boards. As there were no bridges the streams were forded on horseback. Religious services were attended from ten to twenty miles. around, and those were fortunate who had not more than five or six miles to go. In the earliest times every man came armed. The guns were stacked, and the sentinel was appointed to give an alarm in case of the approach of Indians. The toils and hardships of the ministers were excessive. They shared the common lot of the people in respect to food, clothing and lodging; but their journeys from place to place, to preach, to administer the ordinances and to visit their scattered sheep, made their labors arduous and hazardous. The settled ministers often traveled from fifteen to fifty miles in the discharge of parochial duties, and the early Methodist itinerants were constantly traveling their large circuits four or five hundred miles around. Peter Cartwright facetiously said of one of his large circuits on the frontier, that "it took in one half of creation, for it had no boundary on the west;" and he penetrated six hundred miles due west in pursuit of scattered emigrants. In their journeys the preachers often encountered savage Indians, savage beasts, and sometimes more savage white men. Thus did these heroic men toil to build up Christ's Church.

It was a period of rough, resolute courage and independence, and great controversies were frequent. There were sharp contentions about baptism and pedo-baptism, free grace and predestination, falling from grace, unconditional perseverance, etc., etc. Challenges and public debates were common, and these things, with Indian wars, French intrigues, French infidelity aud contentions about State rights, greatly retarded the progress of religion. Infidelity was rife in these western regions at this early period, permeating, as it was estimated, one half of the population of Kentucky. Vice and dissipation flooded the country. It required great boldness to attempt to stem the tide which rolled in with irresistible power every-where.

At the close of the century the Presbyterians and the Methodists sometimes found it necessary to unite their efforts and concert their action for the common cause. This was done in the southern part of Kentucky, where "union meetings" and "sacramental meetings" were held, the two denominations working together as kind and efficient yoke-fellows. In connection with these union efforts the great revival of 1800 commenced, which will constitute the theme of another chapter.*

* Period II, Chapter I.

TH

Section 1.-The Unitarian Trend.

HIS tendency in the New England churches had its inception in the Half-Way Covenant * adopted in 1662. Through the century this leaven had steadily worked, materially changing the current theology of New England.

The Edwardian and Whitefieldian revivals for a time broke the force of this tendency, successfully combated Stoddard's innovation, and led many of the churches back to the old strict terms of membership. In the remainder of the churches, however, the old Calvinistic theology died a speedier death. The strengthening of one class increased the revolt in the other. After the revival the word" Arminian," which had been so much dreaded, grew familiar. The type of thought, however, was not pure Arminianism, but rather Pelagianism mixed with Socinianism. As the term was used it meant Anti-Calvinism. The change had been long and gradual. First, certain church rites crumbled, then the doctrines. There was a new emphasis in behalf of man's free will and ability to gain salvation, and in respect to God's impartiality. There were two parties, and after 1750 they were perceptibly diverging. The new party was rising and extending. The mottoes were, Few fundamentals; no human creed; only Bible words to express mysteries. Broad toleration was advocated in ordination and convention sermons, and the examination of candidates for ordination was discarded. The works of English Unitarians were in circulation. The orthodox party were becoming alarmed, grew more defiant, and charged the " Liberals" with evasion. Such was the drift at the close of the Revolution.

*See pp. 100-102, 107, 108, 137, 140, 150-152, 198-201.

Although the schism out of which the Unitarian body was organized did not occur until 1815-1825, yet so deep and extensive was this drift that the exciting events of the Revolution only slightly checked its progress; and in 1786 it was said that "the general tone of thought in Boston was decidedly Unitarian." The elder Edwards and Mayhew had departed; Chauncy and Gray were feeble with advanced age; Styles was in his meridian at Yale College; Dwight was a rising light; Emerson and Ware had just commenced their ministry; Channing and Beecher were boys; Norton and Buckminster were tender babes; and Hopkins and Belamy were leading a small party in an effort to relieve orthodoxy of the odiousness of High Calvinism. It was at such a time that the first open avowal of Unitarianism in the United States was made in the city of Boston, not among the Congregationalists, but among the Episcopalians.

King's Chapel the First Unitarian Church in America.

When the British troops left Boston all the Episcopal clergy went with them, and King's Chapel was occupied by the "Old South" congregation while they were repairing the injuries to their house made by the English soldiery who had occupied it. In 1782 the remaining proprietors of King's Chapel determined to restore the Episcopal form of worship. In the absence of a regular clergyman Mr. James Freeman, a rising young man and a recent graduate of Harvard College, was employed to read the liturgy. "He was attached to the ritual, but had yet to frame his theological opinions. He gave himself to the current of free investigation, and no ecclesiastical authority restrained his progress or menaced him with public annoyance. Some changes in the Common Prayer were required by the change in the political relations, and after a time Freeman avowed his wish to change, with them, those parts in which the Trinity was acknowledged. . . . By a vote of twenty to seven the proprietors of the chapel adopted the ritual with its proposed alterations. He asked in vain for orders from the new bishops in the United States, and in 1787 the warden * proceeded deliberately to ordain him, seventeen proprietors protesting." The amendment to the liturgy was adopted June 19, 1785, which may be regarded as the date of the formation of the first Unitarian Church in

*The warden "laid one hand upon him and with the other delivered to him the Bible." Lindsay's Vindication, p. 25.

