put to death in Virginia, yet they were subjected to much persecution and annoyance, and were glad in many cases to escape into North Carolina. The Puritans, too, were much disliked, and severe laws were passed "to prevent the infection from reaching the country."* Archbishop Laud's authority stood as high in Virginia as in England. An offender against that authority, of the name of Reek, was, in 1642, pilloried for two hours, with a label on his back setting forth his offence, then fined £50, and imprisoned during the pleasure of the governor.† It would appear, however, either that all this vigilance could not keep out the Puritans, or else that some of the Virginians themselves had become so disgusted with their own as to wish for Puritan preachers. Be that as it may, certain it is that in 1642 there was transmitted to Boston from certain persons in Virginia an application for preachers, and that two actually went from Massachusetts and one from Connecticut, but were dismissed by the governor. Governor Winthrop, speak some of whom took a deep interest in the Colonial Church. Still, it is no less true that many of a very different stamp were sent over, or came of their own accord, and these, after being once inducted into a parish, it was found almost impossible to remove. At a distance from England, and beyond the immediate inspection of the only bishop that seemed to. have any authority over them, they generally contrived to secure impunity, not only for the neglect of their duties, but even for flagrant crimes. Some cases of the most shocking delinquency and open sin occurred both in Virginia and Maryland, without the possibility, it would seem, of their being reached and punished. All that could be done by persons commissioned by the Bishop of London to act for him, under the name of commissaries, was done by such men as Drs. Blair and Bray, and their successors, but the evil was too deep to be effectually extirpated by anything short of the exercise of full Episcopal authority on the spot. Besides traditional evidence of the immoralities of some of the established clergy in Virginia and Maryland, we learning of this affair in his Journal, says that, their existence and character from indubitable histories written by Episcopalians themselves, and they were such as even to call for the interference of the colonial legislatures. The General Assembly of Virginia, in 1631, enacted that "Mynisters shall not give themselves to excess in drinkinge or riott, spendinge theire tyme idellye by day or night, etc." The fact is, that worthless and incapable men in every profession were wont to leave the mother-country for the colonies, where they thought they might succeed better than in England; and such of them as belonged to the clerical profession very naturally supposed that they might find comfortable "livings" in those colonies, where their own church was established, and where they heard that there was so great a deficiency of clergymen.t * At a 5. And, lastly, one of the greatest evils of the Establishment we are speaking of, is to be found in the shameful acts of intolerance and oppression to which it led. Although the Quakers were in no instance *Hening's "Laws of Virginia," 7th Car., i. much later period, Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, in reply to this inquiry from the Lords of Plantations, "What provision is there made for the paying of your ministers?" stated, "We have forty-eight parishes, and our ministers are well paid. But as of all other commodities, so of this, the worst are sent to us."-See "Appendix to Hening's Collec tion." Even so late as 1751, the Bishop of London, in a letter to the well-known Dr. Doddridge, says upon this subject, "Of those that are sent from hence, a great part are of the Scotch-Irish, who can get no employment at home, and enter into the service more out of necessity than choice. Some others are willing to go abroad to retrieve either lost fortunes or lost character."-See Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review for April, 1840." though the state did silence the ministers, because they would not conform to the order of England, yet the people resorted to them in private houses to hear them.‡ In fact, it was not until the lapse of a century after those times that toleration was established in Virginia, through the persevering efforts of the Presbyterians and other non-established denominations, whose friends and partisans had by that time greatly increased, partly in consequence of this very intolerance on the part of the government, but chiefly by immigration, so far as to outnumber the Episcopalians of the province when the war of the Revolution commenced. As for Maryland, although the Quakers were greatly harassed in that colony for some time, and Roman Catholics were treated with grievous injustice, yet there never was the same intolerance manifested towards those who were called Dissenters, as had been shown in Virginia. The Protestant Episcopal Church was established there by law in 1692, but not in fact until 1702. But in no colony in which Episcopacy became established by law was there more intolerance displayed than in New-York. That establishment was effected in 1693 by Governor Fletcher, who soundly rated the Legislature because not disposed to comply with all his wishes. But in zeal for Episcopacy he was outdone by one of his successors, Lord Cornbury, a descendant of Lord Clarendon, who would fain * Hening's "Virginia Statutes," 223. + Ibid., 552. Savage's Winthrop, p. 92. Hubbard's " History of New-England,” p. 141. have deprived the Dutch of their privile- more pleasantly in the unembarrassed ges, and forced them into the Episcopal work of their calling; nor were they likeChurch. He had orders from the govern-ly to have been worse off in respect of ment at home "to give all countenance this world's blessings than the faithful and encouragement to the exercise of the among them really were. ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, as far as conveniently might be in the province; that no schoolmaster be henceforward permitted to come from this kingdom, and keep a school in that our said province, without the license of our said Lord Bishop of London."* In what has been said of the intolerance manifested in several of the colonies in which the Protestant Episcopal Church was established, I would not be understood as charging such intolerance upon that Church. No doubt men of an intolerant spirit were to be found in it, but, alas! true religious liberty, and an enlarged spirit of toleration, were far from being general in those days; but it had members also of a most catholic spirit, who neither could nor did approve of such acts as the above. The intolerance was rather that of the colonial governments, and to them properly belongs the credit or discredit attached to it. Assuredly the Episcopal Church in the United States at the present day furnishes decisive proof that Episcopacy can exist and flourish without aid from the civil government. Dr. Hawks thinks that it has even peculiar advantages for self-sustentation, proved, as he conceives, by the experience of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, and that of the Syrian Churches in India, as well as the history of that Church in the United States. Without expressing an opinion on that point, I hesitate not to say that the Episcopal Church, with all the advantage of having the people enlisted on her side in several of the colonies at the outset, and sustained as she was by the prestige of the National Church of the mother-country, would have done far better had she relied on her own resources under God, in the faithful ministration of his Word, and of the ordinances of His House, than in trusting to the arm of the State in the colonies in which she endeavoured to plant herself. CHAPTER XXI. STATE OF RELIGION DURING THE COLONIAL ERA. In conclusion, I cannot but think that the union of the Episcopal Church with the State in some colonies, and of the Congregational Church with the civil power in others, was, upon the whole, far more mischievous than beneficial; an opinion in which I feel persuaded that the great body alike of the Episcopal and Congregational ministers concur. Had the founders of BEFORE quitting the Colonial Era in the the Episcopal Church in Virginia and Ma- history of the United States, let us take ryland, excellent men as I believe they a general view of the state of religion were, gone to work in reliance on the throughout all the colonies during the peblessing of God upon their efforts, and en-riod of 168 years, from 1607 to the comdeavoured to raise up a faithful native min-mencement of the war of the Revolution istry, trusting to the willingness of the in 1775. people to provide for their support, I doubt As communities, the Anglo-American not that they would have succeeded far colonies, from their earliest days, were better in building up the Episcopal Church pervaded by religious influence, not equalthan they did with all the advantages of ly powerful, yet real and salutary in all. the State alliance which they enjoyed. This was especially true of New-England, They would doubtless have had to encoun- whose first settlers openly declared to the ter many difficulties, but they would have world that they left their native land not laid a surer foundation also for ultimate so much to promote individual religion as success. Dr. Hawks gives a painfully in- to form Christian societies. They could teresting narrative of the struggles which have maintained silent, personal, individuthe established clergy of Virginia and Ma-al communion with their heavenly Father ryland had to sustain with their parishion- in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, or in Holers about their salaries; the one party stri- land, as did some recluses in the monastic ving to obtain what the law assigned to institutions of the earlier and Middle Ages. them; the other, aided even at times by But they had no such purpose. Their legislative enactments, availing themselves Christianity was of a diffusive kind; their of every stratagem in order to evade the hearts yearned for opportunities of extendlegal claims of the clergy. The time and ing it. Religion with them was not only anxiety, the wearing out of mind and body, a concern between man and God, but one which these disputes cost faithful minis- in which society at large had a deep interters, not to mention the sacrifice of