins, and the publication of the Arminian Magazine, at the age of seventy he said he was out of pocket through long years of writing and publishing. But soon after he says that, unawares, it made him rich.

Wesley’s fame as a writer will rest upon his sermons. They had been preached many times, but are not written as he preached them. He felt the need of his people for a compact and concise statement of the most important truths of religion. To prepare this,

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465

he shut himself up with only his Greek Testament and Hebrew Bible, striving to forget all else he ever read. Thus he sought to set forth “plain truths for plain people.” It may be said that the sermons accomplished their aim, and that few religious writings of that century stand as well the test of time. But Wesley’s power was the living preacher facing great congregations. It is his peculiar glory to have been, more than any other man in any age, the religious teacher of the English people.

Wesley’s concise style made him the author of pithy sayings, great truths in a small compass. Such are his oft-repeated: “We think, and let think;” “The world is my parish;” “I desire a league offensive and defensive with every soldier of Christ Jesus;” slavery as “the execrable sum of all villainies;” the liquor-stllers as “poisoners general of His Majesty’s subjects ;” and dying “the best of all is, God is with us.”

Wesley’s distinctive teaching was: (1) Free salvation : that Christ died for all. (2) The doctrine of assurance: That every one may know that his sins are forgiven who repents and believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit bearing witness with his spirit. (3) That it is possible by disobedience to fall from this and every state of grace. (4) Christian perfection : that it is possible for a believer to live without willfully transgressing a known law of God.

We shall find the influence of Wesley’s work in the Great Revival, not only among the people distinctively known as Methodists and in Lady Huntingdon’s Connection, but in the ranks of the |_nⁿ_flUen^C_ce. Church of England as well. Romaine said that, when he began his work, there were not five

30

466 History of the Christian Church.

clergymen in the Church of England who were in sympathy with the Evangelical Revival, but in 1793 there were five hundred. The whole Low Church party of the next century sprang from the Evangelical Revival, and they and their teachings and works were given the name of Evangelical.

The Dissenting Churches—the Congregationalists, ^ Presbyterians, Baptists, and Quakers—took on new Nonconform- ^an^ power and influence through the

<ng Evangelical Revival. It marked a new era Churches. ._n ^ _{career 0}f _ajj English Churches. And

there were even larger results, showing a more extended influence. Though the movement against slav-Ch»drenofthe^ery ^anc* slave-trade was due in no small Evangelical measure to the humane and liberty-loving Revival. _Spj_rj_{t t}^_e eighteenth century, and although the Quakers in America, and Clarkson in England, first attacked it, yet the abolition of slavery and «-the slave-trade in English-speaking countries was due chiefly to the moral sentiment born of the Evangelical Revival.

The modern Sunday-school begun by Robert -Raikes, a member of the Church of England, at j Gloucester, in 1780, is the second child of the Revival. The modern missionary movement, beginning with the landing in India of William Carey in 1793, of the English Baptist Church, is the third and mightiest child of the Evangelical Revival with which will be forever linked the names of John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield.

Great was the sorrow on Wesley’s death; but his beautiful old age and triumphant home-going were potent influences in the life of the common people.

The Evangelical Revival. 467

Wesley’s work went on. There also continued the desire to separate from the Church of England and to have the sacraments from the hands of their own pastors. The Conference in 1796 forbade the discussion of this subject under severe penalty. Many thought this action arbitrary and unjust. So thought Alexander Kilham, who led a secession which organized as the Methodist New Connection in 1797. Kilham died the next year, but there had come the first division among the followers of Wesley.

Chapter VII.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES IN AMERICA.

There were two events in this period which affected all the Churches in the colonies: these were the Great Awakening, or the Evangelical Revival, and the formation of the Government of the United States of America. The former of these was the first great movement of common life felt in all the colonies. The latter affected the organization and work of all the Churches, but more especially that of the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches. With the first came a great awakening of the religious life which deepened and extended the influence of Christianity. There had been a retrogression in morals and religion until the beginning of this movement. The French and Indian War, 1755-1763; the Revolutionary War, 1775-1783; and what almost approached anarchy, from 1783 to 1789—all unfavorably affected the religious life. The adoption of the Constitution of the United States and its first amendments showed plainly the downfall of the State Church system. This came at once in Virginia and Maryland, but lasted a generation longer in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Of course, there was never a State Church in any of the States admitted to fellowship with the original thirteen colonies. The colonists were increasing in wealth and in temporal comforts during this period. In spite of lingering wars, there was a growth both in population and trade.

468

Christian Churches in America. 469

The conquest of Canada removed a menacing and dangerous enemy. The expedition of General Sullivan in 1779 broke the power of the Iroquois, and threw open to settlement the fertile lands of Central and Western New York. In the last thirty years of the century the tide of emigration poured over the Alleghanies into Western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Southern Ohio. The cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston grew in importance and population.

The ablest clergyman of America in this period was Jonathan Edwards. The grandparents of Jonathan Edwards on both sides were New ,

-j-A 111    _T    Jonathan

England clergymen. His mother’s father Edwards, was Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton. ^,7°³’^I7s8* He was born at East Windsor, Connecticut, in 1703. From early childhood he was the subject of religious impressions, and was converted at seventeen. The test in his case was that he submitted to the Divine Sovereignty, and this ever remained the great central doctrine in his thought. At six he began to learn Latin. At thirteen he entered Yale, and was graduated four years later, though he remained there two years longer, paying special attention to Greek and Hebrew. In 1722 he was licensed to preach, and served for eight months at a Presbyterian Church in New York. Edwards had unusual advantages as the only son with ten sisters, and his great powers showed unusually early development. At Yale he served as tutor, 17241726; then he was called to his grandfather’s Church at Northampton, where he served from 1727 to 1750. In the former year, July 27th, he married Sarah Pier-pont, the daughter of a Puritan clergyman. She was

470 History oi the Christian Church.

a woman of rare intellectual gifts and spiritualmindedness. To them were born three sons and seven daughters, and from them was descended no small share of the distinguished men of New England in the last one hundred and fifty years. Few families in the world have such a record.

The ministry of Edwards at Northampton was marked by the outbreak of the Great Awakening under his ministry. Three hundred of his parishioners were converted. Of course, he gladly co-operated with Whitefield. After the revival had run its course, there was a reaction against Edwards. He had taken a stand against the Half-way Covenant, of which his grandfather had been the strongest supporter. On insisting on some measures of discipline, he was dismissed from Northampton under circumstances of peculiar trial. His young family, with most insufficient support, were thrown among the Indians at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to whom Edwards became a missionary in 17501758. Here he wrote his great treatise “On the Will,” and “The Nature of Virtue,” and “Original Sin.” He had already published a treatise on “Religious Affections.” In 1758, Edwards was elected president of Princeton College. In a few weeks after he died of smallpox.

As theologian, Edwards emphasized, as few Christian preachers of any creed do, the Sovereignty of God and the entire lack of freedom of man. His necessarian views now are held by Antichristian thinkers rather than by those who hold the faith in which Edwards lived and died. He also placed the strongest emphasis upon the guilt of the whole race in Adam. Nevetheless it is held that he advanced on the prevail

Christian Churches in America. 471

ing Calvinism in making man’s inability not natural, but moral; in identifying virtue with disinterested benevolence ; in making the motive in God’s action a wise benevolence toward the universe as a whole. Jonathan Edwards was the most distinguished thinker and clergyman in America in the eighteenth century. He owed this distinction to a rare, in equal intensity perhaps unique, union of differing qualities. He was an original thinker of great penetration and power. The era in his intellectual life came when he read Locke at the age of fifteen. Of the awakening of that passion for pure thought, which never left him, he says that he was “as much engaged, and had more satisfaction and pleasure in studying it than the most greedy miser in gathering up handfuls of silver and gold from some newly-discovered treasure.” To this power and passion of the will he added a character as free from taint and as scrupulously upright in the intellectual as in the moral life. But the great driving-wheel of the whole nature was his might of affection, going out toward God in moral reverence, and then in the acceptance and accomplishment of his will in the redemption of men. There was no stronger mind in the Church of his day, nor was there a warmer or more loving heart. He was eminent as a Christian.

The Great Awakening in New England arose from the same general condition as in England,— the popular irreligion and immorality and

,    _r The Great

the clear and emphatic republication 01 Awakening, the truths of the Christian salvation. It began with Jonathan Edwards’s powerful sermons at Northampton, Massachusetts, from December, 1734, to May, 1735. Three hundred professed conversion.

472 History of the Christian Church.

The revival ran through the valley of the Connecticut in 1736-1737. In 1739 and 1749 it broke out under the ministry of the Tennents in New Jersey. George Whitefield arrived in Philadelphia in November, 1739, fresh from the outbreak of the great movement in England. The scenes of Kingswood and Moorfields repeated themselves in America. Everywhere eager and admiring crowds hung on the lips of the prince of pulpit orators. From September to December, 1740, he was in New England. All the Churches and Harvard and Yale welcomed him. There had never been such scenes in America as greeted his preaching in the Connecticut Valley. Whitefield was in New England again in 1744, 1754, in 1764, and in 1770. On his last visit he was a prematurely aged man. On September 29, 1770, he preached in Newburyport, Massachusetts. The crowd thronged about his lodging. Whitefield took the light in his hand to go to bed, as he was weary and suffering from asthma; but seeing the expectant faces, he could not refrain. He turned and preached until the candle burned down in its socket. That was Whitefield’s last sermon. Before another day his course was finished. He had been a burning and a shining light. He was buried at Newburyport. He loved America, and Americans loved him. It was fitting that his remains should rest in American soil. He was the chief instrument in the greatest religious movement New England has known. Generous and free from guile, loving and being loved, he fitly represented and promoted on both sides of the ocean the Evangelical Revival.

There did not lack for opposition to the Revival in the New World more than in the British Isles. Gil-

Christian Churches in America. 473

bert Tennent preached in Boston from December, 1740, to March, 1741. He was severe in his censures of the churches and the clergy. In Connecticut,

Whitefield fell into the same snare. Many °PP°^8ers* enemies were made, especially among the clergy. David Brainerd, the missionary, on account of his sympathy with the Revival, was expelled from Yale College. Harvard College pronounced against Whitefield on his return in 1744. The Congregational Synod of Connecticut, in November, 1741, declared against him. This opposition caused the separati®n into the Old Light and the New Light Congregational Churches in Connecticut, 1746-1751. Thirty-one pastors were ordained to New Light Churches in these years. In spite of this opposition and that of the Episcopal Churches of Connecticut, and excesses in the meetings themselves, the Revival increased in extent and influence through 1742. Then came the ebbtide. In I75°> Jonathan Edwards was forced to give up his charge at Northampton and go to Stockbridge.

Another effect of the reflex action after, and in opposition to, the Revival, was the beginning of the Unitarian movement in Eastern Massachusetts, through Samuel Briant, of Braintree, Massachusetts, 1749-1754; Samuel Webster, of Salisbury, 1757-1796; Charles Chauncey, Boston, 1755; Jonathan Mayhew, Boston, 1747-1766. These*men were of more than ordinary intellectual ability, and were, decided patriots in the pre-Revolutionary struggles. Briant and Mayhew died young. The movement did not take on any organized form until in the next century.

John Murray, the father of Universalism in America, came to Massachusetts in 1770. Nine years later

474 History of the Christian Church.

the first church was built in Gloucester. He was pastor of a Universalist Church in Boston, 1793-1815. In his work he was ably succeeded by Elhanan Winchester.

Jonathan Edwards left his mark, not only on New England thinking, but on her Church life and the in-congrega- tellectual leaders of her clergy. Such were tionaiists. j_oseph Bellamy, Samuel Hopkins, Stephen West, and Jonathan Edwards, Jr.

Joseph Bellamy (1719-1790) was a graduate of Yale College, and held his own pastorate for fifty years. In 1750 he published “True Religion Delineated.” He advanced on the teaching of Edwards, and clearly asserted a general atonement. This became the view of what was styled the New Divinity.

Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803) studied in the home of Jonathan Edwards after graduating at Yale. His two pastorates were Great Barrington, Massachusetts, 1743-1769, and Newport, Rhode Island, 1770-1803. His distinctive teachings were, that man was not guilty for Adam’s sin; that all acts of the unregenerated are selfish and sinful; and that the test of a true Christian is willingness to be damned for the glory of God. This last position had been held by Hooker and Shepherd, and was the outgrowth of the teaching of disinterested benevolence by Jonathan Edwards and his gifted and saintly wife. It is the same doctrine practically, as that of Fenelon, but carried to a further and a logical extreme.

Jonathan Edwards, Jr. (1745-1801), graduated at Princeton, 1765. He was pastor of New Haven, 1769-^I795 > Colebrook, Connecticut, 1795-1799; president of Union College, 1799-1801. In 1784, against the Uni-

Christian Churches in America.

versalists, lie wrote “Brief Observations on the Doctrine of Universal Salvation.” He published in 1785 “The Necessity of an Atonement,” in which he advocated the governmental view of Grotius, which is the most widely accepted statement of the doctrine of the atonement in Congregational and Methodist Churches.

The settlement of Vermont opened new territory to the Congregationalists. The church in Bennington was founded in 1762, and in Newbury in 1764. The University of Vermont was founded in 1791, and the State General Convention in 1796. In 1800 there were seventy-four Congregational churches in the State. Before 1790 there were three Congregational churches in New York State. Between 1790-1800 there were twelve more founded, two of them, East Bloomfield, 1796, and Canandaigua, 1799, in the Genesee country. The first Congregational churches in Ohio were Marietta, 1796, and Youngstown, 1799.

The leading man among the Baptists of this era was Isaac Backus (1724-1806). He was converted in 1741, and was pastor of Congregational Churches from 1742 to 1751. August 22d Baptist*, of that year he was immersed. In January, 1756, he organized a Baptist Church at Middleborough, Mass., and within five years two others were built in the same town. He was pastor of the First Church, Middleborough, 1756-1806. He was father, guide, and defender of the Baptist Churches in New England. Assiduous in his pastoral duties, he was a fervent evangelist, and the leader in all that concerned the Baptists in their conflicts with the State Church in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

476 History of the Christian Church.

The Baptists were proportionally strongest in Rhode Island. The First Church of Providence became a Six-Principle Baptist Church in 1752. A new church, costing thirty-five thousand dollars, was built in 1775. The Warren Baptist Association was organized in 1767. The most important event in the history of the Baptists in New England, in this century, was the founding of Rhode Island College, now Brown University, in 1770. Its first president was James Manning (1738-1791). He was a graduate of Princeton in 1762, and pastor of Warren, Rhode Island, 1764-1770. In 1793 money was raised by a lottery to purchase instruments and apparatus for the college. Jonathan Maxcy was its president from 1791 to 1802. Its name was changed to Brown University in 1804.

The first Baptist Church in New Hampshire was organized at Newton, 1755. Hezekiah Smith, of Haverhill, Massachusetts, was the father of the Baptist Churches of New Hampshire. The New Hampshire Association was formed in 1785 with five ministers and three Churches.

Benjamin Randall, in 1780, organized the Freewill (anti-Calvinistic) Baptist Church in New Hampshire.

The First Baptist Church in Vermont was founded at Shaftesbury in 1768, and the Shaftesbury Association in 1781. The Bowenham Association was formed in 1787. In 1790 the Baptist Churches in New England were distributed as follows: In Massachusetts, 92 churches, with 6,234 members; Rhode Island, 38 churches, 3,502 members; Connecticut, 55 churches, 3,214 members; New Hampshire, 32 churches, 1,732 members; Maine, 15 churches, 882 members; Vermont,

Christian Churches in America. 477

34 churches, 1,610 members; total, 266 churches, 17,174 members. The New Light Congregationalist contributed largely to the Baptist growth in Connecticut.

The Episcopal Churches formed a refuge in Connecticut for those who did not like the least fellowship with the Great Awakening. They made a „

.    Episcopalians.

slow growth when their adherence to the Royalist cause in the Revolutionary War nearly wrecked them altogether. They produced one eminent man in this period, Dr. Samuel Johnson, the president of King’s College, Columbia University.

Samuel Johnson (1696-1772) was graduated at Yale College, and was tutor there until the secession of Dr. Cutler to the Church of England in 1722. Johnson went with him, and was ordained in London in March, 1723. Returning, he built a church at Stratford, Connecticut, in 1724, of which he was pastor for over thirty years, and into whose communion he received, during that time, nearly 4,500 members. He sent also fourteen men to England for clerical ordination. He was always on pleasant terms with Yale College, where he educated his son. At the outbreak of the Revolution there were forty Episcopal Churches and twenty clergymen in Connecticut. In July, I77^> they gave up public worship because they were not allowed to pray for King George. Johnson died before these evil days came. He was president of King’s College from 1754 to 1757, and then pastor at Stratford from 1757 to his death in 1772. He was a man of firm convictions, broadminded, and charitable. Of strong intellect, he was wise in counsel and unwearied in labors. His character commanded respect, and his

478 History of the Christian Church.

piety was genuine. He was the real founder and leader of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut; but he never broke with his former friends of the Congregational Churches.

The Dutch Reformed Church grew with the growth of the Dutch population. The preaching was in the

_ . Dutch language, and so could not win

The Middle    ° ° ’

states, many who were not of Dutch descent. It

1720-1800. _{was a}j_{so unc}j_er the control of the Classis

Dutch    .

Reformed of Amsterdam, and did not have power for

Church. American ordinations until well on in this period. Its churches were in the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys and in Northern New Jersey. The Dutch population were industrious and frugal, and in wealth and temporal comfort surpassed other sections of the people. In the old centers it was, and has remained, strong socially.

The chief events of this time are the successful, though long delayed, effort to have American ordination and the founding of Queen’s, now Rutgers College.

Two men of more than ordinary mark left the impression of their minds and work upon this period. They are Theodore J. Freylinghuysen and John H. Livingston.

Freylinghuysen came to America from Holland in 1720. Important as was his work, of equal value has been the service of his descendants. Among these was Hon. Theodore Frelinghuysen, who was candidate for, and nearly elected, Vice-President of the United States in 1844. He was president of Rutgers College, 18501862.

The burning question of these years was the or-

Christian Churches in America. 479

dination of American clergy for the Reformed Dutch Church. In 1737, seven ministers, at the call of the Consistory of New York, petitioned the _AmerJcan Classis at Amsterdam for permission to Ordination, form a Coetus, or Association, which should ^,737"¹⁷⁷'* have authority to ordain ministers in America. This was not granted until ten years later. Meanwhile the Church was making slow but steady growth. In 1754 there were seventy-one congregations and twenty-nine ministers.

The question of American ordinations was bound up with the founding of a college where candidates for the ministry could be trained. In 1754, accepting some plans for the recognition of the Dutch in the new King’s College, five ministers seceded from the Coetus and formed the Conferentie. The Coetus insisted on American ordinations and a Dutch College which should train for them. The Church and the clergy were thoroughly divided in the bitter strife which ensued, 1754-1771. The Coetus party obtained a charter for a Dutch Academy in 1766. Four years later this became enlarged into a charter for Queen’s College at New Brunswick, New Jersey. In 1825 it became Rutgers College.

The man peculiarly fitted to unite these warring factions was John H. Livingston. Born in New York, he was graduated from Yale in 1762. Four .

*    .1 1 c A    1    TT Livingston.

years later he sailed for Amsterdam. He studied in Utrecht, and was ordained in Holland. In 1770 he returned to New York, having been called to a pastorate there the year previous.

Through his influence the rival parties of the Coetus and Conferentie, in October, 1771, were united

480 History of the Christian Church.

in a Provisional Synod. This was the governing body of that Church in America for the next twenty years. In 1794 a constitution for the whole Church in America was adopted; the General Synod became the supreme governing body; the Provisional Synod became a Particular Synod, and each Classis was given the right of ordination.

