CHAPTER 2: THE MINISTER'S CALLING
The Congregational clergymen frequently reminded their people that the first Christian ministers were the apostles whom Jesus Christ had appointed to preach his gospel. They were proud that their profession was of divine origin. But at the same time, however, they were uncomfortable with the knowledge that Christ had chosen uneducated fishermen as his first ministers. Their own position was dependent on many years of formal training rather than an immediate sense of God's calling.1 Certainly it was desirable that a pastor should have experienced conversion, but divine grace alone did not qualify a man to become a minister. The Congregationalists had inherited the Reformation ideal of an educated preaching clergy. They rejected the notion that unlearned men could preach successfully. "It is a glaring impudence and daring presumption,” said Thomas Foxcroft, "to dream of immediate irradiation from above. The deep things of God must be digg'd out, and fetch'd up from the mine in the common way of study, reading, and converse."2
Men became ministers as a result of a complex process that had little to do with "immediate irradiation from above." Their intellectual talents, social backgrounds, and college educations enabled them to become clerical candidates. A systematic apprenticeship prepared them for their work. The politics of Congregational election produced their call to a particular parish. And finally, ordination by their fellow ministers actually elevated them to the clerical profession. Thus, before a young man even began his pastoral work, he underwent a series of experiences that distinguished him sharply from his fellow New Englanders.
EDUCATION. A college education was the essential prerequisite for the Congregational ministry. Ninety-five percent of the clergymen had a college degree, and most studied for three years after receiving their A.B. in order to earn an A.M., usually in theology.3 The content of their educations, then, and the factors that placed potential ministers in the small minority of New Englanders who became college graduates are important ingredients in the character of the eighteenth-century clergy.
The two most important determinants of whether a person would go to college were social background and intellect. Simply because of their parentage some children had a much greater chance than others of becoming clergymen. Among Harvard graduates between 1700 and 1740 who became ministers, 63 percent were sons of merchants, physicians, sea captains, innkeepers, clergymen, and other relatively well-to-do New Englanders. The proportion of Yale students with prominent parents in the same period was somewhat lower, but still substantial. These affluent fathers were a small fraction of New England's total population, but they were the parents of many of the clergymen. In addition, a substantial proportion of the pastors were relatives of other clergymen. In the early eighteenth century 17 percent of the Yale graduates who became ministers had clerical fathers, and 18 percent of Harvard's ministerial graduates were the sons of clergymen.4
Some ministers had family ties to a large number of their fellow pastors. Several families, such as the Williamses, the Rogerses, and the Woodbridges, produced as many as ten ministers. Moreover, in relation to their numbers it is possible that clerical sons exercised a disproportionate influence on the religious life of New England. Many of the most important New England pastors were second-, third-, or even fourth-generation ministers. Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mather, and Experience Mayhew, for example, were from families that produced many clergymen.
It is true that an important group of clergymen arose from nonministerial backgrounds. Benjamin Colman's father, for example, was a merchant. John Wise was the son of an indentured servant. However, if a boy were born of clerical parents, it was far more likely that he would become a minister than if he came from any other background. And if his parents were poor there was very little chance that he would become a clergyman.
In addition to affluence, parental encouragement and intellectual talent greatly influenced a youth's chances of becoming a minister. Many children were encouraged by their parents to enter the clergy. For example, it was said of Thomas Clap, the president of Yale College, that "from childhood he was 'devoted and dedicated to the work of the ministry' by his pious and worthy parents."5
But a parent was most likely to be successful in urging a young man to become a clergyman if the youth had some native talent and inclination for his studies. Even Cotton Mather was unable to persuade his son, Increase, to become a minister, because the youth lacked an appetite for study. But the father of Nicholas Gilman was more successful. He decided to give his son a liberal education only after the youth had impressed him by repeating part of the Latin accidence by heart each evening after school.6 Nicholas graduated from Harvard in 1724 and later became minister of Durham, New Hampshire.
Thus, a combination of social background, parental encouragement, and intellectual promise helped determine whether a young man would set out on the path to the ministry. None of these factors was a sign of piety. Being able to memorize Latin with ease was an indication of intellectual rather than religious promise, and a father's piety in "devoting" his son to the ministry did not assure that the son would himself be pious. But without the benefit of these qualifications, it was unlikely that a young New Englander, no matter how pious he might be, would acquire the education that was an essential ministerial prerequisite.
The actual training that distinguished potential clergymen from ordinary New Englanders was not designed solely for ministerial candidates. A grammar school education was part of the common experience of ministers, lawyers, merchants, and even of many farmers. Children learned to read and write in "dame schools" and then entered grammar school, usually at age seven. The curriculum of the grammar schools varied form place to place. In some towns the "Latin master" was also responsible for teaching reading and writing; in others the masters taught mathematics along with the classics.7 But the candidate for college admission was chiefly required to learn Latin and Greek.
Although formal religious training was not always a part of the grammar school education, religion did playa role in the early education of New England's youth. The catechism, containing basic religious principles, often served to drill the students in reading and writing. In addition, many teachers gave informal religious counsel to their students. In the early eighteenth century, grammar schools were often taught by young ministerial candidates awaiting a call to a particular church, who were anxious to gain experience in teaching religious principles. Such teachers often sought to introduce religious training into the curriculum.8
In grammar school a student also acquired a tool that he would use frequently in his ministry: his knowledge of Latin and Greek allowed him to study the Bible in the original tongues. Many ministers maintained their linguistic skill and continued to study the Bible in the classical tongues long after they left college. Joseph Baxter, minister of Medfield, Massachusetts, maintained: "We should carefully consult the original tongues to find out the meaning of the texts we insist on."9 Reverend Simon Bradstreet of Charlestown was once introduced as a man who could "whistle Greek."10
Upon completing his grammar school preparation the prospective minister entered either Harvard or Yale College. During the eighteenth century Harvard was, according to Samuel Eliot Morison, "a religious college, but emphatically not a 'divinity school’ or a seminary for the propagation of Puritan theology."l1 The atmosphere of Harvard was religious, with prayers twice daily, catechism on Saturday, and a Puritan observance of the Sabbath. And a large number of Harvard graduates did become ministers: 50 percent in the seventeenth century, and more than one-third in the early eighteenth century. The college curriculum, however, like that of the grammar schools, was suited to lawyers, doctors, and merchants as well as to ministers. "Prospective parsons," according to Morison, "were given exactly the same Liberal Arts course as other boys who had no such ambition."12
In 1701 a second college, later named Yale, was established in Connecticut. This institution, like Harvard, sought not only to educate prospective clergymen but also to train young men for other professions. In the early eighteenth century, Yale graduated more than two hundred young men who became ministers, but in the same period it produced an equal number of students who-' chose other vocations.13
In both schools the curriculum was broad, including the "seven liberal arts" and the "three philosophies" of the medieval universities and also belles-lettres and languages. Students at both Harvard and Yale could read works that contradicted orthodox Puritan ideas, and in the early eighteenth century many supporters of Harvard took pride in the college's "liberalism." In 1712 Benjamin Colman wrote: "No place of education can boast a more free air than our little college may for these last twenty years."14 Although some of the early supporters of Yale hoped that the college would be less liberal than Harvard, students there also were given the opportunity to read unorthodox works.15 The Yale library included a large assortment of books that had been assembled by Jeremiah Dumner in England. This collection included an extensive selection of both orthodox and latitudinarian religious tracts.16
But although college students in the early eighteenth century were exposed to diverse religious ideas, there were limits to the colleges' liberalism. While it is true that Leverett may have changed the tone of Harvard and encouraged his students to consider unorthodox ideas, he did not actually espouse any heretical doctrines. In 1722, when Edward Wigglesworth was appointed to the Hollis Chair of Divinity, Leverett accepted the overseers' request that Wigglesworth should prove his orthodoxy by declaring his adherence to William Ames's Medulla Theologiae, the Westminster Assembly catechism, and the thirty-nine articles. In the same year the trustees of Yale reaffirmed the orthodoxy of their school after the rector of the college, a tutor, and five local ministers declared that their reading in the Dumner books had persuaded them that their Congregational ordinations were invalid. Although this episode, known as the "Great Apostasy" shocked all of New England, it did not usher in a new era of liberalism at Yale. Instead it persuaded the trustees to be more cautious in seeking their next rector. Four days after Cutler and his associates had announced their conversion, the trustees declared that thereafter Yale tutors and rectors would be required to assent to the orthodox Congregational positions on doctrinal and ecclesiastical questions before being installed in office.17
In spite of the diversity of ideas to which an undergraduate was exposed, the student who attended Harvard or Yale in the early eighteenth century was less likely to be led away from religion by unorthodox ideas than by the more subtle temptation to abandon the studious, disciplined life of a ministerial candidate for the more earthly pleasures of student frivolity. At Harvard and Yale there were frequent cases of drunkenness, thievery, dancing, and a variety of other misdemeanors. At Yale, tutor Jonathan Edwards testified that in 1721 his college was beset with "monstrous impieties and acts of immorality . . . particularly stealing of hens, geese, turkies, piggs, meat, wood, etc., unseasonable nightwalking, breaking people's windows, playing at cards, cursing, swearing, damning, and using all manner of ill language, which never were at such a pitch in the college as they now are."18 Samuel Eliot Morison asserts that in this period many students came 'to Harvard from seaports, "which reaped the first harvests from land speculation and West India commerce, and the rum business; and where the influence of Court manners was most quickly felt. The new crop of young men came to be made gentlemen, not to study."19 For such youths there was a broad road ahead to other professions than the ministry. At the 1712 commencement, John Leverett proudly noted that Harvard produced scholars, judges, soldiers, physicians, and farmers as well as ministers. Significantly, most of his examples were of men who belonged to a social as well as an intellectual elite. Richard Warch concludes that Yale too served the provincial upper class. He notes that the college served "as the intellectual core of a Connecticut and interior New England societal establishment; its members sent their sons to the college and Yale's graduates served it."20
Because social background was as important as intellect in determining who would receive a college education and graduates tended to enter the provincial elite, it was natural for intelligent, but self-educated colonists to question whether the colleges did, in fact, improve their students' intellects and souls as much as they raised their status. Ideally, those young men who were most distinguished for intellectual and religious qualities would be promoted by the educational system. But as we have seen, the schools tended to train only those children whose parents could afford the cost of their education. Some colonists complained that this system simply gave special advantages to wealthy children, instead of educating the best intellects for religious and political leadership.
In 1722 a bright young Boston youth who did not attend Harvard wrote a scathing denunciation of the college. Writing under the pseudonym of Silence Dogood, Benjamin Franklin argued that in spite of Harvard's fame as a "temple of LEARNING" most parents who sent their children to college "consulted their own purses instead of their Children's Capacities" with the result that most of the students "were little better than Dunces and Blockheads." He alleged that only a few youths actually worked at college and that when they graduated many students were "e'en just as ignorant as ever."21 Benjamin Franklin was one of many eighteenth-century New Englanders who refused to equate intellectual talent with a college degree. No doubt he exaggerated the role of wealthy parents and personal ambition in the early lives of the ministers, but it was mainly the sons of the well-to-do who became ministers, and, as we shall see, the ministers themselves were not indifferent to questions of social status.
In statements about their profession the ministers liked to suggest that any man with a good mind and a pious heart could become a minister. In practice this was not the case. It is true that in order to enter and to graduate from college a young man did have to show some intellectual promise, and the education he received did involve a degree of religious training. But it was much more difficult for a child of poor parents to attend college than for a child of wealthy parents, and the educational system tested and enhanced a young man's intellect more than his piety.
CLERICAL APPRENTICESHIP. In eighteenth-century New England men became Congregational ministers by acquiring a skill rather than by possessing superior spiritual qualities. We have seen that only a small group of New Englanders were even qualified to enter ministerial training and that these men were distinguished from their fellow colonists more by social background and intellect than by superior piety. It was the actual training prospective ministers underwent after receiving their A.B. that fitted them with a knowledge of Christian doctrine and practice in the arts of preaching and counseling. In essence the minister was established through proper training.
Ministers' diaries suggest that it was common for a candidate to develop a sense of piety only after graduating from college. The undergraduate's intellectual knowledge of religious truth was carefully developed and tested. But there was no effort by his teachers to determine whether the scholars had experienced God's grace and had undergone conversion. Surviving diaries of ministers who were deeply concerned about religious matters while they were in college suggest that their experience was exceptional.
For pious youths college life sometimes seemed inhospitable. John Cleaveland, a Yale student who later became a famous New Light preacher, complained that having to run errands for older boys made serious thought and work difficult. He once lamented: "I think I run further and further and grow colder and colder in things of religion."22 Some young men at Harvard and Yale reacted against the temptations and diversions of the secular world by forming religious clubs at college. In the early eighteenth century several societies for pious worship and discussion were established at Harvard. For example, David Jeffries, a graduate of 1708, formed a student prayer group in his undergraduate days. Jeffries became a merchant, but the society included Joseph Sewall and Thomas Prince, who were to become notable clergymen. Another society, formed in 1721, produced seven ministers from its eight members; among them were Charles Ghauncy and Ebenezer Pemberton. A typical meeting of this group included a twenty-minute discourse by one member "on any Subject he pleaseth." Then followed a disputation on two or more questions with one part of the group holding the affirmative and the other the negative. The members also discussed recently published books and agreed "if we see or hear of any Extraordinary Book, we will give the best account we can of it to the Society." The topics of discussion included, "On a Future State," "On God's Wisdom and Power," "On Regeneration," and "Upon the Unity of the Church."23
A similar organization, the Philomusarian Club, was formed at Harvard in 1728. Only those who were "adjudged to be Philomus, i.e., a lover of learning," were admitted to the group. The club's florid preamble reflected the members' view of their college contemporaries. The subscribers joined together to "stem that monstrous tide of impiety and ignorance which is like to sweep all before it." They agreed to meet four nights weekly and on each occasion to discuss "some point of learning." The club had an elaborate set of laws and penalties. Cursing, for example, was punished with a fine of six pennies, liquor was forbidden, and a student who scoffed at another's performance must pay two pennies to the club treasurer. Every second week a court was to meet in order to penalize miscreants. The original members of the club were ten students in the classes of 1729, 1730, and 1731. Apparently, the organization had a strong appeal for young men who were interested in the ministry. Of the original members eight lived long enough to choose careers, and seven of these became clergymen. Thus, almost 90 percent of these students became ministers at a time when only 40 ... percent of the student body as a whole entered the ministry. Like the earlier pious societies the Philomusarian Club must have provided a haven within a more secular society, where interested students could discuss religious questions and lead a moral life.24
It is evident from the formation of such societies that some ministers became serious Christians before embarking on their ministerial training. But the comparative isolation of these students and the diaries of other students suggest that many young men became' serious Christians only after entering clerical apprenticeship.
It was only after he received his A.B. degree that the student began a course of studies designed exclusively for ministers. Intellectually his next hurdle was the college A.M. examination, which was usually taken three years after the A.B. was granted. Most graduates received the Masters degree even if they did not enter the ministry. However, the subject matter of the examinations varied with a student's professional ambitions. There were no formal courses for the A.M., and there were a variety of circumstances under which men prepared themselves for the degree.
Some young men lived with ministers and learned about pastoral labors as well as theology. This course had a long Puritan tradition. In the early seventeenth century, many Puritan ministers in England had trained ministerial candidates in their homes. John Cotton, for example, instructed students from Cambridge University at his home in Boston, England. In her study of Ministerial Training in Eighteenth Century New England, Mary Latimer Gambrell describes a typical course of studies at one of these "schools of the prophets."25 Students would compose and answer lists of questions that they built into the framework of a systematic or didactic theology. They read theological treatises setting forth opposing points of view, and they wrote compositions and engaged in discussions.
Other candidates lived at home while pursuing their studies and when possible, met to study with other ministerial candidates. Cotton Mather describes one such gathering. The members carried on "a course of Disputation upon the Body of Divinity." They carefully discussed the important church controversies and prepared papers on "every Head of Divinity."26
Other young men had to find steady employment in the years between receiving their A.B.' s and becoming settled pastors. For such students teaching school was a common occupation. Here a ministerial candidate had the opportunity to refresh his Latin and Greek. He might also practice religious instruction. As we have seen, religious training was not a formal part of secondary education, but prayers and catechizing were often included. For example, Joseph Green gave religious counseling to his students in Roxbury. The first eighty-two pages of Green's commonplace book contain his notes for almost three months of catechizing.
