CHAPTER 1: THE MINISTERS AND THEIR TIMES
In the early eighteen-century the New England ministers lived in a society that was becoming increasingly secular. Although a sense of spiritual decline can be discovered in almost any period of American history, it was particularly acute in provincial New England. The seventeenth-century Puritans had displayed an unusual commitment to the belief that all aspects of life should be governed by religious principles. And so it was with some justification that pious New Englanders of the early eighteenth century regarded their community as more materialistic, selfish, and fragmented than the world of their Puritan forebears.
As heirs of the early Puritan divines the eighteenth-century New England ministers had a peculiar responsibility to reverse the course of history and to remind a secular people that the fulfillment of life comes from beyond the present world. They tried to stand outside of society, "to discern the Face of the Times," and to warn their people that the present world was vain and transitory.1 But, like their parishioners, the pastors too had worldly interests. Even as they sought to shape the eighteenth-century environment, they were shaped by it.
THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY BACKGROUND. New England's founders sought to establish a close relationship between religion and the life of the community. Their initial ideas on doctrine, worship, church polity, and morality had been developed by English Puritans in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The leaders of the early New England settlements came to the New World largely in order to create a society in accord with these ideals. The ministers, as religious leaders of a community explicitly devoted to religious ideals, were men of great importance.
Puritan theology clearly defined the relationship between God and man. The divinity was sovereign, incomprehensible, and absolute-the fit object of worship and adoration. Man, on the other hand, was sinful, contemptible, and helpless-deserving only to suffer hell's eternal torments. But, despite the vast distance between the creature and the creator, God had predestined some men and women to enjoy the blessings of salvation. These were saved, not because of their own merit, but because God imputed Christ's righteousness to them.
This view of the nature of God, man, and salvation may properly be characterized as Calvinism. Some historians have argued that the God of the seventeenth-century Puritans was less awesome than the divinity worshipped by early Reformers. But the difference has been exaggerated, and most historians today would agree with David Hall that Puritanism and Reformed theology "were essentially congruent, if not identical."2 Seventeenth-century Puritans and sixteenth-century continental Reformers both held that God had limited himself by entering into covenants with man, and both noted that even without grace fallen man could behave in a moral fashion and even prepare himself for salvation.3 At the same time, however, both stressed the inability of man to find salvation without divine grace. In John Cotton's Boston, as in John Calvin's Geneva, the convert's path to heaven began with the abject realization of his own unworthiness.
The Puritans developed a system of worship and ecclesiastical polity that was consistent with their understanding of the relationship between God and man. They deplored the condition of the Anglican Church, where, they believed, men and women could easily avoid the knowledge of God's wrath and of their own fallen condition. Elegant priestly vestments and stained glass windows soothed their eyes; melodic hymns lulled their ears; and elaborate rituals drew their minds away from God. The Puritans· sought to remove these abominations from the Established Church. In their own meeting houses in England and America the windows and clerical vestments were plain, hymns were abandoned, and communion was a simple ceremony. The service focused on prayers, scriptural readings, and above all, the sermon. Thereby the word of God came directly to the communicant, reminding him constantly of his perilous relationship to the Deity.
The Puritan ecclesiastical structure, as well as Puritan worship, was influenced by the Protestant perception of the relationship between God and man. From the time of Martin Luther, there were Protestants who had argued that all Christian converts were equal in the eyes of the Lord and that the religious status of the minister was no different than that of his fellow Christians. Reformers in the Protestant mainstream rejected this brand of spiritual leveling, and argued that the minister had a double calling from God-that of a Christian convert, and that of a religious leader. But, nonetheless, the ministers' sense of the fundamental importance of conversion as a shared experience of ministers and laymen led them to emphasize the common ecclesiastical work of both. Puritans tended to give laymen an important role in the choice and creation of clergymen and in the government of the church. And they abandoned the hierarchy of bishops and archbishops that the Anglicans had continued from the Catholic Church.4
Puritanism involved also a set of assumptions about human behavior. Although man was saved by faith rather than by works, Calvinism provided the incentive for strenuous moral endeavor. The daily life was an act of worship. Sanctification, which followed justification, led the Christian to treat all his activities as holy occupations. The Puritan saint's moral stance has been aptly described by Edmund S. Morgan as the "Puritan Dilemma."5 In pursuit of a moral life, the believer could neither withdraw from worldly temptations, nor could he freely indulge himself in them. The merchant should work hard at his trade, but must not place his desire for profit ahead of his duty to serve God and his fellow man. The husband should love his wife, but must not prefer her to God. Each act that subordinated human inclinations to the will of God was an act of piety. Hence, in a famous saying, wine was from God, but drunkenness was from the devil.
It was natural that individuals who adopted Puritanism as the rule of their own lives should be distressed by the behavior of other Englishmen who ignored Puritan precepts. Ideally, God should be made manifest in human affairs, but many Englishmen in the seventeenth century ignored the restraints that Puritans advocated. They swore, became drunk, played games on the Sabbath, and otherwise behaved as though there were no God. Worse still, such individuals interfered with the Puritan's pursuit of their own religious goals. They scoffed at Puritan moral scruples and refused to allow Puritans to worship according to their own beliefs. In the 1620s, as the Puritan movement gathered strength in England, the Anglican Church came under the direction of a monarch and archbishop who sought universal conformity to a religious system that was sharply at variance with Puritanism.
Eventually, Puritan hostility to King Charles and Archbishop Laud would lead to civil war in England. But in the 1620s and 1630s many Puritans, despairing of the possibility of reforming their own land, sought to create a more perfect society in the American wilderness. There, beyond the control of English authorities, they could build a "City upon a Hill," an exemplary community based on Puritan ideas about theology, ecclesiology, worship, and behavior.
The community that they established in American can properly be described as a "Puritan society." It is true that in New England as in Old England there were many individuals who appeared to care more for economic profits and worldly pleasures than for Puritan grace. Many business dealings and political controversies in early New England are indistinguishable from secular activities in England.6 But to suggest that for most men and women religion was merely a formality is to overlook the pervasive Puritan influence in New England. The governments of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Plymouth colony protected the church from heretics and saw to it that the ministers were well maintained. Suffrage in early New England was restricted to church members. The laws reflected Puritan standards of moral conduct in business and in private affairs. The ministers and magistrates presided over a community generally characterized by order, deference, and cohesion. The New England town has been described as "a cohesive social organism."7 The families, too, were tight knit, even to the extent that many sons lived on their parents' land until they were well into their middle years.8 The deferential pattern of social organization is apparent also in provincial politics, where the governors were assumed to have a commission from God.