Livingston was the true and steadfast friend of the new college. In its charter, 1770, the object of its founding is clearly and nobly stated: “To promote learning for the benefit of the community and the advancement of the Protestant religion of all denominations ; and more especially to remove, as much as possible, the necessity our said loving subjects have hitherto been under of sending their youth intended for the university to a foreign country for education, and of being subordinate to a foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction.” Words could hardly make more evident the need in 1770 of ecclesiastical, as well as political, independence.

The German Reformed Church in this period grew by natural increase, and from a large emigration which _Th flowed into Pennsylvania, Western Mary-German land, down the Shenandoah Valley, and on

Reformed j_nt₀ North Carolina. Its first leader was Church.

John Philip Boehm. Boehm had been driven out from Worms on the Rhine by the Roman Catholics. There he had been a teacher in the parochial school and precentor in the Reformed Church. By

1720 he was in Pennsylvania. He saw the destitute condition of the Churches, and though not able to receive ordination until 1729, when conferred upon him by the Dutch in New York, in 1725 he became pastor of the Reformed Churches in Faulkner’s Swamp, Skip-

Christian Churches in America. 481

pack, and White Marsh. This pastorate he held until his death in 1749.

The first Church of this communion in Philadelphia was organized by George Michael Weiss. Weiss was born at Stebbach, in the valley of the _Georg_eM< Necker, about 1700. Weiss was ordained Weiss, in 1725. He had pastoral work in Germany, 1729-1731. In the latter year he came to America. For the next fifteen years he had pastorates in Dutchess and Schoharie Counties in New York. Driven from the latter field of work by the Indians, he went to Pennsylvania, where he wrought until his death. He was a man of ability and force of character.

A strange episode in American Church history opened with the coming to Pennsylvania of Conrad Beissel in 1720, and his meeting John Peter ^ ^ Miller in 1734. Beissel (1681-1768) was born at Eberbach in the Palatinate. His father died before his birth, and his mother when he was six years of age. His early education was neglected; but he came to write good German, and was noted as a mathematician and musician, though he was a baker by trade. Beissel was baptized and confirmed in the Reformed Church, but he testified against marriage and glorified the monastic life, so that he had to leave Germany. Coming to America, he at first joined the Dunkards in 1724, being immersed. Four years later he separated from them. He was a Mystic, and had a strange power of winning followers, so that he has been called the Pied Piper of Hamelin. In 1732 he and his followers adopted a conventual rule, imitated The first Synod was organized September 29, 1747.

31

482 History of the Christian Church.

buildings of their monastery. Two years later Beissel met John Peter Miller (1710-1796). Miller was born at Lautern in the Palatinate, and studied at Heidelberg, and as a candidate for ordination came to Pennsylvania in 1730.

He was ordained by the Presbyterian Synod of Philadelphia, and served as pastor at Tulpehocken, 1730-1734. He was regarded as an extraordinary scholar. Beissel won Miller for “Ephrata,” the name of his monastery. Miller was at this time twenty-four years of age. He severed his relations with the Reformed Church, and became for sixty years the life and soul of the new movement. In 1768, on Beissel’s death, he became the head of the community. Miller dressed in a gown of coarse cloth, and slept on a bench, with a stick of wood for his pillow. He wrote a great deal, and was the head of the extensive publishing-house at Ephrata. His record of Baptist martyrdom entitled, “The Bloody Arena, or Mirror of Martyrs” (Ephrata, 1748), was by far the largest publication issued in America before the Revolution. Soon after Miller’s death the “Order of the Solitary” disbanded. The property was sold in 1814. Thus ended the first experiment in Protestant monasticism on American soil.

Michael Schlatter was born in St. Gall, Switzerland. He attended universities, and finished his Aiichaei theological course in Holland. After serv-Schiatter. ing one year as a vicar in Switzerland, he 1716-1790. _saji_eci f_or America, and landed at Philadelphia in September, 1746. His influence, through his unexampled activity, began to be everywhere felt, army. He was at the siege of Louisburg. After the

Christian Churches in America. 483

There were thirty-one pastors and elders present. Schlatter was a settled pastor in Philadelphia and Germantown, but traveled from Northern New Jersey to the Shenandoah Valley. In these journeys he established sixteen charges, each with several congregations. He enjoyed the friendship of the Lutheran leader, Muhlenberg. The turn in Schlatter’s life came when the Synod, in 1751, requested him to go to Europe to raise money to relieve the poverty of the Churches. Schlatter, in a year’s absence, raised sixty thousand dollars, which was invested for the benefit of the Reformed Churches in Pennsylvania; but the Synod was made strictly subordinate to, and dependent for ordinations upon, the Classis of Amsterdam. Schlatter returned with five young ministers, among whom was Philip William Otterbein.

Moved by a translation of Schlatter’s appeal, Rev. David Thompson organized in England a “Society for the Promotion of the Knowledge of God among the Germans;” and raised one hundred thousand dollars to establish charity schools among those who were in Pennsylvania. Schlatter was made superintendent of these schools, and thus became the first superintendent of public instruction in that colony and State. Thompson, in his appeals, had sometimes exaggerated the ignorance of the Germans and their needs. The plain truth was humiliating enough. These appeals and the charity schools touched the pride of the German population. They preferred their ignorance to this charity. Schlatter became very unpopular, and the well-meant experiment proved a failure. Schlatter resigned his educational work, and became a chaplain in the British closely from the Capuchins, and began to erect the

484 History of the Christian Church.

return of the expedition, being in comfortable circumstances, he retired from ministerial life, and, highly respected, lived in Philadelphia until his death. He was an ardent patriot during the Revolution.

The companion of Schlatter, Philip William Otter-bein, was born at Dillenburg, Nassau. He was edu-Phmp wniiam ^cate^ and ordained in Germany. He was otterbein. a fervent Pietist, but not a Mystic. From 1726-1813. iy^₂    h_e was pastor at Lancaster,

Tulpehocken, Frederick, Maryland, and York, Penn-syvania. He built new churches at Lancaster and Frederick. In 1740-1741 he visited Germany. I11 1774 he was called to the Second Reformed Church in Baltimore, of which he remained pastor until his death in 1813. He was the warm and lifelong friend of Francis Asbury. The acquaintance began in 1772, and he assisted in Asbury’s ordination in 1784. Otterbein thoroughly sympathized with the Methodist movement, and from him sprang the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. The effect of the pensions given by the Classis of Amsterdam from the Schlatter fund was the reverse of helpful. The congregations which ought long before to have become financially independent became stingy and pauperized. In 1772 the Synod assumed authority to ordain. In 1791 it declared its right to ordain, “without asking or waiting for permission to do so from the fathers in Holland.” They then renounced their stipend from that country. In April, 1793, at Lancaster, Pennslvania, met the first General Synod of this Church. It represented one hundred and seventy-eight congregations, fifteen thousand members, and about forty thousand adherents. There were

Christian Churches in America. 485

twenty-two ministers, of whom thirteen were present. There was little evidence of prosperity, and the Church did not outgrow the disastrous effect of its pupilage for the next generation. At this Synod was adopted “Rules of Synod” and a new hymn-book.

Franklin College was founded for the Germans of both the Reformed and Lutheran Confessions, at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, June 6, 1787.

Franklin was one of its founders. Henry coli’ege"

E. Muhlenburg was its first president.

Small at first, it has been refounded, and is influential in its work.

The Lutheran Church in this period grew largely ^rom immigrations, and this growth was mainly in Pennsylvania. It had good friends in _The Europe in the persons of the Halle Pietists, Lutheran John Anastasius Freylinghausen, of Halle, ^Church-and Frederick Michael Ziegenhagen, royal chaplain to the German Georges, Kings of Great Britain, 17221776.

Samuel Urlsperger, once a Roman Catholic pastor in Augsburg, came with the expelled Salzburgers to Georgia in 1734- There he and his companions founded Ebenezer, and there, as we know, Wesley met him.

By far the most distinguished man in this Church in the colonial period was Henry Melchoir Muhlenberg. Muhlenberg was born at Eimbeck, Henry in Hanover, of a poor but noble family.

His poverty made him late in getting an 1711-1787. * education. He studied at Gottingen, Jena, and Halle. Graduating, he was also ordained, in 1739. After being two months in London and fourteen weeks 011

486 History of the Christian Church.

the ocean, he arrived at Charleston, September, 1742. Visiting Ebenezer, he came to Philadelphia in November of that year. He had three congregations: one in a carpenter-shop in Philadelphia, one in a barn at the Trappe, and a partially completed church at New Hanover. The latter place was thirty-six miles from Philadelphia and ten from Trappe. To cut off impostors he would not have collections at Church services. In the five years, 1743-1748, there were five new churches built, and one enlarged, in Philadelphia and vicinity. In 1747, Muhlenberg took a missionary tour through Pennsylvania and Western Maryland. He was pastor in New York City in the summers of I75^I_ 1752. He married the daughter of Conrad Wieser, a wealthy German.

The most important event in the history of this Church in this century was the organization of the Ministerium at Philadelphia, August 23, 1748, with power to ordain. This Ministerium adopted a synod-ical constitution in 1760. The first Lutheran minister of American birth was Jacob van Buskirk, born in 1739. He studied five years under Muhlenberg, and then was a pastor in Eastern Pennsylvania from 1762 until his death in 1800. The New York Ministerium was organized October 23, 1786. The first English Lutheran Church in the United States was organized in New York City in 1796, but went bodily over to the Episcopalians in 1805.

The family of Muhlenberg was one of marked ability. Peter Muhlenberg studied in Germany, and was ordained in 1769. He was pastor in the Shenandoah Valley, 1772-1776, when his patriotic feelings got the better of him, and he became a colonel in the Conti-

Christian Churches in America. 487

nental Army. Frederick Augustine Muhlenberg studied at Halle, and was ordained in 1770. He lent most valuable aid to the American cause during the Revolution. He was speaker of the House of Representatives in the First and Third Congresses of the United States. His grandson, a distinguished minister of the Episcopal Church, William Augustus Muhlenberg, was the founder of St. Luke’s Hospital and of the order of deaconesses in that Church. Henry Ernest Muhlenberg studied at Halle, and was ordained in 1770. He served as pastor in New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Lancaster. He was a distinguished botanist and the first president of Franklin College.

The European history of the Moravians has already been sketched, and we have met with Count Zinzendorf. He came to America in 1742, and at once sought to organize a compre- _Mor™*_ans hensive Church, which should include all Christian believers among the Germans. For a while he had great success; but the plan was too visionary, or, if not, Zinzendorf had not the insight and capacity to carry it out. From the first, however, the Moravians have been a missionary people. In 1732-1733 they sent missionaries to the West Indies and to Greenland. In I735> Zinzendorf and his Moravians came to Georgia. This colony removed to Pennsylvania, and settled at Nazareth in 1740. Zinzendorf changed the name to Bethlehem at Christmas of that year. Zinzendorf was in missionary work among the Indians from June to December, 1742, in New York and Pennsylvania. He established seven congregations in the latter colony, and two in New York and at Staten Island. He also founded four schools at

488 History of the Christian Church.

Germantown, Frederick, Oley, and Heidelberg. After Zinzendorf’s return in 1743, August Gottlieb Spangenberg was the head of the Moravians in this country until his death twenty years later. Spangenberg was noted as a theologian and a linguist, and was the author of the semi-communistic arrangements of the Moravians in this country.

The first American Synod of the Church was held in 1748, and the next year it was recognized as an ancient Episcopal Church by Act of Parliament. The Synod met intermittently until 1769, when no other was held for more than seventy years. The Nazareth Hall school was founded in November, 1756. Spangenberg was in Europe in 1750 and 1762. Gnadenhutten, on the Mahoning, was destroyed by the Indians, November 24, 1755. On Zinzendorf’s death the Moravian Church owed on debts he had contracted for the Church seven hundred and seventy-three thousand dollars. They were not all paid until 1801.

In 1752 and 1753, Spangenberg and Henry Antes bought a tract of one hundred thousand Wachovia. _{acres Qn} ^ Yadkin, in North Carolina,

and called it Wachovia. They founded Salem in 1753-

David Ziesberger pushed on west of the Alle-ghanies. After five years of labor he founded below Pittsburg, Friedenstadt, and the same year Salem and Schonbrunn, on the Tuscarora River, in Ohio. The missions seemed to prosper until, in 1781, the British, with three hundred whites and a body of Indians, drove away the whole population and took Ziesberger to Detroit. The next year the American militia, believing falsely that the Moravians favored the British, came

Christian Churches in America. 489

to the settlements in March, and destroyed them, killing ninety-six Indians. In 1798 the United States Government settled with Ziesberger for the losses.

No Church has been more self-denying and devoted than the Moravian, but it has not increased in members. This has been largely through its internal economy. The peculiarities of its exclusive settlements, its use of the lot, its choir system, its use of commercial schemes instead of voluntary offerings to support its work, its use of the German language, and its being led by men of European birth and training who were unable to adapt themselves to the tides of the new life around them, have all contributed to make the Moravians a small Church, but can not dim the splendor of their missionary record.

The Scotch-Irish emigration was the strength of the Presbyterian Church in this century. By 1726 there were six thousand Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania, and at the middle of the cen- p_reSbyunans. tury the number had doubled. The Great Awakening brought new life to the Presbyterian as to the other American Churches. Those influential through it were Jacob Frelinghuysen, Raritan, New Jersey (1719-1746), and the Tennents.

William Tennent came to America in 1716. Two years later he joined the Presbyterians. To meet the immense need of the time for an educated ministry, he, in 1726, organized his “Log j_ei^ents. College” at Neshaminy, north of Philadelphia. His son, Gilbert Tennent, suffered severe illness, and had a wonderful religious experience in 1728. From that time he began to hold revival services. We have met him in Boston with Whitefield,

490 History of the Christian Church.

and he visited John Wesley in London. March 8, 1741, he preached, at a ministerial gathering at Nottingham, Pennsylvania, his sermon on “An Unconverted Ministry.” It was an almost unrelieved denunciatory invective. It only angered, and did not bring to repentance and healing. The freeness and fullness of gospel grace was not so urged as to draw the wounded to the mighty Savior. The same year the Philadelphia Synod compelled Tennent and Blair and the New Brunswick Presbytery to withdraw, by vote of twelve to ten. In 1745 the Synod of New York was formed, with twenty-two ministers; in 1758 it had seventy-two. The Philadelphia Synod, which had thus set itself against the Revival movement, had at the first date twenty-four ministers, and thirteen years later had but twenty-three.

The Synod of New York founded a school at Elizabethtown, New Jersey, in 1745-1747, under Jonathan Dickinson. In the latter year it was ^Pconege.ⁿ removed to Newark under Aaron Burr, who remained its head for the next ten years, and under whom it was removed to Princeton in 1755. Jonathan Edwards was its president in 1758; Samuel Davies, 1759-1761; Samuel Finley, 1761-1766; and Dr. John Witherspoon, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, from 1768 to 1782. This list of eminent men did much to give the Presbyterian Church the influence it possessed at the end of this period.

The most distinguished Presbyterian preacher of this period was John Witherspoon, president of Princeton College, signer of the Declaration of Independence,

Christian Churches in America. 491

and member of the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War. He was directly descended, through an unbroken line of ministers, from John Knox, the Reformer of Scotland. Wither- _John spoon was born near Edinburgh. His Witherspoon, father was a clergyman of piety and learn- ^|7^aa"^,794-ing. Very early in life he was converted, and studied in the public school at Haddington and in the University at Edinburgh. From the latter institution he was graduated, having stood unrivaled for clearness of style and accuracy of thought. He was ordained minister at Keith, in the west of Scotland, in 1745. Twelve years later he exchanged this parish for the Church of Paisley. Here he served but a year, as, in 1768, he was elected president of Princeton College. He came with a great reputation for learning and talent, and rendered important service. He at once largely increased the student body, and augmented its financial resources. He enlarged the curriculum, and made an unexcelled record both in governing the college and in his lectures, which were the first college lectures in America. After five years of service he was elected to the Continental Congress, where he sat from ^I773 ^to 1782. Although he wrote many of the most important State papers of the time, he was true to his duties as college president and his character as a clergyman. His unique position gave him great influence, to which his numerous publications of a high character also contributed. His son-in-law, Dr. Samuel S. Smith, succeeded him in 1782, and he died in 1794.

David Brainerd, with prodigal self-denial, carried

492 History of the Christian Church.

on his missionary work among the Indians (17431747) until he came to an early grave. John Brainerd took up his work, and lived longer to ^the'lndiansf ^serve it* Elihu Spencer labored among the Oneidas of New York from 1748 to I75°* Like all immigrant Churches, the Presbyterians inherited the divisions of the old country. The first Reformed (Covenanter) Presbytery was ^fo^rme^{d in l}743- The Burgher and AntiBurgher differences made themselves felt in Pennsylvania in 1746-1747. An Associate Presbytery was formed in 1753. The Associate Reformed Church organized in 1782.

The Presbytery of Hanover, Virginia, was organized in 1755. The New York and Philadelphia Synods The Growth reunited in 1758. In 1753 the Dutchess of the County Presbytery was organized; in 1781, Church.    _q£ £_e(j $_tonej Pennsylvania. The first

church in this Presbytery was erected in 1790. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States was formed in 1789 with four Synods and sixteen Presbyteries. Henceforth the great Presbyterian Church was organized for its work in the new Nation. At the close of the century it seemed to be the dominant religious force in the new Republic, especially in the Middle States. Its clergy was nearly four times as numerous as that of the Reformed Churches.

The First Baptist Church in New York City became extinct in 1732, but was revived and reorganized The thirty years later. In 1750 there were three Baptists. _or f_our Baptist churches in the colony. In

1792, in the State, there were sixty-two churches and

Christian Churches in America. 493

four thousand members. In 1807, in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, there were twenty-nine churches and three thousand six hundred and thirty-two members.

In 1760 there were estimated to be fifty thousand Quakers in America. There was quite a declension from the former rigid rules. They paid _Quakerg much attention to the condition of the Negroes and the Indians. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, in 1776, expelled their members who would not free their slaves. The New York Meeting took the same action the same year, that of Baltimore the year following, and that of Virginia in 1784. In the year 1787 no acknowledged Quaker held a slave. In this great reform the Quakers led entire Christendom.

William Vasey, the first rector of Trinity Church, New York, was succeeded, in 1746-1764, by Henry Barclay. He began his missionary work The among the Mohawk Indians in 1734. Episcopalians,

t    c Trinity

Three years later he was made rector of church. St. Peter’s, Albany, while still working ^N*^Y* among the Indians. In 1745 there were twenty-two churches in New York and New Jersey. St. George’s, in New York, was consecrated in 1752, and St. Paul’s in 1766. Dr. Auchmuthv was rector of Trinity Church 1764-1777; Dr. Inglis, 1777-1783; Samuel Provoost, 1784-1803. In these years came the dreaded storm of the Revolution. The members of the Church of England very generally sympathized with the mother country, and many of the clergy emigrated. Of course, there were many notable exceptions; the leaders among the laity of the South, of American birth, allied themselves with the cause led by Washington. In New

494 History of the Christian Church.

York this was true of Dr. Samuel Provoost, and of John Jay and Alexander Hamilton.

Yet the best authorties estimate that there were ninety thousand Royalists in the Colony of New York alone. When the British evacuated the city of New York in 1783, ten thousand left with them, and thirty thousand had preceded them to Nova Scotia. Forty thousand Tories had enlisted in the royal armies. The loss to the Church of England in members, wealth, and influence may be imagined.

_ln    In New Jersey, in 1770, there were thir-

New jers#y. teen missionaries and four churches. The Revolution wrecked this work.

The Church had made good progress in Philadelphia. Christ’s Church was finished in 1744, after seventeen years spent in its erection. The ^ln University of Pennsylvania was founded in

Pennsylvania.    '    .