A fourth way of preparing for the ministry involved remaining in residence at college and reading theology. Some students were fortunate enough to receive a Hopkins scholarship at Harvard or a Berkeley fellowship at Yale, which subsidized their studies. While in residence the graduates read theology. They paid no tuition and 'received no formal instruction. Often the resident A.B.s roomed with undergraduates and were probably expected ot help them with their studies.27
The general emphasis in graduate training was naturally upon religious knowledge. Although there was no uniform syllabus, two guides for ministerial candidates were published in New England before the Great Awakening.- In 1726 Cotton Mather published Manuductio ad Ministerum Directions for a Candidate of the Ministry. Nine years later Joseph Sewall and Thomas Prince collected Samuel Willard's notes on preparation for the ministry and published them as Brief Directions to a Young Scholar Designing the Ministry. Although Mather's book is much longer and more detailed than Willard's, the two are similar in intent. Both urge the ministerial candidate to embark upon a course of study designed to improve both his intellect and his piety. Willard's Brief Directions begins by urging the candidate to reflect that "every good Gift, and every perfect Gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Light." A man must recognize his dependence on God, says Willard; he must "put off high Opinions of himself."28 The first three chapters of Mather's Manuductio ad Ministerum have to do with Christian piety. Mather tells the candidate: "My Son, I advise you to consider yourself as a Dying Person." In order to be a "true liver," Mather says, you must seek a higher end than carnal satisfaction. A young man should abase himself in order to behold the true glory of Christ. If God is with him in this, he will have the "principle of piety" in himself.29
Both books contain a number of suggestions for a proper course of studies. Willard recommends that the candidate begin with an intensive study of the scriptures; he should arrange them under "practical heads" for the purpose of applying them to particular human circumstances. Then he should study polemical divinity to learn what doctrines are in opposition to the truth and how to oppose them. The underlying assumption of this course of studies is that the candidate will master a fixed body of truth. He is introduced to opposing viewpoints only in order to confute errors. Willard warns that the student should not be exposed to dangerous new ideas until he is well grounded in orthodox truths: "let him read the most approved Systems and Common-Places, and get them well digested, for till he is soundly principled in the Fundamentals of Theology, he is readily exposed to be led about by every Wind of Doctrine, and baffled with the cunning Sophisms of Impostors, against which this will be a Defence."30
Cotton Mather's Manuductio ad Ministerum also encourages the ministerial candidate to be well grounded in the fundamental truths of Christianity. Even though he devotes several chapters to secular books, he continually directs the student to religious lessons. The chapter on "sciences," for example, is devoted mainly to rhetoric, logic, and ethics, each of which, according to Mather, has a religious dimension.
It is apparent from these formal treatises on ministerial preparation and from candidates' diaries that there was a wide variety of books that students could study in preparing for the ministry, but it is equally apparent that the basic reading course consisted of books that would be most likely to educate the candidate in doctrinal orthodoxy and religious piety. Undoubtedly, John Barnard described the intellectual progress of the typical candidate when he noted that his studies led him "insensibly into what is called the Calvinistical Scheme."31
The study of theology was followed (or sometimes accompanied) by a period of practical apprenticeship in the work of the ministry. Although a young man could not administer baptism or communion until he had been ordained, he could preach sermons, offer public prayers, and make pastoral visits.
Many opportunities existed for the ministerial candidate to develop as a preacher. Often a man began by "commonplacing," speaking on a religious topic, at Harvard or Yale, or by preaching at a private religious gathering.32 John Barnard preached his first sermon "to a society of young men meeting on Lord's day evening for the exercises of religion."33 John Burt preached to a similar society within a year of his graduation from Harvard.34 A candidate often used as much care in composing these informal sermons as he would later expend on important discourses for large congregations.
As a young man became more proficient in preaching, occasions would arise for him to deliver sermons to settled congregations on a regular basis. A candidate might be called upon to occupy a pulpit in the minister's absence, or to preach temporarily to a congregation that had not yet settled a regular pastor. Since the pay for this sort of work was often irregular, a candidate sometimes supported himself with other jobs. John Burt, for example, divided his time between preaching and surveying. In one two-week period he preached four sermons and at the same time "went out to survey and lodged in the woods," and "ran Dr. Toppan's line for him.”35
Before his ordination a young man could also gain practice in other aspects of the minister's work. One of the most important duties of the minister was to give counsel to the members of his parish when they experienced spiritual problems. Many candidates performed this function informally, even as undergraduates in college. Joseph Sewall, for example, ministered to the problems of several of his classmates at Harvard. He persuaded one friend, who was full of "doubts," not to refuse to take communion. He helped another to confront his sense of sin.36 Other opportunities existed to give religious counsel to those whom one met while preparing for the ministry.
Some young men actually acquired formal ministerial positions before being ordained. Often chaplains on military expeditions or at forts were ministerial candidates. (Castle William, in Boston Harbor, was a favorite post for young chaplains because of its proximity to Boston and Cambridge.) One of the most famous of New England's eighteenth-century clergymen, Thomas Prince, began his ministry by serving as a chaplain on board a 450-ton merchant vessel, the Thomas and Elizabeth. In his journal he reports that "we lived very merrily," but even while he was enjoying the excitement of his first long sea voyage, Prince offered religious and moral guidance to the ship's crew. He preached, conducted religious services, and on the Captain's orders he drew up "some laws for the good government of our ship." On the voyage Prince gained experience both in conducting religious services and in setting forth standards of behavior. These same duties were to occupy much of his ministerial life.37
During the course of an apprenticeship, a young man had the opportunity to decide from experience whether he definitely wanted to commit himself to the ministry. A youth could be eminently well qualified to become a clergyman, but still decide he preferred some other calling. Most men who studied theology for their A.M.s and became ministerial candidates did eventually become pastors, but a significant number of men set out on the path to the ministry and then chose other occupations instead. For example, John Denison, of the Harvard class of 1710, preached for a time, but turned to public life and became sheriff of Essex County and a deputy in the Massachusetts legislature. Adino Bulfinch, of the class of 1718, attempted to become a minister, but then opened an apothecary shop in Boston instead. Usually it is difficult to know why a particular person decided not to become a minister. But there are some explanations on record. It was said of Joseph Baxter that he intended to become a pastor, but "the organs of speech in him proving weak, and his voice low" he turned to medicine.38 In the early eighteenth century, several other men abandoned the ministry for this same reason; perhaps this was a convenient way for a poor preacher to excuse himself.
In theory, a candidate determined that he had a call from God to enter the ministry before seeking ordination. Rev. John Hancock made this process seem simple. "The choice left to us as to our callings," he said, "is no other than a conscionable enquiry which way God calleth us, and a conscionable care to take that way."39 But God's call was not always clear, pressing, or easy to discern, and it was not unusual for ministerial candidates to have to overcome doubts about their suitability as pastors. Nicholas Gilman, in a time of uncertainty about his own vocation, was encouraged by reading in John 1:31, "men called of God to the work of the ministry, must not stand back because of the conscience [sic] of much inability."40 Ministers were not expected to be perfect. It was enough if a young man could be reasonably certain that he was qualified to be a clergyman. Samuel Dexter of Dedham expressed the modest hopes about his vocation that most candidates hoped to achieve. Before settling as a minister he examined himself on the character of his calling. As to the principle he acted upon, he said: "I hope it is of faith-I am concerned that it should be so for whatsoever is not of faith is sin."41
It is probable that leaving college heightened the religious feelings of many students. The graduate who was interested in the ministry was nearing the time when he would have to assume the actual responsibilities of a pastoral career. This must have caused many to wonder whether they were worthy of becoming ministers and must have encouraged a mature consideration of religion. Joseph Green reports that in college he "roistered" until he had received his first degree. But then, he said: "When the Commencement was past I began to be in some want and especially I wanted a settled employ [sic]: And this put me upon some serious thought of my fitness to doe God service, and did somewhat restrain me and make me a little studious and diligent; and I think made me to live constantly in the practice of secret prayer." Green said that it was at this time that "God began to work saveingly upon my heart."42 Jonathan Pierpont wrote in his diary that while he was teaching in Dorchester, "It pleased God to awaken me by the word preached."43 John Barnard noted that after his graduation in 1700 he humbled himself "before God with fasting and prayer, imploring the pardon of all my sins, through the mediation of Christ." He sought God's help in becoming a suitable minister, "begging the divine Spirit to sanctify me throughput, in spirit, soul and body, and fit me for, and use me in the service of the sanctuary, and direct and bless my studies to that end."44
Comments like these by ministers who grew up in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries indicate that their conversion experiences were gradual. and subtle rather than sudden, overwhelming psychological changes. A typical instance is John Hancock's description of his religious life. He wrote: "Though I cannot tell the exact time when, or the manner how, or the means and instruments by which the work of grace was wrought in me, yet I think I may draw the conclusion, that the Lord has made me his, I hope I am not deceived in this important matter .... I have felt and experienced many of the blessed influences of the spirit from my youth to this day."45
In general, men who became clergymen in this period did not enter the ministry as the result of dramatic conversion experiences. Men like Samuel Dexter were undoubtedly sincere in their commitment to their vocation, but their sense of calling came only in part from an emotional yearning to serve the Lord. Their decisions were generally made after a long process of reasoning over alternatives and confronting serious doubts. The candidates were not, like Paul on the road to Damascus, overwhelmed by the voice of the Lord, pressing them into his service. But proper ministerial training was usually considered a sufficient guarantee of a candidate's worthiness to become a minister. A young man displayed at least a formal commitment to religion by embarking upon a course of theological studies. These studies did equip him with a wealth of valuable theological knowledge. In addition, his clerical apprenticeship developed his competence to deal with the practical aspects of a minister's work. It was generally assumed that young men who had prepared themselves through these endeavors were now fully qualified to become Congregational ministers.
The formative experience, then, that distinguished men as ministers consisted of education and clerical apprenticeship. During the process ministers frequently experienced religious feelings, but social background, a better than average intellect, a proper education, and clerical apprenticeship were the primary qualifications for the ministry.
CONGREGATIONAL ELECTION. By the time a ministerial candidate was ready to become an ordained clergyman, his training had set him apart from ordinary New Englanders whose formal education was in most cases limited to a few years of rudimentary schooling. Nonetheless, at this time ordinary men, and sometimes women, exercised considerable influence over the candidate's career. Except under rare circumstances, a minister could not be ordained before having been chosen by a congregation to be its pastor. And although ministers tried to control the process of election, the actual choice of a pastor remained under popular control throughout the eighteenth century.
However, the ministers often played an initial role in the process of settling candidates simply because they were most familiar with the young men who were available. In part, this was a result of the difficulties of communication in early New England. In order to secure a candidate, remote towns often had to send messengers to Boston to obtain recommendations. For example, in 1692 the town of Springfield, on the Connecticut River, needed a minister and sent three representatives to the provincial capital to ask the President of Harvard and the Boston pastors for suggestions On the ministers' advice the messengers issued an invitation to Daniel Brewer, who returned to Springfield, was ordained in 1694, and remained the town's minister for almost forty years.46
Individual clergymen often had some influence on the choice of ministers in nearby towns. Daniel Perkins of Bridgewater, for example, believed that he could help settle a candidate he favored. Isaiah Dunster, a young Harvard graduate, noted in his diary that Perkins "invites me to come and keep Sabbath with him and encourages that he will help me to one of the vacancies which are near him."47 In Boston, where the ministers were in constant contact with one another, clergymen frequently influenced the choice of local pastors. So, when Cotton Mather concluded that Boston's first church was declining because of the youth and inexperience of its sale pastor, Benjamin Wadsworth, he persuaded Samuel Sewall and others to call Thomas Bridge from New Jersey to be the young minister's colleague. At first Wadsworth objected, but eventually Bridge was installed as his colleague pastor. But despite such examples of clerical influence, the ministers' advice was frequently ignored, and in most cases laymen plainly controlled the process of settling candidates. A young man's invitation to a particular ministerial office was issued by the people of the congregation. Before a town called a pastor it usually listened to him preach for several months on trial. During this time the townspeople had the opportunity to measure the candidate against their own criteria for a good pastor.
The settlement of Thomas Prentice as a colleague pastor with Hull Abbott in 1739 in the town of Charlestown, Massachusetts, exhibits the common pattern in the selection of a new minister. First, on May 21, 1739, the town meeting, the body that was responsible for voting salaries to the town's clergy, approved the idea of settling a new minister. A week later the church met, concurred with the town, and voted "to set apart a day for solemn prayer with fasting," to seek God's help in their choice of a pastor. On June 13, after the fast, the church met again and voted to invite a single candidate, Thomas Prentice, to preach for two Sabbaths. On July 2 the church and town met together and chose Prentice as pastor.48
In this case the settlement of the minister had involved close cooperation between a congregation, a town, and a candidate. But frequently candidates were the victims of circumstances that clearly reflected the political nature of their settlement in the ministry. In their election the people were said to be issuing a divine call. "In ordinary cases," one minister argued, "the regular Vote and Desire of a Christian People, is look'd upon as the Voice of God, by which He calls forth to Service those that He hath competently furnish'd for it."49 But although the call was considered to be the essential act in enabling a man to become a minister, it frequently did not take the form of a unanimous invitation.
One possible source of trouble was the administrative difference between the town and the church. The church consisted only of those who were full communion members. The town included these "saints" and the noncommunicants as well. The latter group, while not entitled to take communion, was required to attend church and to help pay the minister's salary. Hence, everyone in the town took an active interest in who became the minister. Although the town could legally only concur in the church's choice of a pastor, in fact, the town meeting exercised a great deal of control over the choice, since it paid the minister's salary. If the church elected a candidate whom the town did not like, the town would simply refuse to vote the man a salary.50
Although the church and town could usually concur in the choice of a minister, there were occasions when each put forth its own candidate. In Middleborough, Massachusetts, for example, in 1744 the church nominated a New Light candidate, Sylvanus Conant, and the town chose another man, Thomas Weld. Both groups ordained their man. The town used the old meetinghouse for its·- services, and the church built a new structure for its own. For three years, from 1745 to 1748, the town sought to tax the Conant church for the support of Weld. The issue was finally resolved by the General Court, which ruled that the Conant group could form their own separate "poll parish."51
Sometimes both the town and the church were divided in their choice of a minister. When only a few citizens opposed a candidate's election, he would usually accept, but if the number opposed to him was as large as one-quarter or one-third of the whole, he would have second thoughts. This was particularly true in situations where the minority were obstinate in voicing their opposition. The political nature of the ministerial elections was also apparent in the influence often exercised by powerful coteries or individuals in the church. Although the choice of the minister belonged formally to the whole town and to the whole church, a few important people could often influence the rest. In describing the election of Joshua Gee as pastor of Old North Church, William Waldron, pastor of the New Brick Church in Boston, noted, "tis certain, that the men of post, substance, and influence are for Mr. Gee." Waldron believed that in another town, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, women had great influence. "Tis a pity," he said, "that our pulpit is so much swayed by the petticoat, but some men are born to obey, while women rampant assume to rule and govern."52
The political character of clerical election reveals an important feature of ministerial life in New England. Despite their superior social background and education, ministers were dependent upon their people for support in their work. In many cases during the selection negotiations, this dependence was made painfully apparent to candidates and settled pastors, for some towns treated applicants more like prospective servants than potential religious leaders. In a series of letters written in the 1720s, Richard Waldron described several ways in which churches and towns offended clerical pride. Waldron noted disdainfully that Ipswich was "running wild" when the town nominated eight candidates for their pulpit, with the intention that each man would preach to them for a three month period. Such a competition crudely revealed the dependence of the clergy on the congregation. Waldron was even more critical of the proceedings at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, when the town sought a new minister after Nathaniel Rogers's death in 1723. In a series of letters to his brother he gave advice on how Portsmouth should conduct itself. On October 14, 1723, he urged his brother to see that the town chose a pastor soon because "men's minds will grow wanton and vagrant, which will cause disputings and differences." Two months later, when the town still had not chosen a minister, Waldron concluded that the people thought too highly of themselves and expected to awe their candidates. He wrote his brother that the town' failed to attract William Welsteed, one of the better potential candidates, because it had not paid him proper deference and had shown him "a mean contemptible way of treatment." He criticized Portsmouth for putting "such a valuation and estimate upon yourselves as to imagine that the best would jump at a settlement among you" and criticized their "preposterous management" of the affair. Waldron facetiously recommended John Hancock, of the Harvard class of 1719, as a man who would be sufficiently humble for the town. "He could make a very handsome bow," wrote Waldron, "and if the first did not suit, he'd bow lower a second time."53
The clergymen believed that the popular choice of pastors frequently meant that churches passed over highly qualified candidates because these men failed to win the support of the multitude. William Waldron claimed that Edward Wigglesworth, whom he greatly admired, was neglected as a ministerial candidate simply because of his "small still voice" and high intellectual attainments. According to Waldron, "the rabble which makes the majority" failed to appreciate his qualities; "They disgust every thing but noise and nonsense and can't be content to sit quiet unless their auditory nerves are drummed upon with a voice like thunder."54
Naturally, the tensions in the choice of the ministers and parishes also affected the ministerial candidates themselves. Young men generally tried to avoid parishes that were politically divided, preferring the universal approval of a potential congregation. In 1736 John Hovey rejected a call to 'Woodstock, Connecticut, because "a minority protested the 'mobbish principles' used to obtain the vote."55 Jonathan Cushing rejected a call to Haverhill in 1717 because the minority, which had not joined in his call, remained firmly in favor of another candidate.56 Sometimes a minister accepted a call only on the town's promise to avoid contention. For example, before going to Salem Village, the home of the witchcraft trials, Joseph Green insisted "that they continue in love; and if once they begin to quarrel and contend, I should look upon myself to be free from any obligation to tarry with them."57
The negotiations between candidate and town did not end with the minister's acceptance of a suitable post. The town and the pastor had also to discuss the financial terms of the settlement. Sometimes the minister was able to increase his salary over the town's initial offer. But if he seemed to be asking too much, he might lose the support of the town. In his negotiations prior to settling in Longmeadow, Stephen Williams feared that the people had been convinced that he was too worldly because he did not give an immediate answer to the precinct. He admitted, "they think I am desirous of too great things."58 However, if there was a danger of offending a town by asking too much, there was at the same time the risk that if the minister was not careful about his salary, he might have years of quarreling with the town when he wanted to raise it later. The town's effort to improve its side of the arrangement was also a touchy matter. As the eighteenth century wore on, candidates often had to promise to uphold the Cambridge Platform and, perhaps, to allow ruling elders to be installed. Conservative congregations hoped that such provisions would prevent the ministers from introducing radical innovations into the church.