In this society Congregational ministers enjoyed a position of unusual distinction and respect. They were responsible for the religious life of the whole community. They catechized the children; they led their communities in worship on the Sabbath; they initiated disciplinary action against those who transgressed the moral law; and they published sermons and religious tracts dealing with every aspect of the Christian life. As religious leaders in a society that honored both religion and leadership, clergymen were highly esteemed and well paid for their work. Many colonists made the hazardous journey to American primarily in order to accompany a favorite pastor. In the early years the settlers enjoyed the preaching of such famous English divines as John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, and John Davenport. Recognizing the importance of good ministers, the Puritans sought to secure a continuing supply of able and orthodox religious leaders. This was one of the reasons, perhaps the foremost, for the establishment of Harvard College in 1636.9
But in spite of the strength of Puritanism in early New England, the system was unable to survive intact into the eighteenth century. An important challenge to Puritanism came from New England's commercial interests. The right-thinking Puritan merchant subordinated his economic aspirations to the welfare of the community. Regarding his work as an act of worship, he cared more about providing goods for his fellow Christians than about maximizing his profits. But as the seventeenth century progressed, trade began increasingly to operate according to its own rules, and despite the ministers' objections many merchants made money at the expense of others. Moreover, the leading merchants challenged and eventually supplanted the ministers as the dominant professional class in New England.10
The Puritan hegemony was also weakened by events in England. First, New England's confidence in its own global importance as a model of the ideal Christian commonwealth was undermined during the Civil War, when England adopted a policy of religious toleration, thereby indicating that Congregationalism was but one among many valid religious systems. A few decades later the close alliance between church and state was undermined when England insisted that suffrage in New England could not be restricted to Puritan saints. And in 1684 she abolished the Massachusetts charter and replaced elective Puritan governors with royally appointed executives.
In these ways the close affinity between Puritan theology and New England politics and society was seriously undermined. The new society was less cohesive and more secular, and it was shaped by the values of the English aristocracy and the impact of the colonial frontier as much as by the ideals of Puritanism. Its ministers, lacking the sense of cosmic purpose that characterized their antecedents, were often perplexed by the community they sought to serve.
A PROVINCIAL SOCIETY. In the eighteenth century, wealth and social prestige assumed a far greater importance in New England than was evident in the early years of settlement. In comparison with other parts of the contemporary world, New England was relatively prosperous. In 1704 Madam Knight described Connecticut in terms that could also be applied to the other New England colonies. "It is," she said, "a plentiful country for provisions of all sorts and its [sic] Generally Healthy. No one that can and will be diligent in this place need fear poverty nor the want food and Rayment."11
As the eighteenth century progressed, the fruits of such diligence multiplied. Between 1697 and 1750 New England's imports from England increased by 500 percent.12 In 1740 Benjamin Colman, minister of the Brattle Street Church in Boston, described New England's metropolis as "a place of great trade and business, finery and dress."13 Colman regarded this wealth with mixed feelings. Five years earlier he had lamented the effects of English trade upon New England's currency. "There is no way to recover ourselves... ," he wrote, "but to live upon our homespun and to send for no more silks, calicos, and fine cloth and linen to London .... We must correct our own views, our pride and profuseness in clothing, furniture, etc."14
As Benjamin Colman suggested, the increase in trade was accompanied by the development of new attitudes. In many cases the wealthy merchants adopted a life style that was unaffected by traditional Puritan restraint. Samuel Sewall's oft quoted description of an episode in Boston in 1686 shows that a cultural schism was already developing at that time. In his diary he recorded: "Friday, September 3. Mr. Shrimpton, Captain Lidget and others ... come in a Coach from Roxbury about 9 o’clock or past, singing as they come, being inflamed with Drink. At Justice Morgan's they stop and drink Healths, curse, swear, talk profanely and baudily to the great disturbance of the Town and grief of good people. Such highhanded wickedness has hardly been heard of before in Boston."15 Excessive drinking was not limited to the upper classes. By 1750 there were 150 taverns in Boston alone, and almost every village in . New England had at least one public house.16 John Hancock, minister of Lexington, complained that by allowing customers to take more than "a proportionable amount to drink" and by remaining open after nine o'clock tavern keepers failed to "prevent the mischief of quarrels, loudness, and thefts, midnight brawls, the diseases of intemperance and venery, and a 1,000 other evils."17
In the early eighteen century, the movement toward a more worldly society was also reflected in a change in attitudes toward sex. Puritans had never been sexual ascetics and had heartily approved of the physical relationship between man and wife. But they did not condone sex outside of or before marriage. In the 1720s, however, there was enough diversity of opinion on this point that a religious society at Harvard could debate the question, "Whether it be fornication to lye with one's sweetheart (after contraction) before marriage?"18 We do not know what the society concluded, but in some churches during the next decade, 20 percent of married couples confessed to premarital intercourse.19 In the town of Longmeadow, Massachusetts, Rev. Stephen Williams complained that there was "a notion advanced by some of its being lawful to persons that have made private promises to one another to have carnal knowledge of one another."20
Another sign of the secularization of New England was the pride that many people took in worldly possessions. Josiah Cotton, justice of the peace for Plymouth, was one of numerous eighteenth-century colonists who carefully maintained a family coat of arms. Many colonists coveted fine clothes and jewelry. Richard S. Dunn's description of two of John Winthrop's grandsons shows how even the descendants of one of New England's patriarchs had become obsessed with material possessions. Dunn writes: "Fitz John and Wait Still Winthrop were men of the Glorious Revolution, narrowly secular and parochial, half-humorous and half-ludicrous, uncertain of their values, and always chiefly absorbed with fashion, status and the accumulation of real estate." Both men were petty and cantankerous. "The accumulation of real estate was their main object, and the conduct of lawsuits over disputed land claims was among their main occupations. The brothers also displayed an acute awareness of their status as gentlemen and the necessity of living in style. They were always exceedingly anxious to hear about the latest London fashions in waistcoats and wig."21
The love of ornaments also found its way into the churches. The "Lord's barns" of the seventeenth century, which had been plain edifices, were often replaced by more elaborate structures in the eighteenth century. One of these was the new meetinghouse in Guilford, Connecticut, built in 1726 with a 120-foot steeple.22 Inside the churches, new and old, the practice of assigning pews to reflect each parishioner's wealth was becoming the normal custom. Hymns were also sung in a "New Way" in many churches. By the "Old Way" each man sang his own tune, giving voice to his individual piety. The new method, singing by note, though less individualistic, was more decorous.
