tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10436314028989988552024-02-20T02:13:10.636-08:00History of the Christian Church ©1895 Henry C. SheldonUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger140125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-48088260909300181522012-03-31T14:48:00.000-07:002019-09-02T23:56:57.960-07:00Main Index<p><strong>History of the Christian Church</strong><br />
by Henry C. Sheldon, Boston University<br />Thomas Y. Crowell and Company, New York; ©1895<br />
<em>With some revisions and type-setting by Sharon Mooney (2005)</em><br />All variations on the original Sheldon History volumes, including text revisions, greek art files associated with the text, and revised format by Sharon Mooney</p>
<p>Early Church, Volume One</p>
<p><strong>THE EARLY CHURCH</strong><br />
<a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/preface.html">Preface</a><br />
Introduction</p>
<blockquote>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/nature-of-christian-church.html">Nature of the Christian Church</a><br />
II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/periods.html"> Periods</a><br />
Three divisions in the history of the Christian Church, with their subdivisions or periods.<br />
III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/roman-empire-as-related-to-introduction.html">The Roman Empire As Related to the Introduction of Christianity</a><br />
Condition of immorality throughout the Roman Empire prior to the emergence of Christianity. Frivolous lifestyles of the Roman emperors and the inhumanity Roman entertainment. Sheldon touches on slavery, divorce and infanticide within the Roman Empire, and the reasons behind the persecution of Christians by the Roman Emperor.<br />
IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/jews-of-dispersion.html">The Jews of the Dispersion</a><br />
The population and location of Jews at the period related to the Early Church. Henry Sheldon discusses the persecution and religious implications for the Jews to 30 A.D.</blockquote>
<p><strong>FIRST PERIOD (30-313)</strong><br />
Chapter I : The Church Under the Apostles</p>
<blockquote>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/credibility-of-apostolic-history.html">Credibility of the Apostolic History</a><br />
Comments on differences of personal beliefs between the Apostles and possible error in the Gospels.<br />
II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/founding-and-successive-eras-of.html">Founding and Successive Eras of the Apostolic Church</a><br />
Some of the events which occured between Christianity's beginnings in Judaism to an independent Christianity.<br />
III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/chief-apostles.html">The Chief Apostles</a><br />
Tracing what is known of the lives of the Apostles Peter, Paul, John, and one of the Apostles whose mysterious identity is in controversy, known only as James, "The Just".<br />
IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/charisms-of-apostolic-age.html">Charisms of the Apostolic Age</a><br />
The recorded decline in miracles, speaking in tongues and prophecy following the Age of the Apostles.<br />
V. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/apostolic-church-government.html">Apostolic Church Government</a><br />
Comments on the positions in Church government, apostles, prophets, evangelists, presbyters or bishops and deacons, and the role of women in the early church.</blockquote>
<p>Chapter II : Struggle of Christianity With Heathenism</p>
<blockquote>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/spread-of-christianity-in-heathen.html">Spread of Christianity in the Heathen Empire</a><br />
Statistics from historical records on the spread of Christianity in the early period of the Christian Church by geography and population. Quoting Tertullian, Christianity had became a force to reckon with.<br />
II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/attacks-of-heathen-power.html">The Attacks of Heathen Power</a><br />
Christianity was yet illegal, the persecution and Martyrdom of Christians by Roman Emperors.<br />
III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/attacks-of-heathen-authors.html">Attacks of Heathen Authors</a><br />
The critics of Christianity before the Roman Empire legalized the religion. Including writers such as Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, Lucian and Celsus.<br />
IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/early-christian-apology.html">Christian Apology</a><br />
Early Christian Apologetics, as it arose to counter criticism of Christianity and Scripture, during the time of the early Church. Sheldon explores several apologists during the era, including Quadratus, Aristo, Miltiades, Apolinaris of Hierapolis, Theophilus, Justin Martyr, Origen, Athenagoras, Minicius Felix and Clement of Alexandria.</blockquote>
<p>Chapter III: Heresies and Christian Theology</p>
<blockquote>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/classification-of-heresies.html">Classification of Heresies</a><br />
Defining Heresies in the Early Church.<br />
II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/judaistic-heresies.html">The Judaistic Heresies</a><br />
Heresies within early Christianity which sprang from Judaism and the Mosaic Law.<br />III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/gnosticism.html">Gnosticism</a><br />
Insightful look back into early Christianity and the causes of Gnostic heresies. Covering the theological views of Gnostics and the men who were responsible for the various systems of Gnosticism.<br />
IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/manichism.html">Manichæism</a><br />
Exploring the early Christian heretical doctrines known as Manichaeism, which was a mixture of Christianity and Zoastrianism. Persecuted in the Diocletian era, and refuted by Church fathers, this teaching gained followers well into the sixth century.<br />
V. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/monarchianism.html">Monarchianism</a><br />
The Heresy in early Christianity of anti-trinitarian theology.<br />VI. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/catholic-theologians-and-theology.html">The Catholic Theologians and Theology</a><br />
The rise of Catholic theology and refutation of heretical doctrines, the prominent theologians which shaped Catholic and Christian thought in the early era of Church History.</blockquote>
<p>Chapter IV: Church Constitution and Discipline</p>
<blockquote>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/clerical-hierarchy.html">The Clerical Hierarchy</a><br />
Exploring the history behind the evolution of Catholicism and its hierarchy of clerical positions.<br />
II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/councils-canons-and-constitution.html">Counsels, Canon and Constitution</a><br />
Covering the Councils and the stringent regulations that were adapted for admission into the cleric during the early church, including rules regarding sexual conduct.<br />
III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/discipline.html">Discipline</a><br />
Theological views on ex communication and confession of sin in the early church.<br />
IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/schisms-connected-with-questions-of.html">Schisms Connected with Questions of Discipline. Montanism</a><br />
Montanism and its influence over the church in the Early Period. The founder and followers of Montanism, and how it spread throughout the near east, taking on new names and ultimately peculiarities were adapted by the Catholic Church.</blockquote>
<p>Chapter V: Christian Worship and Life</p>
<blockquote>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/sacred-times.html">Sacred Times</a><br />
Sacred festivals of the Early Church and their origin including the love feast, and the change from the Jewish Saturday Sabbath to the observance of the Lord's Day, which took place on Sunday.<br />
II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/ordinances.html">Ordinances</a><br />
Origins of Baptism, and Christening, the sprinkling of water to baptize converts to Christianity in the Early Church.<br />
III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/main-features-of-early-christian-life.html">Main Features of Christian Life</a><br />
Early Christian lifestyle, including popular views on sexual relations, marriage, virginity, celibacy. How Christians viewed slavery in the period of the early church, and views on fasting and treatment of strangers, poor and the widow.<br />
IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/catacombs-and-their-testimony-on.html">The Catacombs and their Testimony</a><br />
Archaeological and historical insight into Christian thought during early Christianity when burials of the dead took place inside catacombs. Historian Sheldon discusses when catacombs were commonly used, and the last known recorded date of a burial taking place within catacombs. He discusses symbolic icons found to decorate the catacombs and their possible meaning.<br />
V. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/men-of-marked-individuality-tertullian.html">Men of Marked Individuality</a><br />
The lives of Tertullian and Origen, describing the approximate date of birth and an overview on their vastly different lives and personalities.</blockquote>
<p><strong>SECOND PERIOD (313-590)</strong><br />
<a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/second-period-early-church-introduction.html">Introduction</a><br />
The shift from a pagan majority to a Christian majority in the second period of the Early Church.<br />
Chapter I : The Victory of Christianity over Heathenism, and the alliance with the state.</p>
<blockquote>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/administration-of-constantine-and-his.html">The Administration of Constantine and his Sons</a><br />
The Emperor Constantine, who overtook the throne and legalized Christianity in the Early history of the Christian Church. Details from historians on the execution of Constantine's wife and sons. Upon the death of Constantine, his sons Constantius, Constantine the Younger, and Constans overtook the Empire and the history of what became of it.<br />
II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/julian-apostate.html">Julian the Apostate</a><br />
Summary of the life of Julian, Emperor, half brother of Constantine and his short reign over the Roman Empire. Julian's abandonment of Christianity, and belief that it would pass away and heathenism return to its original greatness in the Empire.<br />
III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/policy-of-succeeding-emperors-toward.html">The Policy of the Succeeding Emperors</a><br />
The Emperors who followed Julian on the throne and their use of power toward Christianity. Includes the account of Hypatia of Alexandria and her brutal murder by Christians, and underlying political motives.<br />
IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/heathen-and-christian-apology.html">Heathen and Christian Apology</a><br />
Early Christian Apologetics, as it arose to counter criticism of Christianity and Scripture, during the time of the early Church. Exploring various books written by the early Christian fathers.<br />
V. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/nature-and-results-of-alliance-between.html">Nature and Results of the Alliance Between Church and State</a><br />
As the Christian Church gained influence throughout the Roman Empire, it began to gain political influence. New-found wealth was readily available to the clergy, and many claimed conversion to Christianity for personal benefit. Death penalties were inflicted upon some deemed heretics. Severe punishment upon women encouraged and to supersede laws offering special protection afforded to women.</blockquote>
<p>Chapter II : <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/christianity-on-and-beyond-borders-of.html">Christianity on and Beyond the Borders of the Empire</a><br />
The growth of Christendom in the early Church on and beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Documents some of the martyrs, and the life of St. Patrick in Ireland.<br />
Chapter III : Doctrinal Controversies</p>
<blockquote>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/doctrinal-controversies-causes-and.html">Causes and Features</a><br />
Insight into the zealous dogmatism of the early church and its divisions on theological doctrines. Historians account some of the hostilities of the common person, swept away in controversies over doctrinal interpretation.<br />
II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/arian-controversy.html">The Arian Controversy</a><br />
The Arian Controversy which held the belief that Christ was to be esteemed neither truly divine nor truly human, neither God nor man; but a being intermediate between the two. Arianism was considered a heretical doctrine and was driven out by the Church.<br />III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/christological-controversies.html">The Christological Controversies</a><br />
Further controversies of the early Christian Church on the person of Christ.<br />IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/origenistic-controversies.html">The Origenistic Controversies</a><br />
Athanasius, Epiphanius, Theophilus and other prominent figures in the early church; supporters and opposition to Origen's doctrines.<br />
V. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/controversies-of-anthropology.html">Controversies on Anthropology</a><br />
The controversy which arose with the monk Pelagius from Britain. His doctrinal system were a denial of inherited corruption in the moral nature of man, a strong assertion of the freedom of the will, and a decided emphasis upon man's ability to work out his own salvation as opposed to his radical dependence upon divine grace.</blockquote>
<p>Chapter IV : Church Constitution and Discipline</p>
<blockquote>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/election-education-and-celibacy-of.html">Election, Education, and Celibacy of the Clergy</a><br />
The introduction of bishops voting, and celibacy in the clergy.<br />
II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/developments-in-different-ranks-of.html">Developments in the Different Ranks of the Clergy</a><br />
Early Christian deaconesses and the regulations set upon them, the institution of the papacy and power invested into Bishops.<br />
III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/discipline-confession-of-sins.html">Discipline</a><br />
Penalties for crimes, including murder. The institution of Confession.<br />
IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/schisms-connected-with-questions-of_28.html">Schisms Connected with Discipline</a><br />
Schisms in the early Christian Church and some of the wanton violence and senseless deaths resulting from spiritual zealotry.</blockquote>
<p>Chapter V : Worship and Life</p>
<blockquote>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/sacred-times-rites-and-services.html">Sacred Times, Rites and Services</a><br />
Sacred festivals of the Early Church and their origins, including festivals to Mary, the mother of Jesus, the change from the Jewish Saturday Sabbath to the observance of the Lord's Day, which took place on Sunday.<br />
II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/veneration-of-saints-relics-and-images.html">Veneration of Saints, Relics, and Images</a><br />
Relics worshipped by early Christians. Legends of healings by touching divine relics. Worship of martyrs and saints in early Christianity.<br />
III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/miracles-of-saints-and-relics.html">Miracles of Saints and Relics</a><br />
Miracles in the early Church and deceptive inventions of the miraculous.<br />
IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/general-tone-of-christian-life.html">General Tone of Christian Life</a><br />The Early Church and corrupted moral behavior of the times, comments by early church fathers.<br />
V. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/monasticism.html">Monasticism</a><br />
Monasticism marked a move toward alienation of the world and its wealth. Extreme lifestyles and trends in early Christianity, including self-inflicted torture and solitude.<br />VI. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/representative-men.html">Representative Men</a><br />
Tracing lives of early prominent men of influence within Christianity. Athanasius, Basil and the two Gregories, Chrysostom, Augustine, Theodoret, Jerome and Ambrose.</blockquote>
<p>Chapter VI : Products in the Artistic Spirit in the Early Church</p>
<blockquote>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/hymns-and-liturgies.html">Hymns and Liturgies</a><br />
The introduction and spread of Hymns and Liturgies in the Early Christian Church.<br />
II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/architecture.html">Architecture</a><br />
Architecture in Early Christianity, the majestic buildings erected as houses of worship; influences on Architectural design.<br />
III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/painting.html">Painting</a><br />
Artistic expression through painting and sculpture in early Christianity, and changes over time on how artists chose to portray Jesus.</blockquote>
<p>Appendix</p>
<blockquote><br />
I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/catholic-creeds.html">Catholic Creeds</a><br />
The Catholic Creeds in Early Christianity.<br />
II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/ignatian-problem.html">The Ignatian Problem</a><br />
Fourteen arguments in favor of the Seven Epistles of the Middle Form as the genuine work of Ignatius.<br />
III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/placing-of-hippolytus.html">The Placing of Hippolytus</a><br />
Utilizing historical documents to attempt defining the rank and residence of Hippolytus.<br />
IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/hatch-harnack-theory-of-early-christian.html">The Hatch-Harnack Theory of Early Christian Organization</a><br />
Theory proposed in 1880 by Edwin Hatch to explain how the Administration evolved within early Christianity, and administration of charities.<br />
V. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/roman-bishops-and-emperors.html">Roman Bishops and Emperors</a><br />
Table listing Bishops and Emperors who arose in the Roman Empire, by name and date of ascension.</blockquote>
<h3>Mediaeval Church, Volume Two</h3>
<p><a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/mediaeval-church-introduction.html">Introduction</a></p>
<p><strong>THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH</strong></p>
<blockquote><strong>FIRST PERIOD (590-1073)</strong></blockquote>
<p>Chapter I<br />
<a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/barbarian-tribes.html">The Barbarian Tribes</a><br />
Chronicle of events during the Barbarian Invasions of the Roman Empire and the downfall of the Roman Empire.</p>
<p>Chapter II<br />
<a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/extension-of-christian-territory-by.html">Extension of Christian Territory by Missionaries</a><br />
During the Mediaeval period, the first Christian Missionaries who spread the Christian religion into heathen territories and an end of the Barbarian invasions.</p>
<p>Chapter III<br /><a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/limitation-of-christian-territories-by.html">Limitation of Christian Territory by Mohammedanism</a><br />
Mohammed, and by what means he felt distinguished as a prophet, including commentary on the Koran, its influence and impact on civilization.</p>
<p>Chapter IV<br />
<a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/civil-patrons-of-christianity.html">Civil Patrons of Christianity</a><br />
On the life of Charlemagne, Charles Martel and Pepin who restored a certain amount of order and dignity to the peoples of Europe following the Barbarian Invasions and the rise of feudalism.</p>
<p>Chapter V<br />
Controversies</p>
<p>Chapter VI<br />
Church Constitution and Discipline<br />
I. The Relations between Church and State<br />
II. The Clergy in General<br />
III. The Papacy<br />
IV. Discipline</p>
<p>Chapter VII<br />
Worship and Life</p>
<p><strong>SECOND PERIOD (1073-1294)</strong></p>
<p>Introduction<br />
Chapter I<br />
Political Status of the Principle Countries of Europe<br />
Chapter II<br />
The Papal Theocracy and other Features of Church Constitution<br />
I. Gregory VII and his more immediate successors<br />
II. Alexander III. and Thomas Becket<br />
III. Innocent III<br />IV. The Papacy from Innocent III to Boniface VIII<br />
V. Various Features of Church Constitution</p>
<p>Chapter III<br />
<a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/crusades.html">The Crusades</a><br />
The Crusades were the first great enterprise which enlisted the common zeal of the Christian nations of Europe. All classes of society, from the king down to the peasant, sent forth the armed pilgrims who were to reclaim the holy places of the East. Hundreds of thousands, possibly several millions, of men were sacrificed in these expeditions.</p>
<p>Chapter IV<br />
Monasticism<br />
I. The Cistercians and their Great Representative<br />
II. The Mendicant Orders<br />
<strong>THIRD PERIOD (1294-1517)</strong></p>
<p>Introduction</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Chapter I<br />Chief Political Developments</p>
<p>Chapter II<br />Popes and Councils</p>
<p>Chapter III<br />
Representatives of Criticism and Reform</p>
<p>Chapter IV<br />
<a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/waldenses.html">The Waldenses</a><br />
The Waldenses of the Medieval Church. The origin of this sect, and their founder Peter Waldo.</p>
<p>Chapter V<br /><a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/wycliffe-and-his-followers.html">John Wycliffe and his followers</a><br />
John Wycliffe, Biblical translator, his views as a reformer, his influence upon the Christian Church, and the tormentuous death suffered by Sir John Oldcastle/Cobham.</p>
<p>Chapter VI<br /><a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/john-huss-and-hussites.html">John Huss and the Hussites</a><br />
The life of John Huss, and his influence on Christian History.</p>
Chapter VII<br />
The Mystics<br />
Chapter VIII<br />
Savonarola<br />
Chapter IX<br />The Mediæval Greek Church<br />
Chapter X<br />Mediæval Hymns, Architecture, and Painting<br />
I. Hymns<br />
II. Architecture<br />
III. Painting<br />
Appendix<br />
I. The Seven Sacraments<br />
II. Genuineness of the Famous Bull of Adrian IV<br />
III. Sorcery and Witchcraft<br />
IV. Popes and Emperors</blockquote>
<h3>Modern Church Part One, Volume Three</h3>
<p><strong>THE MODERN CHURCH--PART ONE</strong></p>
<p><strong>FIRST PERIOD (1517-1648)</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/modern-church-introduction.html">Introduction</a></p>
<p>Chapter I <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/humanism-and-its-relation-to.html">Humanism and its Relation to the Reformation</a><br />
The Renaissance era and Humanism in relation to Christianity, and its key figures at the beginning of the Reformation.</p>
<p>Chapter II <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/empire-at-dawn-of-reformation.html">The Empire at the Dawn of the Reformation</a><br />
The empire becomes a mixture of monarchy and confederacy, the peasant revolts, the crumbling system of feudalism.</p>
<p>Chapter III The Reformation in Germany and the Scandinavian Countries</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/luther-till-leipzig-disputation.html">Luther till the Leipzig Disputation</a><br />
The life of Luther, his formative years and aptitude toward learning and teaching. Many of the influences which shaped the life of Luther into a father of the Reformation.</p>
<p>II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/luther-from-opening-of-leipzig.html">Luther from the Opening of the Leipzig Disputation to the Close of the Diet of Worms</a><br />
Luther lays the foundation for the Reformation, leading to the Diet of Worms in which Luther is condemned as a heretic.</p>
<p>III <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/luther-and-german-reformation-from-diet.html">Luther and the German Reformation from the Diet of Worms to the Close of the Diet of Augsburg</a><br />
Further struggles between the Catholic Church and the Protestants. Living in seclusion, Luther accomplishes translation of the Bible.</p>
<p>IV <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/german-reformation-from-diet-of.html">The German Reformation from the Diet of Augsburg to the Death of Luther</a><br />
The Reformation takes hold on the majority of German population. The sexual ruthlessness following in its wake.</p>
<p>V. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/german-reformation-from-death-of-luther.html">The German Reformation from the Death of Luther to the Death of Melanchthon</a><br />
The tensions increase between the Church and Protestants. The lifetime accomplishments of Melanchthon.</p>
<p>VI. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/reformation-in-scandinavian-countries.html">The Reformation in the Scandanavian Countries</a><br />
The effect of the Reformation on Norway, Denmark and Sweden. The leading figures of influence during the Reformation in Scandinavia. Fluxuations between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism by the rulers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chapter IV The Reformation in Switzerland</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/reformation-in-german-switzerland.html">The Reformation in German Switzerland</a><br />
Contemporary to Luther, Swiss Reformer Zwingli and his peculiar doctrines, including Bullinger and his influence on churches abroad.</p>
<p>II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/reformation-in-french-switzerland.html">The Reformation in French Switzerland</a><br />
William Farel, the pioneer of Reformation in French Switzerland. Calvin's arrival, and the severe penalties befalling those who disobeyed Calvin's strict code of conduct. The trial of Michael Servetus.</p>
<p>III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/bonds-of-union-between-reformed.html">Bonds of Union Between the Reformed Churches in Switzerland and Elsewhere</a><br />
Efforts by Bucer to establish union between the Swiss and the Lutheran churches prove uneventful.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chapter V Protestantism in France</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/reformation-in-france-during-reign-of.html">The Reformation in France during the Reign of Francis I</a><br />
Tremendous persecution by Catholics upon Protestants in France during the reign of Francis. Protestantism begins its spread through France.</p>
<p>II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/reformation-in-france-during-reign-of_28.html">The Reformation in France during the Reign of Henry II</a><br />
Persecution and Martyrdom of Protestant Christian heretics, including France's own political officials, with hope to model the system inquisition in Spain.</p>
<p>III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/protestantism-in-france-from-death-of.html">Protestantism in France from the Death of Henry II to the Accession of Henry IV</a><br />
Sixteen year old Francis II, those who usurped authority over the throne, charges of treason and executions. Massacres of Huguenots, and their iconoclastic uprising, leading to the civil wars in France. After three civil wars, a peace was concluded in 1570, only to be betrayed by the Queen, Catharine de Medici. The Vatican's reaction to the massacres.</p>
<p>IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/protestantism-in-france-from-accession.html">Protestantism in France from the Accession of Henry IV to the Fall of La Rochelle</a>
Henry IV., a Roman Catholic grants religious freedom to the Huguenots, and murdered by a zealot. Henry's throne succeeded by Louis XIII.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chapter VI Protestantism in Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/protestantism-in-italy.html">Protestantism in Italy</a><br />Publications by Protestants begin circulating in Italy, disguised as works that even made their way into the Vatican and read by adherents of the Catholic religion. Protestantism begins gaining support. Inquisition begins against those suspected of heresy. Some of the Italian martyrs and the cruel means employed for execution.</p>
<p>II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/protestantism-in-spain.html">Protestantism in Spain</a><br />
Writings of Luther make their way into Spain. The New Testament is translated into Spanish. The inquisition begins to stamp out Protestantism. The barbaric means employed to silence the movement and its adherents.</p>
<p>III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/protestantism-in-netherlands.html">Protestantism in the Netherlands</a><br />
Historians estimate death toll of executions at hands of Roman Catholics. Iconoclastic rebellions, trials for heresy, and religious bigotry increases. Tensions between Christian denominations mount, and talk of war.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chapter VII Protestantism in Great Britain and Ireland</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/reformation-in-england-under-henry-viii.html">The Reformation in England under Henry VIII</a><br />
Henry VIII.'s reign, and controversial, unlawful marriage. The King's desire to shift loyalty from the Pope, to himself. Tyndale's work to translate the Bible into English and distribution thereof to the common person. England was set in such a state, that (quoting) those who were against the Pope were burned, and those who were for him were hanged.</p>
<p>II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/reformation-in-england-during-reign-of.html">The Reformation in England during the Reign of Edward VI</a><br />Reformation takes hold in England. The statute under which heretics had been burned since the rise of the Lollards is abolished. The Book of Common Prayer, a somewhat more Protestant influence, is introduced.</p>
<p>III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/roman-catholic-restoration-in-reign-of.html">The Roman Catholic Restoration in the Reign of Mary</a><br />
Queen Mary Tudor and Philip II., both of Spanish lineage, united in marriage, re-opening the alliance with Rome, and a fierce crusade against the Protestants is rekindled.</p>
<p>IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/protestantism-in-england-during-reign.html">Protestantism in England during the Reign of Elizabeth</a><br />
Elizabeth's toleration of Protestant creeds draws the anger of the Pope and Roman Catholics in Europe. Assasination attempts on the Queen and those condemned as conspirators.</p>
<p>V. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/reformation-in-scotland.html">The Reformation of Scotland</a><br />
Romish religion made a penal offence. John Knox on Queen Mary of Scots. The Queen becomes center of Roman Catholic plots, leading to imprisonment. Escaping to England, she spends her life as a prisoner.</p>
<p>VI. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/protestantism-in-england-and-scotland.html">Protestantism in England and Scotland under James I. and Charles I.</a><br />
Revised translation of the Bible issued during King James reign, and ready for publication in 1611. Furtherance of toleration toward Protestantism, and grievances of the Puritans.</p>
<p>VII. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/protestantism-in-ireland.html">Protestantism in Ireland</a><br />
Futile attempts to bring reform in Ireland, in either political and religious thought. Ireland, in its seclusion experienced little change from the mediaeval system.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chapter VIII The Roman Catholic Church in the Time of the Reformation</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/popes-and-council.html">The Popes and the Council</a><br />
The Political Climate during the Reformation. The Council of Trent, measures to unify Roman Catholic forces, and a revival of Romanism sweeps through Europe.</p>
<p>II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/inquisition.html">The Inquisition</a><br />
Events which occurred during the Inquisition, including the trial of Galileo.</p>
<p>III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/jesuits.html">The Jesuits</a><br />
The rise and organization of the Jesuits. Devoted to Roman Catholicism, the Jesuit Society grew into the thousands and met with resistance from even the Roman Church, due to deceptive practices.</p>
<p>IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/clerical-celibacy.html">Clerical Celibacy</a><br />
Statistics of Priests who strayed from their vow of celibacy, and participated in concubinage.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chapter IX <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/thirty-years-war-and-peace-of.html">The Thirty Years' War and the Peace of Westphalia</a><br />
Events, religious and political that lead up to the war, the devastating effects of the war on Europe, and the peace process.</p>
<p><strong>SECOND PERIOD (1648-1720)</strong></p>
<p>Chapter I. France and other Countries under Roman Catholic Rule</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/louis-xiv-and-his-court.html">Louis XIV. and his Court</a><br />
Louis XIV., King of France and his lavish lifestyle of excess and adultery. Rome, as well as all other outside powers exercised no controlling influence on the affairs of state.</p>
<p>II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/chief-factors-in-religious-and.html">Chief Factors in the Religious and Intellectual Life of the Gallican Church</a><br />
Vincent de Paul's charitable work. Bossuet's influential sermons. Blaise Pascal's defense of Jansenists vs. Jesuits. Madame Guyon, 17th century prophetess, Fénelon's writings on God.</p>
<p>III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/persecution-of-protestants-in-france.html">Persecution of the Protestants in France</a><br />
The monarchy of Louis XIV. was intolerant, a uniform system of faith and worship imposed leading to violent persecution throughout France with thousands of Hugeunots recanting and exiled.</p>
<p>IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/gleanings-from-various-countries-under.html">Gleanings from Various Countries under Romish Rule</a><br />
The intolerance of religion was in full force and in one spectacle eighteen Jews and one Morisco were burned alive. The purchase of souls from purgatory. An overview of the political and religious powers in the last half of the seventeenth century.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chapter II Great Britain and Ireland</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/era-of-cromwell-and-commonwealth.html">The Era of Cromwell and the Commonwealth</a><br />
The political system of Cromwell allows freedom for many Protestants, renewed prosperity, with the exception to the Quakers which Cromwell made no special pains to lend protection.</p>
<p>II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/era-of-restored-stuarts.html">The Era of the Restored Stuarts</a><br />
Charles II. and James receive the crown, and the nation is lulled into a state of moral laxity, followed by further intolerance and persecution.</p>
<p>III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/reigns-of-william-iii-and-anne.html">The Reigns of William III and Anne</a><br />
Developments which bring a greater tolerance toward Protestant denominations, including John Locke's Letters concerning Toleration. The political union of England and Scotland.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chapter III Protestantism in Germany and the neighboring Countries</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/individual-exceptions-to-current.html">Individual Exceptions to the Current Dogmatism</a><br />Controversial fever broke out among German Protestants before the death of Luther, leading to a lengthy reign of dogmatism. Some of the influential authors and their writings during this period.</p>
<p>II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/calixtus-and-syncretists.html">Calixtus and the Syncretists</a><br />
Calixtus, tolerant toward adherents of all denominations sought to establish some common ground between the divided denominations.</p>
<p>III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/spener-and-pietists.html">Spener and the Pietists</a><br />
Spener's Pietism was one example of Christian reform, awakening earnest study of scripture. On the whole, Pietism was a blessing to Germany and to Christendom, though teaching abstinence from worldly merriments.</p>
<p>IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/zinzendorf-and-moravians.html">Zinzendorf and the Moravians</a><br />
Zinzendorf is another note-worthy figure in reformation history. Details of the Moravians' peculiarities; some being the lot, love-feasts, feet-washings, and the fraternal kiss at the communion.</p>
<p>V. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/tenor-of-protestant-history-in-sweden.html">Tenor of Protestant History in Sweden, The Netherlands, and Switzerland</a><br />
The Dutch Republic and some theological developments during the period, such as the Labadists, and the Mennonites, granted full toleration in 1626, bearing similar practices with Baptists and Quakers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chapter IV <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/eastern-church.html">The Eastern Church</a><br />Events in Church History which took shape in Russia. Cyril Lucar adopts creed substantially identical to reformed theology. Philip, exalted to martyrdom for reproval of Ivan the Terrible for his cruelties.</p>
<h3>Modern Church Part Two, Volume Four</h3>
<p><strong>THE MODERN CHURCH--PART TWO</strong></p>
<p>Chapter I Great Britain and Ireland in the Eighteenth Century</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/nonjurors.html">The Nonjurors</a><br />Nonjurors, consisted of men refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the new dynasty which was required of those holding clerical, academic, or other offices.</p>
<p>II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/deistical-controversies.html">The Deistical Controversy</a><br />
Lord Edward Herbert seeks to find essential tenets of true religion, followed by numerous writers who began questioning portions of the Bible and intepretation.</p>
<p>III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/moral-and-religious-condition-of.html">The Moral and Religious Condition of England on the Eve of the Great Revival</a><br />
The relaxation of the law against witchcraft, and a flourishing slave-trade went on, with scarce opposition. Moral decline preceding the Great Revival.</p>
<p>IV. The Great Revival</p>
<p>1. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/great-revival-beginnings-of-methodism.html">Beginnings of Methodism</a><br />
The background of John and Charles Wesley, and details on other key individuals who were involved with the Great Revival, with record of violence by mob attacks on the Methodists.</p>
<p>2. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/whitefield-and-calvinistic-methodism.html">Whitefield and Calvinistic Methodism</a><br />
The life and background of George Whitefield, co-founder of the Methodist denomination. Calvinistic Methodism's influence on England and Wales following Whitefield's death.</p>
<p>3. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/charles-wesley-and-methodist-hymnology.html">Charles Wesley and Methodist Hymnology</a><br />
Charles Wesley was known for his unique gift with sacred poetry. On the lives of John and Charles Wesley, his hymns and mournful passing.</p>
<p>4. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/john-wesley-and-organized-methodism.html">John Wesley and Organized Methodism</a><br />
The rise of organized Methodism, a thing Wesley expresses having not planned. Life of John William Fletcher. Relationship with the Church of England, doctrines of Methodism, and hierarchal positions within the clergy. Wesley's support of the anti-slavery movement and denounce of liquor traffic.</p>
<p>5. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/results-of-revival.html">Results of the Revival</a><br />
Institution of Sunday Schools, the work of Bible and Tract distribution, the impact of the Great Revival upon the common people, --in a time of French revolutionary zeal, and bonfires of Bibles honoring Paine.</p>
<p>V. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/english-dissenters.html">English Dissenters</a><br />
Gradual change in law affects trends in popular doctrines. Laws against Roman Catholics are relaxed, and the resulting outbreak of intolerance. Laws affecting the variegated denominations, and notable figures shaping Protestant Hymnology.</p>
<p>VI. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/principal-developments-in-scotland.html">Principal Developments in Scotland</a><br />
Events leading up to formation of the United Presbyterian Church. David Hume's skeptical works. A woman burned for witchcraft, 1727, Christmas denounced as superstition.</p>
<p>VII. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/ireland-from-revolution-to-union.html">Ireland from the Revolution to the Union</a> (1691-1800)<br />
The sorrow of Roman Catholics under hostile law, and the oppression of the English against the citizens in Ireland. Laws prohibiting marriage of Roman Catholics and Protestants, position of influence, education, property rights.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chapter II America in the Colonial Era</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/america-in-colonial-era-colonies-in.html">The Colonies in their Political Relations</a><br />
Columbus' discovery. The Pope, a Spaniard immediately issues a bull, declaring the Spanish as primary owners of new land. European conquests in the American continents. Slavery, Abolitionists, the colonies and political relation to Europe.</p>
<p>II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/colonies-in-their-relation-to-natives.html">The Colonies in their Relations to the Natives</a><br />
Religious ceremonies and spiritual beliefs of Native Americans, Inca and Maya. Slavery, oppression, massacre and abuses endured by the Natives by the new settlers in America.</p>
<p>III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/roman-catholic-establishments.html">Roman Catholic Establishments</a><br />
The burning of Aztec Libraries. Santa Rosa, patron saint of Lima. Inquisition in the South American continent by Catholics. The story of the miraculous Virgin of Guadalupe.</p>
<p>IV. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/roman-catholics-in-english-colonies.html">Roman Catholics in the English Colonies</a><br />
Colonial law governing restrictions and tolerance toward Catholics, Unitarians and Jews. Details on Maryland having passed the act of tolerance in 1649.</p>
<p>V. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/church-of-england-establishments-and.html">Church of England Establishments, and the Founding of the Protestant Episcopal Church</a><br />
Early American colonies' ties to the Church of England, including levied taxation. Laws and penalties for those failing to attend church, including the death penalty.</p>
<p>VI. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/congregational-establishments.html">Congregational Establishments</a><br />
Various American colonies, their sentiments toward the Church of England. Persecution against variegated denominations. The Salem Witch trial, Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening.</p>
<p>VII. Non-Established Communions</p>
<blockquote>
<p>1. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/presbyterians.html">Presbyterians</a><br />
During the eighteenth century, the Presbyterians were in small numbers and yet to become an official. The transformation and events which leads to the establishment of the Presbyterian Church.</p>
<p>2. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/baptists.html">Baptists</a><br />
Establishment of the first Baptist congregations through the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The growth of the Baptist denomination, the effect of Calvinism, and denominations breaking off from Baptist faith.</p>
<p>3. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/quakers-or-friends.html">Quakers or Friends</a><br />
Persecution and territorities populated by the Quakers in the United States, their code and beliefs.</p>
<p>4. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/methodists.html">Methodists</a><br />
The founders of the American-Methodist Church and establishments of congregations, and growth in the the Revolutionary war era.</p>
<p>5. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/lutherans.html">Lutherans</a><br />
Beginning with the first Lutherans, Swedes who settled in Delaware, Carolinas and Georgia. Overview of events for the Lutheran church in the Revolutionary War era.</p>
<p>6. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/universalists.html">Universalists</a><br />
Organized Universalism traced back to John Murray. Supporters of Restorationism, and pecualiarities of the Universalist creed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>VIII. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/questions-of-morals-and-reform.html">Questions of Morals and Reform</a><br />
Colonial Sabbath decision. Opposition to theatre, inhumane conditions of prisons. Alcohol consumption and prohibition. Quakers first in abolition of slavery, followed by Methodists and Baptist Association of Virginia.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chapter III<br />
France and Other Roman Catholic Countries of Continental Europe from the Death of Louis XIV to the Overthrow of Napoleon I (1715-1815)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/political-movement-in-france.html">The Political Movement in France</a><br />
Hunger and disillusionment provoke the French into political discontent. Many die of want, the King sent to the scaffold. In midst of national upheaval, Napoleon Bonaparte becomes ideal for imperial rule over France.</p>
<p>II. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/skeptical-movement.html">The Skeptical Movement</a><br />
Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Guenée who shaped the era.</p>
<p>III. <a href="http://history-christian-church.blogspot.com/2012/03/french-church-prior-to-revolution.html">The French Church Prior to the Revolution</a><br />
Controversies around the bull Unigenitus. Christian burial rites refused, to reject the bull was graver than 'the primal sin of Adam'. Jansenists and an overabundance of daily miracles, such as convulsions.</p>
<p>IV. The French Church in the Revolutionary Era<br />
V. The French Church in the Napoleonic Era<br />
VI. Chief Events in Austria, Italy, and Spain</blockquote>
Chapter IV<br />
Germany and the Neighboring Protestant States (1720-1821)<br />
I. General Glance at Germany<br />
II. The Wolfian Era<br />
III From Kant to Schleiermacher<br />
IV. Chief Events in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Switzerland
<p>Chapter V<br />
The Russian Church (1725-1825)</p>
<h3>Modern Church Part Three, Volume Five</h3>
<p><strong>THE MODERN CHURCH--PART THREE</strong></p>
<p>Chapter I<br />
Protestantism in Continental Europe Since Schleiermacher and the Union<br />
I. Main Phases of the Political Movement in Germany<br />
II. The Church in Germany viewed principally in its relation to the State<br />
III. Prominent Developments in German Theology<br />
IV. Outlines of Protestant History in Various Portions of the Continent</p>
<p>Chapter II<br />
Romanism in Continental Europe Since The Fall of the First Napoleon<br />
I. Mediæval Tendencies in the Sphere of Worship<br />
II. Papal Absolutism and Infallibility<br />
III Ecclesiastico-Political Matters</p>
<p>Chapter III<br />
Great Britain and Ireland in the Nineteeth Century<br />
I. General Survey of the Religious Field in England<br />
II.Tractarianism, or Ritualism<br />
III The Broad Church<br />
IV. Some Facts Respecting English Dissenters<br />
V. Church Polity and Religious Thought in Scotland<br />
VI. Ireland<br />
VII. Phases of Science and Philosophy in Britain</p>
<p>Chapter IV<br />
America Since the Colonial Era.<br />
I. The Expirament of a Free Church in the United States<br />
II. Denominational Movements and Crises in the United States<br />
1. Unitarians and Universalists<br />
2. Congregationalists<br />
3. Presbyterians and Reformed<br />
4. Methodists<br />
5. Baptists and Disciples<br />
6. Episcopalians<br />
7. Lutherans<br />
8. Quakers<br />
9. Roman Catholics<br />
10. Mormons<br />
11. Socialistic Communities<br />
12. Denominational Statistics<br />
III. Outlines of Canadian Church History<br />
IV. Principle Developments in Spanish America and Brazil</p>
<p>Chapter V<br />
The Eastern Church</p>
<p>Chapter VI<br />
A Glance at Protestant Missions</p>
<p>Conclusion</p>
<p>Appendix<br />
I. The Bull Unigenitus on the Reading of the Scriptures<br />
II. Popes and Emperors</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-36917346101353107292012-03-30T16:16:00.000-07:002019-09-02T23:57:13.029-07:00Preface<p><strong>PREFACE</strong></p>
<p>THIS CHURCH HISTORY is designed to occupy a middle position between a mere compendium and those ponderous works which by their very mass are discouraging to all but professional investigators. It would have been very easy to have doubled the bulk of the production, but we are confident that in so doing we should not have increased its practical value.</p>
<p>Considerable attention has been paid to the demands of historical perspective. By passing lightly over subordinate themes, we have endeavored to secure space in connection with important topics for the presentation, not merely of conclusions, but also of the grounds of conclusions.</p>
<p>The work is not <em>exclusively</em> for professional students. We apprehend, in fact, that it has some special adaptations to the intelligent layman. At any rate, we have written with the conviction that a good knowledge of church history lies close to the vocation of every earnest-minded citizen. For one thing, it is very desirable that he should have in view such object lessons on the relations of Church and State as are furnished by a candid review of the Christian centuries.</p>
<p>A somewhat larger space would doubtless have been given to doctrinal history, had it not been for the author's conviction that the detailed treatment of this subject belongs to a separate branch. It will be noticed however, that the prominent heresies have been sketched, that the field of Catholic doctrine has been defined in the different eras, and that a relatively full account has been given of the principal theological and philosophical developments which have had place since the beginning of the critical era in the eighteenth century.</p>
<p>We have thought it proper to devote three out of the five volumes to the Modern Church, partly on account of the breadth and complexity of the later church history, and partly on account of the relative lack of comprehensive works for this division of the subject.</p>
<p>In a few instances convenience of grouping has led to a departure from the scheme of periods sketched in the introduction; but the tables of contents and the indexes will afford ready means for locating any topic.</p>
<p>It will be observed that on points at issue between Protestantism and Romanism we have taken more than average pains to brace our statements by documentary evidence.</p>
<p>The foot-notes refer to only a part of the sources consulted, but they indicate most of those having prime importance. In general, we have sought to be mindful of the maxim that, in this age of the world, it is far more important to give facts and arguments than to furnish a catalogue of the names and opinions of persons who have chanced to write about the facts. We are conscious, however, that we hare supplied no ideal illustration of the maxim.</p>
<p style="font-size: 10;">BOSTON UNIVERSITY.<br />April, 1894.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-57221756117021152692012-03-29T21:17:00.000-07:002019-09-02T23:57:30.407-07:00The French Church Prior to the Revolution<p><strong>The French Church Prior to the Revolution</strong></p>
<p>In the treatment of the preceding topics the general course of events belonging to the present subject has necessarily been anticipated. There are some special points, however, which may be accorded a brief attention, such as the extent of the protest against the bull Unigenitus; the amount of papal sanction given to the bull; the relation of the controversy to the insinuation of Ultramontanism; the crowning scandal of the controversy effected by imposing the bull upon the consciences of penitents as a condition of absolution; the closing stage of Jansenism; the downfall of the Jesuits; and the fortunes of Protestants.</p>
<p>Mention has been made of the fact that the majority of the bishops adhered to the bull Unigenitus. This adhesion was not the result of any fervent affection for that document. Some of them, doubtless, sharing the animosity of those who instigated the Pope to issue the bull, approved it as a means of annihilating the Jansenist party. A larger number probably were influenced by their double dependence upon King and Pope. They had learned that it was not easy to resist the will of Louis X1V., even when he was acting counter to Rome. In the Unigenitus affair they saw that King and Pope were united. Deeming it, therefore, hazardous to resist, and not being seriously troubled with theological convictions, they subscribed. The ensuing death of Louis gave, it is true, a temporary release from royal pressure; but to retract was a humiliating step, and also of doubtful prudence, since it would expose them to the Pope's displeasure, and would be very embarrassing in case the papal constitution should finally be sustained.</p>
<p>The position of the majority in the episcopate was too well explained to be of much weight with those whose independence was less hampered. In fact the protesting party greatly exceeded that of the subscribers. Voltaire, who had reached the verge of manhood at the publication of the constitution Unigenitus, thus describes the relative strength of the two parties, as the matter stood a few years later: "The Church of France continued to be divided into two parties, the <em>accepters</em> and the <em>rejecters</em>. The accepters were the hundred bishops who had adhered under Louis XIV. with the Jesuits and the Capuchins. The rejecters were fifteen bishops and the whole nation. The accepters enjoyed the support of Rome; the other party that of the universities, the parliaments and the people." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Siècle de Louis XIV, chap. xxxvii., edit. 1829-40.</span></strong> Nearly a score of years were requisite to overcome the opposition so far as to secure a nominal assent to the detested constitution. It was only after forty-eight doctors had been expelled that the Sorbonne was constrained to subscribe in an unqualified manner (1729). As for the Parliament of Paris, it gave no voluntary assent, and the registration of the declaration for the execution of the constitution could be obtained only through the arbitrary mandate of the King (1730). Before reaching this result the government had signalized its inflexible resolution by afflicting numbers of the protesting clergy with fines, banishment, or imprisonment. The amount of violence used did not tend to increase the impression of the people respecting the holiness of the papal constitution. It was also a dubious element in the case that the infamous Dubois had been the means of turning the scale in favor of subscription at a crucial point in the controversy, and had been rewarded with a cardinal's hat.</p>
<p>It has been thought that Clement XI. doubted the wisdom of sending forth the bull which was to give him such an unenviable notoriety, and yielded with a measure of reluctance to the pressure of intemperate partisans. However this may have been, both he and the succeeding Popes made no concessions to the appeals with which they were assailed. Near the end of 1716 he issued briefs to various parties in France, wherein he insisted upon unqualified subscription and declared that to demand explanations of the bull was "to hanker after the fruit of the forbidden tree." Two years later, in a communication addressed to all Christians, he pronounced all who had refused or should refuse obedience to the bull contumacious, and sundered from communion with the apostolic see until they should thoroughly repent of their fault. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Magnum Bullarium Romanum, Continuatio, Pars ii. pp. 205-207.</span></strong> Innocent XIII. approved the position of his predecessor, declaring in letters to the King and the Regent that the bull Unigenitus condemned nothing but manifest errors. Benedict XIII., notwithstanding his anti-Molinist views in theology, commanded the strict observance of the bull (1725). Finally Benedict XIV,, in a brief, or encyclical letter, of the year 1756, gave this unmistakable decision: "Such is the authority of the constitution Unigenitus that no faithful Christian can refuse to submit to it, or oppose it in any way whatever, but at the risk of his eternal salvation." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Jervis, History of the Church of France, ii. 322.</span></strong> That the several Popes who had occasion to render a verdict upon the subject should have taken this ground is entirely explicable. They could not have done otherwise without exposing papal authority to the disgrace of a most glaring contradiction. For the constitution was from the start as plainly an <em>ex cathedra</em> document as it was possible for a pope to construct. It assumed to bind every member of the Roman Catholic Church, not to think, teach, or preach, any of the condemned propositions.</p>
<blockquote>3 Omnes at singulas propositiones præinsertas, tanquam falsas, captiosas, etc., hac nostra perpetuò valitura constitutione declaramus, damnamus, et reprobamus; mandantes omnibus utriusque sexus Christifidelibus, ne de dictis propositionibus sentire, docere, ac prædicare aliter præsumant, quàm in hac eadem nostra constitutione continetur; ita ut quicumque illas, vel illarum aliquam conjunctim, vel divisim docuerit, defenderit, eliderit, aut de eis, etiam disputativè, publicè, ant privatim tractaverit, nisi forsan impugnando, ecclesiasticis censuris, aliisque contra similia perpetrantes a jure statutis pœnis ipso facto absque alia declaratione subjaceat.</blockquote>
<p>To retract was out of the question on the part of those who had no higher interest than their own absolute authority. To explain was nearly equally out of the question. The bull had been issued, not against abstract propositions, but against sentences contained in a specific work. Some of these sentences were as clearly expressive of a definite idea as it was possible for language to frame. To allow, therefore, that they were not condemned in their apparent sense would be equivalent to allowing that they were not condemned at all, and so would expose the Pope to the charge of folly or malice in having sought to discredit the writing of an eminent author by marshaling against it an extended line of bugbears.</p>
<p>The circumstances and the issue of the strife involved a partial victory for Ultramontanism. The Gallican sentiment, cherished by a large part of the nation, was indeed far from being quenched. On the contrary, it was kindled in many minds to an intensity which threatened to burn away all real bonds of connection with Rome. But the exigencies of controversy naturally led the supporters of the papal constitution in the reverse direction. In their attempts to silence opponents they were in a manner driven to magnify the authority of the Pope, and the duty of unqualified obedience. The position taken by the majority of the bishops constrained them for the time practically to ignore, if not formally to deny, the principles of Gallicanism. Some of them indulged in statements of a decidedly ultra cast. Early in the strife the Archbishop of Arles made bold to declare that the opposers of the bull were more guilty than Adam was after the primal trespass. Various writings began to be circulated which advocated the infallibility of the Pope. In one of these the author was pleased to say that it was not less heretical to reject the bull Unigenitus than to deny the incarnation of the Word and the divinity of Jesus Christ. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Rocquain, L'Esprit Révolutionnaire avant la Révolution, pp. 8, 17, 36.</span></strong></p>
<p>Whatever degree of assent the bishops may have given to formal statements of this class, some of them proceeded at length to act as if they were undoubtedly true. In 1749 and the following years a scheme was set on foot to honor the Unigenitus constitution by making it a kind of indispensable passport into paradise. In pursuance of this purpose, De Beaumont, Archbishop of Paris, issued the requisition that applicants for sacraments--at least in cases where there was any doubt about their frame of mind--should be required to produce "billets de confession," or certificates signed by orthodox priests, and testifying that the bearers cordially accepted the bull Unigenitus. This requisition was copied in nearly all the dioceses. The result was that some of the most conscientious men in the realm were denied the sacraments in the dying hour, and were left to expire without a title to Christian burial. Great wrath was naturally provoked; but it was a number of years before the tyrannous requisition was abandoned. The disreputable game of the "billets de confession" may well be characterized as a fitting conclusion to a peculiarly disgraceful chapter in religious history. In truth, the atheistic revel of the revolutionary era was scarcely more of a sacrilege against Christianity than was the whole ungodly fracas of which the bull Unigenitus was the central and the most responsible factor.</p>
<p>It may have been noticed that little mention has been made of the Jansenists in the above account. The reason has been that in the great party opposed to the papal constitution the Jansenists proper were not the most considerable fraction. Their Augustinian theology had never been acceptable to the larger portion of the French people. In the later stages of their history they had no great writers to recommend their theology, no names comparable with those which had adorned their early annals. Moreover, an unhappy episode inflicted much damage upon their reputation. As in previous times the zeal of rival parties in the Church had created a fruitful demand for miracles, so it was in case of the Jansenists. During the dark days when the unholy fiat which Jesuit malice had obtained from Rome was being made effectual against their adherents, their excited feelings were ready to claim relief in any appearance of supernatural intervention. The first token which met their watchful eyes was in 1725. A woman claimed to have been miraculously healed while accompanying a procession in which a priest who belonged to the appellant or protesting party was carrying the consecrated host. The Jansenists made much of the event; but soon it became unnecessary for them to dwell upon this single instance. In 1729 and the following years miracles in their behalf were, so to speak, an every-day occurrence. These were connected primarily with the grave of a Jansenist ascetic, François Pâris, in the cemetery of Saint Médard. It was claimed that sick people who visited this grave were supernaturally cured of their maladies. Extraordinary symptoms were sometimes manifested by the patients, such as convulsions, prophesyings, and trances. The like phenomena still appeared in other quarters after access to the wonder-working grave had been prevented by the authorities. Excessive enthusiasm ran into a crude physical rô1e, which justified the name <em>convulsionnaires</em> that was applied to the subjects of this overpowering excitement. At length the sober-minded among the Jansenists themselves were revolted, and constrained to censure the strange proceedings of their brethren as unworthy of religion.</p>
<p>It is needless to say that these miracles, especially when their credit was at its height, were not pleasing to the foes of Jansenism. As Roman Catholics, they were ready to welcome any quantity of prodigies, provided they should be rightly placed; but to have miracles at a Jansenist tomb was simply intolerable. The Jesuits in particular were cut to the heart. The glory of their order, it is true, was sustained by a record of all sorts of prodigies. But most of these occurred afar off, beyond the dim outlines of distant continents. An objector had a chance to say that the wonderful stories which were told had grown in the process of transmission. But here were miracles wrought beneath the eyes of critical Paris, miracles every way as well attested as any which had happened at the shrine of Becket. In their distress they could think of no safer expedient than to give the credit of the whole business to the devil. Not denying the strange workings of a mysterious power, they classed them among lying wonders. This was the position taken by one of their number in a writing published in 1737, under the title "Traité dogmatique sur les faux miracles du temps." Many others coincided with the Jesuits in this interpretation. Indeed the writer of the above treatise might have quoted Pope Clement XII., as well as the archbishop of Paris, in support of the view that the Jansenist miracles were wrought by the farer of the arch Deceiver. In the final result, while the Jansenists suffered discredit, their opponents also made but doubtful gains. The main advantage accrued to those who had no special love for either party, -- to the school of free-thinkers.</p>
<blockquote>1 Barbier, Journal Historique du Règne de Louis XV., années 1729-1732; Grégoire, Histoire des Sectes Religieuses, tome ii. chap. 13; Martin, Histoire de France, tome xv.; Bauer, Kirchengeschichte der Neueren Zeit, pp. 513-518; Jervis, Church of France, ii. 281-287.</blockquote>
<p>Before leaving the Jansenists, we may add a word respecting that memorial of their struggle which has been perpetuated in the Netherlands. In the time of persecution various representatives of their party had found a refuge in this region. Here the resident Roman Catholics awarded them so much sympathy as to fall themselves under suspicion and accusation. Adverse reports were carried to Rome, and the Pope was constrained in 1704 to depose the Archbishop of Utrecht. This measure, instead of subduing the minds of the people served to make them all the more friendly to the Jansenist interest. Finally, inasmuch as the Pope would not recognize the newly elected archbishop, it was decided in 1723 to install him without waiting longer for the papal authorization. From this date the succession has been continued in the episcopal see of Utrecht. At each new election of a bishop request is made of the Pope for confirmation. This is always refused, and so communion with Rome, though not repudiated in principle, is continually postponed.</p>