influ- est. Hence some fruits of this high and ence, would have been laid out better and holy principle might be expected in the "History of the Evangelical Churches of New-communities which they founded, and we York." not unreasonably desire to know how far their tongue. Nor was it in Massachusetts alone that men cared for the souls of the "Salvages," as they were called. In Virginia, an Indian princess, Pocahontas, received the Gospel, was baptized, and became a consistent member of a Christian Church. Another convert, Chanco, was the instrument, under God, of saving the colony from entire extirpation. the result corresponded with such excel- other good men of that day, present most lent intentions. It were unfair, however, interesting details in proof of this. Amerto expect much in this way, considering ica has seen more extensive, but never the circumstances of the colonists, settling more unequivocal, works of grace, or more in a remote wilderness, amid fierce and indubitable operations of the Spirit. cruel savages, and exposed to all the fa- Nor were the aboriginal heathen around tigues and sicknesses incident to such a the colonies forgotten in those days. Elsettlement, and to the anxieties and diffi- liot and others laboured with great succulties attending the organization of their cess among the Indians in the vicinity of governments, collisions with the mother-Boston. Several thousand souls were concountry, and participation in all that coun-verted. The Bible was translated into try's wars. The colonial era may, for the sake of convenience, be divided into four periods. The first of these, extending from the earliest settlement of Virginia in 1607 to 1660, was one in which religion greatly flourished, notwithstanding the trials incident to settlements amid the forests, and the troubles attending the establishment of the colonial governments. Peace with the Aborigines suffered few interruptions, the only wars worth mentioning being that with the Pequods in Connecticut, in 1637; that between the Dutch and the Algonquins, in 1643; and those that broke out in Virginia in 1622 and 1644, which were at once the first and the last, and by far the most disastrous of that period. But these wars were soon over, and a few years sufficed to repair whatever loss they occasioned to the colonists. This was the period in which those excellent men who either came over with the first colonies, or soon afterward joined | them, laboured long, and very successfully, for the salvation of souls. Among these were Wilson, and Cotton, and Shepard, and Mather (Richard), and Philips, and Higginson, and Skelton, in the colony of Massachusetts Bay; Brewster in Plymouth; Hooker in Connecticut; Davenport in New-Haven; and Hunt and Whitaker in Virginia. Several of the contemporary magistrates, also, were distinguished for their piety and zeal; such as the governors Winthrop of Massachusetts, Bradford and Winslow of Plymouth, Haynes of Connecticut, and Eaton of New-Haven. To these we must add Roger Williams, who was pastor, and, for a time, governor in Providence. The commencement of the colonization of America was certainly auspicious for the cause of true religion. The second period is one of sixty years, from 1660 to 1720. This might be called the brazen age of the colonies. Almost all of them experienced times of trouble. Massachusetts suffered in 1675 from a most disastrous war with "King Philip," the chief of the Pokanokets, and with other tribes which afterward joined in a general endeavour to expel or exterminate the colonists. Violent disputes arose with the government of EngĨand respecting the rights of the colony, and to these were added internal dissensions about witchcraft, and other exciting subjects, chiefly of a local nature. In Virginia, in 1675-76, there were a serious Indian war and a "Grand Rebellion," which threatened ruin to the colony. And in the Carolinas a desolating war with the Tuscaroras broke out in 1711-12. Besides these greater causes of trouble and excitement, there were others which it is not necessary to indicate. The influence of growing prosperity may, however, be mentioned. The colonies had now taken permanent root. They might be shaken, but could not be eradicated or overthrown by the rude blasts of misfortune. Their wealth was increasing; their commerce was already considerable, and attracted many youth to the seas. Every war which England had with France or This was the golden Age of the colonial cycle. God poured out his Spirit in many .places. Precious seasons were enjoyed by the churches in Boston, in Salem, in Plym-Spain agitated her colonies also. outh, in Hartford, and in New-Haven. Nor were the labours of faithful men in Virginia without a rich blessing. Days of fasting and prayer were frequently and faithfully observed. God was entreated to dwell among the people. Religion was felt to be the most important of blessings, both for the individual man and for the State. Revivals were highly prized, and earnestly sought; nor were they sought in vain. The journals of Governor Winthrop, and These causes concurring with the disastrous consequences of the union of Church and State already described, led to a great decline of vital Christianity, and although partial