Even the gravestones of New England, many of them still standing, reflect these basic changes in attitude. Most of the stones from the late seventeenth and ear1y eighteenth centuries bear the figures of skulls. But the stones from the middle of the eighteenth century are adorned with the fleshy faces of cherubs or even with the lively countenances of the men lying beneath them. The awesome fact of death, which drove many early New Englanders to seek their refuge in God, was muted by these comforting images.23
Theological developments also reflected eighteenth-century culture. Although most men continued to believe in a universe ruled by God, many New Englanders tended to place more emphasis than their forebears on man's intrinsic ability and worth. Some began to suggest that man could earn salvation through his own works. This position, known as Arminianism, was especially congenial to wealthy New Englanders, who tended to identify their worldly success with God's approval,24 Although few colonists became outright Arminians before the middle of the century, many attended Congregational churches that had abandoned evidence of conversion as a criterion for membership, and some even became members of Anglican churches, which were slowly gaining adherents throughout New England.
As the Puritan influence over the culture declined, other forces gained importance in shaping the New England mind. In particular, English customs affected many colonists. In politics, the eighteenth century saw the development of a "court persuasion," which stressed the political leadership of New England's upper class and the superiority of English fashions and manners. In the same period, a contrary sensibility, "the country persuasion," gained many supporters. It stressed the political legitimacy of the leader who "remained close to his constituents" and "defended those provincial customs and values which the Court had come to reject."25 Both philosophies had their origins in England and were rooted in secular rather than religious considerations.
In addition to becoming increasingly secular, New England in the eighteenth century was more fragmented and contentious than in the previous era. The early Puritans had urged men to subordinate their selfish desires to the needs of the community. But life in the eighteenth century was characterized by a thirst for self aggrandizement. As the population grew, pressure on available resources left some men wealthy and others impoverished. Families were broken apart as sons left home to seek new lands. Town and provincial politics were increasingly characterized by factional struggles revolving around such issues as the creation of new towns and the printing of paper money. Each of these changes undercut the religious, communitarian ideals of the founders and "put one portion of the populace out of harmony with another." In the early eighteenth century, "a person's total attachment to any community whatsoever diminished."26
Historians generally agree that the loyalties that had once bound men to communities and institutions larger than themselves had been replaced by commitments to narrow individual and group interests. In a study of Connecticut, Richard L. Bushman writes: "After 1690 the close-knit, tightly controlled, homogeneous community of the early period steadily became more open and heterogeneous." Timothy H. Breen and Stephen Foster argue that by the 1680s "Massachusetts had changed from a peaceful to a relatively turbulent society." Perry Miller's chapters on the period in The New England Mind: From Colony to Province are appropriately titled "The Splintering of Society." And H. Richard Niebuhr has described the eighteenth century as a time when "Absolute individuals had replaced absolute kings and absolute churches."27
But although the social structure of New England has been ably described by historians, we know little about the clergymen in this period. Inevitably, the ministers were troubled by their times. As merchants assumed greater importance, as politics became more secular in orientation, as Puritan restraint was challenged by eighteenth-century worldliness, the clergymen lost the central position they had occupied in early Puritan society. The ministers were keenly aware of the worldliness and fragmentation of their society, and they often complained that their people did not show any serious concern for religion. But although they criticized worldliness, the ministers were often as sensitive about their own social position as they were concerned about the decline in religious fervor. Thomas Prince, for example, was phrased when in his first days in London he was mistaken for an Englishman. He reported that people he met "wondered as much at my carriage and deportment, as at the trueness and accuracy of my language."28 A satirical poem written at the time of Benjamin Colman's settlement as minister of the Brattle Street Church indicted the clergymen for their materialism. The poem alleged: "Our parsons grow trim and trig, with wealth, wine and wig."29 The ministers were acutely conscious of their own professional status. After 1690 they began to join together in ministerial associations, permanent organizations that, unlike synods and councils, included no laymen. In the same period, ministers frequently published works about their profession. Between 1700 and 1740 more than one hundred and fifty ordination sermons, funeral sermons for clergymen, and tracts about the ministry were published in New England. In many of these the ministers emphasized the importance of their calling and urged laymen to recognize and honor their status. In 1720 Daniel Lewes summarized what many of his fellow clergymen felt. In the world there are many "Offices and Employments," he said, "but among them all there is none of more Importance ... than that of the Ministry. Nay, it may with Truth be asserted that it is the most weighty, awful, and important Work that ever mortal Man was employed in."30
During this period when the clergymen were becoming highly conscious of their professional status their real economic and social position was far from secure. Most of the country ministers had to divide their time between religious duties and menial farm labor. Often their salaries were low and in arrears. In Boston, where the ministers were usually well paid, laymen such as James Franklin and the supporters of his New England Courant published criticism of the clergy's worldly pride. Other critics challenged the religious leadership of the clergy and questioned the Congregational ideal of a well-educated professional ministry.
Thus, it was in the midst of many complex circumstances that the New England ministers carried on their work in the first part of the eighteenth century. The ideal they upheld stressed religious rather than secular values. It emphasized the transitoriness of life and the vanity of earthly pleasures. And yet the ministers, like the laymen, were increasingly attracted by earthly rewards. Worse still, the clergymen began using the ministerial office itself as a source of worldly prestige.
The tension between the ministers' self-interest and their religious mission led to a crisis in clerical leadership in the 1740s. The Great Awakening, a religious revival that swept through the colonies, was a fulfillment both of the ministers' greatest hopes for a spiritual renewal and of their worst fears of popular disrespect. Awakened laymen showed a lively interest in religious affairs, but they did not always follow their traditional religious leaders, and many even removed ministers whom they disliked or joined new denominations.