1749. St. Peter s, Philadelphia, was built in 1761. Dr. Jacob Duche was rector of Christ’s Church, 1759-1776. Dr. Duche opened the first Continental Congress with prayer, September 4, 1774. July 20, 1775, the Continental Congress attended a service of fasting and prayer in Christ’s Church. Benjamin Franklin, Francis Hopkinson, and Robert Morris were vestrymen in this church. At this service Dr. Duche officiated. In 1776 he wrote to Washington, urging the cessation of hostilities, and then returned to England. Rev. William White, afterward Bishop White, was rector of Christ’s Church from 1779 until his death in 1836.

The aggressive Churches in the South in this period were the Baptists, and in the later decades the Methodists. In this section the Baptists showed first that

Christian Churches in America. 495

evangelistic zeal and fervor and success in gathering the people, which were to distinguish them so in the century following. The Ketokton Association of Virginia was formed in 1766, _the south, and the Kehukee Association of North Carolina in the year previous; that of Charleston was founded in 1790. Shubel Marshall and Daniel Stream were Baptist evangelists in Virginia and North Carolina, 1754-1760. In 1760-1770, in Virginia, Samuel Harris and John Walter organized separate Baptist Churches, but they were united again with the regular Baptists in 1787.

These statistics, otherwise dry, give some idea of the expanding activity of this most energetic American Church, in 1792. In Virginia there were 218 churches, 20,443 members; in North Carolina there were 94 churches, 7,503 members; in South Carolina there were 70 churches, 4,167 members; in Georgia there were 50 churches, 3,201 members. Daniel Boone’s brother, Squire Boone, was a Baptist, and so Baptists soon came into Kentucky. The first Baptist Church in that State was formed in Sexem’s Valley, June, 1781. In 1792 there were 42 churches and 3,095 members. In Tennessee, 21 churches and 900 members.

The first Baptist Church in Ohio was organized in 1790 by Stephen Gano, of Providence, at Columbia, now Cincinnati. Its first pastor was John Smith, senator of the United States. In 1797 there were four Baptist churches in the State. The Baptists were earnest, persistent, and successful agitators against the State Churches. They greatly aided in the disestablishment of that of Virginia in 1786, and those of

496 History of the Christian Church.

Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1833 and 1820. By the opening of the next century they may be said to be fairly launched on their career of conquest.

The storm of the Revolution left more permanent effects in the South than elsewhere, except in New York, in the Episcopal Church. The ma-

Episcopalians. j°^rity ^{of the cler}g>' left the country. After the war it was generally regarded as a British Church. It had little vigor or earnestness. Bishop White says: “In Maryland and Virginia, where the Church had enjoyed civil establishments, on the ceasing of these, the incumbents of the parishes, almost without exception, ceased to officiate. Further South the condition of the Church was not better, to say the least.” Rev. James Madison was elected Bishop of Virginia in 1790. From 1805 to 1812 no Diocesan Convention was held. Vacant parishes remained so for the lack of clergy. For many years there was only one ordination, and that was an unworthy one. In the Eastern States there were but two or three clergy officiating at the close of the Revolutionary War.

The one essential to an American Church was the raising up of American clergy, educated and ordained _The on this side of the ocean. This, of course, Founding of necessitated an American Episcopate. The ^a*Episcopaf^{n nee}d for this had long been recognized, but church, the English bishops would not act. The ^l784* refusal to Wesley had been the invariable refusal of the century. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had, in the years 1701-1776, maintained three hundred and ten ordained missionaries, in two hundred and two central stations, and expended

Christian Churches in America. 497

over a million dollars. But what the Church needed was not charity, but a chance for independent life.

Bishop Samuel Seabury, not a very important individual in intellect or character, saw this very clearly, and decided to have Episcopal consecration to an American See, by hook or by crook. After prolonged negotiations, and proceedings which often bordered on the ludicrous, he obtained consecration from the Scotch Nonjuring bishops at Aberdeen, November 14, 1784.

Fortunately there were in the Church wiser and abler men, though this consecration doubtless did stir up the English bishops to act. The pre- _Bishop eminent leader for the occasion was Rev. wuiiam William White, rector of Christ’s Church, ^w₀^h,t₀^e'

^?    . 1748-1836.

Philadelphia. Bishop White was born in Philadelphia, 1748, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1765. He was in England I77°~

1772, and was there ordained deacon and priest. Returning in the latter year, he at once became rector of Christ’s Church, which positioi. he held for the rest of his long life. Bishop White was sincere in his piety, and both moderate and evangelical in his religion. He was an ecclesiastical statesman, and the most influential Episcopal clergyman in America.

The first General Convention of the Church met September 26, 1785, at Philadelphia. Sixteen clergymen and twenty-four laymen were present, of whom ten of the clergy and fourteen of the laity were from Maryland and Virginia. October 10, 1786, the General Convention again met, and recommended White of Philadelphia, Provoost of New York, and Griffith of Virginia, for consecration to the American Episcopate. Bishops White and Griffith were consecrated at Lon-32

498 History of the Christian Church.

don, February 4, 1787. The General Convention which organized the Protestant Episcopal Church met at Philadelphia, July 28, 1789. It consisted of seventeen clergymen and sixteen laymen. The House of Bishops, of two, assembled October 10, 1789. The Convention adjourned October 16, 1789. The Convention which elected Bishops White, Provoost, and Griffith consisted of nine clergy and eleven laymen, and sat two days. Truly this was a day of small things.

In 1792, Bishop T. J. Claggett was consecrated the first Bishop of Maryland. North Carolina had no bishops until 1817. Robert Smith was elected Bishop of South Carolina, 1795-1801, but he never administered confirmation. Georgia was not even visited by a bishop until 1816. Dr. Piovoost was Bishop of New York, of the self-indulgent, easy-going kind, 17871801. Bishop Seabury died 1796, and Abraham Jarvis succeeded as Bishop of Connecticut, 1797-1813. Edward Bass was made Bishop of Massachusetts, 17971803. Among all these there was but one eminent man. That man was the founder, under God, of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America. That man was William White.

Though Lower California was discovered in 1536, the Spaniards did not occupy Upper California until The Roman ^l7⁶9- Then Father Juneperro Serra, an Catholic able and saintly man, went there to be at ^ChThe^h*    bead of its missions, 1769-1784. In

California 1769, Father Serra established the San Missions. j)j_eg₀ Mission; in 1771, the Monterey Mission; in 1771, July, the San Antonio; in 1771, August, the San Gabriel; in 1775, October, the San Juan Capistro; in 1775, September, the San Fran

Christian Churches in America 499

cisco; in 1777, January, Santa Clara, and also Santa Barbara. In 1773, Serra returned to Mexico; then there were five missions and nineteen Franciscans, and in five years there had been four hundred and ninety-one baptisms. The Spanish authorities in Mexico agreed to give each mission eight hundred dollars. In 1784 there were eight missions, and a Christian population of five thousand eight hundred. In 1800 there were eighteen missions, and fifteen thousand five hundred Christians. The work seemed to increase in prosperity. In 1822 there were twenty-one missions, thirty thousand six hundred Christians, sixty-one thousand five hundred horses, three hundred and twenty-one thousand cattle, and one hundred and twenty-two bushels of grain raised. The Mexican Revolution came, and destroyed it all. The Indians returned to savage life and paganism.

The mission buildings surrounded a quadrangle six hundred feet square. There were rooms for a military detail of five or six, a church, a convent for the fathers, a school for boys, and an- _MJ₈^on». other for girls, and the storehouses. The mission owned the land for a radius of twenty-five or thirty miles, which was used for tillage or grazing. Near the mission was the pueblo, or dwellings of the Christian Indians. At a distance so as not to interfere with the work of the mission, but near enough for protection, was the presidio, or garrison. This seemed a perfect arrangement; but it was wholly artificial, and when the military support was withdrawn the whole collapsed; there was no life in it. The friars had always kept the Indian a child; hence there could be no advance to Christian manhood. Much better

500 History of the Christian Church.

would it have been if secular clergy, in touch with human life, could have had charge of affairs, and all had thorough and vigilant episcopal inspection. This would have prevented quarrels with the political authorities, and kept them more true to their religious a^;m.

The growth of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States is mainly by immigration and the adhesion of the children of immigrants. The

Growth    . .

of the Roman tide of immigration from Roman Catholic

Catholic countries to the United States was small

Church.    .    .

during the eighteenth century; so the growth was small; but foundations were laid for the marvelous expansion of the next hundred years. In

1721 the first priest came to Pennsylvania, Father Greaton. The Jesuits established a school at Bohemia, in Pennsylvania, in 1745. Ten years later there were fourteen priests in Maryland.

Bishop Challoner, of London, who, through the Pope, had oversight of affairs in the British Colonies in 1756, wrote: “There are no missions in any part of our colonies except Maryland and Pennsylvania. Of the number of Catholics I have various accounts— from four to seven thousand. There are twelve missionaries in Maryland, and four in Pennsylvania, all of the Society of Jesus. These also assist some few Catholics in Virginia upon the borders of Maryland, and in New Jersey bordering upon Pennsylvania. As for the rest of the provinces—New England and New York, etc.—if there can be any straggling Catholics, they can have no exercise of their religion, as no priest ever comes near them.” Yet there were some men of influence among the Roman Catholics during the period

Christian Churches in America. 501

of our American Revolution. Thomas Fitzimmons, Thomas Sim Lee, and Daniel and Charles Carroll were Roman Catholics.

The Carrolls were the most notable Roman Catholic family in America. John Carroll, the first Roman Catholic Bishop in the United States, was born at upper Marlborough, Maryland. A year he studied at Bohemia, Pennsylvania, and then went to Europe. Six years he studied at St. Omer, and entered on his two years’ novitiate as a Jesuit. Then he was a student in the Jesuit College at Liege. At twenty-eight he was ordained to the priesthood. He was afterward professor in the Jesuit College at Bruges and Liege for fourteen years. For twenty-six years he had been in Europe, and probably would never have returned to his native land but for the fact that the Jesuits were suppressed in 1773. He made his home in Rockville, Maryland.

June 9, 1784, he was made Prefect Apostolic of the United States; the appointment did not reach him until November 26th, and was accepted by him February 27, 1785. Baltimore was chosen seat of the See, and John Carroll bishop, in 1789. The Pope’s Bull confirming the election bore date November 6, 1789. Carroll was consecrated at Lulworth Castle, August

^I79°- ^his was the beginning of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States. The Sulpicians in 1791 founded an ecclesiastical seminary at Baltimore. A site for a church was bought in Washington in 1794. The first Diocesan Synod was held in November, 1791. There were present twenty priests representing five different nationalities. There was not a building in New England fit to be called a church

502 History of the Christian Church.

at the end of the century. The Roman Catholic population was estimated at two hundred and forty-nine whites and four hundred and fifty Indians. The corner-stone of the first Roman Catholic church in Albany was laid in 1797. Roman Catholics from Maryland emigrated to Kentucky from 1774. The first church was erected at Pottingeer Creek in 1787. In 1796 there was not a Roman Catholic priest in all the Northwest Territory; that is, north of the Ohio and west of the mouth of Lake Erie. One was sent to Detroit during that year. Carroll estimated, in 1785, that there was a Roman Catholic population in Maryland of fifteen thousand eight hundred; in Pennsylvania, seven hundred; in Virginia, two hundred; in New York, one thousand five hundred.

The system of voluntary support, the strong con-nectional organization through the Synods and the coadjutor bishops, were elements of strength to the Church. The differences of nationality and of language were sources of weakness at first; but in the next century they were sources of strength, as the incoming tide of immigration was to make evident.

Chapter VIII.

THE AMERICAN CHURCH OF THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL.

The Evangelical Revival in America, as in Britain, had most beneficent indirect results. All the Churches except the Roman Catholic were greatly quickened by it. Those who opposed it were stirred up by it to zeal and good works. It had a wide influence for good beyond that which was religious in its character. Everywhere it raised the moral tone of the community, and increased in it the efficiency of all the forces which elevate a people in the scale of civilization. The results for this world which flowed from godliness in England under the labors of Wesley’s itinerants in transforming communities, were seen in America. Freeborn Garrettson says of a portion of Delaware, called Cypress Swamp: “When we first went among them, the people, their land and houses, with but few exceptions, were poor. What was worst of all, they were destitute of even the form of godliness. Many of them preferred fishing and hunting to cultivating the land. After the gospel came among them, religion spread rapidly, and they became industrious and happy; left off gambling, tilled their land, built houses, and attended to their spiritual interests, so that, after a few years, in retracing my footsteps in this country, I found that my younger brethren in the university who had succeeded me had been blessed in their la-

503

504 History of the Christian Church.

bors, and everything appeared to wear a different aspect. Experience had taught many that there is nothing like the gospel in its purity to meliorate both the temporal and spiritual condition of man.”

Those effects alone in America were so great as to make its influence this side of the ocean not inferior to that on the other; yet as in England the Great Revival found its concrete and permanent expression in the Wesleyan Church and its allied branches, so in America the product and representative of the Evangelical Revival is the Methodist Episcopal Church, and its numerous family of Churches allied in doctrine, worship, discipline, and spirit. It is the latest of those Churches whose adherents number millions. Though it is youngest, its missionaries are in all parts of the globe, and its bishops in their episcopal tours each year sail on every sea. Though it has the briefest history, it shows the largest increase won from non-Christian people. Though beginning among the lowly, it does not lack great characters nor great achievements. In romantic interest it is surpassed by no annals of Christian devotion, daring, and conquest since the days of the apostles.

The conquest of the North American Continent by European civilization and the Christian religion under the lead of the English race is the great achievement in the history of the world for the last four hundred years. The movement of the European peoples to the western shores of the Atlantic is the greatest migration of population which history anywhere records. In this age of transition and transformation there was necessity for an adoption of the methods whereby Christianity should reach and train the oeople, or else

The American Church.    505

its hold upon them would be forever lost. What student of history but must say that the power and influence of Christendom and the Christian Church has been immensely augmented by this conquest of American soil? To imagine the significance of this fact we have only to inquire what would be the outlook for the future if this conquest had been won for the yellow races, or for an Antichristian faith. It seems to be the decisive weight in the scales of the destiny of the world.

All Christian Churches have striven to adapt themselves to these changed conditions. This is the salient fact which adds interest and variety to the history of the Christian Church in the nineteenth century. The entire Church, and markedly in its most conservative branches, has seemed to pass from a static to a dynamic condition. There are few contrasts more illuminating than that between the condition of the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England at the close the eighteenth century and one hundred years later. We have to rub our eyes to assure ourselves of identity of being amid' such changed methods and conditions. Churches whose changes mean less to the historic traditions have been more than equally active, while new Churches and mongrel faiths and infidelities have arisen to contest the field; all of which proves that religion, Christianity, and the Christian Church are not dead or decaying, but are palpitating with intensest life to the farthest extremities. Only life has adaptations for more powerful and beneficent living; the dead change not.

For the forward movement toward the migrating hosts of the people taking possession of the soil of the

506 History of the Christian Church.

New World each historic Church has some special advantage. It might often be fellowship of race, or language, or previous association; it might be sympathy in thought, or worship, or in adaptation of government. If we grant all this, it still remains that the Methodist Episcopal Church, in this time and the next century, had peculiar fitness for the needs of this great mass of homeless home-makers in a new country.

First, then, it supplied a clergy and ordinances of Christian worship. Bishop Challoner said, in 1759, that if there were any straggling Roman Catholics in New England they can have no exercise of their religion, as no priest can ever come near them. That was true of many a community in regard to all Christian worship or Evangelical preaching. It is hard for us to realize what a life is where, for a score of years, there has been no religious worship. If, therefore, thoroughly trained men, a learned ministry, were the indispensable requisite for a Christian ministry, then the majority of these communities must, for more than the lifetime of the first generation, be without the gospel or the institutions and worship of the Christian religion. The Baptist and Methodist Churches met the situation squarely; they set to work and ordained men who were pious, and who had gifts if they did not have an education. Thus, and thus only, could the people be reached. All the schools in Christendom could not supply the demand for shepherds to these sheep in the wilderness whose need was indeed greatest. Before that time could come, the schools themselves by hundreds must be established.

The Methodist Episcopal Church and its descendants, while supplying a clergy for the people and for

The American Church.

the crisis, as did Francis of Assisi, and as did the apostles in the first age of the Church, exercised over them a constant supervision, and always incited to the possession of the largest intellectual acquirements attainable. It did this through its Book Concern and through its course of study. It also exercised an effective moral discipline over its members and its clergy. Its system of class-leaders formed at that time an admirable lay pastorate.

These workers went at their own expense. The people to whom they ministered were poor, and so were those who ministered to them.

Though poor, the new settlers were hos- poverty⁰ pitable, and the itinerant could be sure they would share with him of such as they possessed. For all the rest God must provide. When Francis Asbury came to Bristol to embark for America, he had not a penny for his expenses. Friends raised money for his passage; but during the voyage he had but two blankets, and no bed.

It was a man of equal devotion—Jesse Lee, the founder of Methodism in New England—who, in the discouragement of his second visit to Boston in 1790, wrote that he sold a magazine to discharge a board bill; and he says, “If I can always have two shillings by me, besides paying all I owe, I think I shall be satisfied.” Of course, men could not marry and, out of the proceeds of such a life, support a family. But even then the conditions were favorable; for land could be taken up, and the wife and children could live on it, cheered by the occasional visits of the husband and father. But the strain upon health and resources was great, and the most of the itinerants located in early

508 History of the Christian Church.

middle life. Often the rise in the value of the land they had taken up made them and their families comfortable, and even prosperous, in their old age. As-bury never married, but most of the itinerants had a home in their declining years. What treasure for the spread of Christ’s kingdom was their untiring zeal and unselfish devotion! Missionary societies with millions at command, could not have supplied their place. And such societies and such resources were as far from them as the stars. Only heaven was near, and the spiritual treasure-house was always open. These, with the support afforded at the settler’s table, enabled the Christian warfare to be carried on with no base of supplies and no thought of retreat.

Another peculiarity of this clergy for the wilderness was, they were a traveling ministry. They had great circuits of hundreds of miles in exitinerancy. ^{tent w}^^ere they visited the scattered settlements once in four or six weeks. They exchanged circuits once a year, or once in two years at the longest. In this way, dwelling on the great themes of the gospel and of human life and destiny, they became mighty preachers of the Word. Without knowing intimately the life of the individuals, they knew thoroughly the life of the people and of their own time. The men of moderate intellectual ability or resources could keep up to a more than ordinary level with this frequent change of scene, this varied experience with men, this constant public address— for they preached daily, if possible—and deep knowledge of the Bible and personal experience of the power of its truths and the value of its promises. This itinerancy was a systematic attempt to preach the gospel

The American Church.

509

to every creature so far as that was possible in the new communities of the South and West.

It would be difficult to conceive of any system of ministerial supply that, with such resources and men, could in so short a time produce such results. Of course, the keystone of the system was not only selfdenial, but obedience. This was the lesson of Asbury’s life, and this gave the Church he served a ministry of unparalleled efficiency. The discipline was strict; moral delinquencies were rare, but were never unpunished. The Church of which Asbury was the chief founder owes much to many means and agencies, but, under God, most to the heroism, the sacrifice, the obedience, and the unfaltering trust in God which characterized its early itinerant ministry in their endeavor to save men and overthrow the strongholds of the adversary. For it was a militant ministry, and if it knew hardships in the campaign, it knew victories such as added to the numbers and to the joys of the heavenly hosts. Even so calm and well-informed a writer as Judge Mellen Chamberlain, viewing the work from the earthly side, says, “Asbury and his itinerants saved to civilization the West and the South.”

