[151] Perhaps no man more boldly stated this interpretation of the motives that inspired the Standing Order than Abraham Bishop, leader of the forces of Republicanism in Connecticut and arch-enemy of “ecclesiastical aristocrats.” “The religion of the country is made a stalking horse for political jockies … Thanksgiving and fasts have been often improved for political purposes and the miserable gleanings from half a year’s ignorance of the true interests of our country have been palmed on the people, by the political clergy, as a pious compliance with the governor’s very pious proclamations…. The union of Church and State … [is] the grand fortress of the ‘friends of order and good government.’” (Oration delivered at Wallingford, New Haven, 1801, pp. 46, 83.) That “the church is in danger” has for some time past been one of the most frequent and frantic of all the absurd cries heard in the land, and that New England through her clannishness has produced “patriarchs in opinion” who assume the prerogative of dictating the opinions of the people on all subjects, are further trenchant comments of the same orator. (Ibid., pp. 13, 17.) Bishop’s observations respecting the alleged specious and insincere character of those public utterances by which “the friends of order and good government” sought to preserve the status quo, are equally pointed. “The sailor nailed the needle of his compass to the cardinal point and swore that it should not be always traversing. So does the New England friend of order: but he cautiously conceals the oppression and imposture, which sustains these habits…. This cry of steady habits has a talismanic effect on the minds of our people; but nothing can be more hollow, vain and deceitful. Recollect for a moment that everything valuable in our world has been at one time innovation, illuminatism, modern philosophy, atheism…. Our steady habits have calmly assumed domination over the rights of conscience and suffrage. Certainly the trinitarian doctrine is established by law and the denial of it is placed in the rank follies. Though we have ceased to transport from town to town, quakers, new lights, and baptists; yet the dissenters from our prevailing denomination are, even at this moment, praying for the repeal of those laws which abridge the rights of conscience.” (Ibid., pp. 14, 16.)
[152] Quoted by Walker, in his History of the Congregational Churches in the United States, p. 216.
[153] Green, Life, pp. 224, 225.
[154] Cf. supra, [pp. 36] and [37] et seq.
[155] See Walker, Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism, p. 287.
[156] The lowest point of religious decline in the history of New England was reached in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The absence of vital piety was generally remarked. The prevailing type of religious experience was unemotional and formal. The adoption of the Half-Way Covenant in the third quarter of the previous century helped to precipitate a state of things wherein the ordinary distinctions between the converted and the unconverted were largely obscured. Emphasis came to be laid heavily upon the cultivation of morality as a means of promoting spiritual life. Prayer, the reading of the Bible, and church attendance were other “means”. In other words, man’s part in the acquisition of religious experience came prominently into view. The promoters of the revival attacked these notions, asserting that repentance and faith were still fundamentally necessary and that the experience of conversion, i. e., the conscious sense of a change in one’s relation to God, was the prime test of one’s hope of salvation. Charles Chauncy, minister of the First Church, Boston, in his Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England (1743), championed the former position; the great Edwards came to the defence of the latter.
[157] Channing, Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 287–290, 387. Cf. also Goddard, Studies in New England Transcendentalism, pp. 13 et seq.
[158] Riley, American Philosophy, p. 192. Note: It is not here maintained that radical religious ideas in New England had their earliest roots, or found their sole stimulus, in the controversy which the theological formulations incident to the Great Awakening provoked. Incipient religious liberalism is distinguishable as far back as the publication of Cotton Mather’s Reasonable Religion, in 1713. In his erudite essay on “The Beginnings of Arminianism in New England,” F. A. Christie adopts the position that prior to the Great Awakening there were rumor and alarm over the mere arrival of Arminian doctrines in this country; but that after 1742 the heresy spread rapidly, chiefly due to the growth of the Episcopal church, with its marked leanings to the Arminian theology. Cf. Papers of the American Society of Church History, Second Series, vol. iii, pp. 168 et seq. But however that may be, the cause of Arminianism during the eighteenth century was promoted by men in New England who drew at least a part of their inspiration from the writings of leaders of thought in the mother country whose theological positions inclined strongly toward rationalism. Cf. Cooke, Unitarianism in America, pp. 39, 44 et seq., 79. Harvard College, from the close of the seventeenth century on, was increasingly recognized as a center of liberalizing tendencies, although none will dispute that the kernel of intellectual independence was found, all too frequently, well hidden within the tough shell of traditional conceits. Cf. Quincy, The History of Harvard University, vol. i, pp. 44–57, 199 et seq. Independent impulses were largely responsible for the following events which mark the definite emergence of Unitarianism in America: the organization of the first New England Unitarian congregation at Gloucester, Mass., in 1779; the publication in this country, five years later, of the London edition of Dr. Charles Chauncy’s Salvation for All Men; and the defection from Trinitarian standards of King’s Chapel, Boston, in 1785–87. Still it must be maintained that the controversies which raged around the doctrines of the New Calvinism beyond all other factors stiffened the inclinations and tendencies of the century toward liberal thinking. Such terms as “Arminianism”, “Pelagianism”, “Socinianism”, “Arianism”, etc., which occur with ever-increasing frequency from the fourth decade of the century on, are in themselves suggestive of the divergencies in religious opinion which the doctrinal discussion incident to the Great Awakening provoked. Cf. Fiske, A Century of Science and Other Essays: “The Origins of Liberal Thought in America”, pp. 148 et seq.
[159] As a typical illustration the comment of Lyman Beecher may be cited: “The Deistic controversy was an existing thing, and the battle was hot, the crisis exciting.” (Autobiography, Correspondence, etc. vol. i, p. 52.) The date is about 1798. In the same connection President Dwight of Yale is referred to as “the great stirrer-up of that [i. e., the deistic] controversy on this side the Atlantic.” (Ibid.) It is certain that Dwight had some acquaintance with the works of the leading English deists, and that he opposed their views. Cf. Travels in New England and New York, vol. iv, p. 362; but his main target was infidelity of the French school. Beecher fails to distinguish between the two.
[160] One discovers no convincing evidence that the deistical views of Benjamin Franklin produced any direct effect upon the thought of New England. As respects Thomas Jefferson the case was different. But New England Federalists were so successful in keeping public attention fixed on Jefferson’s fondness for French political and religious philosophy, that his alleged “French infidelity” rather than his opinions concerning natural religion became and continued to be the bone of contention. That he was regarded as a deist is, however, not to be questioned. Bentley, Diary, vol. iii, p. 20.