In the turbulent years of the Great Awakening the ministers developed a new understanding of their relationship to the people they served. The new concept was largely a recognition of a situation that had already existed, and so in order to understand it fully, we need to begin by exploring the distinctive genesis, activities, and aspirations of the clergy. How did a person become a minister? What did ministers do? How did they attempt to enhance their position? How did they seek to increase religiosity in their communities? The answers to these questions will lead us to a better comprehension both of the ministers and of American society in the late colonial period.
As heirs of the early Puritan divines the eighteenth-century New England ministers had a peculiar responsibility to reverse the course of history and to remind a secular people that the fulfillment of life comes from beyond the present world. They tried to stand outside of society, "to discern the Face of the Times," and to warn their people that the present world was vain and transitory.1 But, like their parishioners, the pastors too had worldly interests. Even as they sought to shape the eighteenth-century environment, they were shaped by it.
THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY BACKGROUND. New England's founders sought to establish a close relationship between religion and the life of the community. Their initial ideas on doctrine, worship, church polity, and morality had been developed by English Puritans in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The leaders of the early New England settlements came to the New World largely in order to create a society in accord with these ideals. The ministers, as religious leaders of a community explicitly devoted to religious ideals, were men of great importance.
Puritan theology clearly defined the relationship between God and man. The divinity was sovereign, incomprehensible, and absolute-the fit object of worship and adoration. Man, on the other hand, was sinful, contemptible, and helpless-deserving only to suffer hell's eternal torments. But, despite the vast distance between the creature and the creator, God had predestined some men and women to enjoy the blessings of salvation. These were saved, not because of their own merit, but because God imputed Christ's righteousness to them.
This view of the nature of God, man, and salvation may properly be characterized as Calvinism. Some historians have argued that the God of the seventeenth-century Puritans was less awesome than the divinity worshipped by early Reformers. But the difference has been exaggerated, and most historians today would agree with David Hall that Puritanism and Reformed theology "were essentially congruent, if not identical."2 Seventeenth-century Puritans and sixteenth-century continental Reformers both held that God had limited himself by entering into covenants with man, and both noted that even without grace fallen man could behave in a moral fashion and even prepare himself for salvation.3 At the same time, however, both stressed the inability of man to find salvation without divine grace. In John Cotton's Boston, as in John Calvin's Geneva, the convert's path to heaven began with the abject realization of his own unworthiness.
The Puritans developed a system of worship and ecclesiastical polity that was consistent with their understanding of the relationship between God and man. They deplored the condition of the Anglican Church, where, they believed, men and women could easily avoid the knowledge of God's wrath and of their own fallen condition. Elegant priestly vestments and stained glass windows soothed their eyes; melodic hymns lulled their ears; and elaborate rituals drew their minds away from God. The Puritans· sought to remove these abominations from the Established Church. In their own meeting houses in England and America the windows and clerical vestments were plain, hymns were abandoned, and communion was a simple ceremony. The service focused on prayers, scriptural readings, and above all, the sermon. Thereby the word of God came directly to the communicant, reminding him constantly of his perilous relationship to the Deity.
The Puritan ecclesiastical structure, as well as Puritan worship, was influenced by the Protestant perception of the relationship between God and man. From the time of Martin Luther, there were Protestants who had argued that all Christian converts were equal in the eyes of the Lord and that the religious status of the minister was no different than that of his fellow Christians. Reformers in the Protestant mainstream rejected this brand of spiritual leveling, and argued that the minister had a double calling from God-that of a Christian convert, and that of a religious leader. But, nonetheless, the ministers' sense of the fundamental importance of conversion as a shared experience of ministers and laymen led them to emphasize the common ecclesiastical work of both. Puritans tended to give laymen an important role in the choice and creation of clergymen and in the government of the church. And they abandoned the hierarchy of bishops and archbishops that the Anglicans had continued from the Catholic Church.4
Puritanism involved also a set of assumptions about human behavior. Although man was saved by faith rather than by works, Calvinism provided the incentive for strenuous moral endeavor. The daily life was an act of worship. Sanctification, which followed justification, led the Christian to treat all his activities as holy occupations. The Puritan saint's moral stance has been aptly described by Edmund S. Morgan as the "Puritan Dilemma."5 In pursuit of a moral life, the believer could neither withdraw from worldly temptations, nor could he freely indulge himself in them. The merchant should work hard at his trade, but must not place his desire for profit ahead of his duty to serve God and his fellow man. The husband should love his wife, but must not prefer her to God. Each act that subordinated human inclinations to the will of God was an act of piety. Hence, in a famous saying, wine was from God, but drunkenness was from the devil.
It was natural that individuals who adopted Puritanism as the rule of their own lives should be distressed by the behavior of other Englishmen who ignored Puritan precepts. Ideally, God should be made manifest in human affairs, but many Englishmen in the seventeenth century ignored the restraints that Puritans advocated. They swore, became drunk, played games on the Sabbath, and otherwise behaved as though there were no God. Worse still, such individuals interfered with the Puritan's pursuit of their own religious goals. They scoffed at Puritan moral scruples and refused to allow Puritans to worship according to their own beliefs. In the 1620s, as the Puritan movement gathered strength in England, the Anglican Church came under the direction of a monarch and archbishop who sought universal conformity to a religious system that was sharply at variance with Puritanism.
Eventually, Puritan hostility to King Charles and Archbishop Laud would lead to civil war in England. But in the 1620s and 1630s many Puritans, despairing of the possibility of reforming their own land, sought to create a more perfect society in the American wilderness. There, beyond the control of English authorities, they could build a "City upon a Hill," an exemplary community based on Puritan ideas about theology, ecclesiology, worship, and behavior.
The community that they established in American can properly be described as a "Puritan society." It is true that in New England as in Old England there were many individuals who appeared to care more for economic profits and worldly pleasures than for Puritan grace. Many business dealings and political controversies in early New England are indistinguishable from secular activities in England.6 But to suggest that for most men and women religion was merely a formality is to overlook the pervasive Puritan influence in New England. The governments of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Plymouth colony protected the church from heretics and saw to it that the ministers were well maintained. Suffrage in early New England was restricted to church members. The laws reflected Puritan standards of moral conduct in business and in private affairs. The ministers and magistrates presided over a community generally characterized by order, deference, and cohesion. The New England town has been described as "a cohesive social organism."7 The families, too, were tight knit, even to the extent that many sons lived on their parents' land until they were well into their middle years.8 The deferential pattern of social organization is apparent also in provincial politics, where the governors were assumed to have a commission from God.
