* TH€ AM€R1CAN # Church Hi§tory5€ri€s :-.5?*-;.- •■' ■■■■■ Vl' •• -.-,■; ■ • r^i. ^L^fi: r.^^ r ■ ^ ■i^^ ,t *« ©heoJogiai ._ '^iii '"ih. >>f. PRINCETON, N. J. Shelf. Division . .JJ)./\ . . i kJ. w.: -^ Section y . jYmuhcr ... C^e (American ance, who bravely and steadily befriended the Re- 12 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. i. formers for many years, till subdued by her husband's harshness and threats of the Inquisition;' the great scholar and professor of eloquence, Aonio Paleario, friend of Ochino, who taught with freedom and power in most of the chief towns of northern Italy, unconscious or disdainful of danger, till he was seized and after two years' imprisonment hanged and burned in Rome at the age of seventy ; ev^en Reginald Pole, a cardinal and a Plantagenet, cousin of the Tudors, a friend of the Reformers and advocate of some of their opinions, yet counseling them to keep their doctrine to themselves, and consenting weakly to the cruelties of Bloody Mary : " whether of good or bad faith in all this, God knows," says an Italian compiler of these times. - The writings of Valdes include the counsels of personal piety already mentioned; a brief digest called " One Hun- dred and Ten Considerations," held to be his most char- acteristic exposition ; and comments on several books of Scripture, of which those on the Psalms [Salfan'o), on " Matthew," and on " Romans " are best known. In gen- eral, these counsels and comments are purely those of prac- tical and personal religion, extraordinarily free from any assumption or even hint of dogma. The one point of Christ's sacrifice is, indeed, incessantly urged, in the gen- eral sense of the Reformers, and with no reference what- ever to the mystery in which it has been enveloped by the church ; but, apart from this, there is little or nothing to suggest an opinion on any point in controversy. As to such, he is betrayed into no statement that may not be put in the very words of Scripture: this makes what is some- times called " his private opinion on the Trinity." In the commentary on Matthew (for example), perliaps the most 1 Generosa d^oniiiio, colta Ji spirito, gciitilc di modi, f <[^[^r//o d\iviniirazi- one per quanti la circondarano. 2 " La Riforma in Italiii nel Sccolo xvi." (anmi. Turin, 1S56), p. 94. " 77/Zs BENEFIT OF CIIKISr." 1 3 extended and formal of all, he speaks of Christ as Son of God and therefore in his own nature divine; but uses not a single phrase which a Unitarian of the older school might not have written, or which a devout Trinitarian would not heartily accord witii. The line that was presently to di- vide Protestant from Catholic so sharply is not (I think) so much as once hinted at in any of these writings, except by their absolute silence as to anything which the ecclesiastical system might prescribe. The best known type of this religious movement is a small manual entitled " Benefit of Christ Crucified." This little book, which is the very mirror of the life here de- scribed, had so great currency in Italy that more than 40,000 copies are said to have been issued from the press of Ven- ice alone ; and it was so carefully suppressed that it was thought, till its rediscovery in 1855, to be (says Macaulay) " as hopelessly lost as the second decade of Livy."^ It is the voice not so much of an individual, but rather of a school or company of associates ; and it may well enough be held as the real legacy of Valdes to his own generation. To find the motive of its persistent suppression in later years, we have only to note its complete silence as to the doctrine or discipline which the papal church made all- essential ; and refer to the time — some twenty years later than that we have been considering — when the most inno- cent-seeming symptom of a piety at variance with that church, or independent of it, was mercilessly hunted down and trampled out. Into that crudest of tragedies we need not enter here. 1 Published in Venice, 1543; and, a copy having l:>een found in the library at Cambridge, in London (1855), under the name of Paleario. It has been ascribed to Valdes himself, and to several of his circle — Benedetto of Man- tua, Ochino, or Flaminio ; but, from a sentence in one of Paleario's letters, it seems to be clearly his, and is generally so regarded. 14 THE UNITARIANS. [Chai'. i. It is enough to copy from this manual a few sentences which show the characteristic style of doctrine, clothing itself in the very thoughts and phrases dearest to the heart of the Reformation, — prefixing a statement (taken here from Cantu) of the doctrinal theory it rests on. We have in it a type of opinion which it will be important hereafter to bear in mind. " Original sin " (it teaches) " was the cause of the ills we suffer, though we knew it not till the law was given. The first office of the law was to give us knowledge of sin ; next, to enlarge its field by forbidding evil desire ; third, to show the wrath of God toward those who do not observe the law ; fourth, to inspire man with fear ; fifth, to constrain him to turn to Christ, on whom alone depend the forgive- ness of sin, justification, and all our [hope of] salvation. If the sin of Adam was alone enough, without our fault, to render us all sinners, a fortiori the obedience (" righteous- ness ") of Christ will have power to render us all righteous and children of grace without our cooperation — which could not be virtue in us, unless we should ourselves become good first. God, having already punished all sin in his best-beloved Son, has granted to mankind universal par- don, which every believer in the gospel shares. From Christ alone, therefore, may each one know his own salva- tion, confiding not in his own works, but in him alone: This pious confidence enters into our heart by act of the Holy Spirit, communicated to us through faith; and faith comes never without the love of God. Hereby we feel ourselves moved with a glad and active {opcroso) zeal to do good works ; we feel the power to fulfill them, and to suf- fer all things for the love and glory of our merciful Father. . . . Wherefore," the manual goes on to say, " it may be clearly understood that the pious Christian need feel no doubt of the pardon of his sins, nor of the grace of God ; DOCTRIXE OF GOOD WORKS. 15 Still, to satisfy the reader, I will write down some authori- ties of holy teachers which confirm this faith." Here he introduces very many names (presumably Catiiolic), and resumes: " Let no one, however, think — with those false Christians who customarily degrade [the things they han- dle]— that true faith consists in believing the history of Christ, as if we should believe that of Caesar or Alexander, or as the Turks believe their Koran. Faith does not of itself, indeed, renew the heart, or warm it with the love of God, or bring forth good works and change of life : these things proceed alone from that true faith which is the work of God in us. Justifying faith is like flame, which cannot but yield light : thus it cannot burn sin away without the aid of good works. And as, seeing a flame that sheds no light, we know that it is false, and painted, so when in any one we see not the light of good works, we say he has not the true faith inspired by God." (Cantu, vol. ii, pp. 380, 381.) This doctrine of " Works " contains, in fact, the key to that stage of the Reformation at which we are now arrived. As the historian calls us to note, it is as far from the daring Lutheran assertion of a faith wholly independent of works,' as from the formal Catholic pretension of works apart from faith. But it was the Catholic Church, not the Lutheran, that felt itself assailed. If not the righteousness it claimed to teacli, at any rate the costly mechanism by which it sought to " transact the great business of salvation," was in danger of getting obsolete. In 1542, the year after Valdes died, the " Supreme and Universal Tribunal of 1 "When Melanchthon sought at Ratisbon, in 1541, to come to terms with the Catliolics, saying tliat l)y justifying faith shoukJ be understood a faitli tliat \vorl a P'rench Protestant who had dared to dispute with Calvin his rigid doctrine of Predestination, and so was in exile from Gene\'a. He engages, besides, in earnest correspondence with a new friend, Walter, on the true meaning of penitence, pardon, and the Divine decree. Partly, perhaps, to shun the stringent air of controversy, he set out in the following spring for a \'isit to Itcdy, which extended to a nearly two years' stay. But he was chiefly moved by the new hope that seemed to dawn there. His native Siena had lately made itself independent, by help of a- French alliance. The power of the Inquisition had just received a check, and for a time it looked as if a new day of lilicrty miglit open to the old Italian republics. We fmd him, again, at Padua, \-isiting his father in Bologna, lingering through most of the following year at Siena. But what seemed dawn had (says the historian) proved to be only twilight : the day of freedom to the Italian republics was past. With whatever of disappointment, he was again in Switzerland in January, at Geneva in the spring, of 1554. Here the air was full of the agitati(Mi, still fresh, follow- 54 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. hi. ing the death of Servetus six months before. Calvin's de- fense of. that act had led the way to new disputes. Laelius, all whose sympathies ran the other way, was now drawn to Calvin, it has been said, ^ by the attraction of opposites." He did not, it is true, share the passionate resentment of some of his countrymen, or break openly with Calvin. His feeling on the subject was, however, well enough known. He was charged with being the real author of a vigorous pamphlet in French, published under the name of Martin Bellie, which gathered up, said its critics, a mess {farrago) of arguments from the ancient church and from modern Reformers, to prove that spiritual error should be met only by weapons of the Spirit : the secular power, it said, is not competent to deal with heresy. There was no need to defend or to attack the opinions of Servetus. His books had been too thoroughly destroyed, was the complaint, for any one to find out what they were. It was a time fruitful of controversy. So far as L.xlius proved himself a combatant at all, it was at this period of his life. Early in 1554 he argues with his friend Bullinger on Divine grace and the efficacy of sacraments : he will hardly grant that the " seal " of Gcxl's promise can be an act performed by man ; his logic will not accept the mys- tery which in the view of the Genevan school enshrines the act. In this same year, again, the implacable tyranny of Rome compelled the Protestant inhabitants of Locarno to choose between their home and their faith. It was hard to say which were the more wretched, those who abased themselves to forsake that faith and submit to the contemptuous tolerance offered them, or those who for the sake of it were driven homeless into the inclemency of wintry and northern skies. A congregation formed ten years before by Italian fugitives from the Inquisition had been hospitably received in Zurich, whom the new exiles L^ELIUS SOCINUS. 55 now joined ; and to them Ochino, lately back from Eng- land, was appointed preacher. Laelius was soon on friendly- terms with him ; and it was now that Martinengo and Ver- gerio whispered their doubts of his soundness in the trini- tarian faith. Again, the next year (1555) a discussion fol- lowed between him and a friend named Wolf, respecting the Trinity and the personality of the Holy (jhost. Here- it appeared, not that he had expressed denial of the doc- trine, but that he would not pledge assent to any state- ment of it that could not be put in the words of Scripture. Bullinger, still true to his friend, succeedetl in turning aside the current of suspicion and ill-will that set against him, and even soothed Calvin's irritable mood so far as the person of Lrelius was concerned. But from this lime on we hear no more of his engaging in controversy. He kept his opinions more and more to himself. Whatever shape he may have given them in his private writings, they are to be gathered chiefly from the works of his nephew, who regarded himself as his natural heir and liter- ary executor. Meanwhile, events were calling him once more into Italy. In this year (1555) Siena had surrendered after a long struggle, to be soon after turned over to the domina- tion of Florence. The next year his father died at Bologna, leaving the family estate in a condition that needed attend- ing to. In the general danger and disturbance, powerful friends were required to make the journey practicable. In 1558, after a friendly reception from Calvin in Geneva, and fortified by letters from Melanchthon to Maximilian, he went again by way of Austria into Poland, where he passed six months among the now vigorous and influential party of the Reformers. Letters from Maximilian and from King Sigismund insured his personal safety, perhaps under a diplomatic commission, during his short stay in 56 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. hi. Italy the following spring. But his correspondence had brought the ill repute of heresy upon his father's house. The family estate was confiscated to the Inquisition. Of his brothers, some were cast into prison, while two, with their nephew Faustus, then a youtlT of twenty, made their escape into France. Laelius returned to Zurich in August, to live a little longer there in poverty and seclusion, cheered now and then by visits from his nephew (then a student of law in Lyons), whom, it is likely, he made the sharer of his more private thoughts. He died on the 14th of May, 1562, at the age of thirty-seven. "Not one of his many former friends," says Trechsel, " bade him good cheer when he went home to the land of Vision — he whose lot it had been to bear so heavy a burden here be- low, seeing not and yet believing." Faustus Socinus, to whom we may henceforth give the family name he is known by in history, was now at the age of twenty-three. He held the memory of his uncle in peculiar love and veneration ; and (it is likely), to pro- tect his good name and take in charge his literary be- quests, went at once, on learning his death, to Zurich. Whether he gave up the hope of such a reformation as they had looked forward to together, and seriously meant to reconcile himself with Rome, is not clear. At all events, he made friends, as Servetus had done, of those in authority under Roman rule. He recovered something of his inheritance, and was for twelve years a diligent, ser- viceable, and valued official under Cosmo de' Medici, Archduke of Florence, in service of his daughter Isabella. He was a man of harder, firmer, and probably more worldly temper than Laelius; the son of an elder brother, Alexander, who died when he was yet a child not three years old, so that he laments the loss of parents and the lack of early instruction. Against this his biographer sets FAUSTUS SOCIXUS. 57 the advantage of ha\-ing had no training in dogmatic theol- ogy, and little of the^ school logic. Till the age of twenty-three, his studies were chiefly of letters and jurisprudence. Laelius had rather hinted than taught his own opinions ; and it was as a man of thirty- five, after his twelve years' residence at court, that he took the resolution once for all to de\ote his life to the study and defense of truth (1574). The death of his patroness Isabella, strangled by her husband, may have quickened his resolve, though he withstood the generous urgency of Francesco that he should remain in the archducal service ; his property, at all events, was secured to him so long as his name should not be given out as the author of heretical writings. He was cordially received at Basel, where he passed three years in study. Being guided, as he frankly declared, by the writings and hints of Laelius, he now stood ready to declare and maintain his views. This he did in a little treatise on the nature and ofifice of Christ, published without concealment, but without his name in' the title. , It is well here to make as clear as we can what was the jnature of the task, and what were its conditions, as they lay 'before his mind at the date we have now reached (1578). The younger Socinus has held in history the unenviable reputation of being the leader in a theological movement blankly if somewhat evasively rationalistic, which, so far as I it went, altered, if not destroyed, the very substance of the ; Christian faith as this had hitherto been held. It is cer- tainly not true that he intended any such result. And it is only by ignorance or misunderstanding that the Unita- rian movement which has followed since his day has been so persistently called by his name. The misunderstanding- has been alike unjust to him and to it. To see what his thought really was, we must bear in 58 THE UNITAKIAXS. [Chap. hi. mind that the Reformation was now more than half a cent- ury past its reaction from that radical revolt which was the first response from the German people to Luther's sono- rous appeal. It had had its own record of strifes and divi- sions. It had attempted by blood and fire to suppress heresies in its own fold. It had become crystallized in sects. It had grown to be a recognized power in shaping the policy of a great kingdom like England, and in main- taining a revolt like that of Holland against the strongest of military monarchies. As a political power, too, it had secured terms of independence in the Peace of Augsburg (1555). which lasted down to the great convulsion of the Thirty Years' War. Meanwhile, its intellectual foundation was as unsettled as ever. Theology, in the futile debates of Flacius and Osiander, was beginning to wander in the field of metaphysics. Practically, the Reformation at this period exhibits itself as a moral force of prodigious energy, which we see in such examples as the Huguenots of France and in the heroic revolt of the Netherlands,' but distracted and unorganized, except where compacted by the rigor of Calvinism ; while the Lutheran church and state were almost neutral in the struggle on which its very life was staked. The only appeal that could be taken, where the party of Reform was so helplessly divided against itself, was to the tribunal of reason — reason, that is to say, for- tified and enlightened by a fresh critical study of the Scriptures, the one recognized court of appeal. The Italian Reformers had from the beginning shown a certain logical or rationalizing temper, which made them in a degree indifferent to the arguments that upheld the more mystical dogmas of the German theologians. They accepted the Reformation in more radical fashion, when 1 The great defense of I.eydcn was in the year before .Socimis ijiiitted Italy; the massacre of St. Bartlioloincw w as two years earlier. THE TASK OF SOCIXUS. 59 they accepted it at all. The supernaturalist theory of the church, remarks Saisset, rests on the four main pillars, or mysteries, of the Trinity, the Creation, the Incarnation, and the Redemption. It was the last alone — the theory of Redemption, with the ecclesiastical corruptions that had grown into it — that made the point of attack to the earlier Reformers. All the others they were equally and (as we have seen) ostentatiously prompt to defend.. In the martyr- dom of Serxetus they had testified, even passionatel)-, that heresy as to those points could find tolerance with them no more than with the Inquisition itself. He had struck, boldly but unskillfull}', at the entire fabric, aiming to sub- stitute for it a metaphysical structure of his own, which embodied (as he held) the real sense of Scripture. What might, perhaps, be done by studying still more critically the whole system of dogma, and comparing it with the word of revelation — to be interpreted, this time, not in the light of a traditional creed, which after all rested only on a damaged church authorit}-, but purely by the educated common sense of critics ? In attempting so much as that, Socinus really opened the way that led straight to the rationalism of a later day. The process was ine\itable, however unintended. And with it must come a sure narrowing and sterilizing of re- ligious thought ; the drying up, perhaps, of some of the l)urest fountains of the religious life. This result Socinus could not possibly foresee. He was not, like Servetus, a man of religious genius; but he was a man of clear con- victions, and genuine courage of his convictions. Still further, these convictions rested not, like the later ration- alism, on postulates of physical or mental science, but on what he accepted, with unquestioning reverence, as the revealed Word of God. This we shall see in his unbending contention against the rationalism of his day, as represented 6o THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. hi. by Francis David (see p. 64). He was a man truly relig- ious in his habit of thought, capable, as we shall see, of a patient, persistent, even heroic faith, such as belongs to a genuine religious leader. If dry and literal criticism of the sacred text were all, his service would not merit even the dubious honor of having given rise to a new form of heresy. Whether he was clearly conscious of what he meant or not, he meant something more than this. Cal- vinism, as he could plainly see, had come to be a j)Ower in the world by building its religious theory into a scheme of positive and invincible logic — invincible, if its premises be once granted. These premises were found by a pre- cise and rigid interpretation of Scripture. But what if this interpretation were a mistaken one? What if the church theory of the Divine nature, which Calvin asserted, were no more sound than the church theory of human re- demption, which Calvin riddled and disallowed? Might not a better understanding of the Word open the way to a doctrinal system equally clear, positive, self-consistent with that of Calvin, about which the religious life should organize itself with equal vigor, but more freely, more humanely, more intelligently ? All this may not have been in the conscious thought of Socinus when his thirty years' life-work lay before him ; but it may have lain in his mind vaguely and unshaped, as a dream. It seems, at any rate, to be the proper clue for tracing the main direction of that work, as we follow it through its incidents and look back upon it as a whole. It was not, properly, a work of speculation or of dogma, like that of Servetus. It was a work of criticism and of church construction. To see it in its proper bearings, we must look back first to the defeated and paralyzed condition of liberal theology in Switzerland, its home, in the years since the trial and condemnation of Servetus. THE SITU ATI ox IX SWITZEKLAXD. 6 1 This condition is best presented to us in a series of Italian names. The ashes of Servetus, said Beza, had quickly begun to stir. The echo of his name came back to Geneva from beyond the mountains. Matteo Gribaldo, a jurist from Padua, had been a member of the Italian congregation there when Servetus was put to death ; and he at once drew upon himself the wrath of Calvin by his indignant condemnation of that act. He further followed the lead of the Spanish heretic into speculations on the Divine nature, which he can conceive, he says, " not otherwise than as two Gods, the one deriving his existence from the other." This moves the scorn of Calvin, and we find the rude ad- versary proscribed and in exile, till his death by plague in 1564. The story of the eloquent preacher Bernard Ochino we have already heard ; and how his restless pursuit of the flickering light of religious fancies scandalized his fel- lows, and brought him, in 1564, to exile and death in far Moravia. George Blandrata, a Piedmontese physician, of vigorous understanding and dominating temper, had fled in 1554 to Geneva from tiie menace of the Inquisition ; but falling here into contro\-ersy with Calvin, and into endless disput- ings about the proper dignity of the Son, he withdrew first to Zurich and afterwards to Poland, where we meet his name a few years later. Again, we find the name of Blandrata's associate, Paolo Alziati, al.so a physician, a rude " campaigner " from Milan, who about 1556 disputes in something the method of Ser- vetus, asserting that the man Christ Jesus was the Wortl in person, and that all of Christ, not his human nature only, died upon the cross. He was afterwards acti\-e with lilan- drata in Poland. 62 THE UXITARIANS. [Chap. hi. Last, Valentino Gentile, a Calabrian from near Naples, young and hot-headed, was found (says Calvin) to be " giving to drink dirty water from the Servetian puddle," holding, like Arius, that Christ was a subordinate deity, the created Word clothed in flesh : the trinity of Calvin, he said, really meant four gods. He was forced to recant, to burn his own writings, and to take oath not to leave the city without official permit. Tiring of the restraint, he escaped, to lead a wandering life in France, Poland, and Moravia ; was captured afterwards in Savoy, and sent to Berne ; and here, condemned for heresy and contempt of law, he was beheaded on the 9th of September, 1566, at the age of forty-six. With him expired, after thirteen years of strife, the last echo of the controversy stirred by Servetus in Switzerland. 1 Meanwhile, from the year 1560, Blandrata had gained great influence among the party of the Reformed in Po- land. He carried this influence so far that, at a synod held in 1562 at Pinczow, he brought their churches to decide that " all disputes regarding the trinity, mediation, or in- carnation should be abandoned ; all expressions unknown to the primitive church should be excluded ; while the clergy were to preach the pure Word of the gospel, unaltered by human comment." A proposed test, that those who main- tained the subordination of the Son should be compelled to resign their charge, was voted down, " whereby the anti- trinitarian bias of the synod became evident ; and a confes- sion prepared by Blandrata in the very words of Scripture seems to have been adopted by silent assent." (Wallace.) In the following year (1563) Blandrata went by invita- tion of Isabella, sister of the Polish king and mother of the young prince John Sigismund, into Transylvania, to be- come the court physician there. In this post he found 1 Caiitu gives tlic names of tliirty-fivc of tliese Italian exiles. THE NAME "UNITARIAN." 