In 1750, Wesley visited Ireland for the first time, and to the end of his life had a deep affection for its people. But even Wesley, in his most _{The Fir5t} enthusiastic moments, could hardly have American dreamed that the founders of Methodism in ^Metnod,sts* the New World would come from Ireland, or, if they did, that they should be Germans and not Irishmen. But so sober history outrivals the wildest romance. In 1758, Wesley records a visit to a colony of Germans at Court Mattrass and Ballygrane. They were de

510 History of the Christian Church.

scendants of emigrants from the Palatinate, of whom we before this have heard often. In the reign of Queen Anne, fifty years previous to this time, they had settled here. They were more industrious and more prosperous than their neighbors, but, having no minister and no church, had been thoroughly ungodly, and were most drunken and profane. They were reached by the Methodist itinerants, and a great reformation took place. Among these people at that time, Philip Embury was a local preacher. Two years later he, with two brothers and their families—Peter Switzer, probably his wife’s brother; Paul Heck, and Barbara Heck, his wife, cousins of Embury; and Valer Tettler, Philip Morgan, and a family of Dulmages—landed in New York, August 10, 1760.

Philip Embury was at this time thirty-two years of age, and had been married two years to Mary

Philip Switzer. He was a carpenter by trade.

Embury. In Ireland he had been a class-leader and 1728-1775. j_QCaj    [_n New York, while there

is no record of unworthiness of life, he had laid down the discharge of the duties connected with these offices. He might never have resumed them but for the indignant zeal and devoted love of his cousin, Barbara Heck. On visiting some friends in the fall of 1766, she found them, among whom was Paul Ruckle, her brother, playing cards. There is no evidence that any former Methodist was of the party. Barbara Heck, roused at the sight, and with the familiarity of long acquaintance, seized the cards, and threw them into the fire; then she warned them of their danger, and exhorted them to a different life. She went immediately to the house of Embury, told him what she

The American Church.

had done, and appealed to him to take up his neglected duties and begin to preach the gospel in this New World. He tried to excuse himself, but she insisted. At last he yielded, and she went out to collect the congregation. Four persons, with herself, made up the audience. After singing and prayer, Embury preached the first sermon delivered by a Methodist on American soil. Embury then and there formed the first Methodist class, of which, of course, he was the leader. Soon there were two classes of six or seven each. They met in private houses, and Embury preached in the almshouse.

In February, 1767, they were visited by Captain Thomas Webb, of the British Army, “a soldier of the cross and a spiritual son of John Wes- ^ _t> Thomas ley.” Webb was a zealous and earnest Webb, preacher, and with his fiery manner, and ^,724’¹⁷⁹⁶* always wearing his uniform, he attracted a crowd. Soon they were obliged to rent a rigging loft, eighteen by sixty feet. Embury and Webb preached here three times a week, but it would not hold half of the people who desired to hear.

Barbara Heck had pondered on these things in her heart. A woman of deep and fervent piety, she had taken them to God in prayer. She devised an economical plan for building the sorely-needed church. The society approved of it; and the First Methodist Church in America owed its plan and initiative to a devoted Christian woman. Captain Webb heartily seconded the enterprise, and gave thirty pounds. They leased a site on John Street, New York, in 176S, and bought it in 1770. The building was of stone, faced with blue plaster, and forty-two by sixty feet in size.

512 History of the Christian Church.

Embury worked on the structure, and made the pulpit with his own hands. The subscription for its erection contained the names of those representing the extremes of society, the Episcopal rectors, the leading families of the city, down to the female Negro slaves, who owned nothing, not even a surname. October 30, 1768, Embury dedicated the church, taking his text from Hosea x, 12. The city then had twenty thousand inhabitants. Captain Webb lent the society fifteen thousand dollars, and gave it the interest. He formed a class of seven members in Philadelphia in 1767 or 1768, and rented a sail-loft for them to worship in. When, in 1770, they purchased from the German Reformed St. George’s Church, which for fifty years was the largest place of worship owned by the Methodists in America, Captain Webb was the foremost in furnishing the funds.

In 1770, a parsonage was erected next to the church in New York. Embury had given his services, and soon after the parsonage was completed he removed to Camden, Washington County, New York. He was accompanied by Peter Switzer and other of his countrymen. While mowing in the field he injured himself so as to cause his death. His descendants, with Barbara Heck and her husband, emigrated to Augusta, Upper Canada, where she died in 1804. Numerous descendants of Embury and Heck are to be found on both sides of Lake Ontario. These humble and faithful people were the founders of Methodism in New York City and State and in Upper Canada.

Robert Strawbridge, an Irishman, who was born near the River Shannon, came to America in 1764 or

The American Church.    513

1765. Unlike Philip Embury, as he had been one of Wesley’s itinerants in Ireland, he at once began the same work here. Settling on Sam’s Creek, in Frederick County, Maryland, he opened _strawbrid*e. his own house for preaching, and formed in it a Methodist society. Soon after, about a mile from his home, he built the “log meeting-house” on Sam’s Creek. It was twenty-two feet square, and never had door, windows, nor floor. Then Strawbridge began itinerating. A typical Irishman of that time, he was fervent, fluent, and improvident. “During his life he was poor, and the family were often straitened for food; but he was a man of strong faith, and would say to them on leaving, 'Meat will be sent here to-day.’ ”

Such generosity was not entirely unappreciated. His neighbors turned in and cared for his crops in his absence. A friend later gave him the use of a farm during his life. In his last sickness he was cared for by one who had been converted under his ministry. In this friend’s orchard he was buried on a spot commanding a view of Baltimore and its environs.

Strawbridge founded Methodism in Hartford County, Connecticut, and in Baltimore, as well as in Frederick County, Maryland. The first native American Methodist preacher was won by his ministry. Richard Owen was for twenty years an industrious, earnest, and successful Methodist preacher, and dearly loved Strawbridge, whose funeral sermon he preached. Strawbridge was with Asbury’s itinerants, with his name in the Minutes of 1773 and 1775. But he could not brook the restrictions placed upon the preachers. He believed they should be free to administer the

33

514 History of the Christian Church.

sacraments, which course he followed, and so separated from Asbury. In the last year of the Revolutionary War, in 1781, he passed from labor to reward.

To these early itinerants and their flock came Captain Thomas Webb. Webb was used to command, and they needed a leader; he was rich and generous, and they needed help. He was a zealous and inspiring preacher, and able to command the attention of a crowd and to interest the most fastidious. President John Adams spoke of him as “the old soldier; one of the most eloquent men I ever heard; he reaches the imagination and touches the passions very well, and expresses himself with great propriety.” Thomas Webb had been with Braddock in his disastrous defeat. He had stormed the works at Louisburg, and there lost an eye and nearly his life. He had fought on the Plains of Abraham, and been there severely wounded. He heard Wesley preach, and was converted and joined the Methodists in 1765. His heart went out in this evangelistic work. After serving a time as barrack-master at Albany, he was retired on full pay, and at liberty to give his time as he had given his means. He founded Methodism in Jamaica, Long Island, and at Pemberton, Burlington, and Trenton, New Jeresy.

In 1769, an appeal came to Wesley from America for help. The Conference took up a generous collection, and sent out Richard Boardman and Joseph Pillmoor to the new work. Boardman was thirty-one years of age, and had been six years in the work. Under his preaching Mary Redfern was converted, and ten years after, when her celebrated son was born, she called his name Jabez from the text of that sermon. She was the mother of Jabez Bunting.

The American Church.    515

Pillmoor had been educated at Kingswood School, and preached in Cornwall and Wales. He was a man of fine presence, excellent administrative ability, and a good preacher. These two missionaries were successful in their work, alternating between New York and Philadelphia. In 1774, when the storm of the Revolution broke out, they both returned to England. Boardman traveled Irish circuits from his return until his death in 1782, except the year 1780, which he spent in London. Pillmoor re-entered the itinerancy in England; but when his name did not appear in Wesley’s Legal Hundred, he left the connection in 1785. Then he returned to America and took orders in the Episcopal Church. In this ministry he served in Philadelphia, New York, and again in Philadelphia until well on in the next century. He retained his love for the Methodists to the last, and was a friend of Asbury.

It needed men very different from these to found a Church in the New World. In I77L Wesley sent out Francis Asbury and Richard Wright. The latter labored here three years, and then returned to England. Asbury and his work will command our further attention. After advancing the cause for six years, Captain Webb sailed for England to secure re-enforcements. He pleaded the needs of America in the Leeds Conference of 1773, and Wesley sent out Thomas Rankin and George Shadford. Rankin came out to take charge of the work, and thus superseded Asbury. He was a Scotchman, born at Dunbar in 1738. After a serious inward struggle he entered the itinerancy in 1781. He traveled important circuits in England, Devon, Cornwall, the Dales, Epworth, and London,

516 History of the Christian Church.

and had accompanied Wesley on an evangelistic tour in the west of England. Rankin was a stern disciplinarian, without the least spirit of concession, and distasteful to Americans in his imperious manner. Undoubtedly his thorough methods were of value to the Church. The storm of the Revolution broke upon the country, and Rankin returned to England in 1778. He re-entered the itinerancy, and for two years preached in London. He seems always to have been highly valued by Wesley. In 1783 he became supernumerary, and such he remained until his death in 1810. The greatest fault of Rankin was his lack of understanding of, or appreciation for, Francis Asbury. A different man was George Shadford. He was born in 1739, ^and converted at the age of twenty-three. Four years later he entered the itinerancy, and five years after came to America. For three years he was in New York and Philadelphia, in 1776 in Virginia, and in 1777 in Baltimore. He returned to England in 1778. Re-entering the work in England, he was in the itinerancy 1779-1791. Then, on account of infirm health, he became supernumerary, and such remained, serving as a most useful and successful class-leader until his death in 1816. Before Shadford left for America, Wesley wrote him a characteristic letter, in which he said: “I let you loose, George, on the great continent of America. Publish your message in the open face of the sun, and do all the good you can.” Shadford sought to honor this advice. Personally no man whom Wesley sent from England was more lovable. He was the evangelist among them, and his work was greatly blessed in the immediate gathering of rich fruits.

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5i7

The Revolutionary War compelled Captain Webb to leave America. He retired to Portland Heights, Bristol. There he was assiduous in labors, and aided materially in building Portland cl^in Webb. Chapel, one of the finest edifices owned by Methodists in England, which was dedicated in 1792. No layman aided the work in America as did Captain Webb.

Wesley’s “Calm Address,” reflecting the views of Dr. Samuel Johnson on the taxation of the American Colonies, made the cause of which he was ^

The

the head extremely unpopular. All the Revolutionary English preachers except Asbury left the ^w“^r “^nd

T T    / A <    Methodism.

country. In June, 1776, Asbury had been arrested and fined five pounds. For ten months, from March, 1778, Asbury was secluded in the house of Judge White, of Delaware. He remained in retirement for the next two years until the war closed. During this period, almost the only gains for Methodism were in Maryland and Virginia, where the Episcopal Church was strong, and where these felt kindly toward the Methodists. Of course, other influences aided ; notably the high character and vigorous preaching of Freeborn Garrettson, and many a man like him. Though Wesley greatly injured his influence in the colonies, yet he did not scruple to tell unpleasant truths to the British Ministry, as witness his letter to Lord North, in which he says: “A High Churchman, the son of a High Churchman, bred up from my childhood in the highest notions of passive obedience and nonresistance, and yet, in spite of all my long-rooted prejudices, I can not avoid thinking these an oppressed people, who asked for nothing more than their legal

5i8 History of the Christian Church.

rights, and that in the most modest and inoffensive manner that the nature of the thing would allow. But, waiving this, I ask, Is it common sense to use force toward the Americans? Whatever has been affirmed, these men will not be frightened, and they will not be conquered easily. Some of our valiant officers say that ‘two thousand men will clear America of these rebels/ No, not twenty thousand, be they rebels or not, nor perhaps treble that number. They are strong; they are valiant; they are one and all enthusiasts; enthusiasts for liberty; calm, deliberate enthusiasts. In a short time they will understand discipline, and as well as their assailants. But you are informed ‘they are divided among themselves/ So was poor Rehoboam informed concerning the ten tribes; so was Philip informed concerning the people of the Netherlands. No; they are terribly united; they think they are contending for their wives, children, and liberty. Their supplies are at hand; ours are three thousand miles off. Are we able to conquer the Americans suppose they are left to themselves? We are not sure of this, nor are we sure that all our neighbors will stand stock still.”

Asbury sympathized with the colonists, yet would not take an oath contrary to his allegiance to the king. What he thought of Wesley’s “Calm Address” appears when he writes: “I am truly sorry that the venerable man ever dipped into the politics of America. My desire is to live in love and peace with all men; to do them no harm, but all the good I can. However, it discovers Wesley’s conscientious attachment to the government under which he lives. Had he been as zealous an advocate of the American cause! But some

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519

inconsiderate persons have taken occasion to censure the Methodists in America on account of his political sentiments/’

This unfavorable impression was deepened by Martin Rodda’s taking sides with a company of Tories in Delaware; and by the fact that Chauncey Clowe, a former Methodist, raised a company of Royalists, and sought to fight his way through to the British forces. They were attacked and cut to pieces. Clowe was taken and executed. Although only two of his company were Methodists, nevertheless it brought severe persecution upon Methodist preachers. Hartley, Wrien, Forrest, Garrettson, and others, were imprisoned ; Gatch was mobbed and tarred; Pedicord was attacked and seriously injured on the highway.

Nevertheless the work grew. When Asbury arrived at New York, there were six hundred members. In

1783, at the close of the war, there were nearly fourteen thousand members and eighty ministers. Of these members, more than twelve thousand were in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.

The preaching of the itinerants had not only won thousands, but had reached some of the wealthy and influential in this territory. Thomas White was Chief Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Delaware. He and his wife became devoted Methodists. Their home was Asbury’s refuge for the last three years of the Revolutionary War. The judge himself was arrested by light-horse patrol; but as no other charge was preferred against him than that of being a Methodist, after five weeks’ detention, he was released. He built a church near his house* called White’s Meeting-house. Judge White’s

520 History of the Christian Church.

friend, Judge Barrett, entertained and protected the Methodists, and built a chapel for them, known to this day as Barrett Chapel. It is built of brick, forty-two by forty-eight feet, and two stories high. Here Asbury and Coke met each other for the first time in 1784. Richard Bassett came to his friend Judge White while Asbury was there. At first he would not stay, but was soon so won by Asbury’s conversation that he invited him to visit him at his home at Dover. His wife was much disturbed when he told her; but he added, “It is not likely that he will come.” A little afterward, looking out of the window, he saw Asbury coming. Both the judge and his wife were converted, became stanch Methodists, and were lifelong friends of Asbury. Barrett was a wealthy man, having a residence at Dover and one at Wilmington, and a tract of six thousand acres at Bohemia Manor, a famous place for the entertainment of Methodist itinerants. There was built the Bethesda Chapel. Mr. Bassett was a member of the Convention which framed the Constitution of the United States, a senator in Congress, and governor of the State of Delaware. His only daughter became the wife of James Bayard, United States Senator from Delaware. Senator Bassett died in 1815.

Another Methodist of those times was Henry Dorsey Gough, who married the daughter of Governor Ridgely, and whose home, Perry Hall, was only twelve miles from Baltimore. Gough and his wife both knew the power of saving grace, and became earnest Methodists. Perry Hall was always open to itinerants. Mr. Gough was worth more than three hundred thousand dollars. He built a chapel near the Hall which was the first American Methodist church which had

The American Church.    521

a bell. His wife was ever a most devoted Christian. Her husband, through social influence, was drawn away, but was, after a time, won back by his devoted wife. Afterwards he would say, “O if my wife had ever given way to the world I should have been lost!” He was always generous in his charities. His only daughter became a devoted Methodist, and married into the Carroll family. Mr. Gough died in 1808. No woman in early Methodism left a higher name for devoted and consistent piety, social grace, and good sense than the mistress of Perry Hall, who entertained at her table the leading citizens of the State, but always had family devotions in the chapel, which she conducted herself if there were none others to do it.

But as the country had secured independence the time had come when the Methodists could no longer be held in subjection to religious destitution as in the days after the close of the Revolutionary War. We have read the words of Bishop White. Dr. H. M. Muhlenberg, the patriarch of the Lutheran Church, puts the matter very forcibly and convincingly in a letter to John Wade, an Episcopalian, when he says: “The further examination and ordination may be easily obtained, if not by a bishop, yet by a regular united Protestant ministry, which is the nearest related to your Episcopal Church. For it is my humble opinion that in the present critical juncture an examination and ordination of a regular Protestant ministry may do as well as an Episcopal one. And since there is yet no Episcopal jurisdiction established by law in the independent States of North America, why should congregations be left destitute of the necessary means of salvation, be neglected and destroyed, only for want

522 History of the Christian Church.

of an Episcopal ordination, which is but a piece of pious ceremony, a form of godliness empty of power, and may be of service where it is established by law, though it does not appertain to the essential parts of the holy function (ministry) itself? In the primitive Christian Church the ambassadors and ministers of Christ could impart extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost unto believing candidates by prayer and laying the hands upon them; but this prerogative is not continued; and while we may controvert forever about apostolical and episcopal succession, experience shows too plainly that neither episcopal, nor ministerial, nor presbyterial ordination doth impart any natural and supernatural gifts and qualities; otherwise we should not find so many counterfeited ministers, refined hypocrites, and grievous wolves in the Christian Church on earth.”

After the meeting at Barrett Chapel, messengers were dispatched in every direction to summon the Methodist itinerants to the Christmas Con-^Tconference^aS f^erence at Lovely Lane Chapel, in Baltimore. Freeborn Garrettson rode twelve hundred miles to convey the invitations. Jesse Lee received the summons, but could not attend. The Conference began the morning of December 24, 1784. There were nearly sixty members present. It continued in session ten days. Mr. Wesley’s letter was read. One passage was as follows:

“Here, therefore, my scruples are at an end; and I conceive myself at full liberty, as I violate no order and invade no man’s right by appointing and sending laborers into the harvest. I have accordingly appointed Dr. Coke and Mr. Francis Asbury to be joint

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superintendents over our brethren in North America; as also Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey to act as elders among them, by baptizing and administering the Lord’s Supper. If any one will point out a more rational and Scriptural way of feeding and guiding those poor sheep in the wilderness, I will gladly embrace it. At present I can not see any better method than that I have taken. It has indeed been proposed to desire the English bishops to ordain part of our preachers for America. But to this I object: (1) I desired the Bishop of London to ordain one only, but could not prevail. (2) If they consented, we know the slowness of their proceedings; but the matter admits of no delay. (3) If they would ordain them now, they would likewise expect to govern them. And how grievously would this entangle us! (4) As our American brethren are now totally disentangled both from the State and from the English hierarchy, we dare not entangle them again either with the one or the other. They are now at full liberty simply to follow the Scriptures and the primitive Church. And we judge it best that they should stand fast in that liberty wherewith God has so strangely made them free.”

Dr. Coke presided. Asbury was elected and ordained deacon on the 25th, and elder the 26th, and on the 27th of December, 1784, bishop, with the exception of some Moravian ordinations, the first episcopal ordination by an Evangelical Church in America. Asbury had been selected by Wesley for the place, but would not accept of it until elected by the brethren of the Conference. Ten elders were elected and ordained for the United States, two for Nova Scotia, and one for

524 History of the Christian Church.

the West Indies; four were elected to deacons’ orders who were not elected elders. Coke ordained Asbury, with the assistance of Whatcoat, Vasey, and Otter-bein. The Minutes of the Conference were bound up with the Hymnal and Wesley’s Order of Service. And now the new Church was fairly launched on its career. The Episcopal emoluments were not great, as Asbury’s salary was but sixty-four dollars a year.

Let us sketch the three Englishmen present at the Christmas Conference. Thomas Coke was the first bishop ordained; but as the Methodists ^e^^ectec^ before ordination, he was afterward unanimously chosen by the Conference with Asbury. Wesley used the terms elder instead of presbyter, and superintendent instead of bishop. The one term is but a translation of the other. Superintendent soon gave way to the shorter and more usual term bishop, but elder has remained. Coke ceased to exercise any episcopal authority after the General Conference of 1808. Yet, to most, Asbury appears as the first, as well as the greatest, of the early bishops.