In this society Congregational ministers enjoyed a position of unusual distinction and respect. They were responsible for the religious life of the whole community. They catechized the children; they led their communities in worship on the Sabbath; they initiated disciplinary action against those who transgressed the moral law; and they published sermons and religious tracts dealing with every aspect of the Christian life. As religious leaders in a society that honored both religion and leadership, clergymen were highly esteemed and well paid for their work. Many colonists made the hazardous journey to American primarily in order to accompany a favorite pastor. In the early years the settlers enjoyed the preaching of such famous English divines as John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, and John Davenport. Recognizing the importance of good ministers, the Puritans sought to secure a continuing supply of able and orthodox religious leaders. This was one of the reasons, perhaps the foremost, for the establishment of Harvard College in 1636.9
But in spite of the strength of Puritanism in early New England, the system was unable to survive intact into the eighteenth century. An important challenge to Puritanism came from New England's commercial interests. The right-thinking Puritan merchant subordinated his economic aspirations to the welfare of the community. Regarding his work as an act of worship, he cared more about providing goods for his fellow Christians than about maximizing his profits. But as the seventeenth century progressed, trade began increasingly to operate according to its own rules, and despite the ministers' objections many merchants made money at the expense of others. Moreover, the leading merchants challenged and eventually supplanted the ministers as the dominant professional class in New England.10
The Puritan hegemony was also weakened by events in England. First, New England's confidence in its own global importance as a model of the ideal Christian commonwealth was undermined during the Civil War, when England adopted a policy of religious toleration, thereby indicating that Congregationalism was but one among many valid religious systems. A few decades later the close alliance between church and state was undermined when England insisted that suffrage in New England could not be restricted to Puritan saints. And in 1684 she abolished the Massachusetts charter and replaced elective Puritan governors with royally appointed executives.
In these ways the close affinity between Puritan theology and New England politics and society was seriously undermined. The new society was less cohesive and more secular, and it was shaped by the values of the English aristocracy and the impact of the colonial frontier as much as by the ideals of Puritanism. Its ministers, lacking the sense of cosmic purpose that characterized their antecedents, were often perplexed by the community they sought to serve.
A PROVINCIAL SOCIETY. In the eighteenth century, wealth and social prestige assumed a far greater importance in New England than was evident in the early years of settlement. In comparison with other parts of the contemporary world, New England was relatively prosperous. In 1704 Madam Knight described Connecticut in terms that could also be applied to the other New England colonies. "It is," she said, "a plentiful country for provisions of all sorts and its [sic] Generally Healthy. No one that can and will be diligent in this place need fear poverty nor the want food and Rayment."11
As the eighteenth century progressed, the fruits of such diligence multiplied. Between 1697 and 1750 New England's imports from England increased by 500 percent.12 In 1740 Benjamin Colman, minister of the Brattle Street Church in Boston, described New England's metropolis as "a place of great trade and business, finery and dress."13 Colman regarded this wealth with mixed feelings. Five years earlier he had lamented the effects of English trade upon New England's currency. "There is no way to recover ourselves... ," he wrote, "but to live upon our homespun and to send for no more silks, calicos, and fine cloth and linen to London .... We must correct our own views, our pride and profuseness in clothing, furniture, etc."14
As Benjamin Colman suggested, the increase in trade was accompanied by the development of new attitudes. In many cases the wealthy merchants adopted a life style that was unaffected by traditional Puritan restraint. Samuel Sewall's oft quoted description of an episode in Boston in 1686 shows that a cultural schism was already developing at that time. In his diary he recorded: "Friday, September 3. Mr. Shrimpton, Captain Lidget and others ... come in a Coach from Roxbury about 9 o’clock or past, singing as they come, being inflamed with Drink. At Justice Morgan's they stop and drink Healths, curse, swear, talk profanely and baudily to the great disturbance of the Town and grief of good people. Such highhanded wickedness has hardly been heard of before in Boston."15 Excessive drinking was not limited to the upper classes. By 1750 there were 150 taverns in Boston alone, and almost every village in . New England had at least one public house.16 John Hancock, minister of Lexington, complained that by allowing customers to take more than "a proportionable amount to drink" and by remaining open after nine o'clock tavern keepers failed to "prevent the mischief of quarrels, loudness, and thefts, midnight brawls, the diseases of intemperance and venery, and a 1,000 other evils."17
In the early eighteen century, the movement toward a more worldly society was also reflected in a change in attitudes toward sex. Puritans had never been sexual ascetics and had heartily approved of the physical relationship between man and wife. But they did not condone sex outside of or before marriage. In the 1720s, however, there was enough diversity of opinion on this point that a religious society at Harvard could debate the question, "Whether it be fornication to lye with one's sweetheart (after contraction) before marriage?"18 We do not know what the society concluded, but in some churches during the next decade, 20 percent of married couples confessed to premarital intercourse.19 In the town of Longmeadow, Massachusetts, Rev. Stephen Williams complained that there was "a notion advanced by some of its being lawful to persons that have made private promises to one another to have carnal knowledge of one another."20
Another sign of the secularization of New England was the pride that many people took in worldly possessions. Josiah Cotton, justice of the peace for Plymouth, was one of numerous eighteenth-century colonists who carefully maintained a family coat of arms. Many colonists coveted fine clothes and jewelry. Richard S. Dunn's description of two of John Winthrop's grandsons shows how even the descendants of one of New England's patriarchs had become obsessed with material possessions. Dunn writes: "Fitz John and Wait Still Winthrop were men of the Glorious Revolution, narrowly secular and parochial, half-humorous and half-ludicrous, uncertain of their values, and always chiefly absorbed with fashion, status and the accumulation of real estate." Both men were petty and cantankerous. "The accumulation of real estate was their main object, and the conduct of lawsuits over disputed land claims was among their main occupations. The brothers also displayed an acute awareness of their status as gentlemen and the necessity of living in style. They were always exceedingly anxious to hear about the latest London fashions in waistcoats and wig."21
The love of ornaments also found its way into the churches. The "Lord's barns" of the seventeenth century, which had been plain edifices, were often replaced by more elaborate structures in the eighteenth century. One of these was the new meetinghouse in Guilford, Connecticut, built in 1726 with a 120-foot steeple.22 Inside the churches, new and old, the practice of assigning pews to reflect each parishioner's wealth was becoming the normal custom. Hymns were also sung in a "New Way" in many churches. By the "Old Way" each man sang his own tune, giving voice to his individual piety. The new method, singing by note, though less individualistic, was more decorous.