63 large opportunity of guiding the course of the Reformation in that valiant principality. He soon won to his view both Isabella and her son, who till the end of his life was a consistent champion of religious liberty. A still more im- portant ally was the eloquent preacher of the Reformed doctrine, Francis David, who had brought the seed of it with him in 1551 from his studies in Wittenberg,^ and, with a singular repute for zeal and independence, had been since 1556 pastor of the metropolitan church in the capi- tal city, Kolozsvar (Klausenburg). By one account, he had retired before a sharp opposition into Poland, whence he returned with Blandrata. Together, their labors were so efTective that, within five years, the privileges they contended for were officially sanctioned by a royal char- ter, and those constitutional rights were defined under which the Unitarian communion in Transylvania has con- tinued to our day. The more detailed narrative of these transactions, with their results, belongs to a later cliapter. Under the date 1568 the name " Unitarian " appears for the first time as the recognized title of a religious body. A decree had been passed by the diet at Torda in 1557, and confirmed in 1563 by the estates of the realm, securing to persons of all faiths the free exercise of their own worship. " Besides this," says the Transylvanian historian Bod, " the various religions formed a union together, [pledging them- selves] that they would ntit on the ground of religion with mutual hate trouble and persecute each other. From this union they were called The United, or Unitarian ; such, nameh', as might inhabit the kingdom by equal right with others of different faith, with whom they should make the commonwealth united and one. The name was retained by those who confessed the Father alone as the true and 1 Or, as another account lias it, from .Mtorf in Bavaria, where a group of " Crypto-.Socinians " is found as late as 1617 (Zeltncr : Leipzig, 1729). 64 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. hi. eternal [One], and was voluntarily adopted by them ; while those who asserted three persons in one essence were contrariwise termed Trinitarian^ ^ The name occurs in a narrative of David's controversy of this year (1568) with Peter Melius ; and it is first found (says Professor Boros) as the recorded title of a legalized religion " in the first article of a diet held at Leczfalva in October, 1600." Within a few years the more rationalizing temper of Francis David carried him beyond his associates so far as to deny that " worship " of Christ, or prayer addressed to him in person, ought to be allowed in the ritual of their churches. This step the more politic Blandrata urgently and at length bitterly opposed. The existence of their re- ligious body, barely tolerated at best under political changes that had come to pass, seemed to be at stake. Finding David impossible to convince, he sent in 1578 to consult the Swiss liberal leaders at Basel ; and here Socinus, with the fresh distinction of his essay upon the Trinity (which Blandrata is said to have seen in manuscript), appeared to be the man best fitted to make a last attempt. For five months, accordingly, from November till the following April, we find Socinus in Transylvania, under the same roof with David, vainly endeavoring, by dint of argument, to win him from his conviction.- The dispute, after being 1 " Historia Hungarorum Ecclcsiastica, " bk. ii., ch. xvi., p. 413. Peter Bod (1712-69) was a student three years at Leyden, and devoted twenty- four years to this work. A very fine edition was publislied in Leyden in 1888. This history is very hostile to tlie Unitarians, and has numerous defects and errors. The aljove passage is copied, witli some variation, in tlie Introduction to Rees's translation of the " Racovian Catechism" (Long- mans, London, 1818). The Uiiiti, of 1557, were not Unitarian. il)liollicc:i Fratrum PolDiinriim," 8 vols. A supplementary volume indudcs the Life of the Sueini l>y Samuel I'rzypkowski. 66 THE UNITARIANS. [CiiAi'. ui. fused him because he would not be rebaptized. In fact, rejecting the church dogma of the Fall, he held the rite itself to be a hurtful superstition. So Servetus had held; and we find, a little later, that the practice had been gen- erally given up by the Unitarians of Transylvania, who, however, observe it strictly since, as the formal initiation into their church-fellowship. Socinus remained true to his co-religionists, notwithstanding; he stood to their sup- port, promptly and ably, when their rights or their doc- trines were attacked ; and before long they received him heartily into their communion on his own terms. The first mischance that befell him here was when, about 1583, his defense of religious liberty was misrepresented to the King of Poland as an attack on royal authority. His political opinions taught, or seemed to teach, the unlawful- ness of all authority resting on force, and of capital punish- ment in the repression of crime ; and in this, says Bayle, he seemed rather a monk in disguise, come to betray his own people, than an exile for the cause of the truth. He now retired for some years to a provincial town, where he married the daughter of a country gentleman who gave him hospitaUty ; and here, in 1587, was born his only child, a daughter, Agnes (his mother's name), whose descendants hold a place of honor in the later story. ^ In the same year he fell into a grave sickness, aggravated through grief at his wife's death ; a little later, he was severely straitened in his fortunes by loss of the income that had come to him hitherto from his estate in Italy.- Tb.c chief events we meet in the later record are the following. 1 It is through her scm, Andreas W'lszowaty {Wisso'd'aliiis), that we have some of the earlier accounts of Lrelius and others ; a grandson, Andreas, was preacher after the exile in Klausenburg, Transylvania; a granddaughter mar- ried Samuel Przypkowski (several times cited), the most eloquent champion of the plundered and banished Unitarians of I'oland. (See the genealogy in Bock, vol. iii., p. 686. See also p. 92, below.) 2 See above, pp. 56, 57. His property was sequestered by the Inquisition in 1590. THE LAST DA YS OF SOCINUS. 67 At a great conference lielcl in 1588, at Brest on the Lithuanian frontier, he appears by his victorious con- tention to have estabhshed, once for all, his supremacy as undisputed leader of opinion among his fellow-believers. But the greater publicity now given to his name was soon followed by the story of the griefs and persecutions of his later years. In a letter addressed from Cracow, October 7, 1594, to a friend at Wittenberg, he thus relates a cow- ardly attack made on him in the streets: " I was seized by a trooper who shouted out that I was an Arian who had led his father into misbelief, and smeared my face abomi- nably with mud, threatening me at the saijic time with the thrust of a musket." He got ofT by pitiful entreaty, but was waylaid for hours after by a ruffian, who (he think.s) would have shot him through with a bullet but for impa- tience at the long waiting. The story (A a later assault, which brought his evil fortune to its extremity, is thus toUl : ^ "On Ascension day, in 1598, a mob of students, under Jesuit instigation, thronged the streets of Cracow, tlragging \-iolently along a man half naked, torn from his sick-bed, amid the hootings of the crowd. His books, papers, and manuscripts were plundered from him, and burned upon the market-place. With a drawn sword over his head, and death by fire threatened before his eyes, the victim cried out, ' I retract nothing. W^hat I was I am, and by the grace of the Lord Jesus that I shall be till my last breath. Do you what God j)ermits!' This man was Faustus Socinus, then fifty-nine years old. His last words, six years later, were : ' W^eary and exhausted, not by life, but by persecutions and hardships, I hasten with joy and confident hope to the finishing of my course, which assures me of rest from tnnihlc and recompense of toil.' " 1 Here cojiicd from an intcrestinii; and most instructive monograph entitled " Siebcnbiirgen " (Transylvania), by Professor Rath: Ileidelherij, 1880. 68 THE UXITARIAXS. [Chap. hi. In person, says his biographer, Socinus was moderately tall, with prominent forehead and fine eyes. " He was ex- tremely self-denying of indulgences, careful of his health (which suffered from stone and colic), and in advanced years was disabled by dimness of sight. In manner he was sim- ple, without haughtiness or ostentation. Courteous and attentive to his friends, his fault, if fault it were, was too little self-regard. Shall we say that he had more of intel- lect or of fire? We may best say, a naturally hasty temper kept well in check, with great patience under ill treatment and Ingratitude, and great self-control. His meditation, he thought, sho.uld not be on death, but rather on the life to come. Many have tried, but I know not if any have equaled him in virtue." These are the words of one (a great-grandson by mar- riage) who as a boy of twelve may probably have known him in person, and who wrote of him within thirty years after his death. If their tone is that of panegyric, as has been said, at least they are words in praise of a man who surely has not in general suffered from excess of praise. In truth, the proper fame of Socinus has been obscured by the somewhat narrow and dry positivism of his intellect. He has nothing of the genius and passion that deepen the tragic interest we find in the story of Servetus ; little of the emotional warmth or the mystical devoutness so familiar in later examples of the Unitarian faith. We are rarely moved or touched by anything in his style of thought, or the arguments he clothes it in. Whatever he may receive in the way of friendly sympathy will most likely be given to the few heroic or tragical passages of his life, But for more than two hundred years his name was that of an acknowledged religious leader. It is our duty now to seek in his writings the direction he gave so long to the opinions of his successors. Most of these writings, -indeed, are not riiE WRiTixas 01- socinus. 69 constructive or independent, but rather occasional and polemic. Our interest in them is wholly as records and way- marks in the history of opinion, not as containing a doctrinal system of any present weight or \'alue. In examining them, we are first of all struck by the childlike and almost bald directness of the assertion — not argument — in which his opinions and expositions are set forth. For Socinus held, says Neandcr, an even exagger- ated supernaturalism ; in his fundamental positions no play whatever is allowed to human reason. It is as if they only needed to be stated, to command assent. There is little or no cumulati\'e force ; little or no expansion or enforcement of fresh thought or learning ; only the weight of simple repetition, in a tone of entire good faith, such as sometimes has the best possible effect in the assertion of moral axioms. But theological propositions are not moral axioms ; and the effect, we must confess, is mostly weak. It is so, in a marked degree, with an early argument on the authority of Scripture — the only one of his .writing that appears to have been published in English. A still better example is his exposition of the first chapter of John's Gospel, which runs somewhat thus: " In the beginning" is at the opening of the Christian dispensation ; " the Word " is Christ, as (by a sort of synecdoche) declarer of the word, or truth, of God ; " the Word was with God," as being known only to him until the bai)tism of Jesus; it "was God" — which is here not the name of a Person, but an attribute of power, author- ity, and love ; " the world was made by him " — that is, men were by him created anew to good works ; " and the world knew him not" as the author of this new life. Such a style of exposition is as far apart from the philosophic in- terpretation of our day as from the dogmatic interpretation it was meant to displace. No wonder it has stood all these years as a butt of angry contempt to the dogmatic theolo- 70 THE UNITARIANS. [CiiAi'. ill. gian, an example of shallow incompetence to the educated student of opinion. Again, we have seen that Socinus held, just as positively, to the worship of Christ as a Divine Person; and we natu- rally look to see how his view differs from that of Servetus, to whom Christ is the true God so far as he can be known to men, and yet in the strictest sense a man. Socinus is here curiously literal and rationalistic. Christ, he holds, was (to quote the Apostle's phrase) " obedient unto death, even the death of the cross ; ivJierefore God hath given him a name that is above every name," rewarding him (so to speak) by an official divinity since his resurrection and ascen- sion, commissioned with full power to bestow life and im- mortality, while yet our own brother, who can feel with us. Christ ascends and dwells in heaven, he says elsewhere (p. 675), before he begins to fulfill his office upon earth. It is thus, as a delegated representative, or official deity, that we owe him homage, just as we should to a royal envoy as representing the king's majesty.^ This is what is really meant by Thomas's exclamation, " My Lord and my God!" And in this narrow sense, of an orthodox}^ all his own, he felicitates his fellow-believers on the prosperous advance of their faith in the last thirty years, in spite of bigoted obstructionists on one side and " semi-Judaizers " (followers of David) on the otlier. In his formal treatise on the Christian Religion he gives us this fine ethical definition, that Christianity is " the heavenly doctrine touching the way of eternal life," which consists in obedience to the Divine law. This he still im- proves upon in the abridgment which served as basis to the " Racovian Catechism," by saying, simply, that it is 1 Mr. Gordon plausilily holds that this interpretation was the key suggested by Lrelius, and shows how readily it could be employed to justify the use of orthodox phraseology in another than tlie iirthoddx sense. THE DOCTRIXE OE SOCJNUS. J I " tJie ivay set before us to eternal life." And it is interest- , ing to hear him, in the breadth of this generous definition,! call upon all true Poles and Lithuanians " to unite [against! their spiritual tyrants] with those who are unjustly styled \ Ebionites and Arians " — a counsel which Protestants of' that day were fatally slow to follow. Socinus does not believe that human nature was changed by the Fall : before it man was mortal, and men have been naturally capable since of virtue, freewill, and religion. He therefore finds the grounds of religion in human nature itself, and not merely as a supernatural gift (p. 537). The kind of satisfaction demanded by Calvin's theory of atone- ment, he says, cannot be made. Still, man is by nature both mortal and sinful ; he needs regeneration, change of heart, deliverance from the bondage of death : for he is not of immortal essence ; a future life is the direct and special gift of God. That Divine gift is promised as the reward of penitence, submission, and obedience ; and it is to carry this glad message that the Son of Man is sent, his ow'ii res- urrection being our pledge of eternal life. The unfaithful, on the other hand, do not suffer torment in hell hereafter; they only lose their portion in the promise, and so " perish everlastingly." These points of dcKtrine, with their truth and their limitation, contain the substance of that belief properly called Socinian. Tiiis name has f)ften been employed to cover all forms of Unitai"ian I)elief. Thus Carlyle uses it, in disparagement, to designate a theology so radically hostile to it as that of James Martineau. Such celebrity may be said to have been fairly earned by the singular influence of this system in shaj)ing the ojjinion of most disbelievers of the Trinity, especiall)' in ICngland, during the century that followed Socinus's death. Put in truth there are, and have been from the first, three distinct types (^f antitrinitarian opinion : 72. THE UNITARIANS'. [Chap. hi. namely, the Socinian, which has been briefly described / above ; the Ari^n, which was held by many eminent divines i in the Church of England, and by most of the early Uni- } tarians in America ; and the Sabellian, of which, in the ,' period we have now reviewed, Servetus is the best-known ' type. If we regard their more recent affiliations, we may say that the Socinian doctrine led most readily to the eight- eenth-century Deism ; that the Arian most easily grew into the peculiar form of religious rationalism more prevalent fifty years ago than now ; and that the doctrine of Serve- tus most natu^'ally expands, under the critical science of our time, into the highly poetic and imaginative symbolism so characteristic of the present stage of religious speculation. For the sake of a clear historical understanding of our subject, as well as in justice to the great variety of minds touched with the Unitarian opinion, it is important to keep these distinctions in view. Probably no person now alive is interested to defend the theory of Socinus, as such. Its value to us is purely historical, as marking a particular stage ^ in the evolution of opinion. But it is more than a denomina- tional concern, it is of human interest, to recognize whatever was honest and of good report in one who has sufTered so great and unmerited obloquy — the man Socinus, of whom an unfriendly biographer has said that " he so excelled in the loftiness of his genius and the suavity of his disposi- tion, such was the strength of his reasoning and the force of his eloquence, so signal were the virtues which he dis- played in the sight of all, so great were his natural endow- ments and so exemplary was his life, that he appeared formed (as it were) to capture the affections of mankind." ' 1 Rev. George Ashwell, " De Socino et Socinianismo " (Oxford, 1680), quoted by Wallace. CHAPTER IV. THE rOLlSII BRETHREN. The name "Polish Brethren" is more commonly given to a group of theologians, especially to seven whose writ- ings, in ten Latin folios, make up the body of exposition and defense of the Unitarian doctrine as held for about a century in Poland, then its best-known refuge and home. But it is also given — just as the name " Bohemian " or " Moravian " Brethren is given — to denote a religious com- munity having its peculiar belief, its own history more or less eventful, and its definite place in that larger move- ment we call the Reformation. It is here used in the latter sense. ^ Poland, early in the period we are concerned with, was one of the most brilliant and powerful monarciiies of Europe. Warsaw was " the Paris of the East." The university at Cracow was " the daughter of the Sorbonne." Coperni- cus, its most illustrious name, a man ten years older than Luther, whose mind reached out independently in mathe- matics, astronomy, and economics, was the highest in the lists of science at his day. There was a moment in our history when it might even seem as if the firm resistance of one man, John Zamoyski, to the election of Henry of 1 Tt is so used by our chief authority, Krasinski, " Historical Sketch of the Reformation in Poland" (2 vols.), vol. i., p. 144. Count Krasinski was a delegate to London from the short lived Polish republic of itS^i, and was compelled by its overthrow to remain in Eni^land. His work, thouijh col- ored by prejudice af;ainst the Unitarian doctrine, is generous in spirit and of high authority. It was written by its accomplished author in English. 73 74 '^'^^^ UNJTARIANS. . [Chap. tv. Valois as king would have put Poland in the front rank of modern powers, with a clearer assertion of religious lib- erty than was found anywhere else in Europe ; for Poland had never been closely bound up, like the nations farther west, with the papal system. Just before the Reformation, in 1500, it was almost equally divided between the Greek and Latin churches. It made one of three great Slavic populations, Bohemia lying on the west and Lithuania on the east, nearly allied in blood, speech, and religious sym- pathy. Its political constitution gave it a nobility of free- holders, very numerous, excessively jealous of their political equality, independent of king or priest, controlling at every point the sovereign they had themselves chosen, calling their state a " commonwealth " down to the time of its dis- solution and decay, claiming their right of absolute free choice as to the form of religion that should serve them best. Thus the land lay broadly open to the invasion of opin- ion from every side. Its conquests in the east included provinces lying close to the heart of Russia. Towards the Black Sea it touched the Tartar hordes, most ferocious of pagans, and included a formidable population of Cossacks, zealots for the Oriental faith. Along the Baltic it disputed its frontier against Sweden and Prussia, and so was steadily pressed by a strong Lutheran propaganda. On the south- west, towards Hungary and Moravia, it was open to the advance of still more radical opinion. It had accepted the Waldensian doctrine in tlie thirteenth century ; had fought the Inquisition and heard the pope called Antichrist in tlic fourteenth ; had welcomed the doctrine of W'iclif, and by its delegates sided with John Huss at Constance, in the fifteenth; had made in 1450 its proud declaration against arbitrary power, that " wc suffer no man to be imprisoned but by law"; and at the diet of 1459 had considered a THE KEFOKMA'J'JOiV LV POLAND. 75 plan of church reform outlined by twelve specific charges of abuse against the hierarchy. Even in the time of her deepest degeneracy, Poland never underwent the curse of the Inquisition. Most of these indications, it is true, touch only the ruling class, the "nobility" of freeholders. The body of the people, here as elsewhere, were doubtless ig- norant, servile, and superstitious — a class the Reformation could never reach. To come now to the period of our own story. In 1525 the Reformation was already a popular demand in Danzig and in Thorn. In 1539 the diet declared complete liberty of the press. In 1548 came a colony of Bohemian Breth- ren, already beginning to be known as Moravians, most fervent and popular of Reformers, who, being harassed by the priesthood, found quiet and hospitality at Thorn. The next year a body of students, clamorous for greater free- dom of instruction, being expelled from the University of Cracow, went to Konigsberg, to return presently as con- firmed Protestants in faith. In 1555 was brought about a religious union (confirmed by the Consensus of Sandomir in 1570) of the Bohemian Brethren with the Genevan party of Reformers, tlien strongest in Lithuania, under the lead of John Laski, just returned from the " Strangers' Church " in London, — the Lutherans holding sullenly and (as it later proved) fatally aloof. In 1556 it was ordained that each "noble" (landholder) should be free to adopt the form of religion he might elect. Finally, in 1572, the advancing wave of religious freedom reached its highest point in the declaration at Cracow, then the capital, that Protestant and Catholic held equal rights in the united kingdom of Poland and Lithuania — one commonwealth, since the Act of Union passed three years before. We have seen already how many Unitarian Reformers, hard pushed in Ital)- or in Switzerland, found hospitality ^6 THE UNITARIANS. [Ciiai>. iv. in Poland. In 1546 — the same year with the society at Vicenza, where, by the usual account, Laelius Socinus first appears — there was formed in Cracow an association for religious study and discussion. Without seeming to abjure the Catholic faith, this group of inquirers developed great freedom of opinion. Here the trinitarian dogma was first attacked by a Friesland Anabaptist, Adam Pastor. We find, soon after, a society of " Polish Brethren " of avowed antitrinitarian doctrine, under a native leader, Goniondski, having as early as 1565 " its synods, ministers, schools, and a complete ecclesiastical organization." At a synod held on Christmas of this year in Wengrow,'this body brought together " forty-seven ministers and eighteen eminent noblemen, besides a great number of inferior personages. ... A letter of the Transylvanian churches was publicly read, and many individuals of the first families joined on that occasion the antitrinitarian churches. The synod re- jected the baptism of infants, on the plea that it was neither used by the primitive churches nor commanded by the gospel ; it was not, however, positively prohibited, but was left to the conscience of individuals, recommending charity and mutual forbearance." The following confession of faith was published in 1574: "God has made the Christ (i.e., the most perfect Prophet) the most sacred Priest, the invincible King, by whom he has created the new world. This new world is the new birth, which Christ has preached, established, and effected. Christ has amended the old order of things, and granted to his elect eternal life, that they might, after God, believe in him. The Holy Spirit is not God, but a gift, the fullness of which the Father has bestowed upon his Son." The same confession forbids oaths, lawsuits, or any form of persecution, reserving to the church the right of closing its doors against unrul}' members. The leader, Goniondski, maintained further AXTITKIMT.INIAN CONFKSS/OX /.V POLAND. -J-J that a Christian should never bear arms, nor hold any ci\il office, nor use a sword. In token of this opinion he wore a wooden sword. He also, it is said, held to com- plete non-resistance and community of <^oods. This relig- ious body was commonly known as Anabaptist, and it is sometimes called " the Lesser Church " of the Reformers, being excluded from the larger Protestant League. We notice that this movement, so far as it took co- herent shape, was strictly national or local. It may have had its first impulse from abroad. Of foreign names, we hear those of Adam Pastor; of Laelius Socinus, who visited Poland in 1551; of Ochino, banished in 1564; of Blan- drata, whose influence has already been described. Except- ing these, all the names that meet us are Polish. They represent, too, the aristocratic — that is, the most distinctly national — class in the kingdom. This circumstance ac- counts at once for its early strength and for its later insta- bility as an element in the national life. It was far too exclusively, from the first, a movement of scholars and critics ; far too little a movement of the people. It per- ished, in the end, at the hands of a pious mob acting as agents of the popular, the official, and what assumed to be the national, faith. The confession cited above was published five years before the coming of Faustus Socinus, who did most to organize the mox-ement and has given it a name in history. Its time of chief actix'ity was during and just after the twenty- five years of service he gave it till his death, in 1604; but this service availed only to keep it alive, as a pretty vigorous school of theological opinion, through a period while Protestantism itself was steadily declining in Poland, under the crafty and most iniquitous oppression soon to be described. The days of its best vigor, and of its modest contribution to the general thought of that 78 THE UXITARIANS. [Chap. iv. age, were the fifty years before the fatal blow it received in 1638. The date at which we are now arrived (1572) brings us to a crisis in the political as well as religious history of Poland. This crisis is very dramatic in the persons and incidents it brings upon the scene, and it will be convenient here to show the nature of it by a brief outline. More than any other one thing, it served to bring Poland disas- trously to the front on the. broader stage of European politics. By a singular good fortune, the course of the Reforma- tion hitherto — that is, from 1507 to 1572 — coincided with the most brilliant period of the Polish commonwealth, under the two Sigismunds, father and son, who were the last kings in direct line of descent from the ancient Jagello stock. Though faithful Catholics, they were just and God- fearing men, as jealously guarding religious freedom as every other political right ; rarely deceived into sanction- ing, or seeming to sanction, acts of persecution such as were elsewhere common ; but, so far as disputes among Protestants themselves were concerned, hokiing the scales of justice even. Their wise policy made the " Dissenters' Peace " {pax dissidcntinvi) one great glory of free Poland. Their most eminent counselor, John Zamoyski, himself a Catholic, echoed their purpose when he said : " I would give one half of my life if those who have abandoned the Church of Rome should return willingly within its fold ; but I would rather give all my life than sutler any person to be dragged into it by force." This heroic line of Polish sovereigns originated thus. Ladislas Jagello, Prince of IJthuania, a barbarian and a pagan, had in 1386 accepted Christianity along with the crown of Poland and the hand of the Princess Hedwig {Jadwiga), only daughter of the last king. The two coun- THE HOUSE OF J. I CELLO. 