The Emancipation of Massachusetts Part 30

HONOR'D SIR, I entreat your acceptance of my most humble and hearty thanks for the kind and Christian advice you were pleased to tender me in relation to Connecticut.... I know that meekness and moderation is most agreeable to the mind of our blessed Saviour, Christ, who himself was meek and lowly, and would have all his followers to learn that lesson of him.... I have duly considered all these things, and have carried myself civilly and kindly to the Independent party, but they have ungratefully resented my love; yet I will further consider the obligations that my holy religion lays upon me, to forgive injuries and wrongs, and to return good for their evil.... I desired only a liberty of conscience might be allowed to the members of the National Church of England; which, notwithstanding, they seemed unwilling to grant, and left no means untried, both foul and fair, to prevent the settling the church among them; for one of their justices came to my lodging and forewarned me, at my peril, from preaching, telling me that I did an illegal thing in bringing in new ways among them; the people were likewise threatened with prison, and a forfeiture of 5 for coming to hear me. It will require more time than you will willingly bestow on these lines to express how rigidly and severely they treat our people, by taking their estates by distress, when they do not willingly pay to support their ministers.... They tell our people that they will not suffer the house of G.o.d to be defiled with idolatrous worship and superst.i.tious ceremonies.... They say the sign of the cross is the mark of the beast and the sign of the devil, and that those who receive it are given to the devil....

Honored sir, your most a.s.sured friend, ...

GEO. MUIRSON. RYE, _9th January_, 1707-8. [Footnote: _Conn. Church Doc.u.ments_, i. 29.]

However, in spite of his difficulties, he was able to boast that "I have ... in one town, ... baptized about 32, young and old, and administered the Holy Sacrament to 18, who never received it before. Each time I had a numerous congregation." [Footnote: _Conn. Church Doc.u.ments_, i. 23.]

The foregoing correspondence was with the secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which had been incorporated in 1701, and had presently afterward appointed Colonel Heathcote as their agent.

They could have chosen no more energetic representative, nor was it long before his exertions began to bear fruit. In 1707 nineteen inhabitants of Stratford sent a memorial to the Bishop of London, the forerunner of many to come. "Because by reason of the said laws we are not able to support a minister, we further pray your lordship may be pleased to send one over with a missionary allowance from the honourable corporation, invested with full power, so as that he may preach and we hear the blessed Gospel of Jesus Christ, without molestation and terror."

[Footnote: _Idem_, i. 34.]

The Anglican prelates conceived it to be their duty to meddle with the religious concerns of New England; therefore, by means of the organization of the venerable society, they proceeded to plant a number of missions throughout the country, whose missionaries were paid from the corporate funds. Whatever opinion may be formed of the wisdom of a policy certain to exasperate deeply so powerful and so revengeful a cla.s.s as the Congregational elders, there can be no doubt the Episcopalians achieved a measure of success, in the last degree alarming, not only among the laity, but among the clergy themselves. Mr.

Reed, pastor of Stratford, was the first to go over, and was of course deprived of his parish; his defection was followed in 1722 by that of the rector of Yale and six other ministers; and the Rev. Joseph Webb, who thought the end was near, wrote in deep affliction to break the news to his friends in Boston.

FAIRFIELD, _Oct._ 2, 1722.

REVEREND AND HONOURED SIR, The occasion of my now giving you the trouble of these few lines is to me, and I presume to many others, melancholy enough. You have perhaps heard before now, or will hear before these come to hand, (I suppose) of the revolt of several persons of figure among us unto the Church of England. There's the Rev. Mr. Cutler, rector of our college, and Mr. Daniel Brown, the tutor thereof. There are also of ordained ministers, pastors of several churches among us, the Rev.