Even the gravestones of New England, many of them still standing, reflect these basic changes in attitude. Most of the stones from the late seventeenth and ear1y eighteenth centuries bear the figures of skulls. But the stones from the middle of the eighteenth century are adorned with the fleshy faces of cherubs or even with the lively countenances of the men lying beneath them. The awesome fact of death, which drove many early New Englanders to seek their refuge in God, was muted by these comforting images.23
Theological developments also reflected eighteenth-century culture. Although most men continued to believe in a universe ruled by God, many New Englanders tended to place more emphasis than their forebears on man's intrinsic ability and worth. Some began to suggest that man could earn salvation through his own works. This position, known as Arminianism, was especially congenial to wealthy New Englanders, who tended to identify their worldly success with God's approval,24 Although few colonists became outright Arminians before the middle of the century, many attended Congregational churches that had abandoned evidence of conversion as a criterion for membership, and some even became members of Anglican churches, which were slowly gaining adherents throughout New England.
As the Puritan influence over the culture declined, other forces gained importance in shaping the New England mind. In particular, English customs affected many colonists. In politics, the eighteenth century saw the development of a "court persuasion," which stressed the political leadership of New England's upper class and the superiority of English fashions and manners. In the same period, a contrary sensibility, "the country persuasion," gained many supporters. It stressed the political legitimacy of the leader who "remained close to his constituents" and "defended those provincial customs and values which the Court had come to reject."25 Both philosophies had their origins in England and were rooted in secular rather than religious considerations.
In addition to becoming increasingly secular, New England in the eighteenth century was more fragmented and contentious than in the previous era. The early Puritans had urged men to subordinate their selfish desires to the needs of the community. But life in the eighteenth century was characterized by a thirst for self aggrandizement. As the population grew, pressure on available resources left some men wealthy and others impoverished. Families were broken apart as sons left home to seek new lands. Town and provincial politics were increasingly characterized by factional struggles revolving around such issues as the creation of new towns and the printing of paper money. Each of these changes undercut the religious, communitarian ideals of the founders and "put one portion of the populace out of harmony with another." In the early eighteenth century, "a person's total attachment to any community whatsoever diminished."26
Historians generally agree that the loyalties that had once bound men to communities and institutions larger than themselves had been replaced by commitments to narrow individual and group interests. In a study of Connecticut, Richard L. Bushman writes: "After 1690 the close-knit, tightly controlled, homogeneous community of the early period steadily became more open and heterogeneous." Timothy H. Breen and Stephen Foster argue that by the 1680s "Massachusetts had changed from a peaceful to a relatively turbulent society." Perry Miller's chapters on the period in The New England Mind: From Colony to Province are appropriately titled "The Splintering of Society." And H. Richard Niebuhr has described the eighteenth century as a time when "Absolute individuals had replaced absolute kings and absolute churches."27
But although the social structure of New England has been ably described by historians, we know little about the clergymen in this period. Inevitably, the ministers were troubled by their times. As merchants assumed greater importance, as politics became more secular in orientation, as Puritan restraint was challenged by eighteenth-century worldliness, the clergymen lost the central position they had occupied in early Puritan society. The ministers were keenly aware of the worldliness and fragmentation of their society, and they often complained that their people did not show any serious concern for religion. But although they criticized worldliness, the ministers were often as sensitive about their own social position as they were concerned about the decline in religious fervor. Thomas Prince, for example, was phrased when in his first days in London he was mistaken for an Englishman. He reported that people he met "wondered as much at my carriage and deportment, as at the trueness and accuracy of my language."28 A satirical poem written at the time of Benjamin Colman's settlement as minister of the Brattle Street Church indicted the clergymen for their materialism. The poem alleged: "Our parsons grow trim and trig, with wealth, wine and wig."29 The ministers were acutely conscious of their own professional status. After 1690 they began to join together in ministerial associations, permanent organizations that, unlike synods and councils, included no laymen. In the same period, ministers frequently published works about their profession. Between 1700 and 1740 more than one hundred and fifty ordination sermons, funeral sermons for clergymen, and tracts about the ministry were published in New England. In many of these the ministers emphasized the importance of their calling and urged laymen to recognize and honor their status. In 1720 Daniel Lewes summarized what many of his fellow clergymen felt. In the world there are many "Offices and Employments," he said, "but among them all there is none of more Importance ... than that of the Ministry. Nay, it may with Truth be asserted that it is the most weighty, awful, and important Work that ever mortal Man was employed in."30
During this period when the clergymen were becoming highly conscious of their professional status their real economic and social position was far from secure. Most of the country ministers had to divide their time between religious duties and menial farm labor. Often their salaries were low and in arrears. In Boston, where the ministers were usually well paid, laymen such as James Franklin and the supporters of his New England Courant published criticism of the clergy's worldly pride. Other critics challenged the religious leadership of the clergy and questioned the Congregational ideal of a well-educated professional ministry.
Thus, it was in the midst of many complex circumstances that the New England ministers carried on their work in the first part of the eighteenth century. The ideal they upheld stressed religious rather than secular values. It emphasized the transitoriness of life and the vanity of earthly pleasures. And yet the ministers, like the laymen, were increasingly attracted by earthly rewards. Worse still, the clergymen began using the ministerial office itself as a source of worldly prestige.
The tension between the ministers' self-interest and their religious mission led to a crisis in clerical leadership in the 1740s. The Great Awakening, a religious revival that swept through the colonies, was a fulfillment both of the ministers' greatest hopes for a spiritual renewal and of their worst fears of popular disrespect. Awakened laymen showed a lively interest in religious affairs, but they did not always follow their traditional religious leaders, and many even removed ministers whom they disliked or joined new denominations.