↑ Pages from the Ecclesiastical History of New England, p. 37.

America. "Thus the first Episcopal Church in New England became the first Unitarian Church in the New World." *

In London a Mr. Lindsay, a friend of Freeman, had just tried a similar experiment. They conferred together. Freeman told him the whole story-how shy the public were at first; how Dr. Priestley's books were being read, and other books of English Unitarians; how many of the clergy had given up the Trinitarian doxology; that there was only one minister in New England who openly preached "the Socinian scheme," although "there are many churches in which the worship is strictly Unitarian, and some of New England's most eminent laymen openly avow that creed."

"Although Dr. Freeman was the first who in this country openly preached Unitarianism under that name, he never claimed the credit of that movement, but referred to Dr. Mayhew and others as having preached the same doctrine before. This was no doubt true. . . . Yet as he was the first to avow and defend the doctrine by its distinct name he may be considered as its first preacher."†

Before his death he became a decided humanitarian. + Revs. Aaron Bancroft, of Worcester, and William Bentley, of Salem, classmates of Freeman in Harvard College, were also among the first to adopt these views. Bentley was very learned and bold. Of him Hon. Edward Everett said, at his funeral, "He dared to speak what others did not dare to think."

In 1794 Dr. Priestley, the distinguished leader in the Unitarian ranks in England, and a decided humanitarian, came to this country to spend the remainder of his days. His great talents and learning were universally acknowledged; but not much was accomplished by his efforts to promote the spread of Unitarianism here.§ He preached to a small congregation in Northumberland, Pa., where he resided, but his lectures in Philadelphia drew large audiences. Hon. Thomas Jefferson was much influenced by him, adopting some of his opinions in the latter part of his life.

On the 12th of June, 1796, thirteen persons holding Unitarian views assembled in Philadelphia to establish religious worship; but the growth of the congregation was slow and their services were several times entirely suspended. The new leaven was steadily working in Boston, and Dr. Bradford has said, "It was confidently believed that there was not a strict Trinitarian clergyman in Boston in 1800." | * Greenwood's History of King's Chapel.

+ Sprague's Annals of the Unitarian Pulpit, p. 169. Ibid., p. 173.

Ibid., Introduction, p. 11.

| Life of Mayhew, p. 468. He probably meant in the Congregational churches. See more fully on this point, Period II, Chap. VI.

ANTI-TRINITARIANS.

The Attitude.

303

The first marked victory which the "liberal" party in New England gained occurred in the early part of the last century, "in the defeat of the Mathers and the ascendency of the Brattles, Leveretts and Willards, in the administration of Harvard College." The founders of the Brattle Street Church, who were leaders of this movement, "headed the social and intellectual tendency that developed itself into Unitarianism." But the most sensitive point in the earlier stages of the movement was practical liberty, a revulsion against the party of Edwards and Whitefield, who endeavored to restore the old practice of doctrinal tests and the relation of Christian experience. It was a contest against what was called ecclesiastical proscription. This practical protest was very soon vindicated by new metaphysical theories in regard to man's moral nature and spiritual capabilities, at variance with the old doctrines of necessity, depravity, regeneration, justification by faith, the atonement, the character and person of Christ and, at a later period, of the Trinity also. While they could not submit to the rigid discipline and the exacting creeds of the older divines, they nevertheless, for the most part, cherished sterling Christian principles and a high sense of personal responsibility. They intended to remain in the Church, but meant to contend for liberty of thought and action. They were supported by a large share of the wealth, culture, civil influence and social distinction of the New England churches. Nor was the spirit of this period of a controversial character, but calm, yet independent.

Freeman, in a letter to Belsham, in 1795, thus described the attitude of the new party.

I am acquainted with a number of ministers in the southern part of Massachusetts who avow and publicly preach Unitarian doctrine; while others, more cautious, content themselves with leading their hearers, by a course of rational and prudent sermons, gradually and insensibly to embrace it.

In some cases the line of demarcation between the two schools was very slight. Such men as Belknap and Eliot differed from the majority of the liberalists. Rejecting the Athanasian creed, they accepted the "indwelling scheme," without assailing the Trinitarian theology as such, and spoke of God as Father, Son and Holy Ghost, as a few Unitarians of a later period have done. Some prominent ministers of this party, down to the close of the last century, and also in the carlier part of the present, refused to be called Anti-Trinitarians, while nevertheless they rejected what they called