<p>About the time that the epidemic enthusiasm which spread from the grave of François Pâris was bringing discredit upon the Jansenist cause, the populace found occasion for irreverent witticisms in a book by the Bishop of Soissons, which was devoted to the memory of Marie Alacoque. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Barbier, Journal, i. 307, 308; Grégoire, Histoire des Sectes Religieuses, tome ii, chap. 20; Rocquain, L'Esprit Révolutionnaire avant la Révolution, pp. 80, 81.</span></strong> The book was a tribute to a form of religious distemper less violent than that of the <em>convulsionnaires</em>, but not many degrees superior in the sight of rational piety. This Marie Alacoque, whose story the bishop recounted, was supposed, near the end of the preceding century, to have been favored with the sight of the heart of Jesus in his opened breast. Stimulated by this fanciful vision, the mediæval faculty for materializing everything, which enters into the essence of the Romish Church, went to work to organize a specific devotion of the Sacred Heart. The Jesuits patronized the new auxiliary to a sentimental and superstitious worship. It did not, however, make great progress till the latter part of the century, when Clement XIII. gave it his approval.</p>
<blockquote>A question soon arose as to whether the Pope had approved devotion to anything more than the symbolical heart, as distinguished from the physical organ.</blockquote>
<p>A special devotion to the heart of Jesus fostered inevitably a parallel honor to Mary, and there are some indications that the latter was rendered in no grudging measure. One of the fervent writers of the time speaks of the heart of Mary as "the storehouse of divine compassions, the furnace of the celestial fire, the library of the Old and of the New Testament." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Grégoire, Histoire des Sectes, tome ii, chap. 20.</span></strong> Another peculiar form of devotion prevailed for a season, at least within a limited circle. As D'Argensan, writing in 1751, informs us, the Queen and a number of the court ladies made use of skulls as an aid to their piety. "They adorn," he says, "these heads of the dead with ribbons and pendants; or they illuminate them with lamps, and they meditate before them for a half-hour." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">3 Mémoires, vii. 16, 17.</span></strong></p>
<p>It is supposed that Clement XIII. had some reference to the existing needs of the Jesuits, for whom he had large sympathy, when he approved the devotion to the Sacred Heart, designing to supply thereby a means of encouragement and union to the members of the Order, and those who shared in their griefs. There was certainly occasion enough for any encouragement that the friendly Pontiff had to offer. The time of reckoning had come for the disciples of Loyola.</p>
<p>The conduct of the Jesuits just before the storm burst upon them cannot be said to have been specially odious. They had not been unusually aggressive and intriguing. The storm was not the offspring of fresh provocation; it was rather the accumulated retribution which the misconduct of generations had earned. There may have been indeed some special provocations at this juncture. But these did not necessarily affect the standing of the whole Order. Had there not been a foregoing history, begetting in many minds the conviction that incorrigible evil was ingrained into this society, it might have successfully met any temporary causes of objection and ill-will.</p>
<p>A Jesuit writer has expressed surprise that it was precisely in Portugal, where the Jesuits seemed to be so firmly entrenched, that the great attack upon them was begun. "At the court," he says, "they were not only the guides of the consciences and conduct of the royal princes and princesses, but also were made the advisers of the King and his ministers in the most important matters. No position in the administration of the State or the Church was awarded without their consent and their influence, so that in truth the higher clergy, the nobles, and the people vied with each other to obtain their intercession and favor." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Georgel, quoted by Theiner, Geschichte des Pontificats Clemens XIV. i. 5.</span></strong> These words used in justification of surprise might better be employed for a contrary purpose. The overgrown influence of the Jesuits in Portugal is by itself a large part of the explanation of the attack upon them. To a statesman like Pombal, confident, energetic, and aggressive, it seemed a thing intolerable that a parcel of ecclesiastics should so completely dominate the nation. Having once entered upon the task of reducing their influence, he doubtless found that either he or they would have to go under. He therefore utilized to the full whatever might be turned to the discredit of the Jesuit fathers. He found in their mercantile projects a cause for complaint. Their alleged complicity in the armed rebellion of the natives in Paraguay gave him a vantage ground against them. Still more their alleged complicity in an attempt to assassinate the King (1758) gave him a formidable advantage. In 1759 came the unsparing edict for their banishment. They were sent in a body to their spiritual father, the Pope.</p>
<p>The news from Portugal caused a profound sensation in France, and in all likelihood raised the question in many minds whether the example of the sister realm might not be successfully imitated. As it happened, there was no occasion to harbor this inquiry for a long time. The impolicy of the Jesuits themselves placed effective weapons in the hands of their opponents. One of the fathers of the Order, Antoine Lavalette, who resided in Martinque, had engaged in large mercantile enterprises. The capture of several of his ships entailed so great a loss on the French firms with which he was financially connected that they were compelled to go into bankruptcy. The creditors of the bankrupt merchants then sued Lavalette and his immediate superior. It being hopeless to secure from them the large sum that was owed, they next tried the expedient of making the Order itself, as a corporate body in the realm, responsible. The Marseilles tribunal agreed to their plea. But the Jesuits were not convinced. Being advised that their establishments had no such oneness in law that all could be held to account for the liabilities of each, they concluded that they would try a legal shift rather than pay the money. With strange fatuity they submitted their case to the Parliament of Paris, the very body which had long and fiercely contended against their schemes. In answer to the claim that the Order could not be held responsible for the debt of a member, the Parliament asked for their constitution. This document, till then unknown to the public, was produced. It is needless to say that it made no favorable impression upon the minds of zealous Gallicans. Those who insisted that the State could not endure the unlimited authority claimed by the foreign ecclesiastic dwelling in the Vatican, were naturally jealous of an institute which delivered a powerful company of men within the realm, body and soul, to a foreign head. The determination of Parliament mounted at once beyond the affair of Lavalette. The examination of the books of casuistry which followed was rather a means of justifying its resolution to overthrow the Society than a basis of judgment.</p>
<p>An attempt was made to save the Jesuits by a compromise measure, providing that certain restrictions agreeable to Gallicanism should be accepted by the Order. A scheme of this kind, endorsed by the King, was forwarded to Rome. The response was a rejection of the proposal, uttered either by the Pope or the General, in these unequivocal words: "Sint ut sunt, aut non sint,"--"let them be as they are, or let them cease to be." Public opinion in France dictated the latter alternative. The royal order for the suppression of the Society was issued in November, 1764. This did not prohibit the residence of former members in France. But sentence of banishment was near at hand; it fell upon them in 1767.</p>
<p>Clement XIII. was profoundly disturbed by the overthrow of the Jesuits in France. As a means of censuring past and checking future assaults he issued the bull Apostolicum (January, 1765). This is nothing less than a warm commendation of the Order, wherein the Pope pronounces the charges made against its principles to be malicious and unfounded, and repels them in these terms: "We publish and declare that the Institute of the Society of Jesus savors in the highest degree of piety and sanctity both on account of the high end which it specially contemplates, namely, the defence and propagation of the Catholic religion, and also on account of the means which it applies to the attainment of this end." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Bullarii Romani Continuatio, Clemene XIII., iii, 38, 39.</span></strong></p>
<p>This commendation was vain. The nations did not consider it necessary to ask the Pope what they should think of the Jesuits. Against the tempest which had begun to blow, the apostolic voice was no better than common breath.</p>
<p>The next and most far-reaching visitation upon the doomed Order was in the Spanish dominions, European and American. The decree of banishment was issued in 1767. An insurrection of the preceding year is presumed to have afforded the pretext. Beyond this all is involved in obscurity. There was no public process, and the King did not deign to assign a single specific reason for his summary measure. The following announcement to the Pope gives his motive for this secrecy: "To spare the world a great scandal, I will keep forever in my own heart the abominable plot which has necessitated these rigors. Your Holiness should believe me upon my word. The safety of my life demands of me a profound silence in this matter." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Crétineau-Joly, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus, v. 302.</span></strong></p>
<p>The kingdom of Naples and Sicily was made forbidden ground to the Jesuits (1767), as also the duchy of Parma (1768). In connection with the latter, Clement XIII. conceived that a suitable occasion had been given for the manifestation of his displeasure, some steps adverse to papal control having been added to the unkind treatment of his favorites. Reviving an old claim that this territory was a fief of the papacy, he undertook to treat the Duke of Parma as a rebellious vassal, and launched against him a sentence of excommunication. The boldness of the act was its only recommendation. The duke was related to the sovereigns of Spain, France, and Naples. Resenting the papal onslaught as an insult to the Bourbon family, they made reprisals by seizing papal territory. Nor was this all; they laid a formal demand upon the Pontiff to wholly abolish the Order of Jesuits. Whether Clement XIII. would have resisted this formidable combination was not to be made manifest. His death in 1769 transferred the fate of the Order to the hands of his successor.</p>
<p>Clement XIV. came to the papal throne, if not under an implicit engagement to fulfill the demand of the sovereigns, with far less of disinclination to do so than was cherished by the preceding Pope. Amiable and moderate in disposition, he was ready to study the interests of peace. As the Bourbon governments continued to press their demand, that of Spain being especially energetic and pertinacious, he at length gave them satisfaction. The brief for the dissolution of the Order of Jesuits was issued in 1773. In this writing, after taking note of precedents for dissolving orders, and calling attention to the numerous dissensions of which the Jesuits had been the occasion, and which it seemed impossible to prevent or allay, the Pope thus pronounced his decision: "Actuated by so many and important considerations, and, as we hope, aided by the presence and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, compelled besides by the necessity of our ministry, which strictly obliges us to conciliate, maintain, and confirm the peace and tranquillity of the Christian republic, and remove every obstacle which may tend to trouble it; having further considered that the said Company of Jesus can no longer produce those abundant fruits and those great advantages with a view to which it was instituted, approved by so many of our predecessors, and endowed with so many and extensive privileges; that on the contrary, it was very difficult not to say impossible, that the Church could recover a firm and durable peace so long as the said Society subsisted; in consequence hereof, and determined by the particular reasons we have alleged, and forced by other motives which prudence and the good government of the Church have dictated, the knowledge of which we reserve to ourselves ...we suppress and abolish the said Company."</p>
<p>Clement XIV. died the next year. His sickness was such as to lead some nearest to his person to believe that he had been poisoned. The question as to who administered the poison--supposing death to have been effected by that cause--lies too purely in the region of speculation to be considered here.</p>
<p>Cast out of their own household the Jesuits found refuge with the heretic and the schismatic. Doubtless it was not for the purpose of heaping coals of fire on their heads in the apostolic sense that Frederic II. of Prussia and the Russian Empress Catharine II. gave friendly entertainment to the members of the proscribed Order. Frederic had recently acquired territories largely Roman Catholic in population. He had promised to allow these territories to remain <em>in statu quo</em> as respects religion. The resident Jesuits were acceptable to the people. They were also largely employed as teachers, and it would make some trouble to supply their places. He therefore concluded to let them rest in peace. In communicating with the Pope upon the subject, he mischievously suggested that, inasmuch as he was a heretic, his Holiness was not able to release him from his obligation to keep his word, or from the duty of being an honest man. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Crétineau-Joly, v. 465.</span></strong> The motives of Catharine were very much the same as those of Frederic. She thought that she could safely use the Jesuits in the recently acquired Polish territory. Here they were allowed to receive novices. In fact Russian patronage served in a special sense to carry the Order through the period of legal nonentity.</p>
<p>It is interesting to note that adversity brought some dogmatic ameliorations to the minds of the Jesuits. As they were awaiting their fate in France a streak of genuine Gallican light shot across the leaden sky of their Ultramontanism. The illumination was sudden, and doubtless was not very permanent. But while it lasted, it had its effect. One hundred and sixteen fathers, including provincials and superiors, gave their written assent to the strong Gallican articles of the Assembly of 1682. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Crétineau-Joly, v. 260, 261; Theiner, Geschichte des Pontificats Clemens XIV., i. 21-23.</span></strong> A few years later some of their brethren in Germany were favored with a similar illumination, in virtue of which they gave their support to theses utterly irreconcilable with Ultramontane maxims. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Theiner, ii. 490, 491.</span></strong></p>
<p>The interior broils of the French Church were not so engrossing in this period as to withdraw attention entirely from the duty of vexing the Protestants. There were intervals indeed during which they received a measure of indulgence. Some of the harsher provisions against them were left very largely in abeyance during the regency of the Duke of Orleans. But a bitter atonement was usually exacted for such a season of relative quiet. To permit the harvest to grow was to create an extra demand for the use of the scythe. So we find the government issuing in 1724 a peculiarly cruel edict. "To the penalty of death decreed against preachers was added the galleys for life for men, and perpetual imprisonment for women, against all who did not inform against them. It was enjoined on curés, or vicars, to visit the sick suspected of heresy, and to exhort them in private and without witnesses. An arbitrary fine was decreed against relatives, friends, or servants, who should prevent the curé from having access to the sick, and the galleys for life against concealed Protestants who should exhort or assist the sick secretly. The law condemning every Protestant, who should be cured after having refused the sacraments, to the galleys for life, and to confiscation of property as a backslider, was confirmed; if the sick man died his memory was to be prosecuted, and his property confiscated. Formerly it was necessary that the refusal of the sacraments should be attested by a magistrate; now the testimony of the curé was sufficient. The parish priest was constituted an official informer. Parents were forbidden to consent to the marriage of their children in foreign countries, without express permission from the King, under penalty of the galleys for life for men, and perpetual banishment for women, with confiscation of property. At the same time the <em>new Catholics</em> (and under this title were comprehended all Protestants, according to the fiction of the law of 1715, which denied that there were any Protestants remaining in France) were ordered to observe in their marriages the formalities prescribed by the holy canons and the ordinances. A11 civil status was thus annihilated for Protestants; there were thenceforth in France, before the law, only Catholics, and backsliders liable to the galleys." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Henri Martin, Histoire de France, tome xv., pp. 118, 119, in Eng. translation.</span></strong> An equally unsparing edict was issued in 1745.</p>
<p>While the practice was not perseveringly kept on a level with this barbarous code, there were numerous instances of intolerable vexation. Now and then a preacher was visited with a capital sentence. Bénezet was hanged in 1752, Lafage in 1754, Rochette in 1762.</p>
<p>It was first in 1788, on the eve of the Revolution, that a scant measure of legal toleration was granted to the Protestants. Even then the concession provoked the protest of the clergy. It required a very special tuition to instil into them the lesson of tolerance. The Faculty of Theology in Paris had not yet learned the alphabet of the subject in 1766. In their censure of a work published in that year they declared that religious intolerance was an essential principle of Catholicism. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Rocquain, Esprit révolutionnaire avant la Révolution, p. 262.</span></strong> "The Assemblies of the clergy held from the accession of Louis XVI. up to the Revolution continually complained of the attempts of the Protestants to secure liberty of conscience. The following words appear in the report of the Abbé de 1a Rochefoucauld presented in 1789: 'This sect, which in the midst of its ruins retains the audacious and independent spirit which it had from its origin, wishes to usurp for falsehood the rights which belong only to the truth.'" <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 De Pressensé L'Église et la Révolution Française, p. 23.</span></strong></p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-9045305246726861222012-03-29T21:10:00.001-07:002019-09-02T23:57:47.426-07:00The Skeptical Movement<p><strong>The Sceptical Movement</strong></p>
<p>An acute observer of events wrote in 1158: "The loss of religion in France cannot properly be attributed to the English philosophy, which has gained at Paris only a hundred philosophers, but to the hatred conceived toward the clergy which now runs to an excess. Scarcely can these ministers of religion show themselves on the streets without being hooted; and cell this comes from the bull Unigenitus, and from the disgrace of the Parliament."<strong>1 D'Argenson, Mémoires, viii. 35</strong> The next year the same writer expressed himself in terms like these: "It is the priests who push from all sides into these troubles and this disorder, and so the minds of men are turned to discontent and disobedience, and everything is moving onward to a great revolution in religion as well as in government." <strong>2 Ibid, viii. 242.</strong></p>
<p>That this verdict of a contemporary has considerable plausibility cannot be denied. It is reasonable to suppose that the bull Unigenitus, violently enforced as it was, was provocative of skepticism. When an authority, claiming supreme and divine right over Christendom, condemned propositions which have an exact equivalent in the New Testament, and undertook to teach men that the <em>fear of an unjust excommunication ought to hinder one from doing his duty,</em><strong> 3 All shuffling apart, no different meaning can be drawn from the condemnation of the following: Excommunicationis injustæ metus, nunquam debet nos impedire ab implendo debito nostro: nunquam eximus ab ecclesia, etiam quando hominum nequitiâ videmur ab ea expulsi, quando Deo, Jesu Christo, atque ipsi ecclesiæ per charitatem affixi sumus. </strong> it is not strange that various individuals, who had imperfectly learned the art of blind obedience, and did not wish to be put to shame by pagans, should think it time to look around for some system compatible with common sense and instinctive morality. Nor will it be strange if the like quest should yet be repeated in France and elsewhere, now that the action of the Vatican council has assigned to this specimen of papal wisdom an indubitable place in the moral code of the Romish Church. Still, it is not proper to burden a single cause with responsibility for results which have flowed from several causes. While the Unigenitus scandal had a baleful efficiency, it but added momentum to a current already started. Back of the sceptical movement of the eighteenth century in general lay the intolerant dogmatism which dominated so large a part of Europe through the seventeenth century. In France especially this dogmatism had taken on a hideous aspect from the time that Louis XIV. laid his hand to the task of extirpating Protestantism. While thus despotic intolerance provoked reaction, the moral levity and corruption which invaded the higher circles of French society in the first half of the eighteenth century favored laxity of belief. Men who lived practically as materialists and epicureans were not well braced against the materialistic and agnostic creed. An appreciable influence may also be attributed to the sensational philosophy and deistical school of England. The soil had been so well prepared in France that the types of thought which they presented could hardly fail to take root there.</p>
<p>An early work of Montesquieu, which achieved no little popularity, gives us a token of relaxed belief. In his "Persian Letters" (1721), we see, if not the same sparkle and piquancy which were put into the "Praise of Folly," a freedom in dealing with the affairs of the Church as bold as that which Erasmus had exhibited in his humorous critique. These Letters, assuming to be written by Persian visitors in France, make the Pope to figure as the head magician, who enforces belief in defiance of mathematics and the evidences of the senses, and who, in order to keep up the habit of belief in Christians, issues articles from time to time, a recent and much talked of constitution being an example. Remarks in a similar vein are passed upon various classes of ecclesiastics. A principal function of the bishops, it is said, is the granting of dispensations. It is characteristic of Christianity that it imposes an infinite number of practices, and inasmuch as it is esteemed more difficult to fulfill these practices than to support bishops to dispense from them, the latter alternative is chosen. This dispensing power reaches even to the canceling of a sworn engagement. Confessors are a kind of dervishes who do not suit the interests of heirs so well as the physicians. Casuists have a great function to perform in showing men how many sins they can commit without periling their salvation by a mortal fault. They are also very useful in taking away from sins their sinful quality by persuading the doer that they were not really sins, if being an acknowledged principle that it is not the act itself, but rather the conviction of the doer respecting the act, which determines its moral character. A commentator is one who searches the Bible to find there his own views, -- a method that is fruitful of variety; in fact, there are about as many points of dispute as there are lines in the Scriptures. A heretic does not fare the same in all regions. In France and Germany he will get clear by making a distinction; but in Spain and Portugal they do not care to listen to dogmatic refinements. A peculiar stroke of politeness has place in Spain. As a captain there will not beat a soldier without first asking his permission, so the Inquisition never burns a Jew without making excuses to him. The numerous stories told about the wrestling of the old monks with the devil indicate that they did not keep very good company. The monastic institute is at present a great check upon national progress. From this point of view, "it is certain that the religion of the Protestants gives them an infinite advantage over the Catholics. I venture to say that, in the condition in which Europe is now found, it is not possible for the Catholic religion to subsist five hundred years." <strong>1 See Letters xxiv., xxix., xxv., lvii., Ixxviii.,lxxv., xciii., cxvii.,cxxiv.</strong></p>
<p>The veil of humor is not so thick as to hide effectually the real opinions of the author of the "Lettres Persanes. " Their import, conjoined with other evidence, leaves no doubt that the papal system was to him a dead letter. His positive creed is not determined with quite the same certainty. Probably it affiliated with that type of deism which was outlined later in the century by Rousseau. He is said to have persevered in his way of thinking to the end. To the Jesuits, who approached him in his last sickness, and urged upon him the duty of retracting, he made only this answer:<br />"I have always respected religion; the morality of the gospel is the best gift that God could have made to mankind."</p>
<p>Montesquieu died in 1755. Voltaire was then at the middle point of his career. More than twenty-five years before, he had taken the pen of the author, and he was unceasingly occupied with literary tasks till his death in 1778.</p>
<p>In Voltaire more than in any other Frenchman, the sceptical revival of the eighteenth century found its impersonation. He supplied to it a more penetrative genius and a vaster industry than any one of his countrymen besides.<strong>1 The genius of the Genevese Rousseau was doubtless equally penetrating, but his literary activity was less extensive.</strong> In the latter respect, indeed, he has few equals in the annals of literature. He was as prodigiously busy in his way as was his contemporary, John Wesley, in a far different way.</p>
<p>As respects the native endowments of Voltaire, it is sufficiently obvious that he was a man of great swiftness and versatility of intellectual movement. With these gifts was associated another which made for them a well-nigh perfect vehicle. Voltaire was a great word artist. Never was language a more obedient subject to any one than was the French speech to him. The very clearness of his discourse was adapted to work conviction by giving an impression of mastery. Add to this a subtle wit, a unique gift for raillery, and one can see that this man was well prepared to impress powerfully that restless generation.</p>
<p>What has been said describes brilliancy rather than profundity. The latter, in fact, cannot be claimed for Voltaire. While in many relations he showed an admirable keenness of perception, he was not largely endowed with the philosophic faculty, and his impetuous temper was opposed to the prolonged and severe reflection which needs to be expended upon the deeper problems of human thinking. He had no aptitude or relish for anything transcendental. To the realm of grandeur and spiritual suggestiveness he was well-nigh a stranger, as appears from his estimate of the antique poets, of Shakespeare, and of others. <strong>2 The following from Martin may be compared: "An essentially active and polemic genius, with little depth and immense surface, he rejected what was profound like what was obscure, what was abstract like what was subtle, and turned with instinctive repugnance from everything that was mysterious." (Histoire de France, tome xv., p 330 in Eng translation.)</strong> Dwelling always upon the surface of the earth in his emotions and affections, he was conspicuously lacking in the sense for the ideal and the infinite. A real awe for holiness seemed to be no part of his experience. Taste rather than principle was at the basis of such repugnance as he entertained for gross vices. Any great amount of moral fastidiousness certainly cannot be ascribed to the author of "La Pucelle."</p>
<p>Some of the biographers of Voltaire credit him with a fair measure of truthfulness. Probably he was truthful in the sense that he would not lie for the mere pleasure of the performance. But when occasion pressed he did not spare a falsehood, and his life was prolific in pressing occasions. The way in which he evaded responsibility for his books involved a continuous chain of deceitful innuendoes from the beginning to the end of his career. The expedients which he employed to gain admission to the French Academy justify the statement that he crawled to the coveted honor over a road paved with flatteries and falsehoods. His presentation of himself for the communion, and insistence upon his title to absolution as being a good Catholic, was an audacious stroke in mendacity, which might well have provoked the Father of Lies to envy. Voltaire, it is true, had his excuse; but the excuse when sifted down amounts simply to the conclusion that his personal comfort and safety were so precious as to justify any amount of crookedness. In the company of his friends, Voltaire himself was not far from putting the case in this form. Being asked one day by his secretary what he would have done if he had been born in Spain, he replied: "I would have gone to mass every day; I would have kissed the sleeve of the monks; and I would have tried to set fire to all their convents." This may have been the language of pleasantry; but in what different light did he figure when posing before a Romish altar as a good Catholic, while at the same time he was laboring with full energy to tear down the whole fabric of Roman Catholic faith and authority?</p>
<p>If the above shows the weakest and basest side of Voltaire in respect of feeling and conduct, his abhorrence of intolerance and his generous efforts in behalf of outraged Protestants and other victims of oppression present his best side. It cannot, indeed, be claimed that his habit of thought and feeling provided any complete basis for tolerance. There was in his mind too little respect for man as man. The pride of intellect which made him look with a species of contempt upon the masses, and allowed him to speak of them as canaille, was not intrinsically the best sort of foundation for a high type of tolerance. Still it would be niggardly not to credit Voltaire with an honest and intense abhorrence of intolerant bigotry. A long series of acts sustains his words on this subject, and makes credible his assertion that he felt a touch of fever on each returning anniversary of the Saint Bartholomew massacre. One will be the less tempted to see mere rhetoric in this declaration, when he remembers that still in Voltaire's time that stupendous crime was publicly celebrated as a great triumph of the Christian Church. <strong>1 In the city of Toulouse the anniversary of the massacre was regularly celebrated as a two days' festival, under sanction of municipal law and e.papal bull. (Parton, Life of Voltaire, ii. 353.)</strong></p>
<p>The intolerance practiced in the assumed interest of Christianity, if it did not create the infidel animosity in the heart of Voltaire, supplied it with fuel, and added to it many degrees of intensity. Ultimately, as is well known, a tolerably white heat was reached. In the private correspondence of Voltaire, during the last twenty years of his life, this intensified animosity glared forth in the formula <em>Écrasez l' Infâme,</em> "Crush the Monster."</p>
<p>What is the meaning of these sinister-looking words? Some have supposed them to refer to the Christian religion, or even to the central figure in that religion. That Voltaire had no faith in Christianity as a revealed religion, and would have been glad to see it displaced by a deistic creed, is entirely certain. But that he meant to apply this intolerant formula specifically and unqualifiedly to the Christian religion, admits of some doubt. A biographer who may be presumed to have looked carefully through the evidence draws this conclusion: "The 'Infâme' of Voltaire was not religion, nor the Christian religion, nor the Roman Catholic Church. It was <em>religion claiming supernatural authority, and enforcing that authority by pains and penalties. This is the fairest answer to the question, taking his whole life into view."</em><strong>2 Parton, Life of Voltaire, ii. 286. Carlyle, who had no inconsiderable occasion to look into the views and schemes of the great sceptic, says: "Voltaire is deeply alive to the horrors and miseries which have issued on mankind from a Fanatic Popish Superstition, or Creed of Incredibilities,- which (except from the throat outwards, from the bewildered tongue outwards) the orthodox themselves cannot believe, but only pretend and struggle to believe. This, Voltaire calls ' The Infamous;' and this -- what name can any of us give it? The man who believes in falsities is very miserable. The man who cannot believe them, but only struggles and pretends to believe, and yet, being armed with the power of tile sword, industriously keeps menacing and slashing all round, to compel every neighbor to do like him, -- what is to be done with such a man ? Human Nature calls him a Social Nuisance; needing to be handcuffed, gagged, and abated. Human Nature, if it be in a terrified and imperiled state, with the sword of this fellow swashing around it calls him 'Infamous,' and a Monster of Chaos. He is indeed the select Monster of that region; the Patriarch of all the Monsters, little as he dreams of being such . . . More signal enemy to God, and friend of the Other Party, walks not the Earth in our day." (History of Frederick the Great, xiii. 6, 7.) </strong></p>
<p>Not disputing this conclusion, we would still suggest that if the aggressive ecclesiasticism of the Romish Church was reckoned by Voltaire an inseparable characteristic, he certainly had an ardent desire for the destruction of that Church.</p>
<p>In writings designed for the public, ridicule, generally managed with sufficient skill to avoid the appearance of brusqueness, was Voltaire's favorite weapon of attack. Nor was this belligerent facetiousness wholly confined to words. His jesting ran over into deeds, when by feigning sickness he forced an unwilling priest to grant him absolution, or when he secured a friendly letter from the Pope, or when finally he obtained from Rome a piece of the hair shirt of Saint Francis, to serve as a relic in the church which he had built upon his estate at Ferney. The relic is said to have arrived on the same day as the portrait of Madame Pompadour, the potent mistress of the King,-- a circumstance which led Voltaire to remark that he was now very well both for this world and for the other.</p>
<p>The positive creed of Voltaire requires no prolix description, since it was neither extensive nor original. It was essentially the deistic creed of Bolingbroke, to whose tuition he was not a little indebted in his earlier years. While granting the existence of God, he had small confidence in the soul's immortality. It is thought, however, that near the close of life he became less doubtful upon the latter subject.</p>
<p>Opposition to the current faith was so much of a recommendation in the eyes of Voltaire, that the greater part of the radical unbelievers shared his regard, not-withstanding considerable divergence, in some instances, from his platform. The sceptical school -- if school it can be called exhibited in truth but moderate homogeneity. Buffon, the distinguished naturalist, the first three volumes of whose work were published in 1749, appears in peculiar contrast with Voltaire, inasmuch as he had a tolerably firm faith in immortality, and only a wavering belief in the existence of God. Among the chief authors of the 'L Encyclopedia " (1750-1765) D'Alembert gravitated toward universal scepticism, while Diderot embraced a sort of pantheistic naturalism. Positive atheism and materialism were represented by D'Holbach, Lamettrie, and Helvetius. As regards the tone of the "Encyclopedia," it should be noticed that a prudent regard to the peril of suppression dictated a measure of reserve and compromise. We find D'Alembert writing as follows, in answer to some strictures from Voltaire: "Doubtless we have some bad articles on theology and metaphysics; but with a theological censorship and an official privilege, I defy you to make them better. There are other articles, less conspicuous, in which all errors are corrected. Time will demonstrate the distinction between what we have thought and what we have said." <strong>1 Quoted by Jervis, Church of France. ii. 335.</strong></p>
<p>While the "Encyclopedia " was in process of publication, a work appeared (1762), which caused the sceptics to look askance. Not a few of them, Voltaire included, felt that there was an alien vein in the new production that boded no good to their cause. We refer to the treatise on education, "Émile, on De L'Éducation," by Jean Jacques Rousseau. In the midst of this treatise occurs the Savoyard Vicar's profession of faith. While this assumes to be simply a specimen of religious method, or of the manner in which a pupil may be led into the domain of pious belief, it is doubtless a compendium of Rousseau's own convictions. A glance into it will show that the sceptics of the era had reason to regard if with a jealous eye. It was not congenial to their negations. While it admitted grave objections to positive revelation, if recognized elements foreign to their system, since it gave a large significance to the innate religious sentiment of man, and eloquently portrayed the unique power of the Christian oracles to satisfy this sentiment. As compared with the writings of contemporary free-thinkers, that of Rousseau had somewhat of a constructive tendency. It was fitted to serve as a stepping-stone out of the blankness into which they were leading. That it exerted a far-reaching influence cannot properly be questioned.</p>
<p>Rousseau does not make his spokesman, the Savoyard Vicar, entirely to discard reasoning in favor of innate sentiment or spontaneous feeling. Arguments for theism are presented with a fair degree of cogency, and the truth is discreetly set forth that among possible hypotheses all of which are attended with difficulties, the one which best explains known facts is to be preferred. Grounds are also given for predicating the immateriality of the soul. Among these the weighty consideration is touched upon, that materialism, with its mechanical necessity, makes nugatory the distinction between truth and error, between correct and mistaken judgments. But interspersed with discussions of this kind, the opinion is expressed that philosophy has no plummet wherewith to sound these deep subjects, and fends rather to confusion than to enlightenment. "Never has the jargon of metaphysics," it is said, "discovered one single truth." Again it is remarked: "I perceive God in His works, I feel Him in myself, I see Him all around me; but as soon as I attempt to discover where He is, what He is, what is His substance, He escapes me, and my troubled spirit no longer perceives anything. ... The more I force myself to contemplate this infinite essence, the less I understand it; but it exists; that suffices me; the less I understand it, the more I adore, I humble myself before Him and say: Being of beings, I am because Thou art; it is to raise myself to my source that I meditate upon Thee without ceasing. The most worthy use of my reason is to annihilate itself before Thee: this is the rapture of my spirit, this the charm of my feebleness, to feel myself overwhelmed by Thy grandeur."</p>
<p>In determining the rules of conduct, as in searching for the knowledge of God, philosophy is a vain dependence. The law of right is expressed in the spontaneous convictions and emotions of the soul. " All which I feel to be good is good; all that which I feel to be evil is evil: the best of all casuists is the conscience, and it is only as a man begins to haggle with if that he has recourse to the subtleties of reasoning."</p>
<p>The fountain of religious and moral truth being thus within, an external revelation, it is concluded, cannot be strictly necessary. At least, to make eternal salvation depend upon the acceptance of a particular external revelation involves enormous difficulties. In that case every man would be under obligation to sift the evidence for and against different systems claiming to be revealed from Heaven. The study of their relative claims would be a life and death matter; no other task would be comparable with this in solemnity and import. From this tremendous labor not a single individual of the race could be excused. "If the son of a Christian does well to follow, without a profound and impartial examination, the religion of his father, why would it be evil for the son of a Turk to follow in like manner the religion of his father ? " It impeaches the benevolence of God thus to hang the immortal destiny of men upon a choice which in so many instances must be extremely difficult or even impossible. The expedient of the Romanist in asserting the authority of the Church provides no legitimate relief. To be told, "The Church decides that the Church has the right to decide," does not give a man any rational foundation. He is just as much bound to test this assumed right as he is to test the authority of the assumed revelation, and the former task is every whit as difficult as the latter.</p>
<p>This vigorous protest against a necessary dependence upon external revelation is not meant to be taken as an unequivocal denial of such a revelation. When it comes to the Christian oracles, Rousseau, without stopping to balance arguments, declares that there are proofs which he cannot combat, as well as objections which he cannot solve. It is in this connection that the spirited and oft-quoted passage occurs: "I confess that the majesty of the Scriptures astonishes me, the holiness of the gospel speaks to my heart. Behold the books of the philosophers, with all their pomp; how petty they are in comparison with those writings ! Is it possible that a book at once so sublime, and so simple, should be the work of men? Is it possible that he whose history it contains should have been himself only a man ? Is that the tone of an enthusiast or of an ambitious sectary? What mildness, what purity in his manners! what touching grace in his teachings! what elevation in his maxims ! what profound sagacity in his discourse ! what presence of mind, what skill, and what justice in his replies! what sovereignty over the passions! Where is the man, where is the sage, who knows how to act, to suffer, and to die without feebleness and without ostentation?... If the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a God. Will you tell me that the gospel history was invented at pleasure? My friend, it is not so that invention occurs; and the facts respecting Socrates, doubted by no one, are less perfectly attested than those respecting Jesus Christ. In reality this supposition only pushes back the difficulty without overcoming it; it would be more inconceivable that several men should have agreed in fabricating this book than it is that one alone should have furnished the subject. a company of Jewish writers could never have invented either the tone or the morals which are found here; and the gospel has marks of truth so great, so striking, so perfectly inimitable, that the inventor of them would be more astonishing than the hero. With all that, however, this same gospel is full of things incredible and repugnant to reason, and which it is impossible for any man of sense to conceive or to admit. What ought we to do in the midst of all these contradictions? To be always modest and circumspect; to respect in silence that which we are able neither to reject nor to comprehend, and to humble ourselves before the Great Being, who alone knows the truth."</p>
<p>It cannot be denied that Rousseau presented a needful offset to the dry intellectual schemes of the philosophers or would-be philosophers. Sentiment has a place as well as logic in the sanctuary of man's being, and it serves in no small degree to mirror to him the spiritual verities with which it is his high privilege to be conversant. But has not Rousseau exalted overmuch the function of mere sentiment, or unreasoned emotion? For our part, we do not hesitate to answer that some of his utterances savor of a misleading extreme. No doubt it may be urged that he is in orthodox company. It often happens that the pulpit responds to the strictures of rationalism with an appeal to sentiment very much in the style of Rousseau. It is well that the appeal should be made; but let the due restriction be applied. Sentiment must have a framework of rationality to grow upon, if it is to rise in beauty and healthfulness. Let go the demand for industrious thoughtfulness and genuine rationality, and there is no telling what superstitions will invade the religious realm, what vagaries, what puerilities, what fooleries with relics and the like, what grievous list of mere doll-baby attachments. As religion is properly the function of the whole man, so the safeguard of its purity lies in the exercise of all the faculties. In the right synthesis of history, reason, and emotion is provided the basis of a normal and healthy religious life.</p>
<p>Rousseau's sentimental deism, or semi-scepticism, may be regarded as the concluding phase of French free-thinking in the eighteenth century. The vulgar atheism which cropped out at the crisis of the Revolution was rather a phase of frenzy than of any kind of thinking.</p>
<p>To arrest an advancing scepticism, like that which has been described, was obviously no easy task. Its insinuating methods and unfixed character embarrassed the effort to bring it to close quarters. Even with the best management a speedy victory was not likely to be forthcoming. But the actual management of the subject was far from being well chosen and efficient. The feeble and inconsequent efforts of the authorities to suppress the offending writings sufficed for little else than to irritate the sceptics, and to inflame their zeal. While the appeal to force and authority was thus abortive, there was at the same time a dearth of fresh and effective argumentation. "Most of the replies were not above the rank of indigested balderdash." <strong>1 De Pressensé, L'Église et la Révolution Française, p. 14.</strong> Orthodox intellect seemed to have become a missing article in France. A few writers, however, showed that complete sterility had not been reached. Duguet used his pen to good advantage in his Traité des Principes de la Foi Chrétienne." But the most trenchant apology was written by Antoine Guenée, under the title "Lettres de quelques, Juifs, Portugais, Allemands, et Polonais à M. de Voltaire." We know from the words of Voltaire himself that he was touched to the quick by Guenée's criticism, at once polite and deft.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-65346119594396557962012-03-29T21:05:00.000-07:002019-09-02T23:58:05.218-07:00The Political Movement In France<p><strong>The Political Movement In France</strong></p>
<p>IN approaching this subject one naturally measures back from the Revolution of 1789. All other enquiries become secondary to that respecting the causes of the great upheaval which overturned the monarchy and the associated institutions.</p>
<p>Giving at once the result of our investigation, we would enumerate these causes as follows: (1) forfeiture of respect on the part of the rulers by moral turpitude; (2) the vacillating policy of the government, or its alternation between concession and despotic authority; (3) bitter religious controversies, in which the government united with a majority of the higher clergy to override the preference of the great body of the people; (4) ambition of the parliaments, and especially of the Parliament of Paris, to reach the position, and to fulfill the functions of a coordinate branch of the government; (5) political writings which discredited the notion of absolute monarchy, and set forth the superior merits of republican or democratic rule; (6) discontent in large masses of the people, provoked by poverty and hunger.</p>
<p>Before the burial of Louis XIV. the eyes of Frenchmen had begun to be opened to the shadowed side of his reign. Looking beyond the glory of royalty they saw the tyranny and the shame. Very few mourned the death of the magnificent despot.</p>
<p>The succeeding rulers were in no wise calculated to make good the deficit in esteem and veneration which had already been incurred. On the contrary, they perpetuated all the shame of the reign of Louis XIV. without reproducing aught of its glory. The Duke of Orleans, who acted as regent during the minority of the King, was an unblushing libertine. Louis XV., in his personal habits, was a disgrace to royalty throughout the greater part of his long reign. As in the times of Henry III., the mistress bore the sceptre, and religion was abased to the semblance of a vapid and despicable superstition by being mixed with moral outrage and indecency. Louis XVI. was doubtless exemplary in his general conduct, but he had not sufficient force of character to recover lost prestige.</p>
<p>The forfeiture of respect which had been wrought in this manner was aggravated by the unsteadiness of the administration. While the monarch affronted the growing taste for self-government by repeating the assumptions of Louis XIV. and claiming once and again to be the impersonation of the entire sovereignty of the realm, he did not maintain himself firmly upon this ground. Yielding at times to popular disquiet, he gave indulgence to the party representing opposing claims. Concessions of this sort, not having the appearance of free gifts, won no gratitude, and only served to encourage to new efforts those who, from interest or principle, were desirous to limit the authority of the crown. The people were neither crowded down to passivity by a strong despotism nor made content by a liberal treatment.</p>
<p>The crowning indiscretion of the government was in the management of religious affairs. Following the behests of the Jesuits and the Pope, it loaned its power to the base enterprise of enthroning a dogmatic constitution -- the bull Unigenitus -- which struck not only at the roots of Gallicanism, but at the foundations of morality itself. A partial exposition of this astonishing document has been given in the preceding volume, and further reference will be made to it presently. What we wish to emphasize here is the fact that the miserable and harassing measures by which the obnoxious constitution was enforced revolted profoundly the greater part of the thinking element in the nation, and well-nigh precipitated an outbreak more than a generation before the Revolution. This is abundantly indicated by reports which have come down to us from the middle part of the eighteenth century. The Memoirs of the Marquis d'Argenson, for example, show that, while yet the school of free-thinkers was in its incipiency, and had done comparatively little toward leavening the popular mind with innovating opinions, a revolutionary stir was in the air. As early as 1743 we find him writing: "Revolution is certain to come in this State; it is crumbling at its foundations; one has only to detach himself from his country, and to prepare to pass under other masters and some other form of government." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Mémoires, iv. 83.</span></strong> In 1751 he wrote: "There is much questioning in the minds of the people respecting this impending revolution in the government; nothing else is talked about, and all classes, even down to the peasants, are imbued with the subject." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Mémoires, vii. 23.</span></strong> A few months later he recorded this reflection: "Will despotism increase, or will it diminish in France? For my part, I hold to the second alternative, and prophesy even the coming of a republic. I have seen in my days the respect and love of the people for royalty diminish. Louis XV. has not known how to govern either as tyrant or as the good chief of a republic. Evil hour for the royal authority when one undertakes neither rôle!" <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Ibid., vii. 242.</span></strong> In various passages, D'Argenson indicates with sufficient distinctness his conviction that the revolutionary ferment which he describes had its origin largely in resentments against the pressure and violence with which the theological scheme of a faction was imposed upon the nation. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">3 Ibid., vi. 453, 454; viii. 35.</span></strong> In fine, the bull Unigenitus, or the plot which it served, fulfilled no inconspicuous part in laying the train for the explosion which was to leave palace and throne in fragments.</p>
<p>Aside from the general import of the Unigenitus controversy, as exasperating the minds of a large body of the people, it had a special political bearing, inasmuch as it gave to the Parliament of Paris the means of magnifying its own importance. In its proper character this body, like the several provincial parliaments, had no legislative functions. Its special office in connection with the making or promulgation of laws was the formal registration of them. But in course of time it began to esteem its function in registration as something more than simply ministerial. It assumed the prerogative to delay in the matter, and to interpose objections to royal decrees. Under the powerful absolutism of Louis XIV. it was indeed overawed and reduced to a quiescent attitude. But in the subsequent era its bent to independent action was repeatedly manifested. The odiousness of the royal policy in the controversy over the papal constitution gave to it the support of a powerful party. It was inspired, therefore, with confidence to resist the royal will again and again. This continued antagonism was naturally fruitful of political thinking. While the parliament, as actually constituted, was rather a privileged body than a representative assembly, its position over against the monarch was analogous to that of such an assembly, and helped to foster the idea, that government is a matter which belongs to the nation, and not merely to the king. Touching upon this point D'Argenson wrote in 1754: "It is observed that never before have the names of <em>Nation</em> and <em>State</em> been repeated as they are to-day. These two names were not pronounced under Louis XIV., and the very idea which belongs to them was wanting. The people have never been so well instructed as to-day in the rights of the nation and of liberty." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Mémoires, viii. 315.</span></strong></p>
<p>It may be concluded from the above that the movement in favor of limited monarchy and the prerogatives of the nation did not wait for formal political treatises. Writings of this order, however, came forward to reinforce the movement. In 1748 appeared Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws." This in its general animus was far from being an inflammatory or revolutionary book. Political problems are discussed therein with great circumspection, and with large reference to historical data. Still it requires no great keenness of insight to discover in the treatise an underlying hostility to unrestricted monarchy. Tokens of this hostility are found in the favorable judgment of Montesquieu upon the system of mutual checks appearing in the English government; in his conviction that the union in the same person of legislative with executive or judicial functions is incompatible with liberty; and in his declaration that virtue is a necessary foundation for a republic, while the principle of honor suffices for a monarchy, and that of fear answers the needs of a despotism. His reflections go to enforce the conclusion that the republican is intrinsically the higher form of government, and should be introduced wherever suitable conditions for its maintenance exist.</p>
<p>Fourteen years after the publication of the "Spirit of Laws," Jean Jacques Rousseau gave to France the treatise which became ere long the Bible of the ultra revolutionists. The "Social Contract" was a genuine specimen of <em>doctrinaire</em> politics. It takes indeed some account of the diverse requisites of different stages in the progress of nations, as also of the characteristics resulting from special experiences and environments. Still the practical difficulties which are likely to be encountered in the application of theories are but lightly regarded. General maxims are enthroned, and pushed boldly to their consequences.</p>
<p>According to Rousseau, the State originates in a convention or contract. For the sake of the greater good of order, protection, and secure sustenance, men resign the independence belonging to them in the state of nature. Thus the community is constituted. As in forming the community all make an entire surrender of their separate rights, they stand in their new relations upon a precise legal equality. The surrender being made, not to this or that individual, but to the whole body, no place is left for personal precedence as respects rights or authority. Inasmuch as an entire surrender is made by all, an unrestricted sovereignty is constituted. This sovereignty inheres in the whole body. The people in their collective capacity are the sovereign. The general will is the supreme authority. The executive, whether king or president, has only to fulfill the general will. He is but the agent of the sovereign. For this agent to act in any wise as the principal, or to usurp any part of the sovereignty, is to break the pact on which the community is founded. When the people are in assembly, as they hold the undivided sovereignty, they can cancel any delegated authority, and adopt any new plan of administration which may command their suffrage or the suffrage of a majority. In fine, as is evident from this outline, the political ideal set forth by Rousseau, was that of an omnipotent democracy, held within no definite limits by organic laws, and unembarrassed by any positive guaranties of historical continuity in its action. Grant that he was not himself a revolutionary zealot, and that he spoke of the dangers which accrue from sudden transitions in government, his book was nevertheless well adapted to be the delight of any hasty and impassioned theorists who should determine to establish at once a political millennium. Amid the great hopes and enthusiasms which were evoked by the assembling of the States-General, or the national representatives, in 1789, the "Social Contract " was thoroughly adapted to gratify and to stimulate a throng of eager minds.</p>
<p>If the presentation of new and alluring ideals kindled the desire of change in some minds, there were large numbers in France who needed no speculative incentive to make them long for a different order of things. Their misery was so near the utmost extremity that the notion of change could hardly signify to them anything else than the possibility of relief. The great body of the peasantry lived on the border of abject penury, so that any unusual dearth exposed them to starvation. Many died of want in 1739 and 1740. The like misery was experienced in 1750, 1751, and 1753. There was also a famine in 1770 and in 1773. The winter of 1789, which preceded the opening of the States-General, was a time of great distress. Now it lay in the nature of the case that so much misery should provoke a popular ferment. Men cannot remain quiet under an intolerable lot. The peasantry too had some excuse for revolutionary fever, since no small part of their hardships was due to a most oppressive and unequal system of taxation, which granted large exemptions to the wealthy, and so threw the principal burden upon the poor laborers.</p>
<p>These causes of political crisis were reinforced in some measure by the successful struggle of the American colonies, and the close association of France with them in that struggle. "The American war," says Henri Martin, "at once postponed and paved the way for the Revolution; it afforded a temporary diversion abroad to the most energetic sentiments of France; but these sentiments returned to us, defined and strengthened by the sight of facts more powerful than books and theories." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Histoire de France, tome xvi, p. 442 in Eng. translation.</span></strong></p>
<p>The years which followed the accession of Louis XVI. (1774) were less stormy than some of those which had preceded. The relative calm might have led an observer to think that the forces of upheaval had been dissipated. But it only needed a special occasion to reveal their presence and energy. When the discovery of a serious deficit in the treasury brought the government into embarrassment, and made it willing to issue the call for the assembling of the States-General, it was speedily made manifest that the idea of a great political regeneration was in many minds.</p>
<p>The barriers of conservatism in the States-General were at once broken down by the successful contention of the commons that the nobles and the clergy should unite with them, instead of forming separate houses. The Constituent Assembly which was thus organized yielded more and more to an impetuous demand for change. Many useful reforms were indeed accomplished. Overgrown privileges were canceled, and various elements of crudity and arbitrariness were eliminated from the judicial system of the realm. But the prudent mean failed to be observed. Legislation so far outran the inclination of a large part of the nation that a fearful discord was made inevitable. Not content to take from the nobility anomalous rights which had been transmitted from the feudal system, the Assembly proceeded to sweep away the estate itself. The clergy were treated with almost as scant forbearance, and the Church was remodeled in defiance of its traditions and preferences.</p>
<p>The Legislative Assembly, which met in October, 1791, had less of the restraints of sober wisdom and prudence than its predecessor. The National Convention of the next year marked a still further descent. The enthusiast, the theorist, and the demagogue were now at the front. Men with no political education and no equipment for the task of statesmen except a stock of phrases and abstractions undertook to make over society from top to bottom. With the King sent to the scaffold (January, 1793), and the old institutions overturned, they esteemed themselves ready to bring in the golden age of liberty and equality. Before the glory of the new regime the meagre past faded completely out of sight, and it was thought best to reckon time from the autumnal equinox of 1792, and in place of the weekly festival of the resurrection to substitute the decade of days.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the presence of insurrection and the danger of foreign invasion gave a sombre tinge to enthusiasm. Those who had been most voluble in praise of brotherhood and liberty were quick to assail with inquisitorial rigor any who dared to think otherwise than themselves. To secure liberty for the future, it was thought necessary to smite it to the earth in the present. So the "reign of terror" was inaugurated. Government became the spoil of the most unscrupulous and inexorable. The National Convention was subordinated to the revolutionary club. "Paris holds France down while a handful of revolutionists tyrannize over Paris." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">H.A. Taine, The French Revolution.</span></strong> The words of Madame de Staël are scarcely too strong to describe the course of events during the fourteen months which followed the proscription of the Girondists at the hands of the Jacobins (May 31, 1793). "There seemed," she writes, "to be a constant descent, like that which Dante describes, from circle to circle, toward a lower plane in hell. To the fierce hate against the nobles and the priests one saw succeed the irritation against land-owners, then against talents, then against beauty itself; finally against everything which remained of the great and the generous in human nature." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Considérations sur les Principaux Evénements de la Révolution Française, ii. 112.</span></strong> The number of lives sacrificed by massacre or execution, though far from inconsiderable, may not have been without its parallels. Indeed, for that matter, the unbridled ambition of Napoleon was vastly more cruel than the fury of the Jacobin chiefs. For the thousands who were destroyed at their beck, there were tens of thousands of Frenchmen who found their graves in Spain and Russia. It was the vindictiveness with which all eminence and merit were assailed that made "the reign of terror" a period of unique horror.</p>
<p>As might have been prophesied, and in fact was prophesied, the excesses of the Revolution prepared for the return of despotism. The rule of the Directory was not such as to assure or reconcile the large number who had been alienated by the preceding violence. From a state of fever and over tension there followed naturally a condition of relaxation or relative political indifference. At the same time a new idol was brought forward to share the homage which had been rendered at the shrine of liberty and equality. The eyes of Frenchmen were dazzled by the military glory which the marvelous generalship of Napoleon Bonaparte had secured for their armies. They interposed, therefore, no serious obstacle to the several steps by which the military captain ascended to the imperial dignity (1799-1804).</p>
<p>The rule of Napoleon, whatever elements of respectability it may have embraced, was the nullification of all that the more generous and liberal minds of France had been striving for in the preceding generations. Never before the fall of the Bastile had there been a more thorough despotism than that which he introduced. Intrinsically the Napoleonic regime was a dwarfing absolutism, and had not its effects been offset in a measure by the great enterprise of exterior conquests, it would stand clearly revealed as such in the history of France.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-79387193768946137582012-03-29T21:01:00.000-07:002019-09-02T23:58:20.579-07:00Questions Of Morals And Reform<p><strong>Questions Of Morals And Reform</strong></p>