79 tries were not made one, however, till 1569, the double sovereignty having thus lasted not quite two hundred years. This was the period of the growth, the conquests, and the political glory of Poland. The kingdom, at the time we ha\e now in view, extended along the 13Iack Sea and the Baltic, rcacliing to the cast almost as far as Mos- cow, and included in its dependencies the Danubian prin- cipalities, and on the west Moravia and Silesia. All the liberal institutions of Poland — its advance in science and letters, the founding of its chief universities, the protection given to religious liberty — belong to the reigns .of this patriotic royal house. It was further closely associated, and had allied itself by marriage, with the equally ancient Lithuanian house of Radzixill, whose chiefs were almost sovereign in their own principality, and were for three generaticMis leaders and champions of the Protestants : in name, CaK'inist or Genevan ; in fact, including Unitarians as well, who found in them steady protection of their threatened liberties. Such indications naturally stirred the jealousy of the ruling church. Sigismund II. (Augustus) was sharply re- buked for his favor to the Protestants by that fierce patron of the Inquisition, the pope Paul IV. (1555-59), earlier known as Cardinal Caraflfa, who urged him to a bloody suppression of them. But this he steadily refused. The one stain of persecution upon his reign is the burning alive of a poor girl, Dorothy Lazetska, in 1556, for the alleged guilt of selling a consecrated wafer to the Jews, to be used in their incantations ; and this was brought about by forg- ing his name to the warrant of execution. Poland, further- more, never took part in the Council of Trent, or accepted its body of decrees. At the death of Sigismund Augustus were left his three sisters, each closely connected with our story. Two were 8o THE UMTARIAXS. [Chap. iv. Catholics, extremely bigoted, and ruled by Jesuit influence : to them were due, indirectly, the calamities of the reigns that follow. The eldest, Catherine, Queen of Sweden, was mother of a third Sigismund, whom we shall meet hereafter as "the Jesuit King" of Poland, w^hose long, weak, and disastrous reign (i 587-1632) brought about the downfall of its freedom and prosperity. The Princess Anna, by a political arrangement to be 'noticed presently (p. 84), was acknowledged queen on her marriage with the fighting prince of Transylvania, Stephen Bathori. A third sister, Isabella, we shall better know, with her son, the heroic John Sigismund, as the first royal Unitarian convert, and as queen-mother in Transylvania.^ Until the death of Sigismund Augustus, in 1572, the king's " election " had been only the formal assent given by the senate, or assembly of the greater nobles, to the succes- sion of the eldest son. Sigismund himself had, in fact, been so elected early in his father's reign, when a boy of ten. His 'death without a son to succeed him led to radical political changes, ultimately fatal to the commonwealth. Religious parties, on whose jealousies and ambitions the choice of a successor was likely to turn, were almost equally divided. A bold and united course on the part of the Protestants might seemingly have put the control per- manently in their hands, and made Poland an equal, ally with England as first of Protestant powers. Their petty 1 The following table will aid in keeping clearly in view the course of events we are to follow. The reigns of Sigisimind I. (" the Great," 1507-4S) and Sigismund II. ("Augustus," 1548-72) are followed by an interregnum of two years. Then succeed : 1574. Henry ok Valois, son of Catherine de Medici. 1575-86. Stephen Bathori, husband of Anna Jagello. 1587-1632. Sigismund III., " the Jesuit King," followed by two sons: 1632-48. Ladisi.as IV. (See i)age 89, below.) 1648-68. John Casimir, ex-Jesuit and cardinal, who alxlicated in a speech of great emotional eloquence, having witnessed the ruin of his country in the interest of the church. rOJJSn DIET OF 1573. 8 1 disputes and mutual antipathies made this wise course im- practicable. The Catholic party were quick to take advan- tage of their disputes, w'eakening them by playing off one against the other; while the exclusion of Unitarians by all the rest from their league showed how vain a thing it was to look for real equality in affairs of state. Their best hope was in a Catholic leader, wise, large-hearted, and upright. Such a leader was John Zamoyski, " the Great," a Polish noble, now a little over thirty. Of Protestant birth, but " disgusted at the quarrels among the Protestants," he became the leader of a reform within the Catholic Church, and the foremost champion of political freedom. Void of personal ambition, he now sought only to make the choice of a king as popular as possible, and to confirm with it the absolute security of equal religious rights. Two errors are here charged to Zamoyski : that he would not permit his own name to be presented as candi- date for the vacant throne ; and that, in trying to popular- ize the election by providing that all ranks of nobles — that is, all free citizens — should take part in it, he invited those extraordinary scenes of turbulence which have made the very name of the Polish diet an astonishment and a warn- ing. The gathering was held in an open plain near War- saw, purposely selected in a region hotly Catholic, and easily reached by a mob of petty nobles. " There were already at Warsaw," says an eye-witness, " many armed gentlemen and many lords, accompanied by a great num- ber of their friends or vassals, who had arrived from every part of the kingdom. The plain where they had pitched their tents, and where the diet was to take place, had all the appearance of a camp. They were seen walking about with long swords at their sides, and sometimes they marched in troops, armed with ])ikes. muskets, arrows, and javelins. Some of them, besides the armed men whom 82 THE UNITARIANS. [CiiAr. iv. they brought for their guard, had even cannon, and were as if intrenched in their quarters. One might have said that they were going to a battle rather than to a diet ; that it was an army for war, not a council of state ; and that they were met rather to conquer a foreign kingdom than to dispose of their own. It looked quite possible that the affair would be determined rather by force of arms than by deliberation and votes. "^ A large array of fully equipped and mounted men was on the plain. In theory, any one of the voting nobility, of at least a hundred thousand, might stop the whole proceeding by insisting on his individual vote. It is to their great credit that all passed off without a single act of violence. The candidate of the more rigid Catholics, an Austrian prince, had suddenly died ; and by what in the light of history seems the strangest choice the election fell without dispute upon Henry of Valois, younger brother of the young Charles IX. of France. Polish fancy had been ap- pealed to by the eloquent traveled dwarf, Krasowski, in favor of the " fine gentleman " from the French court, the youthful hero of Jarnac, who would surely bring with him golden days. Grim rumors of the St. Bartholomew of the year before, caught up with joy and boasting by the Jesuits, might well give the Protestants pause ; but they thought to make all good by accepting Charles's assurance that this was only a matter of local police, at worst an unhappy acci- dent. They insisted, however, on the amplest pledges for the security of French as well as of Polish Protestants. An embassy of twelve nobles went to Paris in great glory, " with coats of gold embroidery," says De Thou, " in grave majesty, like a Roman senate, their bridle-reins studded with silver, with gilded housings and costly decorations, 1 Gratiani, the papal envoy, in Krasinski, vol. ii., p. 24. UEXKV OF I'ALO/S. 83 attended by hii;li-born youths in silken robes, carrying bla/.ing links a yard in IcnL^lh " (\ol. ii., ]). 286). lleiny, his mother's spoiled darling, lingered while he could, both mother and son hoping that his brother's death might give him a more shining crown in Paris. At length, in February, 1574, he consented to be installed in Warsaw, and to take the solemn pledge required, l^ut his Jesuit advisers, it was well known, had counseled liim that " no faith need be kept with heretics." Once, when he seemed to hesitate in the course of the solemnity, a loud Protestant voice was heard, " Swear, or you shall not be king! " And the weak, dissolute boy did as he was bidden, intending the lie. We should hardly know to what evil depth of craft and perjury even Jesuit guile might descend if we had not, at full length, the advice given by Gratiani, con- science-keeper of the young king.^ Before many days were past, the new reign was already discredited by its levities and extravagances. Within four months, weary of his exile, Henry heard gladly of his brother's miserable death, and fled away from a night ban- quet, close followed on horseback by his scandalized sub- jects, who pursued him as far as the frontier. Not to expose themselves a second time to like contumely, the Protestants now secured the choice of a ruler (as they be- lieved) of their own persuasion, under the political arrange- ment before mentioned. A delegation of twelve, including a single Catholic, was sent to confer with Stephen Bathori, reigning prince of Transylvania, who accepted the crown on the terms they offered — marriage with the elderly ' In Krasinski, " Kifonnatioii in Poland" (vol. ii., ]>]i. 35-38); also the details of Jesuit methods, taken from a Polish Catholic writer, in tlic same author's " Religious History of the Slavonic Nations" (|>]i. 189-197), with the elaborate instructions given to tlie ArchI)isho]i of KiolT for cajoling the Russian clergy into the Roman Church {ifii(/., p. 201). 84 1'^^^ UNITARIANS. [Chap. iv. princess, Anna Jagello — leaving his own principality to his brother Christopher. Stephen was a man of intelligence and force, now some- thing over forty, who by hard fighting had risen first to be chief officer, and then successor, to the heroic John Sigis- mund. His bride was nearly twenty years older, and a strict Catholic. He was supposed to be a Protestant — presumably, a Unitarian — of inferior rank, as she doubtless made him feel. A father-confessor, smuggled in by the one Catholic envoy, had gained his ear, and too easily per- suaded him that he should find peace at home by joining the Roman party. To the alarm of the other delegates, Stephen appeared dutifully at mass the next morning after accepting his new dignity. Like Henry of Navarre, eight- een years later, he professed a politic change of creed — " a crown was well worth a mass," — happily, without change of heart. ^ He steadily upheld the legal rights of the com- munion he had publicly forsaken. He was one of the heroic, that is to say, the fighting, kings. A horrible bor- der war with Russia, forced on him by Ivan the Terrible, made the particular field of his achievement. His larger policy was shown in his dealing with the Cossacks of the Dnieper (Zaporogian), who were of the Eastern faith ; whom he not only brought into order and subjection, but organized under a discipline of arms that made them loyal subjects and an efTective guard of the frontier. The hideous ruin brought about by an insolent wantonness that turned them into most vindictive foes will meet us pres- ently. A Latin epitaph on Stephen testifies to the ex- traordinary veneration in which his name was held : " In church more than priest, in state more than king, injustice 1 I follow here the Polish story, as told hy Krasinski and others. The Transylvanian account makes Stephen a Catholic from the first; but at least he held his faith very lightly. SOCINUS AV POLAND: THE " SOCIXIANS:' 85 more than jurist, in battle more than soldier, in friendship more than friend, in all things more than sage." In this period we find the greatest activity among the Unitarians of Poland in establishing their faith. Their new leader, Faustus Socinus, had come to them in 1579. Though received at first with distrust, he gained their com- plete confidence, and at length complete ascendency, in a long series of conferences for the fixing of their creed and discipline. Since the position taken among them at Pinc- zow, in 1562, when Blandrata had prevailed on them to discard creed for Scripture, they had been commonly called " Pinczovians." The town of Rakow {Racovia), founded in 1569 by a generous noble, Sieninski, came to be their chief headquarters, with chapel, school, printing-house, and a university established in 1602 ; and from this they were more widely known as the " Racovian " sect. But the great influence of Socinus has given them the perma- nent title " Socinian," by which alone they have a place in history. Their story is an episode in the great political tragedy now about to be displayed. At the death of Stephen Bathori, in 1587, religious par- ties were again about equally divided. Each in due form now chose its own candidate to the throne. Maximilian of Austria was elected by a coalition between the pajjal legate and the Lutherans; while Sigismund, crown-prince of Sweden, son of Catherine Jagello, was chosen by the "national" party, prompted (it is said) by his aunt Anna, the aged widow-queen. Threatening disorders were put down by the strong, quick hand of Zamoyski, the general- in-chief, who ended the contest by taking Maximilian pris- oner after a sharp battle, and Sigismund was accepted without dispute. He had been brought up nominally a Lutheran, but really, under his mother's influence, as a Catholic of the strictest creed, looking to receive the crown 86 THE UNITARIANS. [Chai-. iv. of Poland in due course. When he succeeded later to that of Sweden, his preference of Polish ways was so open and offensive that in 1604 he was deposed from the northern kingdom, and continued, what he prided himself on being, the "Jesuit King" of Poland. It is now that the name "Jesuit" begins to show its malign and disastrous meaning in our story. As early as 1567, to stay the advance of religious liberty, an appeal had been made for a missionary colony of that order in Poland. This was strongly urged by Cardinal Hosen {Hosius), a prelate of every ecclesiastical merit, but with no one virtue of a true citizen or an honest man ; the same who counseled Henry of Valois to break his oath on the cynical ground that " no faith is to be kept with heretics." He soon succeeded in founding a Jesuit establishment, fully equipped for the evil task of the eighty years that followed. The first grave warning of disaster was an armed and (it is declared) constitutional revolt {Rokosh) in 1605, break- • ing out at Lublin, in the south, which seems not to have \ been wholly suppressed for about three years. The war ' against religious liberty was followed up in four several ; ways. First were individual cases of suppression or per- s secution, sometimes most atrocious: in 161 1, for example, i a village " syndic," or treasurer, a Unitarian, John Tysco- i witz, declining to swear by the crucifix and casting it to the ground as an emblem of superstition, had his tongue \ torn out, his hands and feet chopped off, and was then \ burned at the stake, Sigismund, it is said, consenting to j this horror only under strong pressure from his queen. ' Second, the populace were stirred to a fierce intolerance, so / that the Protestant strength was broken by a long series \ of riots, in which Unitarians were the first to suffer — at | Cracow in 1598, at Lublin in 1627, at Rakow in 1638, 1 THE JESUIT POLICY. 87 and at length the horrors of 1660 \ but all religious freedom eventually perished. Third, the stricter Protestant sects were enticed into consent with the policy of crushing the more liberal (as in the barbarous destruction at Rakow in 1638), till their own doom came, less than a century later, in 1733.^ Fourth, the master-stroke of this policy was achieved by taking in hand, through court influence and all pretensions of superior skill, the training of the sons of higher families, in which office they found their chief rivals in some of the Unitarian schools. This last was carried out with the peculiar subtlety and skill known only, in its perfection, to Jesuit seminaries. The best thing it did (as once remarked of it) was to give the Polish nobility a fluent smattering of bad Latin — an accomplishment of which they were very vain. The method, well understood if not openly avowed, was to sap the vigor of the young mind by keeping it through all its best years in a state of pupilage. To do this the more eff"ectually, it forced upon the learner the study of a pre- posterously difficult Latin grammar, compiled by a Spanish monk, Alvar, so that the answer was always ready, in case a parent shoukl think a boy fit for some manlier task : " At least let him stay till he has finished his grammar lessons" — by which time the pinched and dwarfed intelli- gence could be easily turned to a tool of mental tyranny. The childish understanding, along with the ferocious pas- sion, that astonish us in later Polish story, were the fit ripe fruit of this stupid and wicked training. Naturally, the first victims were the Unitarians, who had not even the defense there might be in a united Prot- estant opinion. ICarly in the reign of Sigismunil TIL, in I Beza had urged that Unitarians shoull 1)C suppressed by the sword, after Calvin's righteous example in Geneva. Their final rejection from the Polish Protestant League was in 1598. 88 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. iv. 1594, Socinus had published the treatise on "Christ the Saviour " {dc Jesn Christo Scrvatorc), by which his theology- is most distinctly known. Four years later was the brutal assault upon him in his sick-bed, before described (p. 67). In 1605, the year after his death, was published in Polish the first form — probably in the main his own work — of the " Racovian Catechism," which long had a certain fame as the best exponent of Socinian theology.^ The school at Rakow went on, with a fair amount of well-earned popularity and a high repute for good learning. Under its eminent head, John Crell, it won the title of "the Sarmatian Athens." It " was frequented not only by Socinian but also by Protestant and Catholic youths ; and it numbered about a thousand pupils," besides adding to the prosperity of the district by its fame as a university town. This continued for nearly forty years, its enemies waiting the hour for its destruction. At length, in the fatal year 1638, two of its students, for boyish mischief, were seen to stone a wooden crucifix set up beside the public street. The boys were duly checked and disciplined ; public apology was made, with the offer of any reasonable expiation ; but nothing could save the school. In spite of generous remonstrance from Protestants, from members of the Greek Church, and even from Catholics, " a decree was passed, enjoining that the Unitarian church at Rakow should be closed, the college broken up, the printing-house demolished, the ministers and professors branded as infa- mous, proscribed and banished from the state." The sen- tence was so ruthlessly carried out that the aged Sieninski, landlord of the territory and founder of the town, was accused by his own son, greedy of the inheritance, and 1 An edition in Latin, in 1609, gave it wide currency. Attempts were made in England to suppress it in 1614 and in 1651. A very handsome English version, edited by Thomas Rees, with a valuable historical introduc- tion, was published in London in 1818, by Longman & Co. COSSACK REVOLT. 89 only " escaped the severity exercised against his fellovv- reHgionists by taking an oath that he was innocent of the crime committed against a wooden cross by two school- boys." This atrocious act led to further consequences. Besides its crushing direct injury, " it gave encouragement to the provincial tribunals in every part of the kingdom to per- secute with the utmost severity all who openly professed antitrinitarian sentiments, and to prevent the unfortunate exiles from Rakow from obtaining a secure and peaceable asylum in other places." This, too, in the reign of the com- paratively manly and just Ladislas, elder son of Sigismund. Before the end of his reign came, the awful retribution began' — an uprising of the Cossacks in 1647, led by Hmelnitski,- a chief of extraordinary craft and power, whose wife had been abducted and afterwards murdered in pure wantonness by a Polish governor. This horrible revolt desolated the entire south of Poland, bringing ruin and destruction especially upon the Unitarian communities, which were most numerous and prosperous there. This misery was checked for a time by a treaty that promised the Cossacks certain political rights, particularly that of being represented in the senate by their ecclesiastical chief, a dignitary of the Eastern Church. But when he came to present himself, the Catholic senators by common consent turned their backs and left the hall in a body, dis- daining to sit with a schismatic. Stung by the insult, the Cossacks broke into a revolt more terrible than before, leading on a prodigious horde of Tartars as allies. 1 How awful, let those who will see in the two wonderfully powerful and impressive tales by Sienkiewicz, " With Fire and Sword " and " The Deluge " (Hoston, Little, Urown & Co.). The author writes, apparently, from the point of view of a fanatic Romanist : at least, that is the phase of feeling the narrative reflects; but it exhibits, with terril)le fidelity, the crimes of inso- lence, lawlessness, and violence among the Polish nobility, which brought the downfall of the commonwealth. 2 In Polisli, Chniiclnicki. go THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. iv. In the midst of these horrors the younger son of Sigis- mund, John Cashiiir, came to the throne — a bigot, a ped- ant, a cardinal, and a Jesuit, but brave to strike one mighty blow at the invader. Beaten back from an awful siege, and crushed in a terrible battle, the Cossacks threw them- selves into the arms of their fellow-religionists of Russia. By 1654 all the eastern half of Poland, including Lithuania, was in the hands of those merciless assailants. Just then the evil genius of John Casimir had prompted him to put forth his claim to Sweden, renounced by his father fifty years before ; and in a few months his cousin Charles Gustavus — a warrior in temper, like his grandson Charles XII. — held without dispute whatever of Poland Cossack, Tartar, and Russian had spared. John Casimir, an exile in Silesia, put himself under the special protection of the Holy Virgin, vowing that, if restored to his kingdom, he would right the wrongs of the peasants and " purify the land of heresy." Seasonably for the fulfillment of his oath, Charles Gus- tavus, who was master of Poland in fact, now refused in brute insolence to be made its king by law. His sword, he said, was the only title he chose to hold it by. The proud nobles who had accepted him made a confederacy to restore their native prince. The Swedish troops, hard- ened in the Thirty Years' War, had outraged the peasantry by burning, plunder, massacre, and cutting off" their cap- tives' hands. A tempest of fanatical reaction set in. Lord and serf joined hands to sweep the invader out of the land. The Swedes, by help of the Protestant " Great Elector," broke (it is said) forever the strength of the Polish chivalry in the fatal three days' battle at Warsaw. Then the elec- tor changed sides. Sweden was forced to give way. Prus- sia claimed and won its independence. Polnnd, exhausted and dismembered, was in condition to call itself a sover- DEATH OK EXILE {1G5S-60). 9I eign state once more. And in 1658 the time was come for John Casimir to execute his vow. The decree in which he did it is by far the most impor- tant pubHc document that has ever touched the destinies of the Unitarian body ; and, as such, the substance of it is copied here:^ "Although our law hath ever forbidden the Arian sect to subsist and spread in our dominions, yet since, by some fatal chance of the Commonwealth, the said sect hath for no long time begun to expand as well within our realm as in the grand duchy of Lithuania, denying the fore-eternity of the Son of God ; We therefore, reafifirming and leaving in full rigor against them the statute [afore- said], have ordained as follows: That if any such shall be found, who shall have dared or shall attempt within our said dominions to confess, propagate, or preach the afore- said doctrine, or to protect and cherish it and its uphold- ers, and shall be lawfully convicted of the same, every such person shall be liable to be without delay capitally punished by our magistrates, by their own authority, under penalty of loss of office." A respite of three years was granted for the sale of estates and collection of debts. With superfluous cruelty, the three years' term was sud- denly cut short, without notice, at the end of two years, and those who held to their faith must leave at once, mostly beggared and stripped. One of the fine traditions of the Polish Brethren speaks of the noble plea made at Cracow, in 1660, by Andrew Wiszowaty, grandson of So- cinus's only child, who stood alone before the diet in de- fense of the banished brotherhood. From an appeal made 1 It is said that there was doubt for a time whetlier the victims of it should be Socinians or Jews ; tlie Jews, however, though worse misbelievers, were more profitaljle subjects. Besides, the <^reat house of Radzivill, second in the kinj^dom and chief protector of the Unitarians, had consented, under the double tempest of invasion, to jnit Lithuania under protection of the Swedes — a deadly afTront to the kinj;. 92 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. iv. to the Great Elector by Samuel Przypkowski, while these wrongs were still fresh and bleeding, the following words are taken : " Upon the shore where we were cast beats a most cruel tempest and storm of ills — continual wasting by the enemy, continual assault of troops, frequent gather- ing of armies, bitter hate and strifes between kings and nobles, poverty of all ranks, a plague of debased coinage, which drains the sap and very life-blood from the body of the kingdom, filling it with dropsy, civil war, and the heap- ing up of every evil, and, which is worst of all, no com- fort of hope, but worse apprehension of the future. How base and pitiful it is, that so many noble men and women, widows and orphans, driven from their native land, many of them stripped of wealth and great estates, who once gave largely in chanty to others, now need not others' help alone, but their pity ; and are in peril of new and even worse persecution, since they no longer have the strength to bear up under it. Tossed by so many waves and storms, suffering every form of dread and horror, we are thrust off from the hospitality even of the sand, yes, the bleak and barren sand. Because we are beginning to till laboriously these sterile and desert spots, and to restore the scorched and broken ruins of the towns, what harm or loss shall we be charged with bringing upon the regions to which we have fled for refuge? Is it for this we have deserved to be vexed with threats and edicts, or cast forth to the insolent barbarity of the mob?"