Another notable opponent must be introduced. The Rev. Charles Chauncy, D.D., was born in Boston, in the year 1705. He entered Harvard College at the age of twelve, and four years afterwards received his first degree. In 1727, he was ordained pastor of the first church in Boston, as colleague of the Rev. Thomas Foxcroft. He died in 1787, in the eighty-third year of his age, and the sixtieth of his ministry. Chauncy was eminent for his learning, was ardently attached to the civil and religious liberties of his country, and strongly objected to State Church establishments. His publications were too numerous to be specified in a work like this. His last days were almost entirely occupied in devotional exercises.
One of his publications, issued in 1742, was entitled, “Enthusiasm described and cautioned against. A Sermon preached at the Old Brick Meeting-house in Boston, in1742. With a Letter to the Rev. Mr. James Davenport.” (8vo. 35 pp.) Mr. Davenport was the minister of Southhold, Long Island; and, during Whitefield’s previous visit to America, became extremely popular in the great revival. Among other places, he visited New Haven, and encouraged the agitations and outcries, which at that time attracted so much attention. In 1742, the Assembly of Connecticut, deeming him under the influence of enthusiastic impulses, directed the governor to transport him out of the colony to the place whence he came. Two years afterwards, he published a confession and retractation. Whitefield is not mentioned in Dr. Chauncy’s sermon; but there can be little doubt, that it was levelled against him as well as against James Davenport.
Twelve months after this, Whitefield was made one of the most prominent figures in another of Chauncy’s works: “Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England. By Charles Chauncy, D.D. Boston, 1743.” (8vo. 454 pp.) It is impossible to give here any general outline of Chauncy’s book, but a few facts and extracts may be useful.
Dr. Chauncy declares that he “could never see upon what warrant, either from Scripture or reason, Mr. Whitefield went about preaching from one province and parish to another, where the gospel was already preached, and by persons as well qualified for the work as he could pretend to be.” He inclines to think, however, that Whitefield was moved by conceit and a love of popular applause. “The inconveniences, which had arisen from this method of acting, had been so great, that the Assembly of Connecticut had passed an Act, restraining both ordained ministers, and licensed candidates, from preaching in other men’s parishes, without their and their church’s consent; and wholly prohibiting the exhortations of illiterate laymen.” “Most, if not all, of the present itinerants are swollen and ready to burst with spiritual pride. As to their mission, they have none, except from their own fond imagination.” “Mr. Whitefield seldom preached, but he had something or other in his sermon, against unconverted ministers; and what he delivered had an evident tendency to fill the minds of thepeople with evil surmisings against the ministers, as though they were, for the most part, carnal, unregenerate wretches. He often spake of them, in the lump, as Pharisees, enemies of Christ Jesus, and the worst enemies he had.” “There never was a time, since the settlement of New England, wherein there was so much bitter and rash judging—parents condemning their children, and children their parents; husbands their wives, and wives their husbands; masters their servants, and servants their masters; ministers their people, and people their ministers. Censoriousness, to a high degree, is the constant appendage of this religious commotion.” “I have all along encouraged a hope of Mr. Whitefield as a real Christian. And he has certainly been zealous and active beyond most of his brethren. But has he not, through the inexperience of youth, and an intemperature of zeal, been betrayed into such things as cannot but be condemned? In particular, I was always afraid, lest people, from him, should learn to give heed to impulses and impressions, and, by degrees, come to revelations, and other extraordinaries of this kind.”
“Another bad thing is the confusion that has been so common, of late, in some of our houses of worship. Says a friend, in giving an account of things, he was himself a witness to, ‘The meeting was carried on with great confusion; some screaming out in distress and anguish; some praying; others singing; some jumping up and down the house, while others were exhorting; some lying along on the floor, and others walking and talking: the whole with a very great noise, to be heard at a mile’s distance,and continued almost the whole night.’”[115]
Dr. Chauncy proceeds to mention the dangerous errors now prevalent among the people; namely: 1. “That which supposes ministers, if not converted, incapable of being instruments of spiritual good to men’s souls. Mr. Whitefieldvery freely vented this error!”[116] 2. “A presumptuous dependence on the blessed Spirit; appearing in the following particulars: so depending on the help of the Spirit as to despise learning;” also, so as to “oppose a diligent use of appointed means;” and so as to “reflect dishonour upon the written revelations of God.” 3. “The making assurance essential to conversion.” 4. “The connecting a knowledge of the time of conversion with the thing itself as though there could not be the one without the other.” 5. “The vilifying of good works.” 6. “Decrying sanctification as an evidence of justification.”
Dr. Chauncy inserts a “proclamation for a day of public fasting and prayer,” issued, on the 9th of February, 1743, by the Honourable Jonathan Law, Esq., Governor of Connecticut, in which the ministers and people of the colony are exhorted to “confess and bewail” all their sins; “particularly, the great neglect and contempt of the gospel and the ministry thereof, and the prevailing of a spirit of error, disorder, unpeaceableness, pride, bitterness, uncharitableness, censoriousness, disobedience, calumniating and reviling of authority; also divisions, contentions, separations, and confusions in churches; and injustice, idleness, evil-speaking, lasciviousness, and all other vices and impieties which abound among us.”
The fifth and last part of Dr. Chauncy’s book contains “the best expedients to promote the interest of religion at this day.” He quotes, with approval, some of Jonathan Edwards’s recommendations, such as “confessing of faults on both sides;” “the exercise of extraordinary meekness and forbearance;” “prayer with fasting;” “care taken that the colleges be so regulated as to be nurseries of piety;” and “taking heed that, while fulfilling the external duties of devotion—as praying, hearing, singing, and attending religiousmeetings—there must be proportionable care to abound in moral duties, as acts of righteousness, truth, meekness, forgiveness, and love towards our neighbour.” To these recommendations, Dr. Chauncy adds some of his own, namely: 1. “The putting a stop to itinerant preaching.” 2. “So to guard church pulpits, that no raw, unqualified persons might be suffered, upon any terms, to go into them.” 3. To guard “against a wrong use of the passions.” 4. The exercise of a “strict discipline in our churches.” 5. “A due care to prove all things, that we may hold fast that which is good.”
These are lengthy, though imperfect, extracts; but, if an apology be needed, it may be found in the facts that Dr. Chauncy was one of the most influential men in New England, and that the effects produced by his book were greater than can be well imagined. He prefixes to his work a list of nearly eight hundred subscribers, including four governors of colonies, twenty-seven “honourables,” and a hundred and forty-seven “reverends.”
Whitefield published a reply to Chauncy’s book; but, strangely enough, the reply is not in his collected works, and seems to have been unknown to all his biographers. The following was its title: “A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Chauncy, on account of some passages relating to the Rev. Mr. Whitefield, in his book entitled, ‘Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England.’ By George Whitefield, A.B., late of Pembroke College, Oxon. Boston, 1745.” (4to. 14 pp.) The letter is dated, “Portsmouth, Piscataqua, November 19, 1744;” and the preface to it, “Boston, January 18, 1745.”