<p>The strict keeping of Sunday was a characteristic of New England throughout the colonial era. Between the long services of the sanctuary, two of which were held by daylight, and the pious duties of the home, the day was so largely preoccupied that there would have been little room for diversion even had it been tolerated. Outside of New England, Sunday observance was less rigidly enforced. Virginia, it is true, started out with a strict injunction on the subject. But the scattered state of the population in that province, as in much of the South, placed the conduct of the people beyond the reach of careful oversight. Moreover, there was no such grim pertinacity in this quarter, on the part of ministers and magistrates, as was needful to sustain a strict Sabbath regime. In New England it was early a question whether the sacred day should begin at sunset, or at midnight, of Saturday. "The former computation was favored in Connecticut. The latter was approved by Massachusetts law." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Palfrey, History of New England, ii. 44.</span></strong></p>
<p>Theatrical plays were regarded in the earlier times of New England as little better than sacrifices to the devil. In Boston a license for such diversions was first granted after the close of the colonial period. In their opposition to the theatre the Quakers agreed with the Puritans. The early laws of Pennsylvania forbade theatrical exhibitions "as tending to looseness and immorality." It was nearly seventy years before an attempt was made to introduce them into the province, and then they encountered a strong opposition. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Bowden, History of the Society of Friends in America, ii. 287, 288.</span></strong> In New York, as well as in Philadelphia, a large party was in favor of excluding the theatre, as late as 1785. Baltimore, on the other hand, and some other places were at that date quite enthusiastic patrons of the histrionic art. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">3 J. B. McMaster, History of the People of the United States, i. 83-95.</span></strong></p>
<p>In the direction of prison reform the colonial history shows very little trace of any humanitarian impulse. Some of the prisons, in their structure, appointments, and discipline, were a disgrace to civilization, pesthouses both physically and morally. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">4 Ibid., i. 98-102.</span></strong></p>
<p>The drinking habits of the people were little to their credit. Probably excess was not very common till the closing part of the seventeenth century; but from that time the waste and wreckage of the rum traffic covered an ever-enlarging area. The social code of the times made the proffering of liquors a matter of ordinary hospitality. They were expected to grace festival occasions, and were a regular appendix to funeral solemnities.</p>
<p>A vital sense of the enormous evils of intemperance seems first to have been aroused near the end of the eighteenth century. We read indeed that in the early days of the colonies some effort was made to restrict the sale of the deadly fire-water to the Indians; that Governor Winthrop opposed the custom of drinking healths as being accessory to intemperance; that the laws of Connecticut placed restrictions on the drinking of spirituous liquors, forbidding that a certain quantity should be exceeded at one time, and that tippling should occur after a certain hour in the evening. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Elliott, New England History, i. 483.</span></strong> We read also that rum was a prohibited article in Georgia from the founding of the colony. But the prohibitory policy was soon abandoned in Georgia, and such restrictions as were put on record elsewhere were of little practical avail. Temperance agitation, as a thing of persistence and increasing momentum, did not begin till the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The Methodist body at this time, in harmony with the precepts of Wesley, took decided action against the traffic in ardent spirits. The Conference of 1780 voted to disown any members engaged in the traffic. Three years later the Conference enjoined the preachers to instruct the people to keep clear of the wrong of making and selling liquors and also of using them "as drams." In the "General Rules," as approved by the Conference of 1784, refraining from buying, selling, and drinking spirituous liquors was included among the necessary outward tokens of a serious Christian purpose. Near the same time the Quakers, at their Pearly Meeting in New England, obligated themselves to the maintenance of temperance principles in their Society. In 1785 Dr. Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia, appeared as an able champion of the temperance cause in an essay entitled "The Effects of Ardent Spirits on the Human Mind and Body;" and in subsequent years his zeal for the reform was repeatedly manifested. The first temperance association in this country was formed in 1789 by two hundred or more farmers of Litchfield County, Connecticut, who pledged themselves to carry on their business without the use of distilled spirits as an article of refreshment for themselves or for those in their employ. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 See Daniel Dorchester, Liquor Problem in All Ages; also, History of Christianity in the United States, pp. 351-355.</span></strong></p>
<p>In a previous connection notice was taken of the spread of anti-slavery sentiments among civilians. It remains for us here to observe the advances made by such sentiments in the different religious communions.</p>
<p>The Quakers were among the foremost to protest against slavery, and to free themselves from all connection with the institution. As early as 1688 the German Quakers residing in Germantown, Pennsylvania, urged the inconsistency of buying, selling, and enslaving men. In 1696 the Yearly Meeting for that province advised the members of the Society to guard in the future against importing African slaves. In 1710 the Pennsylvania legislature, consisting mostly of Quakers, prohibited any further importation of Negroes. Shortly after the middle of the century, influenced by such apostles of emancipation as John Woolman and Anthony Benezet, the Quakers adopted a more decided policy. The Yearly Meeting of Pennsylvania in 1755 concluded that any member of the Society who should be concerned in importing or buying slaves ought to be reported for discipline. Three years later it was ordered that any persons buying, selling, or holding slaves should not be allowed to take part in the affairs of the Church. In 1776 it was voted to disown members who were in possession of slaves, and who would not execute proper instruments for giving them their freedom. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Bowden, History of the Society of Friends in America; Clarkson, Abolition of the African Slave-Trade.</span></strong></p>
<p>The Congregationalists had come generally, before the close of the Revolutionary era, to be opposed to slavery. Samuel Hopkins of Newport bore an honorable part in stirring up conscience on the subject.</p>
<p>The Presbyterians at the Synod of New York and Philadelphia, in 1787, commended the interest manifested in the different States for promoting the abolition of slavery, and advised that care should be taken to educate those in bondage, so that they might be able to make a worthy use of freedom.</p>
<p>The Methodist Conference of 1780 pronounced slavery "contrary to the laws of God, man, and nature, and hurtful to society." It voted also to advise all Methodists to give freedom to their slaves. The General Conference of 1784 went still farther, and assumed to command instead of merely advising. In States where the laws allowed of manumission, it required every member, as a condition of continued fellowship, to emancipate, within a prescribed term of years, all slaves in his possession, and ordered that in the future no slaveholder should be counted eligible to membership. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Leroy M. Lee, Life and Times of Jesse Lee, pp. 165, 166; H.N. McTyeire, History of Methodism, pp. 377, 378.</span></strong> It was found, however, very difficult to carry through so heroic a measure. A large majority of Methodists were at that time residents of States in which slaveholding was a common practice. So strong an opposition was raised to the requisition of emancipation that the ministers felt that its execution was impracticable, and before the close of 1785 notice was given that a future Conference would consider the requisition in question, its immediate enforcement being waived, a retreat having once been made, it was no easy task to regain the former ground. In its "General Rules," however, the Methodist Church never ceased to keep on record a protest against slavery.</p>
<p>Strong ground was taken against slavery by the Baptist associations in Virginia (1787, 1789). They declared hereditary bondage a "violent deprivation of the rights of nature." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia, pp. 79, 303, 304.</span></strong> In the practical application of such views, however, the Baptists were subject to much the same embarrassments as the Methodists.</p>
<p>At the first Convention of Universalists, held in Philadelphia in 1790, the following resolution was adopted: "We believe it to be inconsistent with the union of the human race in a common Saviour, and the obligations to mutual and universal love which how from that union, to hold any part of our fellow-creatures in bondage. We therefore recommend a total refraining from the African trade, and the adoption of prudent measures for the gradual abolition of the slavery of the Negroes in our country." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Eddy, Universalism in America, i. 301.</span></strong></p>
<p>The record shows unmistakably that opposition to slavery, on moral and religious grounds, was very widespread in the American churches in the years immediately following the declaration and the achievement of the country's independence.</p>
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<p>UNIVERSALISTS.-- Organized Universalism in this country is traced back to John Murray more than to any single individual beside. Murray, from being a Calvinistic Methodist, became a disciple of the London Universalist, James Relly. His arrival in America occurred in 1770. After a season of comparative reserve, during which he was known as a spirited Calvinistic preacher, he began an energetic propagandism of the doctrine of the final recovery of all moral beings.</p>
<p>Murray's teaching was not altogether a novelty in the colonies. Though there was no ecclesiastical body here that made it their shibboleth, restorationism had already a sporadic existence. The German Baptists in Pennsylvania were not averse to the doctrine, finding no doubt a recommendation for it in the fact that various of their kin among the Anabaptists on the Continent had been its advocates. Several Episcopalian ministers, in the middle and the latter part of the eighteenth century, as Richard Clarke in South Carolina, Robert Yancey in Virginia, and John Tyler in Connecticut, were more or less pronounced restorationists. A few of the Congregationalist ministers in New England were at the same time inclined to the restorationist creed. This was notably the case with Charles Chauncy, whose views first obtained definite expression before the public in works issued in 1782 and 1784, but had been held by him for a score of years or more.</p>
<blockquote>2 Jonathan Mayhew has sometimes been coupled with Chauncy as a believer in restorationism. But the passage which is cited as evidence, whatever ground it may afford for a suspicion, affords none for a positive verdict. Among the points of certainty are these: Mayhew denied that the punishment which is to be visited upon the sinner in the future will be simply corrective, or designed for the good of its subject. He applied the terms "eternal" and "everlasting" to this punishment, without taking pains to qualify their force. He did not hesitate to speak of "finally hardened" and "irreclaimable" transgressors, and acknowledged that the Scriptures seem to speak of some as given over to "incurable blindness." (Sermons on Striving to Enter in at the Strait Gate; Sermons on God's Goodness; Answer to Mr. Cleaveland, quoted in Alden Bradford's Life of Mayhew.)</blockquote>
<p>Murray's conversion to a new faith did not eliminate the old Calvinistic leaven. In his doctrine of universal recovery he simply extended the conception of sovereign grace. All men, he conceived, are regarded by God as united to the atoning Saviour, so that His righteousness is made to cover their sins, and all are accounted heirs of eternal life. A large proportion of the first converts to Universalism were likewise of Calvinistic antecedents, and retained some traces of their former way of thinking. The Calvinistic bias, however, was only a transient phase. Probably the influence of Elhanan Winchester, who was hardly second to Murray as an active propagandist, had something to do with forwarding a change of sentiment. Winchester, it is true, had embraced high Calvinism before the writings of Siegvolck and Stonehouse had converted him to Universalism (1778-1781). But later he seems to have inclined to a creed essentially Arminian as respects divine sovereignty and grace.</p>
<blockquote>1 Richard Eddy says: "Mr. Winchester's religious views differed but little from Arminian orthodoxy, except in regard to the design and duration of punishment." (Universalism in America, i. 247.)</blockquote>
<p>Winchester came from the Baptists, as did also a considerable part of the ministers and membership of the Universalist body in its early years.</p>
<p>While Murray called himself a Trinitarian, it is understood that his views on the Godhead were of a Sabellian cast. Elhanan Winchester, on the other hand, so far as we have been able to discover, was not interested to improve on the ordinary Trinitarian theory. For a time the Universalists appear to have regarded themselves as a Trinitarian body. But the leaven of Unitarianism began early to work in some of their societies.</p>
<p>There was also a drift in the views entertained respecting the future state. Murray regarded those dying in their impenitence as subject in the other world to divine chastisements or painful consequences of sin, though he seems to have thought of these as having place only in the interval between death and the general judgment.</p>
<blockquote>1 Some Hints relative to the Forming of a Christian Church, quoted in Richard Eddy's Universalism in America, i. 370-372.</blockquote>
<p>Winchester held a more emphatic theory, teaching that sharp punishments, covering, perchance, thousands of years, and reaching beyond the judgment, will be visited upon the more obdurate sinners. That death is the end of pain for all men was not the belief of the great majority of the first Universalists. Their Convention, held at Philadelphia in 1791, set forth the denominational position as follows: "We believe that all that die without the knowledge of their salvation in Christ Jesus must be called unbelievers, and in the Scripture sense do die in their sins; that such will not be purged from their sins -or unbelief by death, but necessarily must appear in the next state under all that darkness, fear, and torment, and conscious guilt which is the natural consequence of the unbelief of the truth. What may be the degree or duration of this state of unbelief and misery we know not." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Eddy, i. 349, 350.</span></strong> But in the same year that this statement was recorded, Murray wrote as though some Universalists were in favor of the notion that death will place all men upon a level, and release all alike from every form of suffering. He combated the frivolous imagination very earnestly. It was destined, nevertheless, to make large headway, for a season, in the Universalist body.</p>
<p>The Unitarian drift among the Universalists was part of a wider movement. But of that movement, or the rise and progress of Unitarianism in New England, we can speak more appropriately in a subsequent chapter.</p>
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<p>THE LUTHERANS, --The Swedes who began their settlement on the Delaware in 1637 were the first Lutherans in America who could boast of a complete church organization and house of worship. It is probable, however, that representatives of Lutheranism were found among the Dutch in New York prior to the planting of the Swedish colony. The Jesuit Jogues noticed their presence during his stay in the province (1642, 1643). But, while they were early on the ground, they were not in condition to make much advancement. The Dutch Reformed were of the opinion that the Augsburg Confession was not entitled to any hospitality in a territory which had been consecrated to the sacred theology of Dort. Scant privileges were therefore allowed to the Lutherans; and when their first pastor arrived, in 1657, he was ungraciously ordered back. This extreme of intolerance was indeed corrected some years later by the home authorities. Still it was not till the English occupation that the Lutherans in New York obtained pastoral oversight.</p>
<p>A few years after the surrender of New York by the Dutch, a detachment of Lutherans proceeded to the Carolinas. Of their religious history in their southern abode next to nothing is known till the eighteenth century. In the course of that century the Lutheran community in the Carolinas was augmented by emigrants from Germany and Switzerland.</p>
<p>The expatriation of the Salzburgers brought a considerable community of Lutherans to Georgia in the first years of its history. In 1741 they numbered not less than twelve hundred. Among all the immigrants professing the Lutheran faith none gave more careful heed to the claims of religion than this community.</p>
<p>A very large influx of German Lutherans, from Würtemberg, the Palatinate, Hesse-Darmstadt, and other German principalities, occurred in the first sixty years of the eighteenth century. The greater portion of them settled in Pennsylvania. Being generally very poor, and receiving no aid from the father-land, they were left for a time in strange destitution as regards religious ministrations, the number of pastors in the country being utterly inadequate to the demand. At length the cry of the more earnest for messengers of the gospel found a sympathetic response in Pietistic Halle. Heinrich Melchior Muhlenberg, who arrived from that institution in 1742, proved to be the forerunner of an efficient company of ministers from the same source.</p>
<p>In a few years the Lutheran interest presented a more organized and progressive aspect. The first Synod was constituted in 1748, with Lancaster and Philadelphia as the places of meeting, a second Synod was formed at Albany in 1786. The Revolutionary War intervened as a disturbing agency. Advance was also retarded by the ultra conservatism of a large party in maintaining the use of the German language for all church purposes. Still, assisted by a continuous stream of immigration, the Lutheran Church was destined in the next century to exhibit a very large growth. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 See E. J. Wolf, The Lutherans in America.</span></strong></p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-56016984085033700792012-03-29T20:47:00.000-07:002019-09-02T23:59:21.662-07:00Methodists<p><strong>Methodists</strong></p>
<p>METHODISTS. --The Wesleys at the time of their brief sojourn in Georgia, represented the High Church, ascetic, Oxford stage of their religious development. Methodism in its proper character they did not represent. Whitefield at his coming was possessed by the evangelical spirit of the great revival, and in this view may be regarded as a genuine exponent of Methodism. But Whitefield followed simply the vocation of an evangelist. He left others to gather up the fruits of his labors, and those labors inured mainly to the benefit of the Calvinistic communions. Methodism in its Arminian phase, and as a distinctly organized movement, was due to agents who had received their religious impulse from a different source.</p>
<p>In the order of time these agents followed the apostle of Calvinistic Methodism. Whitefield was on the way to his last triumphant tour in America and to his grave in Newburyport, when the first missionaries sent out by John Wesley were crossing the Atlantic. The arrival of Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmoor at Philadelphia, in October of the year 1769, preceded by only a few weeks the completion of Whitefield's final voyage.</p>
<p>While Boardman and Pilmoor were the first immediate representatives of Wesley and the English Conference in this country, the founding of Methodism here, as is well known, is not to be ascribed to them. They came in fact at the urgent call of an already existing Methodism. Several laborers preceded them, by at least a few years. In 1766 Philip Embury, belonging to a family which had emigrated from the Palatinate to Ireland, began to minister as a local preacher to a small congregation in New York City. The next year his efforts were seconded by Captain Webb, a military evangelist, who, as John Adams testifies, knew how to wield effectually the sword of the Spirit as well as to handle carnal weapons. Displaying in a new form the soldierly character which he had exhibited at Louisburg and Quebec, he not only inspirited the little band at New York, but helped also to carry the Methodist standard into New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. About the same time that Embury commenced to preach in New York, or shortly before, as some writers contend,</p>
<blockquote>1 A sentence of Asbury can be quoted on the side of this conclusion. Speaking of Pipe-Creek, he says: "Here Mr. Strawbridge formed the first society in Maryland--and America." (Journal, April 30, 1801.)</blockquote>
<p>Robert Strawbridge, a native of Ireland, inaugurated a work that soon manifested its fruitfulness in the sending forth of a number of Methodist evangelists. Robert Williams also preceded the arrival of those who were directly commissioned for the American field, though only by a very brief interval. To him belongs the distinction of having founded Methodism in Virginia.</p>
<p>An appreciable impetus was given to Methodist evangelism by the arrival of Francis Asbury in 1771. So large was Wesley's confidence in the ability and devotion of this disciple that he appointed him the next year, though but twenty-seven years of age, to the oversight of the American societies. In 1773 he was relieved of this office by the arrival of Thomas Rankin; but in a few years he resumed the leadership which was to serve as a prominent factor in the ecclesiastical history of this country.</p>
<p>Before the close of the Revolutionary War, the societies in America were regarded as an adjunct of the Episcopal or Established Church. This was their theoretical position; but practically they held a very loose relation to the Establishment. Most of the Episcopal clergy had no sympathy with the Methodist preachers, and reckoned them antagonists rather than allies. One distinguished exception, nevertheless, may be noted. The Virginian clergyman, Devereux Jarratt, emulated the revival zeal of the Methodists, and gladly employed their services in his neighborhood, at least for a time. "He was the first," says Asbury, "to receive our despised preachers, when, strangers and unfriended, he took them to his house, and had societies formed in his perish. Some of his people became traveling and local preachers amongst us." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Journal, April 19, 1801.</span></strong></p>
<p>The dates given above may serve to indicate that at the time when American Methodism was planted, the storm-cloud of the Revolution was already ascending the horizon. So great a political crisis naturally was a source of no small embarrassment. The foremost of the Methodist preachers were fresh from England, acting under the orders of John Wesley, and uncertain of the length of their stay in the country. They had therefore but a moderate incentive to ally themselves with the cause of the colonies. Asbury, it is true, showed early an aptitude to become Americanized, and was not without sympathy with the struggle for independence. The majority of the Methodist laity shared in the patriotic ardor of their countrymen. But the English preachers in general, while they observed in most instances a prudent reserve, were not ready to renounce their relation with the mother country. Unavoidably their position exposed them to much suspicion, and this was increased by the imprudence of Wesley in publishing a tract against the political demands of the colonies (1775). Wesley, it is true, acted in a manner as the advocate of the colonies. Near the time that the tract was published, he sent a communication to the ministers of State (June, 1775), wherein he warned them that the attempt to settle American affairs by coercion would probably end in failure. But very little, if any, account was made of this, and the item that was blazoned abroad was Wesley's disparagement of the colonial cause. The result could not be otherwise than unfavorable to the interests of Methodism in America Asbury soon found himself deserted by all his English co-laborers, and for an interval was subject to some restraint. Advance was checked by these great difficulties. Nevertheless, there was not a complete standstill, and the Methodist societies at the end of the Revolutionary War were able to exhibit a considerable increase. The number of members in 1784 was 14,988. Of these the great majority were in the South. Only 1,607 were north of Mason and Dixon's line.</p>
<p>The independence of the country, while it did not necessarily separate the societies from Wesley's leadership, left them quite beyond the pale of the Church of England. It lay, to be sure, in their option to seek an association with the Episcopal churches which became organized into the Protestant Episcopal Church. But there was no adequate motive for overtures in that direction. They were practically aliens from the Episcopal body, and had no reason to think that union could be obtained, except upon obnoxious terms. Moreover, the national crisis had served to beget an inclination to independence. The retirement of the English laborers from the field had left the control to native Americans, who had no share in Wesley's attachment to the Establishment, and only a qualified attachment to his person. In 1779 the Conference held in Virginia virtually declared for an independent status by providing for the administration of the sacraments in the societies. Earnest entreaty and the interests of unity caused indeed that this provision should be placed in abeyance for the time being. Still it was a clear token that the societies were advancing to an irrepressible demand for proper church organization. Wesley was therefore recognizing the inevitable when, in 1784, he sent over a scheme of government and the agents who should put it into execution. As noticed in another connection, these agents were Thomas Coke, Richard Whatcoat, and Thomas Vasey,- the first holding the rank of superintendent, and commissioned to ordain Asbury to the same; the others prepared to exercise the functions of elders.</p>
<p>In the explanatory letter which Wesley sent with his representatives, he used this language: "As our American brethren are now totally disentangled both from the State and 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." Evidently this language implies complete ecclesiastical independence. There is no hint of any sort of organic connection with any other religious communion. Wesley, if he knew how to use the English language, must have designed at that time full independence, not indeed of himself in his personal capacity, but of the Anglican and every other ecclesiastical organization.</p>
<p>The intent of Wesley has of course only a biographical significance. Whatever parts of his proposals were accepted became of constitutional force, not because he had proposed them, but because they were accepted by the Methodist preachers in America acting as a legislative body. The Christmas Conference of 1784 was the primary source of constitutional authority. The members of this Conference, it is true, voted to regard themselves as still sons of Wesley, and to give heed to his commands. But this was a voluntary expression of courtesy and dutifulness. It was not regarded as a contract proper; and in fact the concession was withdrawn three years later, when there seemed to be some hazard of an inconvenient interference from abroad.</p>
<p>While an episcopal organization was undoubtedly contemplated, the highest officials were at first called simply superintendents, and the term "episcopal" was attached to the organization. "It was agreed," says Asbury, "to form ourselves into an episcopal church, and to have superintendents, elders, and deacons." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Journal, Dec. 18, 1784.</span></strong> But in the course of a few years the episcopal title was carried over to the chief officers, -- an eminently consistent procedure, inasmuch as the church was entitled to be called episcopal only because it had bishops. The change of name involved no change of conception; and continuously the conception was free from the infection of prelatical notions. Wesley, influenced doubtless by the complications of his position in England, was not pleased with the change of name. But the scheme which he had proposed really contemplated a more emphatic type of episcopal authority, a more autocratic relation of the superintendent to the preachers, than that which in fact was admitted.</p>
<blockquote>1 Thomas ware testifies that one reason for cancelling, in 1787, the declaration of submission to Wesley was the evident preference of Wesley to have matters decided by the superintendents rather than by vote of Conference. (John Atkinson, Centennial History of American Methodism, p. 66.)</blockquote>
<p>Some prominent features in the present constitution of the Methodist body were not considered in the Christmas Conference of 1784. No specific mention was made of presiding elders, and the office was not instituted except in germ. It required, however, but a brief interval for its development. A number of the ministers were ordained elders; and naturally they were intrusted with a certain oversight of the junior ministers on a circuit, as well as with the administration of the sacraments. The number of elders being limited, there was a demand for them to administer the sacraments on more than one circuit. Accordingly, the whole field came to be divided into districts, and the function of the presiding elder was outlined with tolerable distinctness. The office was recognized by the General Conference of 1792. For a time there was no determinate scheme of Conferences. Definite boundaries were first assigned to the Annual Conferences in 1796, and the General Conference first took the character of a delegated body in 1812. A special anomaly in the early Methodist constitution was the lack of any provision for the co-operation of laymen with the ministers in the higher councils of the Church. While the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church included lay representatives, a Methodist Conference was a purely ministerial body. The arrangement, however, seems not to have provoked comment. Wesley's practice had not been such as naturally to bring the subject of lay representation into view.</p>
<p>The Conference of 1784 considered a project for denominational education. Three years later Cokesbury College was opened at Abingdon, Maryland. The building having been destroyed by fire in 1795, Baltimore was made the site of the college, where it was soon visited again with the fiery ordeal. Such a cumulation of misfortune could hardly fail to put a check for a season upon the enterprise of collegiate education.</p>
<p>From the time of its organization into a distinct communion, Methodism rapidly advanced. Its class system and its itinerancy gave it a special adaptation to pioneer work. The one feature enabled it easily to plant the nucleus of a church in the midst of a meagre settlement, and the other qualified it to reach with marked rapidity every quarter that was in need of gospel privileges. Within six years from the first General Conference it had more than trebled its numbers. In 1792 its membership was reckoned at 65,980. The O'Kelly schism,</p>
<blockquote>1 The immediate cause of O'Relly's disaffection was the rejection of his proposition to limit the appointing power of the bishop, by allowing a right of appeal to the Conference. The party of O'Relly at first took the name of "Republican Methodists," later that of the "Christian Church."</blockquote>
<p>which occurred in that year, checked progress for an interval, but a rapid increase was again manifest after a few years.</p>
<p>No small portion of this advance was due to Bishop Asbury. In mental fertility he was not the equal of John Wesley. But in devotion and industry he was not at all his inferior, and in faculty for administration he was scarcely second.</p>
<blockquote>1 Coke wrote: "I exceedingly reverence Mr. Asbury; he has so much wisdom and consideration, so much meekness and love; and under all this, though hardly to be perceived, so much command and authority." (Journal, Nov. 14, 1784.)</blockquote>
<p>The American field he understood vastly better than did Wesley, and he managed its interests with almost uniform discretion. By example and by counsel, through a long period of years, he nurtured a truly militant spirit in the ranks of the Methodist ministers. Under his direction they were marshaled into effective co-operation. The impress of his hand may be seen more or less in the vigor and precision which have characterized the forward march of Methodism ever since his day.</p>
<p>Among the coadjutors of Asbury an eminent place belongs to Jesse Lee. Of good presence and gentlemanly bearing, an adept in repartee, dowered with thorough self-command and courage, sympathetic and persuasive in discourse, he was well qualified for the self-imposed task of planting Arminian Methodism in New England. Before his invasion, this reputed stronghold of Puritan orthodoxy had been avoided by the Methodist itinerants. Boardman had indeed made a brief visit to Boston in 1772. But no one followed up his effort, and all visible result had faded away. The regions beyond the borders of New England were sooner cultivated, a successful work baring been undertaken in Nova Scotia by Freeborn Garrettson (1785-1787). Two years after the return of Garrettson, or in 1789, Lee began his evangelistic tour in New England. The next summer he introduced himself to Boston in the historic sermon on the common. In 1791 the first house dedicated to Methodist worship in New England was built at Lynn. Lee was often reminded that he had left Southern hospitality behind, and moved some degrees toward the north pole. Still, he appreciated the good qualities of the people, contented himself with the reflection that he was better received than could have been expected, and pressed forward with a sunny pertinacity.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-2207083487535873062012-03-29T20:43:00.000-07:002019-09-02T23:59:37.747-07:00Quakers or Friends<p><strong>Chapter VII. -- Quakers or Friends</strong></p>
<p>THE QUAKERS OR FRIENDS. --The decade falling between 1656 and 1666 was the era of special persecution for the Quakers in America, as it was the era of their arrival in Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia. While the two latter colonies did not reach the full measure of severity which was exemplified in the first, they endeavored to shut out the restless evangelists by stringent laws, and left upon a number of them the marks of a sharp chastisement.</p>
<p>As has already been noticed, this kind of tuition was not at all effective in teaching the Quakers the art of keeping away. They pressed into nearly all the colonies at an early date. Soon after persecution had spent its fierceness, they were represented by some able missionaries who journeyed extensively along the Atlantic coast. Here belong in particular the names of John Burnyeat and William Edmundson, not to mention the eccentric founder himself, George Fox, who started upon a colonial tour in 1671.</p>
<p>Maryland was visited shortly after the first envoys of the Society had advertised their presence in America. In the population of the Carolinas the Quakers were an element from the first years of the settlements. John Archdale, one of the Proprietors, who became governor in 1695, was a member of the Society.</p>
<p>The special domain of the Quakers, however, was West Jersey and Pennsylvania. The former passed into the hands of Quaker proprietors in 1674, and the latter was colonized under the patronage of William Penn in 1682. In both territories the members of the Society formed a large proportion of the people for the space of a generation; but the rapid influx of immigrants of other persuasions left them probably in the minority as early as the death of Penn (1718). One element in the Pennsylvania community testifies that the missionary activity of the Society in continental Europe had not been wholly fruitless. "During 1686 many Friends from Germany and Holland arrived in the province. Most of the Germans settled at Germantown, about six miles from Philadelphia, where some of their countrymen had already located." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 James Bowden, History of the Society of Friends in America, ii. 33,</span></strong></p>
<p>In conformity with the fundamental principles of the Quakers, there was no preferred party in Pennsylvania as respects religion, but all stood on an equality before the law. The code which Penn prepared for the colony, if not up to the radical position of Roger Williams, was still exceptionally tolerant. It used this language: "That all persons living in this province who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and Eternal God to be the Creator, Upholder, and Ruler of the world, and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall in no wise be molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion or practice in matters of faith and worship; nor shall they be compelled at any time to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever."</p>
<p>The strong aversion of the Quakers to ecclesiasticism, carried to the point of repudiating a paid ministry, did not cause them wholly to neglect organization. They provided in fact a tolerably complete system of government through a hierarchy of assemblies. Above the individual congregation was the Monthly Meeting; above that, the Quarterly Meeting; highest of all, the Yearly Meeting. The lack of a meeting which should represent the whole Society was met in part by the deference paid to the parent Yearly Meeting at London, and also by a very general acknowledgment of a common set of principles. The first Yearly Meeting in America was organized in Rhode Island in 1661. A second was established at Burlington, New Jersey, twenty years later. In 1683 a Yearly Meeting was held at Philadelphia. According to an arrangement made in 1685, Philadelphia and Burlington were to be alternately the seat of the Yearly Meeting for Pennsylvania and the Jerseys.</p>
<p>The theological teaching of the Quakers continued through the colonial period to correspond to the exposition which had been given by Robert Barclay. They believed in the Bible as the Word of the Lord, but gave the primacy to the Holy Spirit in His direct working upon the soul. They were in sympathy with the doctrine of the Trinity, though preferring to speak upon the subject in Biblical language rather than in that of the creeds. In their explanation of justification they slighted the judicial aspect, and laid the whole stress upon an inward birth or sanctification. The sacraments they regarded as savoring of an undue externalism. In accordance with their emphasis upon the inward working of the Spirit, and the independence of that working from all externals, they entertained a more generous hope respecting the salvation of the heathen than was common in that age.</p>
<p>It has been noticed on a previous page that the Memnonites agreed with the Quakers in their opposition to oaths and to war. Pennsylvania, therefore, naturally afforded them a congenial retreat. Some of them early responded to the invitation of William Penn to settle in that quarter.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-81045266743302086442012-03-29T20:37:00.000-07:002019-09-02T23:59:53.989-07:00Baptists<p><strong>Chapter VII. -- Baptists</strong></p>
<p>THE BAPTISTS. -- Reference was made in the preceding section to the first Baptists in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Outside of these colonies the Baptist era dates from the closing part of the seventeenth century or the early part of the eighteenth. Before the close of the former century Baptist churches were organized in Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. It should be noted, however, that the congregation in Maine was soon dispersed, and that nearly a century elapsed before the work of organizing Baptist churches in that region was again undertaken. "In 1688 the Baptist denomination in North America comprised thirteen churches only. Seven were in Rhode Island, two in Massachusetts, one in South Carolina, two in Pennsylvania, and one in Mew Jersey." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 J. M. Cramp, Baptist History, p. 471.</span></strong> In Connecticut, Virginia, and New York the Baptists acquired an organized existence in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. They had a church in North Carolina in 1727, in Maryland in 1742, in New Hampshire in 1750, or shortly thereafter; in Georgia in 1772. The middle and latter part of the century was a time of rapid growth in the country as a whole. "In 1740 the number of churches was thirty-seven, with less than three thousand members, but in 1790 there were eight hundred and seventy-two churches, containing 64,975 members." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Cramp, p. 527.</span></strong></p>
<p>The great revival which began in the fourth decade of the eighteenth century gave to the Baptists an impulse of far-reaching consequence. One of the immediate fruits of that revival in New England was a number of congregations which were led to take an independent position in relation to the "standing order," either because they considered the local pastor too intolerant of religious excitement, or wished for more stringent terms of fellowship than were maintained where the half-way covenant prevailed. Not a few of these congregations mentioned as Separatists, and sometimes as New Lights -- became associated with the Baptists.</p>
<p>From this source an effective evangelistic agency was provided for North Carolina and Virginia. In 1754 Shubal Stearns, who had become identified with the Separatists, proceeded with some members of his congregation to Virginia. The next year he passed across the border into North Carolina, where his labors resulted in gathering a very flourishing congregation. Soon Stearns and others who had imbibed a kindred zeal began to preach in Virginia after the manner of itinerant evangelists. As indicated above, they were not the first representatives of Baptist principles in Virginia. A company of Baptists from England had been organized as a church in the southern part of the province in 1714, and in 1743 immigrants from Maryland had established a congregation in the northern part, the nucleus of the Regular Baptists in that section of the country. However, before the arrival of the new-comers, who were called Separate Baptists, no great progress had been made. The revival methods whish they employed with marked earnestness proved to be very efficacious in attracting attention and winning converts. At the same time they were equally efficacious in provoking the animosity of the clergy and the magistrates belonging to the Establishment. In the course of the persecution about thirty ministers, besides many subordinate laborers, were imprisoned, some of them more than once. Opposition in this form, however, rather helped than hindered success. Before the end of the century Virginia had become a stronghold of the Baptists. In 1793 the denomination in the State was able to boast of 227 churches, 272 ministers, and 22,793 communicants, or nearly one third of the whole number of Baptists to be found at that time within the limits of the United States. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Thomas Armitage, History of the Baptists, p. 735.</span></strong> Six years previously the different branches--Separates, Regulars, and Independents --had agreed to be known under the common title of United Baptist Churches of Christ in Virginia.</p>
<p>In theology the tendency among American Baptists was to enthrone Calvin. Nevertheless Arminianism had its representatives. It is understood that this was the creed of the first Baptists who settled in the southern part of Virginia, though communication with others eventually corrupted, or perfected, their faith into Calvinism. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 R. B. Semple, History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia, p. 348.</span></strong> Arminian Baptists were found in Rhode Island and Connecticut, and in 1729 an Association of their churches was formed at Newport. Speaking of the time when the Warren Association was organized (1767), a Baptist writer says of the New England churches, "Some of them were frankly Arminian in doctrine." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Armitage, History of the Baptists, p. 717.</span></strong> Several of the leading preachers in Virginia espoused the Arminian position. In 1780 Benjamin Randall founded a denomination, the Free Will Baptists, which made the Arminian doctrines of grace a distinctive feature, as well as open communion.</p>
<p>Various eccentricities in usage and polity made their appearance. A number of these are summarized in the following appeal for charitable judgment: "If the churches composing the Sandy Creek association in North Carolina were tenacious of the kiss of charity, the laying on of hands upon members, the appointment of elderesses, and such things; if a large Baptist body in Virginia was so mistaken as to choose in 1774 three of their number, and designate them 'apostles,' investing them with power of general superintendence; and if in some respects the fervency of New Light feelings got the better of discretion and decorum, we must bear in mind the peculiarities of the times." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Cramp, Baptist History, p. 545.</span></strong> To this enumeration should be added the eccentricity which is represented in the Seventh Day Baptists. In Rhode Island those who advocated the keeping of the seventh day were formed into a separate church in 1671. This was the beginning of the denomination in America.</p>
<blockquote>3 Backus mentions William Hiscox and six others as primarily composing the church. Soon afterwards a family, or several families, by the name of Rogers, joined them; but these new members seem ere long to have fallen into an independent position, thus giving rise to a party known as Rogerenes. With the keeping of the seventh day they combined Quaker phraseology and the renunciation of medicines. (History of New England, i. 324, 325 381; ii. 11, 501.)</blockquote>
<p>An offshoot of the German Baptists, or Dunkers, who settled in Pennsylvania between 1719 and 1729, also maintained the obligation to sanctify the seventh day.</p>
<p>A considerable proportion of Baptist preachers in colonial times were men of but moderate education. The leaders of the denomination, however, were far from being indifferent to learning. In 1764 a memorial of their enlightened zeal was provided through the founding of Rhode Island College, known later as Brown University. A principal part in this enterprise was taken by James Manning and Morgan Edwards, who may be ranked, along with Isaac Backus and Hezekiah Smith, among the eminent representatives of the denomination in that period.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-7080220187844886512012-03-29T20:22:00.000-07:002019-09-03T00:00:11.950-07:00Presbyterians<p><strong>Presbyterians</strong></p>
<p>A section of Presbyterian history, it must be allowed, came under the régime of an establishment. But it was only a small section, that which included the progress of the Dutch Reformed Church in New York for a little more than a generation before the English occupation. American Presbyterianism, as a whole, has not been the subject of specific State recognition and patronage. The heading, therefore, which has been given to this division of our subject involves only a moderate trespass against accuracy. In a general glance the religious bodies enumerated may be classified as non-established communions.</p>
<p>1. PRESBYTERIANS. --From continental Europe there were three considerable classes of immigrants who had been wonted to a Presbyterian polity. These were the Dutch, the German, and the French representatives of the Reformed Church, or that group of communions which took its pattern from Zurich and Geneva. A large proportion of the German Reformed came from the Palatinate on the Upper Rhine. These as well as the Dutch were sufficiently numerous and concentrated to maintain, with comparative ease, a distinct organization. The French Reformed, or Huguenots, on the other hand, in their scattered condition tended toward absorption in other religious bodies. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 On the important contribution which this element made to the country, see the preceding volume, p. 513.</span></strong></p>
<p>At the time of the surrender of New York to the English (1664), the ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church numbered seven. Though this was no large supply for ten thousand people gathered into a number of towns, it suffered a reduction, and for an interval the resident pastors were only three. In the later years of the century a valuable accession was received in Dominie Selyns. "He was the chief of the early ministers to enlarge the usefulness of the Church, and to secure for it a permanent and independent foundation. He was of a catholic spirit, when liberality was not so common, speaking kindly of other denominations and rejoicing in their success. His amiable character endeared him to all around him. He was on terms of friendship with the heads of government, and in correspondence with distinguished men in the neighboring colonies. He was also a poet, versifying in both Dutch and Latin." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 E. T. Corwin, Manual of the Reformed Church in America, 3d ed., p. 16.</span></strong></p>
<p>Somewhat of an era was marked by the arrival of Jacob Frelinghuysen in 1720. Imbued with the spirit of pietism, and an earnest foe of mere formality, he figured in some measure as a forerunner of the revival which was inaugurated under Edwards, Whitefield, and the Tennents. He gave also a fresh impulse to his communion in the enterprise of training young men for the ministry.</p>
<p>The headship of the Dutch Reformed Church in the colonial period was vested in the Classis of Amsterdam. This Classis took the responsibility of supplying ministers, and though it allowed ordinations occasion ally to take place in this country, it expected that this would occur only by special permission. Near the middle of the eighteenth century some of the ministers began to feel that a larger measure of self-government ought to be enjoyed by the churches on this aide of the Atlantic. They were not fully reconciled to the idea that the Coetus which was organized in 1747 should have nothing more than an advisory function. As a minority were for leaving full control to the Classis, there was a division of sentiment. Another cause for partisan feeling also found entrance, inasmuch as the conservative wing favored taking an interest in King's College, while the advocates of a relative independence, believing that that institution would be thoroughly dominated by Episcopalian influence, concluded that they ought to provide for ministerial education in a seminary of their own. The result was a rupture. This continued till 1771, when the discreet mediation of the able minister John H. Livingston prepared a reunion. The plan of agreement which was adopted gave little less than complete self-government to the colonial Church. Twenty-one years later the consummating act was taken. The constitution adopted in 1792 placed the Dutch Reformed Church upon an independent basis.</p>
<p>The German Reformed Church had its largest growth in Pennsylvania. Like the Dutch it recognized the headship of the Classis of Amsterdam. This occurred with the consent and advice of the Church in the Palatinate, which was not in condition to render the needed assistance. From 1730--or shortly after the labors of Weiss and Boehm had gathered the first Reformed congregations in Pennsylvania-to 1792 a close relation was maintained with the Amsterdam Classis.</p>
<p>In its earlier years the progress of the German Reformed Church was much hindered by lack of ministerial supply, and of adequate organization. A partial remedy to these defects was provided by the zeal and industry of Michael Schlatter, who came in 1746, and for several years fulfilled the office of general superintendent. Larger results might have been attained by him, had not his attempt to found free schools with the aid of English and Scotch charity provoked a race prejudice which drove him in 1757 from his official oversight.</p>
<p>Among the young men who came over with Schlatter was William Otterbein. In 1775 Baltimore became the field of his labor. Broad in his sympathies, and laying the chief stress upon heart piety, he was quite ready to pass over denominational lines where favorable opportunities were presented for friendly co-operation in Christian work. Such features of Methodism as the class system and the revival meeting commanded his appreciation. He cherished a friendly regard for Asbury, and assisted at his ordination in 1784. Asbury, on his part, greatly admired the learning and piety of the stalwart German, and spoke of him as "the great and good Otterbein." As several of his countrymen, among whom Martin Boehm was perhaps the foremost, joined zealously in the pietistic enterprise, it grew to considerable dimensions. Many were enlisted who had no special connection with the German Reformed Church, and as that body was not inclined to adopt the movement, it soon issued in a separate communion bearing the name of United Brethren in Christ. This result was not designed by Otterbein. He continued in fact to regard himself as still within the pale of the old communion. His relation to the German Reformed Church was quite analogous to that of Wesley with the Church of England. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 J. H. Dubbs, Rhetoric Manual of the Reformed Church in the United States.</span></strong></p>
<p>One having in mind the broad area of Presbyterianism in Scotland, England, and Ireland, in the middle portion of the seventeenth century would naturally expect to find distinct tokens of an overflow in the presence of a large Presbyterian body in America. Doubtless a considerable number of Presbyterians from the British Isles had entered the colonies at an early date; but they were not aggregated. They came to regions where a different element was dominant. We have therefore to pass across the border of the eighteenth century before we find the communion which bears distinctively the name of "Presbyterians." The first presbytery which was instituted, that of Philadelphia, dates from 1706. In a letter from this presbytery to that of Dublin, in 1710, the extent of Presbyterianism in America was described as follows: "In all Virginia we have one small congregation on Elizabeth River, and some few families favoring our way in Rappahannoc and York; in Maryland four, in Pennsylvania five, in the Jerseys two, which bounds, with some places in New York, make up all the bounds which we have any members from, and at present some of these are vacant." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Quoted by Charles Hodge, Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church in America, pt, i., pp. 65, 66.</span></strong></p>
<p>From this point a rapid growth ensued. In 1716 the single presbytery had become a synod, with three subordinate meetings or presbyteries. Soon after the middle of the century the Presbyterians had passed all rivals in the three States, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. When the General assembly was organized in 1788, the seventeen presbyteries, ranging from New York to the Carolinas, included four hundred and nineteen churches. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">C. A. Briggs, American Presbyterianism.</span></strong></p>
<p>As respects theological teachings, the Presbyterian body in America remained sufficiently homogeneous throughout the colonial period. There was no such drift here as that which carried away the Presbyterian Church in England, and moved also a section of the Irish body from the old moorings. Still the American Presbyterians had early an occasion to deal with a subject which was a source of disturbance and division to both their English and their Irish brethren. The agitation on the subject of subscription which convulsed the meeting at Salter's Hall in 1719 had its counterpart in this country. It was not indeed a very exact counterpart. The party of non-subscribers here were not so stiff in their opposition to the requirement of subscription as were their confrères in England. They differed also from the latter as not including in their ranks any who were properly amenable to the charge of laxity in their personal creed. Still the question of subscription assumed at one time a rather serious import.</p>
<p>The initiative in the discussion was taken by the New Castle Presbytery. In 1724 this presbytery began to require candidates for the ministry to give a formal assent to the Westminster Confession. Not content with this advance towards stringency in their own practice, representative men of the presbytery began to press for synodal action, by which the whole body of ministers might be securely anchored to the great Calvinistic creed. Their overture was not acceptable to all the ministers, a minority at least were opposed to the demand for subscription; and their cause received weight from the fact that their leader was a man of eminent character and ability. He has been described indeed as "the ablest man in the American Presbyterian Church in the colonial period." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Briggs, American Presbyterianism, p. 216. Compare E. H. Gillett, History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, i. 39, 40</span></strong> This was Jonathan Dickinson, a native of Massachusetts, and a graduate of Yale College. So far as his own belief was concerned, Dickinson was as well content, probably, as any of his brethren with the Westminster Confession. But he did not believe in binding upon men the shackles of any elaborate creed. To use his own words, he held that "a joint acknowledgment of our Lord Jesus Christ for our common head, of the sacred Scriptures for our common standard both in faith and practice, with a joint agreement in the same essential and necessary articles of Christianity, and the same methods of worship and discipline, are a sufficient bond of union for the being or well-being of any Church under heaven." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Hodge, Constitutional History, pt. i. p. 144.</span></strong></p>
<p>Had Dickinson been a man of belligerent temper, a sharp antagonism might have resulted. But he was blessed with a superior degree of moderation and practical wisdom. Under his guidance the mooted question was brought to an adjustment which gave general if not universal, satisfaction for the time being. The expedient chosen was that of qualified subscription. In the so-called Adopting act of 1729 the demands upon the subscriber were thus formulated: "Although the Synod do not claim or pretend to any authority of imposing our faith upon other men's consciences, but do profess our just dissatisfaction with, and abhorrence of, such impositions, and do utterly disclaim all legislative power and authority in the Church, being willing to receive one another as Christ has received us to the glory of God, and admit to fellowship in sacred ordinances all such as we have grounds to believe Christ will at last admit to the kingdom of heaven, yet we are undoubtedly obliged to take care that the faith once delivered to the saints be kept pure and uncorrupt among us, and so handed down to our posterity, -- and do therefore agree that all the ministers of this Synod, or that shall hereafter be admitted into this Synod, shall declare their agreement in, and approbation of, the Confession of Faith, with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, as being, in all the essential and necessary articles, good forms of sound words and systems of Christian doctrine, and do also adopt the said Confession and Catechisms as the confession of our faith. And we do also agree that all the presbyteries within our bounds shall always take care not to admit any candidate of the ministry into the exercise of the sacred function but what declares his agreement in opinion with all the essential and necessary articles of said Confession, either by subscribing the said Confession of Faith and Catechisms, or by a verbal declaration of their assent thereto, as such minister or candidate shall think best. And in case any minister of this Synod, or any candidate for the ministry, shall have any scruple with respect to any article or articles of said Confession or Catechisms, he shall at the time of his making said declaration declare his sentiments to the Presbytery or Synod, who shall, notwithstanding, admit him to the exercise of the ministry within our bounds, and to ministerial communion, if the Synod or Presbytery shall judge such scruple or mistake to be only about articles not essential and necessary in doctrine, worship, or government. But if the Synod or Presbytery shall judge such ministers or candidates erroneous in essential and necessary articles of faith, the Synod or Presbytery shall declare them incapable of communion with them. And the Synod do solemnly agree that none of us will traduce or use any opprobrious terms of those that differ from us in these extra-essential and not necessary points of doctrine; but treat them with the same friendship, kindness, and brotherly love, as if they had not differed from, us in such sentiments." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Briggs, pp. 217-220. Hodge and Gillett also give the text. In South Carolina the dispute over subscription was not so happily settled, and a division resulted.</span></strong></p>
<p>Seven years later the Synod passed a declaration, which, if it did not directly limit the liberty which is naturally inferred from the language of the Adopting Act, is understood to have been in the interest of strict subscription. Perhaps the scanty attendance of the liberal party at the Synod of 1736 my have facilitated the passage of the declaration.</p>
<p>Before the question of subscription had passed out of consideration a cause of deeper agitation intervened. As early as 1730-52 the preaching of John Tennent at Freehold, New Jersey, had been attended with tokens of revival. Like effects followed the preaching of William Tennent in the succeeding years. Gilbert Tennent, a brother of the preceding, contributed still more to the awakening, being a man of stirring eloquence and aggressive force. Meanwhile the father of these preachers, through his school for ministerial training, known as the Log College, was preparing a number of young men to take the part of earnest evangelists. Accordingly, when Whitefield arrived, in 1739, he found that the spirit of revival had made much progress, and that a party was at hand which was ready to lend a zealous support to his type of religious enterprise.</p>
<p>But revival methods were not agreeable to all. A few probably were at so low a point in their own religious life that they felt a species of repulsion toward any manifestation of earnest religion. A larger number entertained an aversion for the disorders of the revival. They were sensitive to the violation of ecclesiastical order. They looked upon the entrance of itinerant preachers into fields already under pastoral charge as a rude and unwarranted intrusion. The somewhat headlong censoriousness with which Gilbert Tennent and others commented on unconverted ministers provoked in them a greater or less resentment. Since those who felt thus were a considerable party, they took pains to raise some bars against their more ardent brethren. Measures were passed by the Synod (1737, 1738), which were designed to check the practice of itinerating, and to transfer the power of licensing ministers from the local authority; or Presbytery, to the central body. The covert aim of the last measure was understood by its opponents to be the exclusion of candidates who might serve as spirited and effective preachers, but perchance could not meet a severe technical requirement as respects scholastic attainments.</p>
<p>The advocates of the revival were not a little aggrieved by these acts, and showed a pronounced disinclination to acquiesce in them. In their view the paramount duty was to bring to all men the vital and saving message of the gospel. They considered the action of the Synod an unwarrantable attempt to bind the Word of the Lord. This feeling was especially rife in the Presbytery of New Brunswick, where the influence of the Tennents was paramount. In the matter of licensing candidates this Presbytery overrode the restriction imposed; and, as it would not render the desired satisfaction on this and other points, its delegation was denied a place in the Synod (1741). Had the ejection occurred by due process, the Synod would have had the advantage of legal right on its side. But that was not the fact; the New Brunswick presbyters were dismissed in an arbitrary fashion. Thus a schism was precipitated, and "Old Side" and "New Side" became competing bodies. Many who were friendly at once to the revival and to good order considered that the New Brunswick Presbytery had been dealt with unwarrantably, and joined with it after failing to obtain an accommodation from the Synod. The result was that the Synod of New York, as a rival of that of Philadelphia, was constituted in 1745.</p>
<p>The schism continued till 1758. During the interval the Old Side remained comparatively stationary. The New Side, on the other hand, or the party of the revival, made large advances. One noteworthy trophy of its activity was a successful missionary project in Virginia. In laying the foundation of Presbyterianism in this province, a prominent part was taken by Samuel Davies, who ranks with Dickinson among the foremost of the Presbyterian divines of the colonial era. Other achievement was the founding of New Jersey College in 1747. Princeton became the seat of the college in 1756.</p>
<p>In arranging the terms of the reunion which was effected in 1758, it was necessary to recur to the subject of subscription. In the view of those who ought to be competent interpreters the solution arrived at was substantially a reaffirmation of the principle of the Adopting Act which had been passed in 1729.</p>