^ The exile of the Polish Brethren was even more cruel than the tragedy which twenty-five years later took place, on a far larger scale, in the expulsion of the Huguenots from France. These had at least the sympathy and the protection of a vast body of co-religionists, the hospitality of neighboring England further prompted by commercial 1 " Apologia Afflicts Innocenti.x' " (1666). LAST OF THE POLISH BRIiTHREN. 93 rivalry, or the welcome of many among them to the new colonies of America ; but, for our poor heretics, counted at most by tens and not by hundreds of thousands, the nar- row integrity of conscience, which was their one heroic virtue, cut them ofT from the fellow-feeling of Catholic and Protestant alike. Some found generous welcome over the border, in Transylvania. Some, by the queen's bounty, were settled in Silesia. Some sought refuge in Holland, still famous for its splendid defense of religious independ- ence ; but here they were received churlishly and grudg- ingly, out of old Anabaptist memories, and were pushed back, as far as might be, to the less inhospitable regions farther east. Their last appeal, which we have listened to, gained them generous reception in Brandenburg and Prus- sia ; and here we may consider to have been the home of such poor remnants as still clung to the old name and brotherhood. In 1730 eleven families of them still sur- vived. As late as 1838, in answer to a friendly letter of inquiry, two old men — by name Morsztyn and Schlichting — were reported as still living in eastern Prussia, a remnant of the old Socinians. With them, we may suppose, passed away the last fragment of what, for one eventful century, had borne honorable part in the brilliant commonwealth of Poland. Bayle, writing about 1690, when the story of their exile was still fresh, makes the following comment : " There are few who are not persuaded that it [the Unitarian opinion] has extended in obscurity, and spread more widely day by day ; and it is thought that, as things now are, Europe would be soon surprised at finding itself Socinian if pow- erful princes should embrace this heresy, or if they should only enact that its profession should be relieved of the temporal disabilities it labors -under. This is the opinion of many persons ; and the opinion perplexes and alarms 94 I^^J^ UNITARIANS. [Chap. iv. them." It is a comment natural to a freetliinker, recoil- ing from some recent horror of intolerance, like the revo- cation of the Edict of Nantes. But, in itself, it is shallow and improbable. The Unitarian doctrine is not a form of thought, and the Socinians were not a body of men, likely to make a deep impression upon a time of excessive bigotry or of virulent controversy. These men were hon- est, learned, pious, faithful to their light. They deserve their share of henor — no small share. But their thin rationalizing, not backed by any large intelligent criticism, was far enough from meeting the deeper claims of the relig- ious life. We have seen how their narrow interpretation, their incorrigible pedantry, held them from the broader ranges of the more vigorous life that lay within their reach. A conspicuous defeat has its reasons, which should be sought in history. Socinus began by breaking rather vio- lently with the bolder and equally pious rationalism of his natural allies in Transylvania. His Polish adherents de- feated the hope of religious union (if such a thing were possible) by incessantly pressing the minute points of like- ness, or points of difference, that lay between them and more orthodox Reformers. It was the same to the last. The pathetic and eloquent appeal of Przypkowski, just quoted, is immediately followed by a formal argument to show, not the nobility of a true religious freedom, but that the Socinian creed was, after all, not so very heretical ; not nearly so heretical, in fact, as some with which it had been confounded, particularly the " Judaizing " opinions of Francis David and his like. These are melancholy weaknesses. But they are, as we recollect, the weaknesses of the best and most intelligent men of their day. They show how far it was from possible, then, that the first principles of a scientific theology should be understood. THE '' KACOVIAN CATECHISM:'' 95 The Polish Brethren nuist needs prove the aecuracy of their opinion, not content with simple honesty of thought. The Socinian opinion as to controverted points of doc- trine has been sufliciently shown elsewhere. Its master- piece of exposition, the " Racovian Catechism," well de-jk serves the reputation it gained. Wholly apart from the value of its theology, the form of its argument gives it an educa- tional value distinctly superior to that of any similar work of the school to which it is nearest allied. Its bits of ex- egesis, turning on the exact meaning of Scripture terms, are often vivid and suggestive. Its treatment of practical ethics, in the light of Bible precepts, is singularly wise and clear: take, for example, the topic of Usury (p. 237), so often treated by religionists with mere ignorant tirade ; while the breadth of plan and the logical method and com- pleteness— beginning with the true value of the Scriptures, V and ending by an answer to the question. What is the In- " visible Church of Christ? — make it, to this day, a treatise well worth study. The well-taught, sober, rational, and devout Unitarianism, which accepted this for a century or more as its best manual of faith, held to it by a wise and fortunate choice. It cannot be said to have been really superseded until the coming in of that revolution in relig- ious thought implied in what we call " the higher criticism" of our own day. The Socinians have been thus generously judged by Archbishop Tillotson, an opponent of their theology, who wrote, about 1690: "I must own that generally they are a pattern of the fair way of disputing and of debating matters of religion, without heat and unseemly reflections upon their adversaries. They generally argue matters with that temper and gravity, with that freedom from pas- sion and transprrt, which becomes a serious and weighty argument ; and for the most part they reason closely and 96 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. iv. clearly, with extraordinary guard and caution, with great dexterity and decency, and yet with smartness and subtlety enough, with a very gentle heat, and few hard words — virtues to be praised wherever they are found : yea, even in an enemy, and very worthy our imitation. In a word, they are the strongest managers of a weak cause, and which is ill-founded at the bottom, that perhaps ever yet meddled with controversy. Insomuch that some of the Protestant and the generality of the popish writers, and even of the Jesuits themselves, who pretend to all the rea- son and subtlety in the world, are in comparison of them but mere scolds and bunglers. Upon the whole matter they have but one, this great, defect, that they want a good cause and truth on their side, which if they had, they have reason and wit and temper to defend it." ^ 1 Quoted by Krasinski, vol. ii., p. 407. CHAPTER V. T R A N S \- L V A N I A . The oldest existing group of Unitarian ciiurches is that in Transylvania, the extreme easterly portion of the Aus- tro-Hungarian Empire. Its history as an organized body dates from 1568, when the Unitarian belief was formally recognized as one of the ftnir legal "religions" of that province — the Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist), and Unitarian, whose constitutional rights were reaffirmed at Presburg in 1848. A royal charter, dated 1571, gave to it corporate rights which no political changes have suc- ceeded in annulling; though the attempt has been made, often with excessive cruelty and injustice, here as else- where. Its survival has been due partly to the nature of the country and the circumstances of its history, but chiefly to the singular qualities of the unconquerable race of men that hold it. A few words must first be said, ac- cordingly, of the land and people.^ Transylvania is the blunt wedge of rugged country, in outline not unlike a ram's head, abutting upon the old frontier of Turkey, now Roumania. It covers some sixteen thousand square miles, being not quite half as large as the 1 In this sketch T avail myself of some recollections of a visit to Transyl- vania in 1881, as (Jelegate to the " Supreme Consistory " held at Klausenl>urg (Kolozsvar). My chief authorities, besides, are the monograph of Professor Rath, " Siehenl)iirgen " (Ileidelherg, 1880); an historical sketch by Joszef Ferencz, found in his " Kleiner Unitarier Spiegel" (Vienna, 1879); narra- tives of English visitors, Raget, Tayler, Chalmers, and Ciordon ; that of A. Coquerel ///j, in the "Revue Politique et Eitteraire " (November, 1873); a review by 1'. Hunfalvyof .Alexis Jakal)'s " Eife of Francis David" (Buda- pest, 1880) ; and the personal aid kindly given me by my friends Prof. George I5oros, of Kolozsvar, and Mr. John Eretwell. 97 98 THE UXITAKIANS. [Chai'. v. State of Maine. Its population is something over two millions, extremely mixed and diverse : less than one third are Hungarian, or Magyar; considerably more than half are Roumanian or Wallach ; the rest being made up of Germans, Gypsies, Armenians, and Jews. It is guarded on the north, east, and south by the great mountain masses of the Carpathians, which rise steep from the vast levels that spread eastward into Asia. On the west it is sharply divided from the broad Hungarian plain by a very abrupt and rocky boundary of hills — the Kirdly-Jiag, or " King's Fence." It thus stands out boldly upon the map as a great natural fortress or bastion. It was, in fact, for more than a thousand years the chief bulwark of southeastern Europe against invasions always threatening from the East. In the fifteenth century the genius of its greatest national hero, John Hunniades [Hjnijddi Jdnos), seconded by the half-fabulous exploits of Scanderbeg in Albania, seems alone to have saved the German Empire from the fate of Constantinople. And that great terror lasted into, and more than a century beyond, the time of Luther. The " seven cardinal sins " of Transylvania, which have greatly perplexed its history, are said to be its Three Na- tions and its Four Religions. The four chartered religions are, as we have seen, the Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Unitarian. The "three nations" are: (i) the Szeklers (" frontiersmen "), who also call themselves Attilans, claim- ing to be descended from a portion of the vast troop of At- tila the Hun, which fell back from the battle of Chalons in 451, and has held this land ever since; (2) those who in distinction from the Szeklers are called Magyars, being of the same race and tongue, but left, after a second Hunnish invasion, early in the tenth century, 1 in possession of the ^ Of wliich curious incidents arc found in ScIiciTcl's " Kkkeliart, " witli his authorities in Pertz's " Monunienta Gernianica," voh ii., pp. 104-107. M.IGYAJkS, SAXOXS, WALLACIIS. 99 land to which they gave the name Hungary : they ac- cepted Christianity under Duke Geisa, father of their king St. Stephen, some time before the year looo; (3) some- thing over 200,000 Germans, here called Saxons, colonized from lower Germany in the twelfth and thirteenth centu- ries, to strengthen the defenses against invasion and fill up great voids left by incessant attack and spoliation, espe- cially the horrid Tartar inroad of 1241 : these are repre- sented as a sturdy and valiant people, of thrift somewhat sordid and holdfast, hating change, Lutheran almost to a man.- Singularly true to the language and customs of their forefathers, their very local costumes and popular songs are said to be the same that may be found to-day in their distant fatherland. They have given its German name, Sicbciihiirgcii (" Sex'cn Fortresses"), to the land in which they dwell in a certain seclusion, a sort of secular- ized Covenanters. Some have joined the Unitarians, but in doing it ha\-e had to renounce their native tongue as well as creed. The impracticable Magyar is the vernacu- lar of the Unitarian confession ; and that church was itself at one time known simply as " Hungarian." These " three nations " do not however include all, or even half, the population of Transylvania. In fact, since the i)olitical equality decreed by the Hungarian Diet in 1848, they have ceased practically to exist. A considera- ble majority consists of Wallachians or Wallachs, — that is, " Strangers," who call themselves " Roumans," who claim to be descended from the Dacian colonists that retreated before the Goths across the Danube in 272, and who cher- ish dreams of a Daco-Roumanian sovereignty to lord it some day over their old masters and oppressors the Hun- garans. To the eye they make a picturesque but abject peaL uitry, skilled only in the ruder tasks, addicted to ser- vile superstitions, and guilty of horrible atrocities in several lOO THE UNiTAKIANS. [CnAi'. v. insurrections, the latest being that prompted by Austrian intrigues in 1848.^ In reHgion they hold to a debased form of the Eastern ritual, those who (under pressure from Maria Theresa) acknowledge the pope as spiritual sover- eign being of a " received " religion, while the rest remain "schismatic." Their priests, some of whom are men of high intelligence, are greatly dreaded as secret agents of Russian policy, thus further embittering and complicat- ing old jealousies of race. And to this we may add that, while the Magyars are nearly stationary and the Saxons are dwindling in population, the Wallachs rapidly increase, both by immigration and (spite of their extreme poverty) by their kindly and easy-going family life.- In numbers, then, those of Magyar blood and speech are hardly more than one fourth of the inhabitants of Tran- sylvania. But they are, as any one who has met an assem- blage of them will quickly recognize, natural leaders and rulers of men — sturdy, intelligent, grave, solid, masterful ; a race that could not fail to lead and command, as they have done, among feebler or less resolute populations. Recklessly brave, they stood in front of the great battle that for a thousiand years had to be fought for the security of western Christendom. They might be nearly exter- minated ; again and again they have been cut down to a mere fragment. Incessantly reduced in numbers, the race has maintained itself by a resolute, haughty, and exclusive temper, strikingly relieved against a frankness of manner 1 Of this the Hungarian novelist Jokai has given several powerful pictures, the completest being in a Transylvanian romance, " Die nur einnial Helien," and the most tragic in " Hungarian ,Sl. vi. there was no formal secession of Presbyterian from Episco- pal. On one hand, Archbishop Laud is said to have been the strongest defense of the national church as against papacy. On the other hand, under shelter of that eccle- siastical alliance, the Puritan cause was slowly gaining strength for the struggle that lay before it, little heeding that it but led the way to the more daring assault of Inde- pendency. Puritanism, hitherto best known under such names as Calvinist and Presbyterian, has been defined as implying " Scripturalism, a severe morality, popular sympathy, and ardent attachment to civil freedom." A vigorous attempt was made to hold it in check when, in 1640, Laud issued a series of Canons,^ the fourth of them being in condemna- tion of " the damnable and cursed heresy of Socinianism." Here we are struck by the emergence of a new name in English theological parties. The Unitarians of Poland had now just begun to decline from their prosperity and influ- ence. Two years before, they had felt the first hard blow of persecution in their destruction of their college and press at Racovia. The effect of this blow would naturally be to scatter their opinions, like sparks, over a wider circle. And a few points will here show how they had drawn such atten- tion in England as to call forth Laud's special animosity. As early as 1614, within ten years after the death of Socinus, the " Racovian Catechism," in a Latin version, had been publicly burned in London, and its circulation, so far as might be, had been suppressed. In 16 16 the first Eng- lish church and congregation of Independents had been gathered by Henry Jacob, a disciple and companion of John Robinson in Leyden, who afterwards joined the Plym- outh colony in America. With avowed Independency came increased liberty of thinking in the body of the peo- 1 These will l)e found in Neal's " History of tlic I'uritans," vol. ii. WILLIAM CIIILLIXGWORTII. I 25 pie. In 1635 appeared Chillingworth's i^reat work in de- fense of Protestantism, in which he made his celebrated declaration that " the Bible, the ]5ible, the Bible only is the relit^ion of Protestants." This necessarily carried with it the freedom of private criticism and interpretation. Chillingworth was a writer who struck hard and sharp in controversy. Hobbes likens him to " a lusty fighting fellow, that did drive his enemies before him, but would often give his owne party terrible smart back-blowes." His position was exactly that contended for from the beginning by the Polish Unitarians ; and it is no wonder that the charge of " Socinianism " was at once made against him. This was done in 1636, in a pamphlet by a Jesuit, Edward Knott. In his first chapter Knott " gives an account of the Socinians, in which he does everything in his power to render them odious in the eyes of the public " ; while in the second chapter he makes a point against the Church of England (which demands outward conformity only), that it has no infallible Head, like Rome, and so invites laxity and easiness of belief. The charge was followed up against Chillingworth with extreme virulence until his death, in 1644, particularly by P'rancis Cheynell, rector of Petworth. Cheynell published in 1643 a work entitled " The Rise, Growth, and Danger of Socinianism, together with a Plain Discovery of a Desperate Design of Corrupting the Protest- ant Religion," ascribed to Chillingworth, and " encouraged by the doctrines and practices of the Arminian, Socinian, and Popisii party." So far, indeed, he carried his animos- ity, that at Chillingworth's burial he cast into the grave a copy of his great " Defense," saying, " Get thee gone, thou cursed book, which has seduced so many precious souls! Get thee gone, thou corrupt, rotten book — earth to earth, dust to dust! Go, rot with thy author! " The olTcnse was, to have " run madde witii reason " and tolerated heresy. 126 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. vi. A few dates, carefully followed down, will serve to show the steps by which Independency asserted itself against both Presbyterianism and Prelacy, until the time of its short triumph under Cromwell, and the assault made upon it in all its forms by the Presbyterian party. The challenge thrown out by Laud in 1640 was in- stantly taken up by the Puritan party in the Long Parlia- ment, which met that year. But the Presbyterians claimed, as absolutely as Canterbury or Rome, to hold a form of church government divinely ordained, of full authority over belief and conduct ; and the same weapons that had beaten off their ancient foe, the Hierarchy, they now turned against their new enemies, the Independents. From many a passage in the magnificent pamphlets put forth by Milton, from 1 64 1 to 1644, we see with what enthusiasm, elo- quence, and splendid hope the battle was kept ujd on the other side. The Independents in King James's time were, as Lord Bacon had scornfully said of them, " but a very small number of very silly and base people, here and there in corners dispersed." Hunted out of England in 1608, finding in Holland the secure shelter from which they sent their colonists back into England and beyond the sea, they, had in 1616 a single congregation with vigor enough to live ; and " from this as a nucleus Independency gradually spread through England, and, in spite of the harsh measures of Laud and the court, came in the middle of the century to occupy a dominant place among the powers by which the destinies of England were swayed." While the struggle of parties in the Long Parliament was going on, and during the sessions of the Westminster Assembly (1643-48), the controversy grew more bitter. The Presbyterians, under their " League and Covenant," hoped to force all of Britain and her dependencies into one uniform pattern of church government: this led, indeed, ATTACK OX IXDEPEXDEXCY. 127 to the sending of a special embassy from New England in 1644, to protect its threatened system of Congregationalism. In the same year appeared the first of a series of volumes carrying on the attack on the Presbyterian side, whose very titles carry in them the venom of the debate. The attack had been provoked by the variety of sects and the excessive laxity of opinion, leading to many a scandal and disorder, which mere independency had quickly run into. " License they mean when they cry liberty," expostulated Milton; " asses, apes, and dogs," he did not scruple to call the con- troversialists of his day. A few titles will show sufficiently the general line followed in this battle of the books. A bitter attack on Chillingworth, it will be remembered, had appeared in 1643, "^ Cheynell's "Rise, Growth, and Danger of Socinianism." The next year Thomas Edwards published his '' Antapologia [reply to a defense by Philip Nye and others], wherein are handled the controversies of these times," including a particular mention of the Socin- ians. The " Antajjologia " is offered as " a true glass to be- hold the faces of Presbytery and Independency in, with the beauty, order, and strength of the one, and the deformity, disorder, and weakness of the other." Its tone, however, is moderate, not to say dull, beside that of its more famous sequel, published in 1645, under the title — '"Gajignciia: A Catalogue and Discovery of Many of the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies, and Pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this Time." Of errors, one hundred and seventy-six are catalogued, ranging from antitrinitarian " blasphemies " to dangerous and lax assertions, very nu- merous, in which sentiment disdains the bounds of reason. Among "pernicious practices of the Sectaries," conspic- uous are disorders introduced by Anabaptists, Antinomians, and Familists (disciples of Free Love, as we should call them), violating all decorum of public worship. Such 128 THE UNITAKJAXS. [Chap. \i. things, the writer holds, must be put down by force. Toleration, he says, " is the grand design of the Devil, his masterpiece and chief engine he works by at this time to uphold his tottering kingdom." An appendix, or continu- ation, published two years later, is in its title " The Casting Down of the Last and Strongest Hold of Satan : A Treatise against Toleration." Again we have, in 1646, "The Utter Routing of the Whole Army of all the Independents and Sectaries," by John Bostwick, whose character and temper appear suf- ficiently in its title. In 1647 appeared the fourth edition of a book by Ephraim Pagitt, entitled " Heresiography : or, A Descrip- tion of the Heretickes and Sectaries sprung up in these Later Times," both " Socinians, who teach that Christ dyed not to satisfie for our sins," and " Arrians, who deny the Deity of Christ." Finally, in 1648, was published "A Survey of the Spirit- ual Antichrist, Opening the Secrets of Familism and Anti- nomianism." This interests us, in particular, by its recital of the story of Ann Hutchinson and her following in Bos- ton twelve years before, with its tragic sequel. These last items bear upon our present topic chiefly as part of the process that led to the " Draconic " ordinance against blasphemy and heresy, passed in May, 1648. This ordinance was the final effort of the Presbyterian party to suppress freedom of discussion by public law. Its imme- diate occasion was a translation of "Satan's Stratagems" (a treatise by Jacopo Aconzio, an Italian jurist and engi- neer of Elizabeth's time '), which had led to an investiga- tion of Socinianism at Oxford. " It enacted that all such persons as willingly, by preaching, teaching, printing, or writing, maintain and publish that the Father is not God, 1 See Cantii, vol. iii., p. S2 ; also Prof, lionet- Maury's " (Irigines." CROMWELL'S "AK7VCLES"; BAXTER'S " ESSENTLALS." 129 the Son is not God, or the Holy Ghost is not God, or that they three are not One Internal God, or that in Hke man- ner maintain and pubHsh that Christ is not equal with the Father, shall be adjudged (guilty of felony. And in case the party upon his trial shall not abjure his said error and defense and maintenance of the same, he shall suffer the pains of death, as in case of felony, without benefit of clergy." Seven months later, " Pride's Purge " had effectually destroyed the power of the Presbyterian party in Parlia- ment, and the onlinance was ne\er carried intt) full effect. Independency was already dominant in the army. A new era of tolerance had begun when, in 1653, Cromwell an- nounced his "Articles for the govermnent of the Common- wealth." These, while they "recommend" the Christian religion as " the public profession of these nations," and guarantee that it shall be duly maintained and taught, add that " none shall be compelled by penalties or otherwise " to such public profession, " but that endeavors be used to win them by sound doctrine and the example of a good conversation." They add, further, that all professing Christian belief " shall be protected in the profession of the faith and exercise of their religion, . . . provided this lib- erty be not extended to Popery or Prelacy, nor to such as, under the profession of Christ, hold forth and practice licentiousness." ^ Further, to explain the true meaning of these articles, Richard Baxter^ in this same year (1653) drew up an enumeration of the " essentials " of the Chris- tian religion, having been " sent for up to London " for this purpose. These " essentials " were the Decalogue, the Lord's Prayer, and the Apostles' Creed. Some friends objected that his terms were so broad as to include both Papists and Socinians ; upon which, he says, " I answered 1 Articles xxxv-xxxvii. 