Thomas Coke was no ordinary man. Eighteen times he crossed the Atlantic at his own expense. He founded the Wesleyan Mission in the West Indies. In himself he was a whole missionary society. He pleaded for the founding of a mission in India, but the Wesleyan Conference feared the expense. Coke bore it, thirty thousand dollars, from his own resources, and although he died on the voyage, he founded the Wesleyan Mission in India. Dr. Coke was small in stature, with a weak, feminine voice, but a great soul, a vivid imagination, and high administrative

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abilities. His position in relation to the Church was a most delicate one, and he discharged it as well as could be expected.

Richard Whatcoat, who came with Coke, was a man of rare spiritual mindedness. It was his spirit, his character, and bearing that impressed Richard the American Church. He was converted whatcoat. in 1758 at Wednesbury, and began to itin- '736-1806. erate in 1767. After his arrival in America he served as presiding elder thirteen years out of the sixteen before 1800. At the General Conference of that year he was elected bishop, receiving four votes more than Jesse Lee, a much greater man. Bishop Whatcoat soon succumbed to the hardships of such an episcopacy, and died at the home of Senator Barrett, at Dover, Delaware, in July, 1806. Laban Clark said of him, “If ever I knew a man who came up to St. James’s description of a perfect man—one who bridled his tongue and kept in subjection his whole body—that man was Bishop Whatcoat.”

Thomas Vasey was left an orphan. A wealthy uncle adopted him, but when he became a Methodist disinherited him. He entered the itinerancy Thomas in 1776. His work was in England and vasey. Wales until Wesley ordained him and sent ^f746-i8i6. him to America in 1784. Two years later he was ordained by Bishop White, of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Soon after he returned to England. Wesley recommended him to accept a curacy. In two or three years he tired of this, and longed for the itinerancy again. This he entered in 1789, and traveled for twenty-two years. Then for fifteen years he had

526 History of the Christian Church.

charge of the liturgical service at City Road Chapel. In 1826 he retired on a pension to Leeds, where he died that year, respected as a patriarch of Methodism.

Thus we have seen pass before us all the men Wesley sent to America. They were good men, but, except Dr. Coke, not remarkable men. One remained; and he, in toils and hardships, in successes and triumphs, in character and service rendered, ranks with the great men of the Christian Church. Francis As-bury was the apostle of his age and Church.

Asbury was born at Handsworth, Staffordshire, England. His father was a peasant, a farmer and Francis gardener to two of the wealthiest families Asbury. i_n the neighborhood. His mother was a 1745-1816. pj_{QUS WO}man, and both were Methodists. In his father’s barn at a service, when but thirteen, he felt his sins were forgiven. He had been, even as a boy, correct in habits and life. Being an only son, his father wished him to have an education; but his schoolmaster was so brutal in his treatment that Asbury preferred anything to being under his rule. When past thirteen he was apprenticed to a trade. He lived in his master’s family, and he says he was treated more as a son than as an apprentice. At seventeen he began to hold meetings, and joined Wesley’s itinerants in 1767. Four years later he came to America. The motto of his life and the spirit of his work are well expressed in words he wrote in 1773: “Trouble is at hand, but I can not fear while my heart is upright with God. I seek nothing but him, and I fear nothing but his displeasure.” In this spirit, as he worked, he saw the changes wrought in the moral life of communities. He says: “Men who neither feared God nor regarded man—

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swearers, liars, cock-fighters, card-players, horse-racers, drunkards, etc.—were now changed so as to become new men; and they are filled with the praise of God.” In his work he held the first Quarterly Conference ever held on American soil, in the Christmas week of 1772, among the Maryland Methodists at J. Pres-bury’s; and the first American Conference of itinerants at Philadelphia, July 14-16, 1773. In October, 1774, he preached in the new chapel at Lovely Lane, Baltimore, probably the first one completed in that city, although that of Strawberry Alley was first begun.

At his ordination to the episcopal office, Asbury was thirty-nine years old. He had been in America fourteen years, and through trial and danger had come, not only to know the people, but to have their respect. Asbury was of medium height, but well set up, and with a frame fitted to endure hardships. He had a fresh, pleasant countenance. As emphatically as Wesley, Asbury was born to command. He had the spirit and discipline of the soldier; his courage never failed, nor his generosity. He called no followers to hardship nor peril which he was not the first to share. On the other hand, his orders were given to be obeyed. Always gentle and kind, men knew he suffered no trifling and no evasion. There was about him a spirit of humility and sense of the Divine Presence that made men always regard him with reverential awe. His preaching was plain, practical, and with power.

In May, 1785, together with Coke, Asbury dined with Washington by appointment at Mount Vernon. Coke says Washington received them very politely, and was very open to access. “He is quite the plain country gentleman/’ They asked him to sign a pe

528 History of the Christian Church.

tition for the emancipation of the slaves, which he declined, but said if the Assembly of Virginia would take it into consideration, he would write to the Assembly on the subject. In 1789 the New York Conference was in session. That body voted an Address to Washington, then just inaugurated. The Address was signed by Coke and Asbury. It was presented and read by Asbury on May 29, 1789. Washington replied to it in fitting terms. This was the first recognition of the newly-constituted National Government by any religious body.    .

Bishop Asbury has, in his Journal, left us an account of his journeys, and references to the hardships and perils which he encountered. In 1788

the itinerant’s ^crossed the Alleghanies from Georgia

Life. into Tennessee, and there he describes his experiences. On April 28, 1788, he says: “After getting our horses shod we made a move for Holstein, and entered upon the mountain; the first of which I called Steel, the second Stone, and the third Iron Mountain. They are rough and difficult to climb. We were spoken to on our way by most awful thunder and lightning, accompanied by heavy rain. We crept for shelter into a little dirty house, where filth might have been taken from the floor with a spade. We felt the want of fire, but could get little wood to make it, and what we gathered was wet. At the head of Watauga we fed, and reached Ward’s that night. Coming to the river the next day, we hired a young man to swim over for the canoe, in which we crossed, while our horses swam to the other shore. The waters being up, we were compelled to travel an old road over the mountains. Night came on. I was ready to faint with

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a violent headache. The mountain was steep on both sides. I prayed to the Lord for help. Presently a profuse sweat broke out upon me, and my fever entirely subsided. About nine o’clock we came to Grear’s. After taking a little rest here, we set out next morning for Brother Coxe’s, on Holstein River. I had trouble enough. Our route lay through the woods, and my pack-horse would neither follow, lead, nor drive, so fond was he of stopping to feed on the green herbage. I tried to lead, but he pulled back. I tied his head up to prevent his grazing, and he ran back. The weather was excessively warm. I was much fatigued, and my temper not a little tried. I fed at I. Smith’s, and prayed with the family. Arriving at the river, I was at a loss what to do, but providentially a man came along who conducted me across. This has been an awful journey to me, and this a tiresome day; and now, after riding seventy-five miles, I have thirty-five more to General Russell’s. I rest one day to revive man and beast.”

Yet in this life there were high rewards. Asbury describes the conversion of the sister of Patrick Henry and her husband, General Russell. They continued lifelong Methodists, and their house was the itinerant’s home for all that part of the Great West. “As the road by which Bishop Asbury was to come was,” he says, “infested w^Tith hostile savages so that it could not be traveled except by considerable companies,” he was detained for a week after the time appointed to commence it. “But we were not idle; and the Lord gave us many souls in the place where we were assembled, among whom were General Russell and lady, the latter a sister of the illustrious Patrick Henry. I mention

34

530 History of the Christian Church.

these particularly, because they were the firstfruits of our labors at this Conference. On the Sabbath we had a crowded audience, and Tunnell preached an excellent sermon, which produced great effect. His discourse was followed by a number of powerful exhortations. When the meeting closed, Mrs. Russell came to me and said: ‘I thought I was a Christian; but, sir, I am not a Christian. I am the veriest sinner upon earth. I want you and Mr. Maston to come with Mr. Tunnell to our house and pray for us, and tell us what we must do to be saved/ So we went, and spent much of the afternoon in prayer, especially for Mrs. Russell. But she did not obtain comfort. Being much exhausted, the preachers retired to a pleasant grove, near at hand, to spend a short time. On returning to the house we found Mrs. Russell praising the Lord, and the general walking the floor and weeping bitterly. At length he sat down, quite exhausted. This scene was in a high degree interesting to us. To see the old soldier and statesman, the proud opposer of godliness, trembling, and earnestly inquiring what he must do to be saved, was an affecting sight. But the work ended not here. The conversion of Mrs. Russell, whose zeal, good sense, and amiableness of character were proverbial, together with the penitential grief so conspicuous in the general, made a deep impression on the minds of many, and numbers were brought in before the Conference closed. The general rested not until he knew his adoption; and he continued a faithful and an official member of the Church, constantly adorning the doctrine of God our Savior unto the end of his life/’

In 1792 he speaks of perils of the wilderness. They were ever present. Barnabas McHenry, one of the

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early itinerants of Kentucky, records that once he was staying over night in a log cabin. After the family had retired he spent two or three hours reading. The next day the Indians came and murdered the whole family. They afterwards said that they came the previous night, but finding the door open, and seeing a light, they thought the inmates were prepared for an attack, and resolved to await a more fitting opportunity. As-bury sometimes refers to experiences born of these perils, as in the following passage from his Journal: “Next night we reached the Crab Orchard. There thirty or forty people were compelled to crowd into one mean house. We could get no more rest here than in the wilderness. We came the old way by Scragg’s Creek and Rock Castle, supposing it to be safer, as it was a road less frequented, and therefore less liable to be waylaid by the savages. My body by this time was well tired. I had a violent fever and pain in the head, such as I had not lately felt. I stretched myself on the cold ground, and, borrowing clothes to keep me warm, by the mercy of God I slept five hours. Next morning we set off early, and passed beyond Richland Creek. Here we were in danger, if anywhere. I could have slept, but was afraid. Seeing the drowsiness of the company, I walked the encampment, and watched the sentries the whole night. Early next morning we made our way to Robinson’s Station. We had the best company I ever met with, thirty-six good travelers and a few warriors; but we had a pack-horse, some old men, and two tired horses. These were not the best part. Saturday, May 5th, through infinite mercy, we came safe to Crabb’s. Rest, poor house of clay, from such exertions! Return, O my soul, to thy rest!”

532 History of the Christian Church.

Once he records: “Brothers Phoebus and Cook took

to the woods. Old - gave up his bed to the

women. I lay along the floor on a few deerskins with the fleas. That night our poor horses got no corn, and next morning they had to swim across the Monon-gahela.” Again he says: “Frequently, indeed, we were obliged to lodge in houses built with round logs and open to every blast. Often we rode sixteen or eighteen miles without seeing a house or a human creature, and often were obliged to ford deep and dangerous rivers and creeks. Many times we ate nothing from seven in the morning until six in the evening, though sometimes we took our repast on stumps of trees near some spring of water.”

It seems almost a paradox to speak of habits in such a changeful life. But Asbury had religious habits, and his religious life did not lessen in inhabits.* tensity or fervor. Asbury was a man of prayer. He prayed in all his pastoral visits. He prayed after each meal in all families or taverns wherever he stopped. For years he prayed for each of his preachers by name daily. At every Conference he prayed privately over each name on the list of appointments. On his rides he prayed ten minutes each hour, and he records there were few minutes in the day in which his thoughts were not absorbed in prayer. He fasted every Friday, besides going without food from early morning until late in the evening several days in almost every week. Doubtless this habit of prayer, this habitual converse with God, was the source of that reverential respect which was always felt toward Asbury.

But Asbury, like all others, paid the penalty of abus-

The American Church.    533

ing his body through these constant hardships and his continual overwork. He rode over the worst of roads thirty, forty, or fifty miles a day. Almost daily he preached and led classes, visiting from house to house. He held frequent and laborious sessions of Conferences, and a correspondence of a thousand letters yearly. For the most of the year his fare was that of the log cabin, with no other luxury than tea, which he always carried with him and prepared himself. In the midst of these labors he had almost continual sickness, chills, fevers, and rheumatism. This ill-health and these excessive labors caused his constitutionally melancholy temperament to become morbidly so, and to deepen with his years. His only relief was unresting, tireless work.

In the midst of these labors he had no material reward. Once he says: “I have served the Church upwards of twenty-five years in Europe and _Hisp_overty America. All the property I have gained and is two old horses, the constant companions ^Generosity* of my toil, six if not seven thousand miles every year. When we have no ferry-boats, they swim the rivers. As to clothing, I am nearly the same as at first; neither have I silver nor gold nor any other property.” His horses and carriages were given him by his friends. His donations of every kind he shared with his needy preachers. At one of the early Western Conferences, seeing the needs of the itinerants, he gave away his watch, his coat, and his shirts. A friend asked him to lend him fifty pounds. The bishop wrote: “He might as well have asked me for Peru. I showed him all the money I had in the world, twelve dollars, and gave him five.” Is it any wonder that such prayers, such labors,

534 History of the Christian Church.

such self-denial, such generosity, prevailed ? Is it strange that American Methodists reverence his character, and that countless churches, worth in the aggregate millions of dollars, bear his name ?

The rest of the leading itinerants of that generation were men born in America. They had little scholarship, but were mighty in prayer and in labor unwearied. They laid the foundation of the Church in America born of the Evangelical Revival. Only a few of these can be mentioned, but these were no ordinary men.

William Watters was the first American itinerant. He had the indispensable qualification for that work, wuiiam ^a religious experience. He was born in Watters. Baltimore County, Maryland. His parents

1751-1833. _were members of the Church of England, and he was religiously brought up. In his own words he shall tell of his life before his conversion, of that great religious change, and of his call to preach.

Of his early life he says, “I well remember to have been under serious impressions at various times;” but when about twelve or fourteen years old he took, he says, “great delight in dancing, card-playing, horse-racing, and such pernicious practices, though often terrified with thoughts of eternity in the midst of them. Thus did my precious time roll away while I was held in the chains of my sins, too often a willing captive of the devil. I had no one to tell me the evil of sin, or to teach me the way of life and salvation. The two ministers in the two parishes, with whom I was acquainted, were both immoral men, and had no gifts for the ministry. If they received their salary, they appeared to think but little about the souls of the people. The blind were evidently leading the blind, and it was by the mere mercy of God that we did not all fall into hell together.” * When sixteen or seventeen years of age he was considered by his associates “a very good Christianbut he thought of himself quite otherwise. “It was,” he says, “my constant practice to attend the church with my prayer-book, and often to read my Bible and other good books, and sometimes I attempted to say my prayers in private. Many times, when I have been sinning against God, I have felt much inward uneasiness, and often, on reflection, a hell within, until I could invent something to divert my mind from such reflections. Hence, strange as it may appear, I have left the dancing-room to pray to God that he might not be offended with me, and have then returned to it again with as much delight as ever.”

His conversion was a typical one, and he thus describes it. The next day he was unfit for any business: he spent It in retirement: “I refused to be comforted but by the Friend of sinners. My cry was, day and night, ‘Save, Lord, or I perish; give me Christ, or else I die!’ In this state I loved nothing better than weeping, mourning, and prayer, humbly hoping, waiting, and longing for the coming of the Lord. For three days and nights, eating, drinking, and sleeping in a measure fled from me, while my flesh wasted away and my strength failed in such a manner that I found it was not without cause that it is asked, ‘A wounded spirit, who can heal it ?’ Having returned in the afternoon from the woods to my chamber, my eldest brother (at whose house I was), knowing my distress, entered my room with all the sympathy of a brother and a Christian. To my great astonishment he informed me that God had that day blessed him with his pardoning love. After giving me all the advice in his power, he kneeled down with me, and with a low, soft voice (which was frequently interrupted by tears), he offered up a fervent prayer to God for my present salvation.” He received “a gleam of hope,” but was not content with it. The next day several “praying persons,” who knew his distress, visited him. He requested them to pray with him, and the family was called in, though it was about the middle of the day. “While they all joined in singing, my face,” he says, “was turned to the wall, with my eyes lifted upward in a flood of tears, and I felt a lively hope that the Lord, whom I sought, would suddenly come to his temple. My good friends sang with spirit and in faith. The Lord heard, and appeared spiritually in the midst of us. A divine light beamed through my inmost soul, and in a few minutes encircled me, surpassing the brightness of the noonday sun. Of this divine glory, with the holy glow that I felt within my soul, I have still as distinct an idea as that I ever saw the light of the natural sun, but know not how fully to express myself so as to be understood by those who are in a state of nature, unexperienced in the things of God; for ‘the natural man re-ceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned.’ My burden was gone, my sorrow fled, all that was in me rejoiced in hope of the glory of God; while I beheld such fullness and willingness in the Lord Jesus to save lost sinners, and my soul so rested in him, that I could now, for the first time, call Jesus Christ ‘Lord by the Holy Ghost given unto me.’ The hymn being concluded, we all fell upon our knees; but my prayers were all turned into praises.”

In 1771, at twenty-one, he began to preach. His departure from home and his definite decision to enter the itinerancy he thus records: Many of his friends “wept and hung around him; but,” he adds, “I found such resignation and so clear a conviction that my way was of the Lord, that I was enabled to commit them and myself to the care of our Heavenly Father in humble confidence that, if we never met again in this vale of tears, we should soon meet where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. Calling at one of my brothers’ on my way to take my leave of them, at parting my fortitude seemed all banished, and I was so exceedingly affected that it was with the greatest difficulty I could find any utterance to commit them in prayer to the Divine protection. O for a continual preparation to meet where all tears shall be wiped away ! Even so, Lord Jesus. Amen.”

For the next eleven years he was a tireless and successful itinerant. One year he preached in New Jersey, the rest of the time in Maryland and Virginia, mainly in Virginia, where he was welcomed and refreshed by that friend of the Methodist itinerants, Rev. Devereux Jarratt. Through all the Revolutionary War, as he readily took the oath of allegiance, he was unmolested. In those years of trial he was a peacemaker, and exerted his great influence to hold the societies together, and prevent a division over the question of administering the sacraments. In 1783 he was compelled to locate. Watters was married, and had need to care for his family. In these years he preached constantly as a local preacher, often forty miles from home, and had the undiminished love and confidence of his brethren.

In 1801 he again entered the itinerancy. Preaching at Georgetown, Alexandria, and Washington, his ministry was blessed with great revivals until 1806, when he finally located on a farm in Virginia, across the Potomac from Georgetown. William Watters enjoyed the experience of perfect love, and was one of the holiest men in the early ministry. He was a lifelong friend of Bishop Asbury. In his old age he says, “I rejoice that I was permitted to hear him preach and to be his guest; to eat at his table; to sit at his fireside; to enjoy his friendship and hospitality/’ He died full of years in 1833. William Watters was not a great man; but would that all his successors in the itinerancy in America were as pure in character, as saintly in life, and as successful in winning men to God!

Freeborn Garrettson was a man of a larger mold and of equal devotion. He was descended from the Freeborn ^^{rst sett}l^ers of Maryland, and owned lands Garrettson. and slaves. He had been religiously

1752-1827. bought up by his parents, who were strict members of the Church of England. Before he was ten years old he had strivings of the Spirit. The influence of the Methodist revival reached him. A lay Methodist talked with him, and he began to be serious in his thought and conduct. He heard the itinerants Asbury, Watters, Webster, Rollins, and others. Shad-ford’s preaching shook his foundation of a moral life. Hearing Daniel Ruff he was powerfully convinced, so that on riding home he dismounted from his horse and began to pray. He prayed for forbearance that he might find a more convenient season. But during his ride he was overwhelmed with a sense that now is the accepted time and this is the day of salvation.

He says: “I threw the reins of my bridle on the horse’s neck, and, putting my hands together, cried out, ‘Lord, I submit!’ I was less than nothing in my own sight, and was now, for the first time, reconciled to the justice of God. The enmity of my heart was slain, the plan of salvation was open to me. I saw a beauty in the perfection of the Deity, and felt that power of faith and love that I had been a stranger to. My soul was so exceeding happy that I seemed as if I wanted to take wing and fly to heaven.”