Messieurs following, viz. John Hart of East Guilford, Samuel Whittlesey of Wallingford, Jared Eliot of Kennelworth, ... Samuel Johnson of West-Haven, and James Wetmore of North-Haven. They are the most of them reputed men of considerable learning, and all of them of a virtuous and blameless conversation. I apprehend the axe is hereby laid to the root of our civil and sacred enjoyments; and a doleful gap opened for trouble and confusion in our churches.... It is a very dark day with us; and we need pity, prayers and counsel. [Footnote: Rev. Joseph Webb to Dr. C.

Mather. _Ma.s.s. Hist. Coll._ second series, ii. 131.]

From the tone in which these tidings were received it is plain that the charity and humility of the golden age of Ma.s.sachusetts were not yet altogether extinct among her ecclesiastics. The ministers published their "sentiments" in a doc.u.ment beginning as follows:--

"These new Episcopalians have declared their desire to introduce an usurpation and a superst.i.tion into the church of G.o.d, clearly condemned in the sacred Scriptures, which our loyalty and chast.i.ty to our Saviour, obliges us to keep close unto; and a tyranny, from which the whole church, which desires to be reformed, has groaned that it may be delivered.... The scandalous conjunction of these unhappy men with the Papists is, perhaps, more than what they have themselves duly considered." [Footnote: The Sentiments of the Several Ministers in Boston. _Ma.s.s. Hist. Coll._ second series, ii. 133.] In "A Faithful Relation" of what had happened it was observed: "It has caused some indignation in them," (the people) "to see the vile indignity cast by these cudweeds upon those excellent servants of G.o.d, who were the leaders of the flock that followed our Saviour into this wilderness: and upon the ministry of them, and their successours, in which there has been seen for more than forescore years together, the power and blessing of G.o.d for the salvation of many thousands in the successive generations; with a success beyond what any of them which set such an high value on the Episcopal ordination could ever boast of!... It is a sensible addition, unto their horrour, to see the horrid character of more than one or two, who have got themselves qualified with Episcopal ordination, ... and come over as missionaries, perhaps to serve scarce twenty families of such people, in a town of several hundred families of Christians, better instructed than the very missionaries: to think, that they must have no other ministers, but such as are ordained, and ordered by them, who have sent over such tippling sots unto them: instead of those pious and painful and faithful instructors which they are now blessed withal!" [Footnote: "A Faithful Relation of a Late Occurrence."

_Ma.s.s. Hist. Coll._ second series, ii. 138, 139.]

Only three of the converts had the fort.i.tude to withstand the pressure to which they were exposed: Cutler, Johnson, and Brown went to England for ordination; there Brown died of small-pox, but Cutler returned to Boston as a missionary, and as he, too, possessed a certain clerical apt.i.tude for forcible expression, it is fitting he should relate his own experiences:--

"I find that, in spite of malice and the basest arts our G.o.dly enemies can easily stoop to, that the interest of the church grows and penetrates into the very heart of this country.... This great town swarms with them "(churchmen)," and we are so confident of our power and interest that, out of four Parliament-men which this town sends to our General a.s.sembly, the church intends to put up for two, though I am not very sanguine about our success in it.... My church grows faster than I expected, and, while it doth so, I will not be mortified by all the lies and affronts they pelt me with. My greatest difficulty ariseth from another quarter, and is owing to the covetous and malicious spirit of a clergyman in this town, who, in lying and villany, is a perfect overmatch for any dissenter that I know; and, after all the odium that he contracted heretofore among them, is fully reconciled and endeared to them by his falsehood to the church." [Footnote: Dr. Timothy Cutler to Dr. Zachary Grey, April 2, 1725, Perry's _Collection_, iii. 663.]

Time did not tend to pacify the feud. There was no bishop in America, and candidates had to be sent to England for ordination; nor without such an official was it found possible to enforce due discipline; hence the anxiety of Dr. Johnson, and, indeed, of all the Episcopalian clergy, to have one appointed for the colonies was not unreasonable.

Nevertheless, the opposition they met with was acrimonious in the extreme, so much so as to make them hostile to the charters themselves, which they thought sheltered their adversaries.