It is apparent that in many ways the settlement process tended to place candidates and laymen in an adversary relationship. Nonetheless, a great majority of ministers were able to settle in posts that they would hold for the rest of their lives. In the eighteenth century the average minister served his congregation for a term of more than twenty-five years.59 This indicates that despite the abrasiveness of the settlement process, candidates were generally able to locate themselves in suitable parishes. An important ingredient of this suitability was the tendency of ministers to settle in cultural and geographical regions that suited their background and temperament.
Accordingly, John Callender, a native of Boston, and one of the few Baptist ministers who received a Harvard education, may have declined to settle in Swansea because of the lack of educated company there. In 1731 he settled in the more sophisticated town of Newport, Rhode Island.60 Boston-born John Barnard admitted that he favored settling in Roxbury in 1711 "because it was within five miles of Boston."61 On the other hand, a young man who had been raised in a "country town" might feel uncomfortable in a large pulpit. Samuel Dexter of Malden disliked preaching in Charlestown because, he said, "It is exceedingly exercising to me to Appear in such great Congregations. It is contrary to my Disposition. I abundantly rather chuse Retiredness, and if I might be my own Carver, an Assembly in the Country, though it were but small, would abundantly more gratify me."62
The candidate frequently became a minister in the area of his upbringing. John Barnard received a call to Yarmouth, but rejected it because his "honored father ... seemed to be backward in consenting to the motion, partly because of the distance of about 85 miles, and partly ... .[because] it would not be a comfortable settlement to me."63 Another Boston man, Joshua Gee, declined an invitation to preach in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in part because "here [in Boston] is his mother who used strong entreaties with him, [and] here lies his estate." Along with other considerations these "fixed" him in Boston.64 Rowland Cotton chose the more humble of two available parishes because of family ties; "Being willing to live near his parents, who were then at Plymouth, he accepted a call at Sandwich; when, at the same time, he might have been at Dedham; which, upon several accounts, was preferable."65
The geographical bias in the ministers' settlements is nowhere more apparent than in the case of the ministers who served in Boston in the years between 1690 and 1740. In all there were twentytwo ministers serving the Congregational churches in Boston during these years. Of these, thirteen were raised in Boston and another four within ten miles of Boston. Two of the remainder were from England. Thus, of the twenty-two Boston ministers in this period, only three were from remote New England towns.
We can only conjecture as to the probable effects of ministers settling in their native regions. But one important conclusion does suggest itself. As we shall see in later chapters, the clergy sometimes tended to regard their profession as a separate community and even to believe that the ministerial profession was more important than the secular communities in which they worked. This tendency must have been muted by the attachment of many ministers to their local regions. If a man settled in the area of his upbringing, he would be bound to his community by many shared experiences and by the ties of kinship and affection.
All in all the process that left the selection of ministers under the control of local congregations emphasized the dependence of the pastor on his people. Neither social background, nor intellect, nor superior training enabled the candidate to overwhelm his prospective communicants. At its worst, the selection process resulted in towns seeking to overawe young candidates. At its best, where there was a natural affinity between the minister and the people, it produced a sense of mutual respect on the part of candidate and parish.
ORDINATION. In the eighteenth century ministers appear to have been more sensitive to the difficulties than to the benefits of popular election. They became increasingly dissatisfied with a system that appeared to establish clerical legitimacy in election rather than in the judgment of the established clergy. Incidents such as those described by William Waldron offended clerical dignity. Although the ministers did not deny the people's right to elect their ministers, they did develop a rigorous system of clerical licensing,66 and they continued a process, already begun in the seventeenth century, of modifying the ordination service to stress the candidate's relationship to a professional ministerial community. Ironically, within less than a century of the Puritan flight from Anglican persecution, the New England clergymen were increasingly attracted to an Anglican conception of clerical legitmacy. This development is most apparent in the evolution of the ordination ceremony.
Ordination in the early seventeenth century was a simple service in which a congregation formalized its appointment of a minister. It emphasized the minister's close attachment to his congregation rather than his special role as a clergyman. The best surviving account of an ordination ceremony in early New England is found in the records of the First Church in Dedham. The members of the church, including the future minister, John Allin, considered the creation of their congregation far more important than the installation of its pastor. The church was formed on November 8, 1638, after nearly a year of preparation. On this day eight men in Dedham made a public profession of their faith and entered into "sollemne covenant with the lord and one another."67 The following day John Allin, one of the members of the new church, "was deputed by the church to exercise his gifts received ev'ry Lord's day to the edification of the Church till officers might be chosen to teach by office."68 By this simple act the church appointed Allin to preach. Although no officers of the church had been formally ordained, the church met during the following winter, admitted new members, and listened to Allin's preaching. Only after the winter was over did the church set about choosing and ordaining a minister. The formation of the religious community was of primary importance; the formal installation of its pastor, although desirable, was less consequential.
In 1639 the church elected Allin as its minister and, after careful deliberation, decided that since the members had the power to choose their minister, they also had the authority to ordain him, "ordination being but a declanition of the same and installing into that office."69 Upon reaching this conclusion they asked the advice of the elders of the church in Roxbury, who "confirmed our judgment in that point that the power of the whole worke did belong to us alone under Christ."70 On April 24, 1639, the ordination ceremony was carried out. Members and ministers of other churches were invited to attend, but they had little to do in the proceedings. The essential steps were taken by members of the Dedham Church.
Allin preached the sermon; he and two laymen ordained John Hunting as ruling elder; Rnally, Hunting and two other church members ordained Allin as pastor. The visiting clergymen played no part in the laying on of hands, whereby Allin was made minister of the church. Their participation was limited to a favorable testimony made by their representative, Samuel Whiting of Lynn, of "their love and approbation of the proceedings of the church by giving to the officers chosen the right hand of fellowship."71
This service was typical of early New England ordination ceremonies. The presence of representatives from other churches indicates that they approved of Dedham's practices. In 1648, moreover, the procedure was endorsed by the Cambridge Platform of Church Discipline. The ninth chapter of the Platform, entitled "Of Ordination and Imposition of Hands," declared that the power of choosing church officers belonged to the particular congregations and recommended that ordinations be performed locally:
In such Churches where there are Elders, Imposition of hands is to be performed by those Elders.
In such churches where there are no Elders, Imposition of hands, may be performed by some of the Brethren orderly chosen by the church thereunto. For if the people may elect officers which is the greater, and wherein the substance of the office consists, they may much more (occasion and need so requiring) impose hands in ordination, which is the less, and but the accomplishment of the other. 72
The records of the Dedham Church and the pronouncements of the Cambridge Platform indicate that in the early years of the settlement the minister's official standing was entirely dependent upon his relation to an assembly of covenanted Christians. A church could be formed before its minister was chosen; the minister was selected by the congregation; he was given the official character of a clergyman in a ceremony performed by members of his own congregation; and the ordination sermon was delivered by the new pastor himself. These procedures emphasized the minister's place within a brotherhood of Christian believers, rather than his membership in a sacred priesthood of religious leaders.
Within a few years after the drafting of the Cambridge Platform this emphasis would change. By mid-century in most churches the ceremony of ordaining the new minister came to be performed by other ministers rather than by laymen in the congregation. As late as 1696 the practice of involving laymen in the ordination ceremony had not been entirely abandoned in New England. Samuel Sewall reports that when William Brattle was ordained in Cambridge on November 25, 1696, he had to persuade "the Church to order that Elder Clark should not lay his hand on his head when he was ordain'd." Deacon Gill, who accompanied Sewall on his return home, "said he liked all very well except the Bill of Exclusion."73 But by now such "exclusions" were common practice.
This development radically altered the character of the ceremony. By placing their hands on the minister's head the representatives of the people had symbolized the congregation's choice of one of its members to guide their religious lives. Ordination by other ministers, however, emphasized the young man's initiation into a clerical order. The fact that by the late seventeenth century laymen were generally excluded from the ordination service suggests that the ministers were no longer willing to base their legitimacy so exclusively on their relationship to the congregations they served.
Although the ministers now played a more active role in the creation of new ministers, this modification of earlier practice did not immediately set them apart as a formal professional class. Ministers were still chosen by the congregation, and the ordination ceremony itself was often treated as a time for merriment rather than as a sober occasion when old ministers created new members of their order. Although there are few records of the ordinations of the late 1600s to give us a complete picture of the ceremony, the surviving entertainment bills for the ordination day balls suggest that the occasion was not particularly solemn. For example, the provisions for Timothy Edwards's ordination in 1698 included fourteen pounds of mutton, eighty-eight pounds if beef, four quarts of rum, and eight quarts of wine.74 This suggests that New Englanders still believed that it is the people's election of a minister "wherein the substance of the office consists." Since the creation of a minister consisted in the church's election of a candidate, the less important act of ordaining him could be an occasion for levity and recreation.
In the early eighteenth century, however, the ministers began to claim that clerical status was bestowed by the ordination ceremony, rather than by the people's election. In 1718 Thomas Prince, preaching his ordination sermon, declared that when ministers are ordained, "The Power of taking Care of Your Souls is actually committed to Them: and They do actually receive it, and lay Themselves under the most Solemn Vows and Obligations to take Care of Them."75 In 1729 William Williams, preaching at the ordination of David Hall, declared: "The Election of the Church or People does not Constitute them in their Office or Authorize them to act in it."76 The people's role in choosing the minister came to be so little respected that in 1738 Nathaniel Appleton could warn that "this Privilege or Liberty of electing their own Pastors, has, on occasion of the Abuse of it by the Churches themselves ... been taken away from many of the Churches of our Lord Jesus Christ."77 Such statements tend to suggest- that the ministers believed they should have primary authority in determining who would be admitted to their number.
In most cases the people continued to choose their own ministers, but under exceptional circumstances the clergy began to ordain ministers "at large," men who were deemed worthy to preach, baptize, and offer communion, but were attached to no particular congregation. In 1698 Nathaniel Clap was ordained by ministers in Boston to carryon "the work of the Gospel" throughout Rhode Island, which had only one Congregational church at that time. In the early eighteenth century, several other men were ordained ministers at large before setting out as preachers to Indians or to backcountry settlements. Although ordinations of this sort were unusual, the introduction of the practice gives further evidence of the shift in clerical consciousness. A man could now become a minister without having been so designated by any group of laymen.
The new importance of the ordination is reflected in the candidates' preparation for the event. Ebenezer Parkman's description of the days before his ordination is probably typical. A graduate of Harvard in the class of 1721, Parkman received a call to the ministry in Westborough in February 1724. In June he accepted the invitation. In the next few months he received his Harvard A.M. and married Mary Champney of Cambridge. He settled in Westborough and began preaching. As the day of his ordination drew near he devoted much of his time to reading books on the ministry. In October he records: "My Business about this time was reading Ordination Sermons and wherever the Minister's Duty was explained, Especially Van Mastricht, De Ministaris Ecclesiastico."78 Two weeks before the ordination he dedicated a day "to humiliation and prayer to prepare myself (by the grace of God) for the awful time approaching." Finally, on October 28 he was ordained. In his diary Parkman called the occasion "the Greatest Day I ever Yet –Saw The Day of my Solemn Separation to the Work of the Gospel Ministry and my Ordination to the Pastorate in Westborough."79
As the ceremony of consecration by the ministers came increasingly to be regarded as the most significant step in the creation of a clergyman, the ministers attempted to make the occasion more formal and sought to end the festivities that the service had sometimes occasioned. In his ordination sermon for William Gager in 1725 Eliphalet Adams noted: "I have often seen offensive disorders upon such occasions as these, People seeming to Imagine that it was a Time when they might allow themselves more Liberty." He " urged that there "be no rude, Light or Unseemly Behaviour in this Assembly this Day." Of the ordination ceremony itself, he said: "The Solemn Separation of any Person to the work of the Sacred Ministry ... is a thing so weighty, that Everyone who are present as witnesses at such a Solemnity, should come Prepared with the spirit of Piety."80 At another ordination service in the same year John Graham scolded those who might have come to the service "out of a vain Curiosity, or to get an Opportunity of a Frolic." He lamented that this is "too too Common with Young Persons on such Occasions."81 There was a celebration after Stephen Williams's ordination in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, in 1716, but Williams later regretted his behavior, noting: "I fear we were too merry together."82 Although large banquets accompanied many ordinations throughout the eighteenth century, objections against frivolity were a natural concomitant of the desire to heighten the dignity of the service.
As ordination came to symbolize the solemn initiation of a novice into a formal profession, the practice of preaching one's own ordination sermon fell into disuse. When clerical power had been thought to Row from the congregation, it had been natural for the new pastor to address his people in his moment of consecration. Thus Allin and other ministers of his time had preached their own sermons. But in the early eighteenth century, in accordance with the idea that authority passed from minister to minister, this practice became exceptional. Of the first twenty-five sermons that were published after 1716, only five were preached by the new minister himself. In his ordination sermon for John Lowell in Newbury in 1726, Thomas Foxcroft declared that he preferred the old practice. "Truly glad shou'd I have been," be said, "if (pursuant to the Custom, which hath so long obtain'd among us) he cou'd have been prevail'd on to take up the Book at this time, and preach to us his own devout Thoughts and Purposes." But Foxcroft had to admit that the former practice had fallen into disuse; he referred to the "plea's usually advanc'd in this case, against the common Custom."83 The "common Custom" was, in fact, no longer common. In 1728 John Adams preached his. own ordination sermon in Newport, Rhode Island, but between 1728 and 1740 all the published ordination sermons were preached by someone other than the new minister himself. In 1729 William Williams said: "The Objections against the Person to be Ordained his Preaching his own Ordination Sermon, have prevail'd very much against the late Custom."84
With the growing emphasis on the professional significance of ordination and with the spread of the custom of having experienced ministers do the preaching ordination sermons acquired new importance. In 1709, for the first time, a New England ordination sermon was published, to be followed by another in 1716, still another in 1717, and seven more the ensuing year. In the quarter century from 1716 through 1740, seventy-eight ordination sermons were published.85 Characteristically these sermons were discourses on the ministry-its necessity, authority, and responsibility-and the tenor of the sermons was strongly sacerdotal, quite in contrast to the pastoral emphasis of Allin's ordination text of 1639 (I Corinthians 3:9): "For we are laborers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building." The actual sermon does not survive, but we may reasonably suppose that Allin dwelt on the community of the faithful, himself included as co-laborer with his fellow saints, rather than on the sacred "separation" of the ministerial office.86 Although it is impossible to date the change precisely, most of the ordination sermons published before 1740 not only dealt primarily with the ministry, but stressed the peculiar importance of ministers. Benjamin Colman argued that the "minister's office distinguishes him from other men," and as "it is the chief End of a Christian to glorify God, so it is of a Minister to magnify his Office."87 Many other preachers echoed these sentiments.88
In keeping with the new sense of the centrality of the ordination of the minister to the life of the church, it became customary not to form a new congregation until a candidate could be ordained pastor at the same time. In the seventeenth century many churches had been formed and held services for months or even years before a minister was ordained to serve them. But in the eighteenth century the formation of a new parish and the ordination of its pastor usually occurred on the same day, suggesting that without a minister there could be no church.89
Within a century of the settlement of New England the ordination service thus underwent a series of gradual but significant changes. Congregations were not formed before their minister was installed; ordination came to be performed by ministers rather than by laymen; ministers were occasionally ordained without having been chosen by the people of any particular congregation as their pastor; the ordination sermon was preached by older ministers rather than by the man being installed; the ordination ceremony rather than election by the people began to be regarded as "conveying" the ministerial office; the sermons came to focus on the ministry rather than on the Christian community and were often published, calling attention to their significance; and, finally, in keeping with these other changes, the ministers began to insist that the ordination day should be regarded as a solemn occasion. All of these innovations emphasized the importance of the ordination ceremony.