Arriving home, he called the family together for prayer. A few days after, at family prayers, he gave freedom to his slaves. He says: “Till then I had never suspected that slave-keeping was wrong. I had never read a book on the subject, nor been told so by any one. It was God, not man, that taught me the impropriety of holding slaves, and I shall never be able to praise him enough for it. My very heart has bled since that time for slaveholders, especially those who make a profession of religion; for I believe it to be a crying sin. After he had given his slaves liberty, they all knelt before their common God as his common children. Garrettson says: “A divine sweetness ran through my whole frame. Had I the tongue of an angel I could not describe what I felt.”

He immediately began to hold meetings. He was mobbed and summoned to drill as a soldier. When carried before the officer, he told his experience, and, sitting on his horse, exhorted with tears a thousand people. He was dismissed with a small fine, which he was not called upon to pay. This was in 1775, and that year he began his ministry. In 1776 he was received on trial in the Conference. The next three years he preached in Virginia and Maryland until he was mobbed in June, 1778.

Being unmolested in the congregation he deemed himself safe, notwithstanding he had been threatened privately with imprisonment. But on riding away he was met by an opposer, formerly a judge of the county, who struck him on the head with a bludgeon. The itinerant attempted to escape, but was overtaken by the swifter horse of his assailant, and, struck again, fell senseless to the ground. He was carried to a neighboring house and bled by a person who, passing by, providentially had a lancet. It was supposed he could live but a few minutes. “The heavens,” he writes, “seemed in a very glorious manner opened, and by faith I saw my Redeemer standing on the right hand of the Father pleading my cause. I was so happy that I could hardly contain myself.” The ruffian who assailed him seemed to relent, and sat by his bedside listening to his exhortations, and offered to carry him in his own carriage wherever he wished to go. The itinerant was cited, however, before a magistrate, who boisterously charged him with violating the laws. “Be assured,” replied Garrettson, “this matter will be brought to light in an awful eternity.” The pen dropped from the magistrate’s hand, and the preacher was allowed to retire. Taken into the carriage by the friendly passenger who had bled him, he was safely borne away, and that night was again preaching in a private house, though his bed was his pulpit. He suffered very little opposition in the county afterward. The next day he rode many miles, and preached twice, his “face bruised, scarred, and bedewed with tears.” His hearers were deeply affected, and his own soul was triumphant with grateful joy that he could suffer for Christ. “It seemed,” he writes, “as if I could have died for him.” In a few days he returned courageously to the place of his sufferings, and preached to a numerous and deeply-affected concourse of people. He had conquered the field.

Garrettson tells of the experience of another Methodist preacher, Hartley, “a dear, good man and excellent preacher. The rulers laid hands on him, and confined him in Talbot jail; but he preached powerfully through the window. The blessed God owned his word, and he was instrumental in raising a large society. He was confined a long time, till finally they thought he might as well preach without as within jail. Shortly after he was set at liberty he married a pious young lady and located. He did not live many years; but while he did live he was very useful, and adorned his Christian and ministerial character. He died in the Lord, and went to glory.”

In the fall of 1778, Garrettson began his fifteenth month of ministry in Delaware, and there again was mobbed. He returned to Salisbury to learn that a mob awaited him to send him to jail. It consisted of the first people of the county. The previous night they had attacked the house where he usually lodged, but, not finding him, seized its head and dragged him down the chamber stairs, and along the streets, injuring him so seriously that he would probably have perished, had not a magistrate rescued him. Garrettson’s brethren insisted upon his immediate departure. “I have come,” he replied, “to preach my Master’s gospel, and I am not afraid to trust him with body and soul. . . . Many came out to hear me: I understood that the mob sent one of their company to give information of the most convenient time to take me. While I was declaring, ‘The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished/ the heart of the spy, who sat close to me, was touched, and the tears ran plentifully down his face. After service he returned to his company, and told them I had preached the truth, and if they laid hand on me, he would put the law in force against them. They withdrew to their homes without making the slightest attempt upon me. O who would not confide in so good a God! After our blessed meeting was over I rode three miles, and had a pleasant time with a few of my friends. Glory be to God, he is carrying on a gracious work about this place! All this week I spent in preaching and visiting the young societies.” In 1780 he was sent to New Jersey. In the fall he was back in Delaware, and was not only mobbed, but imprisoned.

Henry Airy was a gentleman of influence and a magistrate. Garrettson visited Airy’s home, and preached with great effect. The lady of the house and many of the black servants were converted. After spending many days with them, he resumed his journey, accompanied by Airy, but was attacked on the highway by a mob, who beat his horse, and clamorously assailed him with blasphemies. After dark they bore him before the magistrate, who ordered him to prison. Airy and some of his friends started on before toward the jail. As his assailants were conducting Garrettson along the highway, a sudden flash of lightning dispersed them, and he was left alone. “I was reminded/’ he says, “of that passage of Scripture where our Lord’s enemies fell to the ground; and then this portion of the Scripture came to me, ‘Stand still, and see the salvation of God.’ It was a very dark, cloudy night, and had rained a little. I sat on my horse alone, and though I called several times, there was no answer. I went on, but had not got far, before I met my friend Airy, returning to look for me. He had accompanied me throughout the whole affair. We rode on, talking of the goodness of God, till we came to a little cottage by the roadside, where we found two of my guards almost frightened out of their wits. I told them if I was to go to jail that night, we ought to be on our way, for it was getting late. ‘O no/ said one of them, ‘let us stay until the morning/ My friend and I rode on, and it was not long ere we had a beautiful clear night. We had not gone far before the company collected again, from whence I know not. However, they appeared to be amazingly intimidated, and the leader rode by the side of me, and said, ‘Sir, do you think the affair happened on our account?’ I told him that I would have him judge for himself; reminding him of the awfulness of the day of judgment, and the necessity there was of preparing to meet the Judge of the whole earth. One of the company swore an oath, and another immediately reproved him, saying, ‘How can you swear at such a time as this?’ At length the company stopped, and one said, ‘We had better give him up for the present;’ so they turned their horses, and went back. My friend and I pursued our way. True it is ‘The wicked are like the troubled sea, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.’ We had not gone far, before they pursued us again, and said, ‘We can not give him up.’ They accompanied us a few minutes, again left us, and we saw no more of them that night.” The next day, Sunday, they reappeared, twenty in number, headed by an aged man “with locks as white as a sheet,” and a pistol in his hand. They seized the evangelist while he was preaching. He was borne away to Cambridge jail, where, during a fortnight, “I had,” he says, “a dirty floor for my bed, my saddlebags for my pillow, and two large windows open, with a cold east wind blowing upon me; but I had great consolation in my Lord, and could say, ‘Thy will be done/ During my confinement here, I was much drawn out in prayer, reading, writing, and meditation. The Lord was remarkably good to me, so that I experienced a prison to be like a paradise; and I had a heart to pray for my worst enemies. My soul was so exceedingly happy, I scarcely knew how my days and nights passed away. The Bible was never sweeter to me. I never had a greater love to God’s children. I never saw myself more worthy. I never saw a greater beauty in the cross of Christ; for I thought I could, if required, go cheerfully to the stake in so good a cause. Sweet moments I had with my dear friends, who came to the prison window. Many, both acquaintances and strangers, came to visit me from far and near, and I really believe I never was the means of doing more good for the time; for the country seemed to be much alarmed, and the Methodists among whom I had labored, to whom I had written many epistles, were much stirred up to pray for me. The word of the Lord, spread through all that country, and hundreds both white and black, have experienced the love of Jesus. Since that time, I have preached to more than three thousand people in one congregation, not far from the place where I was imprisoned, and many of my worst enemies, have bowed to the scepter of our sovereign Lord.”

He then preached on Baltimore Circuit, and in 1781 traveled about five thousand miles in Virginia and North Carolina. In the years until the Christmas Conference in 1784, he preached in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. From that Conference, he was sent to Nova Scotia, and there, amid innumerable hardships and exposures, with great success, he itinerated until the spring of 1787. Over seven hundred members in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were the fruits of the labors of these years. Returning from Nova Scotia, with the expectation of going back to that field of labor, he was sent down the peninsula between the Delaware and the Potomac Rivers, and later became the founder of Methodism in the valley of the Hudson. There Governor Van Cortland, who inherited the manor of that name, and who was Lieutenant-Governor of the State of New York for eighteen years, became a Methodist, and a friend of Asbury as well as of Garrettson. Garrettson became acquainted with the prominent families of that valley, and married Catherine Livingston, a daughter of one of the most influential of them. In his beautiful house at Rhine-beck, he gladly entertained his fellow itinerants. From the Hudson Valley, Methodism spread through the Mohawk country and the region south. Garrettson was always a powerful evangelist. From 1818 to 1825 he was a Conference missionary. He died in 1827, having been one of the most influential men in American Methodism; and having spent fifty-two years in the ministry.

Jesse Lee, next to Asbury, was the most influential leader in the movement of the Methodist Revival of this period. He was the Apostle of Meth-1758-1816. odism in New England, and was the first to write a history of Methodism. Lee was born in Prince George County, Virginia. His parents were attendants upon the services of the Church of England. In 1773 they were converted and joined the Methodists, and Jesse Lee had the same experience and joined the same fellowship. In 1776 he entered into the rest of perfect love. In 1777 he removed to North Carolina, and took up the work of a class-leader. Two years later he preached his first sermon. In 1780 he began to serve a circuit as a supply. Being drafted into the Continental Army broke up his work. Lee, from religious scruples, refused to bear arms. Finally it was arranged that he should serve as a teamster. After four months of service, in which he ceased not to preach at every opportunity, he was released.

Lee had received a fair education, and had been instructed in the Catechism and Prayer-book. For this work, now opening before him, he had rare gifts. He sang well. His voice was of unusual compass and sweetness. As a popular preacher his pathos, his humor, his power to command an audience, made him rarely equaled. He entered the work in North Carolina in 1782, and was admitted to Conference the next year. Though not at the Christmas Conference in

1784, yet soon after he accompanied Bishop Asbury in a trip through the South. He served in work on cirucits in North Carolina, Maryland, and New Jersey until 1789. At this time he opposed the movement making the emancipating of slaves compulsory among the Methodists. Then he was appointed to Norfolk, Connecticut. At once he took the whole of New England for his field. For the next eleven years he labored in New England, though in the last four making tours in the South with Bishop Asbury. The prevalent Calvinism, the reaction from the revivals of Whitefield and Tennent, the rationalistic tendency in Eastern Massachusetts, the influence of a State Church, the cool, intellectual, and argumentative character of the people, made the work of Lee at first peculiarly slow and trying. In seven months of daily preaching he had formed two classes with five members. Only the more unweariedly he went on. In sixteen months he had traveled, he says, some thousands of miles, preached in six States, and in the chief part of the large towns in New England. In 1790 two churches were erected in Connecticut, and June 26, 1791, the society formed in Lynn the February previous dedicated the first Methodist church in Massachusetts. On the 13th of July, 1792, he organized the first Methodist society in Boston. The next month there was held at Lynn the first Annual Conference in New England. In 1793 his time was chiefly given to Maine. Thus, by unexampled labors and undaunted faith, in eleven years he had thoroughly founded and secured a place for the Methodist Episcopal Church in New England. At the close of the century he saw in New England six thousand Church members and fifty itinerant preachers. Garrettson, Asbury, and many others aided in this work; but Jesse Lee was, through all these years, the acknowledged leader. In 1808 he revisited the scenes of these days of trial and triumph, preaching in June, July, August, and September, in all the New England States. This tour, in its crowded audiences and spiritual triumphs, reminds us of those of Wesley in his

543 History of the Christian Church.

later years. The remainder of the life of Jesse Lee was spent in the South, or the Southern Middle States, as pastor and presiding elder.

He was manly and independent. In antagonizing important sections of the Church on important questions he prevented his election to the Episcopacy. He believed in the election of presiding elders, and he did not believe in the ordination of local preachers; yet he was ever the trusted adviser and largely influential in the councils of the Church. In 1812 and 1813 he was elected chaplain of the House of Representatives at Washington, and in 1814-1816 chaplain of the Senate of the United States. Jesse Lee attended the funeral of Bishop Asbury, and a few months after passed from the toils of the itinerancy to the triumphs of God’s elect.

The most striking historic scene in the records of the Methodist itinerants of this period is the sermon of Jesse Lee in Boston. When its surroundings and the after results of the movement are taken into account, it is a companion picture to Wesley’s preaching in the Epworth churchyard. Near the center of Boston Common stood a large elm. Beneath its widespread branches in the afternoon of July 9, 1790, Jesse Lee took his stand upon a table. While he sang a hymn, four persons drew near. Then he prayed and with such signal fervor as to win the interest of all within hearing. Afterward he opened a small Bible and preached. Three thousand persons formed his audience at the close. Thomas Ware, who heard him, said it was the generally-expressed opinion of the crowd that “such a man had not visited New England since the days of Whitefield.” A comparison of the work of the two evangelists would be interesting. It could not be made to the disparagement of either, but certainly that of Lee is not the less enduring.

James O’Kelley (1757-1826) was a sincere and devoted Christian, an able preacher, and a trusted leader. In the Conference of 1791 he objected to ₀Keiiey'* Asbury’s power to fix the appointments of Secession, the preachers, and proposed a resolution ^,792-,79S* that a preacher who felt aggrieved might appeal to the Conference. When it failed, O’Kelley left. The same subject came up in the General Conference of 1792. Here also O’Kelley was defeated. Asbury behaved with great magnanimity, and for two years strove to heal the breach. In 1793, however, O’Kelley and three others were entered in the Conference Minutes as withdrawn. O’Kelley organized what he called the Republican Methodists. He had been for twelve years the successful presiding elder of a large district in Southern Virginia. The movement made its largest gains here and in Northern Carolina. Jesse Lee and Mc-Kendree came to Virginia to arrest the defection. Many were drawn away, and in 1794 there was a loss in the Methodist societies of Virginia of two thousand. The movement reached its height by 1795, and by 1800 had largely run its course.

Dr. Coke as a university man, with the example of Kingswood before him, and the necessity of training its ministry laid upon the new movement _Cokesbury if it was to become a Church, felt that a College, prime essential was a school for higher education. At Abingdon, Maryland, on June 5, 1785, he laid the corner-stone of Cokesbury College. It had a magnificent site twenty-five miles from Baltimore. Asbury, with little training except that which he had picked up, and through which he could read Hebrew and Greek, was quite as earnest as Dr. Coke in the matter of the new college. The college is described as one hundred and eight feet in length, forty feet in breadth, with three stories, built of brick. In 1792 it had more than seventy pupils. The discipline was strict, and showed the customary lack of knowledge of human nature prevalent in educational circles before the days of Froebel and Pestalozzi. The career of the college was short. It was destroyed by fire December 7, 1795- Asbury wrote: “Cokesbury College is consumed to ashes, a sacrifice of about ten thousand pounds in ten years. If any man should give me ten thousand pounds a year to do and suffer again what I have done for that house I would not do it. The Lord called not Whitefield nor the Methodists to build colleges.”

Asbury was right; the work of the Methodists of that generation was evangelism. The time had not come for a Methodist college. There were neither means nor men to make it a success. The time would come, but that was in the next century. In the meanwhile Asbury organized the first Sunday-school in America in 1786 at the house of Thomas Crenshaw, in Hanover County, Virginia. The Conference of ^l79° gave the Sunday-school the first recognition it received from an American Church.

But the work of evangelism went on. In the Minutes of 1800 are reported 287 itinerant preachers and 64,894 members. So the new Church went into the new century.

The movement of the Evangelical Revival in America, resulting in the organization of a new and powerful Christian Church, had its defects. With its intensity there were at times narrowness and lack of knowledge; in the older communities often came division and the weakening of Churches already established and not too strong. On the other hand, if the founding of the Methodist Episcopal Church sometimes took away, she was also an ungrudging and generous giver to the other Christian Churches. What she took with one hand she gave back with both. There is not a Christian Church in America which has not been rendered stronger by the activity, or even by the competition, of this youngest of the great Churches of the land. While growing rapidly in numbers herself, no other Church has contributed to other Churches so many ministers and members.

A comparative view of the Churches at the end of the century is scarcely possible. Probably the Con-gregationalists stood in the lead in clergy and membership. The Presbyterians, much more widely diffused and strongest in the Middle States, would come next, and in influence, if combined with the related Reformed Churches, would stand first. The Baptists reported in 1790 (the next figures are for 1812) 64,188 members. In 1800, despite the losses through O’Kelley’s secession, the Methodists report 287 ministers, and 64,894 members. So that these two great denominations started in the nineteenth century nearly even. The Episcopalians had not yet recovered from the Revolutionary War, and never, perhaps, were less aggressive.

In view of all the facts then existing, and of the immense influence of immigration and the settlement of a mighty continent taxing the resources and energies of all the Churches to the uttermost, it seems in the

552 History of the Christian Church.

historic perspective that the breaking of the Evangelical Church into different advancing, and sometimes competing, columns was a necessity, if America was to be Christianized, and to lead in the Christianization of the world. Viewed in this light, the birth of the Methodist Episcopal Church, child in America of the Evangelical Revival, seems the providential fact in American Church history of the eighteenth century.

The century of the Evangelical Revival, the century most unbelieving since Constantine, ended in the overthrow and blood of the French Revolution.

ADDENDA.

THE THINKERS.

The years of this period witnessed the greatest revolution in the knowledge of human thinking, its analysis, its processes, the estimate of its validity, and its significance as related to the universe and to a future life, known since Aristotle. This revolution was not less epoch-making than that in religion opened by Luther, or in European politics by the French Revolution. The freedom from tradition and authority and the effects of individual initiative and experiment mark the founding of modern philosophy. The men who began and carried on this work from Bacon to Kant are well worth our notice. Upon their labors, despite their mistakes, all aftercomers build.

Of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the father of inductive philosophy, we have already spoken. His “Essays” were published and enlarged,

1612-1625. His great work, “Novum ^con* Organum,” was published in 1620. Bacon’s merit was in cutting loose from the scholastic philosophy and from Aristotle, on which it was founded, and demanding: (1) That facts must be established by observation and experiment; (2) That these facts must be clearly arranged; and (3) That by legitimate and true induction we must advance from knowledge of facts to the knowledge of laws. This inductive method of research has proven the instrument by which the advance in the physical sciences has been made, when it has been improved and perfected by the successors of Bacon. His was the fruitful principle, and what Bacon had attempted in physics a Frenchman, Des Cartes, undertook in metaphysics, or the solution of the great problems of man’s thinking and being.

