Another of the great conflicts of the modern church was impending. But it was only to prophetic minds in the middle of the eighteenth century that it was visible in the greatness of its proportions. The vice of drunkenness, which Isaiah had denounced in Samaria and Paul had denounced at Ephesus, was growing insensibly, since the introduction of distilled liquors as a common beverage, to a fatal prevalence. The trustees of the charitable colony of Georgia, consciously laying the foundations of many generations, endeavored to provide for the welfare of the nascent State by forbidding at once the importation of negro slaves and of spirituous liquors; but the salutary interdict was soon nullified in the interest of the crops and of the trade with the Indians. Dr. Hopkins "inculcated, at a very early day, the duty of entire abstinence from intoxicating liquids as a beverage."[206:1] But, as in the conflict with slavery, so in this conflict, the priority of leadership belongs easily to Wesley and his itinerants. The conference of 1783 declared against permitting the converts "to make spirituous liquors, sell and drink them in drams," as "wrong in its nature and consequences." To this course they were committed long in advance by the "General Rules" set forth by the two Wesleys in May, 1743, for the guidance of the "United Societies."[206:2]
An incident of the times immediately preceding the War of Independence requires to be noted in this place, not as being of great importance in itself, but as characteristic of the condition of the country and prophetic of changes that were about to take place. During the decade from 1760 to 1775 the national body of the Presbyterians—the now reunited synod of New York and Philadelphia—and the General Association of the Congregational pastors of Connecticut met together by their representatives in annual convention to take counsel over a grave peril that seemed to be impending. A petition had been urgently pressed, in behalf of the American Episcopalians, for the establishment of bishops in the colonies under the authority of the Church of England. The reasons for this measure were obvious and weighty; and the protestations of those who promoted it, that they sought no advantage before the law over their fellow-Christians, were doubtless sincere. Nevertheless, the fear that the bringing in of Church of England bishops would involve the bringing in of many of those mischiefs of the English church establishment which neither they nor their fathers had been able to bear was a perfectly reasonable fear both to the Puritans of New England and to the Presbyterians from Ireland. It was difficult for these, and it would have been even more difficult for the new dignitaries, in colonial days, to understand how bishops could be anything but lord bishops. The fear of such results was not confined to ecclesiastics. The movement was felt by the colonial statesmen to be dangerously akin to other British encroachments on colonial rights. The Massachusetts Assembly instructed its agent in London strenuously to oppose it. In Virginia, the Episcopalian clergy themselves at first refused to concur in the petition for bishops; and when at last the concurrence was voted, it was in the face of a formal protest of four of the clergy, for which they received a vote of thanks from the House of Burgesses.[207:1]
The alliance thus occasioned between the national synod of the Presbyterian Church and the Congregationalist clergy of the little colony of Connecticut seems like a disproportioned one. And so it was indeed; for the Connecticut General Association was by far the larger and stronger body of the two. By and by the disproportion was inverted, and the alliance continued, with notable results.
FOOTNOTES:
[182:1] See G. P. Fisher, "History of Christian Doctrine," pp. 394-418; also E. A. Park in the "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," vol. iii., pp. 1634-38. The New England theology is not so called as being confined to New England. Its leading "improvements on Calvinism" were accepted by Andrew Fuller and Robert Hall among the English Baptists, and by Chalmers of the Presbyterians of Scotland.
[184:1] Of what sort was the life of a church and its pastor in those days is illustrated in extracts from the journal of Samuel Hopkins, the theologian, pastor at Great Barrington, given in the Memoir by Professor Park, pp. 40-43. The Sabbath worship was disturbed by the arrival of warlike news. The pastor and the families of his flock were driven from their homes to take refuge in blockhouses crowded with fugitives. He was gone nearly three months of fall and winter with a scouting party of a hundred whites and nineteen Indians in the woods. He sent off the fighting men of his town with sermon and benediction on an expedition to Canada. During the second war he writes to his friend Bellamy (1754) of a dreadful rumor that "good Mr. Edwards" had perished in a massacre at Stockbridge. This rumor was false, but he adds: "On the Lord's day P.M., as I was reading the psalm, news came that Stockbridge was beset by an army of Indians, and on fire, which broke up the assembly in an instant. All were put into the utmost consternation—men, women, and children crying, 'What shall we do?' Not a gun to defend us, not a fort to flee to, and few guns and little ammunition in the place. Some ran one way and some another; but the general course was to the southward, especially for women and children. Women, children, and squaws presently flocked in upon us from Stockbridge, half naked and frighted almost to death; and fresh news came that the enemy were on the plains this side Stockbridge, shooting and killing and scalping people as they fled. Some presently came along bloody, with news that they saw persons killed and scalped, which raised a consternation, tumult, and distress inexpressible."
[188:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," pp. 191, 234; Dubbs, "German Reformed Church," p. 271.
[188:2] See extracts from the correspondence given by Dr. Jacobs, pp. 193-195. Dr. Jacobs's suggestion that three congregations of five hundred families each might among them have raised the few hundreds a year required seems reasonable, unless a large number of these were families of redemptioners, that is, for the time, slaves.
[190:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. 196. The story of Zinzendorf, as seen from different points of view, may be studied in the volumes of Drs. Jacobs, Dubbs, and Hamilton (American Church History Series).
[191:1] Acrelius, quoted by Jacobs, p. 218, note.