<blockquote>1 Briggs, pp. 319-321; Gillett, i. 78, 79. The latter writer says: "The <em>systematic</em> in contradistinction from the <em>ipsissima verba</em> subscription was re-established at the reunion in 1758"</blockquote>
<p>Alongside the main orb of American Presbyterianism there were a few of the lesser luminaries to which Scotch pertinacity, or conscientiousness, or both, had given origin. Not far from the middle of the eighteenth century representatives of the Covenanters (or Reformed Presbyterian Church) and of the associate Presbytery obtained definite organization. In 1782 a large part of the former body united with the latter, thus giving rise to the associate Reformed Church.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-14798416680502247772012-03-29T20:16:00.000-07:002019-09-03T00:00:31.849-07:00Congregational Establishments<p><strong>Congregational Establishments</strong></p>
<p>Cotton Mather begins his ecclesiastical history of New England with these words: "I write the wonders of the Christian religion, flying from the depravations of Europe to the American strand." Many writers besides, if they have not made use of equally grandiloquent phrase, have regarded the migration of the Puritans to these shores with a kindred interest, and have looked upon their work here as a most important contribution to religion and civilization. On the other hand, there have been not a few reviewers who have scarcely been able to mention Puritan New England without having recourse to the vocabulary of disparagement and invective. The explanation of these contrasted judgments is easily found. The sight has followed the inward bias, and that has been seen which was most sought after. Like a strong personality, in whom virtues and faults alike rise above mediocrity, New England in its early history exhibited diverse traits. Much that appears in the record a healthy mind must ever revere. At the same time some things come to view which a well-furnished and well-balanced mind can never admire. Probably the easiest way to dispose of the latter elements would be to charge them upon the age. But this would only divide, not eliminate, responsibility. He surely would be guilty of great boldness who should dare to affirm that the age ought not to have been better than it was. It remains, moreover, to show that the age provided nothing which could have helped the Puritans to correct their faults.</p>
<p>Developing the subject by topics, we will notice in the first place the church polity of the New England settlements.</p>
<p>The Plymouth colony represented the principles of separatism and independency. Its leaders taught the need of departing from the prelatical establishment of England, and assigned to the individual congregation the prerogative of self-rule. The separatism, however, which was represented at Plymouth was not of the most radical cast; it was rather the ameliorated form which was held by John Robinson in his later years. Softened by age and experience, this eminent teacher instructed the pilgrim company, as they were departing for America, to believe that "the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of His Holy word."</p>
<blockquote>1 H.M. Dexter concludes that a broader sense has sometimes been given to these words than was put into them by their author. He thinks they were designed to refer almost entirely, if not exclusively, to polity. (Congregationalism, as seen in its Literature, pp. 404-410.) While allowing tile justice of some limitation, we are disposed to think that it is carried farther than is necessary by Dr. Dexter. No doubt Robinson was satisfied with the Calvinistic doctrines and very ready to defend them in detail. Still, that in his premonition of coming light he consciously excluded doctrine, act believing that tile very acme of insight in that sphere had already been reached, we see no adequate reason to infer.</blockquote>
<p>In practical accord with the tolerance underlying this view, he allowed that protest against the errors of the English establishment need not necessarily be carried to the extreme of refusing altogether to bear the preaching and prayers of godly men in the ranks of its ministry. His position was thus defined by one of his disciples: "He was more rigid in his course and way at first than towards his latter end; for his study was peace and union so far as might agree with faith and a good conscience; and for schism and division, there was nothing in the world more hateful to him. But for the government of the Church of England, as it was in the Episcopal way, the liturgy and stinted prayers of the Church there, yea, the constitution of it as national, and so, consequently, the corrupt communion of the unworthy with the worthy receivers of the Lord's Supper, --these things were never approved of him, but witnessed against to his death, and are by the church over which he was, to this day." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Edward Winslow, quoted by Dexter, p. 406.</span></strong></p>
<p>In the colony of Massachusetts Bay the declared platform was, at the start, nonconformity rather than separatism. In other words, the Puritan emigrants to that quarter advocated not so much a substitute for the Church of England as a reform of certain obnoxious particulars in its ceremonies and administration. At their departure from England they felt free to speak of the Establishment in very friendly terms. Thus Francis Higginson, who came to Salem in 1629, remarked: "We will not say; as the Separatists were wont to say at their leaving, 'Farewell, Babylon! Farewell, Rome!' But we will say, 'Farewell, dear England! Farewell, the Church of God in England, and all the Christian friends there!' We do not go to New England as Separatists from the Church of England, though we cannot but separate from the corruptions in it; but we go to practise the positive pare of church reformation, and propagate the gospel in America." The sailing of Winthrop's company in the next year was preceded by a printed and published address, in which the emigrants spoke of the Church of England as their "dear mother," and declared that the sadness and tears from which they could not refrain on leaving their native country were due largely to the thought that that country was the place of her special residence. It is not necessary to question the sincerity of these expressions. The ordeal of severance from the homes of their childhood naturally called out whatever of underlying affection for England and its institutions existed in the hearts of the departing Puritans. At the same time, these expressions did not represent their whole thought or feeling. The ecclesiastical opinions which placed them at variance with the Establishment were tenaciously held, and a position of entire independence of its shackles was intrinsically agreeable to them. Hence we have the record that the churches of Massachusetts Bay proceeded from the first very much as though the Church of England had no existence. They stood practically on the basis of separatism, and there was not enough difference between their polity and that in vogue at Plymouth to occasion any controversy. ,The New England Puritans," says Governor Hutchinson, "when at full liberty, went the full length which the Separatists did in England. It does not follow that they would have done so if they had remained in England. Upon their removal they supposed their relation both to the civil and ecclesiastical government, except so far as a special reserve was made by their Charter, was at an end, and that they had right to form such new model of both as best pleased them. In the form of worship, they universally followed the New Plymouth Church." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, i. 418.</span></strong> The general model supplied by the older colonies was adopted in Connecticut and New Haven.</p>
<p>In the relation of the churches to each other the primitive New England scheme seems to have been substantially identical with that of later Congregationalism. But in the government of the individual church, the prevailing theory, if we may judge from statements in the oldest extant writings on the subject, had a decided spice of aristocracy. While the congregation elected the officers, it was not thought fitting that it should have any co-ordinate place with them in governing. "Our Fathers," says Dexter, "laid it down that the will of Christ, and not the will of the major or minor part of a church, ought to govern that church. But somebody must interpret that will. And they quietly assumed that Christ would reveal his will to the elders, but would not reveal it to the church members; so that when there arose a difference of opinion as to what the Master's will might be touching any particular matter, the judgment of the elders, rather than the judgment even of a majority of the membership, must be taken as conclusive." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Congregationalism, as seen in its Literature, p. 429.</span></strong></p>
<p>In association with the pastors (and teachers) the early churches had "ruling elders." As defined by the Cambridge synod of 1648, their work was "to join with the pastor and teacher in those acts of spiritual rule which are distinct from the ministry of the Word and sacraments committed to them." They were expected to take a large share in matters of discipline. The office was continued for a considerable interval; but experience finally led many to conclude that the duties of a ruling elder were not sufficiently diverse from those of a pastor to make it necessary to provide an extra official. At the beginning of the next century ruling elders had well-nigh vanished. "Partly through a prejudice against the office," wrote Cotton Mather, "and partly, indeed chiefly, through a penury of men well qualified for the discharge of it, as it has been heretofore understood and applied, our churches are now generally destitute of such helps in government."</p>
<blockquote>1 Magnalia, ii. 206 (ed. 1820). As the so-called "teacher" was less remote in function from the pastor than the ruling elder, there was still less occasion to conserve the distinctive title and office.</blockquote>
<p>The conditions of membership were sufficiently strict in the early times of the Puritan colonies. A few years after the settlement of Massachusetts Bay, it became customary in most churches for the candidate to give a narrative of his religious experience before the congregation; Since this was too crossing to some dispositions, it was provided in the Cambridge platform that those who shrank from the public ordeal could make their profession before the elders, and then in the presence of the congregation simply assent to the elders' report. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Magnalia,ii. 210.</span></strong> As the requisition for this order of examination implies, conversion was regarded as strictly necessary for membership. The Church was understood to be the household of the regenerate.</p>
<p>This view, in connection with the importance attached to baptism as a seal of the covenant, gave rise ere long to a practical difficulty. It was found that a considerable proportion of the second generation of colonists did not feel qualified to make such profession as was required for admission into the churches. In this way many children were left without any title to baptism. As this was felt to be a grievance, a movement originated, shortly after the middle of the century, first in Connecticut and then in the neighboring colonies, for obtaining a remedy. The result was the so-called "half-way covenant." At a synod held in Boston in 1662, it was decided that baptized persons who understood the grounds of religion, and were not scandalous in their lives, although they were not yet fit for full communion, ought to own the covenant, and that their children should then be counted eligible to baptism. Some of the most stanch and thoughtful of the ministers were opposed to so serious a relaxation in the conditions of membership. The measure, nevertheless, was carried by a large majority, and though a spirited opposition was kept up for a time, the practice of the churches gradually was conformed to the new and more indulgent standard. In some instances, concession was carried a step farther, and those who in their religious estate simply met the description of subjects of the half-way covenant were admitted to the Lord's Supper. Some conceived that there was abundant ground for making this practice general, since the Lord's Supper, so far from necessarily implying antecedent regeneration in the communicant, was designed to be a means of regeneration. Thus Solomon Stoddard argued in 1700. With this departure from the old strictness, there naturally ensued a change in the religious tone of the churches, as will be noticed subsequently.</p>
<p>While there was a movement to a lessened stringency in the administration of the individual church, an agitation began for strengthening the connectional system, or the authority of the general body over the single congregation. In Connecticut there resulted a species of compromise with Presbyterianism. It appears from the functions assigned to Associations and Consociations by the Saybrook Platform in 1708. In Massachusetts a similar scheme was proposed, but with a reverse result. The discussion which was provoked nurtured ultimately a firmer adherence to the congregational principle, the genuine Brownist doctrine that the individual church is not to be overruled by any extraneous authority, its proper independence, while consisting with advice, not allowing dictation or judicial determination from without. In securing this outcome, an important part was fulfilled by John Wise, a zealous advocate of a democratic constitution for both State and Church.</p>
<p>In the New England system there was no wide separation between the civil and the ecclesiastical domain. Church and State were very intimately associated. In two of the colonies the franchise could be reached only by admission into the Church. Massachusetts ordained in 1631 that no one should be admitted to the freedom of the body politic but such as were members of some of the churches in her jurisdiction. A like provision was adopted by New Haven. In Plymouth and Connecticut the conferring of the franchise was dependent upon the vote or recommendation of the body of freemen in the several towns. "But it may reasonably be believed that church membership was also in Plymouth and Connecticut much regarded by the electors as a qualification of candidates for citizenship" <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Palfrey, History of New England.</span></strong> In Massachusetts the restriction was maintained with little practical abatement till the cancelling of the charter and the appointment of royal governors. It is true that an act was passed in 1664 allowing freeholders possessed of a certain amount of property, and recommended as orthodox and moral, to be eligible to the franchise, without being members of the churches. But, as Governor Hutchinson gives us to understand, the legal provision was not followed by any appreciable change in practice till the dissolution of the charter government and the introduction of royal governors. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">History of Massachusetts Bay, i. 26.</span></strong> In New Haven the restriction on the franchise continued till the incorporation of that colony with Connecticut.</p>
<p>The connection between Church and State was also illustrated in the matter of ministerial support. The principle of voluntary contributions was not entirely discarded; but the several colonies authorized the imposition of a general tax upon the people of a township, where the salary of the minister was not otherwise provided. In another way also those who were not members were required to acknowledge their obligations to the Church, in that they were subject to fine for non-attendance upon the appointed services.</p>
<p>If to the above we add, that the magistrates were expected to show a vigorous determination to realize the Biblical model, and to restrain and punish all outward acts contrary to the Word of the Lord, we have about the whole ground and occasion for styling the Puritan rule in New England a theocracy. The priestly and prophetical claims which sometimes are associated with that name had no place in the Puritan scheme. A would-be prophet, or medium of divine revelation, was looked upon with great disfavor. The written Word, interpreted by the ordinary faculties with which pious men are endowed, was made the standard. No one, no class, was understood to have a monopoly of interpretation, and theological discussion was a very common engagement in all ranks and circles. The ministers in their theoretical position were but the first among brethren. Nevertheless, it is to be conceded that they exerted a more than average influence upon public affairs. The general anxiety to follow Scriptural precedents tended to increase the measure of consultation with them, since they were deemed to be specially versed in the teachings of the Bible. As a class, too, the early New England ministers were well fitted to command respect and deference. A large proportion of them had been educated in the English universities. Some of them, both in character and talents, may be accounted men of eminence and distinction. The impression made by John Cotton and Thomas Hooker, the one connected with Boston, and the other with the founding and early history of the Connecticut colony, is no mean tribute to their worth. A contemporary and co-laborer of the former has left this report of his ministrations: "Mr. Cotton preaches with such authority, demonstration, and life, that methinks, when he preaches out of any prophet or apostle, I hear not him, I hear that very prophet and apostle; yea, I hear the Lord Jesus Christ Himself speaking in my heart." His writings indicate self-control and moderation of spirit, and the same traits are said to have been reflected in his life. Once a censorious brother told him that his ministry was become generally either dark or flat. The quiet answer was: "Both, brother, it may be both. Let me have your prayers that it may be otherwise." But, if in temper he was a Melanchthon, in theology he had the genuine Puritan appetite for Calvin. "'I have read the fathers,' said he, 'and the schoolmen, and Calvin too; but I find that he that has Calvin has them all;' and being asked why in his latter days he indulged nocturnal studies more than formerly, he replied, 'Because I love to sweeten my mouth with a piece of Calvin before I go to sleep.'" <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Cotton Mather, Magnalia, i. 250.</span></strong> In pulpit talent Hooker probably took precedence of Cotton. Combining great vigor of spirit with a commanding presence, and selecting ordinarily the practical themes of the gospel, he preached with marked power and effect. One who observed his energy and straight-forwardness in his ministry declared of him: "He was a person who, while doing his Master's work, would put a king in his pocket." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Magnalia, i. 313.</span></strong> Aside from his reputation as a minister, Hooker is justly reckoned among the eminent forerunners and exponents of democratic principles. In a sermon which he preached before the General Court of Connecticut in 1638 he gave as clear an assertion of the proper sovereignty of the people as can be found in our annals.</p>
<blockquote>3 The following were his main propositions: "The foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people. . . . The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people, by God's own allowance . . . . They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power also to set the bounds and limitations of the power and piece unto which they call them." (J.H. Trumbull, Historical Notes on the Constitutions of Connecticut, pp. 6, 7.)</blockquote>
<p>From considering the connection between Church and State, we naturally pass to the most somber phase of New England history, the persecution of dissent; since this connection was undoubtedly among the occasions of that persecution. On this theme, we have to deal mainly with Massachusetts. The other Puritan colonies, whatever may have been their maxims, made no conspicuous record for intolerance. Not one of them persecuted any religious party more than Virginia persecuted the Baptists, or New York, the Quakers.</p>
<p>In palliation of the scant charity which Massachusetts exhibited toward uncongenial immigrants, it has been said that the colony, being planted in the midst of a boundless expanse of unoccupied country, considered it entirely right and humane to practise a certain exclusiveness, regarding the land included in their patent as pre-empted territory; just as was done, for example, during a long period, by the Hudson Bay Company with their extensive tract. Those who were not prepared to harmonize with the system which the colony had chosen to establish might properly, as they conceived, be advised to make their home elsewhere. This plea has, without doubt, a foundation in fact. But it does not express the whole motive and animus of the persecution. When we find such a man as Winthrop hinting that the massacre of three hundred Virginians by the Indians was a providential infliction which they had earned by refusing to entertain the ministers sent from Boston, <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Winthrop's History of New England, ii. 198.</span></strong> it becomes apparent that the Massachusetts Puritans regarded their system as entitled to a right of way outside of their special jurisdiction. They claimed an exclusiveness for themselves which they were not ready to justify in others. As against all prelatical systems on the one hand and all liberalism on the other, they believed that they had the truth of God, and were but manifesting a righteous zeal in defending it, if need be, by the indiction of pains and penalties. An excess of confidence as respects knowing the mind of the Lord, which was a characteristic infirmity of Puritanism in England, distempered not a little the tone of Puritan thought and administration on this side of the Atlantic. Political expediency, or the harmony and stability of the State, was indeed a motive in the persecutions, but with this was blended a somewhat bigoted sense of a vocation to defend and avenge divine truths.</p>
<blockquote>1 Something like an index of the dogmatic confidence which prevailed may be seen in the following extract from the Massachusetts law-book printed in 1672: "Although no human power be lord over the faith and consciences of men, yet because such as bring in damnable heresies, tending to the subversion of the Christian faith, and destruction of the souls of men, ought duly to be restrained from such notorious impieties; it is therefore ordered and declared by the Court, that if any Christian within this jurisdiction shall go about to subvert and destroy the Christian faith and religion, by broaching and maintaining any damnable heresies; as denying the immortality of the soul, or resurrection of the body, or any sin to be repented of in the regenerate, or any evil done by the outward man to be accounted sin, or denying that Christ gave Himself a ransom for our sins, or shall affirm that we are not justified by His death and righteousness, but by the perfection of our own works, or shall deny the morality of the fourth commandment, or shall openly condemn or oppose the baptizing of infants, or shall purposely depart the congregation at the administration of that ordinance, or shall deny the ordinance of magistracy, or their lawful authority to make war, or to punish the outward breaches of the first table, or shall endeavor to seduce others to any of the errors and heresies mentioned; every such person continuing obstinate therein, after due means of conviction, shall be sentenced to banishment." (Quoted by Isaac Backus, History of New England, i. 321-322.)</blockquote>
<p>In the first prominent instance of procedure against dissent in Massachusetts the political motive was dominant. While the banishment of Roger Williams helped to bring him forward as an apostle of religious tolerance, he was not banished because he was an apostle of religious tolerance, or because of any specific religious tenet.</p>
<blockquote>1 Among his special theses while in Massachusetts, we have not seen any which involved the question of tolerance, unless it was this, namely, that the magistrate ought not to punish transgressions of the first table of the decalogue. But this was only one of several points which provoked censure, and aside from it the General Court had, in its view, adequate cause for sentence of banishment.</blockquote>
<p>His impracticable individualism, leading him into opposition to State and Church, until his party was reduced well-nigh to his single self, sent him into exile. Immediately after his arrival (1631) he created a prejudice by refusing to join with the congregation at Boston, because they would not make public profession of repentance for having communed with the Church of England while they were in that country. Later he wrote against the Massachusetts patent, challenging the right of the colonists to the land under the King's grant, since the King had transcended his just prerogatives in making the grant. He called in question also the act of the colony in requiring an oath from residence, maintaining that the exacting of an oath from an unregenerate person involves the sin of using God's name in vain. Finally, taking offense because the General Court -- in order to punish the Salem church, over which he presided, for adhering to him while under censure--denied a request of the town for a piece of land, he exhorted his church to withdraw from communion with the churches of the Bay, and declared that he would not commune with it unless his request was complied with. Soon after this he was sentenced, on the ground of the aforesaid acts to depart out of the colony (1635).</p>
<p>The singularity of Williams which occasioned his exile seems not to have been immediately eliminated by that ordeal. At Providence, having concluded that he ought to he a Baptist, he procured immersion from one of his companions, to whom, as also to a few others, he then imparted the rite; thus laying the foundation of the first Baptist church in America. But in a few months he became convinced of the nullity of his baptism, and doubting about any known church having the true apostolic succession, concluded thereafter to be a Christian entirely on his own account. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 see Winthrop, History of New England, vol. i; H. M. Dexter, As to Roger Williams; Palfrey, History of New England, vol, i. chap x.</span></strong></p>
<p>Thus far we have a record of eccentricity. But in Roger Williams there was something much better than mere eccentricity. With all his disputatiousness he bore a large and generous heart. Be harbored no bitterness against Massachusetts on account of his banishment. For forty years thereafter, as Hutchinson remarks, he was repeatedly employed in acts of kindness and benevolence toward the colony which ejected him. This was his only revenge, except the master strokes which he dealt against religious persecution in his writings. No later writer has transcended his position on the subject of tolerance, for he reached here the very acme of radicalism. In his treatise entitled "The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience" he lays down this sweeping proposition: "It is the will and command of God that, since the coming of His Son the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most Paganish, -Jewish, Turkish, or anti-Christian consciences and worships be granted to all men in all nations and countries; and they are only to be fought against with that sword which is only, in soul matters, able to conquer: to wit, the sword of God's spirit, the Word of God." To the defence of this and like theses he brought a spice of genius as well as a mighty earnestness. Accordingly, John Cotton, who attempted to wash the "bloody tenet," had a very indifferent success in the face of Williams' arguments. As the Boston preacher was not willing openly to concede that force has any place in dealing with men's religious convictions, he resorted to that muffled plea for intolerance toward heresy which may be discerned in the Westminster Confession. While allowing that conscience is to be respected, he maintained that in fundamentals God's Word is so clear that the errorist in this field must be made to see the truth after faithful admonition. Consequently, if he still persists in asserting errors, he acts against his own conscience, and in undergoing punishment he suffers, not for the sake of conscience, but as a violator of conscience. If John Cotton had stood alone in this representation, it would be counted a strange thing that he should hare fancied that the admonition of one man or one party must of necessity conquer the intellect of another man or another party.</p>
<p>Close upon the banishment of Roger Williams followed the episode which passes in history as the "Antinomian Controversy." It was a dispute threatening to be more serious in its consequences than the foregoing, since it divided the most prominent men in the colony and roused intense animosities. On the one side were the talented woman Mrs. Ann Hutchinson, her brother-in-law Wheelwright, almost the entire church in Boston, together with its eminent preacher, John Cotton. This party was also supported by the young Henry Vane, who served a term as governor, but left the country shortly before the issue of the strife. On the other side were Winthrop, the minister Wilson, and the general body of clergy and people outside of Boston. This party remained uncompromising in its opposition to the tenets of Mrs. Hutchinson. As for John Cotton, after taking the part of a moderate adherent of the Hutchinson party, he finally receded, alleging that the partisans of that side had deceived him by presenting the fairer aspects of their teaching and concealing its more radical phases.</p>
<p>The dogmatic ground of the controversy is thus given by Winthrop, in his first reference to the subject: "One Mrs. Hutchinson, a member of the church of Boston, a woman of ready wit and bold spirit, brought over with her two dangerous errors: first, that the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person; second, that no sanctification can help to evidence to us our justification." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">History of New England, i. 239 (ed. 1853).</span></strong> Of these two propositions the second commanded the chief attention, and may be styled the core of the dispute. In the view of its advocates, the one evidence of justification is an immediate divine assurance, the testimony of the Holy Spirit to the believing heart. He who combines with this any reference to gracious dispositions or works falls below the evangelical stand-point, and descends to the plane of legality.</p>
<p>The theory involved a one-sided subjectivity. By the small stress that it placed upon the ethical test which is afforded in dispositions and works, it gave too free a scope to personal fancies and impressions. It was not out of accord with her principal doctrine that Mrs. Hutchinson should claim to have been the recipient of special revelations. But these implications were not the sole ground of complaint. The more forward among the Boston enthusiasts stigmatized their opponents as legalists, and discriminated against the ministers of that party as preaching a covenant of works. Mrs. Hutchinson herself had the uncharitable boldness to leave the church when Wilson rose to preach.</p>
<p>Here surely was a disagreeable and alarming state of affairs. Superior discretion and charity might have overcome the difficulties. But there was little of the latter, and no excess of the former. The rude expedient of force was therefore invoked. Soon after the restoration of Winthrop to the office of governor in place of Vane, the prosecution of the disturbing faction was urged forward with vigor, and in part with harshness and arbitrariness. Wheelwright, Mrs. Hutchinson, and Aspinwall were banished (1637), and a considerable number of their party were subjected to a minor punishment.</p>
<p>Less than a decade after the Antinomian spectre had been vanquished, the Massachusetts Puritans felt that they were confronted by another evil shape. The General Court, in 1644, after characterizing the Anabaptists as the incendiaries of commonwealths and the troublers of churches in all places which they had invaded, proceeded to denounce the penalty of banishment against any person who should openly oppose infant baptism or seduce others to disapprove of the rite.</p>
<p>A rhetorical element may be discerned in the language of the Court. It is hardly probable that the Massachusetts legislators were pervaded by quite so great a horror of Anabaptist heresy as the preamble of their act would indicate. Cotton Mather says that among the planters of New England there were some from the beginning who held in a quiet way the Anabaptist theory. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Magnalis, ii. 459.</span></strong> No less a person than Henry Dunster, president of Harvard (1640-1654), did not believe in the propriety of infant baptism, and he might have retained his position in spite of his known views, had he not made it a matter of conscience to give public expression to his scruples. His successor, Charles Chauncy, so far espoused Baptist teaching as to regard immersion the only proper form, though he did not challenge infant baptism. It is to be concluded, therefore, that, unless there was an unusual degree of panic in 1644, the law-makers of that date could not have felt that there was any serious danger of a Münster tragedy being enacted in their midst. Nevertheless they may be credited with a real dread of the intrusion of Anabaptist, or -- as we may properly say in this connection --Baptist teaching.</p>
<p>In 1651 a practical token of resentment against Baptist innovators was given through the arrest and fining of Clarke, Crandall, and Holmes, who took occasion to prophesy in Massachusetts, while on a visit there from Rhode Island. Of the three, Holmes, as he would not pay the fine or accept money for its payment, was subjected to flogging. Sympathy with these sufferers has been abridged on the part of some writers, in consequence of the suspicion that they came on purpose to provide a case of persecution which might be of service in a special exigency of Rhode Island politics. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 H. M. Dexter, As to Roger Williams, pp. 119, 128; Palfrey, History of New England, ii. 350.</span></strong> Naturally this interpretation of the subject is opposed by Baptist writers, and in truth the grounds alleged for it are rather plausible than conclusive. Some fourteen or fifteen years after the arrest of Clarke and his companions a Baptist congregation which had been gathered at Charlestown was molested, and some of its members were temporarily imprisoned. In 1680 a Boston society was inhibited from meeting in the house of worship which they had constructed, until the authorities should grant license. But meanwhile the party cherishing a tolerant regard for the Baptists, which had existed from the first, increased in numbers. A significant token of progress toward a better feeling was given in 1718, when Increase Mather, and his son Cotton Mather, who held a leading place among the Massachusetts clergy, consented to take part in the installation of a Baptist pastor. Still the old Congregational order held legally a preferred place, and the endeavor to guard its privileges caused still some local inconvenience to Baptists as well as to other classes of Gentiles. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 It was not till 1833 that discrimination in favor of the "Standing Order" was effaced from the laws of Massachusetts.</span></strong></p>
<p>That persecution in Massachusetts should have reached its acme in relation to the Quakers is explained by two facts. In the first place they bore an evil name. They were regarded in England, at the middle of the seventeenth century, as wild and fanatical disturbers. Lovers of ecclesiastical order looked upon them very much as lovers of civil order now regard the most boisterous and intemperate anarchists, only in many cases with a greater apprehension of mischief. In the second place, they were the most resolute and stubborn witnesses for what they regarded as the truth. The fact that they were not wanted in a particular place, they interpreted as meaning that they were needed there; and the less they were wanted, the greater they felt was the need of their presence, that a proper testimony might be raised against sin. Massachusetts, therefore, in attempting to bar them out, invited them to press in at any cost.</p>
<p>The first instalment of the Quaker witnesses arrived in 1656, in the persons of two women, less than a month after the General Court had announced as one purpose of the appointed fast day, "to seek the face of God in behalf of our native country in reference to the abounding errors, especially those of Ranters, Quakers, etc." With all possible speed these forerunners were sent away. Laws were then passed for the imprisonment and bodily chastisement of any Quakers who should enter the jurisdiction, for the fining of shipmasters who should bring them in, as also of those who should circulate any of their books or defend their opinions. As the dreaded visitors were not kept out by these means, severer measures were adopted, it being ordered that any Quaker who should presume to come into the jurisdiction after having been punished should suffer the loss of an ear for the first offense; for a second, the loss of the other; and for a third, have the tongue bored through with a hot iron. Finally, in 1658 the acme of legal severity was reached in the enactment that Quakers who should return after being twice banished, should be liable to the death sentence. This law, it should be observed in justice, was not popular. It was passed with difficulty, and indeed was rejected by the house of deputies when first presented. Those who voted for it did not do so as coveting the actual infliction of the extreme penalty. No one wanted the blood of the Quakers. The law was meant to serve <em>in terrorem</em>, and there was probably no serious apprehension that it would be dared to the death. But this conclusion was based on no proper measurement of the Quaker enthusiasm for testifying. Rather than yield the field to such a statute, there were those in the sect who would not accept deliverance. The result was that four Quakers were hanged (1659, 1660). Others made themselves liable to the same punishment. But popular sentiment revolted against further sacrifice, and the magistrates were obliged to fall back upon a less stringent policy. During the few subsequent years that the persecution continued, whipping at the cart's tail was the maximum infliction.</p>
<p>It has sometimes been supposed that the efficient cause of the lessened severity toward the Quakers was the order of Charles II. that those under arrest should be sent to England for their trial. But nearly a year before the promulgation of the royal order there had been a general jail delivery, by which thirty-one Quakers including three under death sentence had been set free, on condition of departing from the colony. Causes within the community, therefore, rather than royal interference, seem mainly to have wrought the change. It is to be observed also that the King's patronage of the Quakers was of a very limited kind, his first communication being pretty thoroughly offset by the second. In 1662, responding to representations from Massachusetts, he wrote: "We cannot be understood hereby to direct or wish that any indulgence should be granted to those persons commonly called Quakers, whose principles being inconsistent with any kind of government, we have found it necessary, by the advice of our parliament here, to make sharp laws against them, and are well contented that you do the like there." From first to last the sharp laws of England, if they did not directly enjoin capital inflictions, were instrumental in destroying scores of Quakers (through the miseries of imprisonment) where Massachusetts sent one to the scaffold.</p>
<p>This completes the record of intolerance, so far as conspicuous instances are concerned. The tragedy which was enacted at Salem Village in 1692 falls rather under the category of superstitious panic than of religious persecution. It was a piece of the most wretched and monstrous foolery which has darkened the annals of Christian nations, --a very small piece when compared with the kindred triumphs of the witchcraft delusion in the European countries, but relatively large in the history of the English colonies. The proximate occasion of the epidemic of terror and outrage seems to have been nothing more serious than a distempered search for diversion, on the part of a group of girls, who for a number of weeks employed their evenings in dabbling with fortune-telling and magic. In virtue of their practice they became adepts in certain strange performances. as these came to the notice of their elders, instead of chastising them into sobriety, as was becoming, they helped to turn their heads and the heads of the community by declaring them bewitched. Urged to name those who used the power of the devil upon them and afflicted them with spectral appearances, they accused two or three. These accusations led to others. In all cases the charges were confirmed by the astounding experiences which the bewitched, probably blending art and distraction together, exhibited in the presence of the judges. For those once accused there was absolutely no means of escape. The chief justice having laid down the principle that the devil could not simulate the form of an innocent person, the testimony of those playing the ro1e of the bewitched that they were tormented by the spectre of a certain person at once involved the conclusion that that person was in league with the Evil One, a veritable witch. To be cited was the same as to be found guilty; and, as the matter was conducted, a condemned person could escape the halter only by acknowledging the truth of the terrible charge. Accordingly the bravest and most steadfast in their integrity were just the ones to undergo the extreme penalty. Some of these nobly invited their fate by venturing to testify against the craze. Under the conditions this act was the next thing to a death-warrant, since it was almost certain to expose them to accusation. Twenty were executed. The company of the accused probably amounted to no less than ten times that number; and there is no telling what aggregate would have been reached, had not the gang of accusers finally passed the bounds of public credulity by assailing persons whom, in consideration of their rank and reputation, very few were willing to account guilty. In this way the spell was broken. Infatuation was succeeded quite generally by a sickening sense of a terrible mistake. A deadly superstition had well-nigh destroyed itself by its own excesses. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 See Charles W. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, 1867.</span></strong></p>
<p>A supplementary picture belongs with that which has been presented in the last few pages. If Puritan New England earned the charge of a certain rigor and intolerance, it should also be credited with having provided an antidote to its own fault. Its intolerance was not that of an inert community hating everything interfering with its slumberous ease. It was rather the intolerance of a community energetically striving after an ideal, and resentful toward objects which seemed to obstruct the way. Mental sloth was no part of the scheme of the New England Puritans. They fostered education as a chief foundation of public prosperity, and gave no slight emphasis to the truth that religion is essentially a relation between the individual and God. They thus provided for an intellectual progress which could not be hemmed in by tradition, for free thought, for manly independence, for the love and the faculty of a generous liberty. From no other field of equal extent has there come a larger body of stanch advocates of the essential rights of men.</p>
<p>As we pass from the seventeenth century we open a new chapter in the ecclesiastical history of New England. The strained endeavor after an austere ideal is not so characteristic a feature as formerly. Through the enlarged doorway provided by the half-way covenant many had found an entrance into the churches who were not disposed to make religion the chief concern of life. The inroads of a contagious worldliness and spiritual sloth became more and more apparent. Doubtless the religious state of the Puritan colonies was not worse than that of other portions of the English-speaking world in that era. On the contrary, it was better. No such leaden sky hung over their spiritual landscape as darkened the face of England in the first half of the eighteenth century. Neither the infidelity of the higher ranks in the mother country nor the brutal insensibility of a large section of the lower classes found any conspicuous counterpart in New England. Nevertheless, religion had assumed here too much the cast of an inefficient respectability, and the gospel, as a transforming power over heart and life, was not holding its own against the world. The small pains taken to exclude from the ranks of the ministry those who did not give evidence of conversion, or a vital sense of divine things, tended to increase and to prolong religious dullness.</p>
<blockquote>Whitefield and his American coadjutor, Gilbert Tennent, were very pronounced in their animadversions upon the prevalence of unconverted ministers. A well-informed writer remarks "The number of unconverted ministers was probably fewer than these men supposed, especially in New England. Still it is useless to deny their existence. When the colleges received young men without even the appearance of piety to prepare for the ministry; when, if graduates were found to possess competent knowledge, and were neither heretical nor scandalous, their piety was taken for granted, and they were ordained of course; when the doctrine that unconverted ministers, though orthodox in doctrine and regular in their lives, were 'the bane of the church,' gave offense, we may be sure that unconverted ministers existed." (Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening, p. 393.)</blockquote>
<p>A corrective, however, was provided in the third generation from the introduction of the half-way covenant. By a remarkable awakening a new current was brought into the spiritual atmosphere. The revival began at Northampton, under the labors of Jonathan Edwards, near the end of the year 1734. For a considerable interval the movement progressed amid tokens of deep interest, and radical transformations. To use the language of Edwards: "Souls did, as it were, come by flocks to Jesus Christ. From day to day, for many months together, might he seen evident instances of sinners brought out of darkness into marvelous light. ... There were remarkable tokens of God's presence in almost every house. It was a time of joy in families on account of salvation being brought unto them; parents rejoicing over their children as new born, and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands. The goings of God were then seen in His sanctuary. God's day was a delight, and His tabernacles were amiable. Our public assemblies were then beautiful; the congregation was alive in God's service, every one earnestly intent on the public worship, every hearer eager to drink in the words of the minister as they came from his mouth; the assembly in general were, from time to time, in tears while the Word was preached,-some weeping with sorrow and distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and concern for the souls of their neighbors." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, Works, i. 348 (ed. 1840).</span></strong></p>
<p>The revival extended to South Hadley, Northfield, Coventry, Windsor, Stratford, and many other towns within or upon the borders of the Connecticut valley.</p>
<p>While this work was still fresh in the memory of the people it was followed and overlapped by another, of wider compass. The marvelous preaching of Whitefield gave here the initial impetus. Landing at Newport in September, 1740, the restless evangelist in the space of a few weeks had journeyed through the most populous towns and caused his voice to be heard by no small proportion of the inhabitants of New England. His audience was often composed of many thousands. At his farewell sermon on Boston common, if the report of an eye-witness may be trusted, not less than twenty-three thousand were present. The same correspondent adds: "Such a power and presence of God with a preacher, and in religious assemblies, I never saw before, and am ready to fear I shall never see again. The prejudices of many are quite conquered, and the expectations of others vastly outdone, as they freely own. A considerable number are awakened, and many Christians seem to be greatly quickened. In this town whoever goes to lessen Mr. Whitefield's reputation is in danger of losing his own." As might be judged from this testimony, Whitefield received a cordial welcome at his first visit, and was but little troubled by the voice of the critic. On his own part, he seems to have gained a favorable impression of the country. We find him noting the absence of scoffing, and the seemliness of the outward behavior with which he was met. As he was leaving the region he rendered this general estimate: "I have now had an opportunity of seeing the greatest and most populous part of New England. On many accounts, it certainly exceeds all other provinces of America; and for the establishment of religion, perhaps all other parts of the world." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Quoted by Tyerman, Life of Whitefield, i. 430.</span></strong></p>
<p>Notwithstanding the enthusiasm with which Whitefield was received, there was a latent opposition to his work. To the sticklers for ecclesiastical order the very notion of an itinerant evangelism was obnoxious. It seemed to them a disrupting agency, a menace of schism and sectarianism. The methods of Whitefield were essentially distasteful to them. And this was not all. It was a special infirmity of the devoted evangelist that he was given to a somewhat headlong censorship. He atoned for his fault, indeed, by a very frank and humble retraction when convinced of being in the wrong. Still his sharp strictures left their wound. We have therefore an explanation of the rise of an opposition party, a party which criticised the revival in general, and Whitefield in particular. During his second visit (1744-45), he had occasion to notice that there were open antagonists in the field.</p>
<blockquote>2 The faculties of Harvard and Yale thought it incumbent on themselves to make their protest against the tactics of Whitefield. One of the most determined and able among the leaders of the opposition was the Boston minister, Charles Chauncy.</blockquote>
<p>This division in the ranks, however, did not prevent the revival from extending to remarkable limits. It left an impress upon a hundred and fifty towns, and brought into the churches, within the space of a few years, from twenty-five to fifty thousand converts, besides raising many already in the churches from the formalities to the life of religion.</p>
<p>It was not without a durable significance that the man of largest intellectual gift in New England was a prominent agent in the beginning of the revival, and its champion throughout. This unique fact tended to secure a right of way to earnest heart piety, to reduce ecclesiastical order to the rank of a subordinate interest, to make the idea of an unconverted ministry intolerable, and to place such an emphasis upon the requirement of conversion in the members as to banish the half-way covenant. The revival by itself would doubtless have worked toward these results. But the fact that the man of highest reputation as a theological thinker threw the weight of his arguments and influence on the side of such ends was obviously a very considerable contribution to their realization. Jonathan Edwards must be ranked among those who wrought efficiently toward the type of religion and religious method which is largely prevalent in the evangelical communions of this country.</p>
<p>In our view this aspect in the work of Edwards is not less important than any other. His service to religion takes precedence of his service to theology. In the latter field he showed, it must be allowed, uncommon subtlety and metaphysical ability. But he was bound by his presuppositions. His thorough committal to a scheme of absolute sovereignty and predestination forced him into one-sided results. He was led thereby to involve the human will in an inextricable chain of necessity, and could find no place for responsibility except by arbitrarily replacing the natural sense of the term with another meaning. In his endeavor to make the race sharers in the guilt of Adam he depleted the notion of moral personality, and sustained a theory which might properly be regarded as an aggravation of the antique subordination of the individual to the mass. Views akin to these had already been advocated vastly beyond their merits, and it was no salutary vocation that Edwards fulfilled in giving them his support. There was, however, even in his theological activity a compensating element. His freshness and vigor gave a powerful stimulus to thought. An intellectual movement was started which could not be inclosed by traditional lines. While some of his successors, notably Samuel Hopkins and Nathaniel Emmons, brought out as ultra statements on the all-dominating sovereignty of God as were ever written, a tendency toward more moderate views also made its appearance, insomuch that the later New England theology, in many of its representatives, has made distinct approaches to evangelical Arminianism. External influences may indeed be credited in part with this result, but it is reasonable to regard it also as due in part to an interior development. Still, while giving place to this ameliorating consideration, it is with a certain complacency that we leave the theologian to view the saint, the champion of dogmas to regard the advocate of the interior life of communion with God. A serene region presents itself here, upon which the awful shadow of the reverse aide of predestination does not appear to have cast either chill or gloom.</p>
<p>In religious sensibility, or the element of deep and fervent emotion, Jonathan Edwards ranks with the Wesleys and the foremost in the list of the mystics. Those who think of him simply as a logician see the prosaic, and overlook the poetic, side of the man. "Besides his logic," it has been well said, "there was his strong and realizing faith. God, heaven, hell, the sinfulness of sin, the beauty of holiness, the glory of Christ, and the claims of the gospel were as substantial realities to his mind and heart as the valley of the Connecticut or the mountains of Berkshire." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Tracy, The Great Awakening, p. 214.</span></strong> At times he was transported into a species of ecstasy by his contemplation of divine verities. In his personal narrative we find testimonies like these: "Sometimes, only mentioning a single word caused my heart to burn within me, or only seeing the name of Christ, or the name of some attribute of God. ... The sweetest joys and delights I have experienced have not been those that have arisen from a hope of my own good estate, but in a direct view of the glorious thing of the gospel. When I enjoy this sweetness it seems to carry me above thoughts of my own estate; it seems at such times a loss that I cannot bear, to take off my eye from the glorious, pleasant object I behold without me, to turn my eye in upon myself, and my own good estate. ... Once, as I rode out into the woods for my health, in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God, as mediator between God and man, and His wonderful, great, full, pure, and sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle condescension. This grace, that appeared so calm and sweet, appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception, -- which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour; which kept me the greater part of the time in a hood of tears and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be, what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated; to lie in the dust, and to be full of Christ alone; to love Him with a holy and pure love; to trust in Him; to live upon Him; to serve and follow Him; and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure, with a divine and heavenly purity. I have several other times had views very much of the same nature, and which have had the same effects."</p>
<p>In writing upon the "Religious Affections," therefore, Edwards was dealing with a congenial theme. As might be expected, he strongly asserts in this able treatise the high worth of the affections in the sphere of religion. "It is evident," he says, "that religion consists so much in the affections as that without holy affection there is no true religion. No light in the understanding is good which does not produce holy affection in the heart; no habit or principle in the heart is good which has no such exercise; and no external fruit is good which does not proceed from such exercises. ... Where there is a kind of light without heat, a head stored with notions and speculations with a cold and unaffected heart, there can be nothing divine in that light; that knowledge is no true spiritual knowledge of divine things. If the great things of religion are rightly understood they will affect the heart. ... The manner of slighting all religious affections is the way exceedingly to harden the hearts of men, to encourage them in their stupidity and senselessness, to keep them in a state of spiritual death as long as they live."</p>
<p>While thus emphasizing emotion as a necessary constituent of genuine religion, Edwards seeks to guard against a distempered subjectivity. A11 impressions which have not an immediate ethical significance, which are not inseparably connected with a positive principle of holiness and spirituality, he reckons of very small account. So far does he disparage mere impressions or inward suggestions, as compared with a spiritual disposition, that he declines to make the former any factor in the assurance of the believer. Not a sentence in the understanding, but the birth of a gracious temper in the heart, or the outflow of the heart in filial trust and love, attests acceptance with God. "The witness of the Spirit of which the apostle speaks," he says, "is far from being any whisper, or immediate suggestion; but is that gracious, holy effect of the Spirit of God in the hearts of the saints, the disposition and temper of children, appearing in sweet, child-like love to God, which casts out fear. ... The strong and lively exercises of evangelical, humble love to God give clear evidence of the soul's relation to God as His child; which very greatly and directly satisfies the soul. ... Lore, the bond of union, is seen intuitively; the saint sees and feels plainly the union between his soul and God." In addition to this stress upon a dominant ethical temper, Edwards provides a safeguard against subjective vagaries in the way in which he links religious emotions with the understanding. He finds a principal fountain of these emotions in the contemplation of the beauty and majesty of divine verities. This is their proper objective ground, as a divinely wrought inward sensibility is their subjective spring.</p>
<p>In the mind of Edwards, ecclesiasticism was at a minimum. God was to him all in all. Piety meant the special presence and agency of God in the soul. Whatever place he may have given to the legal conception of God's relation to men in one part of his system, when his thought was directed to religious experience he dwelt emphatically upon the divine immanence and indwelling. Herein he furnished a bond of fellowship with eminent minds in succeeding times, who have been far from accepting some of the somber phases of his teaching.</p>
<p>We have passed over the outward life of this most celebrated of the colonial divines. It makes, in fact, but a brief story. He was born in 1703, entered Yale College at thirteen, served there as tutor for two years (1724-1726), and was settled over the church at Northampton in 1727. After his dismission from Northampton in 1750, occasioned by his insistence upon strict terms of communion, he served as missionary in Stockbridge, preaching both to the Indians and the white congregation in that town. His death occurred in 1758, very soon after he had entered upon the presidency of Princeton College.</p>
<p>The wife of Edwards was his equal in religious sensibility and devotion. It was therefore with great fitness that he dictated to her, from his death-bed in Princeton, this message: "Tell her that the uncommon union which has so long subsisted between us has been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual, and therefore will continue forever."</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-78246945643582545522012-03-29T20:10:00.000-07:002019-09-03T00:00:49.800-07:00Church Of England Establishments, And The Founding Of The Protestant Episcopal Church<p><strong>Church Of England Establishments, And The Founding Of The Protestant Episcopal Church</strong></p>
<p>The Church of England in the colonies was, as respects spiritual jurisdiction, an extension of the bishopric of London. As respects its general character, it was a rather feeble reflection of the Establishment on English soil. It lacked the requisite number of ministers. This was especially the case before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts began its helpful activity (l701). About four fifths of the parishes in Virginia were vacant at the Restoration, and nearly half were in like destitution sixty years later. Carolina for almost twenty years had no clergyman. In Maryland, before the reinforcement at the end of the seventeenth century, the Church of England had no more than three clerical representatives. Not more than six could be found at that time on the whole Atlantic border, outside of Virginia and Maryland. The aggregate for the entire country probably did not reach fifty. Nor was this the whole of the deficiency. Among those sent into the field, the proportion of men who possessed at once marked ability and spirituality was not large. Virginia, it is true, recorded in her early annals the name of Alexander Whitaker, whose talents and devotion promised a very useful career, had it not been closed by a premature death (1617). Later the colony had occasion to remember gratefully James Blair. To him was largely due the founding of William and Mary College, the first commencement of which was held in 1700. Near the same time the Church in Maryland obtained an efficient servant in James Bray, who, like Blair, acted as commissary of the Bishop of London. George Keith, the distinguished convert from Quakerism, in his missionary tour through the colonies (1702-1704) displayed enough controversial skill to vex the great majority of his former associates in faith, and to win a minority to his side. In New England, from the time that Timothy Cutler, the president of Yale College, became a convert to the episcopal theory (1722) Anglicanism had very creditable representatives in that quarter. Still, the statement must be allowed that through much of the colonial era the Church of England on this side of the Atlantic was but poorly blessed in the quality of its ministry. The conditions were not such as to attract men of talent and enterprise, except perchance the few who heard a Macedonian call in their hearts. A perfunctory discharge of the ordinary perish duties, supplemented by a life that was none too persuasive on the side of godliness, was all that could be expected of a great part of the candidates who presented themselves to the Bishop of London for the American field.</p>
<p>As Virginia was the oldest colony, so it preceded all others, by a considerable interval, in the matter of a church establishment affiliating with that of England. In harmony also with the time when it originated, the Virginia Establishment was distinguished by a greater exclusiveness than any other of those under the episcopal régime in America. The "oath of supremacy" was early imposed upon emigrants to the colony, as a bar against Roman Catholics. When a reinforcement was about to embark in 1609, the spirited preacher William Crashaw, in a sermon before the patrons of the enterprise, deprecated the allowance of any Brownists or factious separatists within the settlement. In its earlier years the colony seems not to have been much troubled with foreign ingredients. But by 1642 it was found that men with nonconforming tastes had gained a foothold, and in such numbers that they thought it desirable to have some Puritan ministers imported from Boston. But the colonial legislature was not willing to tolerate this encroachment. By an act of 1643 it forbade any minister to teach or preach, in public or in private, except in conformity to the constitutions of the Church of England, and instructed the Governor and council to compel all nonconformists to depart "with all conveniencie." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 W. W. Hening, Laws of Virginia, i. 277.</span></strong> Six years later a considerable company found it necessary to make their exit from Virginia, and took refuge in Maryland. A cold reception was also accorded to the Quakers. Ordinances of 1661-63 subjected them to heavy fines for attending conventicles, and directed that a third offense should entail upon them, as also upon other separatists, the penalty of banishment. Shipmasters bringing Quakers into the country were to be visited with like punishments. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Ibid., ii. 48, 180, 181.</span></strong> The Baptists, who made their appearance in the next century, were not a whit more welcome to the Virginia churchmen, and received a liberal share of stripes and imprisonment. In short, the Establishment in Virginia proved very clearly its sense of exclusive right in that province. The remaining colonies, on the other hand, which had a Church of England establishment, being founded at a time when tolerance had obtained a larger recognition, did not in general place any serious restraint upon the worship of dissenting Protestants.</p>