In the turbulent years of the Great Awakening the ministers developed a new understanding of their relationship to the people they served. The new concept was largely a recognition of a situation that had already existed, and so in order to understand it fully, we need to begin by exploring the distinctive genesis, activities, and aspirations of the clergy. How did a person become a minister? What did ministers do? How did they attempt to enhance their position? How did they seek to increase religiosity in their communities? The answers to these questions will lead us to a better comprehension both of the ministers and of American society in the late colonial period.
Notes
1. Benjamin Colman, A Funeral Sermon on the Deaths of the Rev. Messrs. Brattle and Pemberton (Boston, 1717), p. 44.
2. David D. Hall, "Understanding the Puritans," in Stanley N. Katz, editor, Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development (Boston, 1971), p. 41. Hall's essay is an excellent survey and analysis of the secondary literature on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Puritanism.
3. Norman Pettit, The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan
Spiritual Life (New Haven, 1966).
4. William Pauck, "The Ministry in the Time of the Continental Reformation," and Winthrop S. Hudson, "The Ministry in the Puritan Age," in H. Richard Neibuhr and Daniel D. Williams, editors, The Ministry in Historical Perspectives (New York, 1956); and David D. Hall, The Faithful Shepard (Chapel Hill, 1972), chapters 1 and 2.
5. Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop
(Boston, 1958).
6. In Winthrop's Boston, A Portrait of a Puritan Town, 1630-1649 (Chapel Hill, 1965), Darrett B. Rutman claims that economic and political considerations were the primary forces in early New England. Perry Miller has argued that religion was the principal element in Puritan society-see his Orthodoxy in Massachusetts (Boston, 1959) and The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Boston, 1961, first published 1953). In Puritanism in America (New York, 1973), Larzar Ziff is concerned with the relationship between social conditions and religious beliefs. Most historians today would agree with David D. Hall that "the history of the [Puritan] movement was somehow related to the contemporary culture and social structure." ("Understanding the Puritans," p. 33).
7. Kenneth A. Lockridge, A New England Town: The First Hundred Years
(New York, 1970), p. 13.
8. Philip J. Greven, Four Generations: Population, Land and Family in Colonial Andover Massachusetts (Ithaca, 1970).
9. On the founding of Harvard College, see Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard 1636-1936 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1936), and Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (two volumes, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1936); and Winthrop S. Hudson, "The Morison Myth Concerning the Founding of Harvard College," Church History 8 (June 1939): 148-59.
10. Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1955).
11. Sarah Kemble Knight, The Journals of Madam Knight and Rev. Mr.
Buckingham (New York, 1825), p. 65.
12. Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1961), p.757.
13. Benjamin Colman to George Whitfield [no date, probably 1740], Colman Papers, MHS.
14. Benjamin Colman to "Mr. Holden," January 6,1734/35, Colman Papers, MHS.
15. Samuel Sewall, Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674-1729, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 5th series, vols. V-VII (1878-82), V: 150-5l.
16. Henry B. Parkes, "New England in the Seventeen-Thirties," New England Quarterly 3 (1930), 402.
17. John Hancock, Commonplace Book, HLH.
18. [Ebenezer Turrell], "An Account of a Society in Harvard College," Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications 12 (1909): 229.
19. Parkes, "New England," p. 207. In Andover, Massachusetts, 11.3 percent of the babies born between 1700 and 1729 arrived less than nine months after their parents were married. In Bristol, 10 percent of the babies born between 1720 and 1740 arrived less than eight months after their parents' marriage. (In the next two decades the proportion in Bristol increased dramatically to 49 percent.) Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations, p. 113. John Demos, "Families in Colonial Bristol, Rhode Island," William and Mary Quarterly 25, no. 4 (October, 1968), 56.
20. Stephen Williams, Diary, January 29, 1749/50, MRS.
21. Josiah Cotton, Memoirs, p. 167, MRS; Richard S. Dunn, Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630-1717 (Princeton, 1962), pp. vi, 191. Well-to-do New Englanders were highly conscious of their social standing in their communities. Some assumed the title, "gentleman," to distinguish themselves from their lesser neighbors. See Lockridge, A New England Town, pp. 152--53, 184-85.
22. Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley's Harvard Graduates IV: 76. Hereafter volumes I-III (1873-85) of this series of biographical sketches will be cited as Sibley, Harvard Graduates; subsequent volumes (1933-- ) will be cited as Shipton, Harvard Graduates.
23. These remarks on colonial gravestones are based in part on my own observation of some of these fascinating colonial artifacts. Two fine works on New England gravestones are: Harriette M. Forbes, Gravestones of Early New England (Boston, 1927); and Allan Ludwig, Graven Images (Middletown, Connecticut, 1966).
24. On the development of Arminianism, see Conrad Wright, The Beginnings of Unitariansm in America (Boston, 195.5); Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Boston, 1961, first published 1953); Joseph C. Haroutunian, Piety Versus Moralism: The Passing of the New England Theology (New York, 1932); James VI/. Jones, The Shattered Synthesis: New England Puritanism before the Great Awakening (New Haven, 1973); and Norman Pettit, The Heart Prepared (New Haven, 1966).
25. T. H. Breen, The Character of the Good Ruler: Puritan Political Ideas in New England, 1630-1730 (New Haven, 1970), p, 209.
26. Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1750 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967), pp. 72, 107.
27. Bushman, Puritan to Yankee, p, ix; Timothy H. Breen and Stephen Foster, "The Puritans' Greatest Achievement: A Study of Social Cohesion in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts," Journal of American History 60 (1973): 20; H. Richard Niehuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (New York, 1959, first published 1931). p. 100. The fragmentation of New England society in the early eighteenth century is also described in Kenneth A, Lockridge, A New England Town; Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations; and Richard S. Dunn, Puritans and Yankees. In contrast to these works, Michael Zuckerman's Peaceable Kingdoms, New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1970) presents one argument that a strong communitarian ethos influenced town politics well into the eighteenth century.