1 30 THE UNITARIAXS. [Chap. vi. them, ' So much the better, and so much the fitter it is to be the matter of our concord.' " To complete this record of the Commonweahh period, the following may be added, (i) In 1655 was published "The Gospel Defense" {Vi?idicicB Evaiigcliae) of John Owen, most eminent of scholars among the Independents, then doing good service at Oxford in upholding the cause of sound learning in the university. It was written to counteract the Unitarian heresy, too well protected under the toleration enforced by Cromwell.' "The evil is at the doore," he says; " there is not a Citty, a Towne, scarce a Village in England, where some of this poyson is not poured forth." The book is further interesting to us from a pretty full though distorted and hostile narrative of the antitrinitarian movement in Poland and Transylvania. (2) In 1656 appeared Chewney's "Anti-Socinianism," with an appendix entitled " Heresiarchy : or, A Cage of Unclean Birds, Containing the Authors, Propagators, and Chief Dis- seminators of this Damnable Socinian Heresie," of which the title shall here suffice. (3) In 1657 John Bagshaw produced in Latin " Two Anti-Socinian Dissertations," showing " that Socinians ought not to be called Christians," and disputing " whether the good works of unbelievers are sinful." These three are mostly a harmless rethreshing of the old straw of controversy. They serve, at best, to put In relief the noble tolerance of the great Protector, who was observed in his later years to be gentler towards all men, even to those of the Church of England. The events thus briefly traced in outline make the back- ground on which we have now to follow the biography of the man who best represents the movement we are con- sidering. 1 In this year, as told l)elow (p. 134), Crom-well sent John Biddlc to a safe restraint in the vScilly Islands, taking him out of the city prison, where he was confined by order of the Parliament. JOIIX BIDDLE. 131 John Biddle has been called the father, the earliest wit- ness, and the martyr of English Unitarianism. He was born in 161 5, in a small town near Gloucester. "His father," says his earliest biographer, "was of a middle sort of yeoman, and also dealt in woolen clothes, by which means he maintained his family honestly, and with credit suitable to his rank, or rather above it." The boy was so proficient in the free school of his native town that before he was ten he drew the notice of a gentleman of the neigh- borhood, who, by an " exhibition " (or annual gift) of ten pounds, liberal for those days, helped him to the best edu- cation to be had. At twenty-three he was a graduate of Oxford, and at twenty-six master of arts and principal of the Crisp Free School in Gloucester. While in the uni- versity he had been known as especially grave and studi- ous, inclined to serious things. He knew by heart, it was said, the whole of the New Testament, Greek as well as English, down to and including the first four chapters of " Revelation." At twenty-nine (May 2, 1644) he had formulated a confession of faith as to the trinity^ its main points being (i) that there is but one Divine Essence, prop- erly called God; (2) that God, in this highest sense, exists but in one Per.son ; (3) that Christ is truly God " by being truly, really, and properly united " with the Father. So far, this seems to have been purely a personal confession, the ground and motive of a very thoughtful and humble piety. To avoid cavil, he altered the phrase a little later, so as to admit " three in that one Divine Essence, com- nionly tcniicd Persons." These have been commonly held to be the terms of a safe and sufficient orthodoxy, at least for the ordinar\- and public profession of belief. But they led to private dis- cussion among near friends, and to further study on his part, in the course of which he drew up twelve arguments 132 THE UNITARIANS. [Chai'. vi. touching the proper deity of the Holy Ghost. These were heedlessly or maliciously reported outside the circle of in- quirers, and so came to the knowledge of the magistrates. In consequence, the obscure, poor, and modest provincial schoolmaster was summoned before the awful bar of the Presbyterian Parliament. On the 2d of December, 1645, though sick with fever, he was cast into a common jail. A friend in Gloucester gave bail for him, with six months' liberty ; and here he was visited by Archbishop Usher, who labored kindly to convince him of his error. Again he was arrested, and a committee was deputed to examine him. This came to notliing, except that a copy of his argument was burned. Six months after his first arrest, he addressed a pathetic appeal to Sir Henry Vane, beseeching, " If you have any bowels towards them that are in misery, that you would either procure my discharge, or at least make report to the House touching my denial of the supposed deity of the Holy Spirit: " the only point in question, since he had re- fused to be drawn into a discussion of the nature of Christ. At this time, indeed, he seems to have been ignorant of any argument of the Socinians. His view is wholly origi- nal and his own. He follows his appeal with a long state- ment of reasons, wishing, no doubt, to put the whole case in the hands of so generous an advocate as- Vane. His own words avowing his belief and motive are his best exposition. " There is, I say, one principal Spirit among the good angels, called by the name of the Advocate, or the Holy Spirit, or the Good Spirit of God, or the Spirit by way of eminence. This opinion of mine is attested by the whole tenor of the Scripture, which perpetually speaketh of him as differing from God, and inferior to him ; but is irrefragably proved by these places of Scripture " — which are cited at much length, " Of these places thus recited," JOllX BIDDLE. 133 he continues, " no man, though never so subtle, and though he turn and wind his wit every way, shall ever be able to make sense, unless he take the Holy Spirit to be w'hat I say." And he further adds, " For my own particular, after a lont^', impartial inquir}- of the truth in this contro- versy, and after much earnest calling upon God to give unto me the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowl- edge of him, I find myself obliged, both by the principles of Scripture and of reason, to embrace the opinion I now hold forth ; and as much as in me lieth, to endeavor that the honor of Almighty God be not transferred to another, not only to the offense of God himself, but also of his Holy Spirit, who cannot but be grieved to have that ignorantly ascribed to himself which is proper to God that sends him, and which he nowhere challengeth to himself in Scripture. What shall befall me in the pursuance of this w^ork I refer to the disposal of the all-wise God, whose glory is dearer to me not only than my liberty, but than my life." ^ " God is jealous of his honor" is the phrase he afterwards used to justify his owm persistent urging of the argument. The next year^ in " a confession of faith touching the Holy Trinity according to the Scripture," he would not den\- the doctrine, but only its unscriptural interpretation. This confession was apparently composed in prison. It was printed in 1648, and rej^rinted, as we Ikivc it now, by his friend Thomas I'^irmin, in 1691. To silence this one poor schoolmaster is said to have been the pressing motive for urging the " Draconian ordi- nance " against blasphemy and heresy already described (p. 128). But bigotry overshot its mark. The ordinance was so loaded down with details of the creed it would maintain, and the heresies it meant to stifle, that practically it lay a dead letter. Meanwhile the great political crisis 1 From vol. i. of " Unitarian Tracts," pul)lislied in 1691. 134 ^-^^^ UNITARIANS. [Chap. \i. was more urgent still. The strong hand of Cromwell held intolerance under, and for three years more John Biddle lay in jail, seemingly forgotten. He was released in Feb- ruary, 1 65 I, nearly perishing from neglect, nearly starved by poverty. He earned a scanty li\-ing by editing a scholarly edition of the Septuagint; and when, by the Act of Oblivion, of February 10, 1652, he was safe from molestation, he gathered about him the nucleus of a Uni- tarian society. This, however, did not outlast his death. We presently find him busied in translating and circulat- ing the writings of Unitarians abroad, including a biography of Socinus. But his chief offense appears to have been a "Twofold Catechism," published in 1654, answering ques- tions of doctrine in the very words of Scripture. A reply soon appeared, under the title " The Blasphemer Slain." On the 1 2th of December Parliament declared the "Two- fold Catechism " heretical and blasphemous, ordering all copies of it to be burned ; and the next day its author was committed to close confinement in the " Gate-house." Par- liament would have proceeded further with him, but on the 22d of January it was suddenly dissolved by Cromwell. Biddle was released, but was again arrested in sequence of a new discussion. To keep the peace between the dis- putants as well as might be, he was now sent to an honor- able and restful retirement in the Scilly Islands by Crom- well, who made a modest allowance for his support. Returning to London on his release, in the spring of 1658, after two and a half years of quiet activity — " enjoy- ing much Divine comfort from the heavenly contemplations which his retirement gave him opportunity for" — he took up again his pastoral charge, only retreating for a time into the country after Cromwell's death, in September of that year. When " the king came to his own again," in 1660, he prudently confined himself to private ministrations. JOHN BIDDLE ; THOMAS FIRM IX. I 35 l)ut he did not so escape the cruelty of his persecutors. "For on the ist of June, 1662, he was haled out of his lodgings, where he was convened 'with some few of his friends for Di\ine worship, and carried before Sir Richard Brown, who forthwith committed them all to the public prison, John Biddle to the dungeon, where he lay for five hours, and was denied the benefit of the law which admits offenders of that sort to bail for their appearance." He was condemned to a fine of one hundred pounds, with a threat of seven years' imprisonment. But within five weeks, " by reason of the noisomeness of the place and the pent air," he fell into a deadly sickness. He was barely able to be removed for two days of repose among friends, when he died, on the 22d of September, at the age of forty- seven. He had often said " that if he should be once more cast into prison, he should never be restored to liberty ; and, moreover, that the icork ivas done." The little church gathered by John Biddle did not sur- vive him, though the doctrine he taught was silently adopted in many dissenting congregations at a later day. It was embraced, with eager assent, among others by a young disciple, Thomas Mrmin (1632—97), of whose most honorable record as a Unitarian layman a word should be said in this place. He had already been turned from his Calvinistic belief by an Arminian preacher, John Good- win ; and his name appears among the group that through Biddle's long season of persecution had stood true to him. Although in later years he commonly worshiped in the Church of England, he held his liberal faith through his prosperous, beneficent, and honored life. He was a Lon- don merchant, a man of modest fortune (never exceeding some forty thousand dollars), which he drew upon for charitable uses with a wealth of generosity amazing and unexampled in those profligate days. The amount of 136 THE UXITARIANS. \C\\.\v. \\. misery he relieved in the dreadful times of the plague and the great fire of 1666 was beyond computation. His charity, too, was wise as it was liberal and open-handed, — a charity that knew no difference of nation or sect, while it created and kept up lines of self-respecting industry. His heresy, well known and openly avowed, did not de- prive him of the amplest reward of gratitude from all parties in his lifetime, and generous praise is recorded of him in a monument upon the wall of the parish church he attended. To him we probably owe the survival of the very name and memory of John Biddle ; certainly, of his biography and his full profession of belief, for at his own cost he gathered and published, in 1691, the papers which make up the first of six volumes of the " Unitarian Tracts." ^ The series itself gives the share taken by the defenders of that belief in the vigorous discussion that went on during the last years of the century. This remarkable episode in the history of religious thought in England remains now to be described. If the Presbyterian party, which had brought to pass the restoration of the king, rejoiced in the condemnation of the man they had been eager to destroy, they were speedily brought to a better mind. Just within a month before John Biddle's death, two thousand of their ministers made noble atonement for whatever fault that party had been guilty of, by voluntarily resigning their livings in the Church of England on the new " St. Bartholomew's Day " (August 24, 1662), expelled by the Act of Uniformity lately passed. Charles's pledge had been " that no man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences of opin- ion on matters of religion, which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom." Under this heavy blow, the Puritan theo- 1 This rare and indispensable record exists, complete, in the Harvard University library. U II. I.I AM FKXX. 137 logians — Nonconformists now, and presently to be known as Dissenters — lost their stomach for speculative debate, which went henceforth into other hands. An occasion for renewing the debate was found in 1688. A Presbyterian preacher, Thomas Vincent, had sharply rebuked some members of his congregation who had gone for curiosity to hear the doctrine declared at a Quaker meeting. Quakerism had come up twenty-one years be- fore, in 1647, through the testimony of George Fox, in a time when there was great laxity in belief and disorder of morals, after the crushing defeat of monarchy in the field ; and had just gained, in 1667, its most distinguished ad- vocate in Robert Barclay. Among others, it was early embraced by that warm-liearted, brilliant, opinionated youth, William Penn, who was at this time closely intimate with one of its most noted preachers, George Whitehead. Resenting the contumely of Vincent, who charged its doc- trine of the Inner Light as " damnable," these two now demanded a hearing, which was grudgingly allowed them in the Presbyterian chapel, already packed with unfriendly auditors. The debate was at once turned to a cliallenge of their opinion on the trinity ; and, whatever they might wish to say, they soon found it " impossible to obtain a hearing." This incident led Penn, now at the age of twenty-four, to prepare and publish a little pamphlet, with the title "The Sandy F'oundation Shaken." It is an argument of appeal or protest, rather than of labored criticism ; a plain, brave, frank word, suited to open a discussion, not a trea- tise or an essay, such as the controversial fashion of the time might seem to demand. Even at our later day we are struck b\- the vigor an(i decision of the protest. The scholastic doctrine of the trinity ; the assertion that " .satis- faction " can be made for the sin of one by the suffering 138 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. vi. of another, or that one who is himself guilty can be " jus- tified " by another's righteousness, — these cardinal points of Galvin's creed are attacked, not by arguments carefully drawn from Scripture, but by appeal to the natural reason and conscience of men. We seem, in this appeal, to hear the very voice of our own day, rather than those echoes of the past we have been so long used to. Channing, in his most convincing argument, did not go an inch beyond it. Meanwhile there went on a quiet spread of Unitarian opinion in England, embracing the illustrious names of John Milton and Algernon Sidney. Milton's argument, which is that commonly called Arian, is contained in a Latin treatise on " Christian Doctrine," which lay in manuscript till 1823, when it was brought to light and soon after published, with a translation, making the text of Macaulay's celebrated essay. Sidney's is included among those speculations, political and philosophic, which brought him to the block in 1683. There was, too, a steady inflow of antitrinitarian writings from the Continent, mostly from Polish sources, which called out, among other protests, in 1680, a dissertation on Socinus and Socinianism by George Ashwell, who sums up his judgment of the man in the generous terms before quoted.^ A more important waymark of the course the weary debate now took is found in a Latin essay, "A Defense of the Nicene Faith," by the Rev. George Bull, published in 1685. This essay is partly a concession to the stress of argument on purely Scripture grounds, partly an attempt to guide the discussion into a diflferent channel. The Christian writers before Athanasius are cited in much detail, with a view to show that the real mind of the early church, while ascribing every Divine perfection to the Son and Spirit, made these " subordinate " in the one point, 1 At the end of Cliapter TIT. (p. 72). TOLERATION ACT; BURY; WALLIS. 1 39 that the Father alone is self-subsistent, and that from him alone those perfections are granted and derived. This view was attacked about thirty years later, on Arian grounds, in a pamphlet by Daniel Whitby.^ But the way was really opened to the controversy now about to follow, by the Toleration Act of 1689, passed after the accession of William and Mary. This Act ex- cluded both papists and deniers of the trinity from the indulgence granted to Dissent. Still, the granting of it, as Locke foresaw, was likely to bring about a larger liberty. In this very year the Houses of Convocation, then sitting, had their attention called to certain brief " Notes " on the Athanasian Creed, with other writings of heretical tendency. In 1690 the debate was fairly opened by Dr. Arthur Bury, rector of Lincoln College, in a tract entitled "The Naked Gospel." This tract charges that the church doctrine of the trinity, after centurres of debate, was first made obli- gatory by an edict of Theodosius, later than 380. Its author would forestall controversy on the subject by lim- iting debate to the one question. What was the doctrine actually taught by Christ and the apostles? The discus- sion that now follows lay wholly within the limits of the Church of England, and was conducted by eminent divines belonging to tiiat church. It gives us three differing points of view. The first is shown in an essay entitled " Letters on the Trinity," by Dr. John Wallis, an elderly Oxford professor of mathematics. The form of doctrine, he urges, is es- sential by reason of the dignity and steadiness it gives to the church system of faith. The only difficulty is in its philosophic interpretation. But why perplex ourselves with that? Let us only, for the sake of peace, accept the dictum of the church that there are " three Somewhats " in 1 Printed in S]iarks's " Tracts," vol. i. 140 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap, vi the Di\"ine nature, which we may explain as we will, but certainly cannot understand. " These three Somewhats we commonly call Persons ; but the true notion and true name of that distinction is unknown to us." God, he says, " beareth to his creatures these three relations, modes, or respects : that he is their Creator, their Redeemer, their Sanctifier. That is what we mean, and all that zue mean, when we say God is in three Persons." Take the simplest of mathematical illustrations : has not a cube three " some- whats," which we call its three dimensions — length, breadth, and height? Of these no one can be confounded with either of the others, and they are all equal ; yet they are not three cubes, but one. May we not interpret our doctri- nal formula in some such way as this? The challenge is next taken up by Dr. William Sherlock, dean of St. Paul's, and father of the more celebrated preacher, in a " Vindication of the Holy and Ever-Blessed Trinity." He goes into the discussion too hastily, with a tone needlessly domineering and with some carelessness of phrase, thinking to give weight to his argument by a terminology which he has not clearly thought out to him- self beforehand. What constitutes a Person, he says, is self-consciousness. We accept the Trinity as consisting of three Persons : now each of these is distinct in his own self-consciousness, " just as three finite and created minds are; " while " they are united into one by a mutual con- sciousness, which no created spirits have." This assertion, repeated again and again, with some variety and expansion of phrase, — as if he would drown objection by the ampli- tude of tone in which it is spoken, — makes the substance of his argument. The " Vindication " called out that somewhat virulent wit of the Establishment, Dr. Robert South. He attacks it, in a style gratuitously offensive if not insulting, by WILLIAM SHERLOCK; ROBERT SOUTH. 141 "Animadversions upon Dr. Sherloci<'s Book" (1693), ^"^1 again in " Tritheism Charged upon Dr. Sherlock's New Notion of the Trinity" (1695). We may pass over the cavils at his opponent's lordly tone and at the phrases al- ready quoted, and come to the definition which he would put in their place : " The three Persons of the blessed Trinity are one and the same undivided Essence, Nature, or Godhead, diversified only by three different modes of subsistence, which are sometimes called properties and sometimes relations ; " and these again, as found in spirit- ual natures, he compares to " postures " in material forms. " We do hold and affirm," he says, " that the Father com- municates his nature, under a different mode of subsisting .from what it has in himself, to another; and that such a communication of it, in such a peculiar way, is called his begetting of a son " (p. 292). This substitution of feebler phrases for the sublime though perhaps vague symbolism under which the church has veiled the eternal mystery of the Godhead, exposed Dr. South to as merciless retort, as keenly pressed, as that he had applied to Sherlock. As it looked to unfriendly eyes, the situation was this : three men, all eminent theo- logians, all speaking with authority, all accepting the same creed, all members of the same Establishment, gave each an interpretation to the same words which both the others held to be heretical and misleading; constructively, even blasphemous. Thus their Unitarian critics were well con- tent to leave them to confute one another. One view, they said, was clearly tritheistic, one was Sabellian, while the third they could themselves well assent to.' The three interpretations continued, however, to abide together, as peaceably as they might, in the shelter of the Establish- ment. This was now, in a time of \iolent political changes, 1 See " Unitarian Tracts," vols. ii. and iii. 142 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. VI. taking on a secular or " Erastian " tone, never quite equaled before or since. In a splenetic attack on the Whigs of his own day, Charles Davenant says (1701), "A modest Christian durst hardly put in a word for the Second Person of the Trinity without exposing himself to laughter." And he adds, " Are not many of us able to point to sev- eral persons whom nothing has recommended to places of the highest trust, and often to rich benefices and dignities, but the open enmity which they have, almost from their cradles, to the di\inity of Christ?"' A well-known ex- ample of the " Arian " clergy of that day is Dr. Samuel Clarke, who wrote, in 1724: "The Scripture, when it mentions the One God, or t/ie Only God, always means the Supreme Person of the Father;" and again, " The Son, or Second Person, is not self-existent, but derives his being or essence, and all his attributes, from the Father, as from the Supreme Cause " (pp. 224, 270). No Unitarian state- ment had hitherto said more than this. In 1695 appeared Locke's "Reasonableness of Christian- ity," maintaining that the one " essential " of Christian be- lief is the acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah. This was at once assailed by John Edwards, son of the author of " Gan- graena," with almost all his father's virulence, charging that Locke was a Socinian but afraid to own it. Locke might well reply, as he did, that he had not read a single Socinian book. But all the charge implied was in the air. What- ever was most free in the heritage of thought, Locke had entered into as deeply as any man. The real importance of his " Reasonableness," in the history of opinion, is that it was the last word, spoken judicially, in a long debate which could now only repeat itself; and that it was the 1 Works (ed. of 1778), vol. iii., p. 322. I have a MS. list (prepared by the late Pishey Thompson, Esq., of Washington, D. C. ) of th'rty-three clergy- men of the Church of England, including an archbishop and four bishops, of known Unitarian opinions. I.OCA-E'S •' A'/':.lSOA.I BL£A'£SS "; THOMAS KMLYX. I 43 immediate prelude to the Deistical Controversy, which en- i4a[;ed the more radical thinkers of England for the next fifty years.' The name of one other Unitarian witness interests us, from the influence it had in the discussion that sprang uj) a little later in America. Thomas Emlyn (i 663-1 741) — a man of serious, sweet, and candid temper, a devoted pastor, especially tender and comforting in prayer — began his career among the Nonconformists, preaching at the early age of nineteen, in London. He was an eye-witness, the next year, of the execution of Lord William Russell, which no doubt helped confirm him in the faith of free- dom. At twenty-one he went to Belfast, in the household of a family of rank. In the revolutionary year, 1688, we (ind him preaching " with pistols in his pocket " in the dis- turbed district of the north of Ireland. In discussion with a friend on Sherlock's " Vindication," he held to the Arian view against the Socinian. But he never carried the argu- ment into the pulpit, where his teaching was always grave, tender, and practical. After a ten years' ministry in Dub- lin, while in his fresh grief at the loss of his admirable wife, he was called to account for his private opinions. His aged colleague was put on the stand to testify of his intimate conversations. Narrow Nonconformists appealed to church and state against him, and he was punished by a year's imprisonment, with a fine of a thousand pounds. The witness of his later life in l'2ngland is found in a vol- ume of sermons and one of essays in defense of his opinions, introduced by a biography warm from a friendly hand. One pitiful tragedy completes the tale of the period we have been reviewing. In January, 1697, one Thomas Aikenhead, a boy of eighteen, a student in the University of Edinburgh, " not vicious, and extremely studious," was 1 See the author's " Christian History," vol. iii., pp. 176-181. 