These remarkable changes in the minister's role in creating new pastors respect a movement toward a sacerdotal conception of the clergy. In Faithful Shepards, David Hall has argued that the early Puritan ministers began to abandon customs that established clerical legitimacy in congregational ordination when the Antinomian crisis revealed that popular religious judgments could not be relied upon to provide stability. As we have seen, the movement toward a redefinition of clerical legitimacy was continued into the eighteenth century. Proud of their rigorous training, uneasy about the popular basis of their authority, they were attracted to a view of clerical legitimacy that stressed the independent objective character of the clergy.
The desire for a stable basis of leadership was so intense that it actually drove a number of Congregationalists into the arms of the Anglican church. The most notable conversion to Anglicanism occurred in 1723 when the president of Yale, Samuel Johnson, and six tutors and ministers announced that they doubted the legitimacy of their Congregational ordinations and indicated that they would seek ordination in England by Anglican bishops.
Congregational New Englanders were shocked and frightened by this event, which they labeled the "Great Apostasy." The episode was especially disquieting because the converts had acted from a premise which most Congregational ministers shared, that ministerial validity was derived from other ministers rather than a congregational election. Ironically, the Puritan reaction to the Apostasy tended to stress the similarity of Anglican and Congregationalist ordinations rather than the unique qualities of the New England Way. Upon returning to Boston after being ordained in England, Timothy Cutler preached a sermon that William Waldron described as "full of raillery and bitter invectives." Waldron reported that Cutler "insists, it seems, upon the invalidity of our ordinations." The Congregationalists had a chance to respond five months later in the course of the ordination of Joshua Gee in Boston's Second Church. William Waldron's description of this ceremony suggests that the Congregationalists wanted their ordinations to be as impressive as those of the Anglicans.
On Wednesday last the ordination of Mr. Gee was proceeded in. The affair was carried on with so much seriousness and awful reverence that if I had been wavering about the validity of our ordinations before I should have been then fixed and established by the solemnity and religious devotion visible in all parties at the sacred action. Every man's soul seems to be in it.90
That Congregationalist ordinations were becoming increasingly similar to Anglican services is apparent in a letter White Kennett, bishop of Peterborough, wrote Benjamin Colman after he received a copy of Colman's sermon delivered at William Cooper's ordination. "By your ordination sermon," he said, "I perceive you have changed an irregular custom into much more decency and order, by not suffering the young candidate to make then his probation sermon, but to have the preparatory discourse made by a senior more apt and able to teach."91 It is doubtful that Colman was disturbed that a Congregational innovation should be complimented for moving toward an Anglican ideal. He probably agreed with Kennett that the new practice had more "decency" and "order."
It is ironic, but not surprising that the Congregational ministers had adopted a notion of clerical legitimacy that reflected Anglican ideas about church government. As we have already noted, there was an important element in New England that regarded the English aristocracy as the proper model for social grace and stability. By intellectual training and frequently by social background, the ministers did belong to a colonial elite. The courtly view of their profession reflected in the ordination ceremonies was consistent with their view of their proper status in provincial society.
Their concept of themselves conflicted, however, with the nature of their elections and their day-to-day relations with their people. This conflict is the subject of later chapters. For the moment it is important to note the humane, indeed secular, character of the process by which a man became a minister in the eighteenth century. In the exhilaration of this moment, when a large crowd of ministers and laymen had gathered to observe and participate in his ordination, the new clergyman may have often concluded that the Lord, himself, had chosen him as one of his ministers. For example, on the day of his ordination, Thomas Prince traced the hand of the Lord through all the stages of his calling to the ministry. Christ, he said, "rules on Earth by His Omnipresent, Alwise, and Almighty Spirit. By This He inclines and qualifies particular Persons for Divine Imployments, and gives Them Opportunities of Laboring in them. By This He makes Them successful, approved, esteemed, and disposes the Hearts of His People to Them. By This He influences and directs Their Choice and Acceptance and Solemn Consecration to Their Sacred Office."92 Other clergymen would agree with Prince that the ministers received, in effect, a call from God. But in contrast to the "illiterate usurpers" who sometimes appeared in early New England and claimed that the call of God was the only preparation they needed to preach, the established clergy of New England believed that God's call was always accompanied by years of formal training, a regular election, and an ordination carried out with "decency and order."
Religion did play an important role in all of these processes. The candidate learned religious doctrines in grammar school, college, and particularly in graduate training. He became acquainted with the techniques of pastoral leadership through ministerial apprenticeship, and (it was hoped) he grew in piety as he matured. Each of these experiences reminded him of the divine being who ruled the world, but it is apparent that other factors were involved in the creation of ministers. The candidate's social background and intellectual ability, the relationship between men within the towns, and the professional aspirations of the settled ministers all played important parts in the ministers' calling.
In theory the ministers stood apart from their times and reminded men who were caught up in temporal concerns that the real purpose of life lay beyond the world, and in many ways their training did direct them to this divine mission. But at the same time, it is evident that the process by which men became clergymen in colonial New England was intimately related
Men became ministers as a result of a complex process that had little to do with "immediate irradiation from above." Their intellectual talents, social backgrounds, and college educations enabled them to become clerical candidates. A systematic apprenticeship prepared them for their work. The politics of Congregational election produced their call to a particular parish. And finally, ordination by their fellow ministers actually elevated them to the clerical profession. Thus, before a young man even began his pastoral work, he underwent a series of experiences that distinguished him sharply from his fellow New Englanders.
EDUCATION. A college education was the essential prerequisite for the Congregational ministry. Ninety-five percent of the clergymen had a college degree, and most studied for three years after receiving their A.B. in order to earn an A.M., usually in theology.3 The content of their educations, then, and the factors that placed potential ministers in the small minority of New Englanders who became college graduates are important ingredients in the character of the eighteenth-century clergy.
The two most important determinants of whether a person would go to college were social background and intellect. Simply because of their parentage some children had a much greater chance than others of becoming clergymen. Among Harvard graduates between 1700 and 1740 who became ministers, 63 percent were sons of merchants, physicians, sea captains, innkeepers, clergymen, and other relatively well-to-do New Englanders. The proportion of Yale students with prominent parents in the same period was somewhat lower, but still substantial. These affluent fathers were a small fraction of New England's total population, but they were the parents of many of the clergymen. In addition, a substantial proportion of the pastors were relatives of other clergymen. In the early eighteenth century 17 percent of the Yale graduates who became ministers had clerical fathers, and 18 percent of Harvard's ministerial graduates were the sons of clergymen.4
Some ministers had family ties to a large number of their fellow pastors. Several families, such as the Williamses, the Rogerses, and the Woodbridges, produced as many as ten ministers. Moreover, in relation to their numbers it is possible that clerical sons exercised a disproportionate influence on the religious life of New England. Many of the most important New England pastors were second-, third-, or even fourth-generation ministers. Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mather, and Experience Mayhew, for example, were from families that produced many clergymen.
It is true that an important group of clergymen arose from nonministerial backgrounds. Benjamin Colman's father, for example, was a merchant. John Wise was the son of an indentured servant. However, if a boy were born of clerical parents, it was far more likely that he would become a minister than if he came from any other background. And if his parents were poor there was very little chance that he would become a clergyman.
In addition to affluence, parental encouragement and intellectual talent greatly influenced a youth's chances of becoming a minister. Many children were encouraged by their parents to enter the clergy. For example, it was said of Thomas Clap, the president of Yale College, that "from childhood he was 'devoted and dedicated to the work of the ministry' by his pious and worthy parents."5
But a parent was most likely to be successful in urging a young man to become a clergyman if the youth had some native talent and inclination for his studies. Even Cotton Mather was unable to persuade his son, Increase, to become a minister, because the youth lacked an appetite for study. But the father of Nicholas Gilman was more successful. He decided to give his son a liberal education only after the youth had impressed him by repeating part of the Latin accidence by heart each evening after school.6 Nicholas graduated from Harvard in 1724 and later became minister of Durham, New Hampshire.
Thus, a combination of social background, parental encouragement, and intellectual promise helped determine whether a young man would set out on the path to the ministry. None of these factors was a sign of piety. Being able to memorize Latin with ease was an indication of intellectual rather than religious promise, and a father's piety in "devoting" his son to the ministry did not assure that the son would himself be pious. But without the benefit of these qualifications, it was unlikely that a young New Englander, no matter how pious he might be, would acquire the education that was an essential ministerial prerequisite.
The actual training that distinguished potential clergymen from ordinary New Englanders was not designed solely for ministerial candidates. A grammar school education was part of the common experience of ministers, lawyers, merchants, and even of many farmers. Children learned to read and write in "dame schools" and then entered grammar school, usually at age seven. The curriculum of the grammar schools varied form place to place. In some towns the "Latin master" was also responsible for teaching reading and writing; in others the masters taught mathematics along with the classics.7 But the candidate for college admission was chiefly required to learn Latin and Greek.
Although formal religious training was not always a part of the grammar school education, religion did playa role in the early education of New England's youth. The catechism, containing basic religious principles, often served to drill the students in reading and writing. In addition, many teachers gave informal religious counsel to their students. In the early eighteenth century, grammar schools were often taught by young ministerial candidates awaiting a call to a particular church, who were anxious to gain experience in teaching religious principles. Such teachers often sought to introduce religious training into the curriculum.8
In grammar school a student also acquired a tool that he would use frequently in his ministry: his knowledge of Latin and Greek allowed him to study the Bible in the original tongues. Many ministers maintained their linguistic skill and continued to study the Bible in the classical tongues long after they left college. Joseph Baxter, minister of Medfield, Massachusetts, maintained: "We should carefully consult the original tongues to find out the meaning of the texts we insist on."9 Reverend Simon Bradstreet of Charlestown was once introduced as a man who could "whistle Greek."10
Upon completing his grammar school preparation the prospective minister entered either Harvard or Yale College. During the eighteenth century Harvard was, according to Samuel Eliot Morison, "a religious college, but emphatically not a 'divinity school’ or a seminary for the propagation of Puritan theology."l1 The atmosphere of Harvard was religious, with prayers twice daily, catechism on Saturday, and a Puritan observance of the Sabbath. And a large number of Harvard graduates did become ministers: 50 percent in the seventeenth century, and more than one-third in the early eighteenth century. The college curriculum, however, like that of the grammar schools, was suited to lawyers, doctors, and merchants as well as to ministers. "Prospective parsons," according to Morison, "were given exactly the same Liberal Arts course as other boys who had no such ambition."12
In 1701 a second college, later named Yale, was established in Connecticut. This institution, like Harvard, sought not only to educate prospective clergymen but also to train young men for other professions. In the early eighteenth century, Yale graduated more than two hundred young men who became ministers, but in the same period it produced an equal number of students who-' chose other vocations.13
In both schools the curriculum was broad, including the "seven liberal arts" and the "three philosophies" of the medieval universities and also belles-lettres and languages. Students at both Harvard and Yale could read works that contradicted orthodox Puritan ideas, and in the early eighteenth century many supporters of Harvard took pride in the college's "liberalism." In 1712 Benjamin Colman wrote: "No place of education can boast a more free air than our little college may for these last twenty years."14 Although some of the early supporters of Yale hoped that the college would be less liberal than Harvard, students there also were given the opportunity to read unorthodox works.15 The Yale library included a large assortment of books that had been assembled by Jeremiah Dumner in England. This collection included an extensive selection of both orthodox and latitudinarian religious tracts.16
But although college students in the early eighteenth century were exposed to diverse religious ideas, there were limits to the colleges' liberalism. While it is true that Leverett may have changed the tone of Harvard and encouraged his students to consider unorthodox ideas, he did not actually espouse any heretical doctrines. In 1722, when Edward Wigglesworth was appointed to the Hollis Chair of Divinity, Leverett accepted the overseers' request that Wigglesworth should prove his orthodoxy by declaring his adherence to William Ames's Medulla Theologiae, the Westminster Assembly catechism, and the thirty-nine articles. In the same year the trustees of Yale reaffirmed the orthodoxy of their school after the rector of the college, a tutor, and five local ministers declared that their reading in the Dumner books had persuaded them that their Congregational ordinations were invalid. Although this episode, known as the "Great Apostasy" shocked all of New England, it did not usher in a new era of liberalism at Yale. Instead it persuaded the trustees to be more cautious in seeking their next rector. Four days after Cutler and his associates had announced their conversion, the trustees declared that thereafter Yale tutors and rectors would be required to assent to the orthodox Congregational positions on doctrinal and ecclesiastical questions before being installed in office.17
In spite of the diversity of ideas to which an undergraduate was exposed, the student who attended Harvard or Yale in the early eighteenth century was less likely to be led away from religion by unorthodox ideas than by the more subtle temptation to abandon the studious, disciplined life of a ministerial candidate for the more earthly pleasures of student frivolity. At Harvard and Yale there were frequent cases of drunkenness, thievery, dancing, and a variety of other misdemeanors. At Yale, tutor Jonathan Edwards testified that in 1721 his college was beset with "monstrous impieties and acts of immorality . . . particularly stealing of hens, geese, turkies, piggs, meat, wood, etc., unseasonable nightwalking, breaking people's windows, playing at cards, cursing, swearing, damning, and using all manner of ill language, which never were at such a pitch in the college as they now are."18 Samuel Eliot Morison asserts that in this period many students came 'to Harvard from seaports, "which reaped the first harvests from land speculation and West India commerce, and the rum business; and where the influence of Court manners was most quickly felt. The new crop of young men came to be made gentlemen, not to study."19 For such youths there was a broad road ahead to other professions than the ministry. At the 1712 commencement, John Leverett proudly noted that Harvard produced scholars, judges, soldiers, physicians, and farmers as well as ministers. Significantly, most of his examples were of men who belonged to a social as well as an intellectual elite. Richard Warch concludes that Yale too served the provincial upper class. He notes that the college served "as the intellectual core of a Connecticut and interior New England societal establishment; its members sent their sons to the college and Yale's graduates served it."20
Because social background was as important as intellect in determining who would receive a college education and graduates tended to enter the provincial elite, it was natural for intelligent, but self-educated colonists to question whether the colleges did, in fact, improve their students' intellects and souls as much as they raised their status. Ideally, those young men who were most distinguished for intellectual and religious qualities would be promoted by the educational system. But as we have seen, the schools tended to train only those children whose parents could afford the cost of their education. Some colonists complained that this system simply gave special advantages to wealthy children, instead of educating the best intellects for religious and political leadership.
In 1722 a bright young Boston youth who did not attend Harvard wrote a scathing denunciation of the college. Writing under the pseudonym of Silence Dogood, Benjamin Franklin argued that in spite of Harvard's fame as a "temple of LEARNING" most parents who sent their children to college "consulted their own purses instead of their Children's Capacities" with the result that most of the students "were little better than Dunces and Blockheads." He alleged that only a few youths actually worked at college and that when they graduated many students were "e'en just as ignorant as ever."21 Benjamin Franklin was one of many eighteenth-century New Englanders who refused to equate intellectual talent with a college degree. No doubt he exaggerated the role of wealthy parents and personal ambition in the early lives of the ministers, but it was mainly the sons of the well-to-do who became ministers, and, as we shall see, the ministers themselves were not indifferent to questions of social status.