<p>Ecclesiastical discipline in Virginia, had the practice followed the laws, would have been sufficiently strict. A code which had place between 1610 and 1619 would not seem feeble even when compared with that which Calvin and his associates introduced into Geneva. Among its provisions were the following: "No man shall speak any word, or do any act which may tend to the derision or despite of God's holy Word, upon pain of death. Nor shall any man unworthily demean himself unto any preacher or minister of the same, but generally hold them in all reverent regard and dutiful in treaty; otherwise he, the offender, shall openly be whipped three times, and ask public forgiveness in the assembly of the congregation three several Sabbath days. Every man and woman duly twice a day, upon the first tolling of the bell, shall upon the working days repair unto the church to hear divine service, upon pain of losing his or her day's allowance for the first omission; for the second to be whipped; and for the third to be condemned to the galleys for six months. Also every man and woman shall repair in the morning to divine service, and sermon preached upon the Sabbath day, and in the afternoon to divine service and catechising; upon pain for the first fault to lose their provision and allowance for the whole week following; for the second, to lose the said allowance, and also to be whipped; and for the third to suffer death." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 F.L. Hawks, Rise end Progress of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia, pp. 25, 26.</span></strong> It is no wonder that after a few years it was thought necessary to modify this merciless code. Nevertheless, it was deemed proper to sustain by statute the obligation to attend the Sunday service. As late as the beginning of the eighteenth century laws were passed subjecting to fines those voluntarily absenting themselves from the sanctuary.</p>
<p>Between the ideal set forth in the legislation and the practice there was undoubtedly a rather broad chasm. The free-going Virginia planters were not disposed to pay any excessive regard to religious restraints. In some of the parishes a strict preacher was at a discount. In all the parishes, during a good share of the period, laymen had the means of keeping out those whose pastoral rigor and fidelity might prove troublesome, since the vestries governed the settling of the ministers. This subjection to local and lay authority was regarded by one and another critic as very prejudicial to the health of the Establishment. Morgan Godwyn, referring to the years preceding the Bacon rebellion (1676), declared that the ministers were so miserably treated by the vestries as to suffer greater discouragements than those which befell the clergy in England during the time of the Puritan usurpation. A curious testimony on the state and character of the clergy at this time, and a still more curious indication respecting the enlightenment of their civil head, are given in the following from Governor Berkeley: "Our ministers are well paid, and by my-consent would be better if they would pray oftener and preach less. But as of all other commodities, so of this, the worst are sent us, and we have few that we could boast of since the persecution in Cromwell's tyranny drove divers worthy men here. But, I thank God, there are no free schools, nor printing; and I hope we shall not have [them] these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 J.S.M. Anderson, History of the Church of England in the Colonies, ii. 348.</span></strong></p>
<p>In the Carolina provinces an exclusive right was not claimed for the Church of England. All Protestant settlers were allowed to choose their own worship, provided they treated the Episcopal Church with respect, and were obedient to the government. Nevertheless, it was the design of both King and Proprietors to extend the home establishment to the Carolinas. One of the articles of the Fundamental Constitutions declared that the religion of the Church of England, being the national religion of all the King's dominions, should also be that of Carolina, and should alone receive public maintenance by legislative grant. Another article in the Constitutions approached the theocratic regime of Massachusetts Bay and of New Haven as respects the conditions of citizenship. It contained this provision: "No person above seventeen years of age shall have any benefit or protection of the law, or be capable of any place of profit or honor who is not a member of some church or profession, having his name recorded in some one, and but one, religious record, at once."</p>
<p>The Fundamental Constitutions, as has been observed, received scant recognition in practice. As respects the erection of a church establishment, some time elapsed before there was any proper provision for religious worship; and it was first at the beginning of the eighteenth century that the colonial legislature made legal provision for the maintenance of the Church of England. There was an attempt at this time to disfranchise dissenters, but the violent scheme was quickly thwarted.</p>
<p>A heterogeneous community like that of the Carolinas, which had suffered comparative neglect for so long a period, did not of course present very select materials for a religious organization. The situation must indeed have been desperate, if we are to accept the description given by Gideon Johnson, who served as the commissary of the Bishop of London. "The people here," he wrote, "generally speaking, are the vilest race of men upon the earth. They have neither honor nor honesty, nor religion enough to entitle them to any tolerable character, being a perfect medley or botch-potch, made up of bankrupt pirates, decayed libertines, sectaries, and enthusiasts of all sorts who have transported themselves hither from Bermudas, Jamaica, Barbadoes, Montserat, Antego, Nevis, New England, Pennsylvania, etc., and are the most factious and seditious people in the whole world. Many of those that pretend to be churchmen are strangely crippled in their goings between the Church and Presbytery, and as they are of large and loose principles, so they live and act accordingly, sometimes going openly with the Dissenters, as they now do against the Church, and giving incredible trouble to the Governor and clergy." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 W. S. Perry, History of the American Episcopal Church, i. 379</span></strong> In this the worthy commissary gives doubtless the dark side of the subject. Perhaps in a different mood he might have let in a little light upon the scene, though leaving it still a somber sketch. Notwithstanding the cheerless outlook which he records, he was able to lay a foundation for better things.</p>
<p>Among those who succeeded to the superintendence of the Church in South Carolina, Commissary Garden won some celebrity by his attempt to bring Whitefield to account for his irregular labors (1740-1742). The champion of law and order had the satisfaction of freeing his conscience; but so far as putting a check on the winged evangelist was concerned, he might as well have laid his injunction against the wind.</p>
<p>The Revolution of 1689, when the government of Maryland passed out of the hands of the Baltimore family until the heir was announced to be a Protestant (1715), was followed by the establishing of the Church of England in that colony. Action in that direction was taken in 1692, and ten years later a full legislative sanction had been secured for the project of establishment.</p>
<p>In outward respects the legal church in Maryland was one of the most favored. A large proportion of the people were numbered among its adherents, and the ministers had on the average no reason to complain of their salaries. "In no part of America were the clergy half so well supported," says a careful writer, speaking of the time just preceding the War of Independence. Had the interests of vital religion been equally well sustained, the Maryland Church might well have been the subject of many and hearty congratulations. But that appears not to have been the case. For the same author whom we have just quoted, though writing as a friendly historian, declares that the Establishment in Maryland justly forfeited respect, on account of the scandals which were comparatively unrebuked in the lack of strict discipline. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 F.L. Hawks, Rise and Progress of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Maryland, pp. 236, 237.</span></strong></p>
<p>In New Jersey the Church of England held legally a preferred place, in that a general tax might be levied for its support. In other respects dissenting communions stood on a basis of equality; moreover, very little, if any, use seems to have been made of the legal preference which was given to the Church of England. The same order of statements describes the ecclesiastical status of Georgia. In both provinces the Church of England was largely a missionary institute, depending, as it did in New England and Pennsylvania (outside of a few places), upon the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.</p>
<p>The adherents of the Church of England in New York were but a handful in the first years after the English occupation, and at the end of the seventeenth century they numbered no more than one tenth of the population. This inferiority in numbers stood naturally in the way of exclusive privileges. For a time the Dutch Presbyterians claimed quite as much the character of an established church as did the Episcopalians. James II. seems to have had it in mind to abolish this equality. In his instructions to Governor Dongan in 1686 he prescribed as a condition of preferment to any benefice, or induction into the office of schoolmaster, that the candidate should present a license from the Archbishop of Canterbury. The intent contained in these instructions was taken up some years later by the English Governors. Fletcher and Cornbury (1692-1708) were notably zealous for an established ministry. The majority of the colonists looked upon their efforts as an unjustifiable aggression; still they allowed them to be partially successful. The maintenance of worship in Trinity Church was provided for by a general tax upon the city of New York, and a number of Episcopal churches in other places also had the benefit of a tax levied upon the townsmen generally. Near the middle of the eighteenth century a support for the Church of England interest was furnished in the founding of King's College. The first commencement of the college was held in 1758, one year after that of the kindred institution in Philadelphia. The first president was Samuel Johnson, who ranked perhaps as the ablest of the Connecticut ministers. One of the graduates of the year 1758 was Samuel Provost, the first representative of New York among the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church.</p>
<p>Mason and Gorges, who held grants in New Hampshire and Maine, were churchmen, and doubtless were minded to provide an established ministry for these territories. But their colonies never acquired an extent and stability that admitted of anything more than feeble beginnings of an ecclesiastical system.</p>
<p>In Massachusetts the first monument to prelacy which afflicted the eyes of the Puritans was built during the abhorred administration of Andros. It bore the name of King's Chapel, and dates from the year 1689. Christ Church was added in 1723, and Trinity Church in 1734.</p>
<p>A pleasing episode in the New England annals was made by the visit of the genial and talented George Berkeley, then Dean of Derry, later Bishop of Cloyne. For nearly three years he lived at Newport (1729-1731), a part of the time being employed in the writing of his philosophical dialogue, the "Alciphron." The object of his coming was the foundation of a university, to be located at the Bermudas, and to serve as a great nursery of culture and religion in America. The failure of the English government to furnish the promised endowment thwarted his scheme, and he was compelled to return with the discouraging reflection that he had been employed upon a vain errand. Nevertheless, his zeal for the cause of learning in the new world was not destined to be without its substantial memorial. In the founding of scholarships at Yale College, and in the gift of books to both Yale and Harvard he rendered a service in which his catholicity, as well as his generosity, came to expression.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the Revolutionary struggle there were perhaps in the whole country from Maine to Georgia three hundred congregations and two hundred and fifty ministers connected with the Church of England, at the close of the war it is not probable that more than half that number of ministers could be found, and the congregations which could boast of regular services had been reduced in nearly equal ratio.</p>
<blockquote>1 Not all regions suffered as much as Virginia, but some certainly did not fare much better. The extent of the desolation which visited the Virginia churches may be seen in the following statement: "When the colonists first resorted to arms, Virginia, in her sixty-one counties, contained ninety-five parishes, one hundred and sixty-four churches and chapels, and ninety-one clergymen. When the contest was over she came out of the war with a large number of her churches destroyed or injured irreparably, with twenty-three of her ninety-five parishes extinct or forsaken, and of the remaining seventy-two, thirty-four were destitute of ministerial services; while of her ninety-one clergymen, twenty-eight only remained, who had lived through the storm." (Hawks, Hist. of the Episcopal Church in Virginia, p. 164.)</blockquote>
<p>This depletion was due in no inconsiderable measure to the royalist position of the clergy. While a part of them zealously espoused the cause of American independence, an equal or larger proportion were too strongly attached to the mother country to welcome a separation. This was naturally the feeling of the missionary clergy, whose commission and support came alike from the other side of the Atlantic. In South Carolina the loyalist clergy were in the minority, constituting, it is said, only one fourth of the whole; but in Virginia and Maryland they were about double the number of those who sided with the colonies. This fact was evidently unfavorable to the continued maintenance of the establishments. Probably, had the case been different, the advance of sentiment in favor of disconnecting Church and State would ere long have brought disestablishment. As it was, disestablishment came with the first notes of independence.</p>
<p>During a large part of the colonial era it was felt by the clergy to be a serious disadvantage that there was no resident bishop on the American side. Those interested for the good name of the ministry grieved over this destitution, as making it impossible to maintain suitable discipline; and generally it was considered that candidates for orders were made to pay an excessive price, in that they were required to cross the sea in order to reach episcopal hands. As early as the time of Charles II. a proposal was made to supply a bishop to Virginia. Indeed, one was actually designated to the post, but for some reason he was never sent, and the design was abandoned. In the next century many urgent requests came to England for a bishop. That they did not elicit a favorable response has been ascribed to the strong opposition of the Dissenters, who no doubt were much agitated over the subject, since in their view a bishop, as the close ally of the English Establishment and the English crown, would be for them a forerunner of both ecclesiastical and political subordination. These objections the Episcopal party endeavored to answer by assurances that a bishop in America would not claim any jurisdiction or authority beyond the administration of religion among those accepting him as their ecclesiastical head. As respects the merits of the contention, we cannot well reach a more definite or impartial verdict than that which is embraced in the following words of Bishop White: "What would have been the event, in this respect, had the Episcopal clergy succeeded in their desires, is a problem which it will be forever impossible to solve. In regard to the motives of the parties in the dispute, there are circumstances which charity may apply to the most favorable interpretation. As the Episcopal clergy disclaimed the designs and expectations of which they were accused, and as the same was done by their advocates on the other side of the water, particularly by the principal of them, the great and good Archbishop Seeker, they ought to be supposed to have had in view an episcopacy purely religious. On the other hand, as their opponents laid aside their resistance of the religious part of it as soon as American independence had done away all political danger, if it before existed, it ought to be believed that in their former professed apprehensions they were sincere." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Memoirs of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America pp. 6, 7.</span></strong></p>
<p>The sundering of the bonds with the mother country evidently left the Episcopal churches in the several colonies or States without any recognized bond of connection. If there was to be a united Episcopal Church for the whole country, it must be erected by concerted action. After some preliminary conferences provision was made for such action by assembling a convention at Philadelphia in 1785. This meeting submitted, for the consideration of the several State conventions, a constitution or plan of government, and also a model for a prayer-book. The character of the latter indicates that the compilers could not be ranked as conservatives. The Athanasian and Nicene creeds were rejected, the clause respecting Christ's descent into hell was eliminated from the Apostles' Creed, the thirty-nine articles were reduced to twenty, and a number of alterations were made in the liturgy. The "Proposed Book" proved to be too radical in its departures from the English prayer-book. At the convention of 1786 the Nicene Creed was restored, and also the clause which had been ejected from the Apostles' Creed. Definitive action on the articles of religion was not taken till a later period (1801), when it was concluded not to modify the thirty-nine articles any farther than the changed conditions required.</p>
<p>In 1787 William White of Pennsylvania, and Samuel Provoost of New York obtained consecration to the episcopacy from the English bishops. Three years earlier the representative of the Connecticut clergy, Samuel Seabury, had been consecrated by the non-juring bishops of Scotland. As some objection was felt to Seabury, there was a danger of division in the ranks of the Episcopalians. But judicious management bridged over the difficulty; and at the convention of 1789 the New England bishop united with those representing other portions of the country. From this convention we map date the relative completion of the organization of the Protestant Episcopal Church.</p>
<p>As in case of the prayer-book the movement was from a radical to a more conservative position, so also in relation to episcopal authority. As first accepted at the convention of 1789, the constitution left the power of legislation almost entirely in the hands of the house of deputies, composed in part of the clergy, and in part of the laity. The bishops could simply review measures, approving them, or returning them with their objections, in which case the house of deputies could override the objections by a stipulated majority. This inequality was in part rectified before the conclusion of the convention, in that the power of the bishop to initiate measures was specified. Still the bishops were not placed on a basis of co-ordination with the other branch of a general convention. It was first in 1808 that they attained this position, by being empowered to render an unqualified veto upon the measures proposed by the house of deputies.</p>
<p>At the initial stage the dominant temper of the Protestant Episcopal body was undoubtedly Low Church. There may have been a strain of High Churchism in Bishop Seabury; but Bishop White, the master spirit in the era of organization, occupied a freer stand-point, and we are constrained to believe that he represented in this the larger constituency. In a pamphlet which he prepared in 1782 he gave the opinion that the validity of church organization is not strictly dependent upon episcopal succession. This view he continued to hold; for as late as 1830 we find him referring to the production of his early years in these terms: "In agreement with the sentiments expressed in this pamphlet I am still of opinion that in an exigency in which duly authorized ministers cannot be obtained, the paramount duty of preaching the gospel, and the worshipping of God on the terms of the Christian covenant should go on in the best manner which circumstances permit. In regard to episcopacy, I think that it should be sustained as the government of the Church from the time of the Apostles, but without criminating the ministry of other churches." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 W. S. Perry, History of the American Episcopal Church, ii. 9.</span></strong></p>
<p>That his position was remote from the Tractarian plane may also be concluded from the following statement in his Memoirs: "It will be a most important use of the review to notice the undeviating intention of the Church to make no such alterations as shall interfere with the maintaining of the doctrines of the gospel, as acknowledged at the Reformation. That point of time should be kept in mind, in order to protect the Church, not only against threatened innovations from without, but also against others which have occasionally showed their heads in the Church of England, and may show their heads in this church, betraying a lurking fondness for errors which had been abandoned." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Memoirs of the Protestant Episcopal Church, p. 316.</span></strong></p>
<p>The Protestant Episcopal Church may have produced men who are entitled to be counted the equals or superiors of Bishop White in scholarship and ability. But that among its eminent representatives it can point to a single one who has been characterized by a more exemplary spirit, we greatly doubt. There would be a much wider harmony in the ecclesiastical world if questions in controversy were commonly approached with the courtesy and judicial temper which were manifested by William White, Bishop of Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>James Madison, the first bishop of Virginia, shared in the irenic temper of Bishop White. It was at his instance that the bishops in 1792 adopted the following minute in behalf of Christian union: "The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, ever bearing in mind the sacred obligation which attends all the followers of Christ to avoid divisions among themselves, and anxious to promote that union for which our Lord and Saviour so earnestly prayed, do hereby declare to the Christian world that, uninfluenced by any other considerations than those of duty as Christians, and an earnest desire for the prosperity of pure Christianity, and the furtherance of our holy religion, they are ready to unite and form one body with any religious society which shall be influenced by the same catholic spirit. And in order that this Christian end may be the more easily effected, they further declare that all things in which the great essentials of Christianity or the characteristic principles of their church are not concerned, they are willing to leave to future discussion, being ready to alter or modify those points which, in the opinion of the Protestant Episcopal Church, are subject to human alteration. And it is hereby recommended to the State conventions to adopt such measures or propose such conferences with Christians of other denominations as to themselves may be thought most prudent, and report accordingly to the ensuing general convention."</p>
<blockquote>1 Bishop White, Memoirs of the Protestant Episcopal Church, pp 208-210; W. S. Perry, History of the American Episcopal Church, ii. 126. It is proper to add that we have used the valuable work of Bishop Perry more largely than the list of references indicates.</blockquote>
<p>The union scheme of Bishop Madison had more immediate reference to the Methodists. As it failed to obtain the approbation of the house of deputies, its enunciation led to no further action.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-65793410035179943372012-03-29T20:06:00.000-07:002019-09-03T00:01:06.163-07:00Roman Catholics In The English Colonies<p><strong>Roman Catholics In The English Colonies</strong></p>
<p>The English colonies afforded, on the whole, but little encouragement to Roman Catholic immigration. The barrier which they raised was only less effective against Romanists than that which was set up against Protestants in the Spanish and French domains. Most of the colonies which provided otherwise for a general tolerance had in their charters or laws an excepting clause against the members of the Papal Church. Pennsylvania allowed a fair measure of tolerance in practice, though the pressure of the English government seems to have secured on her statute-book a discrimination against Roman Catholics. Rhode Island for a considerable interval had no law against the practice of the Roman Catholic religion, and the disabling clause which was included in her statutes at a later date, to meet probably some special exigency in English politics, is not known to have had any practical effect.</p>
<blockquote>1 Arnold contends that the disabling clause was not adopted by any formal vote, but was interpolated by the committee employed in collecting the statutes, probably in the year 1699. He concedes, however, that in the subsequent action of the Rhode Island Legislature it received a species of recognition. (History of the State of Rhode Island, ii. 490-497.)</blockquote>
<p>On the side of proscription, the acme of severity was realized by enactments of Massachusetts and New York in 1647 and 1700 respectively. In the one case it was ordered that any "Jesuit, or spiritual or ecclesiastical person ordained by the authority of the Pope of the See of Rome," should be required to leave the colony, and on his return, except by reason of shipwreck or in the character of an ambassador, should be hanged. In the other case it was decreed that Romish priests voluntarily entering the colony should he liable to hanging.</p>
<blockquote>1 This law, it is said, was due rather to the urgency of the English Governor, Bellomont, than to the temper of the legislature. It is to be remembered, too, that New York at that time apprehended danger from her Roman Catholic neighbors in Canada. If the danger was not real, it was owing to the lack of adequate power in the field rather than to the purposes of the French government. No farther back than 1689, as Count Frontenac was about to resume the direction of affairs in Canada, Louis XIV. had set forth such particulars as the following, respecting the treatment of the colonists whom he was expecting to conquer: "If any Catholics were found in New York, they might be left undisturbed, provided that they take an oath of allegiance to the King. Officers and other persons who had the means of paying ransoms were to be thrown into prison. All lands in the colony, except those of Catholics swearing allegiance, were to be taken from their owners, and granted under a feudal tenure to French officers and soldiers. . . . Mechanics and other workmen might, at the discretion of the commending officer, be kept as prisoners to work at fortifications and do other labor. The rest of the English and Dutch inhabitants, men, women, and children, were to be carried out of the colony and dispersed in New England, Pennsylvania, or other pieces, in such manner that they could not combine in any attempt to recover their property and their country. And, that the conquest might be perfectly secure, the nearest settlements of New England were to be destroyed, and those more remote laid under contribution." (Parkman, Count Frontenac and New France, p. 189.)</blockquote>
<p>In neither instance, so far as we are aware, did the intolerant legislation give rise to any martyrdom.</p>
<blockquote>1 It is recorded that in the panic resulting from a supposed Negro plot in New York (1741), one who may have been a priest was hanged. But his execution, though in all probability a gross injustice, was based on alleged complicity with a scheme of murder and rapine.</blockquote>
<p>In the preceding paragraph no account has been taken of Maryland, since its peculiar relation to Roman Catholic immigration requires a special consideration. The more important points concern three assumptions which until recently have been commonly entertained: (1) that a foremost interest with Lord Baltimore was to provide in Maryland a refuge for Roman Catholics; (2) that the colony of Maryland was in its first stages predominantly Roman Catholic; (3) that special honor is due to a Roman Catholic legislature for having passed the act of tolerance in 1649.</p>
<p>In considering the first assumption it is not necessary to examine into the spirit and designs of George Calvert, or the first Lord Baltimore, since it was under his son Cecilius that the project of colonization was carried out. This being understood, the assumption cannot be admitted without large abatement. Had it been a leading object with Lord Baltimore to provide an asylum for Roman Catholics he would naturally have taken pains to fill up his colony with the adherents of his own faith. But it cannot be shown that he did this. Supposing that at the start he was not able to control the matter, it was certainly a voluntary act of his, when nine or ten years later he invited the Puritans of Massachusetts to settle in Maryland. Why extend such an invitation? Did he think that the Puritans were so kindly in their feelings toward Romanism that their presence in large numbers would give security in Maryland to those professing the Romish religion? No, Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, was a man of sober business instincts. The maintenance of his proprietary right and the development of his principality, so as to make it financially profitable, were his foremost objects. He was not in any emphatic sense a philanthropist; the invited Puritans were not in special need of his commiseration. Still less was he a religious zealot. Doubtless he wished to favor his co-religionists; but he would not do it at too great expense. He put a check upon the Jesuit missionaries, and informed them that they could not expect special rights and exemptions when he found that their course was prejudicing his relation with the home government. In the time of the Commonwealth he pushed his policy of worldly prudence so far as to ask consideration for his claims on the ground that Maryland had showed a less stubborn attachment to the cause of the Stuarts than the neighboring colony of Virginia, though he could not have forgotten that it was to the Stuarts that he owed his dignity and estates. In this there was certainly more of calculation than of magnanimity. On the whole, we see in the Proprietary of Maryland a man of poise and moderation, calculating, watchful of his own interest, tolerant it may be from conviction, but certainly knowing well that tolerance was for his material interest in filling up his colony, and scarcely less than a necessity in maintaining his proprietary standing. That a Roman Catholic courtier should hold, under a Protestant government, such a stretch of privilege was enough by itself to provoke scrutiny in an age of intense religious jealousies. Any rumor that he was using the privilege to the serious discomfiture of Protestants would speedily have brought a tempest about his ears. For Lord Baltimore to attempt to impose disabilities on Protestants in Maryland would have been about the same madness as for De Monts to persecute Roman Catholics at Port Royal. In fact, his charter obligated him not to give an exclusive right or even a preferred place to the Roman Catholic religion, since it stipulated that churches should be consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of England.</p>
<p>The second assumption seems to have flowed mainly from the fact that the Proprietary was a Roman Catholic, and that, besides the Jesuit missionaries whom he sent out, there were no clergymen in the colony during the early part of its history. As for these grounds of judgment, it is evident that the first must yield to any positive evidence. The second can also be shown to be intrinsically weak. Any one who remembers that Carolina was for years without any ministerial supply, though proprietors and colonists were both Protestants, will not think it remarkable that no Protestant ministers were introduced into Maryland, where the ruling head was a Roman Catholic. The lack of ministers might be sufficiently explained by the supposition that no adequate authority interested itself in the matter. This item, then, in no wise proves that Protestants were not from the first a large element in Maryland. That they were a majority is clearly indicated by several contemporary testimonies. The following three we think will be found entirely adequate to establish our conclusion: (1) Father White, one of the Jesuit missionaries who sailed with the colony, in his narrative of the voyage written near the end of 1634, says that the distribution of wine on a festival occasion was followed by sickness on the part of those who indulged too freely; and that "about twelve died, among whom were two Catholics." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, edited by Henry Foley, iii. 345.</span></strong> These statistics indicate that the Protestants on board ship were the more numerous, unless perchance they were less used to wine than their Romish brethren or partook more freely. (2) A list of twenty propositions of canon law, emanating probably from Father White, was submitted by the English Provincial to the Propaganda at Rome. In the explanatory communication which the Provincial sent with the propositions this statement occurs: "In a country like this, newly planted, and depending wholly upon England for subsistence, where there is not (nor can be until England is reunited to the Church) any ecclesiastical discipline established by laws of the province, or granted by the Prince, nor provincial synod held, nor spiritual courts created, nor the canon laws accepted, nor ordinary or other ecclesiastical persons admitted (as such), nor the Catholic religion publicly allowed; and whereas three parts of the people or four, at least, are heretics, I desire to be resolved" <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Records of the English Province, iii. 362.</span></strong> [on the sub-joined list of questions). (3) Not long after the preceding communication, another was sent to the Propaganda, about the year 1642, by the Vice-Provincial of the Jesuits in England. Maryland at that time, during the temporary absence of the governor, Leonard Calvert, was under the charge of the Secretary Leugar, then a Roman Catholic, but having received his early education among Protestants. The Vice-Provincial, having recounted the main facts respecting the founding of the colony, and the sending out of the Jesuit missionaries for the conversion of heretics and natives, proceeds as follows: "The affair was surrounded with heavy and many difficulties, for in leading the colony to Maryland, by far the greater part were heretics, the country itself, a <em>meridie Virginiœ ab aquilone</em>, is esteemed likewise to be a New England, that is, two provinces full of English Calvinists and Puritans; so that not less, nay, perhaps greater dangers threaten our fathers in a foreign, than in their native land of England. Nor is the baron himself able to find support for the fathers, nor can they expect sustenance from heretics hostile to the faith, nor from Catholics for the most part poor, nor from savages, who live after the manner of wild beasts." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Ibid, iii. 363, 364.</span></strong> Evidently, if these Jesuit correspondents are to be counted trustworthy, it must be concluded that the colony in Maryland never was preponderantly Roman Catholic.</p>
<p>In the light of the foregoing conclusion, there is little occasion to deal specifically with the third assumption. Surely it would be a small consolation to a Roman Catholic to be able to prove that a majority in the assembly of 1649 were Roman Catholics. Finding indubitable evidence that the Protestants were then a large majority of the people, learning moreover, that an assembly held several years before contained a majority of Protestants,</p>
<blockquote>1 This fact appears in the letter quoted above. Complaining of Secretary Leugar as narrowing the privileges of the Romish Church, the Vice-Provincial says: "The Secretary, having summoned the Assembly in Maryland, composed with few exceptions of heretics and presided over by himself, attempted to pass the following laws repugnant to the Catholic faith and ecclesiastical immunities that no virgin can inherit unless she be twenty-nine years of age; that no ecclesiastic shall be summoned in any cause, civil or criminal, before any other than a secular judge," etc. (p. 365).</blockquote>
<p>as did also that of 1650, <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 E. D. Neill, Founders of Maryland, pp. 122, 123; W. T. Brantly, in Critical and Narrative History of America, vol. iii.</span></strong> "he must own that the act of tolerance passed in 1649 was clearly a safeguard for Roman Catholic worship and citizenship. No excessive credit, therefore, is due to Romish legislators for voting such an act, supposing its passage depended simply on them,-- a conclusion not wholly free from doubt.</p>
<blockquote>3 It is known that the Governor and half of his council were Protestants. If the council sat as a separate house, it lay in the discretion of Protestants to accept or to reject the act. What proportion of the burgesses were Protestant is not fully determined.</blockquote>
<p>On the other hand, the Protestant members of the Assembly cannot be praised very greatly, unless it be concluded that they were better and wiser than their successors, who in after times disfranchised the Roman Catholics in Maryland. Probably the pleasure of the Governor and the Proprietary was quite as influential with them as an intelligent love for tolerance, as respects the compass of the act of tolerance, it was drawn in very broad and generous terms for Trinitarian Christians; for Jews and Unitarians, on the contrary, it bespoke very scant charity, making them liable to capital punishment for any declaration of their special tenets.</p>
<p>The act of toleration was renewed in 1676. But the Revolution of 1689 brought an unhappy change to the Roman Catholic minority. Through a large part of the next century they were restricted in the public exercise of their religion and placed under political disabilities.</p>
<p>The Revolutionary War was an era of emancipation for Roman Catholics, though still at its close the statute-books in a few of the States did not concede to them the right to hold political offices. It has been estimated that they numbered in 1783 about sixteen thousand in Maryland, seven thousand in Pennsylvania, fifteen hundred in the other States, and about four thousand in the western territories on the Ohio and the Mississippi, which at this time were ceded by Great Britain. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 De Courcey and Shea, History of the Catholic Church in the United States, pp. 53, 54.</span></strong></p>
<p>The organization of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in this country dates from the year 1789, when the Pope authorized the erection of the episcopal see of Baltimore. The first bishop, John Carroll, belonged to a Maryland family which took an honored part in the struggle for nationality, and is justly remembered himself as a man of culture, discretion, and ability.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-31933809504776318512012-03-29T20:01:00.000-07:002019-09-03T00:01:21.696-07:00Roman Catholic Establishments<p><strong>Roman Catholic Establishments</strong></p>
<p>Aside from attempts to convert the natives, Roman Catholicism in the colonial epoch of America presents but few noteworthy developments. The present topic, therefore, invites us to add only a brief catalogue of facts to what has been given in the preceding section.</p>
<p>A special feature of the establishment in Spanish America was its dependence upon the crown. Unaware of the broad range to which the privileges granted would apply, Alexander VI. and Julius II. conferred upon the Spanish monarch the tithes of the newly discovered regions, together with the exclusive right of nominating episcopal dignitaries and bestowing benefices. Indeed the ecclesiastical centre was placed at Madrid rather than at Rome. Papal bulls and briefs were required to be submitted to the Council of the Indies before they could be published. Directions were not unfrequently issued to the colonial authorities, enjoining them to return to the Council of the Indies such documents as had not been reviewed and approved by that body. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Watson, Spanish and Portuguese America, ii. 138, 137; H. H. Bancroft, Mexico, iii. 685 686. Chevalier, Mexico, Ancient and Modern, i. 369, 370.</span></strong></p>
<p>The different ranks of the hierarchy were soon represented in the Spanish settlements. Panama was made an episcopal seat in 1521. Mexico received her first bishop in 1527 in the person of Julian Garcés. Near the same time Zumárraga was appointed as the second in the list. In 1547 Mexico became an archdiocese, with jurisdiction over nine suffragan bishops. Zumáraga was invited to be the first incumbent, but declined on account of his years. In the view of his contemporaries he was a man of merit and distinction. Later generations, however, regard his name with little complacency on account of one great folly, his pious vandalism in destroying the Aztec libraries.</p>
<blockquote>1 Says Bancroft: "All else we could readily forgive the bishop, even the occasional burning of a few old witches; but the destruction of the Aztec libraries, the mountains of native historical documents, and monumental works at Tlatelulco, must ever be regarded as an unpardonable offense. We cannot deplore deeply enough this irreparable loss, the hieroglyphic history of nations unknown, reaching back a thousand years or more." (Mexico, ii. 558.)</blockquote>
<p>In South America, Lima became directly after the conquest an important ecclesiastical seat. Among the early prelates of this region a special celebrity belongs to Toribio de Mogrovejo, Archbishop of Lima (1581-1606). Journeying assiduously over the broad district under his charge, through the valleys of the coast and the heights of the Andes, instructing and catechizing as he had opportunity, he paid to his flock the full debt of kindly interest and self-sacrificing toil. He was canonized in 1680. In this honor he had been preceded by a disciple, a young woman, whose great beauty was only rivalled by her religious consecration, the Santa Rosa, whom the people of Lima revere as their patron saint.</p>
<p>Among the inferior clergy three classes were distinguished: the <em>curas</em>, or perish priests; the <em>doctrineros</em>, or the religious teachers of the native neophytes in the conquered districts; and the <em>misioneros</em>, or the laborers in the outlying regions where Spanish authority was not yet well established. In the earlier part of the period the regular or monastic clergy occupied the field, and they remained to the end a very conspicuous factor. The evidence indicates that the first generations of regulars were, in the main, earnest and self-denying laborers. Nor can it be doubted that men of this cast were found among the later representatives. But a century wrought a very perceptible declension. At length the authorities became convinced that the services of the regulars bore an ill proportion to their special privileges. Not far from the middle of the eighteenth century a decisive decree was issued, excluding them henceforth from vacant benefices and ordaining that the parishes should be manned with the secular clergy. That the latter had earned this preference by their superior virtue and enterprise cannot be maintained. As is indicated by a list of official documents, their ranks, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, included many adventurers of meagre talents and slender virtue, who sought in the colonies a success which they could not hope to obtain at home. The new regulations, however, as enlarging the sphere which was open to the seculars, tended to introduce a better element.</p>
<p>In the early part of the nineteenth century the secular clergy in the Mexican viceroyalty numbered about five thousand. The church property at the same date, including both secular and regular, is supposed to have been equal to half the value of the real estate of the country.</p>
<p>For an interval the Spanish dependencies managed questions of heresy without the aid of a regular tribunal of inquisition. But Philip II. took care that so essential a part of an ecclesiastical outfit should not be wanting. In 1570 and 1571 he provided for tribunals of the Holy Office at Mexico, Lima, and Carthagena. The Indians, as being insufficiently instructed, were for the most part exempted from its jurisdiction. This was no great refinement of mercy, since the plainest common-sense must have dictated that the Inquisition would have too much work on hand if it should undertake to deal strictly with the great mass of natives, as yet but partially weaned from their paganism. The limitation, however, did not rob the tribunal of employment. At an auto-de-fé, celebrated at Mexico in 1574, sixty-three victims were exhibited, of whom five were burned. Other spectacles of the kind followed, so that by the year 1596 ten autos had been performed. Within thirty years more than two thousand subjects for inquisitorial scrutiny had been discovered. How much was accomplished between 1600 and the end of the eighteenth century is not very precisely determined. It is known, however, that not a few autos were held. At the latter date the introduction of books impregnated with free-thinking gave the inquisitors a special occasion for activity. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Llorente, Histoire de 1'Inquisition, ii. 198-200; H. H. Bancroft, Mexico, ii. 677-681; iii. 699-701.</span></strong></p>
<p>In Lima the first auto was celebrated in 1581, the last in 1776, the whole number being twenty-nine. Of the victims at these spectacles fifty-nine were burned alive. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 C. R. Markham, Peru, p 149.</span></strong> The bloodiest outburst of inquisitorial cruelty was that which fell upon Portuguese Jews between 1630 and 1640. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">3 Medina, Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion de Lima.</span></strong> Among those who were disciplined in the early part of the eighteenth century was a band of mystics, followers of the Jesuit Juan Francisco de Ulloa. Their views, which were circulated at Santiago, were much like those of the distinguished quietest Molinos. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Medina, Hist. de la Inquisicion en Chile.</span></strong></p>
<p>Brazil, unlike the Spanish dependencies, was not favored with a special tribunal of inquisition.</p>
<p>The auto de fé might have served to remind the natives in Mexico that the country had been provided with a tolerably adequate substitute for the old Aztec war-god and the stone of sacrifice. A compensation for more amiable features of their ancient religion was early furnished by the miraculous appearance and memorial of the Virgin of Guadalupe (1531). As the pleasing story runs, an Indian convert by the name of Juan Diego was surprised in the way by a vision of the Virgin Mary. Following her command, he gathers from the roses in the neighborhood and brings them in his mantle to the Mother of Mercy. Having taken them in her hands she replaces them in the mantle and instructs him to present them to the bishop. The errand is fulfilled, when lo, upon the unfolded mantle, the image of the Virgin is found to have been distinctly painted. The honored cloth obtains a fitting shrine, and annually attracts the gaze of thousands of visitors. To the natives the miraculous token must have been especially agreeable, as indicating that the Virgin was ready to be the patroness of the conquered as well as of the Spaniards.</p>
<p>A strained relation between the secular and the ecclesiastical power was not an infrequent episode in the Spanish provinces. Canada experienced a like occasion of disturbance, owing largely to the character of her first bishop. Laval, who was sent out as vicar apostolic in 1659, and in 1674 was made bishop of Quebec, was a man of aggressive and domineering temper. His view of the proper relation of Church and State, if a recent eulogist may be taken as authority, was of a decidedly ultramontane cast.</p>
<blockquote>1 As reported in the "Montreal Weekly Herald," Nov. 2, 1872, the Jesuit Braun thus epitomized the views of Laval: "The supremacy and infallibility of the Pope; the independence and liberty of the Church; the subordination and submission of the State to the Church; in case of conflict between them, the Church to decide, the State to submit; for whoever follows and defends these principles, life and a blessing; for whoever rejects and combats them, death and a curse." (Quoted by Parkman, Old Régime, p. 166.)</blockquote>
<p>Since the Jesuits served him as efficient allies, he was able in a measure to illustrate his theory. Among political achievements, he is credited with making one governor and unmaking two.</p>
<p>A better memorial of the bishop's activity was provided in the educational institutions which he established, --his seminaries for priests and boys respectively, to which recently Laval University has been added, the whole constituting one of the most important of Roman Catholic foundations in North America.</p>
<p>The advent of Laval marked the close of the purely missionary regime in Canada. One feature of that regime, however, was perpetuated. Laval was not willing that the cure, or parish priest, should be so much of a fixture as he was ordinarily in France. He wished rather to exercise his own pleasure in stationing and removing cures, just as was done with the missionaries by their superiors. His plan was challenged, but his pertinacity seems to have won the victory. "At this day the system of removable cures prevails in most of the Canadian parishes." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Parkman, Old Régime, p. 161.</span></strong></p>
<p>Louisiana was regarded as ecclesiastically dependent upon Quebec, the bishop of the latter having jurisdiction over the former. Some years after the transfer of Louisiana to Spain the bishop of Cuba took the place of the Canadian prelate.</p>
<p>As has been noticed on a previous page, the British occupation of Canada was soon followed by large concessions to the religion of the French inhabitants. Whatever other motive may have dictated the concessions, it was obviously a matter of political discretion to conciliate a people who formed an immense majority of a distant province, and the value of whose friendship began to be emphasized by increasing omens of a war of independence in the territory to the south.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-57143584311376681452012-03-29T19:45:00.000-07:002019-09-03T00:01:40.813-07:00The Colonies In Their Relation To The Natives<p><strong>The Colonies In Their Relation To The Natives</strong></p>
<p>A large part of America, at the time of its discovery, was comparatively uninhabited. The West India islands had in proportion to their extent a considerable population. Mexico, a part of Central America, and Peru were well-occupied regions, containing probably an aggregate of several millions of people. But north of Mexico any great mass of inhabitants was nowhere to be found. The broad prairie region was almost untenanted. We should be making no illiberal estimate if we should reckon the whole number of Indians north of the present Mexican border as not exceeding half a million at the time that the English and the French began their settlements.</p>
<blockquote>1 Speaking of the region of the United States east of the Mississippi, George Bancroft says: "We shall approach, and perhaps rather exceed, a just estimate of their numbers at the spring-time of English colonization if to the various tribes of the Algonkin race we allow about ninety thousand; of the eastern Dakotas less than three thousand; of the Iroquois, including their southern kindred, about seventeen thousand; of the Catawbas, three thousand; of the Cherokees, twelve thousand; of the Mobilian confederacies and tribes, -- that is, of the Chicasaws, Choctaws, and-Creeks, including the Seminoles,--fifty thousand; of the Uchees, one thousand; of the Natchez four thousand; in all, it may be not far from one hundred and eighty thousand souls." (History of the United States, ii. 100.) L. H. Morgan adds the comment: "This is as large a number as our information will justify. There is not the slightest reason for supposing that they ever exceeded that number." (Indian Migrations, in Beach's Indian Miscellany.) "M. de la Joncaire, in 1736, drew up for the information of the home government an official estimate of the number of fighting men among all the savage tribes then in existence between Quebec and Louisiana (that is, nearly the whole of New France), and the total he ventured to give was but 18,000."(Garneau, History of Canada, i. 121.) Morgan, on the basis of reports from the Spanish explorers, concludes that the Pueblo (or village) Indians in New Mexico and its neighborhood numbered, near the middle of the sixteenth century,about fifty thousand. (Indian Migrations.) The Spanish missionaries, in 1802 estimated the California Indians at a little over thirty two thousand. (Ibid.) In 1851 Sir George Simpson reckoned the Indian population of British America east of the Rocky Mountains at sixty-seven thousand, and those west of the mountains at eighty thousand. (Ibid.)</blockquote>
<p>The more civilized of the aboriginal communities -- the Incas in Peru, the Quichés in Guatemala, the Mayas in Yucatan, the Aztecs with their confederates in Mexico, and the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico--had evidently a territorial right that was worthy of some respect in the sight of the nations. They presented the aspect of settled communities, and some of them, the Peruvians in particular, used much diligence in developing the resources of their country. As for the other races or tribes,-their occupation and improvement of the soil were evidently on too limited a scale to establish anything more than a partial title. While they might rightfully claim all that was needed for their sustenance, they had no just prerogative to keep waste so vast an inheritance by making it the exclusive domain of their savagery.</p>
<p>Whatever the right in any quarter, there was little power to enforce it against the grasping Europeans. The unity requisite for any formidable opposition was wanting. A bloody civil strife had greatly weakened Peru just before the coming of Pizarro, and the more legitimate claimant of the crown was a prisoner at the commencement of the conquest. The Aztec rule in Mexico was so feared or hated by various tribes that Cortés was able readily to unite a mass of native warriors with his little army of Spaniards, and thus to destroy the central power of the native empire. In the more northern regions the animosities of the tribes against each other caused that their strength should be expended in mutual slaughter rather than in checking the European invader. In only two instances was there any extended combination against the foreigners, -- that of Philip in 1675, and that of Pontiac in 1763.</p>
<p>In the civil polity of the less advanced tribes, as in case of the old Germanic barbarians, there was a mixture of the hereditary and the elective principles, of democracy and chieftainship. The centrifugal tendency was conspicuous; but in some instances the process of separation into distinct tribes was offset by confederation. Among confederacies the Iroquois presented the example of the greatest power and success, While they might be reckoned among the fiercest of barbarians, they were in their way tolerably keen diplomats and statesmen.</p>
<p>The religion of the Indians was a polytheism tinged more or less with fetichism. They may have believed in a <em>superior</em>, but scarcely in a <em>supreme Spirit</em>. Even after their idea of the Great Spirit had been enlarged by contact with the Europeans, it was often sufficiently crude and anthropomorphic,</p>
<blockquote>1 Parkman says: "The primitive Indian was as savage in his religion as in his life. He was divided between fetich-worship and that next degree of religious development which consists in the worship of deities embodied in the human form. His conception of their attributes was such as might have been expected His gods were no whit better than himself Even when he borrows from Christianity the idea of a Supreme and Universal Spirit, his tendency is to reduce Him to a local habitation and a bodily shape; and this tendency disappears only in tribes that have been long in contact with civilized white men. The primitive Indian, yielding his untutored homage to One All-pervading and Omnipotent Spirit, is a dream of poets, rhetoricians, and sentimentalists." (Jesuits in North America, Intro. lxxxix.)</blockquote>
<p>The religion of the more civilized Indians was not many degrees better than that of the rude tribes. The Aztecs and the Incas may have had a more elaborate ceremonial and priestly system, and may also have reached in a few points higher views of religious truth. But with both the more worthy elements were overlaid by a mass of superstitions, and in case of the Aztecs the offering of human sacrifices formed a more odious feature than any contained in the worship of the savage tribes. A like practice has been charged against the Incas, but it is claimed that the imputation grew out of a misunderstanding of the ancient Peruvian language, and is not sustained by the evidence. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 C. R. Markham, in Narrative and Critical History of America, edited by Justin Winsor, vol, i.</span></strong></p>
<p>The Spaniards seem to have conceived that they brought with themselves a full right to whatever territories they might discover. They did not deem it necessary to solicit grants from the natives. On the contrary, they considered themselves licensed to seize the most valuable possessions of the natives, and made little or no scruple also about seizing their persons. Enormous cruelties stained the path of conquest. The gross estimates given by one and another Spanish witness, we need not believe. We think it a great exaggeration when Oviedo reports that two millions of the natives were sacrificed by the tyranny of Pedrarias, the governor at the Isthmus, or when Las Casas says that four or five millions were slaughtered in Guatemala within a period of sixteen years. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 H. H. Bancroft, Central America, i. 614; ii 235, 236.</span></strong></p>
<p>Such estimates border on the ridiculous. But that the lives of the natives were recklessly wasted, and in the most cruel ways, is not to be doubted. Oviedo reports of the adventurous De Soto that he much enjoyed the sport of killing Indians. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">3 J. G. Shea, in Narrative and Critical History of America, vol, ii.</span></strong> It is said that during the governorship of Pedrarias eighteen caciques were on one occasion given to bloodhounds, to be torn in pieces. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Bancroft, Central America, i. 410.</span></strong> Ovando, the governor of Hayti, caused eighty caciques, who were suspected of disaffection, to be burned at the stake. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 R. G. Watson, Spanish and Portuguese South America, i. 69.</span></strong> Cortés, in reprisal for the Pánuco rebellion, burned four hundred natives, if his own story may be believed. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">3 Bancroft, Mexico, ii. 122, vol. v. of Pacific States.</span></strong> Nuño de Cuzman caused men to be hanged for simply neglecting to sweep the roads before him, and, maliciously identifying discontent with rebellion, enslaved whole towns which had been guilty of no real offense. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">4 Bancroft, Mexico, ii. 264, 267, 286.</span></strong> Mendoza, the first viceroy, though not in general a bad ruler, thought it proper to brand five thousand, who had ventured to assert their independence by force of arms, as slaves, besides inflicting cruel punishments and mutilations. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">5 Ibid. ii. 532.</span></strong></p>
<p>Enslavement of the natives, actual or virtual, was part of the regular programme of the Spanish conquerors, and whatever restraint was put upon the practice was due to interference from without. Columbus thought it no sin to make slaves of the Indians, and was quite jubilant over the prospect of the revenue which might be obtained from cargoes of the human merchandise. The Spanish government, it is true, did not fully second this feature in the enterprise of the great explorer. Nevertheless, in conceding that Indians taken in war or guilty of specially odious crimes might be condemned to bondage, it left open a wide door to enslavement. Under the existing conditions an unfair advantage was certain to be taken of the concession. For forty years, or until the publication of the so-called New Laws in 1543, this evil license was continued. And long after that date legal provision existed for placing the natives in wardship or a species of serfdom. Such was the <em>encomienda system</em>, which provided that the natives in a conquered district should be divided among the settlers, to be held by them for a term of years or for one or more lives, receiving from them instruction and protection, and obligated to render to them a certain service. This system was in vogue for two centuries. The result was that the great body of the natives had little of personal liberty. Forced labor and melancholy thinned their ranks, and with terrible rapidity in some quarters. The native population of the West India islands was soon reduced to a poor fraction of the former total. The yoke was also heavy upon the Peruvians; especially did the compulsory labor in the mines tell upon them with deadly effect. A part of the waste may have been the unavoidable result of contact with new conditions. To men who have not a good degree of robustness the impact of a new civilization is apt to bring a scathing influence. But a large part of the ruin must undoubtedly be charged to the greed and despotism of the conquerors.</p>
<p>This is the dark side of the subject. The brighter side is the courage and perseverance with which distinguished philanthropists, like Las Casas, sought to protect the natives and to work out humane laws in their behalf. The response which the Spanish government made to the appeals of these advocates is also a feature of relief. From the time that the New Laws were issued -- and to some extent before that date -- it sought by repeated enactments to protect the natives. The temper of the colonists caused it to retract some of the more generous of its provisions; nevertheless it continued to exhibit conspicuous zeal and watchfulness in behalf of the aboriginal peoples. Its record on the whole is very creditable; at least it would be necessary to account it so, if it had not given such an example of merciless rigor in the home administration, and had not promoted the enslavement of Africans while seeking to restrict that of Indians.</p>
<blockquote>1 The Portuguese had instituted African slavery near the middle of the fifteenth century. America, however, first offered them a considerable market. About a decade from the first voyage of Columbus, Negroes began to be imported into Hayti. The rapid decline of the native population gave a strong incentive to the traffic.</blockquote>
<p>Hand in hand with conquest went the work of converting the natives. The stern invaders themselves had a species of religious zeal, and for every two glances which they directed to the golden calf were ready to bestow one upon the Virgin Mary. The friars who followed plentifully in their wake, as they took in general a kindly interest in the welfare of the natives, labored zealously to induct them into the Christian religion. Among the settled populations the displacement of the old idolatry progressed rapidly. To practice it openly under the eyes of their masters was out of the question, and various motives conspired to make them willing to accept, at least nominally, the substitute which was offered. What Bancroft says of the Mexicans, in this relation, will apply in part to the other semi-civilized communities. There were several reasons, he remarks, for the broad, though superficial, success in proselyting. "Foremost stood fear and policy, for it was dangerous to disobey the conquerors, while favors could be gained by courting them. Then came the undefined belief with many that the religion of men so superior in prowess and intelligence must contain some virtue, something superior to their own. . . . Further, the new rites and doctrines had many similarities to their own to commend them to the natives. Baptism was used for infants generally, and purifying water was applied also by ascetics; the communion was taken in different forms, as wafer or bread, and as pieces from the consecrated dough statue of the chief god, the latter form being termed <em>teoqualo</em>, 'God is eaten;' confession was heard by regular confessors, who extended absolution in the name of the deity concerned. The idea of a trinity was not unknown, and according to Las Cases' investigations, even a virgin-born member of it; the flood existed in recorded traditions, and Cholula pyramid embodied a Babel myth, while the mysterious Quetzal-coatl lived in the hopes, especially of the oppressed, as the expected Messiah. Lastly the cross, so wide-spread as a symbol, held a high religious significance also here, bearing among other names that of the 'tree of life.' Although these similarities appeared to the friars partly as a profanation, and were pointed out as a perversion by the Evil One, nevertheless they failed not to permit a certain association or mingling of pagan and Christian ideas in this connection, with a view to promote the acceptance of the latter. The Indians on their side availed themselves so freely of this privilege as frequently to rouse the observation that they had merely changed the names of their idols and rites." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Mexico, ii. 181, 182.</span></strong> Not a few, it would appear, made even a less change than this in accepting Christianity. With a good degree of pertinacity they continued to practise some of the old rites in spite of their new professions. "Many placed the images behind the crosses and saint tablets, or worshipped them with elaborate ceremonies, in common with others, in secret localities. When remonstrated with for his obstinacy, a cacique once exclaimed: 'How is it,' pointing to the picture of a saint, 'that you Spaniards preach so much against idolatry while you yourselves worship images?' The Spaniard replied with the usual explanation, 'that they did not adore the images, but gazed on them in meditation of the great virtues of the saints whom they represent.' Hereupon the chieftain remarked: 'Neither do we worship images of gold or wood; our prayers and sacrifices are offered to God.'" <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Bancroft, Mexico, ii. 179.</span></strong></p>