"The king, by his instructions to our governor, demands a salary; and if he punishes our obstinacy by vacating our charter, I shall think it an eminent blessing of his ill.u.s.trious reign." [Footnote: Dr. Cutler to Dr.

Grey, April 20, 1731. Perry's _Coll._ iii.]

Whitefield came in 1740, and the tumult of the great revival roused fresh animosities.

"When Mr. Whitefield first arrived here the whole town was alarmed....

The conventicles were crowded; but he chose rather our Common, where mult.i.tudes might see him in all his awful postures; besides that, in one crowded conventicle, before he came in, six were killed in a fright.

The fellow treated the most venerable with an air of superiority. But he forever lashed and anathematized the Church of England; and that was enough.

"After him came one Tennent, a monster! impudent and noisy, and told them all they were d.a.m.n'd, d.a.m.n'd, d.a.m.n'd! This charmed them, and in the most dreadful winter that i ever saw, people wallowed in the snow night and day for the benefit of his beastly brayings; and many ended their days under these fatigues. Both of them carried more money out of these parts than the poor could be thankful for." [Footnote: Dr. Cutler to Dr.

Grey, Sept. 24, 1743. Perry's _Coll._ iii. 676.]

The excitement was followed by its natural reaction conversions became numerous, and the unevangelical temper this bred between the rival clergymen is painfully apparent in a correspondence wherein Dr. Johnson became involved. Mr. Gold, the Congregationalist minister of Stratford, whom he called a dissenter, had said of him "that he was a thief, and robber of churches, and had no business in the place; that his church doors stood open to all mischief and wickedness, and other words of like import." He therefore wrote to defend himself: "As to my having no business here, I will only say that to me it appears most evident that I have as much business here at least as you have,--being appointed by a society in England incorporated by royal charter to provide ministers for the church people in America; nor does his majesty allow of any establishment here, exclusive of the church, much less of anything that should preclude the society he has incorporated from providing and sending ministers to the church people in these countries." [Footnote: _Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson_, p. 108.] To which Mr. Gold replied:--

As for the pleas which you make for Col. Lewis, and others that have broke away disorderly from our church, I think there's neither weight nor truth in them; nor do I believe such poor shifts will stand them nor you in any stead in the awful day of account; and as for your saying that as bad as you are yet you lie open to conviction,--for my part I find no reason to think you do, seeing you are so free and full in denying plain matters of fact.... I don't think it worth my while to say anything further in the affair, and as you began the controversy against rule or justice, so I hope modesty will induce you to desist; and do a.s.sure you that if you see cause to make any more replies, my purpose is, without reading of them, to put them under the pot among my other thorns and there let one flame quench the matter.... HEZ. GOLD.

STRATFORD, _July_ 21, 1741. [Footnote: _Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson,_ p.

111.]

And so by an obvious sequence of cause and effect it came to pa.s.s that the clergy were early ripe for rebellion, and only awaited their opportunity. Nor could it have been otherwise. An autocratic priesthood had seen their order stripped of its privileges one by one, until nothing remained but their moral empire over their parishioners, and then at last not only did an a.s.sociation of rival ecclesiastics send over emissaries to steal away their people, but they proposed to establish a bishop in the land. The thought was wormwood. He would be rich, he would live in a palace, he would be supported by the patronage and pomp of the royal governors; the imposing ceremonial would become fashionable; and in imagination they already saw themselves reduced to the humble position of dissenters in their own kingdom. Jonathan Mayhew was called a heretic by his more conservative brethren, but he was one of the ablest and the most acrid of the Boston ministers. He took little pains to disguise his feelings, and so early as 1750 he preached a sermon, which was once famous, wherein he told his hearers that it was their duty to oppose the encroachment of the British prelates, if necessary, by force.