In statements about their profession the ministers liked to suggest that any man with a good mind and a pious heart could become a minister. In practice this was not the case. It is true that in order to enter and to graduate from college a young man did have to show some intellectual promise, and the education he received did involve a degree of religious training. But it was much more difficult for a child of poor parents to attend college than for a child of wealthy parents, and the educational system tested and enhanced a young man's intellect more than his piety.
CLERICAL APPRENTICESHIP. In eighteenth-century New England men became Congregational ministers by acquiring a skill rather than by possessing superior spiritual qualities. We have seen that only a small group of New Englanders were even qualified to enter ministerial training and that these men were distinguished from their fellow colonists more by social background and intellect than by superior piety. It was the actual training prospective ministers underwent after receiving their A.B. that fitted them with a knowledge of Christian doctrine and practice in the arts of preaching and counseling. In essence the minister was established through proper training.
Ministers' diaries suggest that it was common for a candidate to develop a sense of piety only after graduating from college. The undergraduate's intellectual knowledge of religious truth was carefully developed and tested. But there was no effort by his teachers to determine whether the scholars had experienced God's grace and had undergone conversion. Surviving diaries of ministers who were deeply concerned about religious matters while they were in college suggest that their experience was exceptional.
For pious youths college life sometimes seemed inhospitable. John Cleaveland, a Yale student who later became a famous New Light preacher, complained that having to run errands for older boys made serious thought and work difficult. He once lamented: "I think I run further and further and grow colder and colder in things of religion."22 Some young men at Harvard and Yale reacted against the temptations and diversions of the secular world by forming religious clubs at college. In the early eighteenth century several societies for pious worship and discussion were established at Harvard. For example, David Jeffries, a graduate of 1708, formed a student prayer group in his undergraduate days. Jeffries became a merchant, but the society included Joseph Sewall and Thomas Prince, who were to become notable clergymen. Another society, formed in 1721, produced seven ministers from its eight members; among them were Charles Ghauncy and Ebenezer Pemberton. A typical meeting of this group included a twenty-minute discourse by one member "on any Subject he pleaseth." Then followed a disputation on two or more questions with one part of the group holding the affirmative and the other the negative. The members also discussed recently published books and agreed "if we see or hear of any Extraordinary Book, we will give the best account we can of it to the Society." The topics of discussion included, "On a Future State," "On God's Wisdom and Power," "On Regeneration," and "Upon the Unity of the Church."23
A similar organization, the Philomusarian Club, was formed at Harvard in 1728. Only those who were "adjudged to be Philomus, i.e., a lover of learning," were admitted to the group. The club's florid preamble reflected the members' view of their college contemporaries. The subscribers joined together to "stem that monstrous tide of impiety and ignorance which is like to sweep all before it." They agreed to meet four nights weekly and on each occasion to discuss "some point of learning." The club had an elaborate set of laws and penalties. Cursing, for example, was punished with a fine of six pennies, liquor was forbidden, and a student who scoffed at another's performance must pay two pennies to the club treasurer. Every second week a court was to meet in order to penalize miscreants. The original members of the club were ten students in the classes of 1729, 1730, and 1731. Apparently, the organization had a strong appeal for young men who were interested in the ministry. Of the original members eight lived long enough to choose careers, and seven of these became clergymen. Thus, almost 90 percent of these students became ministers at a time when only 40 ... percent of the student body as a whole entered the ministry. Like the earlier pious societies the Philomusarian Club must have provided a haven within a more secular society, where interested students could discuss religious questions and lead a moral life.24
It is evident from the formation of such societies that some ministers became serious Christians before embarking on their ministerial training. But the comparative isolation of these students and the diaries of other students suggest that many young men became' serious Christians only after entering clerical apprenticeship.
It was only after he received his A.B. degree that the student began a course of studies designed exclusively for ministers. Intellectually his next hurdle was the college A.M. examination, which was usually taken three years after the A.B. was granted. Most graduates received the Masters degree even if they did not enter the ministry. However, the subject matter of the examinations varied with a student's professional ambitions. There were no formal courses for the A.M., and there were a variety of circumstances under which men prepared themselves for the degree.
Some young men lived with ministers and learned about pastoral labors as well as theology. This course had a long Puritan tradition. In the early seventeenth century, many Puritan ministers in England had trained ministerial candidates in their homes. John Cotton, for example, instructed students from Cambridge University at his home in Boston, England. In her study of Ministerial Training in Eighteenth Century New England, Mary Latimer Gambrell describes a typical course of studies at one of these "schools of the prophets."25 Students would compose and answer lists of questions that they built into the framework of a systematic or didactic theology. They read theological treatises setting forth opposing points of view, and they wrote compositions and engaged in discussions.
Other candidates lived at home while pursuing their studies and when possible, met to study with other ministerial candidates. Cotton Mather describes one such gathering. The members carried on "a course of Disputation upon the Body of Divinity." They carefully discussed the important church controversies and prepared papers on "every Head of Divinity."26
Other young men had to find steady employment in the years between receiving their A.B.' s and becoming settled pastors. For such students teaching school was a common occupation. Here a ministerial candidate had the opportunity to refresh his Latin and Greek. He might also practice religious instruction. As we have seen, religious training was not a formal part of secondary education, but prayers and catechizing were often included. For example, Joseph Green gave religious counseling to his students in Roxbury. The first eighty-two pages of Green's commonplace book contain his notes for almost three months of catechizing.
A fourth way of preparing for the ministry involved remaining in residence at college and reading theology. Some students were fortunate enough to receive a Hopkins scholarship at Harvard or a Berkeley fellowship at Yale, which subsidized their studies. While in residence the graduates read theology. They paid no tuition and 'received no formal instruction. Often the resident A.B.s roomed with undergraduates and were probably expected ot help them with their studies.27
The general emphasis in graduate training was naturally upon religious knowledge. Although there was no uniform syllabus, two guides for ministerial candidates were published in New England before the Great Awakening.- In 1726 Cotton Mather published Manuductio ad Ministerum Directions for a Candidate of the Ministry. Nine years later Joseph Sewall and Thomas Prince collected Samuel Willard's notes on preparation for the ministry and published them as Brief Directions to a Young Scholar Designing the Ministry. Although Mather's book is much longer and more detailed than Willard's, the two are similar in intent. Both urge the ministerial candidate to embark upon a course of study designed to improve both his intellect and his piety. Willard's Brief Directions begins by urging the candidate to reflect that "every good Gift, and every perfect Gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Light." A man must recognize his dependence on God, says Willard; he must "put off high Opinions of himself."28 The first three chapters of Mather's Manuductio ad Ministerum have to do with Christian piety. Mather tells the candidate: "My Son, I advise you to consider yourself as a Dying Person." In order to be a "true liver," Mather says, you must seek a higher end than carnal satisfaction. A young man should abase himself in order to behold the true glory of Christ. If God is with him in this, he will have the "principle of piety" in himself.29
Both books contain a number of suggestions for a proper course of studies. Willard recommends that the candidate begin with an intensive study of the scriptures; he should arrange them under "practical heads" for the purpose of applying them to particular human circumstances. Then he should study polemical divinity to learn what doctrines are in opposition to the truth and how to oppose them. The underlying assumption of this course of studies is that the candidate will master a fixed body of truth. He is introduced to opposing viewpoints only in order to confute errors. Willard warns that the student should not be exposed to dangerous new ideas until he is well grounded in orthodox truths: "let him read the most approved Systems and Common-Places, and get them well digested, for till he is soundly principled in the Fundamentals of Theology, he is readily exposed to be led about by every Wind of Doctrine, and baffled with the cunning Sophisms of Impostors, against which this will be a Defence."30
Cotton Mather's Manuductio ad Ministerum also encourages the ministerial candidate to be well grounded in the fundamental truths of Christianity. Even though he devotes several chapters to secular books, he continually directs the student to religious lessons. The chapter on "sciences," for example, is devoted mainly to rhetoric, logic, and ethics, each of which, according to Mather, has a religious dimension.
It is apparent from these formal treatises on ministerial preparation and from candidates' diaries that there was a wide variety of books that students could study in preparing for the ministry, but it is equally apparent that the basic reading course consisted of books that would be most likely to educate the candidate in doctrinal orthodoxy and religious piety. Undoubtedly, John Barnard described the intellectual progress of the typical candidate when he noted that his studies led him "insensibly into what is called the Calvinistical Scheme."31
The study of theology was followed (or sometimes accompanied) by a period of practical apprenticeship in the work of the ministry. Although a young man could not administer baptism or communion until he had been ordained, he could preach sermons, offer public prayers, and make pastoral visits.
Many opportunities existed for the ministerial candidate to develop as a preacher. Often a man began by "commonplacing," speaking on a religious topic, at Harvard or Yale, or by preaching at a private religious gathering.32 John Barnard preached his first sermon "to a society of young men meeting on Lord's day evening for the exercises of religion."33 John Burt preached to a similar society within a year of his graduation from Harvard.34 A candidate often used as much care in composing these informal sermons as he would later expend on important discourses for large congregations.
As a young man became more proficient in preaching, occasions would arise for him to deliver sermons to settled congregations on a regular basis. A candidate might be called upon to occupy a pulpit in the minister's absence, or to preach temporarily to a congregation that had not yet settled a regular pastor. Since the pay for this sort of work was often irregular, a candidate sometimes supported himself with other jobs. John Burt, for example, divided his time between preaching and surveying. In one two-week period he preached four sermons and at the same time "went out to survey and lodged in the woods," and "ran Dr. Toppan's line for him.”35
Before his ordination a young man could also gain practice in other aspects of the minister's work. One of the most important duties of the minister was to give counsel to the members of his parish when they experienced spiritual problems. Many candidates performed this function informally, even as undergraduates in college. Joseph Sewall, for example, ministered to the problems of several of his classmates at Harvard. He persuaded one friend, who was full of "doubts," not to refuse to take communion. He helped another to confront his sense of sin.36 Other opportunities existed to give religious counsel to those whom one met while preparing for the ministry.
Some young men actually acquired formal ministerial positions before being ordained. Often chaplains on military expeditions or at forts were ministerial candidates. (Castle William, in Boston Harbor, was a favorite post for young chaplains because of its proximity to Boston and Cambridge.) One of the most famous of New England's eighteenth-century clergymen, Thomas Prince, began his ministry by serving as a chaplain on board a 450-ton merchant vessel, the Thomas and Elizabeth. In his journal he reports that "we lived very merrily," but even while he was enjoying the excitement of his first long sea voyage, Prince offered religious and moral guidance to the ship's crew. He preached, conducted religious services, and on the Captain's orders he drew up "some laws for the good government of our ship." On the voyage Prince gained experience both in conducting religious services and in setting forth standards of behavior. These same duties were to occupy much of his ministerial life.37
During the course of an apprenticeship, a young man had the opportunity to decide from experience whether he definitely wanted to commit himself to the ministry. A youth could be eminently well qualified to become a clergyman, but still decide he preferred some other calling. Most men who studied theology for their A.M.s and became ministerial candidates did eventually become pastors, but a significant number of men set out on the path to the ministry and then chose other occupations instead. For example, John Denison, of the Harvard class of 1710, preached for a time, but turned to public life and became sheriff of Essex County and a deputy in the Massachusetts legislature. Adino Bulfinch, of the class of 1718, attempted to become a minister, but then opened an apothecary shop in Boston instead. Usually it is difficult to know why a particular person decided not to become a minister. But there are some explanations on record. It was said of Joseph Baxter that he intended to become a pastor, but "the organs of speech in him proving weak, and his voice low" he turned to medicine.38 In the early eighteenth century, several other men abandoned the ministry for this same reason; perhaps this was a convenient way for a poor preacher to excuse himself.
In theory, a candidate determined that he had a call from God to enter the ministry before seeking ordination. Rev. John Hancock made this process seem simple. "The choice left to us as to our callings," he said, "is no other than a conscionable enquiry which way God calleth us, and a conscionable care to take that way."39 But God's call was not always clear, pressing, or easy to discern, and it was not unusual for ministerial candidates to have to overcome doubts about their suitability as pastors. Nicholas Gilman, in a time of uncertainty about his own vocation, was encouraged by reading in John 1:31, "men called of God to the work of the ministry, must not stand back because of the conscience [sic] of much inability."40 Ministers were not expected to be perfect. It was enough if a young man could be reasonably certain that he was qualified to be a clergyman. Samuel Dexter of Dedham expressed the modest hopes about his vocation that most candidates hoped to achieve. Before settling as a minister he examined himself on the character of his calling. As to the principle he acted upon, he said: "I hope it is of faith-I am concerned that it should be so for whatsoever is not of faith is sin."41
It is probable that leaving college heightened the religious feelings of many students. The graduate who was interested in the ministry was nearing the time when he would have to assume the actual responsibilities of a pastoral career. This must have caused many to wonder whether they were worthy of becoming ministers and must have encouraged a mature consideration of religion. Joseph Green reports that in college he "roistered" until he had received his first degree. But then, he said: "When the Commencement was past I began to be in some want and especially I wanted a settled employ [sic]: And this put me upon some serious thought of my fitness to doe God service, and did somewhat restrain me and make me a little studious and diligent; and I think made me to live constantly in the practice of secret prayer." Green said that it was at this time that "God began to work saveingly upon my heart."42 Jonathan Pierpont wrote in his diary that while he was teaching in Dorchester, "It pleased God to awaken me by the word preached."43 John Barnard noted that after his graduation in 1700 he humbled himself "before God with fasting and prayer, imploring the pardon of all my sins, through the mediation of Christ." He sought God's help in becoming a suitable minister, "begging the divine Spirit to sanctify me throughput, in spirit, soul and body, and fit me for, and use me in the service of the sanctuary, and direct and bless my studies to that end."44
Comments like these by ministers who grew up in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries indicate that their conversion experiences were gradual. and subtle rather than sudden, overwhelming psychological changes. A typical instance is John Hancock's description of his religious life. He wrote: "Though I cannot tell the exact time when, or the manner how, or the means and instruments by which the work of grace was wrought in me, yet I think I may draw the conclusion, that the Lord has made me his, I hope I am not deceived in this important matter .... I have felt and experienced many of the blessed influences of the spirit from my youth to this day."45
In general, men who became clergymen in this period did not enter the ministry as the result of dramatic conversion experiences. Men like Samuel Dexter were undoubtedly sincere in their commitment to their vocation, but their sense of calling came only in part from an emotional yearning to serve the Lord. Their decisions were generally made after a long process of reasoning over alternatives and confronting serious doubts. The candidates were not, like Paul on the road to Damascus, overwhelmed by the voice of the Lord, pressing them into his service. But proper ministerial training was usually considered a sufficient guarantee of a candidate's worthiness to become a minister. A young man displayed at least a formal commitment to religion by embarking upon a course of theological studies. These studies did equip him with a wealth of valuable theological knowledge. In addition, his clerical apprenticeship developed his competence to deal with the practical aspects of a minister's work. It was generally assumed that young men who had prepared themselves through these endeavors were now fully qualified to become Congregational ministers.
The formative experience, then, that distinguished men as ministers consisted of education and clerical apprenticeship. During the process ministers frequently experienced religious feelings, but social background, a better than average intellect, a proper education, and clerical apprenticeship were the primary qualifications for the ministry.
CONGREGATIONAL ELECTION. By the time a ministerial candidate was ready to become an ordained clergyman, his training had set him apart from ordinary New Englanders whose formal education was in most cases limited to a few years of rudimentary schooling. Nonetheless, at this time ordinary men, and sometimes women, exercised considerable influence over the candidate's career. Except under rare circumstances, a minister could not be ordained before having been chosen by a congregation to be its pastor. And although ministers tried to control the process of election, the actual choice of a pastor remained under popular control throughout the eighteenth century.