144 THE UXITARIAXS. [Chap. vi. executed for blasphemy. The Scottish capital, apparently, had not caught the cosmopolitan temper which would have made such an act impossible in London. Within two years, an old statute inflicting the penalty of death for blasphemy had — to the horror of such minds as Locke's — been furbished up afresh. The boy Aikenhead was con- victed, by testimony of his college-mates, of such offenses as saying, in the warmth of debate, that to him the phrase " god-man " was as meaningless as if one should say " goat-stag," or " square-round," with other expressions which were construed to signify contempt of the Bible or of the Divine name. He was tried, without counsel to cross-examine the witnesses (college boys like himself) or explain to them what their testimony might imply as to the fate before him. The most important part of the evi- dence he explicitly denied. Three years later, or a little more, the Act of Union between England and Scotland would probably have made this shocking act impossible. Heresy could no longer be punished by death in Eng- land. But, to propitiate such bigotry as still suvived, an act was passed, in 1698, "for the more effectual suppress- ing of blasphemy and profaneness." It contained the following terms, which are an essential sequel to the review that has now been taken : namely, that " if any person having been educated in, or at any time having made pro- fession of, the Christian religion, within this realm, shall by writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking, deny any one of the Persons of the Holy Trinity to be God ; or shall assert or maintain that there are more Gods than one, or shall deny the Christian religion to be true, or the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be of Divine authority, and shall be thereof lawfully convicted by the oath of two or more credible witnesses, — such person shall for the first offense be adjudged incapable and disabled in LAST ACTS OF IXTOLERANCE. 1 45 law to have and enjoy any office or employment, civil or military " : the penalty for repeating the offense being total loss of all civil rights — such as right to inherit or de- fense at law — with three years' imprisonment. This su- premely wicked statute — wicked because passed by men without conscience or conviction on the subject, and made intentionally a dead letter except when it might serve for malicious prosecution — was not repealed till 181 3. Uni- tarians in England were not reinvested with their full civil rights until the passage of the " Dissenters' Chapels Act" in 1844.^ 1 See below, p. 153. CHAPTER VII. UNITARIAN DISSENT IN ENGLAND. The discussion which filled so large a space at the close of the seventeenth century gave to the Unitarian doctrine, more or less disguised, a certain recognized standing both in the Established Church and among the more educated of the Nonconformists. Two names, in particular, show this result. Samuel Clarke (1675-1729), eminent alike as a scholar, a mathematician, and a churchman, the best known defender at that day of a philosophical theism, held a position frankly Arian ; and his revised liturgy was adopted, almost without change, in the earlier Unitarian congrega- tions. Nathaniel Lardner (1684- 1768), the most learned theologian among the Presbyterians, and far the most em- inent defender of historical Christianity against the Deists, confessed a Unitarianism more and more pronounced, dur- ing a career distinguished as much for caj^idor and thought as for laborious erudition. Thus, for more than half a century, there was a complete lull in a dispute that a little while before had looked so implacable and vindictive. To explain this change, we note that the Deistical controversy — following from the argument of Locke's " Reasonableness," and occupying almost exactly the first half of the eighteenth century (1696-1748) — had opened up a new issue, that of Rationalism pure and .simple. In that debate the Unitarians ranked themselves, with strong conviction, among the defenders of a miraculous revelation. For considerably more than a hundred years not one of any note among them wavered in this position. And, 146 rKESBYTKKIAN, INDEPENDENT, BAPTIST. 147 while the stress of that controversy lasted, questions of doctrinal interpretation were dwarfed, if not forgotten. The body of English Dissenters had been drawn to- gether by the common and deep wrong they suffered under, through the series of execrable acts passed by the government of the Restoration.' From time to time at- tempts were made to give them unity and strength under some form of confession that might embrace them all. But the pressure was lightened by the Act of Tolera- tion (1689); and the Dissenting body, which had come together from widely different sources, fell again into its natural groups, The Prcsbyterian.s — as nobly shown in the case of Ba.xter — had inherited something of the mental breadth, the pliancy of organization, and the comparative easiness as to doctrine, that belong to a great secular Estab- lishment, like that from which they had withdrawn against their will. The Independents, who had \-oluntarily for- saken the National Church for conviction's sake, held more rigidly to their points of faith, and became forerunners of the stricter E\'angelical bodies of a later day. Individuals among them, however, held that faith loosely, as Watts (1674— I 748), who is understood to have died a Unitarian ; 2 and Doddridge (1702-51), whose vague "in-dwelling scheme " was hardly less heretical. The Baptists had never been bound by a formal creed, and their theology, sharply individualized, had proved the germ or the ally of various heresies ; but they were more closely held by their strict requirement of adult baptism, which defined them sharply as a sect, tending also to divide into sub- 1 The .Act of Uniformity, 1662: tlie Conventicle Act, 1664; tlie Five-Mile Act, 1665; the Test and Corporation Acts, 1673 (abolished, 1828). Under the operation of these it is stated that, from first to last, nearly eight thousand persons perished in various prisons. - " I have somctinies carried reason," Jic says, " even to the camp of Socinus ; but then Saint Jolin gives my soul a twitch." 148 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap, vii, sects — some Sabbatarian, some of a more free communion. These several tendencies reappear in the later history of Unitarian Dissent. While not one of its congregations bears the title " Independent," no less than twenty- five (eight in England and seventeen in Ireland) are still known as " Presbyterian," and several were originally Baptist — though only two of them (one each in England and in Wales) have kept that name in their recorded title. So many of them are, in fact, of Presbyterian descent, that that name has been seriously proposed, in our day, for adoption by the whole body of Liberal congregations, so as to avoid the narrow polemic associations of the title " Unitarian." Under the conditions of toleration granted them, Eng- lish Dissenters were bound by the harsh and unjust restric- tion that they must assent to all the properly doctrinal arti cles of the Church of England, — that is, to thirty-five out of the thirty-nine, — having dispensation only from the four which define the claims of church authority. The restric- tion was as futile as it was unjust. Latitude of interpreta- tion was not likely to be more fettered outside the church walls than within them. We may, it is true, assume that the subscription of Dissenters was oftener honestly made than that of Churchmen. But it was felt to be a badge of subjection, and it galled. It was, besides, not only a check on honest liberty of thinking, but a standing invitation to casuistry and subterfuge. This point of conscience pricked more and more sharply as the stress of the Deistical con- troversy abated. And we find, accordingly, just after the middle of the century, a series of efforts or appeals to Par- liament— long made in vain, though urged by a most in- telligent and influential portion of the Anglican clergy — to have the terms of subscription lightened.^ 1 A bill of relief passed the Commons in 1772, but was dcfcntcd liy the Lords. Since 1779, only " belief in Christianity " is required of the dissent- ing clergy. TIIEOPHILVS LIXDSEY. 1 49 It is just here that Unitarian Dissent in England properly begins. Its history will be best told in a short series of representati\e lives. The first Unitarian chapel, distinctly known as such, was founded in Essex Street, London, by TheoijJiilus Lindsey, in 1774. Lindsey (i 723-1808) was a clergyman of the Church of England, w^ho had on grounds of conscience given up his li\-ing at Catterick, in Yorkshire, five years before. He was a man of peculiarly winning and gracious personality ; of gentle temper, that might easily have been spoiled by the indulgence and flattery surrounding him in youth ; a refined scholar and devoted parish minister, generously and on principle spending his income in chari- ties among the distressed ; holding, against the somber view of Butler, Paley's cheerful belief in the gladness of all sentient things, and against the harsh theology of his time the kindlier hope of a restoration of all souls in the life to come. As early as 1763, at his transfer to the highly privileged position in Catterick, he had felt scruples at renewing subscription to certain of the articles ; but had persuaded himself that his own explanation of them (a Sabellianism like that of Wallis) might be fairly enough covered by the required formula. " My great diflficulty," he says, " was on the point of worship [paid to Christ] ; in comparison with this, subscription to the articles, however momentous in itself, gave me then but little concern." ' While here, however, he came under two strong per- sonal influences which did much to decide his course. One was from intimate association with an elderly clergyman (Archdeacon Blackburne, his wife's stepfather), whose beliefs and scruples were very like his own, who put the case in this way : " I confess that, with my present views, I should not be free to sign the articles again. But I did 1 "Apology," p. 20. 150 THE UNITARIANS. \Q.\\\v. vii. sign them once in good faith ; and, in signing them, I pledged my Hfe to a work the most sacred and important that I could conceive. Am I free to abandon that work? I see how it will end with you. With your convictions it is only a question of time when you will leave the church. But for me it is too late to make the change. On the whole, my conscience keeps me where I am." ^ The other influence was from a close friendship formed during this time with Joseph Priestley, then a Dissenting minister at Leeds. Priestley's restless, versatile, and self- confident intelligence would of itself encourage all liberty of thinking. But he had had his own hard experience of ill-paid work and narrow circumstances. He was scrupu- lous not to urge his friend's conscience beyond its nat- ural pace. " Stay where you are," was the burden of his advice ; " your work is a good work, and when the time comes that you must change it, the way will be clear to you." Advice so given, in the guise of prudence, may well have the effect in a generous mind to strengthen more than weaken the impulse towards self-sacrifice. Here Lindsey was helped by the noble spirit of his wife, herself a clergyman's daughter, of more natural courage and a more practical temper than his own, along with great reverence of his character and work, and a tender esteem of his serener quality, calling him " one of the best, gentlest, and most indulgent of human beings." She had heartily shared in his unstinted neighborly charities, and as heartily stood by him now in whatever loss he might take upon himself.'' Seeing the peril of insincerity in all creeds, he 1 Rutt's " Life of Priestley," vol. ii., p. 82. (Citation much condensed.) 2 A most interesting sketch of this admirable woman is given by her friend Mrs. Cappe in the " Monthly Repository" of February, 1812. When, rally- ing from a painful illness, her husband spoke of the burden upon his mind in holding his position, her prompt reply was, " Then relinquish it: God will LIXDSEY IN LONDON. 151 had taken an active share in the efforts, made among- men of other calHngs as well as clergymen, to have the terms of subscription lightened by public law, " traveling up- wards of two thousand miles in the winter of 1771-72 to obtain signatures to the petition " for that object. As these efforts were baffied, he consented to remain only while some hope remained that the relief might be granted. When this hope was finally lost, he did not delay to quit his charge, preaching his farewell words November 28, 1773, having just passed his fiftieth year. The real interest in Lindsey's withdrawal from the church is — as that of every religious crisis — less a doctrinal than a moral or spiritual interest. It brought to the front the question of conscience in the assent to dogma, which has been and still is smothered under reasons of a supposed expediency, that can be cut only by the sharp sword of in- dividual conviction. To meet this question, we could not well invent a finer test case than his : the scholarly temper, the conservative habit, the restraints of friendsliip, the love of consecrated forms (for to the end of his life he used a very moderately revised edition of the church liturgy), the devotion to professional duty, the kindly surroundings and modest refinements of life familiar to him up to the age of fifty ; and, as against them all, the abrupt entrance upon a way of life in which, most literally, " he knew not whither he went." His former bounties, and his wife's, had left them in a condition liardly a step from downright and pressing poverty. Furniture, plate, and books all had to be sold. Coming to London, they could for some years, in exchange for tiieir fair country \-icarage, occupy only two small rooms on the ground floor of a tenement in Holborn. ]iroviilc." In an c']Ti(lcmic of smallpox she caused tlic children of that and neighhoring parishes to be inoculated, attending personally to all the cases (we are told), of which she lost not one. (This was before vaccination, which was discovered in 1796.) 152 THE UNITAKIAXS. [Chai'. vii. Of all their many church friends, not one appears to have spoken a word of encouragement or sympathy, or to hav^e lifted a hand to help.' But new friends soon gathered around him, including such names as Priestley, Franklin, and Price. He busied himself with his " Apology," and other writings which this led to; also with a series of studies and discussions of mat- ters congenial, including a criticism of Gibbon, a history of Unitarianism, a reply to Robertson, a defense of Priestley. Tasks like these were spread over a period of nearly twenty years. But most permanent of his works was the build- ing of Essex Street Chapel, in 1778, which first organized Unitarian Dissent as a working force in the religious life of England. In this he was so well helped by friends and circumstances as to be both minister and part-proprietor of the chapel in which he served for fifteen years. He definitely relinquished the pulpit at the age of seventy, refusing ever to occupy it again, though he persevered in busy activities till near his death, in 1808, at the age of eighty-five. Three years before he had published " Con- versations on the Divine Government," perhaps his most characteristic essay. In it he pleads for the essential goodness and justice of God as displayed in nature, and meets, by his ardent faith in a future state of disci- pline and purification, the question how evil — nay, such horrors as those of the Canaanitish conquest — may be permitted or even ordained by a righteous Sovereign of the world. What had long been pretty widely held as individual opinion had now found a local habitation and a name. Within ten years after Lindsey's death " the great body " of those Presbyterian congregations not bound by the terms of their foundation to orthodox formularies were avowedly 1 " Monthly Repository," December, iSo8. (Letter of Mrs. Cappe. ) THE EARLIER UNITARIAN DISSENT. 153 Unitarian.^ In 181 3 the old stigma of legal disabilities, which till then cast a shadow on the name, was blotted out. In 1825 the several provisional bodies established to spread and maintain the doctrine were merged in the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, which has its present head- •quarters in Essex Hall, once Theophilus Lindsey's chapel. It now represents between three and four hundretl congre- gations, widely various in origin and name, that sustain its agencies at home and abroad. The only outside opposition tliat has seriously embarrassed them was that raised against their legal right to iiold certain endowments or bequests (especially the " Lady Hewley's Charity " fund) given for religious as well as charitable uses, or the continued pos- session of their old meeting-houses.- The judicial decision was against both these rights ; but the latter was deter- mined in their favor by the " Dissenters' Chapels Act " of 1844. Since then Unitarians stand on an equal level of civil rights with every other religious body. Down to this last date or near it — that is, for a term of about seventy years — English Unitarianism was well known by a form of doctrine, a style of Scripture exposi- tion, and a type of the religious life pretty accurately de- fined and closely consistent with itself. It grew out of a movement of thought whose general course has now been traced, under conditions which became manifest as the main stream of the Reformation ran out into separate channels. Another period has followed since, in which old dogmas, arguments, and lines of sect are of less and less account. Within the limits thus defined, we have now to trace its doctrinal features, and the course of its 1 " Encyclopxdia Biit.innica. " For the decline of Presljyterianism at this date,- see "Monthly Repository" of 1813, p. 183; comparing 1809, p. 486. - Tiie points involved are very fully set forth in the " Monthly Reposi- tory " of July and September, 1S17, pp. 430, 505. 154 '^l^E UNITARIANS. [Cii.U'. \ ii. denominational history. This will be best shown in a series of representative names. Joseph Priestley (i 733-1804), for forty years an intimate friend and correspondent of Lindsey, may be said almost alone to have shaped the system of opinion by whicli the Unitarianism of that period is best known. At the same time, with a fluency and versatility of composition almost unrivaled, he created a considerable body of literature, scientific as well as religious, much of which has ^'alue to this day. The forty-eight volumes of his works omit a considerable part of what he published "in his lifetime. Besides these, a mass of correspondence, innumerable ex- periments, studies, and observations in natural science, and a very laborious career as teacher and preacher, witness the extraordinary activity of his mind.^ He was in the front rank of chemists of his day, and did more, perhaps, than any other one man to carry that science over the steps that led directly to its reconstruction by Lavoisier and Dalton. He was the companion or correspondent of Franklin in his studies of electricity ; an honored guest and associate among the men of science whom he visited in Paris. With his friend Dr. Richard Price he had an eager and hopeful interest in the earlier steps of the French Revolution ; and was, under the charge of republicanism, mobbed and almost beggared in a frightful riot at Birming- ham, in 1 79 1. Coming to America in 1794, past the age of sixty-one, he corresponded with Jefferson and others- on the latest ideas in political and social science. Through all, with a wonderful sweetness of temper and an intel- lectual courage equally rare, — " a heretic who was yet a saint," as Huxley says of him, — he devoted himself to the one great purpose of his life, in developing, illustrating, 1 .A list of 108 of his pul)lislic'l writ'n^s, including p:uiiplilcls but not his numberless magazine articles, fills eight pages of his memoir. JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. I 55 and defendini^ his conception of relit^ious truth. He de- chired himseU' a Christian amonsj^ those scientists in Paris who told him he was the first man of sense they had seen that beheved in God, and proved his faith as serenely in obloquy or exile as in the calm piety of his dying hours. He was born near Leeds, of a Dissenting family rigidly orthodox and scrupulously pious ; learned tiie Westminster Shorter Catechism byjieart, and was taught to pray aloud in his own words at six. Losing his mother at that age, he was brought up by an aunt of austere Calvinistic faith, who helped him generously, as well, in his early schooling. At eleven he was experimenting on the breathing capacity of spiders. In the year or two following he was studying both Latin and Greek, and " rarely spent an hour for any recreation," though in this time he read most of Bunyan's works. His health, generally invulnerable, began (no wonder) to fail him here, and he was on the point of accepting a post in a commercial house at Lisbon. Re- covering, w'e find him at seventeen dissuaded from study- ing Rabbinic lore, having already learned the biblical Hebrew, which he taught at eighteen. He had then, or a little later, read the Hebrew Bible twice through, and more. This he tells in self-defense against Horsley's slurs upon his learning. Seeking church-member.ship about this time, he was refused because he could not admit that all men are personally guilty in Adam's sin, having been influenced by one of his teachers, a " Baxterian." At twenty, with a fellow-student, he formed the practice of reading, in addition to their routine work, ten folio pages of Greek daily, besides a Greek play or two each month. Afterwards, when a teacher at a salary of thirty pounds, his hours of instruction were eleven a day ; and holidays, except " red-letter days," seem to have been a thing un- known. 156 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. vii. The twelve years from twenty-eight to forty were divided between the charge of the Dissenting academy at Warrington and a congregation at Leeds. His work as a preacher, which he had most at heart, was embarrassed by an hereditary defect of speech, which was a help to him, he says, by saving him from any ambition to shine in con- versation or seek popular applause in the pulpit. While at Warrington he made the acquaintance of Dr. Price, whose liberalism in politics he warmly shared ; and corre- sponded with Franklin (then in London), by whose advice he wrote a rapid but very successful history of discoveries in electricity. His Arianism had at first been a bar from the Dissenting pulpit, though he entered on his work at Leeds an avowed " Socinian " ; and here he formed the in- timate friendship with Lindsey which so strongly influenced the life-work of both. He had been at twenty a student of Hartley's philoso- phy, which vividly illustrates by nerve- vibration the associ- ation of ideas, and so was already led towards that view of philosophical necessity which remained his belief through life and deeply tinged the early Unitarian theology. His Necessarianism was, however, a strictly religious doctrine, corresponding in a wide way with what we should call a Moral Order of the universe, or in a narrower way with what we call Laws of Mind, as distinct from spontaneous and wanton Freewill on one side, or a purely scientific Determinism on the other. Moral liberty of choice, under these conditions, it does not appear that (illogical or not) he ever let go. But the singular serenity of his faith he always ascribed to the firm hold which the Necessarian philosophy had upon his mind. At twenty-five he had relinquished the Calvinistic doctrine of Atonement ; also, it would seem, that of Election, which his more orthodox PRIESTLEY'S MATERIALISM. 157 friends vainly tried to convince him was logically a part of his scheme of a Divine Necessity. His free commenting on the argument in some of Paul's Epistles had further brought rebuke from the learned apologist Lardner, with whom he conferred on the historical evidences of Christi- anity. These studies, with comparison of the Septuagint and the Hebrew text, mark his advance in doctrinal and critical theology up to the age of thirty-five. During a seven years' engagement as librarian and tutor in the family of Lord Shelburne (1773-80) his reputa- tion as an experimenter and disco\'erer in physics reached its height. Just then, his and Franklin's were the most shining names in that field of science. His careful study of certain conditions of organic life in a long series of ex- periments on air, and the deep sense of the " mystery of matter " which they induced, had effect in developing \Yhat is commonly called Priestley's materialism. It was, indeed, the natural sequence, and simplification, of his view of philosophical necessity. Like that, he held it as a strictly religious \-iew. \w our day we sliould state it in terms of the One Force familiar to the language of recent science. In substance (as has been remarked) his " mate- rialism " differs only in terms from Berkeley's " idealism " : each is simply a challenge of the " dualisn-w" taught in our common speech. That mind and matter are two inde- pendent "substances" in the make-up of the human con- stitution, which he had thought at first, he dismissed as a metaphysical fiction. Scientifically, we have to do only with a single series of facts, in which body and soul are quite undistinguishable — at least, inseparable; and in this view he is undisturbed by any consciousness of a dualism implied in the notion of moral liberty. That view, it is true, denies the natural immortality of man as a conscious 158 THE UXITARIANS. [Chap. vii. person ; but " he held, with an ahnost naive reahsm, that man would be raised from the dead by a direct exertion of the power of God, and thereafter be immortal." ^ Priestley's residence in Birmingham, from 1780 to 1 791, is the happiest and the culminating period of his intellectual life. In a retrospect written at the age of fifty-four he tells us something of his mental habits, and of the almost perfect nervous health which enabled him to do the work of a long life almost without an hour's loss from illness or pain or lack of sleep. We learn, too, of his easy rapidity of touch — he was early a master of shorthand — such that he dispatched a translation of Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes within a month ; and that " besides his miscellaneous reading, which was at all times very great, he read through all the works quoted in his comparison of the different systems of Grecian philosophy with Christianity, composed that work, and transcribed the whole of it, in less than three months!" And we see him as a lecturer, " a man of about middling stature, slenderly made, remarkably placid, modest, and courteous, pouring out with the simplicity of a child the great stores of his most capacious mind." He had expressed in a political essay some approval of the republican *theory of government (though wholly loyal to his own), and had admitted the right of revolution under a desperate tyranny. This, in the temper of that day, was enough to confound him with the French revo- lutionary madness. In May, 1791, came an outburst of blind mob fury sharpened by ecclesiastical bigotry and hate. His chapel was burned. His house, which the mob tried to set on fire by sparks from his own electrical machine, was wrecked. His furniture, library, and " the most truly valuable and useful apparatus of philosophical 1 Huxley's "Address at Birmingliaiu in 1891," p. 18. PR/ESTLEV EV AMERICA ; THOMAS BEES HAM. 159 instruments," he says, " that perhaps any individual in this or any other country was ever possessed of," were totally destroyed. The money loss he reckoned at more than $150,000, of which a small part was afterwards recovered. His life was saved by flight to London, with his wife, traveling painfully by night. All chances of occupation were hazardous while the reactionary fury lasted. And so, in I 794, at the age of sixty-one, relinquishing