Rene Des Cartes (1596-1650), the founder of modern philosophy, was the son of a lawyer and born at La Haye, in Touraine. His mother died Cartes* ^{soon a}ft^er his birth. His health was feeble during his boyhood. From 1604 to 1612 he attended the Jesuit school at La Fleche. In 1612 he was at Paris taking lessons in horsemanship and fencing. The next two years he spent in fashionable dissipation in the capital. Tiring of this, he went into complete retirement, 1614-1616, and devoted himself to study and reflection, paying special attention to mathematics and philosophy. From May, 1617-1619, he served as a volunteer under Maurice, Prince of Orange. Des Cartes, as became a pupil of the Jesuits, was a firm, though not a bigoted, Roman Catholic. From 1619 to 1621 he served as a volunteer under the Bavarian colors, and was present at the battle of Winter Mountain, which dashed the hopes of the new King of Bohemia. It was while on this service that his great discoveries came to him. After leaving contending armies, in 1621, at the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, he traveled through Moravia, Western Poland, Pomerania, Brandenburg, Holstein, and Friesland to Belgium, where he arrived in 1622. The same year he visited France, and sold his paternal inheritance so that it brought him an income of 6,000 or 7,000 francs, equal now to more than $2,500. The next three years he visited Switzerland, Venice, and Rome, making a pilgrimage to Loretto. From 1625 to 1628 he lived in seclusion in Paris, but was present at the taking of La Rochelle. In 1629 he began his twenty years’ residence in Holland, visiting France only for a short time in 1644, 1647, ^and 1648. He was in England in 1630, and in Denmark four years later. In 1647, Cardinal Mazarin granted him a pension of 3,000 francs. Des Cartes withdrew to Holland, to develop and perfect his discoveries and his philosophy. Few men have lived to think as did Des Cartes. His fare was simple, his diet was mainly that of a vegetarian, and he rarely drank wine. He never married, though a daughter, Francine, when five years old, died in 1640. He read little. It is said that the Bible and the “Summa” of Thomas Aquinas were the only books he took with him to Holland. He had no care for mere learning or scholarship; in his travels, only nature and the actual aspects of human life interested him. He had no place for history or art. While in Holland he published his “Philosophic Essays” in 1637, in which appears his “Discourse on Method;” in 1641, his “Meditations on First Philosophy,” discussing God and immortality; in 1644, “Specimina Philosophica,” mainly mathematical. In 1644 appeared his “Principia Philosophica,” mainly given to physics; and in 1650 his “Passions of the Soul.” In 1649 he received an invitation to visit Queen Christina of Sweden, which he accepted, and died in Stockholm in February, 1650. Des Cartes lived the latter part of his life in Evangelical Holland, and the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of the unfortunate Frederick overthrown at Winter Mountain, was his warm friend. Warned by the example of Galileo, his treatise, “The World,” in which he upheld, with qualifications to suit the Church Doctrine, the Copernican theory, was not published until after his death. Des Cartes was a little man, with a large head and dark complexion. Yet this little man wrought great things. In mathematics he is the inventor of analytical geometry, and of the present notation of exponents in algebra, and of giving the first letters of the alphabet to the known and the last to the unknown quantities, and he advanced this science in the solution of difficult equations. In physics, his contributions related to the refraction of light, the rainbow, and the weight of the air. He held also the unity of matter, which has been proved only by the spectrum analysis.

It was as a philosophic thinker, however, that Des Cartes won his fame. He began by an analysis of our knowledge and our thought. He believed that clearness was the test of the truth of an idea, a clearness so great that all doubt is excluded. In the application of this test he came to his own being, and said, “I think, therefore I am.” This is a statement and fact so clear as to exclude all doubt. This includes the veracity of our consciousness. Our consciousness leads to God as the center and source of truth.

Des Cartes’s view of the universe and of nature is in the strictest sense mechanical. Animals are but animate machines, without sensations of pain like ours, hence automata. In this scheme there is no place for progress, or history, or evolution; all is static.

Des Cartes emancipated thinking from the past, and taught men to question for themselves, and to seek clear and distinct conceptions for themselves. In his scheme all the universe was either thought or extension, and there was no connection between them.

Baruch, or Benedict, Spinoza (1632-1677) carried the principles of Des Cartes to their logical extreme, and became the founder of the pantheistic philosophy of modern Europe. Spinoza J^za. was born at Amsterdam, to which city his parents had fled from Spain as the result of the persecution of the Jews. He was early trained in Jewish philosophy and the Talmud. He also learned Latin and studied Des Cartes. The meaning and tendency of his thought could not be concealed, and so, when twenty-four years of age, he was solemnly cut off from Judaism, and an attempt was made to assassinate him. He changed his name from Baruch to Benedict, and went to live with a Collegiant host near Amsterdam, 1656-1661. He was a skilled workman in grinding lenses for optical instruments. He lived even more simply and independently than Des Cartes. A friend left him half his fortune. Spinoza would not take it, and when the heir wished him to accept, instead, a yearly income of $500, he cut it down to $300. He was seldom moved to passion, though the murder of the De Witts moved him so that only the compulsion of his friends saved him from their fate. He occasionally attended church, and recommended his hosts to go regularly. In 1661 appeared his “Treatise on God, Man and Well-being.^,, In 1661-1663 he lived near Leyden; 1663-1670 near The Hague. In 1670 appeared his “Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,^,, in which he argues that conduct is under the civil law, but that opinions should be free. From 1670 until his death Spinoza lived at The Hague. There, in the last year of his life, he was visited by Leibnitz, and there he published his “Tractatus Politicus” and his “Ethics.” All of his works were published in the Latin language.

Spinoza carried Des Cartes’s static and mechanical view of the physical universe to a full application to mind and morals, and made the one substance in which all inheres, God. There can be no question as to the uprightness of Spinoza’s life, or the sincerity of his thought, or the attraction which simplicity, unity, and necessity of his thought has for many minds. These, however, should not hide from us the fact that, outside of materialism, there is no teaching more false, and that as it is more attractive, it is more dangerous than materialism itself. Spinoza’s writings are cast in the form of geometrical theorems and propositions. The process is entirely deductive, and the methods of mathematics are applied to the processes and problems of mind. There is an air of great cogency and conclusiveness in this method, but it is not suited to the subject, and is by all confessed as unfortunate.

Spinoza’s fundamental and original principle is, that the dualism of thought and extension in Des Cartes is overcome in a unity of substance; this substance is God; thought and extension are his two fundamental qualities or attributes. God has no personal or individual existence, because all personality implies determination, and all determination is negation or limitation, and God can not be limited. Here is the great false assumption. God works, Spinoza says, according to the inner necessity of his nature.

From this primal position it follows that all individual existence is but a mode of the infinite and under the most stringent necessity, so that “not an atom could be other than it is without a change of the whole world.” That is, all human individuality disappears in the infinite—in God. It becomes of first importance to inquire in what kind of a God our individuality is lost. It then appears that the process which dehumanizes man, reduces God to a dead abstraction ruled by uncontrollable fate. The principle that all determination is negation leads to a God in whom all conceptions of good, evil, freedom, and responsibility have no place. This, of necessity, has ethical consequences. According to his scheme, the supreme principle of morals is the effort at self-preservation. Man is, like the animals, under the necessity of gratifying his appetites, and without free will or moral responsibility. He can know no repentance or pity, and for him there is no redemption. He has all in God and will, sinning or serving alike, receiving his reward from God. But a God without moral distinction! What a God! It seems a lower level than the ancient polytheism. So far is man by wisdom, or by the Cartesian mechanism, from finding out God. But Spinoza had asked the question, however poorly he had answered it, Is there a unity transcending the distinction between mind and matter? That is a question still with us.

The successor to these men in the development of philosophic thought was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716), the ablest man and the most _Gottfried universal genius of his time. As a math- wiiheim ematician, as a philosopher, as a counselor ^{e n z}* of kings, he showed that he had few superiors in this period. In philosophy and affairs he reminds us of Leonardo da Vinci in art. Few men with gifts so rare and so manifold have lived in our world. Leibnitz was the son of a Professor of Moral Philosophy at Leipzig. His father died when he was but six years old. He learned Latin at eight. From 1661 to 1666 he was at the University of Leipzig. In the latter year he took his degree of Doctor of Laws, but from another university. From 1667 to 1673 he was in the service of the Elector of Mainz. At first he was employed in revising the statute-book of the Electorate, then in diplomatic service.

Leibnitz felt that he should stand for the unity of the German Empire, and therefore, to divert the rising and dangerous ambition of Louis XIV, he sought to induce him to invade Egypt for his own advantage and the common good of Christendom. He worked out a scheme for that conquest which Napoleon effected more than a century later. He published “Thoughts on Public Safety” in 1670, and in 1672, in the interest of his scheme, visited Paris. The next year he was in Paris and London. The Duke of Bruns-wick-Liineburg secured his services in 1673, and he served three generations of rulers of that house. His services were especially important toward securing the elevation of Hanover to an Electorate of the German Empire in 1692. From 1676 to 1716 he resided in Hanover in a beautiful home, still shown to visitors. From 1687 ^{to I}^9° he was in South Germany and Italy, spending nine months at Vienna. At Rome the post of librarian of the Vatican was offered him if he would become a Roman Catholic. In 1686 appeared his “Sys-tema Theologica,” an attempt to unite the Roman Catholic and Evangelical Churches on grounds which they held in common. The Revolution in 1688, by which

England became securely Evangelical and the plans of Louis XIV were checked, if nothing else, made these efforts futile. Meanwhile honors came to Leibnitz. In 1700 he was made privy counselor to the Elector of Brandenburg; a year later the elector became the first King of Prussia. With his wife, the able and brilliant Sophia Charlotte, the daughter of the Electress of Hanover and granddaughter of that ill-fated Frederick of the Palatinate who married the daughter of James I of England, he had a most intimate and reciprocally helpful friendship. He never recovered from the effect of her death in 1705. There are no more interesting associations connected with the rambling old palace at Charlottenburg than those of Leibnitz and his royal pupil and friend. The Elector of Hanover made him privy counselor also, and the dignity of Baron of the Empire was conferred by the Emperor of Germany at Vienna. In 1710 appeared his “Theodicy,” which he had prepared at the request of Sophia Charlotte, and in 1714 his “Monadology,” and also “Principles of Nature and Grace.” For thirty years he worked on his “History of the House of Brunswick,” which he brought down from 768 to 1005. The years 1711-1714 were spent in Vienna. On his return to Hanover, His Electoral Highness had already inherited the crown of Great Britain, and had gone to England. In 1716 the race was finished, and Leibnitz’s name was to be known from his works.

As a mathematician, Leibnitz’s fame is secure as the independent discoverer and the first to publish the differential and integral calculus. Newton discovered earlier the same method of treating curves, but was much later in publishing the results of his discovery.

On the other hand, Leibnitz’s notation and nomenclature were much superior to Newton’s, and are now universally employed.

In philosophy, Leibnitz’s great merit is that he construed the universe, not as Des Cartes had done in terms of extension, but in terms of force. The scheme of thought by which he did this was wholly original; but, like many original things, has not commended itself to posterity, yet it has elements of truth, perhaps, even beyond what we are now able to comprehend. Leibnitz conceived the universe as a system of monads. That is simple, percipient, self-active beings, which, as individual centers of force, are the very atoms of nature. These monads are not physical but spiritual existences, and each is in itself a mirror of the universe. They are self-active, and not acted upon. The greater the activity of the monad, the greater its clearness of perception. The human soul is a monad, and God is the great monad.

To Leibnitz the universe is not static, but dynamic. He almost anticipates the teaching of evolution when he holds the law of continuity that “there is no vacuum or break in nature, but everything takes place by degrees,—the different species of creatures rising by insensible steps from the lowest to the most perfect form.’'

Each monad is in accord with every other by a preestablished harmony. Space and time are phenomenal, depending on the way in which the monads are perceived,—relative, as the order of co-existence or succession. The will is free from external control, this is the best possible of worlds, and God is the source, the cause, and the final harmony of the universe.

Leibnitz was a sincere and earnest Christian. He labored for the reunion of the Lutherans and Reformed, as he had done for the Roman Catholics and the Evangelicals, but he was a hundred years before his time.

The true successor of Francis Bacon, and the greatest philosopher in physics of modern times, was Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). His father, a small farmer, died before the birth of his Newton, son. The mother married an English clergyman within two years. She devoted herself to her oldest son, though he was not a brilliant boy at school, until a kick from a schoolfellow, on account of his dullness, roused his strong intellect. His preparation for the university was made at Grantham, Lincolnshire, near which he was born. In 1661 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, that mighty mother of distinguished men. In 1665 he took his B. A. degree, a year before he had won a scholarship, and in 1667 he became Fellow, taking his degree of M. A. a year later. In 1669 he succeeded Isaac Barrow, largely through Barrow’s influence, as Professor of Mathematics, in his college. In 1672 he became Fellow of the Royal Society. The same year he sent to that society his celebrated paper on the Solar Spectrum, resulting from passing a ray of light through a prism. In 1685 he had worked out his theory of gravitation.

His “Principia,” giving this and his other discoveries, including integral and differential calculus, which he called fluxions, to the world, was published at the expense of the president of the Royal Society, Robert Boyle, 1686-1687. Newton had steadfastly resisted King James II’s endeavor to intrude Roman Catholics into Cambridge University against the law, and was elected to Parliament when William of Orange came to the throne. He sat for the university, 1689-1690. In 1692-1693 he had a severe illness, which was reported as lunacy, but seems to have been a nervous affection resulting from too close mental application and lack of exercise. In 1694, through his friend Montagu, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was made Warden of the Mint, with a salary of $3,000 per annum. He carried through successfully the recoinage of the money of the realm, a work greatly needed, and which stopped the practice of clipping coins, through which the people suffered much loss, and the English gallows was abundantly furnished with the “clippers” who were caught.

In 1697, Newton was made Master of the Mint at more than double his former salary. In 1699 he was made foreign associate of the French Academy of Sciences. In 1701 he again sat in Parliament for his university. The same year he resigned both his Fellowship and his Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge. In ^I7°5, Queen Anne made him a knight. From 1703 until his death at eighty-five he was annually elected president of the Royal Society.

The discoveries of Newton began early in his career,—the binomial theorem in 1665-1666, and his calculus in 1669. He was interested in all problems of optics. In his later years he wrote on prophecy, and was concerned with religious questions. Newton was a convinced and a sincere Christian. Like Des Cartes and Spinoza, he never married, but gave his life to his thought. His doctrine of gravitation ranks as the widest and best proved of the generalizations of science, and basal to all that followed. Bacon theorized; Newton demonstrated.

The significance of John Locke (1632-1704) is, that he applied the experimental method of observation and analysis to the questions relating to the constitution of our minds, the origin and Locke, the validity of our knowledge. In this sense he is the founder of the English empirical philosophy, and his intellectual descendants are Berkeley, Hartley, Hume, Reid, Mill, and Sir William Hamilton.

Locke determined to examine the source of our knowledge. This he declared to be solely in our sensations or sense perceptions, and in our internal reflections upon these. Hence he declared war on innate ideas of all kinds. It may be said of this contest that the innate ideas which he overthrew were not the innate ideas which his great contemporaries held, and that his polemic against them, if strictly taken, went much too far. Locke said, “There is nothing in the intellect which is not in the senses.” Leibnitz’s correction was just and needful when he added, “except the intellect itself.”

The father of John Locke was a Puritan attorney, strict but genial. He was sent to Westminster school, 1646-1652, when he entered Christ Church, Oxford. There he took his degree of B. A. in 1656 and M. A. in 1658, under the Puritan dominion. In 1660 he became tutor of Christ Church, and his home was at Oxford until 1667. As tutor he lectured on Greek, Rhetoric, and Philosophy, while he studied chemistry and meteorology, and even practiced medicine, but gave chief attention to the teaching of Des Cartes, whose doctrine of clear and innate ideas he set himself to combat by the test of observation.

In 1665 he was secretary of an embassy to Cleves, and resided in Berlin. From 1667 to 1682 he made the Exeter House, the seat of the Earl of Shaftesbury, his home. From 1667 to 1673 he was secretary to the Earl, his patron. In 1673 he was made secretary of the Board of Trade, meanwhile retaining his studentship at Christ Church. From 1675 to 1679 he was in France, at Montpelier, for his health, and at Paris for society. On the fall of Shaftesbury, Locke was in exile in Holland, until the Revolution brought in the Prince of Orange. It was in this banishment that he finished his “Essay on the Human Understanding,” begun in 1671 and published in 1690. In February, 1689, he was back in London, and was made one of the Commissioners of Appeals. In the same year he published his “Letters on Toleration,” written twenty-three years before, and “Two Treatises on Government,” including his plan for the colonial government of the Carolinas. A second “Letter on Toleration” followed in 1690, and a third in 1692. The year following came his “Thoughts on Education,” and in 1695 his “Reasonableness of Christianity.” From 1696 he was a Commissioner of the Board of Trade. Locke was the most fortunate of all the bachelor philosophers. Having weak health, and subject to asthma from 1690 until his death, he was most tenderly cared for by Lady Masham, a daughter of the celebrated Dr. Cudworth, at her country house, Theobalds, ten miles from London. Locke said he died “in perfect charity with all men, and in sincere communion with the whole Church of Christ, by whatever names Christ’s followers call themselves.” Large and judicial in mind, tolerant, humane, and kind, John Locke was, like Isaac Newton, a noble type of Christian manhood.

In spite of an inexact use of terms and of contradictions, Locke’s accumulation and examination of the facts concerning our mental processes and the sources of our knowledge was the beginning of a new era in psychology and the theory of knowledge. Locke himself was as convinced of the certainty as of the inadequacy of our knowledge. Yet from his teaching came the most divergent schools of thought.

There is no more attractive figure among these thinkers than the broadminded and genial philosopher, Bishop Berkeley, who, in his thought, strangely reminds us of that other Irish- Berkeley, man of rare and subtle wit, the companion of Charles the Bald, John Scotus Erigena. George Berkeley (1685-1753) was born at Dysert Castle, Thomastown, Ireland. His father had the rank of captain in the army and was collector of customs. Young Berkeley prepared for the university at Kilkenny school, 1696-1700. In the latter year he entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1704, and of which he was elected Fellow in 1707. Here he studied thoroughly Des Cartes and Locke. In 1709 he published his “Theory of Vision,” and the year following his “Principles of Human Knowledge.” From 1707 to 1712 he was tutor in his college. The latter year he went to England, and in the year following he was presented to court by Swift. In the same year were published his philosophic “Dialogues,” unsurpassed in style in English. The next seven years he spent on the Continent, the first two as chaplain to Lord Peterborough, and the next five as tutor for the son of Dr. Ashe, with a visit to England between the two appointments.

In 1720 his treatise “De Motu” was published, presenting the main principles of his philosophy. The next year he returned to Ireland as chaplain to the Duke of Grafton. In 1722 he was made Dean of Dro-more, and the next year Dean of Derry. While Swift’s “Vanessa,” Miss Van Homrigh, left him half of her fortune; she had met him but once.

Berkeley now conceived the idea of founding a college at Bermuda for North America. He succeeded in obtaining a Parliamentary grant of $100,000 for the project, which, however, was never paid. In its interests he came to Rhode Island, where he lived, 17281731. Americans will never forget his kindness to Yale College, to which he gave a part of his library. In ^J733 he published “Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher,” a philosophic classic.

In 1734 he was appointed Bishop of Cloyne. There he remained until 1752, when he removed to Oxford to educate his second son, his oldest son having died while in attendance there. The next year he died, and is buried at Christ Church, Oxford.

Berkeley is the founder of modern Idealism. He translates the distinction between subject and object in the synthesis that no object exists apart from the mind. For him existence is inconceivable apart from mind, and hence existence itself “denotes conscious spirits and the objects of consciousness.” In seeking the content of consciousness his system is a theory of casualty. He reasons our sense ideas are not due to our own activity, they are not caused by our will; hence they must be produced by some other will; hence only by the divine intelligence. “Therefore, sense experience is the constant action upon our minds of the supreme active intelligence, not of dead matter.” External things are caused and are carried in regular succession. So the divine ideas find their realization in our experience. “Nature is constant experience, and forms the sign and symbol of a divine universal intelligence and will.” That is, reality is in mind only. Apart from mind there is no reality. Things have their reality in and for mind.

This was Berkeley’s answer to the pronounced trend of Locke’s theory of knowledge toward materialism. This step was avowedly taken by Hartley and Priestley, without denying God. The French philosophers, from Condillac to Taine, go to the logical conclusion, and deny anything but matter. This was the reigning philosophy of the eighteenth century; that of the nineteenth century, in its main current at least, has reverted to idealism.