"Suppose, then, it was allowed, in general, that the clergy were a useful order of men; that they ought to be esteemed very highly in love for their work's sake, and to be decently supported by those they serve, 'the laborer being worthy of his reward.' Suppose, further, that a number of reverend and right reverend drones, who worked not; who preached, perhaps, but once a year, and then not the gospel of Jesus Christ, but the divine right of t.i.thes, the dignity of their office as amba.s.sadors of Christ, ... suppose such men as these, spending their lives in effeminacy, luxury, and idleness; ... suppose this should be the case, ... would not everybody be astonished at such insolence, injustice, and impiety?" [Footnote: "Discourse concerning Unlimited Submission," Jonathan Mayhew. Thornton's _American Pulpit_, pp. 71, 72.]

"Civil tyranny is usually small in its beginning, like 'the drop of a bucket,' till at length, like a mighty torrent... it bears down all before it.... Thus it is as to ecclesiastical tyranny also--the most cruel, intolerable, and impious of any. From small beginnings, 'it exalts itself above all that is called G.o.d and that is worshipped.'

People have no security against being unmercifully priest-ridden but by keeping all imperious bishops, and other clergymen who love to 'lord it over G.o.d's heritage,' from getting their foot into the stirrup at all.... For which reason it becomes every friend to truth and human kind, every lover of G.o.d and the Christian religion, to bear a part in opposing this hateful monster." [Footnote: Preface to "A Discourse concerning Unlimited Submission," Jonathan Mayhew. Thornton's _Amer.

Pulpit_, pp. 50, 51.]

Between these envenomed priests peace was impossible; each year brought with it some new aggression which added fuel to the flame. In 1763, Mr.

Apthorp, missionary at Cambridge, published a pamphlet, in answer, as he explained, to "some anonymous libels which appeared in our newspapers ... grossly reflecting on the society & their missionaries, & in particular on the mission at Cambridge." [Footnote: East Apthorp to the Secretary, June 25, 1763. Perry's _Coll._ iii. 500.]

By this time the pa.s.sions of the Congregationalist divines had reached a point when words seemed hardly adequate to give them expression. The Rev. Ezra Stiles wrote to Dr. Mayhew in these terms:--

"Shall we be hushed into silence, by those whose tender mercies are cruelty; and who, notwithstanding their pretence of moderation, wish the subversion of our churches, and are combined, in united, steady and vigorous effort, by all the arts of subtlety and intreague, for our ruin?" [Footnote: Dr. Ezra Stiles to Dr. Mayhew, 1763. _Life of Mayhew_, p. 246.]

Mr. Stiles need have felt no anxiety, for, according to Mr. Apthorp, "this occasion was greedily seized, ... by a dissenting minister of Boston, a man of a singular character, of good abilities, but of a turbulent & contentious disposition, at variance, not only with the Church of England, but in the essential doctrines of religion, with most of his own party." [Footnote: East Apthorp to the Secretary. Perry's _Coll._ iii. 500.] He alluded to a tract written by Dr. Mayhew in answer to his pamphlet, in which he reproduced the charge made by Mr. Stiles: "The society have long had a formal design to dissolve and root out all our New-England churches; or, in other words, to reduce them all to the Episcopal form." [Footnote: _Observations on the Charter, etc. of the Society_, p. 107.] And withal he clothed his thoughts in language which angered Mr. Caner:--

"A few days after, Mr. Apthorpe published the enclosed pamphlet, in vindication of the inst.i.tution and conduct of the society, which occasioned the ungenteel reflections which your grace will find in Dr.

Mayhew's pamphlet, in which, not content with the personal abuse of Mr. Apthorpe, he has insulted the missions in general, the society, the Church of England, in short, the whole rational establishment, in so dirty a manner, that it seems to be below the character of a gentleman to enter into controversy with him. In most of his sermons, of which he published a great number, he introduces some malicious invectives against the society or the Church of England, and if at any time the most candid and gentle remarks are made upon such abuse, he breaks forth into such bitter and scurrilous personal reflections, that in truth no one cares to have anything to do with him. His doctrinal principles, which seem chiefly copied from Lord Shaftsbury, Bolingbroke, &c., are so offensive to the generalty of the dissenting ministers, that they refuse to admit him a member of their a.s.sociation, yet they appear to be pleased with his abusing the Church of England." [Footnote: Rev. Mr.

