XX
The Ministers.
The picture which Colonel Higginson has drawn of the Puritan minister is so well known and so graphic that any attempt to add to it would be futile. All the succeeding New England parsons, as years rolled by, were not, however, like the black-gowned, black-gloved, stately, and solemn man whom he has so clearly shown us. Men of rigid decorum, and grave ceremony there were, such as Dr. Emmons and Jonathan Edwards; but there were parsons also of another type,--eccentric, unconventional, and undignified in demeanor and dress. Parson Robinson, of Duxbury, persisted in wearing in the pulpit, as part of his clerical attire, a round jacket instead of the suitable gown or Geneva cloak, and he was known thereby as "Master Jack." With astonishing inconsistency this Master Jack objected to the village blacksmith's wearing his leathern apron into the church, and he assailed the offender again and again with words and hints from his pulpit. He was at last worsted by the grimaces of the victorious smith (where was the Duxbury tithingman?), and indignantly left the pulpit, ejaculating, "I'll not preach while that man sits before me." A remonstrating parishioner said afterward to Master Jack, "I'd not have left if the Devil sat there." "Neither would I" was the quick answer.
Another singular article of attire was worn in the pulpit by Father Mills, of Torrington, though neither in irreverence nor indifference. When his dearly loved wife died he pondered how he, who always wore black, could express to the world that he was wearing mourning; and his simple heart hit upon this grotesque device: he left off his full-flowing wig, and tied up his head in a black silk handkerchief, which he wore thereafter as a trapping of woe.
Parson Judson, of Taunton, was so lazy that he used to preach while sitting down in the pulpit; and was so contemptibly fond of comfort that he would on summer Sundays give out to the sweltering members of his congregation the longest psalm in the psalm-book, and then desert them--piously perspiring and fuguing--and lie under a tree enjoying the cool outdoor breezes until the long psalm was ended, escaping thus not only the heat but the singing; and when we consider the quantity and quality of both, and that he condemned his good people to an extra amount of each, it seems a piece of clerical inhumanity that would be hard to equal. Surely this selfish Taunton sybarite was the prosaic ideal of Hamlet's words:--
"Some ungracious pastors do
Show me the steep and thorny way to Heaven,
Whilst like a puff'd and reckless libertine
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede."
But lazy and slothful ministers were fortunately rare in New England. No primrose path of dalliance was theirs; industrious and hard-working were nearly all the early parsons, preaching and praying twice on the Sabbath, and preaching again on Lecture days; visiting the sick and often giving medical and "chyrurgycal" advice; called upon for legal counsel and adjudication; occupied in spare moments in teaching and preparing young men for college; working on their farms; hearing the children say their catechism; fasting and praying long, weary hours in their own study,--truly they were "pious and painful preachers," as Colonel Higginson saw recorded on a gravestone in Watertown. Though I suspect "painful" in the Puritan vocabulary meant "painstaking," did it not? Cotton Mather called John Fiske, of Chelmsford, a "plaine but able painful and useful preacher," while President Dunster, of Harvard College, was described by a contemporary divine as "pious painful and fit to teach." Other curious epithets and descriptions were applied to the parsons; they were called "holy-heavenly," "sweet-affecting," "soul-ravishing," "heaven-piercing," "angel-rivalling," "subtil," "irrefragable," "angelical," "septemfluous," "holy-savoured," "princely," "soul-appetizing," "full of antic tastes" (meaning having the tastes of an antiquary), "God-bearing." Of two of the New England saints it was written:--
"Thier Temper far from Injucundity,
Thier tongues and pens from Infecundity."
Many other fulsome, turgid, and even whimsical expressious of praise might be named, for the Puritans were rich in classic sesquipedalian adjectives, and their active linguistic consciences made them equally fertile in producing new ones.
Ready and unexpected were the solemn Puritans in repartee. A party of gay young sparks, meeting austere old John Cotton, determined to guy him. One of the young reprobates sent up to him and whispered in his ear, "Cotton, thou art an old fool." "I am, I am," was the unexpected answer; "the Lord make both thee and me wiser than we are." Two young men of like intent met Mr. Haynes, of Vermont, and said with mock sad faces, "Have you heard the news? the Devil is dead." Quick came the answer, "Oh, poor, fatherless children! what will become of you?"