a modest lectureship at Hackney, he removed with his family to America. His latter days were spent in Northumber- land, Pa., in the hope that his children might grow up near a projected liberty-loving colony, which never came to birth; and here he died in 1804. " His theological assail- ants in England had echoed, perhaps prompted, the vilest execrations of the Birmingham mob. Edmund Burke, with superfluous disdain, refused to answer or even to notice an appeal for justice in behalf of this ecclesiastical outlaw. At a local gathering of clergy (we are told) one man said that he would gladly set the torch with his own hand to a pile of Priestley's writings, and burn the author alive with them ; and the rest, applauding, declared them- selves ready to do the same. Such was the insolence of theologic hate in England a hundred years ago!" ' The immediate successor of Priestley in his work at Hackney was Thomas Belsham (i 750-1829), who also followed Lindsey in Essex Street a few years later, and thus becomes a link between the past and the living gen- eration. Born and bred among the orthodox Dissenters, he was the first of that body to resign a position of trust and influence to join the Unitarians, at a time when, as he said, " a Socinian is still a sort of monster in the world." He did this not under any pressure that especially galled his conscience, since the conditions of his office as head of ' From .nil .iddress {lelivcrctl in IMiiladelpliia in February, 1886. l6o THE UNITARIAiYS. [Chap. vii. a Dissenting academy left him very free ; nor yet with a glad courage, since he was of somber temperament, weighed with the burden of the flesh, distrustful of himself, near the age of forty, looking only to obscure quiet with a pit- tance in some country town. It was sheer dogged British honesty of conviction. He tells in his " Calm Inquiry " the method he took with his pupils in their study of the Bible : that they should copy out and classify the texts that made for or against the doctrine under, discussion ; and how, to his own great surprise, and reluctantly, he found himself slowly drawn over to the new belief, and he could no longer serve with a neutral or divided mind. This sturdy honesty, with much industry and a fair amount of learning, made Mr. Belsham's strength and gave him a certain eminence among his fellows. More than most of them, he was known as a controversial advo- cate of the Unitarian doctrine ; more than most of them, he inclined to rationalize it. Some among them were " Arians," holding that Christ in person was agent of the Almighty in creating the universe. Others, still calling themselves Arians, held that he may be regarded as the Maker of the earth, and possibly of the entire solar system. Others ascribed to him only a shadowy and (so to speak) official preexistence. But all such, he thought, could not be honestly regarded as Unitarians, holding as he did " the simple and proper humanity of Christ." There was in his mind, apparently, a reaction from the anxious and brood- ing introspection that meets us in the religious journal he scrupulously kept in his earlier years. The " indwelling " scheme by which Doddridge had disguised from himself his own lapses from orthodoxy repelled the more blunt and candid mind of Belsham. He followed stiffly the lead of his slowly maturing conviction as far as his loyalty to the letter of the Bible would allow. He was much troubled. THOMAS BELSIIAM ; LA XT CAKPEXTER. l6l on the other part, by the Increasincj tendency of his time to " infidehty," or open rationahsm. His best known Ht- erary work was done as chief editor of the " Improved Ver- sion of the New Testament," which exhibits and defends the Unitarian criticism of its day ; ^ and in a translation with exposition of Paul's Epistles, which he holds to be only in small jxirt doctrinal, mostly for practical teaching and eciification. Of far narrower range than Priestley, he adopted in general the same views, including, with some demur, that of philosophical necessity, w^hich he ex- presses in the proposition that all events are brought to pass by "one governing Will." His name is held, per- haps not quite justly, to stand for that highly respectable but frigid and formal piety which Unitarianism in his day was commonly supposed to be. That this estimate of it was narrow and unjust w^e have the best proof possible in the honored and beloved name of Lant Carpenter (i 780-1840), w^hose life of sixty years brings to a fit close this period of our history. Unlike all the others who have been named, he was born and edu- cated among influences purely Unitarian. Owing to his father's failure in business, he was adopted by a mater- nal relative, a liberal Dissenter of Kidderminster, in whose household a native sweetness and vivacity of temper w^on to him warm affection from the beginning. The trait which most distinguished him through life was a certain moral genius in the work of education, with an eager and painstaking fidelity that gave him a singular influence with the young. Among the memories of his childhood, 1 Unitarians generally have been made somehow responsible for this ver- sion, with which they ap])ear, on the contrary, to have been " cgregiously disappointed" (see "Monthly Repository " for December, 1808). It was blamed for taking as a basis, instead of Wakefield's, Archbishop Newcome's translation, which follows the text of Clricsbach, and then departing from that text in numerous cases, of which a list is given in the " Repository." It soon met the fate of other revised versions, falling completely into disuse. 1 62 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap, vii. it is told that, when a boy of about eleven, wishing to give daily lessons to a class of his Sunday-school pupils, he would meet them — as the only hour of the day when they had not to work for their living — at four in the morning, summer and winter — " in summer under a mulberry tree, at other times in a little summer-house without fire " — giv- ing them " their hour's instruction in writing, arithmetic, and other branches of useful knowledge." That sacred passion of apostleship remained with him to the last, and very largely aided to shape his work in life. Dr. Carpenter ^ accepted in its best religious sense and with great ardor of conviction the doctrine in which he had been taught. It does not appear that through life he added anything to it or took anything away from it. He gave to it, simply, the great weight of his admirable ex- ample, with the defense of a spirited, elaborate, and (to him) somewhat costly reply to a scornful attack made by Bishop Magee in his treatise on the Atonement. In his college days, at the age of twenty-one, he had gone stu- diously and (as he deemed) thoroughly over the ground of the Christian evidences as exhibited by Lardner and Paley ; and the clear conviction to which he came then, he never wavered in. This belief of his, the Unitarianism of that day, was scrupulously defined against every form of trin- itarian doctrine on one side, and as scrupulou.sly guarded against any departure from the letter of the Bible on the other, following a straight and narrow path of literal interpretation. The New Testament, in the improved text and version, was taken, uncritically, as of absolute and final authority. This was no mere formal postulate of a school in theology. In a private letter, written past middle life to a grown-up daughter, he urges that " the Scriptures 1 He received at the age of twenty-six the honorary degree of LL.D. from the University of Glasgow, where he had been a student of distinction. LA XT CARPENTER. 1 63 are our only gitidc.'' To this literalism appears a sint^le qualification : that (on the ground of a doubt whether the first two chapters of the Testament make part of the i^ospel as originally written) the story of the birth of Jesus is in- terpreted as a natural event, though revealed in a halo of mystery and miracle. This view is taken in his " Harmony of the Gospels," the maturest labor of his life. The double burden of a large family school with his im- portant parish charge in Bristol, added to public respon- sibilities which he could not avoid, was slowly — nay, swiftly — undermining his life.^ While his father lived to ninety-five, he was an old man at fifty. To secure time for the tasks he had most at heart, he would go to his study at four o'clock in the morning, especially in winter when he enjoyed the quiet most, and appear at breakfast witii a radiant face, saying, " I have been with our Lord in Galilee this morning! " But then came the unescapable burden of the day's instruction, and the weight of other cares ; for he was a most faithful and tender pastor, and one of the most copious of correspondents. It was inevitable that his strength should break down, once and again, in sickness threatening to be fatal. As he approached his sixtieth year, the end of his working day seemed to have come. His last journey was undertaken to secure a year of rest in southern Europe. Sailing from Naples in a coasting steamer, he was washed or fell overboard in a storm at night, two months before he reached the age of sixty. The events of the long Continental struggle (i 793-1815), with the changes that slowly came about in the condition of the laboring classes, had powerfully turned the religious minds of luigland to political and social questions. This influence was, perhaps, most strongly felt among the Nonconformists, and of these, chiefly among the most 1 64 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. vii. liberal. We have seen how Priestley and Price had been identified with the revolutionary party. At a later day, the correspondence both of Belsham and of Dr. Carpenter often shows the close relations they were drawn into with leading" statesmen by the common interest in liberal poli- tics. This interest was much quickened by the steps taken in 181 3 to relieve Unitarians from the legal disabilities they still lay under. Then, having gained this relief, they were generously eager to aid in the measures that brought about the Catholic emancipation of 1829. In these efforts, in the work of general education, in the abolition of such oppressive burdens as the window tax and the restrictions upon labor-union, in negro emancipation, in temperance legislation, and the repeal of the scandalous " Contagious- Diseases Act," the names of leading Unitarians have been honorably prominent. Among the terrors of the riot in Bristol that grew from the reactionary fury against the Reform Act of 1832, Dr. Carpenter appears conspicuous as advocate, witness, or narrator, — not going out of his professional sphere, but listened to in it with deep respect, and carrying weight in high political circles by the simple authority of his name. The religious body he was con- nected with now felt itself respected and influential, nu- merous enough to assure itself of a rapid growth and a power for righteousness which it has never quite reached ; and of a hold upon the future, as a strong and united body, which at this day it can scarce venture any longer to look forward to. What honorable rank it had won in the world of letters is best seen in such names as those' of William Ro.scoe, Samuel T. Coleridge, John Bowring, and a few others, brilliant pioneers of a more brilliant day that has followed. How well Dr. Carpenter's own work has been carried on by his children, especially in the contributions of Dr. LATER EXGLISH UXrrARIAiYS. 165 William B. Carpenter to scientific ethics, and of Mary Carpenter in practical philanthropy, is well known. The most familiar type of the thought-and life associated with Unitarian forms of piety is perhaps to be found in a group ot highly cultivated women, whose names have been house- hold words to more than one generation : Catherine Cappe, Helen Maria Williams, Lucy Aikin, Anna Lajtitia Bar- bauld, Maria Edgeworth, Joanna Baillie, Harriet Marti- neau, Sarah Flower Adams. Their form ef piety has more of the serenity, the cheerful gravity, and the eth- ical glow of the religious life than of its depth, passion- ate contrition, or ecstatic rapture; and it is more readily associated with household affections, practical moralities, and the plain duties of every day, than with the great heroic enterprises of Christian faith. There was thus danger in it of a narrowing, even hardening tendency, of which the finest spirits would be soonest aware. Yet this peril, even if it were real, has been much ex- aggerated in unfriendly judgments. In the words of a near and intelligent student of the religious movement we have traced, " In spite of the apixirent materialism which • made the editors of a Warrington hymn-book (some- where m the twentie-s) boast of haxing avoided the term soul, as a word calculated to rouse unpleasant associations, there was a deep and earnest and unpretending piety.' There was, however," he continues, "a great difference in denommational zeal between those who had, as descend- ants of the early English Presbyterians, gradually become Unitarians, and those who— like Lindsey and Belsham and Aspland— came over from the Church or the Calvin- istic Nonconformists. The latter initiated the movement for the Unitarian name; they first designated chapels as Unitarian; they began to institute ' closed trusts,' which were opposed to the Presbyterian principle, and have 1 66 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. vii. been a trouble ever since. The general attitude of non- subscribing Presbyterians is sketched by the Rev. J. J. Tayler in his ' Retrospe;ct of the Religious Life of Eng- land ' ; and some' important applications of their princi- ples are made by Dr. Martineau in his letters to Mr. Mac- donald." ^ The tendency to a stricter denominationalism, with per- haps a too easy self-content, was suddenly broken near the end of the period we have now surveyed. A challenge wonderfully different in tone was sounded ; an intellectual horizon was opened up vastly broader than anything we have thus far found. Early in the year 1836 was pub- lished " The Rationale of Religious Inquiry," a thin volume of six lectures by James Martineau. This book, little but precious, struck the keynote of the higher criticism that has been followed out since in many lines of thought. The writer was a young preacher, then settled in Liver- pool, a man of thirty-one, educated first for the profession of civil engineering, who had come with singular intellectual freshness, wealth, and courage into the field of theology ; who had relinquished a Dublin pulpit, choosing at twenty- six the independence of a laborious and doubtful self-sup- port before the government grant his congregation were entitled to receive ; whose riper philosophical studies had led him away from the conventional Necessarianism of the English Unitarians of that day, — though in retracting that earlier view he ga\'e to it (in the "Liverpool Lectures" of 1839) probably the finest literary exposition it has ever had, in an argument on Moral Evil. Those who are old enough to have caught the first tones of theit new voice will remember how it was instantly recognized as the voice of an intellectual leader, and with what interest every step has been watched in the long 1 Reprinted in " Essays, Reviews, etc.," vol. ii., pp. 371, 381. JAMES MARTINEAU. \6j and brilliant career that has followed. The series covers fifty-eight years of successive publications, each as fresh, as vigorous, and as independent as the first. Taking" up the " Rationale " at this day, we note that it accepts, and puts forward with sharp relief, the then ac- cepted di\'ision-line of Christian and Deist : whether or not Christianity is to be received as a dispensation of mir- acle. In the school which Dr. Martineau represents, this division-line has been so long left behind as to have been for more than forty years lost quite out of sight: this was shown, in 1850, by the generous and cordial recognition he gave to Theodore Parker as a Christian thinker. With an exaltation of the person of Christ very rare in so keen a critic, he maintains in 1853, against Professor Newman, that " we rest our Christianity on that moral perfection of Jesus which he arraigns"; while in 1890, denying that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, he says, simply, that " in the sphere of Divine things, the requirement is that he be better" than we, and " make more approach to the supreme Perfection."^ During a residence in Germany in 1848-49, he became a master in the fields of modern philosophy and criticism, developing a marked increase in breadth and force. A series of critical papers of extraordinary brilliancy and power — of which we may here note those on the Creed and the Ethics of Christendom — have cov- ered most fields of modern philosophical inquiry. His contributions to purely religious thought, of profoundest and probably most lasting value, have appeared in dis- courses entitled " Endeavours after the Christian Life " and " Hours of Thought," which in their quality of intellectual exposition of the deeper religious experience may almost be said to constitute a class by themselves. What is rarest, even in so extended a career, is to ha\e had the opportu- 1 " Essays," etc., vol. iii., p. 55; " Seat of Autliority," p. 651. 1 68 THE UXITARIANS. [Chap. vii. nity, when already far past eighty, to sum up its ripest fruits in the five large octavo volumes known as " Types of Ethical Theory," "A Study of Religion," and "The Seat of Authority in Religion," together with the four of reprinted " Essays, Reviews, and Addresses," which gather up the most significant of his earlier labors, scat- tered through half a lifetime. It is happily too soon ^ to survey Dr. Martineau's life- work as a whole, or to pass a critical judgment upon it. For our present purpose, it is enough to say that it is by far the most rich and important systematic contribution ever made by a single hand to the literature of thought in the religious body with which he has been associated. More, too, than any other of its intellectual leaders, he has been impatient of the limitations that seem to be thrown about it by a name taken from the lists of contro- versial theology, refusing to join publicly in the work of a " Unitarian " organization, or to contribute a paper to a " Unitarian " review. Rather, he would recall and claim for that body the historic title "Presbyterian," carefully guarding it from being either a doctrinal sect on the one hand, or on the other a loose aggregate of ill-trained pop- ular religionists. His sympathies are widely apart from the schemes that seek for it a greater denominational vigor, and, possibly, a wider field of real service and influ- ence. Standing aside from all such efforts, he has been its intellectual guide and instructor as no other man has been or could be. While his near associates have been men — like John James Tayler and James Drummond — of marked learning and ability, his name alone adequately represents the course the higher liberal thought has taken, whether by what he has adhered to or by what he has dissented from. 1 Written in the siunnier of 1893. THE PRESKXT SITUATlOy. 169 In what form English Unitarianism will survive changes so radical, whether as an organized body or as an intel- lectual force, it is too soon to forecast. We have already, seen those features of it which have perceptibly influenced the parallel development in America. In respect of num- bers, it does not greatly vary from what it was half a cent- ury ago, counting, in 1893, 344 congregations and 356 ministers. Its two strong points, as a healthy living force, are : that its ablest men heartily accept the results of scien- tific investigation in physics, history, or criticism', and that the body of it is pervaded by a deep and powerful sym- pathy with what is best in the political and social aspira- tion of the day, which is now perhaps the most important single factor in British 'politics. But whether these two tend together as a source of strength to the Unitarian body, as such, is open to question. " The critical move- ment," again to copy from the writer before quoted, " is wholly opposed to denominationalism and ecclesiastical zeal. It necessarily fosters Broad Church views of the inadequacy of all formuL-e, of the necessity of compromise in worship, and the rest. Hence the militant Unitarians do not care at all for historic and critical inquiries, and they profoundly mistrust all philosophy. On the other hand, the ethical sentiment, being precisely what links us to other bodies by a common philanthropy, is also un- favorable to the maintenance of narrow lines of ecclesias- tical organization. It pleads for union and cooperation with other bodies to the utmost possible extent ; it sinks all diflerences of creed or church life, if given moral ends can be secured." Under such conditions the body must survive, if at all, not as an independent force, but as a single battalion, serving under its special discipline, in an immensely greater host. But this is prophecy, not history. CHAPTER VIII. ANTECEDENTS IN NEW ENGLAND. What is called the Unitarian movement in New Eng- land belongs, strictly, to the last century and a half, since the Great Awakening of 1735. But to explain the direction and character taken by this current of religious thought, it is necessary to look back for a moment to the first founding of the colonies, and to note, in particular, the non-dogmatic forms of covenant under which their earlier churches were gathered. Of these forms it will be suffi- cient here to copy three : those, namely, of the First Church in Plymouth (1620), the First Church in Salem (1629), and the First Church in Boston (1630). These three churches are all now known as Unitarian, and each exists at this day under its original covenant. That in Plymouth, it is true, was revised in 1676; but this was done without changing in the least its character or sub- stance. In Bradford's " History " (p. 6) j^ ,is related that the Pilgrims at Plymouth " as the Lord's, free people joyned them selves into a church estate, in the fellowship of tiic gospell, to walke in all [God's] wayes made known or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeav- our, whatever it should cost them." In the later revision the covenant is given thus : " We do hereby solemnly and religiously, as in his most holy presence, avoucli the Lord Jehovah, the only true God, to be our God and the God of ours; and do promise and bind ourselves to walk in all 170 EARLY COVENANTS. 171 our ways according to the rule of the gospel, and in all sincere conformity to his holy ordinances, and in mutual love and watchfulness over one another, depending wholly upon the Lord our God to enable us by his grace here- unto." That of the church in Salem reads : " We covenant with the Lord and with one another, and doe bynd our selves in ye presence of God, to walke together in all his waies, according as he is pleased to reveale himself unto us in his Blessed word of truth." In the additions of 1636, which follow, the " waies " of practical piety are defined at some length, without the insertion of a single point of contro- verted doctrine.^ The First Church in Boston declares, after a brief pre- amble, as follows : " We ... do hereby solemnly and re- ligiously promise and bind ourselves to walk in all our ways according to the rule .of the gospel, and in all sincere conformity to [Christ's] holy ordinances, and in mutual love and respect each to other, so near as God shall give us grace." At the first signing, this covenant bore only the four names of John Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, Isaac Johnson, and John Wilson, the three leading laymen of the colony, and its first minister. These earliest documents show, in the first place, why it was that New England Unitarianism was not (like the English) a secession, but an offshoot or development, from the original Congregational order: doctrinal dissent, or nonconformity, was never called for ; and secondly, how all agree in recognizing, as the tribunal of last appeal, not church authority, or any form of creed, but the direct guidance of the Spirit of Truth present to the individual 1 Ilurd's " History of Essex County." See especially the discussion as to what constituted the original covenant, and whether it was accompanied by a confession of belief, as presented by Rev. K. B. Willson, pp. 24-27. I ']2 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. \ hi. mind, which is ever the invitation to free thought and the motive of doctrinal advance. These points are the rather to be noted, because "to accept the covenant" was the formal act essential to full citizenship, as well as to mem- bership in the church. The covenant, accordingly, and not a point of speculative doctrine, furnished the question at issue in the sharp discussion — that on the " Half-way Covenant " — which opened the second era of colonial life in 1662.^ This was the first intrusion of the modern secu- lar spirit into the conduct of the colonial church, and was compelled upon it by the political circumstances of the Restoration. We understand, of course, that there w^as a body of doctrine generally if not universally received among the colonial churches. This, indeed, has made the standard of a very rigid orthodoxy, by which all departures from it have been judged, quite down to our own day. Colonial laws to restrain " heresy," passed in 1646 and in i6q7, were first formally abolished by the Bill of Rights in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. The exaggerated doctrine of the Free Spirit, proclaimed by Ann Hutchin- son in 1634, held the colony distracted till her cruel expul- sion two years later. About 1650 William Pynchon pub- lished " The Meritorious Price of Man's Redemption," a treatise " vindicating the suff"erings and sacrifice of Christ from that most dangerous Scriptureless tenent, that is held forth by Mr. Norton, of New England, in his book of 1 The essential provision of the " Half-way Covenant" was that children of persons baptized, though unregenerate, may be baptized, " their parents owning the covenant." Its terms are stated in " The Spirit of the Pilgrims " to be these: (i) the duty of all baptized persons "to own the covenant," whether or not formally admitted to the church ; (2) in case of their hesitation or indifference, the church should summon them to do it ; (3) if they still neglect, they are to receive the formal censure of the church ; (4) if they are of sober and reputable life, though not church-members, their children may be baptized. . CONFESSION OF IGSO. I 73 ' Christ's Sufferings,' afifirming that he suffered the es- sentiartorments of hell and the second death from God's immediate vindicative wrath"; asserting, on tiie contrary (p. 309), that his death was a priestly act, in which he offered up his own life as ransom for the guilty, l^'or this advance upon the somber theology of our fathers, the book was burned, and its author was punished by a fine of a hundred pounds. The constitution and polity of the colonial churches had been carefully defined in the" Cambridge Platform "of 1648, as a measure of defense against the Presbyterian party hitherto dominant in the Long Parliament. Their doc-, trinal standard was of far later date ; it was not formally! announced till 1680. In that year a synod of elders and delegates, representing five New England colonies, was 1 held in Boston, which drafted a " Confession of Faith" in thirty- two chapters, copied in substance from tliat of the I Westminster Assembly, as abridged by the Independents in the "Savoy Confession" of 1658.