Caner to the Archbishop of Canterbury, June 8, 1763. Perry's _Coll._ iii. 497, 498.]

The Archbishop of Canterbury himself now interfered, and tried to calm the tumult by a candid and dignified reply to Dr. Mayhew, in which he labored to show the harmlessness of the proposed bishopric.

"Therefore it is desired, that two or more bishops may be appointed for them, to reside where his majesty shall think most convenient [not in New England, but in one of the Episcopalian colonies]; that they may have no concern in the least with any person who do not profess themselves to be of the Church of England, but may ordain ministers for such as do; ... and take such oversight of the Episcopal clergy, as the Bishop of London's commissaries in those parts have been empowered to take, and have taken, without offence. But it is not desired in the least that they should hold courts ... or be vested with any authority, now exercised either by provincial governors or subordinate magistrates, or infringe or diminish any privileges and liberties enjoyed by any of the laity, even of our own communion." [Footnote: _An Answer to Dr.

Mayhew's Observations_, etc. Dr. Secker, p. 51.]

But the archbishop should have known that the pa.s.sions of rival ecclesiastics are not to be allayed. The Episcopalians had become so exasperated as to want nothing less than the overthrow of popular government. Dr. Johnson wrote in 1763: "Is there then nothing more that can be done either for obtaining bishops or demolishing these pernicious charter governments, and reducing them all to one form in immediate dependence on the king? I cannot help calling them pernicious, for they are indeed so as well for the best good of the people themselves as for the interests of true religion." [Footnote: _Life of Samuel Johnson_, p.

279.]

The Congregationalists, on the other hand, inflamed with jealousy, were ripe for rebellion. On March 22, 1765, the Stamp Act became law, and the clergy threw themselves into the combat with characteristic violence.

Oliver had been appointed distributor, but his house was attacked and he was forced to resign. The next evening but one the rabble visited Hutchinson, who was lieutenant-governor, and broke his windows; and there was general fear of further rioting. In the midst of this crisis., on the 25th of August, Dr. Mayhew preached a sermon in the West Meeting-house from the text, "I would they were even cut off which trouble you." [Footnote: _Galatians_ v. 12.] I That this discourse was in fact an incendiary harangue is demonstrated by what followed. At nightfall on the 26th a fierce mob forced the cellars of the comptroller of the customs, and got drunk on the spirits stored within; then they went on to Hutchinson's dwelling: "The doors were immediately split to pieces with broad axes, and a way made there, and at the windows, for the entry of the mob; which poured in, and filled, in an instant, every room.... They continued their possession until daylight; destroyed ...

everything ... except the walls, ... and had begun to break away the brick-work." [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ iii. 124.] His irreplaceable collection of original papers was thrown into the street; and when a bystander interfered in the hope of saving some of them, "answer was made, that it had been resolved to destroy everything in the house; and such resolve should be carried to effect." [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 125, note.] Malice so bitter bears the peculiar ecclesiastical tinge, and is explained by the confession of one of the ring-leaders, who, when subsequently arrested, said he had been excited by the sermon, "and that he thought he was doing G.o.d service." [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 123.]

The outbreak met with general condemnation, and Dr. Mayhew, who saw he had gone too far, tried to excuse himself:--

"SIR,--I take the freedom to write you a few lines, by way of condolence, on account of the almost unparalleled outrages committed at your house last evening; and the great damage which I understand you have suffered thereby. G.o.d is my witness, that, from the bottom of my heart, I detest these proceedings; that I am most sincerely grieved at them, and have a deep sympathy with you and your distressed family on this occasion." [Footnote: Mayhew to Hutchinson. _Life of Mayhew_, p.

420.]