28. Thomas Prince, Sea Journal, November 17, 1709, MI-IS.
29. Quoted in Josiah Cotton, Memoirs, pp. 108-09, MRS. In his Jonathan Edwards (New York, 1949), Perry Miller notes that the eighteenth-century ministers "regularly bewailed New England's declension, castigated tavern hunters and backbiters, and went home to solid dinners and a glass of Madeira" (p. 17).
30. Daniel Lewes, Of Taking Heed to and Fulfilling the Ministry (Boston, 1720), pp. 1-2.
2. David D. Hall, "Understanding the Puritans," in Stanley N. Katz, editor, Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development (Boston, 1971), p. 41. Hall's essay is an excellent survey and analysis of the secondary literature on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Puritanism.
3. Norman Pettit, The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan
Spiritual Life (New Haven, 1966).
4. William Pauck, "The Ministry in the Time of the Continental Reformation," and Winthrop S. Hudson, "The Ministry in the Puritan Age," in H. Richard Neibuhr and Daniel D. Williams, editors, The Ministry in Historical Perspectives (New York, 1956); and David D. Hall, The Faithful Shepard (Chapel Hill, 1972), chapters 1 and 2.
5. Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop
(Boston, 1958).
6. In Winthrop's Boston, A Portrait of a Puritan Town, 1630-1649 (Chapel Hill, 1965), Darrett B. Rutman claims that economic and political considerations were the primary forces in early New England. Perry Miller has argued that religion was the principal element in Puritan society-see his Orthodoxy in Massachusetts (Boston, 1959) and The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Boston, 1961, first published 1953). In Puritanism in America (New York, 1973), Larzar Ziff is concerned with the relationship between social conditions and religious beliefs. Most historians today would agree with David D. Hall that "the history of the [Puritan] movement was somehow related to the contemporary culture and social structure." ("Understanding the Puritans," p. 33).
7. Kenneth A. Lockridge, A New England Town: The First Hundred Years
(New York, 1970), p. 13.
8. Philip J. Greven, Four Generations: Population, Land and Family in Colonial Andover Massachusetts (Ithaca, 1970).
9. On the founding of Harvard College, see Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard 1636-1936 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1936), and Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (two volumes, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1936); and Winthrop S. Hudson, "The Morison Myth Concerning the Founding of Harvard College," Church History 8 (June 1939): 148-59.
10. Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1955).
11. Sarah Kemble Knight, The Journals of Madam Knight and Rev. Mr.
Buckingham (New York, 1825), p. 65.
12. Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1961), p.757.
13. Benjamin Colman to George Whitfield [no date, probably 1740], Colman Papers, MHS.
14. Benjamin Colman to "Mr. Holden," January 6,1734/35, Colman Papers, MHS.
15. Samuel Sewall, Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674-1729, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 5th series, vols. V-VII (1878-82), V: 150-5l.
16. Henry B. Parkes, "New England in the Seventeen-Thirties," New England Quarterly 3 (1930), 402.
17. John Hancock, Commonplace Book, HLH.
18. [Ebenezer Turrell], "An Account of a Society in Harvard College," Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications 12 (1909): 229.
19. Parkes, "New England," p. 207. In Andover, Massachusetts, 11.3 percent of the babies born between 1700 and 1729 arrived less than nine months after their parents were married. In Bristol, 10 percent of the babies born between 1720 and 1740 arrived less than eight months after their parents' marriage. (In the next two decades the proportion in Bristol increased dramatically to 49 percent.) Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations, p. 113. John Demos, "Families in Colonial Bristol, Rhode Island," William and Mary Quarterly 25, no. 4 (October, 1968), 56.
20. Stephen Williams, Diary, January 29, 1749/50, MRS.
21. Josiah Cotton, Memoirs, p. 167, MRS; Richard S. Dunn, Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630-1717 (Princeton, 1962), pp. vi, 191. Well-to-do New Englanders were highly conscious of their social standing in their communities. Some assumed the title, "gentleman," to distinguish themselves from their lesser neighbors. See Lockridge, A New England Town, pp. 152--53, 184-85.
22. Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley's Harvard Graduates IV: 76. Hereafter volumes I-III (1873-85) of this series of biographical sketches will be cited as Sibley, Harvard Graduates; subsequent volumes (1933-- ) will be cited as Shipton, Harvard Graduates.
23. These remarks on colonial gravestones are based in part on my own observation of some of these fascinating colonial artifacts. Two fine works on New England gravestones are: Harriette M. Forbes, Gravestones of Early New England (Boston, 1927); and Allan Ludwig, Graven Images (Middletown, Connecticut, 1966).
24. On the development of Arminianism, see Conrad Wright, The Beginnings of Unitariansm in America (Boston, 195.5); Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Boston, 1961, first published 1953); Joseph C. Haroutunian, Piety Versus Moralism: The Passing of the New England Theology (New York, 1932); James VI/. Jones, The Shattered Synthesis: New England Puritanism before the Great Awakening (New Haven, 1973); and Norman Pettit, The Heart Prepared (New Haven, 1966).
25. T. H. Breen, The Character of the Good Ruler: Puritan Political Ideas in New England, 1630-1730 (New Haven, 1970), p, 209.
26. Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1750 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967), pp. 72, 107.
27. Bushman, Puritan to Yankee, p, ix; Timothy H. Breen and Stephen Foster, "The Puritans' Greatest Achievement: A Study of Social Cohesion in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts," Journal of American History 60 (1973): 20; H. Richard Niehuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (New York, 1959, first published 1931). p. 100. The fragmentation of New England society in the early eighteenth century is also described in Kenneth A, Lockridge, A New England Town; Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations; and Richard S. Dunn, Puritans and Yankees. In contrast to these works, Michael Zuckerman's Peaceable Kingdoms, New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1970) presents one argument that a strong communitarian ethos influenced town politics well into the eighteenth century.
28. Thomas Prince, Sea Journal, November 17, 1709, MI-IS.
29. Quoted in Josiah Cotton, Memoirs, pp. 108-09, MRS. In his Jonathan Edwards (New York, 1949), Perry Miller notes that the eighteenth-century ministers "regularly bewailed New England's declension, castigated tavern hunters and backbiters, and went home to solid dinners and a glass of Madeira" (p. 17).
30. Daniel Lewes, Of Taking Heed to and Fulfilling the Ministry (Boston, 1720), pp. 1-2.