<p>The uncertain tenure of Christianity in the minds of its native professors was signally illustrated in New Mexico. In all the pueblos of that region it had been enthroned within a generation from the conquest. In 1630, if Spanish accounts may be trusted, the Christianized natives amounted to sixty thousand. Yet, fifty years later, when the signal for rebellion was sounded, Christianity was almost universally repudiated. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">3 Bancroft, New Mexico and Arizona, vol, xii., in Pacific States.</span></strong> In Zuñi Bloae was any respect paid to its memorials or its rites during the twelve years of independence which followed the uprising of 1680. The reinstatement of Spanish authority was at the same time a restoration of the Roman Catholic religion; but the mission had seen by far its best days. By 1760 the pueblo natives had been reduced to a total of less than ten thousand.</p>
<p>Among the uncivilized tribes the results of missionary effort were not specially encouraging. In this field the Spaniards as well as the French expended not a little of self-sacrificing devotion. At times the work seemed prosperous; but it never gained a solidity which enabled it to withstand adversity. In Florida the harvest was not large in comparison with the martyr blood that was shed in founding the mission. It was only a very moderate success also that was achieved in Texas. In California, on the other hand, the Franciscans were able to boast of considerable progress (1769-1840). Here the plan was pursued of gathering the baptized natives into communities, where their industrial as well as religious training was in the hands of the missionaries. The last of these communities was formed in 1823, when the list was made up to twenty-one. An approach to this species of establishments had been exemplified by the Jesuits in Lower California until the work there was taken from their contro1 (1767). It was, however, the "reductions" in Paraguay (1610-1767) which afforded the most conspicuous example, under Jesuit auspices, of the policy of isolating the converted Indians from outside influences and subjecting them to a minute and searching tuition. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">See the account given in the preceding volume, pp. 407, 408.</span></strong> This policy had its obvious advantages. The ultimate result, nevertheless, was not highly satisfactory. It was found that the Indians had gained no independent basis of religious or civilized manhood. Both in the Californian and the Paraguayan instance, as soon as the fostering and the guiding hand of the missionary was withdrawn, there remained but a scant memorial of the labor expended. The terrible death-rate among the gathered natives, at least in the California establishments, was also a drawback. In mentioning these qualifying features we have no design to prefer any radical impeachment against either the skill or the humanity of the missionaries. The fact is, the uncivilized red man was a fearfully hard subject to manage. Leave him with his tribe, and it was exceedingly difficult to get into him any genuine religion or civilization. Change his outward condition and place him under the restraints of an orderly life, in the midst of Christian surroundings, and on the one hand his health was subjected to a severe trial, while on the other the root of his savagery still remained in his breast, ready to spring up as soon as opportunity might come, into the old tempers and habits.</p>
<blockquote>1 This fact is graphically set forth in the following from a Roman Catholic writer: "After months, nay years, of teaching, the missionaries found that the fickle savage was easily led astray; never could they form pupils to our life and manners. The nineteenth century failed, as the seventeenth tailed, in raising up priests from the Iroquois or the Algonquin; and at this day [1855] a pupil of the Propaganda, who disputed in Latin on theses of Peter Lombard, roams at the head of a half-naked band in the billowy plains of Nebraska." (J. G. Shea, History of Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the United States, p. 26.)</blockquote>
<p>The settlement of the Portuguese in Brazil had its favorable aspect for the natives. They came not as gold-hunters, or plunderers and extortioners, but with the purpose of improving the country agriculturally. Their appearance, however, had its doleful prophecy for the poor aborigines. For the Portuguese were the most eager, practised, and expert slave-catchers of the time. It is hardly necessary to state that it did not take long for their evil aptitude to display itself to the serious cost of the Indians.</p>
<p>Happily there were those in the Portuguese settlements who rivalled the industrious philanthropy which Las Casas had displayed for the Indians under Spanish rule. The Jesuits were represented in Brazil by men of conspicuous talents and devotion, as is sufficiently evidenced by the names of Nobrega, Anchieta, and Vieyra. In them and their associate missionaries the natives found powerful advocates. Vieyra in particular was untiring in his efforts to secure protective measures from the government. Bounds were thus set to the enslavement of the Indians, especially as the importation of Negroes supplied a substitute for their labor. The decree for their complete emancipation came simultaneously with that for the expulsion of the Jesuits (1759-60).</p>
<p>A prominent item of the missionary method adopted in Brazil was the placing of the natives in villages by themselves under the supervision of their religious instructors. These villages, however, were not given over so completely to the control of the missionaries as were the reductions in Paraguay. While the Portuguese settlers were not expected to dwell in them, they were privileged to make requisition upon their superintendents for a quota of laborers, to serve for a portion of the year. The Brazilian Indians accordingly did not come to feel such an absolute dependence upon their religious directors as did those in Paraguay.</p>
<p>The relation of the French to the Indians was different from that which the Spaniards or the English assumed with them. They neither adopted toward them the mien of conquerors nor asked from them grants of territory. Their ostensible relation was in part that of allies, and in part that of patrons. Few in numbers and receiving but small resources from the French government, they made up by diplomacy for their lack of strength. They dwelt with the natives on friendly terms, were careful to avoid affronting their feeling of independence, and were content to bring them gradually into the status of subjects of France. No other nationality can be said to have shown equal tact in dealing with the uncivilized red men, or equal capacity for entering into sympathetic relationship with them.</p>
<p>The French missions covered a wide range. They included the Abenakis in Maine, the Hurons in Upper Canada and Michigan, the Iroquois in New York, the Ottawas in Michigan and Wisconsin, the Illinois in the region which still bears their name, and various tribes in the lower valley of the Mississippi. The Iroquois mission was only temporary (1667-1687). A number of the converts, however, were transferred to Canadian soil, and formed there the basis of an Iroquois community. A colony from the Christianized Abenakis was also transferred to the northern region.</p>
<p>The method pursued in this mission field is thus described, in contrast with that which prevailed in some of the Spanish territories: "The French missionary planted his cross among the heathen, and won all that he could to the faith, and whenever he could, formed a distinct Pillage of Christians; but these villages were never like the missions of the Spanish missionaries. The French priest left his neophyte free,--setting him no task, building no splendid edifices by his toil. The Spanish mission contained its workshops, dormitories, infirmaries, and granaries; the French mission was a fort against hostile attack, and inclosed merely the church, mission-house, and mechanics' sheds,-- the Indians all living without in cabins or houses, and entering the fort only in time of danger." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Shea, Catholic Missions, p. 128.</span></strong></p>
<p>The Récollets, or Franciscans of the Strict Observance, were the first missionaries in the region of Quebec. After ten years, or in 1625, they were joined by the Jesuits.</p>
<blockquote>2 Representatives of the Order of Jesuits had come to Port Royal in Acadia in 1611. Two years later they attempted a settlement at Mt. Desert, on the coast of Maine, but the unkind visit of Argall from Virginia spoiled their project in this region.</blockquote>
<p>The temporary occupation of Quebec, by the English, which occurred a few years later, gave a brief interruption to the mission. In the resumption of the enterprise (1633) the Jesuits took the lead, and the following decades were the heroic period of the Order in New France. A preceding page has given us occasion to mention the name of Brébeuf and others, who exhibited in a notable degree the devotion and fortitude of martyrs. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">3 See the first volume of The Modern Church, pp. 408, 409.</span></strong></p>
<p>That the French Jesuits were their own historians has no doubt affected the estimate of their work. An impartial outsider would have given to the narrative of their labors a somewhat different coloring from that which it bears in their "relations."</p>
<blockquote>This is the view of one of the most recent of Canadian historians. Speaking of the papal decree closing the publication of missionary letters (1673), as being probably directed especially against those of the Jesuits, he adds: "Ce qui est certain, c'est que, au Canada, les habitants étaient, depuis des années, mécontents de ces récits dans lesquels les faits étaient presque toujours dénaturés. ... Lexclueivisme qui règne dans ces narrations et que l’on a voulu excuser en disant qu’elles sont consacrées uniquement aux affaires religieuses, n'est que trop réel et par suite condamnable. Les jésuites savaient bien ce qu’ils faisaient en représentant les choses sous un jour favorable à leurs seuls interêts. . . On a raison de se moquer, comme 1'a fait le père Le Clercq, de ce nombre prodigieux de sauvages convertis qui ont disparu du moment où les Relations cessèrent de circuler en France. . . . Sous le couvert de la religion, l’intrigue a été longtemps victorieuse en Canada, et encore de nos jours, la presse bonasse accepte la prétendue tradition des 'jésuites bienfaiteurs de ce pays,' sans rien connaître et sans rien peser." (Benj. Sulte, Histoire des Canadiens-Français, iv., 107, 108.)</blockquote>
<p>The authentic record, while it has its bright pages, has others that are quite destitute of lustre. It may justly be charged that the Jesuits were over-anxious for their own importance. They sought to control the administration at Quebec. They wished to duplicate among the western tribes the theocratic regime of Paraguay, and showed a pronounced jealousy toward La Salle, while he was undertaking the exploration of the Mississippi, because his project did not appear to be directed to their aggrandizement. Count Frontenac may have acted the part of a prejudiced witness when he wrote: "The Jesuits will not civilize the Indians because they wish to keep them in perpetual wardship. They think more of beaver skins than of souls, and their missions are pure mockeries," <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Parkman, Count Frontenac and New France, p. 25.</span></strong> This is undoubtedly too strong. But it is certain that the religion of many of their neophytes was a thin veneer of so-called Catholicity spread over a savagery that had undergone no appreciable abatement. How far the missionaries were responsible for the unchristian ferocity still remaining is not easy to determine. The Indians, it must be allowed, were not altogether passive subjects in their hands.</p>
<p>The much greater number of the English colonists made them of necessity, in their relations to the aborigines, a more encroaching power than the French. It is probably true also that the former, as a body, were stiffer and less affable than the latter in dealing with the children of the forest. Their natural sentiments interposed a wider social barrier against the Indians than was raised by the temper of the French. Notwithstanding the example of John Rolfe, they showed less inclination to intermarry with the natives. In this incompatibility there was evidently a poor omen for the Indians. Unable to mix with the English, it only remained for them to retreat before the sturdy aggressive race, unless extraordinary wisdom and charity should be at hand to adjust and supervise their mutual relations.</p>
<p>Still, the evidence shows that the English colonies started on the basis of a friendly treatment of the natives. Whatever injuries may have been done here and there by representatives of the "mixed multitude," the tenor of the early colonial legislation was in the line of fair dealing. The ruthlessness with which the Spaniards fell upon the occupants of the soil was nowhere exhibited. In a large proportion of instances the settlers entered into a specific agreement with the natives and paid a stipulated price for their lands. Speaking of the Plymouth colony, Josiah Winslow was able, in 1676, to make this declaration: "I think I can clearly say that before these present troubles broke out, the English did not possess one foot of land in this colony but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors. Nay, because some of our people are of a covetous disposition, and the Indians are in their straits easily prevailed with to part with their lands, we first made a law that none should purchase or receive of gift any land of the Indians without the knowledge and allowance of our Court. . . . and if at any time they brought complaints before us, they have had justice impartial and speedy, so that our own people have frequently complained that we erred on the other hand in showing them overmuch favor." John Fiske is of opinion that the same might be said of the neighboring colonies. "The general laws of Massachusetts and Connecticut," he adds, "as well as of Plymouth, bear out what Winslow says, and show us that as a matter of policy the colonial governments were fully sensible of the importance of avoiding all occasions for quarrel with their savage neighbors." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Beginnings of New England, pp. 199, 200.</span></strong> In New Jersey and Pennsylvania likewise there was a purchase of lands from the natives. In Georgia they were consulted respecting territorial occupation, and were treated by Oglethorpe with exemplary kindness. Virginia and Maryland also showed a good degree of discretion and equity in their dealings with the Indians.</p>
<p>A darker phase, it must be conceded, entered finally into the general picture. Indian atrocities were responded to with fierce energy, and reprisals did not always stop short with the guilty. In New England the terrible ravages consequent upon the war of extermination which was undertaken by Philip and his allies, quenched sympathy for the Indians, engendered toward them a deep distrust, and kindled in too many hearts an unpitying hate. It is scarcely surprising that the colonists, thinking of ruined homes and friends ruthlessly butchered, should have been incited to sell some hundreds of the captive Indians into slavery. The act, nevertheless, was far from being humane or Christian. So, even at that time, judged a few of the more just and clear-sighted New Englanders. In South Carolina the settlers enslaved the natives without waiting for any such weighty provocation. One fourth of all the slaves of the province were reported in 1708 as being Indians.</p>
<p>That the missionary enterprise of the English was on a much smaller scale than that of the Spaniards or the French is a fact that can be readily explained. Such enterprise, to be largely prosecuted, needs both special institutions and special habitudes. Protestantism in the first century of its history was sufficiently occupied with the Herculean task of maintaining its own existence in Europe. At the time, therefore, that the English colonies were planted, it had not been habituated to the work of evangelizing the uncivilized races, and had little or no equipment for such work. The requisite agents were not within reach. The more southern colonies found it difficult to secure anything like an adequate supply of pastors even for the white population, and those in the North had no excess. In the great orders of the Romish Church, on the other hand, -- the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Jesuits, -- there was almost a superfluity of laborers to be utilized in any field that might be opened. Protestantism was to demonstrate its missionary capacity; but the conditions ordained that the demonstration should not come in the seventeenth century, though possibly it might have come earlier than the nineteenth century had there been no culpable torpor. Romish apologists, who have endeavored to make capital out of the contrasts of the colonial epoch, might have saved some of their rhetoric had they viewed the situation with more candor and insight.</p>
<p>In New England, which enjoyed in the seventeenth century a larger religious equipment than the other English settlements, it is to be noticed that a very good beginning was made toward the evangelization of the natives. It is estimated that in 1674 the number of "Praying Indians" amounted to four thousand.</p>
<p>Continuous effort to instruct the Indians in the Christian faith was begun by Thomas Mayhew, upon the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard about 1643. After his death (1657), his father, of the same name, took up the work and passed it on to a line of successors in the Mayhew family. Near the same time that the evangelization of the natives on the islands was undertaken, a fruitful work was begun within the bounds of the Plymouth colony by the benevolent and enterprising laymen, Richard Bourne and Thomas Tupper. In Massachusetts the most distinguished laborer was John Eliot, and it is not without a certain justice that he has been called the apostle of the Indiana, though several were only second to him in their achievements. From the time that he began to preach to the natives at Nonantum, in 1646, to the time of his death, he was their unfailing friend, counselor, advocate, and teacher. His enormous labor in translating the whole Bible, together with some other writings, into the Indian tongue, calls for scarcely more admiration than the rare combination of patience, firmness, and tact with which he directed and trained his eccentric pupils. As his work progressed he became convinced that the Christian natives should be placed in communities by themselves. Several villages of Praying Indians were accordingly founded, the first being that of Natick (1651). In the management of these he endeavored to introduce, as far as was feasible, the element of self-help and self-dependence. The Indiana themselves were intrusted with the town administration; and, moreover, such of them as had the necessary gifts were encouraged to use them in religious instruction. Some fifteen hundred were under this regime on the eve of Philip's war. Unhappily that war proved to be a serious ordeal for these communities. After the besom of destruction had gone by they were found, where not extinct, to be much reduced, and the full measure of former prosperity never returned.</p>
<p>The work of Eliot and his contemporaries awakened no little interest in England. In 1649 a practical response was given by the passage of an ordinance instituting the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Indians, and providing for the collection of funds. This society was re-established early in the reign of Charles II., under the presidency of the distinguished Robert Boyle, and rendered a valuable assistance to Eliot in supplying a financial basis to his enterprise.</p>
<p>In the eighteenth century an effort affording not a little encouragement was made among the Mohegan Indians at Stockbridge, on the western border of Massachusetts. The labors of John Sergeant were specially fruitful in this field (1734-1749). His mantle fell upon his son of the same name, who continued the work, after an interval during which the mission was in the charge successively of Jonathan Edwards and Stephen West. Contemporary with the progress of the Stockbridge mission were the labors of the Connecticut minister, Eleazar Wheelock, who exhibited much earnestness and ability in educating Indian youth. In the same period also New England sent several laborers westward among the Iroquois.</p>
<p>If other sections in general did less than New England for the religious instruction of the Indians, there was at least an exhibition of good intentions. The first Virginia assembly legislated as follows: "Be it enacted, that for laying a surer foundation of the conversion of the Indians to the Christian religion, each town, city, borough, and particular plantation, do obtain unto themselves by just means a certain number of the natives' children to be educated by them in true religion and a civil course of life; of which children the most towardly boys in wit and graces of nature to be brought up by them in the first elements of literature, so as to be fitted for the college intended for them, that from thence they may be sent to that work of conversion." This action was in accordance with the instructions of King James and the Virginia Company. Only a few steps, however, were taken toward carrying out the plan. The great Indian massacre of 1622 fatally interfered with the generous enterprise, which without this drawback would probably have needed, in order to be made eminently successful, better appliances than were then available.</p>
<p>Good designs were also entertained in connection with other colonies. Something in the way of actual achievement was accomplished by the Dutch pastors at Albany and Schenectady among the neighboring Mohawks, and by various representatives of the Episcopalian and Presbyterian clergy in New York among the Iroquois during the course of the eighteenth century. The success of David Brainerd (1742-1747) in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania indicated that the cause of Indian evangelization had found in him a specially competent workman; but his early death gave but a brief opportunity to his talents and devotion. The missionary enterprise, which became a passion with the Moravians almost from the time of their organization under Zinzendorf, was generously expended in efforts to convert the Indians during the last sixty years of the eighteenth century. A promising beginning was made by them in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Rude interruptions despoiled them in large part of the proper fruit of their toil. So much the more should historic justice pay tribute to their devotion. Especially does the work of David Zeisberger, the apostle of the Delawares, including as it did three score years of unremitting efforts for the salvation of the red men, call for a grateful and reverent acknowledgment.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-43021665318353068672012-03-29T19:37:00.000-07:002019-09-03T00:01:57.929-07:00America In The Colonial Era: The Colonies In Their Political Relations<p><strong>The Colonies In Their Political Relations</strong></p>
<p>SCARCELY had Columbus brought back the news that the waters of the Atlantic laved accessible lands in the distant west before full provision was made for the ownership of the new regions. Alexander VI., though one of the most unsavory among the ecclesiastical potentates who have had their seat in Rome, felt no hesitation about portioning out the planet according to his discretion. He seemed in fact to possess a fully average consciousness of what is implied in being heir to the immeasurable wealth of Peter. By a bull issued May 4th, 1493, he ordained that countries which should be discovered a hundred leagues or more to the west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands should fall to Spain.</p>
<blockquote>1 Lands actually possessed by any other Christian power up to the time of the first discovery by Columbus, were excepted from the grant to Spain. All other lands within the defined limits, whenever and however they might be discovered, were to fall to the Spanish sovereigns, as appears from the following language of the bull: Motu proprio, hon ad vestrum vel alterius pro vobis super nobis oblatæ petitionis instantiam, sed de nostra mera liberalitate, et ex certa scientia, ac de apostolicæ potestatis plenitudine, omnes insulas et terras firmas inventas et inveniendas, detectas et detegendas versus Occidentem et Meridiem fabricando et consteuendo unam lineam a Polo Arctico, scilicet Septentrione, ad Polum Antarcticum, silicet Meridiem, sive terræ firmæ et insulæ inventæ et inveniendæ sint versus Indiam aut versus aliam quamcumque partem, quæ linea distet a qualibet insularum quæ vulgariter nuncupantur de los Azores y cabo vierde, centum leucis versus Occidentem et Meridiem, ita quod omnes insulæ et terræ firmæ repertæ et reperiendæ, detectæ et detegendæ, a præfata linea versus Occidentem et Meridiem per alium regem aut principem Christianum non fuerint actualiter possessæ usque ad diem nativitatis Domini Nostri Iesu Christi proximi præteritum, a quo incipit annus præsens millesimus quadringentesimus nonagesimus tertius, quando fuerunt per nuntios et capitanos vestros inventæ aliquæ prædictarum insularum, auctoritate omnipotentis Dei nobis in beato Petro concessa, ac vicariatus Jesu Christi, qua fungimur in terris, cum omnibus illarum dominiis, civitatibus, castris, locis, et villis, juribusque et jurisdictionibus apertinentiis universis, vobis hæredibusque et successoribus vestris (Castellæ et Legionis regibus) in perpetuum tenore præsentium donamus, concedimus, et assignamus. Vosque et hæredes ac successores præfatos illarum dominos cum plena, libera, et omnimoda potestate, auctoritate et jurisdictione, facimus, constituimus, et deputamus.</blockquote>
<p>The following year the papal gift was modified, in that the dividing line was placed three hundred and seventy leagues to the west of the Cape Verde Islands. The bull of Alexander VI. was of course made out in the dark. No one at that time had anything like an accurate knowledge of the earth's surface. Nevertheless so far as America is concerned, the Pope, as a Spaniard, could not better have satisfied his partiality for his native land had he acted in the light. Only a section of Brazil was located east of the line which he drew in the plenitude of his authority. To the rest of the two continents Spain held the title.</p>
<p>The papal parchment was doubtless a convenient thing for Spain. Still the real basis of her success in the New World was her own enterprise. She pushed forward energetically in the project of discovery and occupation. Herein she preceded France and England by the breadth of a century. Before they had ceased merely to dream of transatlantic possessions, she had extended her rule to a continental range.</p>
<p>The beginning of a permanent settlement in the West Indies was made during the second visit of Columbus (1493-1496), at which time he planted a colony upon the island of Hispaniola or Hayti. In the succeeding years the other principal islands of the group were occupied. Possession was taken of Cuba in 1511.</p>
<p>Darien served as the first permanent foothold upon the main land. A settlement was begun there in 1510. Three years later Vasco Nuñez crossed the Isthmus and won the distinction of being the first European to gaze upon the Pacific. In 1519, by the founding of Panama, Spain secured an advantageous position on the western coast.</p>
<p>From the Isthmus the tide of conquest rolled both northward and southward. In the former direction it met the impetuous wave which had been started by Hernando Cortés, whose splendid piracy had won the Aztec empire for the Spanish crown (1519-1521). Central America was thus in large part brought under the sword. While its subjugation was in progress the avaricious thirst of the Spaniards was excited by rumors of an empire in the south, where the accumulated treasures of a civilized people presented a prize rivalling that which had fallen to the conquerors of Mexico. Here was a chance for a master-stroke in brigandage, and Francisco Pizarro, a man rivalling Cortés in daring and hardihood, but inferior in culture and magnanimity, was ready to improve the chance. After spending some years in preliminary expeditions, he sailed from Panama for the conquest of Peru in 1531. The same order of tactics which had triumphed over Montezuma in Mexico speedily sufficed to overthrow the power of the Inca ruler. The fabulous heap of gold gathered for his ransom only served to line with a brilliant mockery his way to the scaffold.</p>
<p>Peru supplied a vantage ground for further conquests. An attack upon Chili was undertaken as early as 1535. It was not, however, till a few years later that any substantial acquisition was made in that direction; and then the work of subjugation was incomplete. The advance into southern Chili was held in check by the Araucanians. This hardy people withstood successfully all efforts to subdue them, and still had the courage in the eighteenth century to match arms several times with the Spaniards.</p>
<p>Simultaneously with the advance into Chili the districts toward the north were invaded. Quito was captured in 1533, and the city of Bogota was founded in 1538.</p>
<p>Meanwhile settlements were being effected from the eastern side of the continent. Spanish vessels, bearing a company of colonists, entered the La Plata in 1534, and two or three years later the first permanent settlement in Paraguay, or the La Plata basin, was begun at Asuncion. The continuous history of Buenos Ayres dates from 1580, though its primary foundation was forty-five years earlier.</p>
<p>To the north of Mexico Spanish conquest did not advance so rapidly as in the regions to the south of the Isthmus. The country with its wild tribes appeared less inviting. Considerable interest, however, was awakened at quite an early date in New Mexico, where the Pueblo Indians exhibited, if not so advanced a civilization as that of the Mexicans and Peruvians, still a state noticeably above sheer barbarism. The first regular expedition into New Mexico, which occurred under Coronado in 1540, did not result in the occupation of the country. Fifty years or more elapsed before a settlement was made; and this can hardly be described as permanent, since an uprising of the natives in 1680 either destroyed or swept away every Spaniard in the province. Twelve years later a reconquest was effected.</p>
<p>In Lower California, California, and Texas, Spanish colonization was scarcely more than a means of planting and sustaining missions. The first of these countries witnessed the beginning of a permanent settlement in 1697, the second in 1769, and the third in 1714. Texas had been entered at an earlier date. Aside from the visits of individual missionaries and travelers, a formal attempt to plant a colony is recorded for the year 1690; but this proved to be so unpromising that it was soon abandoned.</p>
<p>Florida also was never largely occupied by the Spaniards. The first expeditions to the country ended in utter disaster. Instead of the looked-for paradise, the invaders found hunger, disease, and the grave. The real settlement of the country was not begun till 1565, when Menendez founded St. Augustine on the eastern coast. About one hundred and thirty years later (1696) Pensacola was founded in western Florida. A few other settlements were started; but the country was rather garrisoned than occupied. The Spanish population is supposed not to have exceeded six or seven thousand when the province was surrendered to Great Britain (1763); and its return to Spanish control twenty years later was probably not followed by a sufficient influx to make up for the deficit in the Spanish element which had resulted from the foregoing evacuation.</p>
<p>In the theory of Spain, as in that of other European powers who acquired territory in America, her colonies ranked as attachments to the crown. Proprietorship in the full sense pertained to the sovereign. He held the primary title to the land, and those who settled upon it were counted as subjects of his unrestricted rule.</p>
<p>The more immediate instrument for exercising the royal pleasure in relation to the colonies was the Council of the Indies. This council, which had its seat at Madrid, possessed supreme jurisdiction over every department of colonial administration. The appointment of officials and the origination of the laws by which they were to be guided fell alike within its province.</p>
<p>In the early stages of discovery and conquest captains-general and governors were the foremost officers in the new settlements.</p>
<blockquote>1 The title of viceroy may have been used in connection with Columbus, but the vice-regal function as a regular and permanent feature of colonial administration was introduced later.</blockquote>
<p>But as great populations mere brought into subjection the system of viceroys was introduced. Privileged with not a little of royal state and holding the chief executive power over a vast stretch of territory, the viceroy enjoyed a sort of princely dignity. In his accountability, however, and his liability to recall, he was made to recognize that he still remained in the relation of subject and servant. The first to be appointed viceroy was Mendoza, who was installed in Mexico in 1535. For a considerable time, Lima, the capital of Peru, was the only rival of Mexico in the honors of viceroyalty, the one being the governmental centre of the provinces to the south of the Isthmus, and the other of those to the north. But in 1718 a third viceroyalty was instituted at Santa Fé de Bogota, and in 1776 a fourth was erected at Buenos Ayres. During most of the colonial era all the provinces were regarded as under the supervision of one viceroy or another. In some regions, however, located at a distance from the seat of the viceroy, his authority was scarcely more than nominal.</p>
<p>Next to the chief executive the most notable authority was the audiencia. This in its central function was a judicial tribunal. But its prerogatives extended somewhat beyond the mere consideration of questions and suits at law, so that its authority served in a measure to limit that of the viceroy. At the height of colonial expansion there were twelve of these tribunals distributed through the provinces.</p>
<p>The conviction that colonies ought above all things to enrich the mother country, in conjunction with the narrow commercial system which dominated the age, led Spain to impose upon the trade and industries of her American States a most damaging and oppressive system of restriction. Everything needed by the colonies had to be imported from the mother country. Trade with foreigners was even reckoned among capital offenses. As for inter-colonial traffic, it was either grievously hampered with restrictions or entirely prohibited.</p>
<p>These restraints, together with a constant burden of taxation, though amounting to a grievance appreciably greater than that which fired the resentment of the English colonies, seemed for a long time to awaken no serious alienation or thought of rebellion. But at length the ambition for freedom and self-government awoke throughout the length and breadth of the Spanish dependencies. The temporary usurpation by Napoleon over the crown of Spain, though resented by the colonies in the first instance, interrupted their connection with the mother country, and prepared them finally to think that they could dispense with the rule of a distant monarch, whether in or out of the regular line. At the same time, the example of the independence and rising prosperity of the Anglo-American States stimulated their courage. The result was that between 1810 and 1822 the standard of revolt was everywhere raised and everywhere carried forward to victory, -in Hayti, or such portion of it as still remained under Spanish rule, in Mexico, in Central America, and in the various provinces of South America. The dependencies of Mexico to the north, as they still continued in connection with her, shared her new political status. Accordingly, since Spain ceded Florida to the United States in 1819, she held in 1822 only the merest fragment of the magnificent domain beyond the Atlantic, over the greater part of which she had ruled for nearly three centuries.</p>
<blockquote>1 Among the works found serviceable in preparing the preceding outline, special mention may be made of H. H. Bancroft's "History of the Pacific States," and R. G. Watson's "Spanish and Portuguese South America."</blockquote>
<p>The era of Portuguese colonization in Brazil dates from the year 1531. The country had indeed been visited earlier by the explorer and the trader; but it was then that the government began in earnest to encourage occupation. While a vast stretch of territory in the interior remained untouched, a tolerably continuous line of settlements extended along the coast by the end of the seventeenth century.</p>
<p>At the initial stage of occupation hereditary captaincies were bestowed upon a number of persons, giving them unrestricted rule over the districts which they undertook to colonize. This arrangement seemed to be too favorable to the despotic instincts of the captains, and in answer to complaints the country was placed under a governor-general in 1549. Between 1580 and 1640 Brazil, sharing the fortune of the mother country, was under the crown of Spain. Before the close of this interval the Dutch had succeeded in gaining a foothold. They were not allowed, however, to enjoy their acquisitions for more than the space of a generation.</p>
<p>The great European upheaval under Napoleon affected Brazil as well as the Spanish dependencies. For a time the unique spectacle was witnessed of the throne being transferred from the European to the American side. On the return of the King to Portugal, Brazil declared for independence (1822-23). But while a separate monarchy was erected, the ruler was taken from the family of the sovereign to whom allegiance had previously been rendered. The house of Braganza still held the sceptre.</p>
<p>In the earlier attempts of the French to colonize America the Huguenots took a conspicuous part. Their great leader Coligny, interested at once to extend the domains of France and to provide an asylum for his co-religionists, gave his encouragement to several expeditions. In the first of these Brazil was the objective point, and a settlement was effected upon an island in the harbor of Rio Janeiro in 1555. Its history was a brief chapter of disasters. Weakened by the faithless conduct of its leader, Villegagnon, who began to persecute the Protestants in the little community, it fell an easy prey to the jealous Portuguese (1558).</p>
<p>A darker fate still befell the settlement in Florida. The small company left in the country in 1562 abandoned their post the next year, to endure upon the sea the combined horrors of famine and exposure in a crazy and unseaworthy craft. The larger community, composed mainly of Huguenots, which was settled on the St. John's river in 1564 and 1565, encountered a foe more merciless than famine and storm. The sword of a Spanish bigot cut off the greater part of them in one of the most cold-blooded massacres which have been perpetrated on this continent. The French commander, the brave and able Ribaut, fell with the rest. Menendez, the agent of the atrocity, took pains to mix his religion with the deed, representing that the butchery was a suitable treatment of an evil and accursed sect. Philip II., it is hardly necessary to state, was well pleased with the work of his subordinate. A despatch to Menendez bore this endorsement, supposed to be in the handwriting of the king: "Say to him that, as to those he has killed, he has done well; and as to those he has saved, they shall be sent to the galleys." To Pius V. also the massacre was no offense. If he did not formally approve it, he did approve its author, addressing him a few years later in very flattering terms as "a much-beloved and dear son in Christ." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World; Fairbanks, History of Florida; Charlevoix, History of New France (Shea's translation).</span></strong></p>
<p>Meanwhile there were Roman Catholics in France who were disposed to regard the work of Menendez as a crime against Frenchmen, and not merely a deserved infliction upon heretics. One of these, Dominique de Gourgues, had the hardihood to plan and to execute (1568) a terrible reprisal upon the Spanish garrisons which had taken the place of the Huguenot colony.</p>
<blockquote>2 That Spanish writers should wish to call Gourgues a "heretic" is explained by their abhorrence of the man. We regard the declaration of Charlevoix, that he never forsook the ancient faith, as deserving much greater credit. Ferland follows Charlevoix, as is seen in his Cours d'Histoire du Canada, i. 55.</blockquote>
<p>The proper era of French colonization began about forty years from the destruction of the settlement in Florida. After sending her fishermen for a century to the northern waters, France at length concluded that it was worth while to occupy some portion of the vast domain which had been discovered. Beginning in Acadia, or Nova Scotia, the bearers of the French standard passed up the St. Lawrence to Quebec and Montreal; then penetrated through the lake region, and finally advanced through the Mississippi valley to the Gulf of Mexico. It was in 1682 that the intrepid La Salle, by pushing his boat into the waters of the Gulf, solved the mystery of the great river. By the end of the century the settler had followed the explorer. France stood sentinel at the mouth of the Mississippi as well as at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Her claims covered the heart of the continent.</p>
<p>Huguenot patronage had its share in this later enterprise which created a New France, as well as in the abortive efforts at colonization which had preceded. It was under the patent which the Huguenot De Monts obtained from Henry IV. that the oldest permanent settlement of the French in America was effected (1605), that of Port Royal- now Annapolis--in Acadia.</p>
<blockquote>1 This is reckoned as the oldest settlement. It should be noticed, however, that it was abandoned temporarily (1607-1610), though the buildings were left standing and were reoccupied on the return of colonists.</blockquote>
<p>It was also under the auspices of De Monts that Champlain established a colony at Quebec in 1608. New France, however, was not destined to be a home or refuge for the Huguenots. Their worship was soon put under the ban, and they were given to understand that in the American domains of the "Very Christian King" only savages and orthodox Romanists were to be tolerated. In the period of the dragonnades tens of thousands went to other countries, but none were admitted through the barred gates of Canada and Louisiana. This exclusion, for the time being, saved the minds of the untutored Indians from being infected with Calvinistic heresy; but the ultimate result of the intolerant policy was not so happy, since thereby the country was made a ready prey to the Protestant rule of Great Britain. Thus have judged some of the French Canadians themselves. Speaking of the period of the great exodus in the reign of Louis XIV., Garneau remarks: "What a mighty advantage would have accrued to New France, if a licensed emigration of the Protestant population of Old France had taken place, at this time, to Canada and the newly explored regions of the West! Other inimical and rival countries had not then been enriched and strengthened by what the French nation thus lost, both in contemporary and coming times; nor had we, Gallo-Canadians, been reduced to defend foot to foot, against an alien race, our language, our laws, and our nationality." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">History of Canada, i. 272 (Bell's translation).</span></strong> The French colonies in their early stage were little more than appendages to trading companies. They were frontier posts subordinate to the convenience and profit of those who had the monopoly of the trade in peltries. The cultivation of the land was a secondary consideration, and but little pains were taken to foster the growth of the population.</p>
<p>Even to the end of the French jurisdiction the fur trade held an unhealthy pre-eminence, and the population remained miserably inadequate to defend so broad a stretch of territory. But in time efforts began to be made to reinforce the settlements and to place them upon a better basis. In 1663 we find the Governor of Canada advising the King to send a large body of soldiers into the province, who, after being employed in subduing the Iroquois and driving the Dutch out of New York, should be given lands and settled in the country. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Parkman, The Old Régime in Canada.</span></strong></p>
<p>This scheme in its full extent was not attempted. But from that time the French government felt the necessity of building up and extending the colonies. As the emigration to New France rarely took place by families, shiploads of maidens were sent out from time to time, and the unmarried settlers were well-nigh coerced into a selection of wives, very considerable deprivations being imposed upon those who dared to defy sovereign authority and to remain single.</p>
<p>As an encouragement to the occupation of land a species of feudalism was transplanted to Canada. Large domains were granted to such as would promise to improve them within a given time. To meet this condition, the seignior, or holder of the grant, was under constraint to parcel out his lands among a number of tenants, who paid him a moderate rent, and acknowledged certain legal obligations to him, such as patronizing his mill, and setting apart for him a percentage of the fish caught in waters bordering his domain. In the more trivial causes the seignior had judicial power over his tenants. But this prerogative appears not to have been much exercised, and as the seignior himself was directly amenable to the colonial government, he had little of the relative independence which pertained to the feudal lord in mediæval times. The system survived the transition to British rule. Down to the year 1854 many estates in Canada were held under feudal tenure.</p>
<p>In the colonial administration the chief officials were the governor-general and the intendant. The latter exercised important judicial functions, and besides served the king as a kind of spy upon the governor. These two, in conjunction with a few councilors, had the whole control of affairs.</p>
<p>The general cast of government was that of a paternal absolutism. Popular sovereignty was entirely ignored. A fair degree of nursing was expended on the people. They received, however, no training in the faculty of self-rule. The exigencies of their position made them hardy soldiers; but in the qualities which are needed for a free, durable, and progressive commonwealth, their English neighbors were rapidly outstripping them.</p>
<p>In advancing to the possession of the great waterways, France seemed to be grasping the keys of the continent. Before the construction of railroads such means of communication were of immense import. But there were great obstacles in the way of following up the advantage. The hostility of the Iroquois, early provoked by the alliance of Champlain with their enemies, not only raised a formidable barrier in the direction of the Hudson, but carried back a tide of desolation into Canada. Then again, as has been indicated, colonization was not fostered on a scale at all comparable with the national opportunity. At the middle of the eighteenth century the English colonists outnumbered the French ten to one, and during most of the previous part of their history the ratio was doubtless equally unfavorable. To offset the disparity the French put forth special efforts to gain the alliance of the Indian tribes. Their missionaries were continually utilized to this end. Considerable success rewarded their pains; but it was a kind of success which worked toward future overthrow. The undisguised way in which the French colonists spurred on, and co-operated with, the savages in their murderous raids upon the New England towns enkindled a deep animosity, and beget the conviction that the conquest of Canada was a necessary antecedent to peace and security.</p>
<blockquote>1 Apologists for the Canadians have been inclined to allege that the English in New York instigated the Iroquois to the great massacre which took place at La Chine and its neighborhood in 1689. The allegation is not unnatural. There can be no doubt that the New Yorkers, at one time and another, took pains to foster in the Iroquois a hostile attitude toward the French and their allies. But with this massacre they had no responsible connection. The immediate cause of the atrocity was the treachery of a Huron chief, the Rat, who wished to break off the treaty between the French and the Iroquois, as being dangerous to the Hurons. No document verifies the accusation against the English in New York, and it is moreover opposed by known facts. Parkman says: "I find nothing in contemporary documents to support the accusation. Denonville wrote to the minister, after the Rat's treachery came to the light, that Andros had forbidden the Iroquois to attack the colony. Immediately after the attack at La Chine, the Iroquois sachems, in a conference with the agents of New England, declared that 'we did not make war on the French at the persuasion of our brethren at Albany; for we did not so much as acquaint them of our intention till fourteen days after our army had begun their march.'" (Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV.) But even if New York, acting without concert with the New England authorities, had been guilty in this instance, it would not have justified the sacking of peaceful hamlets in Massachusetts and Maine. That some of the missionary priests were immediately engaged in urging on these cruel raids is far from being a feature of relief.</blockquote>
<p>The first great step toward the conquest was made in 1710. At this time Acadia, which had previously been taken and restored at intervals, was taken to be permanently retained. By the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 this region was surrendered to England, together with Newfoundland and the Hudson Bay territory. A little more than forty years later (1755) the French element in Acadia was much reduced by the forced embarkation of some thousands, and their distribution among the English colonies.</p>
<blockquote>1 This violent dealing cannot be justified. The expulsion of the Acadians, in the manner in which it was accomplished, was a cruel deed. At the same time there is a poor excuse for inserting the fancies of the poet in the place of history, and depicting the Acadians as a harmless, innocent folk who gave no occasion for the blow that fell upon them. Before the English occupation they had not exhibited a specially peaceable and exemplary disposition. After the transfer of their country to England, they were disposed to claim the neutral position which was conceded to them for a time, as a finality, and refused to take the unconditional oath of allegiance. "There can be no room to doubt," says Beamish Murdock, "that such a neutrality as had been suffered but never sanctioned by the British crown was wholly incompatible with its just righter of sovereignty." (History of Nova Scotia, ii.,287. Compare C.C. Smith in Critical and Narrative History of America, vol. v.) Parkman, while confessing the harshness of a measure which punished the innocent with the guilty, does not hesitate to say that "many of the sufferers had provoked their fate, and deserved it." (Count Frontenac and New France, p. 190.)</blockquote>
<p>In 1763, the valor of Montcalm, having failed to save Quebec, the whole of Canada passed under British rule, together with a large share of French territory to the south of the lakes. As, at the same time, Louisiana, including the great region of the Mississippi valley, west of the river, was ceded to Spain, France completely relinquished her empire in the western world. Louisiana, it is true, was restored to France in the time of the first Napoleon, but it was only to be passed over at once to the United States for a specified sum. This occurred in 1803.</p>
<p>In acquiring Canada, England obtained a province that was loyal enough after a fashion, but one nevertheless that refused to be anglicized. From that time to this the French Canadians have shown a singular indisposition to be anything else than French Canadians, Immediately after the conquest it seems to have been presumed that they might be treated in all respects as British subjects, and English law was declared to be in force in the province. But it was found impracticable to make so great a transition on the instant. By the Quebec Act of 1774 French laws were allowed to rule in questions of property and civil rights, while English law was to apply in criminal cases. At the same time Roman Catholics were granted the right to practise their religion and to levy tithes upon themselves for its support. By the constitution of 1791 a still further concession was made to the French element, in that a division was effected between Lower and Upper Canada, and each province was allowed to have its own legislature. As the French greatly preponderated in Lower Canada, this arrangement was agreeable to their preference for a separate and distinct position.</p>
<p>The overthrow of French rule on the St. Lawrence doubtless prepared the way for the overthrow of British rule in the regions to the south. Being relieved of the presence of an aggressive rival the colonies of English descent felt free to present a bold front to the mother country in demanding what they esteemed to be their rights. They could now contend with England without incurring the danger of falling into the hands of France. Some of the French statesmen of the era were keen enough to see the probable course of events, and to pre-diet the revolution which followed so speedily upon the retirement of their nation from its colonial possessions. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Bancroft, History of the United States, ii. 564; iii. 75.</span></strong></p>
<p>English colonization ran parallel with the French. Two years after De Monts had settled Annapolis, and one year before Champlain had founded Quebec, the nucleus of a rival dominion had been provided at Jamestown in Virginia (1607).</p>
<p>In each case alike success was preceded by disaster. The colony which Sir Waiter Raleigh planted at Roanoke (1585-1590) was as completely swept away as the Huguenot settlement in Florida had been twenty years earlier. Nor was the patron of the English enterprise more happy in his personal fortunes than the pioneers of French colonization. While the sword of Menendez shed the blood of Ribaut, and Coligny fell a victim to royal jealousy and religious fanaticism, Raleigh was kept in prison for many years, and finally sent to the block by the mean-spirited James I.</p>
<p>The energy and genius of Raleigh kindled a spirit of enterprise in Richard Hakluyt and others, that issued in 1606 in an organized effort to secure for English rule the middle portion of the continent, which then was called Virginia. In response to a petition for this end, King James granted in that year a patent for the territory between the 34th and 45th degrees of latitude. The patentees, while subject to the instructions of the crown, were invested with a general superintendence over the country to be settled. They were expected to form two colonies, one in the southern and another in the northern part of their grant. The patentees connected with the former project came to be designated as the London Company, and it was under their auspices that a settlement was effected at Jamestown.</p>
<p>The adventurers or patentees for the northern colony did not meet with so speedy a success. The colony planted by Popham at the mouth of the Kennebec (1607, 1608) had but a brief existence. The earliest permanent settlement in New England, that at Plymouth in 1620, did not in strictness take place under the authority of either of the English companies. While the Pilgrims obtained their patent from the London Company, they settled where it had no validity, New England being outside of the jurisdiction of that company.</p>
<p>The same year that the Pilgrims landed a reorganization of the adventurers of the Northern Colony of Virginia was effected. As newly constituted the company was called the "Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering, and governing of New England in America." It was under a grant from this Council for New England that the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay made their settlement in 1628 and the following years. The Pilgrims at [New] Plymouth secured themselves in the possession of their district by a patent from the same source (1621, 1630). The claims of Ferdinando Gorges to territories in Maine rested likewise primarily upon grants from the Council for New England (1622, 1635), as did also those of John Mason and his heirs to the region of New Hampshire (1621, 1622, 1635). The Connecticut colony (1635, 1636) was an overflow from the large Puritan population which had emigrated to Massachusetts Bay, and its principal settlements on the Connecticut river were made under the protection of the older colony. But it was deemed prudent to found a claim upon a patent which was understood to have emanated from the Council of New England, and which passed from the Earl of Warwick to Lord Say and Sele. The New Haven colony, founded in 1638, and the Providence and Rhode Island plantations (1636, 1638) held their lands in the first instance by purchase from the Indians, and depended for continuous possession upon the sanction or connivance of the crown.</p>
<p>In actual settlement New England may be regarded as having been in advance of New York. For while the Dutch kept up a connection with the region of the Hudson after its discovery in 1609, for a number of years they employed no other means of occupation than the establishment of trading-posts. It was first in 1623, under the auspices of the West India Company, which had been chartered by the States General two years previously, that an agricultural colonization was seriously attempted. Even from that date the influx was not rapid. The population of New Netherland was small compared with that of New England when in 1664 it passed under English rule.</p>
<p>After New England, Maryland was the next theatre of a permanent English settlement. The patent which assigned the country to George Calvert (Lord Baltimore) was prepared in 1632. Before it passed the great seal Sir George died. The patent, however, remained intact to his son Cecil, and under its provisions Maryland was settled in 1634.</p>
<p>The royal grant which bestowed the Carolinas upon a company of English gentlemen dates from the year 1663. Shortly before this time the northern part of the Carolina coast, or the Albemarle region, had begun to be occupied by emigrants from Virginia. In 1665 a settlement was made on Cape Fear River. Five years later a colony was established in South Carolina. In 1680 Charleston became the chief seat of this branch of the Carolina province.</p>
<p>New Jersey became a field for English settlement at about the same time as Carolina. During the preceding years it had been reckoned by the Dutch as a part of New Netherland, and in 1655 they had given a practical indication of a disposition to sustain their claim by bringing into subjection the Swedish colony which had been planted on the Delaware seventeen years before. Accordingly when the Dutch surrendered their possessions to the English, New Jersey was transferred along with New York (1664). It was, however, at once made a separate province, or rather two provinces. By grant of the Duke of York, to whom the whole territory of New Netherland had been consigned, the Jersey portion was divided between Sir George Cartaret and Lord Berkeley. Under their patronage an English population began forthwith to be established in the country.</p>
<p>Pennsylvania was given to William Penn in 1681 in payment of a debt which the crown had incurred to his father, Admiral Penn. The next year the newly constituted province, which afforded a welcome asylum to the Quakers, received the first company of colonists. The territory constituting the present state of Delaware was reckoned in the grant of Penn. After 1703 it had its own legislative assembly, though continuing under the proprietary of Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>The founding of Georgia was the latest example of English colonization (the temporary occupation of Florida excepted) in this country. In its motive it was one of the most worthy in the list of colonial enterprises. As devised and conducted by Oglethorpe it was designed to provide a refuge for imprisoned debtors, whose incompetency was rather their misfortune than their crime, as also for other classes of the unfortunate or oppressed. The charter for the colony was granted in 1732, and early in the following year the settlement at Savannah was begun.</p>
<p>In considering the political status of the English colonies one is struck with the manifest contrast which they present to the Spanish and the French communities in America. While in theory the first were as truly appendages of the crown as the others, the offspring of its grants and the immediate subjects of its unrestricted sovereignty, they were in fact very differently circumstanced. They exhibited in their political condition a variety, a movement, and a freedom not to be found in the Spanish or the French dependencies. These traits, especially in the earlier portion of the colonial period, were due in part to the procedure of the English government, -- to the measure in which it left the management of the American settlements to patentees and colonists. But from the first it was due also in part to the character of the colonists. Their independent spirit in no small proportion of instances was the motive to emigration, and that spirit was not likely to lie dormant in the free air of the wilderness. It grew and throve, so that when the English government was ready to lay a stricter hand upon the colonies, it was found that they could not be moulded at will. Where outward conformity was rendered to the requisitions of throne or parliament, a spirit of independence was still manifest back of the conformity.</p>
<p>Three different forms of government were represented in the colonies, -- the charter, the proprietary, and the royal. Several of the colonies had experience of two different forms, since the cancelling of a charter or of a proprietary right brought in the direct control of the crown.</p>
<p>New England was the proper theatre of the charter governments. Virginia, it is true, was settled under the provisions of a charter, and the powers conveyed in the second instrument, or that of 1609, were large. But it was the London Company, not the colony which held the charter. The company indeed treated the colony with a good degree of liberality, and in the concessions which it made laid a foundation for self-rule. These concessions, however, were granted simply as a matter of policy and good-will. With the cancelling of the charter in 1624 Virginia fell into the rank of a royal province, over which the governor was the appointee of the crown. This was its political status down to the American Revolution, with the exception of an interval in the commonwealth era.</p>
<blockquote>1 At a later date a long step was taken toward bringing Virginia under the proprietary régime. In 1673 Charles II. gave the whole territory to Arlington and Culpepper. The enormous grant, however, while it included great privileges, such as the entire church patronage of the colony, seems not to have involved a transfer of the government to the said lords. Culpepper, it is true, became governor a few years later,but by a special appointment from the king. The territorial right, too, as the case was managed, did not long continue in its full extent.</blockquote>
<p>But while in theory immediately dependent upon the crown, the Virginia colony nurtured a preference for self-rule, and was as well prepared as any of the American sisterhood for the era of independence.</p>
<p>The charter of Massachusetts Bay was made out in 1629 to an English corporation under the name of the "Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." In this instrument powers were conveyed for electing the officers needed in the government of the colony, and for making laws and ordinances not repugnant to those of England. The same year that the charter was granted a plan was devised to transfer it, or the whole administration under it, to the soil of New England. The offices were filled with those who engaged to reside in the new country. Thus from the start the colony of Massachusetts Bay was in a large sense a self-governed community. Rhode Island was equally favored. The charter which Roger Williams obtained in 1644, and under which the several settlements in that region were united two or three years later, was remarkably liberal. The colony was really exempted from the obligation to conform its laws to those of England, it being required only to secure such conformity as was agreeable to the nature and constitution of <em>the place and the people</em>. It was one of the anomalies of the reign of Charles II. that he renewed substantially the provisions of this charter (1663). From the same king Connecticut received a charter (1662) scarcely less generous in the measure of self-rule which it conferred. At the same time the territory of Connecticut was extended so as to include that of the New Haven colony. After some show of reluctance New Haven consented to the union. Plymouth never possessed a royal charter. It ranged nevertheless with its neighbors as regards the actual management of its affairs till its union with Massachusetts (1691). New Hampshire and Maine, being disputed territory, had during their earlier history no very definite political status. The claims of Massachusetts over the former were settled adversely, and in 1679 New Hampshire was made a royal province. As for Maine, by purchase from the heirs of Gorges Massachusetts secured a title in that quarter (1677), that is, to the portion between the Piscataqua and Kennebec rivers. In general, it may be said that New England, during the whole middle portion of the seventeenth century was virtually a cluster of self-governed republics.</p>
<p>Among these free states, community of feeling and interest led Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven to enter into a species of confederation (1643). The arrangement had considerable significance for New England affairs till the consolidation of New Haven with Connecticut (1662-1665). In their internal administration these colonies were closely akin. The stamp of Puritanism was upon them a11. Their people were generally hardy, frugal, and enterprising. Education was cared for as in no other colonies. As early as 1636-38, fifty years before a like enterprise was executed in any other English settlement, Harvard College was founded. Illiteracy among those born in the country was comparatively unknown. Social life bore traces of an austere spirit. The laws were stringent. Yet they constituted no such strait-jacket as those have been wont to imagine who have based their notions on the fabulous "blue laws" of New Haven. In no part of New England was there so near an approach to a genuine Draconian code as that under which Virginia was placed for an interval in her early history. Compared with contemporary European codes those of Massachusetts and Connecticut were unquestionably humane.</p>