However, the ministers often played an initial role in the process of settling candidates simply because they were most familiar with the young men who were available. In part, this was a result of the difficulties of communication in early New England. In order to secure a candidate, remote towns often had to send messengers to Boston to obtain recommendations. For example, in 1692 the town of Springfield, on the Connecticut River, needed a minister and sent three representatives to the provincial capital to ask the President of Harvard and the Boston pastors for suggestions On the ministers' advice the messengers issued an invitation to Daniel Brewer, who returned to Springfield, was ordained in 1694, and remained the town's minister for almost forty years.46
Individual clergymen often had some influence on the choice of ministers in nearby towns. Daniel Perkins of Bridgewater, for example, believed that he could help settle a candidate he favored. Isaiah Dunster, a young Harvard graduate, noted in his diary that Perkins "invites me to come and keep Sabbath with him and encourages that he will help me to one of the vacancies which are near him."47 In Boston, where the ministers were in constant contact with one another, clergymen frequently influenced the choice of local pastors. So, when Cotton Mather concluded that Boston's first church was declining because of the youth and inexperience of its sale pastor, Benjamin Wadsworth, he persuaded Samuel Sewall and others to call Thomas Bridge from New Jersey to be the young minister's colleague. At first Wadsworth objected, but eventually Bridge was installed as his colleague pastor. But despite such examples of clerical influence, the ministers' advice was frequently ignored, and in most cases laymen plainly controlled the process of settling candidates. A young man's invitation to a particular ministerial office was issued by the people of the congregation. Before a town called a pastor it usually listened to him preach for several months on trial. During this time the townspeople had the opportunity to measure the candidate against their own criteria for a good pastor.
The settlement of Thomas Prentice as a colleague pastor with Hull Abbott in 1739 in the town of Charlestown, Massachusetts, exhibits the common pattern in the selection of a new minister. First, on May 21, 1739, the town meeting, the body that was responsible for voting salaries to the town's clergy, approved the idea of settling a new minister. A week later the church met, concurred with the town, and voted "to set apart a day for solemn prayer with fasting," to seek God's help in their choice of a pastor. On June 13, after the fast, the church met again and voted to invite a single candidate, Thomas Prentice, to preach for two Sabbaths. On July 2 the church and town met together and chose Prentice as pastor.48
In this case the settlement of the minister had involved close cooperation between a congregation, a town, and a candidate. But frequently candidates were the victims of circumstances that clearly reflected the political nature of their settlement in the ministry. In their election the people were said to be issuing a divine call. "In ordinary cases," one minister argued, "the regular Vote and Desire of a Christian People, is look'd upon as the Voice of God, by which He calls forth to Service those that He hath competently furnish'd for it."49 But although the call was considered to be the essential act in enabling a man to become a minister, it frequently did not take the form of a unanimous invitation.
One possible source of trouble was the administrative difference between the town and the church. The church consisted only of those who were full communion members. The town included these "saints" and the noncommunicants as well. The latter group, while not entitled to take communion, was required to attend church and to help pay the minister's salary. Hence, everyone in the town took an active interest in who became the minister. Although the town could legally only concur in the church's choice of a pastor, in fact, the town meeting exercised a great deal of control over the choice, since it paid the minister's salary. If the church elected a candidate whom the town did not like, the town would simply refuse to vote the man a salary.50
Although the church and town could usually concur in the choice of a minister, there were occasions when each put forth its own candidate. In Middleborough, Massachusetts, for example, in 1744 the church nominated a New Light candidate, Sylvanus Conant, and the town chose another man, Thomas Weld. Both groups ordained their man. The town used the old meetinghouse for its·- services, and the church built a new structure for its own. For three years, from 1745 to 1748, the town sought to tax the Conant church for the support of Weld. The issue was finally resolved by the General Court, which ruled that the Conant group could form their own separate "poll parish."51
Sometimes both the town and the church were divided in their choice of a minister. When only a few citizens opposed a candidate's election, he would usually accept, but if the number opposed to him was as large as one-quarter or one-third of the whole, he would have second thoughts. This was particularly true in situations where the minority were obstinate in voicing their opposition. The political nature of the ministerial elections was also apparent in the influence often exercised by powerful coteries or individuals in the church. Although the choice of the minister belonged formally to the whole town and to the whole church, a few important people could often influence the rest. In describing the election of Joshua Gee as pastor of Old North Church, William Waldron, pastor of the New Brick Church in Boston, noted, "tis certain, that the men of post, substance, and influence are for Mr. Gee." Waldron believed that in another town, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, women had great influence. "Tis a pity," he said, "that our pulpit is so much swayed by the petticoat, but some men are born to obey, while women rampant assume to rule and govern."52
The political character of clerical election reveals an important feature of ministerial life in New England. Despite their superior social background and education, ministers were dependent upon their people for support in their work. In many cases during the selection negotiations, this dependence was made painfully apparent to candidates and settled pastors, for some towns treated applicants more like prospective servants than potential religious leaders. In a series of letters written in the 1720s, Richard Waldron described several ways in which churches and towns offended clerical pride. Waldron noted disdainfully that Ipswich was "running wild" when the town nominated eight candidates for their pulpit, with the intention that each man would preach to them for a three month period. Such a competition crudely revealed the dependence of the clergy on the congregation. Waldron was even more critical of the proceedings at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, when the town sought a new minister after Nathaniel Rogers's death in 1723. In a series of letters to his brother he gave advice on how Portsmouth should conduct itself. On October 14, 1723, he urged his brother to see that the town chose a pastor soon because "men's minds will grow wanton and vagrant, which will cause disputings and differences." Two months later, when the town still had not chosen a minister, Waldron concluded that the people thought too highly of themselves and expected to awe their candidates. He wrote his brother that the town' failed to attract William Welsteed, one of the better potential candidates, because it had not paid him proper deference and had shown him "a mean contemptible way of treatment." He criticized Portsmouth for putting "such a valuation and estimate upon yourselves as to imagine that the best would jump at a settlement among you" and criticized their "preposterous management" of the affair. Waldron facetiously recommended John Hancock, of the Harvard class of 1719, as a man who would be sufficiently humble for the town. "He could make a very handsome bow," wrote Waldron, "and if the first did not suit, he'd bow lower a second time."53
The clergymen believed that the popular choice of pastors frequently meant that churches passed over highly qualified candidates because these men failed to win the support of the multitude. William Waldron claimed that Edward Wigglesworth, whom he greatly admired, was neglected as a ministerial candidate simply because of his "small still voice" and high intellectual attainments. According to Waldron, "the rabble which makes the majority" failed to appreciate his qualities; "They disgust every thing but noise and nonsense and can't be content to sit quiet unless their auditory nerves are drummed upon with a voice like thunder."54
Naturally, the tensions in the choice of the ministers and parishes also affected the ministerial candidates themselves. Young men generally tried to avoid parishes that were politically divided, preferring the universal approval of a potential congregation. In 1736 John Hovey rejected a call to 'Woodstock, Connecticut, because "a minority protested the 'mobbish principles' used to obtain the vote."55 Jonathan Cushing rejected a call to Haverhill in 1717 because the minority, which had not joined in his call, remained firmly in favor of another candidate.56 Sometimes a minister accepted a call only on the town's promise to avoid contention. For example, before going to Salem Village, the home of the witchcraft trials, Joseph Green insisted "that they continue in love; and if once they begin to quarrel and contend, I should look upon myself to be free from any obligation to tarry with them."57
The negotiations between candidate and town did not end with the minister's acceptance of a suitable post. The town and the pastor had also to discuss the financial terms of the settlement. Sometimes the minister was able to increase his salary over the town's initial offer. But if he seemed to be asking too much, he might lose the support of the town. In his negotiations prior to settling in Longmeadow, Stephen Williams feared that the people had been convinced that he was too worldly because he did not give an immediate answer to the precinct. He admitted, "they think I am desirous of too great things."58 However, if there was a danger of offending a town by asking too much, there was at the same time the risk that if the minister was not careful about his salary, he might have years of quarreling with the town when he wanted to raise it later. The town's effort to improve its side of the arrangement was also a touchy matter. As the eighteenth century wore on, candidates often had to promise to uphold the Cambridge Platform and, perhaps, to allow ruling elders to be installed. Conservative congregations hoped that such provisions would prevent the ministers from introducing radical innovations into the church.
It is apparent that in many ways the settlement process tended to place candidates and laymen in an adversary relationship. Nonetheless, a great majority of ministers were able to settle in posts that they would hold for the rest of their lives. In the eighteenth century the average minister served his congregation for a term of more than twenty-five years.59 This indicates that despite the abrasiveness of the settlement process, candidates were generally able to locate themselves in suitable parishes. An important ingredient of this suitability was the tendency of ministers to settle in cultural and geographical regions that suited their background and temperament.
Accordingly, John Callender, a native of Boston, and one of the few Baptist ministers who received a Harvard education, may have declined to settle in Swansea because of the lack of educated company there. In 1731 he settled in the more sophisticated town of Newport, Rhode Island.60 Boston-born John Barnard admitted that he favored settling in Roxbury in 1711 "because it was within five miles of Boston."61 On the other hand, a young man who had been raised in a "country town" might feel uncomfortable in a large pulpit. Samuel Dexter of Malden disliked preaching in Charlestown because, he said, "It is exceedingly exercising to me to Appear in such great Congregations. It is contrary to my Disposition. I abundantly rather chuse Retiredness, and if I might be my own Carver, an Assembly in the Country, though it were but small, would abundantly more gratify me."62
The candidate frequently became a minister in the area of his upbringing. John Barnard received a call to Yarmouth, but rejected it because his "honored father ... seemed to be backward in consenting to the motion, partly because of the distance of about 85 miles, and partly ... .[because] it would not be a comfortable settlement to me."63 Another Boston man, Joshua Gee, declined an invitation to preach in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in part because "here [in Boston] is his mother who used strong entreaties with him, [and] here lies his estate." Along with other considerations these "fixed" him in Boston.64 Rowland Cotton chose the more humble of two available parishes because of family ties; "Being willing to live near his parents, who were then at Plymouth, he accepted a call at Sandwich; when, at the same time, he might have been at Dedham; which, upon several accounts, was preferable."65
The geographical bias in the ministers' settlements is nowhere more apparent than in the case of the ministers who served in Boston in the years between 1690 and 1740. In all there were twentytwo ministers serving the Congregational churches in Boston during these years. Of these, thirteen were raised in Boston and another four within ten miles of Boston. Two of the remainder were from England. Thus, of the twenty-two Boston ministers in this period, only three were from remote New England towns.
We can only conjecture as to the probable effects of ministers settling in their native regions. But one important conclusion does suggest itself. As we shall see in later chapters, the clergy sometimes tended to regard their profession as a separate community and even to believe that the ministerial profession was more important than the secular communities in which they worked. This tendency must have been muted by the attachment of many ministers to their local regions. If a man settled in the area of his upbringing, he would be bound to his community by many shared experiences and by the ties of kinship and affection.
All in all the process that left the selection of ministers under the control of local congregations emphasized the dependence of the pastor on his people. Neither social background, nor intellect, nor superior training enabled the candidate to overwhelm his prospective communicants. At its worst, the selection process resulted in towns seeking to overawe young candidates. At its best, where there was a natural affinity between the minister and the people, it produced a sense of mutual respect on the part of candidate and parish.
ORDINATION. In the eighteenth century ministers appear to have been more sensitive to the difficulties than to the benefits of popular election. They became increasingly dissatisfied with a system that appeared to establish clerical legitimacy in election rather than in the judgment of the established clergy. Incidents such as those described by William Waldron offended clerical dignity. Although the ministers did not deny the people's right to elect their ministers, they did develop a rigorous system of clerical licensing,66 and they continued a process, already begun in the seventeenth century, of modifying the ordination service to stress the candidate's relationship to a professional ministerial community. Ironically, within less than a century of the Puritan flight from Anglican persecution, the New England clergymen were increasingly attracted to an Anglican conception of clerical legitmacy. This development is most apparent in the evolution of the ordination ceremony.
Ordination in the early seventeenth century was a simple service in which a congregation formalized its appointment of a minister. It emphasized the minister's close attachment to his congregation rather than his special role as a clergyman. The best surviving account of an ordination ceremony in early New England is found in the records of the First Church in Dedham. The members of the church, including the future minister, John Allin, considered the creation of their congregation far more important than the installation of its pastor. The church was formed on November 8, 1638, after nearly a year of preparation. On this day eight men in Dedham made a public profession of their faith and entered into "sollemne covenant with the lord and one another."67 The following day John Allin, one of the members of the new church, "was deputed by the church to exercise his gifts received ev'ry Lord's day to the edification of the Church till officers might be chosen to teach by office."68 By this simple act the church appointed Allin to preach. Although no officers of the church had been formally ordained, the church met during the following winter, admitted new members, and listened to Allin's preaching. Only after the winter was over did the church set about choosing and ordaining a minister. The formation of the religious community was of primary importance; the formal installation of its pastor, although desirable, was less consequential.
In 1639 the church elected Allin as its minister and, after careful deliberation, decided that since the members had the power to choose their minister, they also had the authority to ordain him, "ordination being but a declanition of the same and installing into that office."69 Upon reaching this conclusion they asked the advice of the elders of the church in Roxbury, who "confirmed our judgment in that point that the power of the whole worke did belong to us alone under Christ."70 On April 24, 1639, the ordination ceremony was carried out. Members and ministers of other churches were invited to attend, but they had little to do in the proceedings. The essential steps were taken by members of the Dedham Church.
Allin preached the sermon; he and two laymen ordained John Hunting as ruling elder; Rnally, Hunting and two other church members ordained Allin as pastor. The visiting clergymen played no part in the laying on of hands, whereby Allin was made minister of the church. Their participation was limited to a favorable testimony made by their representative, Samuel Whiting of Lynn, of "their love and approbation of the proceedings of the church by giving to the officers chosen the right hand of fellowship."71
This service was typical of early New England ordination ceremonies. The presence of representatives from other churches indicates that they approved of Dedham's practices. In 1648, moreover, the procedure was endorsed by the Cambridge Platform of Church Discipline. The ninth chapter of the Platform, entitled "Of Ordination and Imposition of Hands," declared that the power of choosing church officers belonged to the particular congregations and recommended that ordinations be performed locally:
In such Churches where there are Elders, Imposition of hands is to be performed by those Elders.
In such churches where there are no Elders, Imposition of hands, may be performed by some of the Brethren orderly chosen by the church thereunto. For if the people may elect officers which is the greater, and wherein the substance of the office consists, they may much more (occasion and need so requiring) impose hands in ordination, which is the less, and but the accomplishment of the other. 72
The records of the Dedham Church and the pronouncements of the Cambridge Platform indicate that in the early years of the settlement the minister's official standing was entirely dependent upon his relation to an assembly of covenanted Christians. A church could be formed before its minister was chosen; the minister was selected by the congregation; he was given the official character of a clergyman in a ceremony performed by members of his own congregation; and the ordination sermon was delivered by the new pastor himself. These procedures emphasized the minister's place within a brotherhood of Christian believers, rather than his membership in a sacred priesthood of religious leaders.
Within a few years after the drafting of the Cambridge Platform this emphasis would change. By mid-century in most churches the ceremony of ordaining the new minister came to be performed by other ministers rather than by laymen in the congregation. As late as 1696 the practice of involving laymen in the ordination ceremony had not been entirely abandoned in New England. Samuel Sewall reports that when William Brattle was ordained in Cambridge on November 25, 1696, he had to persuade "the Church to order that Elder Clark should not lay his hand on his head when he was ordain'd." Deacon Gill, who accompanied Sewall on his return home, "said he liked all very well except the Bill of Exclusion."73 But by now such "exclusions" were common practice.
This development radically altered the character of the ceremony. By placing their hands on the minister's head the representatives of the people had symbolized the congregation's choice of one of its members to guide their religious lives. Ordination by other ministers, however, emphasized the young man's initiation into a clerical order. The fact that by the late seventeenth century laymen were generally excluded from the ordination service suggests that the ministers were no longer willing to base their legitimacy so exclusively on their relationship to the congregations they served.
Although the ministers now played a more active role in the creation of new ministers, this modification of earlier practice did not immediately set them apart as a formal professional class. Ministers were still chosen by the congregation, and the ordination ceremony itself was often treated as a time for merriment rather than as a sober occasion when old ministers created new members of their order. Although there are few records of the ordinations of the late 1600s to give us a complete picture of the ceremony, the surviving entertainment bills for the ordination day balls suggest that the occasion was not particularly solemn. For example, the provisions for Timothy Edwards's ordination in 1698 included fourteen pounds of mutton, eighty-eight pounds if beef, four quarts of rum, and eight quarts of wine.74 This suggests that New Englanders still believed that it is the people's election of a minister "wherein the substance of the office consists." Since the creation of a minister consisted in the church's election of a candidate, the less important act of ordaining him could be an occasion for levity and recreation.