To the Irishman Berkeley succeeded the Scotchman, David Hume (1711-1776) ; to the idealistic, the skeptical philosophy. The father of David Hume was the owner of a small estate, and died early. The son, born in Edinburgh, was educated in her university, 1723-1726. He then studied at home Cicero and Seneca, Locke, Berkeley, and Butler. His object was literary fame. In study and thought he overstrained his system so as seriously to injure his health. To restore its tone he went to France in 1734, where he remained for the next three years. In January, 1739, appeared the result of his thinking in the preceding ten years, entitled “Treatise on Human Nature,” treating in succession the understanding, the passions, and morals. Here, at twenty-eight, Hume is seen at his best. His further philosophical writings seem in the main to be but the adaptation of the ideas here expressed to a more popular audience. The book fell flat, to the intense mortification of its author. In 1741 and 1742 he published two volumes of “Essays,” which met with a good reception.

In 1745 he was made guardian to a lunatic of noble blood. A year later more congenial occupation was found as secretary to General St. Clair, at Paris; in the same capacity, in the next two years, he visited Vienna and Turin. In 1749 he was again in England, and from 1751 to 1763 he lived in Edinburgh, having received the appointment of librarian of the Associates’ Library. In the former year he published “Political Discourses,” which gave him popular favor, and his “Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.” In 1757 appeared his “Natural History of Religion.” His “Discourses Concerning Natural Religion” were not published until after his death. Hume was a thorough Deist.

He was at Paris acting as secretary for the English Embassy, 1763, and remained there for the succeeding three years. In 1767-1769 he was in London as secretary to General Conway. In the latter year he returned to Edinburgh. He had now an income of $5,000 a year, and made his native city his home until his death. Hume never married. From 1753 until his death he was occupied with his “History of England,” which brought him fame and money, but which seems to the author to be a conspicuous example of a history bad in its conception and bad in its execution. A poorer source of knowledge or opinion concerning the times treated it would be difficult to find.

As a philosopher, Hume attacked the psychological problem started by Locke, that of the origin and validity of our knowledge. Hume’s positions were that:

(1) “Conscious experience consists of isolated states, each of which is a fact, and is related to others only in an external fashion;” (2) “Ideas are but secondary copies of impressions, and in our knowing we can discover but external relations among the facts of our observations and experience;” (3) “Hence, conscious experience contains merely a succession of isolated impressions and of ideas, their fainter copies; these are bound together by merely natural and external links of connection, the principle of association among ideas.” The conceptions of space and time are derived from our sensations of sight and touch, and the order of succession in our perception.

Thus all cause is banished. There is no validity in our knowledge, which is but an association of isolated states without inner connection. There is no inner connection in the scheme of things, and hence no necessary source. Of either we can not assure ourselves. The whole scheme was worked over and elaborated, without marked advance, in the following century by John Stuart Mill.

A most intimate friend of Hume’s, and one whose ideals and principles were not dissimilar, was Adam Smith (1723-1790), the author of “The Wealth of Nations. From Adam Smith dates our modern political economy, and he exercised an immense influence upon public opinion and legislation. His father was a Controller of Customs. Like Isaac Newton, he was born after his father’s death. He was his mother’s only child, and to her care the weakly child owed his life and early training. This care he repaid with his utmost filial devotion to that mother, whose life terminated but six years before his own. Like Hume and Gibbon, he never married. The young lad was in Glasgow University, 1737-1704, and then went to Oxford, intending to become a clergyman of the Church of England. He was at Baliol College, 1740-1747. He then returned to Scotland, and was for the next three years at his native Kirkcaldy and at Edinburgh. In 1751 he was elected to the Chair of Logic in Glasgow University; this the next year he exchanged for the Chair of Moral Philosophy, which he held until 1763. In 1759 appeared his “Theory of the Moral Sentiments.” From 1763 to October, 1765, he was on the Continent, mainly at Toulouse, Geneva, and Paris. For the next ten years he lived with his mother at Kirkcaldy, and there wrought out his “Wealth of Nations,” the most important single contribution ever made to the science of political economy. This work was published in 1776. In 1778 he was made Commissioner of Customs, and thenceforth had his residence at Edinburgh. His book was an immediate success, and honors came to him in his later years. None was more highly prized than his election as rector of Glasgow University in 1787. The thinking of few men has had more immediate and far-reaching effect upon economics and politics than that of Adam Smith.

The true successor of Locke, as Locke conceived his philosophy, was Thomas Reid (1710-1796), the founder of the philosophy of Common Sense, and the father of the Scottish philosophy from his own time to the death of Dr. James McCosh. Reid was the son of a Presbyterian pastor at Kincardine, and was educated at Aberdeen University, 1722-1726. For the next ten years he was librarian of his Alma Mater. From 1737 to 1752 he was pastor of New Machan, near Aberdeen, and, if he followed his own ideals, a very high and dry preacher he was. In 1740 he married. From 1752 for the next twelve years he was Professor of Philosophy at Aberdeen. Then, from 1764 to 1781, he was in the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow. His closing years were spent in that city. In 1764 he published his “Enquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense.” In 1785 appeared his “Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man,” and in three years the “Essay on the Active Powers of the Human Mind.” In opposition to Berkeley, Reid denied that “all objects of my knowledge are ideas of my own mind,” and in opposition to Hume he denied that the units of knowledge were isolated impressions. On the contrary, he affirmed that the unit of knowledge is always a judgment. Any judgment includes a reference to a permanent subject and to a permanent world. These are necessary conditions of our perception. Sensation is a condition of perception, but perception can never be derived from mere sensation, nor can the real world be made to melt into the subjective sensation. This is the system of dualism which, through Dugald Stewart, Sir William Hamilton, and James McCosh, was the ruling philosophy in Scotland, England, North America, and, through Cousin, in France, until the last decade of the nineteenth century.

The goodly succession of philosophic thinkers of this period closed with Immanuel Kant, his critical philosophy, and his transcendental dialectic.

In his theory of knowledge, Kant affirms that we know only phenomena and never the things in themselves. This was his great defect. He also affirms, against all sensationalists, that we know ^lmKant^Uel through forms of knowledge supplied by the mind itself. These are marked by the characteristics of necessity and strict universality. The forms of intuition are space and time. The forms of thought are the twelve Kantian categories. That is, in accord with Leibnitz and Reid, the mind itself supplies the conditions of perception and of knowing, or cognition. Hence, in Kant’s thought, there was room for God and for human free will. From Kant’s transcendental dialectic sprang the leaders of German idealism, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, and others. More original in their thought, and striking off in distinct lines, were Schopenhauer, the founder of the philosophy of the world, as will or pure pessimism; and the thinkers of marked influence in education and religion, Herbart and Lotze. In the last decades of the century, the new idealism, personal not pantheistic, came more and mere into ascendency.

Some Singers oe the Engush Nonconeorming Churches.

These addenda may not close without some farther notice of the singers of Nonconforming England in the eighteenth century.

Chief of these was Isaac Watts (1674-1748). Isaac Watts’s father kept a boarding-school at Southampton, and himself wrote poetry. The son was a precocious child, ana made verses from his earliest years. In 1690 to 1693 he was sent to an academy in London, and afterward served as tutor in the family of Sir John Hartopp at Stoke Newington. He learned easily, having begun Latin at four years of age; but at the academy his close application permanently injured his health. In 1698 he became assistant pastor of the Independent Congregation in Monk Lane, London. In 1700, and for the next twelve years, he was pastor, but his health was so infirm that from 1703 an assistant pastor was necessary. In 1712, Lady Abney offered to the unmarried poet a home in her house. There he lived until his death in 1748. Few men have written more religious poetry than Isaac Watts. Few have written worse than a good part of it, and none have surpassed him at his best in setting forth the Divine attributes with a sense of majesty and in reverence. There are no modern collections for congregational use in which these are not found. “Before Jehovah’s awful throne/’ “He dies, the Friend of sinners dies,” “O God, our help in ages past,” and “There is a land of pure delight,” are familiar examples.

Next to Watts stands Philip Doddridge (17021751), who won just fame as a preacher and a popular commentator. His “Rise and Progress of True Religion in the Soul” brought William _Doddridg_e. Wilberforce and many others to a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. His father was a London merchant, and he was the youngest of twenty children. In 1712 he was sent to a school at South Kingston on the Thames, and in 1715 to another at St. Albans. In 1723 he became pastor of the Independent Congregation at Kebworth; there he remained until 1729. In that year he removed to an Independent pastorate at Northampton, where he served until the year of his death.

Addenda.

His disease, consumption, had made marked progress when, September 30, 1751, he sailed for Lisbon. On October 26th he died there, and there also he was buried.

Doddridge wrote some three hundred hymns, most of them of the prosaic order, but some, with good reason, have survived. “Hark the glad sound, the Savior comes,” “O happy day that fixed my choice,” and “My soul, repeat his praise,” are among the best.

Mrs. Barbauld, a Presbyterian, Miss Anna Steele, a Baptist, as were Medley, Fawcett, and Samuel Sten-nett, wrote hymns the Evangelical Churches admire and sing. These, with the singers of the Evangelical Revival, make a choir of English singers in the eighteenth century unsurpassed amid all the wealth of sacred song with which the years since have blest the Church.

Appendix I.

THE GALLICAN ARTICLES.

Declaration of the Clergy of France concerning the Ecclesiastical Power:

“There are many who labor to subvert the Gallican decrees and liberties which our ancestors defended with so much zeal, and their foundations which rest upon the sacred canons and traditions of the Fathers. Nor are there wanting those who, under the pretense of these liberties, seek to derogate from the primacy of St. Peter and the Roman pontiffs his successors; from the obedience which all Christians owe to them, and from the majesty of the Apostolic See, in which the faith is taught and the unity of the Church is preserved. The heretics, on the other hand, omit nothing in order to represent that power, by which the peace of the Church is maintained, as intolerable both to kings and to their subjects; and by such artifices estrange the souls of the simple from the communion of the Church, and therefore from Christ. With a view to remedy such evils, we, the archbishops and bishops assembled at Paris by the king’s orders, representing, together with the other deputies, the Gallican Church, have judged it advisable, after mature deliberation, to determine and declare as follows:

“i. St. Peter and his successors, vicars of Christ, and likewise the Church itself, have received from God power in things spiritual and pertaining to salvation, but not in things temporal and civil; inasmuch as the Lord says, ‘My kingdom is not of this world;’ and again, ‘Render unto Qesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s.’ The apostolic precept also holds, ‘Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God; whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.’ Consequently kings and princes are not, by the law of God, subject to any ecclesiastical power, nor to the keys of the Church, with respect to their temporal government. Their subjects can not be released from the duty of obeying them, nor absolved from the oath of allegiance; and this maxim, necessary to public tranquillity, and not less advantageous to the Church than to the State, is to be strictly maintained, as conformable to the Word of God, the tradition of the Fathers, and the example of the saints.

“2. The plenitude of power in things spiritual, which resides in the Apostolic See and the successors of St. Peter, is such that at the same time the decrees of the Ecumenical Council of Constance, in its fourth and fifth sessions, approved as they are by the Holy See and the practice of the whole Church, remain in full force and perpetual obligation; and the Gallican Church does not approve the opinion of those who would depreciate the said decrees as being of doubtful authority, insufficiently approved, or restricted in their application to a time of schism.

“3. Hence the exercise of the apostolic authority must be regulated by the canons enacted by the SpiriJ; of God and consecrated to the reverence of the whole world. The ancient rules, customs, and institutions received by the realm and Church of France remain likewise inviolable, and it is for the honor and glory of the Apostolic See that such enactments, confirmed by the consent of the said See and of the Churches, should be observed without deviation.

“4. The pope has the principal place in deciding questions of faith, and his decrees extend to every Church and all Churches; but, nevertheless, his judgment is not irreversible until confirmed by the consent of the Church.

“These articles expressing truths which we have received from our Fathers, we have determined to transmit to all the Churches of France, and to the bishops appointed by the Holy Ghost to preside over them, in order that we may all speak the same thing and concur in the same doctrine.”

Signed by thirty-four bishops and thirty-four of the second order, presented to and approved by the king, and ordered to be registered by Parliament, subscribed by theological professors, and taught in all colleges of the universities.

Appendix II.

GENERAL RULES OF THE UNITED SOCIETIES.

This was the rise of the United Society, first in Europe, and then in America. Such a Society is no other than “a company of men having the form and seeking the power of godliness, united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their salvation.”

That it may the more easily be discerned whether they are indeed working out their own salvation, each Society is divided into smaller companies, called classes, according to their respective places of abode. There are about twelve persons in a class, one of whom is styled the leader. It is his duty,—

1.    To see each person in his class once a week at least; in order, (i) To inquire how his soul prospers;

(2) To advise, reprove, comfort, or exhort, as occasion may require; (3) To receive what he is willing to give toward the relief of the preachers, Church, and poor.

2.    To meet the ministers and stewards of the Society once a week, in order, (1) To inform the minister of any that are sick, or of any that walk disorderly and will not be reproved; (2) To pay the stewards what he has received of his class in the week preceding.

There is only one condition previously required of those who desire admission into these Societies—“a desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins.” But wherever this is really fixed in the soul it will be shown by its fruits.

It is therefore expected of all who continue therein, that they shall continue to evidence their desire of salvation,—

First. By doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind, especially that which is most generally practiced; such as,

The taking the name of God in vain.

The profaning the day of the Lord, either by doing ordinary work therein or by buying or selling.

Drunkenness, buying or selling spirituous liquors, or drinking them, unless in cases of extreme necessity.

Slaveholding; buying or selling slaves.

Fighting, quarreling, brawling, brother going to law with brother; returning evil for evil, or railing for railing; the using of many words in buying or selling.

The buying or selling goods that have not paid the duty.

The giving or taking things on usury; that is, unlawful interest.

Uncharitable or unprofitable conversation; particularly speaking evil of magistrates or of ministers.

Doing to others as we would not they should do unto us.

Doing what we know is not for the glory of God; as,

The putting on of gold and costly apparel.

The taking such diversions as can not be used in the name of the Lord Jesus.

The singing those songs, or reading those books, which do not tend to the knowledge or love of God.

Softness and needless self-indulgence.

Laying up treasure upon earth.

Borrowing without a probability of paying; or taking up goods without a probability of paying for them.

It is expected of all who continue in these Societies that they shall continue to evidence their desire of salvation,—

Second. By doing good; by being in every kind merciful after their power; as they have opportunity, doing good of every possible sort, and as far as possible to all men:

To their bodies, of the ability which God giveth, by giving food to the hungry, by clothing the naked, by visiting or helping them that are sick or in prison;

To their souls, by instructing, reproving, or exhorting all we have any intercourse with; trampling under foot that enthusiastic doctrine that “we are not to do good unless our hearts be free to it.”

By doing good, especially to them that are of the household of faith or groaning so to be; employing them preferably to others; buying one of another; helping each other in business; and so much the more because the world will love its own, and them only.

By all possible diligence and frugality, that the Gospel be not blamed.

By running with patience the race which is set before them, denying themselves, and taking up their cross daily; submitting to bear the reproach of Christ, to be as the filth and offscouring of the world; and looking that men should say all manner of evil of them falsely, for the Lord’s sake.

It is expected of all who desire to continue in these Societies that they shall continue to evidence their desire of salvation,—

Third. By attending upon all the ordinances of God. Such are,

The public worship of God;

The ministry of the Word, either read or expounded ;

The Supper of the Lord;

Family and private prayer;

Searching the Scriptures;

Fasting or abstinence.

These are the General Rules of our Societies; all which we are taught of God to observe, even in his written Word, which is the only rule, and the sufficient rule, both of our faith and practice. And all these we know his Spirit writes on truly-awakened hearts. If there be any among us who observes them not, who habitually breaks any of them, let it be known unto them who watch over that soul as they who must give an account. We will admonish him of the error of his ways. We will bear with him for a season. But, if then he repent not, he hath no more place among us. We have delivered our own souls.

Appendix III.

WESLEY’S RULES FOR HIS PREACHERS.

I. Be diligent; never unemployed a moment; never triflingly employed; never while away time; neither spend any more time at any place than is strictly necessary.

2-. Be serious; let your motto be, Holiness to the Lord; avoid all lightness, jesting, and foolish talking.

3.    Converse sparingly and cautiously with women, particularly with young women in private.

4.    Take no step toward marriage without first acquainting Mr. Wesley with your design.

5.    Believe evil of no one; put the best construction on everything; remember that the judge is always supposed to be on the prisoner’s side.

6.    Speak evil of no one; keep your thoughts within your own breast till you come to the person concerned.

7.    Tell every one what you think wrong in him, and that plainly, and as soon as may be, lest it fester in your heart.

8.    Do not affect the gentleman; you have no more to do with this character than with that of a dancing-master, for a preacher of the gospel is the servant of all. (But though he was not to affect the gentleman, he was to be one in all good respects, as Wesley taught in his “Address to the Clergy.”)

9.    Be ashamed of nothing but sin; not of fetching wood (if time permit), nor of drawing water; nor of cleaning your own shoes, or your neighbor’s.

10.    Be punctual; do everything exactly at the time, and, in general, do not mend the Methodist rules, but keep them, not for wrath, but for .conscience' sake.

11.    You have nothing to do but to save souls, and therefore spend and be spent in this work. And go always, not only to those who want you, but to those who want you most.

12.    Act in all things, not according to your own will, but as a son in the Gospel. As such, it is your duty to employ your time in the manner in which you shall be directed; partly in preaching, and visiting the flock from house to house; partly in reading, meditation, and prayer. Above all, if you labor with us in our Lord’s vineyard, it is needful that you should do that part of the work which we advise, at those times and places which we judge most for his glory.

NOTES.

I. There are no more thrilling instances of daring and suffering in the records of missionary endeavor than those furnished by the Jesuits in their efforts to convert the Huron and Iroquois of Canada and New York. We have already mentioned Isaac Jogues. He went to the Huron Mission in Canada in 1641, and the same year reached SautSte. Marie. In August, 1642, he was captured by the Mohawks, and subjected to the cruelest tortures. While his companion, Rene Goupil, was tomahawked, Jogues was run through the gauntlet at every village; he was tied to the stake to be gashed and slowly burned; then, with mutilated hands, he served as a slave. At Albany he escaped through. John Mecklenburg, or Magapolensis. He came to Manhattan, the first Roman Catholic priest to set foot on its soil, and from its wharf sailed to France, arriving there in 1644; the same year he returned to Canada. Again he took his journey with the Mohawk sachems to Albany and the towns on the Mohawk River.

On another journey over the same route a band of Mohawks seized him and “ led him in triumph to their town. Here he was beaten, and strips of flesh were cut from his back and arms;” then, with his companions, he was brained with a tomahawk. Space will not allow the portrayal of the martyrdom of Father Bre-boeuf, or the tortures of Father Bassani. After his incredible sufferings the latter wrote to France, “I could not have believed that a man was so hard to kill.”

II.    In American or in Church history there are few more pleasing episodes than that which occurred when the Jesuit missionary, Druillette, visited Boston in 1650 to secure an alliance of the French and English colonies against the Indians. He spent eight months in New England and was most courteously entertained, though he failed in the object of his mission. He relates that, on his return from Plymouth to Boston, he stopped at Roxbury and enjoyed the hospitality of John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians. From the record of Father Druillette the visit must have been both pleasant and profitable. Think of a French Jesuit sleeping in a Puritan parsonage! But doubtless the common interest in Christian work among the Indians, as well as common devotion to their common Lord, overcame all sense of religious differences, even in that age of religious intolerance. Puritan history furnishes few more attractive pictures.

III.    The Dunkards. This sect of German Baptists arose from the teaching 01 Alexander Mack, in Schwartzenau, Germany, in 1708. Soon persecution drove them to Holland. From thence they emigrated to Pennsylvania, 1720-1729. They are now found also in Maryland, Virginia, Indiana, and Ohio, being most numerous in the latter State. They believe in trine immersion, in foot-washing, in anointing with oil the sick, and they will not take oaths nor render military service. They live and dress simply and care well for their poor. They have an unpaid ministry of bishops and teachers. Like the Mennon-ites, whom they greatly resemble, their discipline is strict and enforced by the free use of excommunication.