<p>The closing part of the Stuart era was a time of gloom and disaster for the New England colonies. Charles II. canceled the charter of Massachusetts in 1684. James II. was minded to treat those of Rhode Island and Connecticut in like manner. New England was joined with New York under the supervision of a royal governor. The former system of self-rule was effectually swept away, and James was prepared to exemplify the theory that colonies are only appendages of the crown, when the Revolution of 1688 made him an exile from his kingdom. With the accession of William III. Rhode Island and Connecticut resumed their charters. Massachusetts, however, failed to recover the full measure of her liberties. Under the new charter which was granted her in 1691 the governor and deputy-governor were appointees of the crown. From this date to the Declaration of Independence there were no other colonies which ranked with Rhode Island and Connecticut in respect of political privileges.</p>
<p>The examples of proprietary governments were Maryland, Carolina, including both the northern and the southern province, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania along with Delaware. Georgia does not properly fall under this description, the trustees for founding that colony having rather the character of temporary managers than that of owners. Their right ended after twenty years, and Georgia then assumed the status of a royal colony. By a royal charter given in 1639 Ferdinando Gorges was made Lord Proprietor of the Province of Maine, with full powers of government. But his trans-Atlantic kingdom never became much more than a parchment affair.</p>
<p>In Maryland - the earliest example of the proprietary government--we have that type presented in all its length and breadth. By the terms of the charter Lord Baltimore was made the real sovereign of Maryland, the owner of the land, and the head of the legislative, judicial, and military systems within its limits; and what was secured to him personally was secured also to his heirs. In much the same terms Pennsylvania was conveyed to William Penn and his heirs. With intervals of interruption this form of government continued in these colonies till the war of Independence. In the two provinces of New Jersey it had a much shorter history. Proprietary rule ceased in them in 1702, after which they were united to form a royal province. In the Carolinas the rule of the proprietaries was practically overthrown in 1719, and ten years later their right was wholly canceled. From the latter date North and South Carolina held each the status of a province under the crown. In general the proprietaries acted the part of liberal sub-monarchs and granted their subjects a fair share of political privileges. Those who held the Carolinas seem to have given the most ground of complaint; not so much that they wished to rule despotically as that they had an inordinate desire to illustrate political speculations. Having gotten up, with the aid of John Locke, an elaborate scheme of official dignities and class distinctions, they wished to make the colonists the mediums of displaying its merits. Thus, with a perseverance worthy of a better cause, they pressed their "Fundamental Constitutions" upon a people to whom they were in no wise suited.</p>
<p>New York after its surrender to the English remained in the condition of a royal colony,</p>
<blockquote>Technically speaking, there was an era of proprietary rule, but the proprietor, the Duke of York, was heir to the crown, and on his accession New York fell into the ordinary relation of a royal colony.</blockquote>
<p>and for the greater part of the time enjoyed about the same political privileges as were conceded to Massachusetts under the charter of William III. During the period of Dutch control the most distinctive feature in its government was the full-blown feudal system which was introduced under the direction of the West India Company.</p>
<p>In the internal government of the colonies generally there were three main factors, the governor, the governor's council, and the assembly chosen by the people, the second being the prototype of the State senate.</p>
<p>Such was the political school in which were trained the communities that were to found the great republic of the western world. Separate units, with different antecedents and points of obvious dissimilarity, they felt the connecting bond of a common lore for civil liberty. Hence the attempts of England to manacle their industries, to control their trade, and to impose taxes upon them without their consent, provoked a common resentment, which at length issued in a united declaration of independence.</p>
<p>When we speak of a common resentment and consequent uprising, the expression must be taken with a qualification. Recent writers justly notice the fact that the Revolutionary War was not altogether the war of one country against another. There were Tories in this country, and in some regions they formed no small percentage of the population. There were friends of the struggling colonists in England, leaders in Parliament who openly espoused their cause, and counted their victory in America a necessary safeguard for the cause of liberty in England. The war was a struggle of party with party, of the party holding liberal principles in both countries with the conservative upholders of arbitrary government in both.</p>
<p>The majority in America had sore need of the help of the minority in England. The achievement of independence was a desperate enterprise. It was not, however, one whit more desperate than the work of construction which was undertaken immediately afterward. Men who had no special motive to prophesy evil declared at the time that such diverse political units as were the colonies, scattered along such an extent of territory, could by no possibility be compacted into a stable government. That the task should have been successfully achieved shows that there were statesmen in the field quite above the rank of the ordinary manufacturers of paper constitutions. In truth, the nation which blesses the Divine Providence that gave a Washington and others to lead through the smoke and din of battle may well pour out equal thanksgiving for the Madison, the Hamilton, the Washington and others who, in the time of peace, wrought out the Federal Constitution and secured its adoption. No single group of statesmen in any country has ever reared a nobler monument of political wisdom.</p>
<p>That the unique structure, however, had one serious blemish was not hid even from those by whose hands it was shaped. They reluctantly admitted the blemish because they considered it impassible otherwise to unite the colonies into a single nation. Thus resulted the compromise with slavery, --a postponing of trouble to fall in tenfold volume upon a later generation, which may have had, however, more than tenfold strength to bear the ordeal.</p>
<p>To one who knows how firm a hold slavery had upon the whole South before the middle of this century, a surprise can hardly fail to come, as he reads for the first time the numerous declarations and protests against it which were put on record at the close of the colonial period.</p>
<p>The traffic in human flesh had indeed been practised with little compunction in all the colonies. It was recognized in their several statute-books. Rhode Island, it is true, passed a law in 1652 limiting the enslavement of Negroes, as well as of other bondmen, to a period of ten years. But it cannot be said that the law was steadily enforced. The northern colonies as well as the southern had their slaves, though in much smaller numbers in proportion to their population. For any colony to have excluded African bondmen would have been in direct contravention of the will of the mother country. It was a favorite item in the mercantile policy of England to keep an open slave market in her American dependencies. Even before the famous clause,-the so-called <em>asiento,</em> -- in the treaty of Utrecht, (1713) had given her a relative monopoly of the slave traffic, she would not tolerate a legislative restriction of it in any province under the crown. Of course after the enormous extension of the traffic had fostered a corresponding greed, she was still less inclined to admit restriction. It was but a continuation of the policy which had been pursued in the preceding years when in 1770 the King sent an instruction to the Governor of Virginia, commanding him, "upon pain of the highest displeasure, to assent to no law by which the importation of slaves should be in any respect prohibited or obstructed." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Bancroft, History of the United States, iii. 410.</span></strong></p>
<p>This governmental fostering of an inhuman traffic had begun, not far from the date of the above instruction, to provoke criticism on both sides of the Atlantic. Among the colonies there was a marked quickening of conscience on the subject, beginning near the middle of the century, -when the Quakers inaugurated their effective opposition to slavery,--and showing tokens of increasing vitality till the adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1789. In the northern colonies the small profit of the institution provided a favorable ground for the spread of the moral antipathy against it which some of the more generous and thoughtful minds entertained. In this quarter, therefore, the struggle for independence was the signal for the legal abolition of slavery. The same era of enlarged thought upon the essential rights of men called forth also many adverse comments on the system of human bondage from the southern communities. The leading statesmen of Virginia -- Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, and Washington --all spoke against it, some of them in very positive terms. Jefferson denounced it in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, and afterwards characterized it in terms which might well-nigh have satisfied the zeal of the typical abolitionist. The first assembly of colonial representatives, in 1774, passed a resolution against the further importation of slaves, and in 1787 the proposition to exclude slavery from the northwestern territories received the assent of a11 the southern States. In fact only two States, South Carolina and Georgia, seem to have been at that time thoroughly wedded to slavery.</p>
<blockquote>1 For sixteen years Negro slavery was excluded from Georgia. The motive for the regulation may have been considerations of prudence as well as humanitarian zeal. At any rate, shortly after the repeal of the restriction, the slave code of Georgia indicated very little tenderness for the bondman. A slave could be put to death for burning a stack of rice or barrel of pitch. Striking a white person entailed the same penalty in case of a third offense, or even for a first offense if the assault resulted in a grievous wound. Teaching slaves to write was strictly prohibited.</blockquote>
<p>But for the necessity of conciliating them, it is probable that no recognition of this form of human oppression would have been allowed to mar the constitution of the republic.</p>
<blockquote>2 Some of the principal works consulted in connection with the English colonies are the following: Bancroft, History of the United States; Narrative and critical History of America, edited by Justin Winsor; Palfrey, History of New England; C. W. Elliott, The New England History; S. G. Arnold, History of the State of Rhode Island; J. R. Brodhead, History of the State of New york; J. T. Scharf, History of Maryland; E. D. Neill, The Colonization of America, The Founders of Maryland, and Virginia Carolorum; F. L. Hawks, History of North Carolina; C. C. Jones, History of Georgia; John Fiske, The Beginnings of New England; also, the Critical Period of American History; J. A. Doyle, The English in America.</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-39927646455103394472012-03-29T19:33:00.000-07:002019-09-03T00:02:14.096-07:00Ireland From The Revolution To The Union<p><strong>Ireland From The Revolution To The Union (1691-1800)</strong></p>
<p>The Revolution left Ireland a conquered country. The hopes which had been awakened during the administration of Tyrconnel, of throwing off English supremacy, rooting up the Protestant interest, and driving the Protestant land-owners out of the country were doomed to bitterest disappointment. The Irish soldiers who marched out of Limerick in 1691, and took ship for France, were right in judging that there was a dismal prospect before their country. "When the wild cry of the women, who stood watching their departure was hushed, the silence of death settled down upon Ireland. For a hundred years the country remained at peace, but it was the peace of despair. No Englishman who loves what is noble in the English temper can tell without sorrow and shame the story of that time of guilt. The work of oppression, it is true, was done, not directly by England, but by the Irish Protestants; and the cruelty of their rule sprang in great measure from the sense of danger and the atmosphere of panic in which the Protestants lived. But if thoughts such as these relieve the guilt of those who oppressed, they leave the fact of oppression as dark as before. . . . The conquered people, in Swift's bitter words of contempt, became 'hewers of wood and drawers of water,' to their conquerors." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Green, History of the English People, iv. 53, 54.</span></strong> Full as much indulgence, no doubt, was granted to Irish Romanists as was commonly allowed at the same date to Protestants in Roman Catholic countries. Men were burned alive in Portugal and Spain, and hanged in France, on the score of religious opinions and practice, in the first half of the eighteenth century. But oppression in one quarter is no adequate justification for it in another.</p>
<p>Probably nearly three fourths of the population of Ireland at the time of the Revolution were Romanists. The deprivations, therefore, that were effected fell here upon the body of the people, and not upon a mere fragment, as was the case in England. In no less than four respects they were subjected to heavy disabilities before the law; namely, in property, in political rights, in education, and in religious privileges. About a million acres of land were reckoned as forfeited. Restrictions were imposed upon the power of Roman Catholics to acquire real estate, or to bequeath the same according to their choice. Romish parents could be compelled to make allowances for Protestant children. If the eldest son turned Protestant, the estate was attached to him, so that it could not be mortgaged or conveyed by the Romish father. Gun-makers and sword-cutlers must disavow Romanism and engage not to receive Romish apprentices. In any trade, except the linen industry, a Roman Catholic could not have more than two apprentices. On the offer of five pounds he might be compelled to part with his horse. As Romish lawyers were efficient aids in the evasion of these regulations, laws were passed to the effect that no one should act as a solicitor who had not given adequate proof of his Protestantism. Besides these restrictions were others quite as fruitful of misery to the Irish people as any of those mentioned, to the Irish people as a whole; for the laws by which England sought to protect her products against Irish competition were supremely adapted to impoverish Protestants and Romanists alike. The shipping interest of Ireland was destroyed, and Swift was guilty of slight exaggeration when he said: "The conveniency of ports and harbors, which nature bestowed so liberally on this kingdom, is of no more use to us than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in a dungeon." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 227.</span></strong></p>
<p>as respects political privileges, the Roman Catholics were little better than aliens in their own country throughout the larger part of the eighteenth century. They were disqualified for office, limited in the exercise of suffrage, and finally excluded from its exercise altogether. They were also barred out of the army and the navy.</p>
<p>Laws were passed excluding Roman Catholics from the University. They could not found schools at home, send their children abroad for education without special permit, act as tutors, or even fulfill the office of guardians. Schools were indeed provided for them after 1733, but these were offensively sectarian in character; in fact, manifestly designed to effect the conversion of those who should partake of their benefits.</p>
<p>As for the Romish religion,the legislation contemplated its speedy extinction. In the reign of William III. it was enacted "that all Popish archbishops, vicars-general, deans, Jesuits, monks, friars, and all other regular Popish clergy, and all Papists exercising any ecclesiastical jurisdiction, should depart out of the kingdom before the 1st of May, 1698, on pain of imprisonment till transportation; and that, returning after transportation, they should be guilty of high treason. With respect to any Popish ecclesiastics not actually in the kingdom, it prohibited any such to come in, on pain of twelve months' imprisonment, to be followed by transportation, and of high treason if returning after having been transported. Penalties, varying according to the number of times when the offense should be committed, from twenty to forty pounds, and the forfeiture of lands and goods for life, were enacted against any person who should knowingly harbor, relieve, conceal, or entertain such Popish clergy. It was further enacted that no person, upon pain of forfeiting ten pounds, should bury any dead in any suppressed monastery, abbey, or convent that is not made use of for celebrating divine service, according to the liturgy of the Church of Ireland by the law established, or within the precincts thereof. And that all justices of the peace should, from time to time, issue their warrants for apprehending and committing all Popish ecclesiastics whatsoever that should remain in the kingdom contrary to the act; and for suppressing all monasteries, friaries, nunneries, or other Popish fraternities or societies. A statute was also enacted for preventing the mischiefs which had resulted from the intermarrying of Protestants with Papists." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Richard Mant, History of the Church of Ireland, ii. 73, 74.</span></strong> In the reign of George II. the law declared marriages of this kind null, and made the priest who should venture to solemnize them liable to hanging.</p>
<p>The above enactments, it will be observed, did not prohibit the secular clergy resident in the country from exercising a large part of their functions, but by excluding all influx from abroad, and all increase by new ordinations, it aimed to prevent their having any successors.</p>
<p>In the reign of Anne the resident priests were required to be registered and to subscribe the oaths of allegiance and abjuration, the oaths being so constructed that they were obliged to acknowledge the rightfulness of the existing government as opposed to the claims of the Stuarts, as well as their willingness to accept its rule. Out of upwards of a thousand priests only about thirty complied with these requirements. Those refusing compliance could exercise the priestly office only in secret or by connivance of the authorities.</p>
<p>As the nature of the case dictated, much of this legislation was ineffective. There was no power in Ireland adequate to execute the intolerant statutes against a majority of the people. The laws, no doubt, worked toward the political and social degradation of the Roman Catholics; but so far as they were aimed against their religion they were for the most part a failure. It is recorded, indeed, that about a thousand Roman Catholics, many of whom had considerable fortunes, came into the Established Church between the years 1703 and 1738, and that the number of accessions had risen before the last decade of the century to four thousand and eight hundred. But converts gained by worldly considerations were a poor acquisition, and the paltry influx was vastly outweighed by the bitterness fostered in the great mass who adhered to their old faith. Wesley expressed both the fact and the philosophy of the case when he said, "At least ninety-nine in a hundred of the native Irish remain in the religion of their forefathers. . . . Nor is it any wonder that those who are born Papists generally live and die such, when Protestants can find no better ways to convert them than penal laws and Acts of Parliament." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Journal, Aug. 15, 1747.</span></strong></p>
<p>The enactments against the presence of the bishops and the monks were never genuinely executed, and soon were openly discarded. Early in the reign of George II. Archbishop King wrote: "The Papists have more bishops in Ireland than the Protestants have, and twice at least as many priests; their priories and nunneries are public; it is in vain to pass laws against them, for the justices of the peace are no ways inclined to put such laws in execution." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Mant, ii 471.</span></strong> Before the middle of the eighteenth century the laws designed to limit and ultimately to abolish the practice of the Roman Catholic religion were virtually obsolete. It was not, however, till the latter part of the century that the statute book began to assume a more favorable aspect. A beginning was made in 1778 toward the repeal of discriminations against Romish subjects. Still farther advance was made in 1782 and 1793, though up to 1829 somewhat was still wanting to complete the legal emancipation of Irish Roman Catholics.</p>
<p>The condition of the Romish population was evidently very unfavorable to religious intelligence. An overwhelming majority of the people could neither read nor write. Gross superstitions abounded and found a profuse manifestation, especially in connection with places of pilgrim resort. Not a few of the priests were extremely ignorant. Drunkenness was far from being an unknown vice among them. It makes a curious impression respecting the drinking customs of the times, when we read that a diocesan chapter, wishing to raise a barrier against inebriety, passed a rule to the effect that "no priest in any one place, and at one time, was to drink more than a naggin [two glasses] of whiskey undiluted, or double that quantity in punch." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Killen, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, ii. 292.</span></strong></p>
<p>Among the more noteworthy events in the history of Irish Romanism in the eighteenth century was a declaration of principles prepared toward the end of the reign of George II. by O'Keefe, Bishop of Kildare, and republished in 1792 as an authentic expression of the sentiments of Irish Roman Catholics. It contains among other statements the following: "We have been charged with holding as an article of our belief that the Pope, with or without the authority of a General Council, or that certain ecclesiastical powers, can acquit and absolve us, before God, from our oath of allegiance, or even from the just oaths and contracts entered into between man and man. Now we utterly renounce, abjure, and deny that we hold or maintain any such belief, as being contrary to the peace and happiness of society, inconsistent with morality, and, above all, repugnant to the true spirit of the Catholic religion. We declare that it is not an article of the Catholic faith, neither are we thereby required to believe or profess that the Pope is infallible, or are we bound to obey any order in its own nature immoral, though the Pope, or any ecclesiastical power, should issue or direct such order; but, on the contrary, we hold that it would be sinful in us to pay any respect or obedience thereto." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Henry Parnell, History of the Penal Laws; Killen, Eccl. Hist. of Ireland, ii 279.</span></strong> This surely collides in some points both with papal practice and Vatican teaching.</p>
<p>Decisions agreeing with the foregoing declaration, at least in part, were near the same time presented from several Roman Catholic Universities. At the instance of Pitt the three following questions had been submitted: "(1) Has the Pope, or have the cardinals, or has any body of men, or any individual of the Church of Rome, any civil authority, power, jurisdiction, or pre-eminence whatsoever within the realm of England? (2) Can the Pope or cardinals, or any body of men, or any individual of the Church of Rome, absolve his Majesty's subjects from their oath of allegiance, upon any pretext whatsoever? (3) Is there any principle in the tenets of the Catholic faith by which Catholics are justified in not keeping faith with heretics, or other persons differing from them in religious opinions, in any transaction, either of a public or a private nature?" <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Parnell, History of the Penal Laws.</span></strong> The replies coming from Paris, Douay, Louvain, Alcala, Salamanca, and Valladolid were an explicit negative to each of the questions. These declarations of the learned faculties are interesting as matter of history, though of course, in the absence of any <em>ex cathedra</em> signature by the Pope, they are not worth quoting as respects authority.</p>
<p>The penal legislation of the eighteenth century against the Irish Roman Catholics had its parallel in the vexation of Irish Protestants. Though the Episcopalian or Established Church of Ireland numbered scarcely more than one eighth of the population during the century, legislation was shaped with sole reference to its protection and interests. If it be granted either that the interests of the Establishment were of higher value than the interests of the people in general, or that they were identical with the same, then possibly one may follow the example of Bishop Mant and justify the whole mass of penal and restrictive laws, down to their most rigorous items, though even then it would be necessary to show that the harsh policy was adapted to the end sought. On any other supposition, no justification can be offered. Especially out of character and reason must appear the disabilities imposed upon Protestant Dissenters, the main body of whom were the Presbyterians in the North of Ireland. Their valor had been a principal means of saving the Protestant interest in Ireland from being overthrown before the machinations of Tyrconnel and his allies. Common humanity would seem to dictate that they should not be sacrificed to the supposed welfare of an Establishment numbering scarcely more adherents than their own ranks; and common-sense would seem to dictate with equal plainness, that in the face of an overwhelming Romish majority, Protestantism ought not to be weakened and held in check by a persecution discouraging the immigration and forcing on the emigration of its staunchest adherents. In fine, one can hardly wish to modify the unbounded denunciations which Froude heaps upon the narrow policy that was pursued. Though the Establishment was far from being a highly effective religious agency, Ireland was governed by it and for it for several scores of years. By a section of an act of Parliament in 1704 the Dissenters were shut out of the government, the holding of any office above the rank of constable being made dependent upon taking the sacrament according to the rites of the Established Church. After an interval, however, this grievance was modified by the passage of indemnity bills.</p>
<p>Among the various annoyances to which Protestant Dissenters were exposed a peculiarly odious infliction was the obstacle thrown in the way of their marriages being solemnized by their own ministers. After the accession of Queen Anne, "the Presbyterian marriages, hitherto connived at, were declared illegal, and prosecutions were threatened for incontinency. . . . It was announced that the children of all Protestants not married in a church should be treated as bastards, and, as the record of this childish insanity declares, many persons of undoubted reputation were prosecuted in the bishops' courts as fornicators for cohabiting with their own wives.)" <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Froude, The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century.</span></strong> Prosecutions of this sort were forbidden after 1737, but not till the latter part of the century did the law distinctly allow Dissenting ministers to solemnize marriages, and then the concession was made in the face of the protest of the bishops of the Establishment.</p>
<p>The adoption of a more liberal policy toward Dissenters at the close of the eighteenth century does not seem to have been prejudicial to the Established Church. On the contrary, it rose to an improved condition at this very time. "The revival," says Killen, "among the Episcopal clergy, which commenced about the time of the Rebellion of 1798, continued to spread far and wide; so that before the end of the reign of George III. the Irish Establishment contained a considerable number of ministers who, in point of real eloquence and pastoral devotedness, would have adorned the brightest period in the Christian annals, a few of those now awakened became in the end dissatisfied with their Church and withdrew from its communion, but the greater number remained within its pale, and contributed greatly to promote its credit and efficiency. This baptism of grace was experienced by other denominations; and hence, since the year 1800, there has been a general improvement in the state of Irish Protestantism." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Killen, ii. 388, 389.</span></strong></p>
<p>At the close of the period the Episcopal Church in Ireland underwent an important change in respect to its constitution. The same Union Bill, of the year 1800, which united in one the Parliaments of England and Ireland consolidated the Church Establishments of the<br />two countries.</p>
<p>Among the distinguished representatives of the Irish establishment in the eighteenth century there were very few who approached Archbishop King, Dean Swift, and Bishop Berkeley in extent of celebrity.</p>
<p>The main body of Presbyterians in Ireland were located in Ulster and connected with the Synod of Ulster. In 1751 this synod reckoned one hundred and fifty-seven congregations.</p>
<p>While the State consented to the persecution of the Irish Presbyterians in one way or another, by a strange inconsistency it contributed toward the support of their ministers. A specific sum of money, the so-called Regium Donum, was conceded, with the exception of a short interval in the reign of Anne, down to the era of disestablishment (1871), when a compensation was allowed for the life interest of existing beneficiaries. In the time of William III. the Regium Donum was £1,200; in 1868 it amounted to £40,000.</p>
<p>The liberalism which invaded the Presbyterians of England in the eighteenth century touched in a less degree the Presbyterians of Ireland. A number became restless under the bondage to dogma. "In 1726 twelve ministers with their flocks, constituting what was called the Presbytery of Antrim, were excluded from the general body. The distinctive principle of these separatists was non-subscription to all creeds or confessions." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Killen, ii. 282.</span></strong> At the same time the views of Simson, the Glasgow professor, were given more or less currency through the agency of those who had studied at the Scotch University.</p>
<p>From the time that Wesley invaded Ireland in 1747 the Methodist evangelists pressed forward with characteristic ardor and with characteristic experiences of opposition and mob violence. If the apparent results upon Irish soil were less ample than in some other quarters, it was because of special obstacles. Not to mention the difficulty of contending with a predominant Romanism, enforced in the hearts of the people by political as well as by religious prejudices, the growth of the Methodist societies was repeatedly hindered or wholly stopped by the extensive emigration of their members. The number reported as connected with the Irish Conference in 1813, namely, 28,770, may be regarded as expressing about the maximum of membership which has at any time been reached. Three or four years later the Conference was much weakened by a schism which resulted in consequence of a vote to concede the sacraments to the societies. Very few of the ministers joined the schismatics, but several thousands of the people, including not a few of the wealthier class, united to form a body of "Primitive Methodists" on the principle of perpetual adherence to the Established Church.</p>
<p>As already noted, Ireland contributed to Wesley such distinguished co-laborers as Thomas Walsh, Adam Clarke, and George Moore. In the closing years of the eighteenth and the early part of the present century a place of peculiar honor in the annals of Irish Methodism was won by Gideon Ousley. A man of good family and education, having a courageous heart, blessed with a good share of mother wit, and deeply sympathizing with the poor people, he was eminently qualified for successful work in his chosen vocation as a missionary at large. Many a tribute of esteem and admiration was gained by him from his Romish auditors whom he addressed in the Irish tongue.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-26194102640754105282012-03-29T19:28:00.000-07:002019-09-03T00:02:31.948-07:00Principal Developments In Scotland<p><strong>Principal Developments In Scotland</strong></p>
<p>In 1712, five years after the legislative union was effected between the English and the Scotch realms, Parliament passed an act destined to be the fruitful cause of disturbance and division in the Church of Scotland. This was the act for the restoration of patronage. The measure was uncalled for and obnoxious to national feeling, a most unfortunate piece of legislative inter-meddling. Trouble first began in 1732, when an act supplementary to the law of patronage, which was passed by the Assembly, was protested against by a minority as being a still further encroachment upon the rights of the people in the settling of their pastors. Among those protesting there were four, namely, Ebenezer Erskine, Alexander Moncrief, William Wilson, and James Fisher, who urged their cause with so much vigor and determination that they earned the displeasure of the Assembly, and finally in 1733 were suspended by the commission of that body from the ministry of the Established Church. Being thus denied what they deemed their rights, and being furthermore inclined to complain of latitudinarian tendencies in the Establishment, they proceeded to form a church of their own, which was known as the associate Presbytery. Ralph Erskine and others joined with them, and in 1742 they numbered twenty-six ministers. A few years later the Associate Presbytery split into two factions, on the question of taking the burgher oath.</p>
<blockquote>1 The one taking this oath declared that he professed and allowed with all his heart "the true religion presently professed within this realm and authorized by the laws thereof."</blockquote>
<p>In 1820 the two sections came together and formed the United Secession Church. Not very long after the schism headed by Ebenezer Erskine, a second occurred for similar reasons. An obnoxious candidate having been presented by a patron to a perish, the people and the presbytery refused to settle him. The Assembly undertook to deal with the presbytery, and commanded them to ordain the patron's nominee. On their refusal, one of their number, Mr. Gillespie, was deposed (1752). This led to the formation of the so-called Relief Synod, which held the place of an independent Church till 1847, when it was incorporated with the United Secession Church. The whole body is now known as the United Presbyterian Church.</p>
<p>Besides these sects of Scottish Dissenters, another of a different type had its origin in the eighteenth century. From his study of the teachings of the New Testament, John Glass came to the conclusion that church establishments are inconsistent with the gospel, and in 1727 published a book to that effect. This caused his deposition. a small sect was gathered by him, called Glassites, or Sandemanians, the latter name being derived from Robert Sandeman, the son-in-law of the founder. In pursuance of their literal acceptance of New Testament precedents, the sect insisted upon weekly participation of the eucharist, love-feasts, the kiss of charity on certain occasions, abstinence from blood and things strangled, feet-washings, plurality of elders or pastors in each church, exclusion from the pastoral office of those having been twice married, and liberal sharing with each other of private goods.</p>
<p>The secessions which occurred did not leave the Established Church homogeneous in spirit and policy. Two rival parties continued within its bounds, the one known as the <em>popular</em> or <em>evangelical</em>, the other as the <em>moderate</em> party. Of these the latter was in the ascendant in the eighteenth century, first under the leadership of Patrick Cuming, and then of William Robertson. This party, if not from conviction enthusiastically in favor of patronage, believed in accepting it as the existing law of the Church, and was disposed to grant little indulgence to those who felt themselves aggrieved on this score. Its policy, conceived in a rather arbitrary spirit, had its advantages; but it had also its disadvantages. "It introduced order within the Church. It crushed the revolt of presbyteries. It silenced in many cases popular clamor. But it quietly and gradually alienated masses of people from the Establishment." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 John Tullock, in the St. Giles Lectures.</span></strong></p>
<p>As the eighteenth century advanced, the rigid spirit of Scottish orthodoxy found itself invaded by more liberal tendencies. There was not a little aversion, however, to departure from old grooves, and some remarkable exhibitions of inveterate prejudice are on record. As late as 1727 a woman was burned for witchcraft, and in 1736 the Associate Presbytery solemnly protested against the repeal, which was then effected, of the laws against witchcraft. It is also recorded that sticklers for old-time customs "denounced in repeated resolutions the legal vacation in December as a national sin, because it implied some recognition of the superstitious festival of Christmas." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Lecky, ii. 90; Burton, History of Scotland from 1689 to 1748, ii. 333.</span></strong></p>
<p>Relaxation of dogmatic zeal was especially conspicuous among the so-called Moderates. While expressing no open dissent from the creeds of the Church, they gave to doctrine a secondary place in their spirit and practice, and adopted to a considerable extent in their sermons the moral-essay style so current in England in the early part of the eighteenth century. Their bias is also seen in the fact that their reputation as writers was won mainly in the held of general literature rather than in that of theology. In the former domain they commenced about the middle of the century to acquire an enviable fame. A catalogue of these literary Churchmen has been given as follows: "Beginning with Robert Wallace, author of a 'Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind in Ancient and Modern Times,' which anticipated Hume's essay on the same subject, and led the way to the later Malthusian speculations, there is a perfect galaxy of distinguished authors to be found in the Scottish Church during the next forty years. Robert Watson, the historian of Philip II.; Adam Ferguson, the historian of Rome; John Home, the author of the tragedy of 'Douglas;' Hugh Blair, the author of the celebrated 'Sermons,' and of the 'Lectures on Rhetoric;' Robert Henry, the philosophic author of the 'History of Great Britain;' and lastly and chiefly, William Robertson, the historian of Scotland, of America, and of Charles V., were all ministers of the Church of Scotland. Add to these Thomas Reid, the well-known head of the Scottish philosophy, and George Campbell, author of the 'Treatise on Miracles,' in reply to Hume, and of the 'Elements of Rhetoric,' and the intellectual picture is still more striking." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 John Tullock, in the St. Giles Lectures.</span></strong> It seems a little remarkable that out of all this list of writers only the last two appear to have made any definite reply to the skeptical productions of Hume. But perhaps a sufficient explanation may be found in the predominance in these authors of the literary over the dogmatic impulse, and in the manner and character of the unbelieving metaphysician. There was very little in Hume, aside from his bare speculations, to provoke into controversial antagonism. In ordinary intercourse he was remote from the style of the scoffing free-thinker. As Mackenzie remarks, "He had, it might be said, two minds; one which indulged in the metaphysical scepticism which his genius could invent, but which it could not always disentangle; another, simple, natural, and playful, which made his conversation delightful to his friends, and even frequently conciliated men whose principles of belief his philosophical doubts, if they had not power to shake, had grieved and offended. During the latter period of his life I was frequently in his company amidst persons of genuine piety, and I never heard him venture a remark at which such men, or ladies, still more susceptible than men, could take offense." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Quoted by J. H. Burton, Life and Correspondence of David Hume, ii. 439.</span></strong></p>
<p>So far as the scope of rational proofs is concerned, Hume's system was thoroughly skeptical. It cast doubt upon the substantial existence of both mind and matter, questioned the validity of the category of causation, and discredited the ability of testimony to establish the fact of miracles. Still, had Hume's writings contained a larger element of reverence for sacred things, it would not be necessary, in spite of his radical propositions, to charge him with a wholesale scepticism. Men of the most believing temper, while magnifying the office of faith or spontaneous sentiment, have sometimes accorded almost as little to the sphere of demonstration as was left to it by Hume. Moreover, it actually appears that Hume gave to sentiment some part of that which he took away from reason. Various passages in his writings indicate a preference for the theistic conception, or the supposition of an intelligent Author of nature. It appears also that he did not mean to challenge unqualifiedly the idea of causation. In a letter, belonging presumably to his later years, we find him writing: "Allow me to tell you that I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause. I only maintained that our certainty of the falsehood of that proposition proceeded neither from intuition nor demonstration, but from another source. ... There are many different kinds of certainty, and some of them as satisfactory to the mind, though perhaps not so regular, as the demonstrative kind." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Burton, i. 97, 98.</span></strong> To this may be added the response which Hume gave to Boyle, as the latter intimated that his excessive grief over the death of his mother was due to his lack of religious faith. "Though I throw out my speculations," said the philosopher, "to entertain the learned and metaphysical world, yet, in other things, I do not think so differently from the rest of the world as you imagine." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 Burton, i. 293, 294.</span></strong></p>
<p>Some effort was made in the direction of an ecclesiastical censure upon the opinions of Hume. In the General Assembly of 1756 it was moved to appoint a committee to inquire into his teaching. The motion, however, was far from commanding a majority. To the end, Hume lived in friendly relations with the leading clergymen of Edinburgh.</p>
<p>The Philosophy of Common-Sense founded by Thomas Reid, and carried forward by Dugald Stewart and others, served in a measure as an offset to the system of Hume. The distinctive characteristic of this philosophy was its stress upon intuitive beliefs, or those fundamental truths which command the assent of men of sound understanding who attend to them without prejudice. Demonstration, it was maintained, is not needed for this order of truths; being thoroughly agreeable to man's mental constitution, they carry in themselves an adequate sanction.</p>
<p>On the whole, very little of positive heterodoxy came to the surface in Scotland during the eighteenth century. In the early part of the century, Simson, professor of divinity in Glasgow, fell under suspicion of Pelagianism, and in 1729 was suspended from teaching and preaching. Among those who thought his sentence too light was Thomas Boston, one of the "Marrow Men," as they were called. The Erskines were included in the same party. They derived their name from a work which they brought to notice,--a work composed in the time of the Rebellion by an Oxford Puritan, and styled the "Marrow of Modern Divinity." Its tone was the extreme opposite of Pelagianism, and its strong statements on the subject of grace were pushed well-nigh to the border of Antinomianism. The Assembly censured the book. In the latter part of the century some of the Moderates evinced more or less dislike of creed subscription, and a few are supposed to have leaned to Arian or Socinian views. A book written in 1790 by Dr. M'Gill of Ayr, on the death of Christ, incurred the charge of Socinianism, but the author by the help of explanations succeeded in escaping sentence of deposition. Those credited with similar views were styled the "New-light" party,-- a designation which appears in the poetry of Burns.</p>
<p>The eighteenth century, in general, was not a time of eminent religious enterprise in Scotland. While something was done to propagate Christian knowledge among the rude and Romanized Highlanders, and a society was organized to this end, there was a general lack of missionary zeal. Church extension was not carried forward, and many sanctuaries were allowed to become dilapidated. The border of the nineteenth century had been passed before practical Christian enterprise began to press forward with worthy strides.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-6864919246669693192012-03-29T19:24:00.000-07:002019-09-03T00:02:50.250-07:00English Dissenters<p><strong>English Dissenters</strong></p>
<p>After the threatening opposition in the reign of Anne, which culminated in the Occasional Conformity Bill, and the Schism Act, had spent its force, the Dissenters enjoyed a fair degree of security. Nevertheless, they made but slow progress toward a legal equality with the members of the Establishment. A serious discrimination was maintained against them through the century. It was not till 1828 that their eligibility to public office was formally acknowledged by the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. Prior to this date the most notable item of legal indulgence which the government granted was the provision in 1779 that Dissenters, instead of being required to subscribe to the Anglican articles as a condition of exercising the office of minister or schoolmaster, should simply make a general declaration of their Christian faith. This provision had at the time no application to the Unitarians. Impugners of the doctrine of the Trinity were under the ban of the law till 1813. In practice, however, the law had been for a long interval little else than a dead letter.</p>
<p>The advance of Roman Catholics to a complete legal standing was nearly parallel with that of Protestant Dissenters. In 1778 some of the severer items recorded against them in the statute book were repealed, and in 1829 the completing act of Roman Catholic emancipation in England was accomplished. The indulgence shown at the former date was followed by a disgraceful episode. A combination of demagogism and anti-Romish animosity precipitated a popular outbreak in London, known as the Gordon riot.</p>
<p>An investigation, conducted by Daniel Neal, in 1715-16, lead to the conclusion that there were at that time eleven hundred and fifty congregations of Protestant Dissenters in England and Wales. In this aggregate,-which, as given, is perhaps somewhat too small, --the Presbyterians were the largest factor. It has been estimated that their congregations were nearly double those of the Independents, as also larger in size, while the congregations of the Baptists, though nearly equal in number to those of the Independents, were inferior in size. The Roman Catholics in England do not appear to have been a numerous body during the eighteenth century. They are said to have reckoned, in 1767, 67,916 adherents; in 1780, 69,376.</p>
<p>The relative superiority of the Presbyterians among English Dissenters was not maintained. Early in the Georgian era they began to decline. Among the principal causes of declension were relaxation of discipline and disintegration of belief. So far was the doctrinal defection carried that before the end of the eighteenth century the Presbyterian name became well-nigh synonymous with Socinian or Unitarian.</p>
<p>The revolt against the Trinitarian teaching, while it specially affected the Presbyterians, did not owe its origin altogether to them. In the closing years of the seventeenth century the enterprising and philanthropic layman, Thomas Firmin, though he remained in the Established Church, was active in spreading Unitarian literature. Whatever effect may have been produced by this kind of agency was supplemented by an ill-managed attempt on the part of several theologians of the Establishment to explicate the mysteries of the Trinity. The attempt ended in mutual accusations of unsoundness. William Sherlock incurred the charge of tritheism, while Wallis and South were accused of Sabellianism. Such charges included no charitable respect for the intent of the writers named. But shortly afterwards an unmistakable departure from the Trinitarian standard was made by William Whiston. According to Macaulay, "Whiston believed everything but the Trinity." Among the fanciful items of his creed was the belief that the work which passed under the name of the "Apostolical Constitutions" was one of the earliest and most authoritative memorials of primitive Christianity, and indeed of equal value with the four Gospels. Whiston called himself a Eusebian; his opponents called him an Arian. The term Eusebian or Semi-Arian may be granted him, since he did not maintain that the Son was made out of nothing. His heterodoxy caused him the loss of the chair of mathematics which he held at Cambridge. He finally became connected with the General Baptists. A more important contribution to the same, or a very similar class of views respecting the Trinity was made by Samuel Clarke, whose "Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity" was published in 1712. This work was challenged. Clarke managed to satisfy the bishops by a qualifying paper, but many of the clergy were not pleased with his escape. Among the writings called out by the agitation, those of Waterland have earned a wide reputation as an able exposition and defence of Trinitarian teaching.</p>
<p>Partly owing to this ferment, and partly in consequence of the rationalizing spirit of the time, a current was started in the direction of Arianism. A token that this current had entered the domain of the English Presbyterians was first discovered in 1717, when two ministers at Exeter, James Pierce and Joseph Hallett, fell under suspicion. After some local stir, the subject was brought before the Dissenting clergy of London and vicinity in the famous meeting of Salter's Hall, in 1719. The meeting ended in a breach between the party which insisted upon subscription to a definite Trinitarian formula, and that which rejected subscription. The non-subscribers, so far as the Presbyterian wing of the assembly was concerned, were largely in the majority. Many of them, probably nearly all of them, were by no means anti-Trinitarians. Their opposition was against the requisition of subscription at all. But their position argued at least an absence of dogmatic zeal which, under the existing circumstances, was favorable to an encroaching liberalism. A few decades later only a remnant of the Presbyterian Church in England still adhered to the old faith.</p>
<p>Until the latter part of the century, opposition to Trinitarianism commonly took the form of Arianism. Nathaniel Lardner, who won honorable distinction in the deistical controversy, is understood to have leaned to Arianism. The same was true of Richard Price. Joseph Priestley, on the other hand, advanced to the doctrine of the simple humanity of Christ, and contributed notably toward the transition to this form of Unitarian belief. Theophilus Lindsey and Thomas Belsham, the former coming from the Established Church, and the latter from the Independents, wrought in the same direction. The humanitarian conception of Christ was thus brought into the ascendant. As appears from the Historical Sketch of Lindsey, there was also a tendency decidedly hostile to the early Socinian view that worship is due to Christ, as the representative of God, and as exalted to practical kingship in the things of grace.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the large contingent which it received from the Presbyterians, and its accessions from other sources, Unitarianism did not greatly thrive. There was difficulty in retaining ground once acquired. While there were some flourishing congregations, others hardly managed to keep their lease of life. We find Priestley painting the outlook in these discouraging terms: "It is too evident to be denied that the societies of those who are called Rational Dissenters, whether they be properly Unitarian or not, do generally decline, many of them having become actually extinct, and others being in such a condition that they cannot be supported much longer. This is more especially the case in London and in the South of England; but from the same causes it may in time extend to the North."</p>
<p>The Independents, or Congregationalists, adhered more steadily than the Presbyterians to the standards which had been handed down from the preceding generations. In the first half of the century they enjoyed the services of men of such high character, genius, and scholarship as Bradbury, Watts, and Doddridge. Thomas Bradbury was a man of great fearlessness and force, who did not hesitate to take his politics into the pulpit, who felt specially at home on the field of controversy, and who championed orthodoxy with a fiery earnestness. It is scarcely an accident that he came to be spoken of as "bold Bradbury." Isaac Watts was one of the most gifted men of his generation. He was a preacher of more than average eloquence, and an acute, if not eminently profound writer on the topics of theology and philosophy, as well as a possessor of the divine charism of poesy. Through his talent for sacred song he introduced a new era in the history of English hymnology. "His fancy was as chaste as it was lofty, and was ever held in check by a profound and awful reverence for the character of Almighty God. His errors are, for the most part, errors of style and execution. He had not the musical ear or the delicate critical judgment of Addison. His verse is often faulty in its rhythm, and careless and inaccurate in its rhyme. From its mixed vigor and tameness of thought and expression, it is singularly unequal. But, compared with everything of their kind which had gone before, his hymns must have seemed like the addition of a new sense to the Christian worshiper." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 H.S. Skeats, History of the Free Churches of England from 1688 to 1851, p. 256.</span></strong> Philip Doddridge shared with Watts the honor of sustaining the reputation of Nonconformists for learning and literary ability. His Catholic temper brought him into friendly relations with a great variety of parties. As president of the Academy at Northampton for a score of years, he exercised a widely extended influence. Through his writings, especially the "Family Expositor," and the "Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," he reached a still larger circle. The latter treatise, though perhaps open to criticism, as presenting a piety that is somewhat too analytic and introspective, has established its claim to high regard by the undeniable fact that it has served as a unique instrument in the conversion of men. While not the equal of Watts in poetic talent, Doddridge wrote hymns whose tenderness and depth of devotional feeling give them a secure title to immortality. In their origin, his hymns were an appendix to his sermons. "They were flung off with happy facility, each one after he had finished the preparation of his sermon, while his mind was still brimming and kindling with the thought. Each hymn, therefore, preserves the leading ideas of some forgotten sermon." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Stanford, Life of Philip Doddridge.</span></strong></p>
<p>The period from 1688 to 1800 is named by a Baptist historian "the quiet period" in the annals of his English brethren, not only as being a time of rest from persecution, but also, for the major part, a time of relative inaction. The Arminian branch, the so-called General Baptists, suffered, much like the Presbyterians, from the inroads of Arianism. In protest against this innovation, the more orthodox withdrew in 1770, and formed the New Connection of General Baptists. The body thus organized was destined to be the representative in later times of the General Baptists, the Arianized churches having passed into the Unitarian communion, or become extinct. In the first quarter of the eighteenth century the Arminian Baptists were favored with a learned adherent in the person of John Gale, who is known from his reply to Wall's "History of Infant Baptism."</p>
<p>The Particular, or Calvinistic Baptists, while they contributed so distinguished a member as Robert Robinson to Socinianism, seem to have suffered, on the whole, rather from narrowness than from laxity in dogma. "To whatever other causes," says Cramp, "the condition of affairs may be ascribed, there can be little doubt that the paralyzing influence of the doctrinal sentiments entertained by many of the ministers, must be regarded as mainly contributing to this result. John Brine and Dr. Gill were chief men in the denomination for nearly half a century. They were supra-lapsarians, holding that God's election was irrespective of the fall of man. They taught eternal justification. Undue prominence was given in their discourses to the teachings of Scripture respecting the divine purposes. Although they themselves inculcated practical godliness, and so were not justly liable to the charge of Antinomianism, there is reason to fear that numbers of those who imbibed their doctrinal views kept out of sight, or but feebly urged, the obligation of believers to personal holiness. And this is certain, that these eminent men and all their followers went far astray from the course marked out by the Lord and His apostles. They were satisfied with stating men's dangers, and assuring them that they were on the high road to perdition. But they did not call them to repent and believe.... and the churches did not, could not, under their instruction, engage in efforts for the conversion of souls. They were so afraid of intruding on God's work that they neglected to do what He had commanded them." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Baptist History.</span></strong></p>
<p>The Methodist revival favorably affected the interests of the Baptists, though they were somewhat slow to manifest the forward impulse. Their annals for the closing part of the century contain two names, Robert Hall and William Carey, which shine as stars of the first magnitude. The former has a well-grounded celebrity as one of the great masters of the pulpit, his sermons being at once remarkable for style and for substance. The latter took a conspicuous part in inaugurating the era of enlarged interest in missionary enterprise. Largely through his influence the Baptist Missionary Society was formed in 1792, and the next year he sailed for India. Among those associated with Carey in establishing the Missionary Society, a foremost place in influence was occupied by Andrew Fuller, who besides was eminent as one of the most cogent and thoughtful among the theological writers of his denomination. From Samuel Stennett the Baptists received the precious legacy of hymns which still are voiced in countless sanctuaries.</p>
<p>One of the questions for debate within the denomination was the propriety of open communion. Through the eighteenth century, a large proportion of Baptist ministers seem to have taken the negative side. This side was vigorously championed by Abraham Booth, and was also supported by Andrew Fuller. On the other hand, John Ryland and Robert Hall argued for open communion. The writings of the latter in particular were influential in spreading the conviction among English Baptists that it is not worth while to sacrifice to mere technical consistency both catholicity and consistency of the deeper and better kind.</p>
<p>By the beginning of the eighteenth century the Quakers in England had already passed the meridian as respects the growth of their sect. From this time their chief distinction lay in their forwardness and zeal in philanthropic enterprises. In 1758 they issued a vigorous protest against the slave trade, and three years later voted to disown any Quakers who might be engaged in the nefarious business. It has been said that by 1780 there was not a single slave in the possession of an acknowledged Quaker. The Quakers also took an honorable part in the work of prison reform. The name of Elizabeth Fry is one of the bright names interwoven with the record of large-hearted and untiring philanthropy in behalf of the wretched prisoner. To be sure, in labors of this kind, she and her co-laborers had been anticipated by John Howard, who began his remarkable tours of prison visitation in 1777; but still an ample held was left for the humanitarian zeal of the Quakers.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-39862082694887903572012-03-29T19:19:00.000-07:002019-09-03T00:03:04.737-07:00Results of the Revival<p><strong>Chapter IV -- Results of the Revival</strong></p>
<p>It is difficult properly to estimate the results of the Methodist revival of the eighteenth century. Isaac Taylor declares that it has "so given impulse to Christian feeling and profession, on all sides, that it has come to present itself as the starting-point of our modern religious history." Speaking of those, perhaps a hundred in number, who were notably connected with the movement, he says: "It would not be easy, or not possible, to name any company of Christian preachers, from the apostolic age downward to our own times, whose proclamation of the gospel has been in a larger proportion of instances effective, or which has been carried over so large a surface, with so much power, or with so uniform a result. No such harvest of souls is recorded to have been gathered by any body of contemporary men since the first century." Similar testimonies could easily be quoted from a variety of sources.</p>
<p>The Methodist revival rendered incalculable service to the nonconforming sects, by arousing them from their languishing condition, and infusing into them new life and vigor. It rendered also great service to the Established Church. If it created an independent body, it filled it largely from those who had been of no benefit to the Establishment, and were practically strangers to its services; and whatever it took away, it gave therefore an adequate compensation in the spiritual impulses which it imparted. The Evangelical School, which embraced very much of the life and power of the English Church in the closing part of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth century, may not have been altogether due to Methodism, but it cannot be denied that it received thence much of its inspiration and means of growth. This school was distinguished by more or less of a Calvinistic bias,-- quite positive in Berridge and Romaine, but of a moderate type in the majority. Its ruling interest, however, was practical rather than speculative. Some of its members, as, for example, the two most eccentric, Grimshaw and Berridge, were remarkable for the extent of their labors. As respects the claims of the Established Church, the Evangelicals occupied a liberal position. "They simply regarded her as one of many Protestant communions. Distinctive Church principles, in the technical sense of the term, formed no part of their teaching." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Overton, History of the English Church in the Eighteenth Century.</span></strong> Besides those named above, the Evangelical school included Henry Venn, Walker of Truro, John Newton, the poet Cowper, Thomas Scott, Richard Cecil, Charles Simeon, Joseph Milner, Isaac Milner, and Thomas Robinson of Leicester. Hannah More, and such distinguished laymen as William Wilberforce and the two Thorntons may also be embraced in the list.</p>
<p>A fresh impulse to humanitarian and benevolent enterprise is also to be attributed to Methodism. It was among the pioneers in the organization of Sunday-schools, and in the work of Bible and Tract distribution, and other means of benefiting the ignorant and wretched. "One of the noblest results of the revival," says Green, "was the steady attempt, which has never ceased from that day to this, to remedy the guilt, the ignorance, the physical suffering, the social degradation of the profligate and the poor. It was not till the Wesleyan impulse had done its work that the philanthropic impulse began." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 History of the English People, iv. 273.</span></strong></p>
<blockquote>Robert Raikes may be called the founder of Sunday-schools, as the work which he began about 1783 gave a special impulse to the institution of such schools. But, as Tyerman remarks, it deserves to be mentioned that Hannah Ball, a young Methodist lady, had a Methodist Sunday-school at High Wycombe fourteen years before Robert Raikes began his at Gloucester; and that Sophia Cooke, another Methodist, was the first who suggested to Raikes the Sunday-school idea, and actually marched with him at the head of his troop of ragged urchins, the first Sunday they were taken to the parish church. (Life and Times of John Wesley, i. 10, 11.) Wesley's attitude toward the enterprise was cordial from the start. In 1784 he wrote: "I find these schools springing up wherever I go. Perhaps God may have a deeper end therein than men are aware of. Who knows but some of these schools may become nurseries for Christians?" (Ibid., iii. 414, 415.)</blockquote>