In the early eighteenth century, however, the ministers began to claim that clerical status was bestowed by the ordination ceremony, rather than by the people's election. In 1718 Thomas Prince, preaching his ordination sermon, declared that when ministers are ordained, "The Power of taking Care of Your Souls is actually committed to Them: and They do actually receive it, and lay Themselves under the most Solemn Vows and Obligations to take Care of Them."75 In 1729 William Williams, preaching at the ordination of David Hall, declared: "The Election of the Church or People does not Constitute them in their Office or Authorize them to act in it."76 The people's role in choosing the minister came to be so little respected that in 1738 Nathaniel Appleton could warn that "this Privilege or Liberty of electing their own Pastors, has, on occasion of the Abuse of it by the Churches themselves ... been taken away from many of the Churches of our Lord Jesus Christ."77 Such statements tend to suggest- that the ministers believed they should have primary authority in determining who would be admitted to their number.
In most cases the people continued to choose their own ministers, but under exceptional circumstances the clergy began to ordain ministers "at large," men who were deemed worthy to preach, baptize, and offer communion, but were attached to no particular congregation. In 1698 Nathaniel Clap was ordained by ministers in Boston to carryon "the work of the Gospel" throughout Rhode Island, which had only one Congregational church at that time. In the early eighteenth century, several other men were ordained ministers at large before setting out as preachers to Indians or to backcountry settlements. Although ordinations of this sort were unusual, the introduction of the practice gives further evidence of the shift in clerical consciousness. A man could now become a minister without having been so designated by any group of laymen.
The new importance of the ordination is reflected in the candidates' preparation for the event. Ebenezer Parkman's description of the days before his ordination is probably typical. A graduate of Harvard in the class of 1721, Parkman received a call to the ministry in Westborough in February 1724. In June he accepted the invitation. In the next few months he received his Harvard A.M. and married Mary Champney of Cambridge. He settled in Westborough and began preaching. As the day of his ordination drew near he devoted much of his time to reading books on the ministry. In October he records: "My Business about this time was reading Ordination Sermons and wherever the Minister's Duty was explained, Especially Van Mastricht, De Ministaris Ecclesiastico."78 Two weeks before the ordination he dedicated a day "to humiliation and prayer to prepare myself (by the grace of God) for the awful time approaching." Finally, on October 28 he was ordained. In his diary Parkman called the occasion "the Greatest Day I ever Yet –Saw The Day of my Solemn Separation to the Work of the Gospel Ministry and my Ordination to the Pastorate in Westborough."79
As the ceremony of consecration by the ministers came increasingly to be regarded as the most significant step in the creation of a clergyman, the ministers attempted to make the occasion more formal and sought to end the festivities that the service had sometimes occasioned. In his ordination sermon for William Gager in 1725 Eliphalet Adams noted: "I have often seen offensive disorders upon such occasions as these, People seeming to Imagine that it was a Time when they might allow themselves more Liberty." He " urged that there "be no rude, Light or Unseemly Behaviour in this Assembly this Day." Of the ordination ceremony itself, he said: "The Solemn Separation of any Person to the work of the Sacred Ministry ... is a thing so weighty, that Everyone who are present as witnesses at such a Solemnity, should come Prepared with the spirit of Piety."80 At another ordination service in the same year John Graham scolded those who might have come to the service "out of a vain Curiosity, or to get an Opportunity of a Frolic." He lamented that this is "too too Common with Young Persons on such Occasions."81 There was a celebration after Stephen Williams's ordination in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, in 1716, but Williams later regretted his behavior, noting: "I fear we were too merry together."82 Although large banquets accompanied many ordinations throughout the eighteenth century, objections against frivolity were a natural concomitant of the desire to heighten the dignity of the service.
As ordination came to symbolize the solemn initiation of a novice into a formal profession, the practice of preaching one's own ordination sermon fell into disuse. When clerical power had been thought to Row from the congregation, it had been natural for the new pastor to address his people in his moment of consecration. Thus Allin and other ministers of his time had preached their own sermons. But in the early eighteenth century, in accordance with the idea that authority passed from minister to minister, this practice became exceptional. Of the first twenty-five sermons that were published after 1716, only five were preached by the new minister himself. In his ordination sermon for John Lowell in Newbury in 1726, Thomas Foxcroft declared that he preferred the old practice. "Truly glad shou'd I have been," be said, "if (pursuant to the Custom, which hath so long obtain'd among us) he cou'd have been prevail'd on to take up the Book at this time, and preach to us his own devout Thoughts and Purposes." But Foxcroft had to admit that the former practice had fallen into disuse; he referred to the "plea's usually advanc'd in this case, against the common Custom."83 The "common Custom" was, in fact, no longer common. In 1728 John Adams preached his. own ordination sermon in Newport, Rhode Island, but between 1728 and 1740 all the published ordination sermons were preached by someone other than the new minister himself. In 1729 William Williams said: "The Objections against the Person to be Ordained his Preaching his own Ordination Sermon, have prevail'd very much against the late Custom."84
With the growing emphasis on the professional significance of ordination and with the spread of the custom of having experienced ministers do the preaching ordination sermons acquired new importance. In 1709, for the first time, a New England ordination sermon was published, to be followed by another in 1716, still another in 1717, and seven more the ensuing year. In the quarter century from 1716 through 1740, seventy-eight ordination sermons were published.85 Characteristically these sermons were discourses on the ministry-its necessity, authority, and responsibility-and the tenor of the sermons was strongly sacerdotal, quite in contrast to the pastoral emphasis of Allin's ordination text of 1639 (I Corinthians 3:9): "For we are laborers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building." The actual sermon does not survive, but we may reasonably suppose that Allin dwelt on the community of the faithful, himself included as co-laborer with his fellow saints, rather than on the sacred "separation" of the ministerial office.86 Although it is impossible to date the change precisely, most of the ordination sermons published before 1740 not only dealt primarily with the ministry, but stressed the peculiar importance of ministers. Benjamin Colman argued that the "minister's office distinguishes him from other men," and as "it is the chief End of a Christian to glorify God, so it is of a Minister to magnify his Office."87 Many other preachers echoed these sentiments.88
In keeping with the new sense of the centrality of the ordination of the minister to the life of the church, it became customary not to form a new congregation until a candidate could be ordained pastor at the same time. In the seventeenth century many churches had been formed and held services for months or even years before a minister was ordained to serve them. But in the eighteenth century the formation of a new parish and the ordination of its pastor usually occurred on the same day, suggesting that without a minister there could be no church.89
Within a century of the settlement of New England the ordination service thus underwent a series of gradual but significant changes. Congregations were not formed before their minister was installed; ordination came to be performed by ministers rather than by laymen; ministers were occasionally ordained without having been chosen by the people of any particular congregation as their pastor; the ordination sermon was preached by older ministers rather than by the man being installed; the ordination ceremony rather than election by the people began to be regarded as "conveying" the ministerial office; the sermons came to focus on the ministry rather than on the Christian community and were often published, calling attention to their significance; and, finally, in keeping with these other changes, the ministers began to insist that the ordination day should be regarded as a solemn occasion. All of these innovations emphasized the importance of the ordination ceremony.
These remarkable changes in the minister's role in creating new pastors respect a movement toward a sacerdotal conception of the clergy. In Faithful Shepards, David Hall has argued that the early Puritan ministers began to abandon customs that established clerical legitimacy in congregational ordination when the Antinomian crisis revealed that popular religious judgments could not be relied upon to provide stability. As we have seen, the movement toward a redefinition of clerical legitimacy was continued into the eighteenth century. Proud of their rigorous training, uneasy about the popular basis of their authority, they were attracted to a view of clerical legitimacy that stressed the independent objective character of the clergy.
The desire for a stable basis of leadership was so intense that it actually drove a number of Congregationalists into the arms of the Anglican church. The most notable conversion to Anglicanism occurred in 1723 when the president of Yale, Samuel Johnson, and six tutors and ministers announced that they doubted the legitimacy of their Congregational ordinations and indicated that they would seek ordination in England by Anglican bishops.
Congregational New Englanders were shocked and frightened by this event, which they labeled the "Great Apostasy." The episode was especially disquieting because the converts had acted from a premise which most Congregational ministers shared, that ministerial validity was derived from other ministers rather than a congregational election. Ironically, the Puritan reaction to the Apostasy tended to stress the similarity of Anglican and Congregationalist ordinations rather than the unique qualities of the New England Way. Upon returning to Boston after being ordained in England, Timothy Cutler preached a sermon that William Waldron described as "full of raillery and bitter invectives." Waldron reported that Cutler "insists, it seems, upon the invalidity of our ordinations." The Congregationalists had a chance to respond five months later in the course of the ordination of Joshua Gee in Boston's Second Church. William Waldron's description of this ceremony suggests that the Congregationalists wanted their ordinations to be as impressive as those of the Anglicans.
On Wednesday last the ordination of Mr. Gee was proceeded in. The affair was carried on with so much seriousness and awful reverence that if I had been wavering about the validity of our ordinations before I should have been then fixed and established by the solemnity and religious devotion visible in all parties at the sacred action. Every man's soul seems to be in it.90
That Congregationalist ordinations were becoming increasingly similar to Anglican services is apparent in a letter White Kennett, bishop of Peterborough, wrote Benjamin Colman after he received a copy of Colman's sermon delivered at William Cooper's ordination. "By your ordination sermon," he said, "I perceive you have changed an irregular custom into much more decency and order, by not suffering the young candidate to make then his probation sermon, but to have the preparatory discourse made by a senior more apt and able to teach."91 It is doubtful that Colman was disturbed that a Congregational innovation should be complimented for moving toward an Anglican ideal. He probably agreed with Kennett that the new practice had more "decency" and "order."
It is ironic, but not surprising that the Congregational ministers had adopted a notion of clerical legitimacy that reflected Anglican ideas about church government. As we have already noted, there was an important element in New England that regarded the English aristocracy as the proper model for social grace and stability. By intellectual training and frequently by social background, the ministers did belong to a colonial elite. The courtly view of their profession reflected in the ordination ceremonies was consistent with their view of their proper status in provincial society.
Their concept of themselves conflicted, however, with the nature of their elections and their day-to-day relations with their people. This conflict is the subject of later chapters. For the moment it is important to note the humane, indeed secular, character of the process by which a man became a minister in the eighteenth century. In the exhilaration of this moment, when a large crowd of ministers and laymen had gathered to observe and participate in his ordination, the new clergyman may have often concluded that the Lord, himself, had chosen him as one of his ministers. For example, on the day of his ordination, Thomas Prince traced the hand of the Lord through all the stages of his calling to the ministry. Christ, he said, "rules on Earth by His Omnipresent, Alwise, and Almighty Spirit. By This He inclines and qualifies particular Persons for Divine Imployments, and gives Them Opportunities of Laboring in them. By This He makes Them successful, approved, esteemed, and disposes the Hearts of His People to Them. By This He influences and directs Their Choice and Acceptance and Solemn Consecration to Their Sacred Office."92 Other clergymen would agree with Prince that the ministers received, in effect, a call from God. But in contrast to the "illiterate usurpers" who sometimes appeared in early New England and claimed that the call of God was the only preparation they needed to preach, the established clergy of New England believed that God's call was always accompanied by years of formal training, a regular election, and an ordination carried out with "decency and order."
Religion did play an important role in all of these processes. The candidate learned religious doctrines in grammar school, college, and particularly in graduate training. He became acquainted with the techniques of pastoral leadership through ministerial apprenticeship, and (it was hoped) he grew in piety as he matured. Each of these experiences reminded him of the divine being who ruled the world, but it is apparent that other factors were involved in the creation of ministers. The candidate's social background and intellectual ability, the relationship between men within the towns, and the professional aspirations of the settled ministers all played important parts in the ministers' calling.
In theory the ministers stood apart from their times and reminded men who were caught up in temporal concerns that the real purpose of life lay beyond the world, and in many ways their training did direct them to this divine mission. But at the same time, it is evident that the process by which men became clergymen in colonial New England was intimately related
Notes
1. See, for example, Nathaniel Appleton, Isiah's Mission (Boston, 1728), p.20.
2. Thomas Foxcroft, A Practical Discourse (Boston, 1718), p. 40.
3. These figures are based upon biographical information in Frederick Lewis Weis, The Colonial Clergy and the Colonial Churches of New England (Lancaster, Massachusetts, 1936).
4. For the social background of Yale graduates, see Richard Warch, School of the Propltets: Yale College, 1701-1740 (New Haven, 1973), pp. 252, 269. My figures for Harvard are based on biographical data in Shipton, Harvard Graduates. In classifying well-to-do parents I have included men who were distinguished from the average New Englander by military or civic office, profession, and/or wealth. The ongoing investigations of the colonial social structure by demographers, such as P. M. G. Harris, will undoubtedly lead to a much more precise classification of social classes than is used here. Nonetheless, the general tendency of ministers to come from well-to-do backgrounds is evident in these figures. P. M. G. Harris has summarized his findings in "The Social Origins of American Leaders: The Demographic Foundations," in Perspectives in American History 3 (1969): 1.59--344. (His category "upper class families" is more restrictive than my well-to-do parents," which leads to differences in our figures for prosperous Harvard parents.) Some of Harris's conclusions have been challenged by Daniel Scott Smith in "Cyclical, Secular, and Structural Change in American Elite Composition," Perspectives in American History 4 (1970): 349--74.
5. Nathaniel Eells, Ministers of the Gospel (1729), quoted by Shipton, Harvard Graduates VII; 474.
6. Nicholas Gilman, Spiritualia, Gilman Papers, MHS.
7. The standard accounts of schooling in colonial New England are found in Robert Middlekauff, Ancients and Axioms (New Haven, 1963); Bernard Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society (Chapel Hill, 1960); and James Axtell, The School Upon a Hill (New Haven, 1974).
8. For example, while teaching in Roxbury, Joseph Green, later minister of Salem Village, instructed his pupils in the principles of Christianity. Green, "Commonplace Book," pp. 236-37.
9. Joseph Baxter, Notes on Ministerial Meetings, p. 102, MHS. See also Cotton Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerum (Boston, 1726), p. 31.
10. Shipton, Harvard Graduates IV: 157.
11. Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, p. 22. Hereafter cited as Morison, Harvard.
12. Morison, Harvard, p. 23. Much of this discussion of Harvard is based on "The School of the Prophets," chapter two of Harvard.
13. Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College (six volumes, 1885-1912), I: 773.
14. Benjamin Colman to White Kennett, November 1712, Colman Papers, MHS.
15. In 1723 Moses Noyes wrote to Samuel Sewall, "The first Movers for a College in Connecticut alleged this as a Reason, because the College at Cambridge was under the Tutorage of Latitudinarians, but how well they have mended, the Event sadly manifests." Dexter, Yale Documents, p. 242. See also Samuel Sewall and Isaac Addington to Thomas Buckingham, October 6, 1701, in Dexter, Yale Documents, p. 16, and especially Richard Warch, School of the Prophets, chapter 1.
16. Although the Dumner collection is most famous for its inclusion of latitudinarian works, Dumner defended himself from the charge that he had "fill'd the Library with every book for the Church & not one of the other side." He pointed out that "there never was an Eminent Dissenter & Author whose works are not in that Collection." Jeremiah Dumner to Timothy Woodbridge, June 3, 1723, in Dexter, Yale Documents, p. 24. See also Warch, School of the Prophets, chapters 8 and 9.
17. Proceedings of the Trustees, October 17, 1722, in Dexter, Yale Documents, p. 223. In accordance with these rules, Elisha Williams gave "Satisfaction of the Soundness of his Faith in Opposition to Armenian and prelatical Corruption" before being installed as rector in 1726. Proceedings of the Trustees, September 13, 1726, in Dexter, Yale Documents, p. 226.
18. Jonathan Edwards to Timothy Edwards, Yale, March 1, 1721, Edwards
Mss., ANTS.
19. Morison, Harvard, p. 60.
20. Warch, School of the Prophets, p. 277.
21. [Benjamin Franklin], New England Courant, May 7-12,1722.
22. John Cleaveland, College Diary, January 19, 25, 1741/42, EI.
23. Ebenezer Turrell, "An Account of a Society in Harvard College," in Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications 12 (1909): 227-31.
24. Philomusarian Club, Preamble and Rules, AAS. Statistics on Harvard graduates entering the ministry are based on Shipton, Harvard Graduates.
25. Mary Latimer Gambrell, Ministerial Training in Eighteenth Century
26. New England (New York, 1937), passim.
27. Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerum, pp. 74-75.
28. Morison, Harvard, pp. 26, 35.
29. Samuel Willard, Brief Direction to a Young Scholar Designing the Ministry (Boston, 1735), p. 1.
30. Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerum, pp. 2, 5-20, passim.