revivals took place, the all-pervading piety that characterized the first generation suffered a great diminution. The light of holiness grew faint and dim, and morality, in general, degenerated in a like degree. The Fathers had gone to the tomb, and were succeeded, upon the whole, This was the period in which Edwards and Prince, Frelinghuysen, Dickinson, Finley, and the Tennents, laboured in the Northern and the Middle States; Davies, and others of kindred spirit, in Virginia; the Wesleys for a while in Georgia; while Whitfield, like the angel symbolized in the Apocalypse as flying through the heavens, having the everlasting Gospel to preach to the nations, traversed colony after colony in his repeated visits to the New World, and was made an instrument of blessing to multitudes. by inferior men. The second Governor | important, though painful lessons, were Winthrop, it is true, showed himself, in the learned, in regard to the economy of the administration of the united colonies of Spirit, which have not been wholly forgotConnecticut, to be a great and good man, ten to this day. and a father alike to the Church and the State. Among the ministers, too, there was a considerable number of distinguished men; but their labours were not equally blessed with those of the Fathers. Among the best known were the Mathers, Increase and Cotton, father and son, the latter more distinguished for the extent and variety of his acquirements than for soundness of judgment;* Norton and others in Massachusetts; Pierpont in Connecticut; Dr. Blair, who for a long time was the Bishop of London's commissary in Virginia; Dr. Bray, who held the same office in Maryland, two persons to whom the Episcopal Church in those colonies was much indebted for its prosperity. The faithful pastors in New England received an accession to their number, in the early part of this period, by the arrival from England of some of the two thousand ministers who were ejected there for non-conformity, soon after the accession of Charles II. The third period, comprehending the thirty years from 1720 to 1750, was distinguished by extensive revivals of religion, and this, notwithstanding the agitation produced in the colonies, by the share they had in the war between France and England towards the close of that period, and other unfavourable circumstances besides. The Great Awakening, as it has been called, infused a new life into the churches, more especially in New-England, in certain parts of New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, and some other colonies, and its effects were visible long afterward in many places. It is true that fanatical teachers did much mischief in several quarters by associating themselves with the work of God, and introducing their own unwarrantable measures, so as to rob it, in the end, of much of the glorious character that distinguished it at first. Yet it cannot be denied that it was a great blessing to the churches. Some * Cotton Mather's acquirements were really prodigious, considering the age and the circumstances in which he lived. His publications amounted to no fewer than 382, several of which, such as his "Magnalia, or the Ecclesiastical History of New-England," were large works. He displayed, however, such a mixture of credulity, pedantry, and bad taste, that he was not appreciated as he deserved. The part which he took in the affair of the witches, though greatly misrepresented by some writers, did him vast injury. He was singularly given to believe all sorts of mar The fourth and concluding period of the Colonial Era comprehends the twenty-five years from 1750 to 1775, and was one of great public agitation. In the early part of it the colonies aided England with all their might in another war with France, ending in the conquest of the Canadas, which were secured to the conquerors by the treaty of Paris in 1763. In the latter part of it men's minds became universally engrossed with the disputes between the colonies and the mother-country, and when all prospect of having these brought to an amicable settlement seemed desperate, preparation began to be made for that dreadful alternative-war. Such a state of things could not fail to have an untoward influence on religion. Yet most of those distinguished men whom I have spoken of as labouring in the latter part of the immediately preceding period, were spared to continue their work in the beginning of this. Whitfield renewed from time to time his angel visits, and the Spirit was not grieved quite away from the churches by the commotions of the people. Still, no such glorious scenes were beheld during this period as had been witnessed in the last; on the contrary, that declension in spiritual life, and spiritual effort, which war ever occasions, was now everywhere visible, even before hostilities had actually commenced. review which the limits of this work perSuch is the very cursory and imperfect mit us to take of the religious vicissitudes of the United States during their colonial days. That period of 168 years was, comparatively speaking, one of decline, and even deadness, in the greater part of Protestant Europe; indeed, the latter part may be regarded as having been so universally. Yet, during the same period, I feel very + For a full and able account of this great work of certain that a minute examination of the grace, as well as of other revivals of religion, of un- history of the American Protestant churchusual power and extent in America, see a work pub-es would show that in no other part of lished at Boston in 1842, entitled the "Great Awa- Christendom, in proportion to the populakening," by the Rev. Joseph Tracy. It is by far tion, was there a greater amount of true the fullest account of the early revivals in America that has yet appeared, and being derived from au- knowledge of the Gospel, and of practical thentic sources, is worthy of entire credence. godliness, among both ministers and their vellous stories. flocks. No doubt there were long intervals of coldness, or, rather, of deadness, as to spiritual things, during which both pastors and people became too much engrossed with the "cares of life." But, blessed be God, he did not abandon us forever. Though he visited our transgressions with a rod, and chastised us for our sins, yet he remembered the covenant which he made with our fathers, and the Word of his promise wherein he had caused them to trust. And though our unworthiness and our unprofitableness had been great, he did not cast us away from his sight, but deigned to hear us when we called upon him in the dark and gloomy hour, and saved us with a great salvation. And this he did "because his mercy endureth forever." CHAPTER I. BOOK III. THE NATIONAL ERA. EFFECTS OF THE REVOLUTION UPON RELIGION. -CHANGES TO WHICH IT NECESSARILY GAVE RISE. FROM the Colonial we now proceed to the National period in the history of the United States. 1775 to 1800, the first eight, spent in hostilities with England, were pre-eminently so. The effects of war on the churches of all communions were extensively and variously disastrous. To say nothing of the distraction of the mind from the subject of salvation, its more palpable influences were seen and felt everywhere. Young men were called away from the seclusion and protection of the parental roof, and from the vicinity of the oracle of God, to the demoralizing atmosphere of a camp; congregations were sometimes entirely broken up; churches were burned, or converted into barracks or hospitals, by one or other of the belligerant armies, often by both successively; in more than one instance pastors were murdered; the usual ministerial intercourse was interrupted; efforts for the dissemination of the Gospel were, in a great measure, suspended; colleges and other seminaries of learning were closed for want of students and professors; and the public morals in various respects, and in almost all possible ways, deteriorated. Christianity is a religion of peace, and the tempest of war never fails to blast and scatter the leaves of the Tree which was planted for the healing of the nations. The first twenty-five years of the national existence of the States were fraught with evil to the cause of religion. First came the war of the Revolution, which literally engrossed all men's minds. The population of the country at its commencement scarcely, if at all, exceeded 3,500,000; and for a people so few and so scattered, divided into thirteen colonies, quite independent, at the outset, of each other, having no national treasury, no central government or power, nothing, in short, to unite them but one common feeling of patriotism, it was a gigantic undertaking. The war was followed by a long period of prostration. Connexion with England having been dissolved, the colonies had to assume the form of states, their governments had to be reorganized, and a general, or federal government, instituted. The infant nation, now severed from the mother-country, had to begin an existence of its own, at the cost of years of anxiety and agitation. Dangers threatened it on every side, and scarcely had the General Government been organized, and the states learned to know their places a little in the federal economy, when the French Revolution burst forth like a volcano, and threatened to sweep the United States into its fiery stream. In the end it led them to declare war against France for their national honour, or, rather, for their national existence. That war was happily brought to an end by Napoleon, on his becoming First Consul, and thus was the infant country allowed to enjoy a little longer * The Rev. Dr. Helmuth, formerly pastor in Philrepose, as far as depended on foreign na-adelphia. The letter from which the extract given in the text is taken is found in the "Hallische Nachrichten," p. 1367-8, and quoted by Professor Schmucker in his "Retrospect of Lutheranism in the United States." tions. Unfavourable to the promotion of religion as were the whole twenty-five years from A single passage from a letter, written by a distinguished and most excellent German clergyman,* will give the reader some idea of the state of things during that war. It was written not long after its commencement. The perusal of it cannot fail to impress the mind of every Christian with the duty of praying that the peace which now so happily reigns among the nations may evermore continue : "Throughout the whole country great preparations are making for the war, and almost every person is under arms. The |