<p>In the closing part of the century Methodism served as a bulwark against French infidelity and revolutionary zeal. The wildfire was transferred to English soil. The writings of Paine won enthusiastic disciples. Some made a bonfire of their Bibles in honor of their new apostle, and some even got so far beyond the apostle himself that they deliberated whether they ought not to uncitizen him for superstitiously professing some belief in the existence of God. But such opinions made only a measure of headway. "England, on the whole," says Lecky, "escaped the contagion. Many causes conspired to save her, but among them a prominent place must, I believe, be given to the new and vehement religious enthusiasm which was at that very time passing through the middle and lower classes of the people, which had enlisted in its service a large proportion of the wilder and more impetuous reformers, and which recoiled with horror from the anti-Christian tenets that were associated with the Revolution in France." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2 England in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 691, 692.</span></strong></p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-62552152945821571232012-03-29T19:14:00.000-07:002019-09-03T00:03:21.897-07:00John Wesley And Organized Methodism<p><strong>John Wesley And Organized Methodism</strong></p>
<p>John Wesley started out with no elaborate system of religious organization in his mind. The Moravians, with whom he was at first associated, illustrated(at this time in England) the general idea at the basis of his scheme, namely, that of societies within a church; but the more specific features of Methodist economy were provided one after another in answer to some special exigency. The first societies of which Wesley may be regarded as the founder were instituted in 1739, at Bristol and London. The former city witnessed the first project for the <em>building</em> of a Methodist chapel, but the latter had the preaching house that was first <em>opened</em> for use. This was the Foundry, a deserted building, which was appropriated by Wesley in November, 1739. "This date has been considered the epoch of Methodism, for thenceforward the Foundry was its headquarters in London." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Stevens, History of Methodism, i. 131</span></strong> It is to be noticed, however, that the societies instituted in 1739 had a Moravian or semi-Moravian statue, Wesley being at that time a member of a Moravian society, and acting in conjunction with the fraternity. But the next year marked a rupture with the Moravians, and Wesley's societies stood then upon an independent basis. The cause of the rupture was certain strange notions which had invaded the Moravian societies in London, and which gained in them for a season the ascendency. These notions were nothing less than a pronounced quietism. The leaders in the aberration, among whom Philip Molther was conspicuous, taught that any degree of doubt is inconsistent with justifying faith, and that until this faith is bestowed one must abstain from outward means of grace, lest he be led to trust in them instead of trusting in Christ alone. These mischievous tenets infected the society in Fetter-lane, which had received its constitution from Peter Boehler, but had been largely under the supervision of Wesley. Finding himself unable to make headway against the erroneous teachings, Wesley took his leave of the society in July, 1740, having previously requested those of like mind to accompany him.</p>
<p>The first chapels that were built for Wesley's societies were vested in himself; but after a few years property of this kind was devolved upon trustees. The expense incurred in chapel-building gave rise in 1742 to an important feature in Methodist economy. For the more effective collection of funds, the societies were divided into classes of twelve, one of the twelve serving as collector, and being responsible for a penny a week for each member. Forthwith it was discerned that this class system could be made useful for other than financial ends, that, indeed, it could be made to serve as a beneficent means of discipline and religious edification. So the financial became an eminently religious institution, and the collector, or class leader, a kind of sub-pastor.</p>
<p>Among Wesley's auxiliaries, the lay preachers were perhaps the most important. So long as he maintained his position as a member of the Established Church, and refrained from founding a separate sect, they were simply indispensable in a work of rapid and extensive evangelism. The requisite laborers could not be found among those who were in orders. The only feasible method was to accept the services of laymen, who, if not highly cultured in many instances, were nevertheless far more competent to enlighten and elevate the degraded masses than any agency besides that was available. As early as 1739 Wesley employed John Cennick as a lay helper, if not strictly as a lay preacher. Tyerman maintains that Cennick labored at Kingswood in the latter capacity. If this conclusion be accepted, it is necessary to explain why Wesley was so much exercised, in 1740 or 1741, by the news that Thomas Maxfield was preaching to the society in London. The explanation is not clear, unless it be assumed that Wesley had regard to difference of men and places, and thought that the recently converted layman was venturing upon too high a responsibility in undertaking to preach to the London congregation. Whatever the previous facts in the case, Wesley was convinced by the advice of his mother and by his own observation of Maxfield's gifts that he ought not to be restrained from preaching, and from that time the talents of laymen in expounding the Word were freely called into requisition. By the year 1744 about two score of these lay preachers were in Wesley's employ. These men generally were fitted for their work by genuine experience of the saving power of the gospel, by a living sympathy with the poor people, and by a hardihood and courage which prepared them to endure privation, and to face the violence of the mob. Some of them had a rare knowledge of men, and great skill in the arts of address. Some of them, too, came to possess no mean acquaintance with books, at least with those more directly connected with their vocation; for upon nothing did Wesley insist with greater vigor than upon diligence in his preachers to improve their opportunities for study. The names of some of these men impartial history will ever treasure with veneration and affection. John Nelson, the converted mason, for example, will be known as long as Methodism claims a place in the world. A more engaging specimen of sturdy and consecrated manhood, of invincible patience and courage, of zeal ballasted by strong common-sense, has scarce ever emerged from the ranks of the common people in England.</p>
<p>Wesley's position in relation to his preachers and the members of his societies was that of a head of a voluntary association. He consulted with them freely; he met the preachers annually in conference, the first gathering of this kind being in 1744; but the real authority remained nevertheless in his own hands. To enter his Connection was equivalent to entering into a personal engagement with him to be subject to his scheme. Every one was free to come or go, and very little ceremony was requisite in either case, but the face of membership, so long as it existed, was an acknowledgment of Wesley's leadership. We find him, accordingly, defining his own power as follows: "It is a power of admitting into and excluding from the societies under my care; of choosing and removing stewards; of receiving or not receiving helpers; of appointing them where, when, and how to help me; and of desiring any of them to meet me when I see good." No doubt Wesley had inherent qualities naturally impelling to leadership; but that love of authority was allowed to interfere with conviction of duty, there is no adequate evidence. He took the lead no less in labor and hardship than in governing. His work had far advanced before any one appeared either fitted or willing to share his responsibility. The engagements of his preachers were then with him, and whether they would be bound to others depended upon their choice. Some will think that in his later years he ought to have shared his power with the Conference. Possibly this might have been done with good effect. Still there was some ground for fearing that a change of this kind would interfere with the efficient prosecution of the work in hand. We may conclude that Wesley spoke with entire sincerity, if not with entire understanding of himself, when he said to the Conference of 1766: "I did not seek any part of this power; it came upon me unawares; but when it was come, not daring to bury that talent, I used it to the best of my judgment. Yet I never was fond of it; I always did, and do now, bear it as my burden, -the burden which God lays upon me, and therefore I dare not yet lay it down. But if you can tell me any one, or any five men, to whom I may transfer this burden, who <em>can</em> and <em>will</em> do just what I do now, I will heartily thank both them and you."</p>
<p>Up to his death Wesley both wrote and spoke against separation from the Established Church. At the same time, however, he looked upon separation as something very likely to occur in the near future, and it cannot be denied that he took steps in its direction, --steps which may be regarded as virtually leading on to the territory of dissent. In other words, he was an inconsistent Churchman, attached to the Church of England, but more attached to the kingdom of Christ, and constrained to do violence to his relation to the one that he might serve what he considered to be the interests of the other. This appears especially in his ordinations. Many in his societies were inconvenienced as respects the sacraments, not being able to obtain them at all, or only from clergymen whose manifest lack of vital piety so offended their religious instincts that their hearts revolted against their ministrations. Being denied the aid of the bishops in meeting this need, Wesley, at length, after years of delay, proceeded himself to the work of ordination. First, in 1784, he ordained Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey presbyters, and Thomas Coke superintendent, at the same time commissioning the last to ordain Francis Asbury to the office of superintendent.</p>
<p>These ordinations all had reference to the United States, the independence of which, recently achieved, had placed them outside of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of England. Under these conditions, Wesley naturally concluded that his American societies ought to be erected into an independent church. In 1785 he ordained John Pawson, Thomas Hanby, and Joseph Taylor to administer the sacraments in Scotland. In the succeeding two or three pears several more were ordained for the same field. Finally (1788-89), he ordained Alexander Mather, Thomas Rankin, and Henry Moore, to minister in England. The first of these three was still farther ordained to the rank of superintendent; but no special use was made of the dignity.</p>
<p>In ordaining to the rank of presbyters, Wesley certainly kept within prerogatives allowed by the theory of church government, which he had entertained for years. as early as 1746 his reading of Lord King's account of the primitive Church had shaken his notions about the necessity of bishops and their original distinction from presbyters. Ten years later we find him penning this decisive statement: "I still believe the episcopal form of church government to be Scriptural and apostolical; I mean well agreeing with the practice and writings of the apostles. But that it is <em>prescribed</em> in Scripture, I do not believe. This opinion, which I once zealously espoused, I have been heartily ashamed of ever since I read Bishop Stillingfleet's 'Irenicon.' I think he has unanswerably proved that neither Christ nor His apostles <em>prescribe</em> any particular form of church government; and that the plea of <em>divine right</em> for diocesan episcopacy was never heard of in the primitive Church. "Believing thus in the original identity of presbyters and bishops and the optional character of episcopacy, he did not at all transcend his ecclesiastical theory when, as a presbyter, he proceeded to ordain to the like office. But was his act in ordaining accordant with the polity and practice of the Established Church of England as understood on all sides in his day? Certainly not. It was an irregularity, a cutting loose from constituted authority, of so grave a character as to be virtually the initiation of ecclesiastical independence.</p>
<p>As respects also Wesley's ordinations to the rank of superintendent, it cannot be definitely charged that Wesley transcended his theory of church constitution, while at the same time it must of course be allowed that he acted counter to the established polity of the church of which he was a member. It has been urged that Coke, being a presbyter, had as good a right to ordain Wesley superintendent as Wesley to ordain him. Undoubtedly, so far as the mere fact of ecclesiastical rank was concerned. But there were other facts of determining force in the case. Wesley was looked upon as the father of the American societies. He had a <em>de facto</em> authority over them. They were at liberty to repudiate this authority if they pleased. But they were not pleased to do so. They greatly preferred that his authority should be used in assisting them to provide satisfactorily for their ecclesiastical needs. In sending Coke as superintendent, Wesley simply made the satisfactory provision, and made it too, though in a somewhat extraordinary way, yet not by the usurpation of any unprecedented prerogatives. Supposing superintendent to be equivalent to bishop, instances could be cited both from the primitive Church, and from the Church of the Reformation, showing that it was no unheard of thing that bishops should be ordained by presbyters.</p>
<blockquote>1 "The appointment of a bishop by presbyters," says Jackson, "is no novelty, as the early history of the Church of Alexandria demonstrates, as well as that of the Lutheran Church in Germany. In the appointment of Dr. Coke Mr. Wesley did no more than the great German reformer had done to meet the wants of the people whom God had given him. Every reader of ecclesiastical history knows that Martin Luther, again and again, with the rid and concurrence of his fellow presbyters, ordained bishops for the Protestant Church of Germany."<br />(Life of Charles Wesley, p. 761.)<br /> Stanley, referring to the induction of Athanasius into the episcopal office, says: "Down to this time (according to the tradition of the Alexandrian Church itself) the election to this great post had been conducted in a manner unlike that of the other sees of Christendom. Not the bishop, but twelve presbyters, were the electors and nominators, and, according to Eutychius, consecrators. It was on the death of Alexander that this ancient custom was exchanged for one more nearly resembling that which prevailed elsewhere." (Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church, pp. 325, 326.) Compare Bishop Lightfoot, Christian Ministry, in Commentary on Philip., pp. 228-236.</blockquote>
<p>But what did Wesley mean by the term "superintendent"? Did he use it merely as a modest equivalent of "bishop"? Some have answered in the negative, and have blamed those who substituted the latter for the former term. No doubt the substitution was not agreeable to Wesley, but at the same time, no serious misnomer, no real contradiction of the newly constituted office, was involved in the use of the title "bishop." A superintendent, solemnly inducted into office by an extra lying-on of hands, and accredited with supervisory power over a body of presbyters, is not a simple presbyter. He exercises functions generally associated with the episcopal office, and to all practical intents is a bishop. A superintendent of this kind Wesley plainly meant to provide.</p>
<p>The same year that Wesley consummated his American ordinations, he provided for the permanent and legal standing of his Connection on British soil. His Deed of-Declaration (1784) constituted one hundred of his preachers to be the legal Conference after his death, this conference being empowered to fill its own vacancies, to receive and to expel preachers, and to appoint them, under certain restrictions, to their fields of labor. "Subsequently, by a wise accommodation, all the preachers who were in connection with the Conference were permitted to vote, and such as had been members a given number of years were allowed to put the President in nomination, by their votes for the confirmation of the Legal Hundred." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Stevens, History of Methodism, ii. 207.</span></strong></p>
<p>Wesley was far from being indifferent to dogma. No important work like his was ever built upon moonshine. Great evangelical truths, decisively grasped, and vitalized by intense conviction, lap at the foundation of the Methodist revival. Nevertheless, Wesley regarded beliefs entirely subordinate to purity of heart and life, and valued the former only as a means of inspiring and sustaining the latter. He required no lengthy confession of faith as a condition of admission into his societies. "Is a man a believer in Jesus Christ?" he wrote, in 1765, "and is his life suitable to his profession?" are not only the main, but the sole inquiries I make in order to his admission into our society. The essence of religion be defined as nothing else than "humble, gentle, patient love." He commended the saying that "God made practical divinity necessary, the devil, controversial," and lamented on one occasion that the circumstances required him to spend ten minutes of his sermon in controversy, a larger amount of time than he had publicly given to this kind of work for many months before. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Journal, 1751.</span></strong> across all lines of sect he was able to discern spiritual kindred. Concerning Marcus Aurelius he said: "I make no doubt but this is one of those many who shall come from the east and the west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while the children of the kingdom, nominal Christians, are shut out." However much he reprobated the opinions of the Quakers, he found his heart captivated by the piety of William Edmundson, and exclaimed, "Could mistakes send such a man as this to hell? Not so. I am so far from believing this that I scruple not to say, Let my soul be with the soul of William Edmundson!" Some of the examples of religious consecration most admired by him were found within the borders of Roman Catholicism. Of Thomas à Kempis and Francis de Sales he wrote, "I doubt not they are now in Abraham's bosom."</p>
<p>Very soon after his conversion Wesley gave decided expression to the main points of his theological scheme. Indeed his earlier exposition of some of these points was more radical than his later.</p>
<p>Like all who took a prominent part in the great revival, Wesley emphasized the doctrine of justification by faith. At the same time, however, he laid great stress upon good works, -- not indeed, as a primary condition of justification, but as binding upon the conscience, as the necessary fruits of faith, as indispensable to the retention of the divine favor, and to progress in the divine life. Accordingly, we find him dissatisfied with Luther's commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, and charging him with a too lax and disparaging tone in his references to the law. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Journal, June, 1741.</span></strong> The same order of thought is conspicuous in the General Rules which he prepared for his societies. The idea of neglecting the common Christian duties on the score of any subjective caprice stirs a righteous indignation in him, and he speaks of "trampling under foot that enthusiastic doctrine of devils, that we are not to do good unless our hearts are free to it." He constantly gives a prominent place to the ethical element in religion. In this he undoubtedly rendered a most needful and important service to Methodism. Inculcating, as it does, a strongly subjective type of piety, magnifying the believer's privilege in respect to inward experiences, it needs just such a safeguard against fanatical superiority to externals as the phase of teaching in question.</p>
<p>At first Wesley was disposed to insist upon assurance as invariably an accompaniment of justification, so that its absence would be proof of the lack of justifying grace. But he afterwards retreated from this radical position, and while he emphasized the common privilege of believers to walk in the light of assurance, he allowed that one might be in a justified state who was not clearly assured of the fact.</p>
<p>On the subject also of Christian perfection, or entire sanctification, Wesley made at an early date his strongest statement. Some points on the subject expressed in the preface to a hymn-book, published not later than the spring of 1741 (Tyerman says in 1740), were afterwards modified as being by far too radical. According to his matured theory, Christian perfection was understood to imply exemption from sin, from everything contrary to love, but not from mistakes in judgment and corresponding mistakes in action, not from wandering thoughts and other species of temptation which invade the mind without being consented to or cherished. It was farther described as a perfection accommodated to man's actual powers, involving, therefore, not such a service as angels or the unfallen Adam were able to render, but only the best service which a nature wounded by the fall, and retaining ever in this world certain infirmities despite the healing work of divine grace, is competent to render. It does not appear that Wesley at first distinctly inculcated the idea that this crowning grace is to be suddenly grasped by a simple act of faith. But as one witness after another appeared who testified that they had in this manner obtained it, he came to the conclusion that, though there is likely to be more or less of an interval between justification and entire sanctification, believers ought to be encouraged to seek for the higher state by a distinct act of faith, and not by a prolonged discipline. According to Wesley, an adequate assurance of having attained this state requires, among other evidences, the positive witness of the Holy Spirit. He also, at least on certain occasions, advised caution in preaching or testifying upon the subject before promiscuous assemblies.</p>
<p>There is no distinct proof on record that Wesley himself ever claimed to have experienced the grace of entire sanctification. On the contrary, there is evidence that when far on in life he disclaimed its possession; <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Tyerman, ii. 598.</span></strong> and to the end he practised a reserve in the matter of personal testimony that might profitably have been imitated by more than one of his followers. Nevertheless, he affirmed with great constancy the doctrine of the attainability of the supreme grace. Very serious discouragements to its advocacy arose. In 1762 some of those in London, professing to have been entirely sanctified, ran into open fanaticism, contemning their more sober teachers, and boasting with intemperate zest of visions and prophesyings. An unbalanced man, by the name of George Bell, was the ringleader in the folly, but more or less of countenance was given to it by a man of so good repute as Thomas Maxfield. Bell finally spoiled his reputation as a prophet by fixing a date for the end of the world, and Maxfield, disowning Wesley's leadership, became the head of an independent society. These events produced a reaction in the mind of Charles Wesley, so that he began to teach, not, indeed, that entire sanctification is unattainable in this life, but that it is to be expected only in those ripened by long discipline, and is not to be made prominent as a matter of personal testimony. John, on the other hand, while he insisted upon searching tests, held to his former views with full conviction, and that, too, in the face of an extensive reaction. In 1766 we find him declaring that a general faintness had fallen upon the whole kingdom as respects the subject of Christian perfection, and that he was almost weary of striving against the stream both of preachers and people. A few years later he affirmed that only a very small proportion of those once professing the grace had retained it. In 1772 he complained that almost all his preachers, while they believed in perfection, failed to make it a living issue, preaching upon it not at all, or only at long intervals. A sufficient list of discouragements, surely! That Wesley continued to press the doctrine shows the importance that it claimed in his estimate.</p>
<p>In proportion as Wesley emphasized the ethical side of Christianity, and insisted upon good works, he was jealous of the tenets of high Calvinism. While, no doubt, he abhorred them from a theoretical point of view, he honestly feared their practical influence. He regarded them as naturally affording shelter to the Antinomianism which he detested above all things. Occasionally he found those who had become infected with the Antinomian virus. Accordingly, at the Conference of 1770 he believed it opportune to warn his preachers against leaning too much to Calvinism, against lowering the claims of the law, and disparaging the worth of good works. Addressing those who were understood to make no question about the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith, Wesley was not careful to guard his statements in the interests of that doctrine; in fact, he made use of expressions that might be regarded as qualifying the doctrine somewhat seriously. This was unfortunate. The minutes of 1770 passed under the notice of those for whom they were not primarily designed. The needed explanations which a friendly Arminian could supply, the Calvinist was slow to devise. A cry of disapprobation arose from the Calvinistic Methodists and their sympathizers. The minutes were stigmatized as Pelagian and papistical. At the ensuing Conference explanations were offered which were deemed satisfactory by representatives of the offended party. But controversial animosity baring once been excited easily found occasion to burn with increasing ardor. On the Calvinistic side the principal champions were Richard Hill, Rowland Hill, and Augustus Toplady. These men, on the whole, were eminently distinguished by earnest and self-denying piety; but in this controversy they appear distinguished for nothing so much as for polemic bitterness and virulence. They seem to have acted upon the principle that it was necessary to crush John Wesley, that they were the men to do it, and that in doing it they were justified in going outside of the matter in dispute, and raking together everything that could serve as material of personal opprobrium. Toplady avowedly proceeded on this principle. He was convinced that Wesley was "the most rancorous hater of the gospel system" that ever had appeared in England, and that he deserved the utmost severity of treatment that could be visited upon him. "Mr. John Wesley," he says, "is the only opponent I ever had whom I chastised with a studious disregard to ceremony. Nor do I in the least repent of the manner in which I treated him. ... I only gave him the whip when he deserved a scorpion." Toplady looked through the distorting medium of a perfect horror of Arminianism. He viewed it as a profane assault upon the divine sovereignty, a system in which the Creator is brought down into pitiful subjection to the creature, a system closely allied to the Epicurean doctrine of chance, and justly exposed to the charge of atheism. Indeed, he went so far in his detestation of Arminianism as to question the salvability of its persistent upholders. "I much question," he says, "whether the man that dies an Arminian can go to heaven. But certainly he will not be an Arminian when he is in heaven." According to his own system, the creature is under the dominion of an absolute causation, which is distinguished from a universal and inexorable fatalism only by having its seat in a personal intelligence and will. In other words, God determines beyond all contingency every item in the creature's fortunes. Speaking of fate, he says: "If you mean a regular succession of determined events, from the beginning to the end of time, an uninterrupted chain without a single chasm, all depending on the eternal will and continued influence of the great First Cause,--if this is fate, it must be owned that it and the Scripture predestination are at most very thinly divided, or rather, entirely coalesce."</p>
<p>Wesley himself took little part in the controversy, and the task of answering assailants devolved mainly upon Walter Sellon, Thomas Olivers, and John William Fletcher. The first two were spirited disputants, and repaid their opponents with something of their own coin. Fletcher, on the other hand, was too much of a saint not to sanctify controversy itself with the leaven of Christian love. He was a man in whom ardent devotion and tender charity were blended into a charming unity. The testimonies which have been pronounced in his favor make as complete a canonizing sentence as was ever issued. Wesley declared him the most unblamable man that he had met in the course of his four-score years. Robert Hall said: "Fletcher is a seraph who burns with the ardor of divine love. Spurning the fetters of mortality, he almost habitually seems to have anticipated the rapture of the beatific vision." Henry Venn wrote of him: "I have known all the great men for these fifty years; but I have known none like him. I was intimately acquainted with him, and was under the same roof with him once for six weeks, during which time I never heard him say a single word which was not proper to be spoken, and which had not a tendency to minister grace to the hearers.</p>
<p>The way in which Fletcher's enthusiastic piety manifested itself would be almost certain to appear obtrusive in another. But in him freedom of expression was joined with a grace and gentility which overcame the impression of forwardness or intemperateness. His <em>courtesy</em> was no small element in his influence. "It was pure and genuine," says Wesley, "and sweetly constrained him to behave to every one (although particularly to inferiors), in a manner not to be described, with so inexpressible a mixture of humility, love, and respect. This directed his words, the tone of his voice, his looks, his whole attitude, his every motion. "To similar effect is the remark of Benson: "His manner was so solemn, and at the same time so mild and insinuating, that it was hardly possible for any one to be in his company without being struck with awe and charmed with love." The subduing effect of this amiable bearing was well illustrated in the case of a prominent Dissenting minister, Thomas Reader, who called upon Fletcher in order to take him to task for what he regarded as erroneous teaching in a recent publication. "Fletcher, knowing him by name, ran from his study to receive his visitor, and spreading out his hands, exclaimed, 'Come in, come in, thou blessed of the Lord! am I so honored as to receive a visit from so esteemed a servant of my Master? Let us have a little prayer, while refreshments are getting ready.' Mr. Reader was puzzled. He remained three days, but was utterly unable to muster sufficient courage to even intimate the object of his visit. Afterwards he stated that he never enjoyed three days of such spiritual and profitable intercourse in all his life." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 For this and other facts, see Tyerman, Life, Letters, and Literary Labors of John William Fletcher.</span></strong></p>
<p>Switzerland was the native land of Fletcher, where he was born in 1729. After finding his way to England (1752), and spending an interval in perfecting his acquaintance with the English language, he served as tutor in the family of Thomas Hill, of Tern Hall. In 1757, he entered into holy orders, and three years later began work in the parish to which he was attached for the remainder of his life. His choice of this parish was an eccentricity of piety very rarely witnessed in those times. While he was offered Dunham, he took Madeley, as providing more work and less salary. The difficulties of the field, as also the spirit in which he entered upon it, are indicated by these words written soon after his installation: "The bulk of the inhabitants are stupid heathens, who seem past all curiosity, as well as all sense of godliness. I am ready to run after them into their pits and forges, and I only wait for Providence to show me the way. I am often reduced to great perplexity, but the end of it is sweet. I am driven to the Lord, and He comforts, encourages, and teaches me." The generous manner in which he cared for his parishioners is thus described by Benson: "The profusion of his charity toward the poor and needy is scarcely credible. It constantly exhausted his purse; it frequently unfurnished his home; and sometimes left him destitute of the common necessaries of life. That he might feed the hungry, he led a life of abstinence and self-denial; and that he might cover the naked, he clothed himself in the most homely attire."</p>
<p>Before he had taken orders, Fletcher had made acquaintance with the Methodists, and conceived for them a cordial friendship. He entertained in particular a profound regard for Wesley. Accordingly, when the controversy began to rage over the obnoxious minutes, he stepped out of his place as president of Lady Huntingdon's college at Trevecca, freely gave his friend the benefit of his industry and talent, and published his "Checks to Antinomianism." As an offset to the arguments of opponents, and also, for the most part, as a presentation of Biblical and practical points of view, these controversial writings of Fletcher were an eminent success. While he deals in a brotherly way with the persons of his antagonists, he indulges in many sharp thrusts at their opinions. A passage or two will illustrate. "Nothing can be more absurd," he says, "than to affirm that when 'something is required to be done in order to receive a favor, the favor loses the name of a free gift, and directly becomes a debt.' I say to two beggars, Hold out your hand, here is an alms for you. The one complies, and the other refuses. Who in the world will dare to say that my charity is no more a <em>free gift</em>, because 1 bestow it only upon the man that held out his hand? Will nothing make it free but my wrenching his hand open, or forcing my bounty down his throat?" "Suppose a schoolmaster said to his English scholars, 'Except you instantly speak Greek, you shall all be severely whipped,' you would wonder at the injustice of the school tyrant. But would not the wretch be merciful in comparison with a Saviour (so-called), who is supposed to say to myriads of men who can no more repent than ice can burn, 'Except ye repent ye shall all perish'? I confess, then, when I see real Protestants calling this doctrine 'the pure gospel,' I no more wonder that real Papists should call their bloody inquisition the house of mercy, and their burning of those whom they call heretics an <em>auto de fé</em>, or act of faith." "Let no one say that we wrong the Calvinian decree of reprobation when we call it a horrible decree, for Calvin himself is honest enough to call it so."</p>
<p>Some of Fletcher's representations may be open to correction. In particular, the propriety of the terms which he employs in distinguishing between a first and a second justification may be questioned. But the general vivacity of style and energy of thought in the "Checks to Antinomianism" must be recognized by any candid reader, and their relative superiority in the controversy which occasioned them is unmistakable. Says one, whose denominational connections might have begotten sympathy with the opposing party: "Whatever may be the theological opinions of any one who has studied the controversy, he must needs admit that Fletcher had the advantage in precision of thought, in skillful reasoning, and in eloquence of expression. Without justifying all his conclusions, whilst demurring to several of his arguments, I must bear witness to the high moral tone and sweet Christian temper of these productions, and not forget to remark that he could and did rise to an elevation above one-sided views, and brought together what in other parts of the discussion were too often torn asunder." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 John Stoughton, History of Religion in England, vi. 268.</span></strong></p>
<p>Fletcher's labors were ended in 1785. His death was a special grief to Wesley. One of his cherished hopes had been that the vicar of Madeley might become his successor in the leadership of the societies.</p>
<p>The preceding pages have so largely revealed the character of Wesley that little needs to be added specifically upon this subject. Criticism, no doubt, has its opportunity here as well as elsewhere. It has pointed, for example, to a species of credulity, a too ready assent to the supposition of supernatural agency in connection with unusual or surprising events. And, in truth, it cannot be denied that Wesley's journal betrays a certain zest for the marvelous. This is evinced, if by nothing else, by the <em>amount of space</em> which he gives to narratives of experiences of a fanciful or extraordinary cast. At the same time, it must be allowed in justice to Wesley, that all such experiences went for nothing with him as opposed to the grand spiritual and ethical tests of character which are laid down in the New Testament. Again, it may be charged against him that in one and another instance he showed a certain precipitancy in judging opinions, and a needless severity in strictures upon persons. This must be allowed, but the statement should go with the second of these specifications, that Wesley was exceedingly fond of open dealing, and if he gave plain talk to others, he was able betimes to receive it himself with good grace, and, moreover, was never disposed to ask an opponent to come more than half way before welcoming him in the spirit of genuine reconciliation. Again, it may be alleged that the rigid scheme which he imposed upon his school at Kingswood bespeaks a heart out of sympathy with the impulses and needs of childhood. No doubt, the Kingswood regime was quite remote from modern notions of youthful discipline; but to some extent it is to be charged against the times, and at most was an index of Wesley's head rather than of his heart. He lavished a generous love upon children, and some of the scenes which sited most of a mellow radiance upon the closing years of his pilgrimage are those which reveal his tenderness for the young or their responsive affection for him. The charge of ambition, which some of the earlier critics were disposed to urge, requires but a brief answer. That Wesley was not wholly beyond the infirmity which disposes most men to relinquish with a degree of reluctance power which has long been exercised, is to be granted. He was loath to withhold his hand from Methodist affairs in America after the societies had been constituted a distinct church. He imposed his own thinking upon his English preachers in a somewhat remarkable manner. The selection of his "Notes on the New Testament" and four volumes of his sermons to be a doctrinal standard was a piece of paternalism which may be explained, in large part, by Wesley's peculiar relations to his workmen, but is not easily justified. These facts, we conceive, indicate some share in the very natural inclination to hold on to power once acquired. But this is far from being identical with conscious self-seeking. Wesley did not live in the same zone with a shallow, earthy ambition. The accusation of plagiarism, out of which Toplady made so much capital, demands still less notice. No doubt Wesley's "Address to the Colonies" was little else than an abridgment of Johnson's pamphlet on the subject, and it would have been wise to have mentioned this fact. But Wesley probably judged that the fact of abridgment would be understood, the treatise of Johnson being so prominently before the public. In any case, Johnson himself, so far as is known, was not disposed to complain. On the contrary, he was much pleased to have the aid of Wesley in circulating his arguments. According to Isaac Taylor, another must be added to the list of defects, or alleged imperfections, in the great evangelist, namely, his lack of domestic instincts. "Wesley," he says, "apostolic man as he was, and having a heart and a countenance warm and bright as the sun with genuine benevolence.-- an unselfish, loving soul, a soul large enough to fill a seraph's bosom,-- himself knew nothing of the domestic affections." If Taylor had said that Wesley was singularly unfortunate in his attempts to satisfy the domestic instincts of his nature, no exception could be taken. The Georgia disappointment was followed by a more grievous disappointment, as Grace Murray, partly by her own choice, and partly by the influence of officious friends, broke her engagement with him, and hastily consummated a marriage with one of his preachers; and this was followed by the most grievous affliction of all, an unreasonable and termagant wife. In 1751 he married Mrs. Vazeille, a widow lady of good repute. At first she accompanied him in his work, but soon grew weary of his incessant itinerating, became almost crazed by jealousy, and in fine acted such a part that "she deserves," says Southey, "to be classed in a triad with Xantippe and the wife of Job, as one of the three bad wives." All the evidence goes to show that Wesley treated her with becoming patience and consideration. "Several of his letters to her, which were written after their marriage, have been preserved. They display the utmost tenderness of affection, and justify the opinion that, had it been his happiness to be married to a person that was worthy of him, he would have been one of the most affectionate husbands that ever lived." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Jackson, Life of Charles Wesley, p. 441.</span></strong> Taylor was quite out of the way in his estimate of Wesley's domestic aptitudes. There is clear evidence that he was to an extra degree responsive to the charms of womanhood. "His early impressibility," says Stoughton, "seen in tender affection for beautiful and gifted sisters, and in warm friendship for the gentler sex, prepared for a lifelong habit of purest sympathy with Christian women." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 History of Religion in England, vi. 112.</span></strong></p>
<p>The grand distinguishing traits of Wesley were consecration, industry, mental alertness, and executive ability. He was intensely devoted. Obstacles the most formidable sank out of sight before his invincible resolution. He was inaccessible both to fear and flattery. His indifference to the verdict of those in high position almost passed over into a species of aversion to people of rank. As he himself states, he cared for no intercourse with persons of quality. He had a very poor opinion of the moral and intellectual character of the more <em>favored</em> classes of his own time, and on one occasion exclaimed over the difficulty of being shallow enough for a polite audience.</p>
<p>The amount of work accomplished by Wesley is almost without a parallel. He achieved much, not merely because he was always occupied, but because he was supremely methodical and self-possessed. "Though I am always in haste," he writes, "I am never in a hurry; because I never undertake any more work than I can go through with perfect calmness of spirit." For a long period he traveled annually not less than four thousand and five hundred miles. Besides canvassing England and Scotland, he crossed the Irish channel forty-two times, and spent in the aggregate about six years in that country. Some of his most talented and trusted laborers, such as Thomas Walsh, Adam Clarke, and Henry Moore, were won in this field. It is estimated that in the course of fifty years he preached upwards of forty thousand times. Besides doing this work he was active in disseminating Christian literature among his people, compiling a library of choice treatises and contributing many volumes of his own productions. He managed, moreover, to secure considerable time for miscellaneous reading. We find him at one time reviewing his studies in Homer; at another, reading a work of Voltaire, or some of the writings of Rousseau; in many instances perusing recently issued works in history and theology.</p>
<p>Wesley was awake to the issues of his day, and in active sympathy with progress in every department. He was interested in scientific discoveries. Franklin's experiments with electricity in particular excited his enthusiasm, and called out the exclamation, "What an amazing scene is here opened, for after ages to improve upon!" He gave his hearty support to the anti-slavery movement, which rose to prominence in his later years, and the last letter which he wrote was to Wilberforce, encouraging him in his philanthropic labors for the slave. He denounced slavery as utterly inconsistent with justice, and fervently implored God to work out the emancipation of the oppressed. "Arise, and help those that have no helper, whose blood is spilled upon the ground like water! Are not these also the work of thine own hands, the purchase of thy Son's blood? Stir them up to cry unto thee in the land of their captivity; and let their complaint come up before thee; lee it enter into thy ears! Make even those that lead them away captive to pity them, and turn their captivity as the rivers in the South." With equal emphasis Wesley denounced the liquor traffic. Words of more terrific energy have scarce ever been uttered against this spoiler of human thrift and happiness than fell from his lips in one of his sermons. Speaking of those who sell for aught but medicinal purposes, he said: "They murder his Majesty's subjects by wholesale, neither does their eye pity or spare. They drive them to hell like sheep, and what is their gain? Is it not the blood of these men? Who, then, would envy them their large estates and sumptuous palaces? A curse is in the midst of them; the curse of God cleaves to the stones, the timber, the furniture of them! The curse of God is in their gardens, their walks, their groves,-- a fire that burns to the nethermost hell!"</p>
<p>To some extent Wesley outlived the opprobrium which had been heaped upon him year after year. Many of his opponents ceased from their railings, and the churches, which had been almost entirely closed against him, began to open their doors, so that he received more invitations to preach than he could well accept. In substantial fulfillment of his hope that he might cease at once to work and live, he died March 2, 1791, a week after preaching his last sermon. The victory upon the death-bed was such as befitted the close of a victorious life.</p>
<p>The societies which owned Wesley as their founder were at this time no inconsiderable body. The report for 1790 announces 134,549 Methodist members, of whom 57,631 belonged to America. Among the British Methodists a question of engrossing interest immediately after Wesley's death was naturally their relation to the Established Church. Every year more and more pressure was brought to bear in the direction of independence. The manner in which the independent status was ultimately reached has been succinctly described as follows: "After a resistance protracted for four years, it was settled by the Conference of 1795 that, where a majority of the stewards and leaders in any society, and also of the trustees of the chapel, desired it, the Lord's Supper might be administered. No society was advised to ask for this. The tone of the Conference to the last was rather dissuasory; but provision was made that society by society, where the members insisted on the sacraments being administered they should be administered. This is all the separation from the Church of England which has ever taken place in Methodism. It took some twenty years to consummate the result. That result was, the ministers finally came to administer the sacrament in every circuit and every society." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">1 Rigg. The Relations of John Wesley and of Wesleyan Methodism to the Church of England.</span></strong></p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-86892752746797224012012-03-29T19:09:00.000-07:002019-09-03T00:03:56.556-07:00Charles Wesley And Methodist Hymnology<p><strong>Charles Wesley And Methodist Hymnology</strong></p>
<p>Charles Wesley, if less adapted for practical achievements among men than his brother John, was, on the whole his efficient coadjutor. For a series of years he was his associate in the perils and toils of the itinerancy, and though he ceased after 1756 from extensive journeyings, he remained still attached to Methodism, and devoted his ministry to its societies in London and Bristol. In his later years he was troubled with apprehensions that a separation from the Established Church might occur, and was afflicted by some points in his brother's policy, especially his ordinations. But these differences were not allowed to sever the bond of affection between the two brothers.</p>
<p>Charles in temperament was much less even and settled than his brother. "Few ministers,"says Jackson, "it is presumed, have been subject to greater variation of feeling than Charles Wesley. When traveling from place to place, preaching the word of life, and witnessing the power of divine grace in the conversion of ungodly men, his joy sometimes rose to rapture, and at other times his energies were paralyzed by despondency, and be earnestly desired to descend into the grave." In domestic life, whether by reason of greater aptitude for the married state or not, he was infinitely more happy than his brother.</p>
<p>Though a preacher of no mean ability, Charles Wesley is known almost wholly for his unique gifts in sacred poetry. More than any other whose poetic talent was enkindled by the revival, he lived and moved and had his being in sacred song. Fitted by his classical training to understand the niceties of verse, holding theological views in full sympathy with the most august, tender, and fruitful themes of the gospel, possessing religious sensibilities that were easily kindled to a flame, and baring a command over language which made it the facile instrument of his thought and feeling, he was every way qualified to be a master hymnist. The distinct products of his poetical genius were in the neighborhood of seven thousand. As the hymns of the Jewish Psalter were the adequate vehicle for almost every phase of Hebrew piety, so the hymns of Charles Wesley give apt expression to nearly every characteristic thought and feeling of Protestant Christianity. "It may be affirmed," says Isaac Taylor, "that there is no principal element of Christianity, no main article of belief as professed by Protestant churches; that there is no moral or ethical sentiment peculiarly characteristic of the gospel; no height or depth of feeling, proper to the spiritual life, that does not find itself emphatically and pointedly and clearly conveyed in some stanza of Charles Wesley's hymns." Stoughton aptly remarks: "There are hymns of smoother versification and pervaded by a serener spirit,--more suited to Anglo-Catholics, and perhaps to sedate Nonconformists; but for light and life, force and fire, no compositions can compare with those of the Methodist poets. They bear distinctly a character of their own, and reflect the excitement out of which they rose. Perhaps at times Isaac Watts may hare surpassed them in calm grandeur of conception, and Philip Doddridge in tenderness of sentiment; but beyond anything in either, there are in Charles Wesley's hymns tones of conflict and victory which resemble the voice of a trumpet, and strains of praise like the sound of many waters."</p>
<p>It was the fortune of Charles Wesley to reach the goal before his brother. He died March 29, 1788. A fortnight later the surviving brother, then ill his eighty-fifth year, while conducting service at Bolton, gave out the hymn of the deceased poet beginning with the words, "Come, O Thou Traveller unknown." as he reached the lines -</p>
<blockquote>"My company before is gone,<br /><br />And I am left alone with Thee,"</blockquote>
<p>the bereaved old man was overpowered by his emotions, burst into a flood of tears, and was unable for a few moments to proceed with the service. A companionship extending over three quarters of a century, notwithstanding some differences on points of expediency, had nurtured a rare affection between the organizer and the poet of Methodism.</p>
<div class="separator" style="text-align:center"><iframe src="https://edwardtbabinski.us/related-content/related-content-25.html" style="margin-bottom:0em; margin-left:0em; margin-right:0em; height:400px; width:600px; border:0px"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1043631402898998855.post-89479026105903635422012-03-29T19:05:00.000-07:002019-09-03T00:04:13.719-07:00Whitefield And Calvinistic Methodism<p><strong>Whitefield And Calvinistic Methodism</strong></p>
<p>George Whitefield was born in 1714. His father, who was an inn-keeper in Gloucester, died while George was in youth, and the care of his education devolved upon his mother. At the age of eighteen he entered Pembroke College, Oxford. His straitened circumstances had previously compelled him, at least for a time, to do menial duties at the inn, and at college he was obliged to work his way as a servitor. His early life had exhibited a mixture of religion and irreligion, but at college the religious impulses of his nature gained the ascendency. After passing through a profound and painful struggle, he issued into a clear experience of divine grace. In 1736 he was admitted to orders, and began directly his remarkable preaching career. His very first efforts produced an extraordinary impression. In 1738 he visited America, and conceived the project of the orphan house in Georgia, an institution which continued to claim his affectionate interest till the end of his life. Early in 1739, as already stated, he led Methodism to the field of victory, by initiating outdoor preaching. In the same year he visited Wales, and started a second time for America. His first trip to Scotland occurred near the middle of 1741. But our space forbids us to particularize. Suffice it to say that, in his almost ubiquitous evangelism, he traversed England repeatedly, made numerous visits to Wales and Scotland, twice crossed into Ireland, made seven voyages to America, preached through the colonies on the Atlantic border, and died a few hours after delivering his last sermon, at Newburyport, Sept. 30, 1770.</p>
<p>Whitefield possessed but moderate learning and intellectual breadth. He was rather lacking in precision and poise. Cast out upon a conspicuous and tumultuous career as early as the age of twenty-three, he naturally exhibited some of the faults of immature thought and precipitate zeal. Of this he himself became conscious, and we find him writing, in 1748, as follows: "In how many things have I judged and acted wrong! I have been too rash and hasty in giving characters both of places and persons. Being fond of Scripture language, I have often used a style too apostolical; and at the same time I have been too bitter in my zeal. Wild-fire has been mixed with it; and I frequently wrote and spoke in my own spirit, when I thought I was writing and speaking by the assistance of the Spirit of God. I have, likewise, too much made impressions my rule of acting; and have published, too soon and too explicitly, what had been better told after my death. By these things I have hurt the blessed cause I would defend, and have stirred up needless opposition." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Tyerman, Life of Whitefield.</span></strong> But for special errors of the head, and some lack of intellectual delicacy, there was a noble compensation in Whitefield. A more affectionate heart than his scarce ever beat in a human bosom. No one was ever more ready with a humble confession when once convinced of a fault.</p>
<p>Sacred oratory was the luminous centre in the genius of Whitefield. In natural gifts of thrilling and persuasive address he was one of the most remarkable men that ever lived. His power as an orator, however, was wrapped up with his personal presence, with his voice of wonderful compass and flexibility, with his action at once the height of grace and energy, with his manner shaped and informed by such intensity of conviction that he seemed to speak from the border of the spiritual world. His printed sermons fail almost utterly to reveal the orator; and indeed they are none too ample as specimens of his mere words and ideas. While he preached upwards of eighteen thousand times, only eighty-one sermons were committed to print, and of these, eighteen were issued without his revision or consent of the sixty-three authentic sermons remaining, at least forty-six-six were preached and printed before he was twenty-five years of age. The proof of his eloquence lies not here, but in the effects of his preaching, and in the testimony of all classes of witnesses. While he melted the rude and the abandoned to repentance, he commanded the plaudits of the learned, the aristocratic, and the sceptical. Benjamin Franklin narrates how the orator got the best of him. He fully resolved to give nothing for the orphan house, because Whitefield insisted upon having it in Georgia, instead of accepting his advice to locate it in Philadelphia. "I happened?" he says, "soon after, to attend one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived that he intended to finish with a collection; and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded, I began to soften, and concluded to give the copper. Another stroke of his oratory determined me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold and all." The same writer instances the fact that the utterance of Whitefield was most perfect and effective in sermons which he had many times repeated. Equally significant of the eloquence of the great preacher is the testimony of David Hume. He considered Whitefield the moat ingenious preacher to whom he ever listened, and records this item from his recollections of his preaching: "Once Whitefield addressed his audience thus: 'The attendant angel is about to leave us and ascend to heaven. Shall he ascend and not bear with him the news of one sinner reclaimed from the error of his way?' And then, stamping with his foot, and lifting up his hand and eyes to heaven, he cried aloud, 'Stop, Gabriel, stop, ere you enter the sacred portal, and yet carry with you the tidings of one sinner being saved.' This address surpassed anything I ever saw or heard in any other preacher." The celebrated actor, David Garrick, is reported to have said, "I would give a hundred guineas if I could only say 'Oh !' like Mr. Whitefield." Lord Chesterfield also paid tribute to Whitefield's genius. "On one occasion when the great preacher was representing the sinner under the figure of a, blind beggar, whose dog had broken from him, and who was groping on the brink of a precipice, over which he stepped and was lost, Chesterfield was so excited by the graphic description that he bounded from his seat and exclaimed, 'By heavens, the beggar is gone !'" The testimony of a prominent American ship-builder is worth adding. Having been persuaded to hear the noted evangelist, he was asked, "What do you think of Mr. Whitefield?" "Think? "said he, "I never heard such a man in my life. I tell you, sir, when I go to church I could build a ship from stem to stern under the sermon; but were it to save my soul, under Mr. Whitefield I could not lay a single plank."</p>
<p>Whitefield's earlier sermons show no trace of a specifically Calvinistic belief, and the causes of his preference for it are not very definitely given. Probably his reading and his intercourse with Congregationalists and Presbyterians in America were prominent factors in determining his bias. Passing hastily over the graver implications of the doctrine of unconditional election, he was attracted by its apparent exaltation of sovereign grace and its elimination of all contingency respecting the ultimate fortune of the converted person. In 1740 we find him unwaveringly entrenched in the Calvinistic tenet. About this time Wesley sent forth his most vigorous blast against the tenet, his sermon on Free Grace. The cause determining him to this step was by no means an ardent love of controversy. As he emphatically affirmed, he did not make the holding of the doctrine of election a bar to membership in the societies which he superintended. It was only the contentious advocacy of the same that he considered insufferable. On this principle he dealt with his lay helper at Kingswood, John Cennick, who, on the score of his Calvinistic belief, alienated the people from their leader, and wrote to Whitefield, then in America, to return and assist in opposing the Armenian errors. Wesley could not do otherwise than complain of such conduct. A rupture of the society at Kingswood ensued. The minds of not a few in the neighborhood were perplexed over the doctrinal question at issue. Under these circumstances, Wesley thought himself justified in publishing the sermon mentioned above. Whitefield was much offended by the sermon, and prepared an answer. Wesley was still ready for continued fellowship, and was far from the idea of opposing by name the advocates of predestination. But Whitefield, whether by his own choice or under the influence of more ardent partisans, decided that fellowship was out of the question. Referring to an interview held in March, 1741, Wesley says: "He told me he and I preached two different gospels; and therefore he not only would not join with me, or give me the right hand of fellowship, but was resolved publicly to preach against me and my brother, wherever he preached at all." This estrangement, if ever it really sundered the bond of affection between the two men, was of short duration. Before the close of 1742 they seemed to have been united in heart, and addressed each other in friendly terms. Under date of November, 1755, Wesley wrote in his journal: "Mr. Whitefield called upon me. Disputings are now no more. We love one another, and join hand in hand to promote the cause of our common Master." Of Whitefield's regard for Wesley we have a striking index in the answer which he made to a censorious Calvinist who asked him whether they were likely to see John Wesley in heaven. "I fear not," was the reply; "he will be so near the throne, and we shall be at such a distance, that we shall hardly get a sight of him." This friendship remained unbroken, and after the death of Whitefield, which occurred before the outbreak of the more virulent Calvinistic controversy, both of the Wesleys lovingly commemorated the departed evangelist, the one in a funeral sermon, and the other in an elegiac poem.</p>
<p>But the heart union of the leaders was not destined to be represented by an organic union of Methodism. The Calvinistic and Armenian types made for themselves separate channels, as respects the organizing of the former, Whitefield took only a subordinate part. In the first stage of the history he exhibited a measure of activity in organizing societies; but as early as 1749 he had resolved to be simply an evangelist, to sow the seed in every open field, and leave others to do the harvesting. If in this way he failed to build up a compact organization wherewith to perpetuate his memory, he did not fail of permanent results. The churches of England, Scotland, and America received from him a lasting impulse in vital religion. In the second stage the most prominent organizer of Calvinistic Methodism, at least on English soil, was Lady Huntingdon. After the death of her husband this remarkable woman devoted her heart and fortune to the interests of religion. Whitefield was constituted her chaplain, and preached in her mansion to the most aristocratic audiences assembled in England. The ample fortune of the countess was lavishly employed in building chapels, to which her influence secured the appointment of men of an earnest and devout spirit. A college for the training of ministers was endowed by her at Trevecca, in Wales. The idea was entertained, and in no small degree fulfilled, of leavening the Church of England with an evangelical ministry. "Like Wesley, Lady Huntingdon, with Whitefield, Howell Harris, and most of her preachers, was strongly attached to the Church of England. They wished not to be classed with Dissenters; but in order to protect her chapels from suppression, or appropriation by the Established Church, she had to avail herself, in 1779, of the 'Toleration Act,' a law by which all religious societies that would not be subject to the established ecclesiastical power, could control their own chapels by an avowal direct or virtual, of dissent. Her 'Connection' thus took its place among the Dissenting churches, and Romaine, Townsend, Venn, and many others of her most influential co-laborers belonging to the establishment, ceased to preach in her chapels." <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Stevens, History of Methodism, i. 170, 171.</span></strong></p>
<p>In England, Calvinistic Methodism, as a distinct organization, made but moderate progress after the death of Whitefield. One wing, the so-called Tabernacle Connection, or Whitefield Methodists, inclined toward the forms of the Congregationalists, and a large proportion of their societies were absorbed by that denomination. Lady Huntingdon's Connection, on the other hand, adhered to the liturgical forms of the Anglican Church. Trevecca, and later Cheshunt College, served as its educational centre. The Connection continued to hold its ground, but was not favored with any marked advancement.</p>
<p>Wales was the preferred ground of Calvinistic Methodism in its organized form. Among those who figured in the heroic age of Welsh Methodism a foremost place belongs to Howell Harris and Daniel Rowlands. The former was a veritable Boanerges, whose impromptu speech rose above the din of mobs, and whose courage was ready for a new trial before yet he had been healed of the bruises received in a preceding encounter. Rowlands was a pulpit orator, who carefully prepared his sermons, but put into them the living energy of intense conviction. Multitudes came from far and near to hear his quickening message while he served as rector of Llangeitho. At length, in 1763, the hostility of his clerical brethren drove him out of the Established Church. A quieter, but no less enduring service than that of these hardy evangelists was rendered by a convert of Howell Harris, William Williams of Pantycelyn, the sacred poet of his country, whose hymns still claim pre-eminence in the Welsh collection, and whose talent has also very beautiful memorials in English hymn-books. Thomas Charles, of Bala, who cast in his lot with the Methodists in 1785, wrought efficiently in the promotion of education among the common people, and in the organization of the societies. It was first in 1811 that the Welsh societies entered upon the status of an independent communion. Before the year 1880 the number of members had exceeded a hundred thousand. <strong><span style="font-size: xx-small;">See W. Williams Welsh Calvinistic Methodism.</span></strong></p>
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