31.Willard, Brief Directions, p. 3. John Barnard, "Autobiography," Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 3rd Series, V (1836): 185-86.
32. On private meetings, see Cotton Mather, Ratio Disciplinae (Boston,
1726), pp. 91-94.
33. Barnard, "Autobiography," p. 186.
34. John Burt, Diary, February 27, 1737, AAS.
35. Ibid., October 2, 7, 11, 15, 1737.
36. Joseph Sewall, Diary, October 3, September 30,1707, BPL.
37. Thomas Prince, Logs of Sea Voyages, passim, MHS.
38. In Shipton, Harvard Graduates VII: 304-05.
39. John Hancock, Commonplace Book, p. 70, HLH.
40. Nicholas Gilman, Diary, March 20,1741, NHHS.
41. Samuel Dexter, Diary, December 5, 1723, DHS.
42. Joseph Green, "The Commonplace Book of Joseph Green (1675-1715)," ed. Samuel Eliot Morison, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications 34 ( 1943): 191-253.
43. Jonathan Pierpont, "Extracts from the Diary of Rev. Jonathan Pierpont,"
New England Historical and Genealogical Register 13 (1859): 255.
44. John Barnard, "Autobiography," p. 185.
45. John Hancock, Commonplace Book, p. 75, HLH.
46. Sibley, Harvard Graduates III: 384.
47. Isaiah Dunster, Diary, May 26, 1746, EI.
48. Hull Abbot, Notes on Church Affairs, in Joseph Stevens, Commonplace Book, NEHGS.
49. William Williams, A Painful Ministry (Boston, 1717), p. 9.
50. See John Michael Bumsted, The Pilgrims Progress: A Religious History of Southeastern Massachusetts (Ph.D. dissertation, Brown, 1965), pp. 64-71. See also Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967), p. 153.
51. Bumsted, "Pilgrim's Progress," pp. 211-14.
52. William Waldron to Richard Waldron, November 11,1723, MHS.
53. Ibid., October 14, November 18, 25, December 23, 1723, MHS.
54. Ibid., November 18, 1723, MHS.
55. Shipton, Harvard Graduates VII: 538.
56. Ibid., V: 634.
57. Green, "Commonplace Book," p. 248.
58. Stephen Williams, Diary, February 29,1715/16, LMPL.
59. See appendix.
60. Shipton, Harvard Graduates VII: 15.
61. John Barnard, "Autobiography," p. 214.
62. Samuel Dexter, "Extracts from the Diary of the Rev. Samuel Dexter of Dedham," New England Historical and Genealogical Register 13 (1859): 309.
63. Barnard, "Autobiography," p. 214.
64. William Waldron to Richard Waldron, November 18, 1723, MHS.
65. Josiah Cotton, Memoirs, p. 70, MHS.
66. See below, chapter IV.
67. The Early Records of the Town of Dedham 2 (Dedham, Mass., 1885):
9.
68. Ibid., p. 13.
69. Ibid., pp. 17-18.
70. Ibid., p. 18.
71. Ibid., p. 20. .
72. Williston Walker, ed., The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism (New York, 1893), p. 216.
73. Samuel Sewall, Diary VI: 438. Cotton Mather explained that this practice was deemed suitable when the churches were in remote areas that were "destitute of Ordainers" (Ratio Disciplinae, p. 42). For examples of ordinations for remote plantations, see Shipton, Harvard Graduates IV: 183; VII: 570; VIII: 143-44.
74. Shipton, Harvard Graduates IV: 95.
75. Thomas Prince, A Sermon Delivered by Thomas Prince ... at his Ordination (Boston, 1718), p. 17.
76. William Williams, The Office and Work of Gospel Ministers (Boston, 1729), p. 16.
77. Nathaniel Appleton, Superior Skill and Wisdom Necessary for Winning Souls (Boston, 1737), p. 50.
78. Ebenezer Parkman, Diary, American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, series 2, vol. 71 (1961): 117.
79. Ibid., p. 117.
80. Eliphalet Adams, The ·Work 0/ AJinisters (Boston, 1725), pp. 1-2.
81. John Graham, The Obligations \Vhich the Profession of the Christian Religion, Lays Men under to Depart from Iniquity (New London, 1725), p.36.
82. Shipton, Harvard Graduates VI: 26.
83. Thomas Foxcroft, Ministers, Spiritual Parents, or Fathers in the Church of God (Boston, 1726), p. 2.
84. William Williams, Gospel Ministers, p. 2, See also Mather, Ratio Disciplinae, p. 25.
85. This figure is based on a count of the ordination sermons listed in Charles Evans, American Bibliography (reprint ed. New York, 1941 [orig. publ. Chicago, 1903-34]), and includes two sermons preached at the ordination of Baptist ministers and one sermon preached at an ordination on Long Island by Congregational ministers. The others were preached in New England for Congregationalist ministers and all were published in New England. There were only three other ordination sermons published in the colonies in this period, one in Pennsylvania and two in New York.
86. Dedham Records, II: 18.
87. Benjamin Colman, "Preface" to Thomas Symmes, Ordinntion Sermon (Boston, 1722).
88. See William WilIiams, The Great Concern of Christians (Boston, 1723), p. 1; Joseph Belcher, God Giveth the Increase (Boston, 1722), p. 24; Nathaniel Appleton, Superior Skill and Wisdom, p. 36; Nathaniel Henchman, The Divine Pastor (Boston, 1733), p. 20; and Ebenezer Pemberton, A Plea for the Ministers of the Gospel (Boston, 1706), p. 8.
89. These generalizations about the timing of ordination are based on Sibley-Shipton, Harvard Graduates, passim, and Mather, Ratio Disciplinae, p. 3.
90. William Waldron to Richard Waldron, October 9, 1723; March 9, 17231 24, MHS.
91. White Kennett to Benjamin Colman, Westminster, March 23, 1723/24 in Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings 63 (1919-20): 82.
92. Thomas Prince, Ordination Sermon, p. 19.
2. Thomas Foxcroft, A Practical Discourse (Boston, 1718), p. 40.
3. These figures are based upon biographical information in Frederick Lewis Weis, The Colonial Clergy and the Colonial Churches of New England (Lancaster, Massachusetts, 1936).
4. For the social background of Yale graduates, see Richard Warch, School of the Propltets: Yale College, 1701-1740 (New Haven, 1973), pp. 252, 269. My figures for Harvard are based on biographical data in Shipton, Harvard Graduates. In classifying well-to-do parents I have included men who were distinguished from the average New Englander by military or civic office, profession, and/or wealth. The ongoing investigations of the colonial social structure by demographers, such as P. M. G. Harris, will undoubtedly lead to a much more precise classification of social classes than is used here. Nonetheless, the general tendency of ministers to come from well-to-do backgrounds is evident in these figures. P. M. G. Harris has summarized his findings in "The Social Origins of American Leaders: The Demographic Foundations," in Perspectives in American History 3 (1969): 1.59--344. (His category "upper class families" is more restrictive than my well-to-do parents," which leads to differences in our figures for prosperous Harvard parents.) Some of Harris's conclusions have been challenged by Daniel Scott Smith in "Cyclical, Secular, and Structural Change in American Elite Composition," Perspectives in American History 4 (1970): 349--74.
5. Nathaniel Eells, Ministers of the Gospel (1729), quoted by Shipton, Harvard Graduates VII; 474.
6. Nicholas Gilman, Spiritualia, Gilman Papers, MHS.
7. The standard accounts of schooling in colonial New England are found in Robert Middlekauff, Ancients and Axioms (New Haven, 1963); Bernard Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society (Chapel Hill, 1960); and James Axtell, The School Upon a Hill (New Haven, 1974).
8. For example, while teaching in Roxbury, Joseph Green, later minister of Salem Village, instructed his pupils in the principles of Christianity. Green, "Commonplace Book," pp. 236-37.
9. Joseph Baxter, Notes on Ministerial Meetings, p. 102, MHS. See also Cotton Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerum (Boston, 1726), p. 31.
10. Shipton, Harvard Graduates IV: 157.
11. Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, p. 22. Hereafter cited as Morison, Harvard.
12. Morison, Harvard, p. 23. Much of this discussion of Harvard is based on "The School of the Prophets," chapter two of Harvard.
13. Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College (six volumes, 1885-1912), I: 773.
14. Benjamin Colman to White Kennett, November 1712, Colman Papers, MHS.
15. In 1723 Moses Noyes wrote to Samuel Sewall, "The first Movers for a College in Connecticut alleged this as a Reason, because the College at Cambridge was under the Tutorage of Latitudinarians, but how well they have mended, the Event sadly manifests." Dexter, Yale Documents, p. 242. See also Samuel Sewall and Isaac Addington to Thomas Buckingham, October 6, 1701, in Dexter, Yale Documents, p. 16, and especially Richard Warch, School of the Prophets, chapter 1.
16. Although the Dumner collection is most famous for its inclusion of latitudinarian works, Dumner defended himself from the charge that he had "fill'd the Library with every book for the Church & not one of the other side." He pointed out that "there never was an Eminent Dissenter & Author whose works are not in that Collection." Jeremiah Dumner to Timothy Woodbridge, June 3, 1723, in Dexter, Yale Documents, p. 24. See also Warch, School of the Prophets, chapters 8 and 9.
17. Proceedings of the Trustees, October 17, 1722, in Dexter, Yale Documents, p. 223. In accordance with these rules, Elisha Williams gave "Satisfaction of the Soundness of his Faith in Opposition to Armenian and prelatical Corruption" before being installed as rector in 1726. Proceedings of the Trustees, September 13, 1726, in Dexter, Yale Documents, p. 226.
18. Jonathan Edwards to Timothy Edwards, Yale, March 1, 1721, Edwards
Mss., ANTS.
19. Morison, Harvard, p. 60.
20. Warch, School of the Prophets, p. 277.
21. [Benjamin Franklin], New England Courant, May 7-12,1722.
22. John Cleaveland, College Diary, January 19, 25, 1741/42, EI.
23. Ebenezer Turrell, "An Account of a Society in Harvard College," in Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications 12 (1909): 227-31.
24. Philomusarian Club, Preamble and Rules, AAS. Statistics on Harvard graduates entering the ministry are based on Shipton, Harvard Graduates.
25. Mary Latimer Gambrell, Ministerial Training in Eighteenth Century
26. New England (New York, 1937), passim.
27. Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerum, pp. 74-75.
28. Morison, Harvard, pp. 26, 35.
29. Samuel Willard, Brief Direction to a Young Scholar Designing the Ministry (Boston, 1735), p. 1.
30. Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerum, pp. 2, 5-20, passim.
31.Willard, Brief Directions, p. 3. John Barnard, "Autobiography," Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 3rd Series, V (1836): 185-86.
32. On private meetings, see Cotton Mather, Ratio Disciplinae (Boston,
1726), pp. 91-94.
33. Barnard, "Autobiography," p. 186.
34. John Burt, Diary, February 27, 1737, AAS.
35. Ibid., October 2, 7, 11, 15, 1737.
36. Joseph Sewall, Diary, October 3, September 30,1707, BPL.
37. Thomas Prince, Logs of Sea Voyages, passim, MHS.
38. In Shipton, Harvard Graduates VII: 304-05.
39. John Hancock, Commonplace Book, p. 70, HLH.
40. Nicholas Gilman, Diary, March 20,1741, NHHS.
41. Samuel Dexter, Diary, December 5, 1723, DHS.
42. Joseph Green, "The Commonplace Book of Joseph Green (1675-1715)," ed. Samuel Eliot Morison, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications 34 ( 1943): 191-253.
43. Jonathan Pierpont, "Extracts from the Diary of Rev. Jonathan Pierpont,"
New England Historical and Genealogical Register 13 (1859): 255.
44. John Barnard, "Autobiography," p. 185.
45. John Hancock, Commonplace Book, p. 75, HLH.
46. Sibley, Harvard Graduates III: 384.
47. Isaiah Dunster, Diary, May 26, 1746, EI.
48. Hull Abbot, Notes on Church Affairs, in Joseph Stevens, Commonplace Book, NEHGS.
49. William Williams, A Painful Ministry (Boston, 1717), p. 9.
50. See John Michael Bumsted, The Pilgrims Progress: A Religious History of Southeastern Massachusetts (Ph.D. dissertation, Brown, 1965), pp. 64-71. See also Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967), p. 153.
51. Bumsted, "Pilgrim's Progress," pp. 211-14.
52. William Waldron to Richard Waldron, November 11,1723, MHS.
53. Ibid., October 14, November 18, 25, December 23, 1723, MHS.
54. Ibid., November 18, 1723, MHS.
55. Shipton, Harvard Graduates VII: 538.
56. Ibid., V: 634.
57. Green, "Commonplace Book," p. 248.
58. Stephen Williams, Diary, February 29,1715/16, LMPL.
59. See appendix.
60. Shipton, Harvard Graduates VII: 15.
61. John Barnard, "Autobiography," p. 214.
62. Samuel Dexter, "Extracts from the Diary of the Rev. Samuel Dexter of Dedham," New England Historical and Genealogical Register 13 (1859): 309.
63. Barnard, "Autobiography," p. 214.
64. William Waldron to Richard Waldron, November 18, 1723, MHS.
65. Josiah Cotton, Memoirs, p. 70, MHS.
66. See below, chapter IV.
67. The Early Records of the Town of Dedham 2 (Dedham, Mass., 1885):
9.
68. Ibid., p. 13.
69. Ibid., pp. 17-18.
70. Ibid., p. 18.
71. Ibid., p. 20. .
72. Williston Walker, ed., The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism (New York, 1893), p. 216.
73. Samuel Sewall, Diary VI: 438. Cotton Mather explained that this practice was deemed suitable when the churches were in remote areas that were "destitute of Ordainers" (Ratio Disciplinae, p. 42). For examples of ordinations for remote plantations, see Shipton, Harvard Graduates IV: 183; VII: 570; VIII: 143-44.
74. Shipton, Harvard Graduates IV: 95.
75. Thomas Prince, A Sermon Delivered by Thomas Prince ... at his Ordination (Boston, 1718), p. 17.
76. William Williams, The Office and Work of Gospel Ministers (Boston, 1729), p. 16.
77. Nathaniel Appleton, Superior Skill and Wisdom Necessary for Winning Souls (Boston, 1737), p. 50.
78. Ebenezer Parkman, Diary, American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, series 2, vol. 71 (1961): 117.
79. Ibid., p. 117.
80. Eliphalet Adams, The ·Work 0/ AJinisters (Boston, 1725), pp. 1-2.
81. John Graham, The Obligations \Vhich the Profession of the Christian Religion, Lays Men under to Depart from Iniquity (New London, 1725), p.36.
82. Shipton, Harvard Graduates VI: 26.
83. Thomas Foxcroft, Ministers, Spiritual Parents, or Fathers in the Church of God (Boston, 1726), p. 2.
84. William Williams, Gospel Ministers, p. 2, See also Mather, Ratio Disciplinae, p. 25.
85. This figure is based on a count of the ordination sermons listed in Charles Evans, American Bibliography (reprint ed. New York, 1941 [orig. publ. Chicago, 1903-34]), and includes two sermons preached at the ordination of Baptist ministers and one sermon preached at an ordination on Long Island by Congregational ministers. The others were preached in New England for Congregationalist ministers and all were published in New England. There were only three other ordination sermons published in the colonies in this period, one in Pennsylvania and two in New York.
86. Dedham Records, II: 18.
87. Benjamin Colman, "Preface" to Thomas Symmes, Ordinntion Sermon (Boston, 1722).
88. See William WilIiams, The Great Concern of Christians (Boston, 1723), p. 1; Joseph Belcher, God Giveth the Increase (Boston, 1722), p. 24; Nathaniel Appleton, Superior Skill and Wisdom, p. 36; Nathaniel Henchman, The Divine Pastor (Boston, 1733), p. 20; and Ebenezer Pemberton, A Plea for the Ministers of the Gospel (Boston, 1706), p. 8.
89. These generalizations about the timing of ordination are based on Sibley-Shipton, Harvard Graduates, passim, and Mather, Ratio Disciplinae, p. 3.
90. William Waldron to Richard Waldron, October 9, 1723; March 9, 17231 24, MHS.
91. White Kennett to Benjamin Colman, Westminster, March 23, 1723/24 in Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings 63 (1919-20): 82.
92. Thomas Prince, Ordination Sermon, p. 19.