^ This declaration could not, however, be imposed as a creed upon the churches, which simply adopted such portions of it as they thought lit into their several covenants. The theory of independency might not be denied. As a consequence of the restoration of Charles II., the colonies had been forced to admit to equal citizenship, and hence as qualified for cliurch communion, " all persons orthodox in their opin- ions and not vitious in their lives." From this came the lax terms of membership, in the " Half-way Covenant "of 1662, and opening of church doors to the un regenerate. From this, again, arose the compromising theory that the TvOrd's Sup[)er is of itself a " converting ordinance," and that hence " profane persons ought to be admitted to 1 Given in Mather's " Magnalia," vol. ii., pp. 157-178. Sec " Tiie Pan- oplist," vol. iii., p. 13. 1 74 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. viii. partake of it." This theory was vigorously attacked by Increase Mather, in a small volume directed against Solo- mon Stoddard; and again at a .synod in 1689, where he remonstrated against " men of known unregeneracy shar- ing in the tremendous mysteries " of that sacramental act. The effect most dreaded at this period would appear to have been less the spread 'of doctrinal heresy than the secularizing of church life. " Doth not a careless, remiss, flat, dry, cold, dead frame of .spirit grow upon us secretly, strongly, prodigiously ? " so asks, sadly, a minister of the elder time, in 1669. Royal authority was unfriendly to the old ecclesiastical rule. Conditions of social life were altered from the former rude simplicity. Natural leaders in the young State — jurists, publicists, or men of letters — cared more for political rights than for church theology. Against this danger — illustrated at all points in the remarkable career of John Wise, " Father of American democracy" (1652-1725) — the barrier of a stricter eccle- siasticism was set up. In 1 700 the plan of a " national \ church " was urged, to confirm the shaken authority. In 1 705 a system of " associations ' ' and " standing councils ' ' was adopted. In 1708 the " Saybrook Platform" established in Connecticut a method of " Consociation," or local pres- bytery, which never got footing beyond the boundaries of that province. An ecclesiastical machinery of some little dignity and strength was thus constructed, which held in moderate check the laxness of Independency, and was in a good number of cases efTective in setting bounds to the) Boston liberal theology of a later day. Meanwhile, the change of the colonial charter in 1692 had brought in, along with royal governors and new dis- tinctions of rank, increased circulation of English books. The discussions of Sherlock, South, Whiston, Clarke, and others came to be widely known. Among the rest, writ- uxrr.tKi.ixs OF iifE ekjuteeatii cExrrRY. 175 ings of Thomas Emlyn, the amiable witness and sufferer of that clay for the Unitarian faith, had a large currency and a special influence. Dr. Sprague, in his " Annals of the American Pulpit," records the lives of forty-nine ministers of known Unitarian belief settled in Congrega- tional churches during the eighteenth century. The list begins with the seventy years' pastorate (1717-87) of the excellent and eccentric Dr. Ebenezer Gay, of Hingham, who has been called " the Father of American Unita- rianism " — a graduate at eighteen of Harvard College, who received its doctor's degree at eighty-nine, and died in his ninety-second year ; and includes the name of James Freeman, the terms of whose settlement at King's Chapel, in 1785, virtually transferred that noble foundation from the Epi'scopal to the Congregational body. To these we should add the name of Lemuel Briant, minister of Braintree from 1747 to 1752, citing the evidence of the elder President Adams, who, "discussing in 1815 the principles of the new departure, found in them nothing that was not familiarly known to him, and bore testimony to the fact that sixty- five years before, Lemuel Briant \yas a Unitarian." ^ It may be noted, however, that the con- troversy at that day turned chiefly on the Atonement and the conditions of the moral life, and so was known as " Arminian," not specially as antitrinitarian. These evidences of a great latitude of opinion, tolerated and allowed for without any break in the Congregational order, will be easily understood from what has been said of the character of the church covenants. It had much to do, besides, with the deepening interest in political affairs, as we approach the period of open conflict with the mother- country. Indeed, it might almost be said that every man 1 "Three Episodes in the History of Massachusetts," by Charles F. Adams, p. 643. 176 THE UXITAKIAXS. [Chai-. viii. of very wide and strong influence in public life (with the possible exception of Samuel Adams, "last of the Puri- tans")— from Benjamin Franklin, the friend of Lindsey and Priestley, to Thomas Jefferson, whom his biographer ' Randall calls a Unitarian in belief — was a confirmed disbe- liever in the Puritan theology ; while, unconscious of any jealousy, the Congregational ministry had its full share in rousing and guiding the patriot temper of the day. Naturally, the growing laxity of opinion did not come to pass without sharp remonstrance from the more zealous preachers of the elder creed. ^ Thus we hear, in 1719, of "an inclination to the abominable errors of Arius." Cot- ton Mather's convention sermon in 1722 complains that men " do not preach much about the person of Christ, after the manner," he remarks, " of Church-of-England men " ; while in 1726 William Williams, in less polemic mood, would subordinate controversy " to set forth the glory of Christ, . . . the main and essential part of our w^ork." Jonathan Edwards, at Northampton in 1734, is uneasy at symptoms of " Arminianism," which he thinks to betoken a cold and neutral temper in the religious life. And the next year, under his powerful impulse, occurs the wonder- ful phenomenon of " the Great Awakening," with extrava- gance of revivals that followed, and the " strange transports of mechanical devotions," which are generally held, by the reaction they invited, to have led the way to the liberal theology that followed. How rapid this counter-movement was, we find evidence in the three vi.sits of George Whitefield to Boston, in 1740, in 1744, and in 1754. In the first, fresh as he was from his enthusiasm in the great work of Jonathan Edwards, he 1 Some of the details which follow are taken from an extended article by Rev. E. H. Gillett, D.D. (200 pages of double columns) in the " Historical Magazine" for April, 1871. IIJUTKFIKLD AND ClIAUNCY ; THE MAYIIEIVS. IJ-J seemed to carry all before him, and gave his farewell dis- course on Boston Common to a crowd of twenty thousand eager listeners. In the second, the scene is already changed. Edwards's *' Thoughts " and Chauncy's " Sea- sonable Thoughts" on the great revival have intervened. Criticism is in the ascendant. A demand for " discipline " has displaced the heated enthusiasm. The reaction has now set in, which six years later drove Edwards from his home in Northampton to his Stockbridge exile among the Indians. At his third visit, in 1754, Whitefield finds no response in Boston. A new gospel of reason has been for eight years installed in the West Church pulpit by May- hew, the boldest preacher of his day. The spirit of the time is "hostility to creeds." The cry of " Arminian," " Socinian," " Antinomian," has been heard without alarm. The writings of Thomas Emlyn are diligently studied. We have in full \-iew that " weakness of the pulpit " (with the notable exception of Mayhew) which has been recorded as one symptom of the coming political revolution. The New England clergy, as Whitefield in his wrath had can- didly said of them, were " dumb dogs, half devils and half beasts, unconverted, spiritually blind, and leading their people to hell ! " Charles Chauncy, minister of the First Church in Boston for sixty years, till his death, in 1787 — a scholar, an ardent patriot, a political reformer, and a ready controversialist — was eminently the intellectual leader at this period in the new advance towards a rational theology. But its most effective popular champion was Jonathan Mayhew, pastor of the West Church from 1747 till his early death, in 1766. He was born in i 720, a child of brave descent. His an- cestors for four generations had been rulers, teachers, and civilizers among the Indians. The first, Thomas Mayhew (i 592-1682), a citizen of Watertown, Mass., had received •178 THE UXITARIAXS. [Chap. vni. a grant of the island of Martha's Vineyard, where he planted a colony at Edgarton, at the age of fifty- five, tak- ing with him his son Thomas, a zealous preacher, as mis- sionary among the native tribes. Ten years later, at the age of thirty-six, this son — a beloved apostle, familiar with the dialects of his hearers — was lost at sea, while on his way to plead their spiritual needs in London ; and a few years later the father, already revered by the savages as a just magistrate and true friend, devoted himself at se\'enty to carrying on his son's work as preacher of the gospel, sometimes walking as much as twenty miles in a day to fulfill his service. Though twenty-fold the number of the whites upon the island, the Indians of his charge could never be drawn to take part in the somber horror of King Philip's War; and the old man died in peace, lacking six days only of ninety years. The good work was continued by his grandson John, and then by Experience, father of the more eloquent and famous Jonathan. Coming fresh from such a field, the younger Mayhew brought with him a spirit of almost haughty independence, which was quickly manifest. From the outset he pro- fessed the right and duty of private judgment. At his settlement in Boston the more cautious of the clergy held aloof, and he was installed by a council gathered from country parishes. He would not follow the customary practice of seeking membership in the Boston Association of Ministers, and never took part in the Thursday Lecture, but established a more attractive weekly series of his own. It is significant that his doctor's degree came to him from Aberdeen. He was, it is said, " the first clergyman in New England who expressly and openly opposed the school doctrine of the Trinity." This doctrine he did not scruple even to ridicule, by applying the phrases of the creed to an imaginary deification of the Virgin Mary. JONATIIAX MAYllKW. I 79 Already when a student at college he had been revolted by the cxtraxaganccs of a re\ival. Under the influence (it is said) of Dr. Gay, of Hingham, he had then chosen the cooler way of reason. Thus he rejected the doctrine of " irresistible grace"; he doubted the entire creed of orthinloxy ; he held the doctrine of freewill, taking the Arniinian part in the burning controv'ersy of the day. " Creed-making " he held in scorn. A vicarious atone- ment and an imputed righteousness he vehemently denied. Persecution for opinion's sake he hated. "A burning fagot," he said, " has no tendency to illuminate the under- standing;" in the popular way of revivals " men are con- verted— only out of their own wits ; ... to attempt to dragoon men into sound orthodox Christians is as unnat- ural as to attempt to dragoon them into good poets, physicians, or mathematicians," Christianity, according to him, is not a scheme of salvation, to be defined by dogma, but " the art of li\'ing virtuously and piously." These phrases give hint of a temper sometimes hasty and disdainful, but in the main nobly independent. It is no wonder that his gospel of freedom soon ran out in the line of political rights and duties, or that he became the near friend and adviser of such ardent patriots as Samuel Adams, James Otis, and other pre-revolutionary leaders. Zeal for theological controversy gave way, step by step, before interest in public events. Among the topics of dis- course which he carried into the pulpit are such as these : the death and character of Frederick, Prince of Wales ; the anniversary of the beheading of Charles I., which he takes as occasion for a plea against ecclesiastical apologies for despotism ; the taking of Quebec ; the accession of George HI. The discussion that best shows his \-igor of attack and retort was called out by an effort made by certain Episcopalian ministers to get P.piscopacy recognized as an l80 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. viii. established religion in the colonies. This had led to the great abuse (as he charged it) of drawing upon missionary- funds to maintain clergymen of that persuasion in the larger towns, already well provided with Christian teachers, where they found no hearing, instead of sending them to remoter settlements, where they were really wanted. The most pungent passage in his attack is a bit of sarcasm, almost fierce, on the religious and political antecedents of Seeker, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had incautiously meddled in the debate. A personal controversy with Mr. Clea\'eland, of Ipswich, in which he resents the charge of a Restorationist heresy in the phrase that punishment may be " for the good of the offender," is less creditable to his judgment or temper. Dying at the age of forty-six, a little before the crisis of the political revolution which his impetuous .spirit hailed in advance, he left a fame far wider and more enduring than any of his associates. Mayhew's successor in the West Church, Simeon How- ard (i 767— 1804), continued the line of dissent from the accepted creed, being esteemed an Arian. He was a man of modest, serious, and even temper, in character generous and upright, highly esteemed for scholarship, and as a pastor greatly loved. In his time that church was nearly wrecked by the storm of the Revolution. While he took refuge in Halifax, Nova Scotia, " the house he preached in was turned into a barrack, and his congregation dis- persed in every direction." Those were not days of theological interest or advance. " The divinity of Christ,' complained Andrew Croswell, speaking at that time, " is an antiquated doctrine, very unfashionable and unmodish." " Every Christian," responded Tucker of Newbury, in I 768, " has and must have a right to judge for himself of the true sense and meaning of all gospel truths." Presi- dent Locke, of Harvard College, insisted in 1772 that LIBERALS IN SALEM. l8l " foreign errors are to be met by argument alone, not by crowding down creeds and confessions upon pain of eternal punishment." The cHmax of this period of indifferentism was reached in the presidency of Joseph Willard (i 781- 1804), an Arminian in creed, who corresponded with friends of Voltaire in France as well as Priestley and Price in England, in whose time it was a common saying that " the Boston ministers have agreed to differ." At the end of the century we are told : " It is confidently believed that there was not a strict trinitarian clergyman of the Congregational order in Boston." Nor was this temper of mind confined to professed theologians. Among the anecdotes of the revolutionary period, it is told that Timothy Pickering, of Salem, — emi- nent alike as a soldier, a jurist, a statesman, and in later years as a bitter Federalist partisan, — once heard Ikiron Steuben say, while campaigning on the Hudson, that he " would as soon believe the doctrine of the trinity " as some tale that had just been told him. This set the seri- ous young adjutant to thinking, and he became one of the lay promoters of a very notable theological movement in his native town.^ The liberal mo\-ement in Salem is associated chiefl\' with three very eminent names among its ministers. Of Thomas Barnard, of the North Church (i 773-1812), it is said that he was a man of strong character and remark- able personal influence. This latter quality was shown in his effccti\-e mediation, in 1775, between a British officer and young Timothy Pickering, who, with his militia guard, claimed txjid kept possession of certain weapons which the authorities sought to detain. But this great personal in- fluence was neutral as to those matters of dispute that 1 For an interesting sketch of tin's niovenient see two papers .at the chise of a volume entitled " Social Equilihriuni," etc., by Rev. George Ijiitciielor. 1 82 THE UNITARIANS. [Cuap. viii. might seem more properly within his province. " Dr. Barnard," said an unsatisfied parishioner to him one day, " I never heard you preach a sermon on the trinity." " No," was the instant reply, " and you never will." His convention sermon of 1793 went to prove that "faith in Christ and obedience to his laws " may well be con- sistent with honest difference as to the grounds of belief in him. The name of John Prince, of the First Church (1779- 1836), was more familiar, through his long ministr}' of fifty-seven years, to men of a younger generation. He was a man of scientific turn of mind, of gentle and kindly temper, of easy liberality in belief and practice. Thus he was interested in the reading anci circulating of English Unitarian books, and — what was a rare thing to do among the Congregational clergy of that day — he opened his pul- pit in 1787 to John Murray, the pioneer of Universalism in America. Through this mild easiness of disposition he was one of those who, when controversy comes, are readily suspected of evasion or concealment. Quite the most remarkable and most independent of the three " liberal " Salem ministers was William Bentley, of the East Church (i 783-1819), who was called to his place from a tutorship of mathematics in Harvard College. He was a man brusquely independent, discarding both the creed and the great wig "which was its symbol." He discon- tinued the Friday's "preparatory lecture," then custom- ary before communion Sunday. He sympathized frankly with the Engli.sh Unitarians, holding Priestley's tracts to be a sufiicient vindication of their doctrine. Yet he sharply opposed divisions in the Congregational body, and scorn- fully refused to take part in the ordaining of John Mur- ray, as "an illiterate foreigner without credentials." He was a most industrious and faithful preacher, writing his WILLIAM BENTLEY. 1 83 two sermons a week, without break, for six-and-thirty years. He was among the first to accept the later Uni- tarian expositions of the Logos, and was earlier than Channing- to oppose the orthodox dogma of native de- pravity in human nature. He was far in ad\'ance of his day in accepting the spirit of modern democracy, and did not at all shun to be called by such names of contumely as " Jacobin," " Democrat," or " Jeffersonian infidel." An anecdote shows his daring, popular, and ready temper. During the War of 1812 word was brought to him in the pulpit one Sunday morning that the frigate " Constitu- tion " had taken refuge at Marblehead, four miles away, threatened by British cruisers. Instantly dismissing the congregation, he headed a party of relief, riding (says one account) on a gun-carriage. Whether or not deterred by the signs of resistance, the cruisers sailed away ; upon which, returning as promptly as he had gone, he thrilled his audience with an impromptu patriotic discourse on the text, "There go the ships!" Dr. Bentley was, further- more, master of learning extremely rare in his day. He was said to be " expert in at least twenty-one languages," and such an adept in calligraphy that manuscript copies made by him, in Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, are models of that elegant art. Thus distinguished as a scholar, he yet declined the presidency of a college in Vermont, choos- ing the homelier ta.sks of his parish ministry. A man of warm temperament, an eager partisan of the most popu- lar political creed, a fluent newspaper correspondent, a devoted pastor and friend, his last act was to visit a sick parishioner on a bitter December day ; and then, return- ing to his fireside, he dropped dead as he opened his lips to give some direction to his attendant. A still more characteristic influence working in Salem to the same general effect was that of merchants and ship- 1 84 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. viii. masters, especially those .engaged in the East India trade. Commerce, in the years following the Revolutionary War, was the most potent element in the social life of Salem. In particular, commerce in the Indian Ocean here first came to be of great magnitude and importance, and gave to this town a rank quite out of proportion to its size or population. It was on a voyage to the Isle of Bourbon, in 1 794, that Nathaniel Bowditch worked out the com- putations which gave to his "Practical Navigator" its supreme authority among books of its class. Professor Benjamin Peirce, ranked as the profoundest genius among American mathematicians, was grandson of a Salem ship- master. The most eminent local names were those dis- tinguished in that line of commercial adventure ; and of these, almost all the more prominent — twenty, it is said, out of twenty-four — were to be found in the Unitarian congregations. Men of their order of intelligence were quick to be impressed by contact with old-world civiliza- tions and alien faiths. The supercargo of the first ship that traded in those waters is related to have volunteered at home a defense of Mohammedanism. Others felt in like manner the mental stimulus of foreign travel and ad- venture, so that the brighter intelligence of New England fast lost its provincial quality, along with whatever was narrow in its Puritan tradition. It is a citizen of Salem, Robert Rantoul, whom we find at a later day in corre- spondence with Rammohun Roy, touching the points of kinship between Oriental and Western faiths. Thus " the first liberalizing influence upon the old Puritan theology was felt in that community through its navigators, even more than through its critics and theologians. As soon as they came into those warmer latitudes, their crust of prejudice melted and cracked from them like films of ice; and in place of the narrow tradition they carried out with KING'S CHAPEL, BOSTON. 185 them they brought home the germs of a broad rehgion of humanity." - The event of chief note in the half-century we havei now traced was that act of the proprietors of King's Chapel, in Boston, by which (in the language of its min- ister, Dr. Greenwood) " the first Episcopal Church in New England became the first Unitarian Church in America." On the 19th of June, 1785, it was voted, twenty against seven, to strike out from the order of service whatever teaches or implies the doctrine of the trinity. This step was prepared for by a course of discussions on the true interpretation of Christian doctrine, conducted by James "Freeman, who for about two years had been the " reader " of that church, and who two years later was formally in- stalled as its pastor by the Vestry, acting under the general statutes of Massachusetts, the affiliated churches refusing their assent or fellowship. The change was further favored by the temper developed in the revolutionary struggle, when some of the royalist proprietors went into exile, and their places were filled by younger men. Mr. Freeman had had scruples on the point of lay ordination ; but, hearing an English visitor — Rev. Mr. Hazlitt, father of the essay- ist— assert its validity, he replied, " I wish you could prove that, sir," and so entered into the argument, in which he was easily convinced. He soon became an active propa- gandist of Unitarian doctrine. He published a " Scripture Confutation of the Thirty-nine Articles"; distributed the writings of English Unitarians, including the gift of Priest- ley's works to Harvard College; and, without being an eager controversialist, was held in liigh esteem as a pio- neer among the early Unitarian leaders, till his death, in 1835, at the age of seventy-six. For some twenty years following the step taken at King's Chapel, the movement as it widens out is most 1 86 THE UNITARIANS. [Ciiap. viii. easily to be traced in a series of personal names or inci- dents. In 1 786 Aaron Bancroft, father of the historian, was settled in Worcester, where from that date till his death, in 1839, he was widely known as a leader in the new theology, exhibiting " uniform prudence in counsel and action, a warm heart and courteous manners, and de- voted fidelity in all relations of public and private life." A congregation in Portland, Me., seeking in 1792 to re- form its order of worship, under the direction of its min- ister, Mr. Oxnard, found itself drawn into alliance with the liberal movement ; and this act was followed, about the same time, in the important town of Saco. In 1794 simi- lar action was taken in Plymouth and in Barnstable. Two' years later are found scattered churches of known Unita- rian affinities in the States of Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Pennsylvania.^ Priestley, it is said, was warmly urged, in 1 794, to settle as a Unita- rian preacher in both New York and Philadelphia, but preferred a retired life at Northumberland. Freeman, in 1789, speaks of "many churches in which the worship is strictly Unitarian"; and we hear at the same date of an atmosphere of doubt (" not concealed disbelief") touching the disputed points of the popular theology. " Rejection of the trinity " would seem to be the one point of agree- ment among the Boston ministers ; and Dr. Joseph Buck- minster, of Portsmouth, laments in 1799 a tendency that has already the promise of its most brilliant representative in his greatly gifted son, who at fifteen has rejected the doctrine of native depravity, and- doubts the trinity. Thus in the year 1800 it comes to pass that, while scarce one Congregational preacher can fairly be called a trinitarian, there is as yet "no line of demarkation." Eckley is rated as " orthodox," PLliot and Howard as 1 Belshaiu's " Life of Lindsey " (1812). HENRY WAKE AT HARVARD COLLEGE. 1 87 " Arian," Emerson as " Unitarian," Kirkland as simply " liberal." Harvard College, founded to be the nursery of Puritan theology, is quite neutral, e\'en helplessly so. Its president, Willard, has " no zeal " ; Professor Pearson, " no influence " ; Tappan is a " moderate Calvinist " ; Pop- kin, a "Socinian." East of Worcester, seventy-five min- isters out of two hundred may be reckoned " orthodox " ; in Plymouth County, only two out of twenty ; in Boston, one out of nine. This, however, can be counted as hardly more than a vague unrest. The old Congregational order is still unbroken. Buckminster, most ardent of the liberals, writes to Belsham in 1809: " Except in the little town of Boston and its vicinity, there cannot be collected from any space of one hundred miles six clergymen who have any conception of rational theology, and who would not shrink from the suspicion of antitrinitarianism in any shape." The "Monthly Repository" of 181 2 (p. 200) complains of the extreme reticence of the Boston ministers, in con- trast with their more outspoken English sympathizers. It was not only tljat they appreciated to the full their advantage as members in good standing of an established order ; but at this period they honestly distrusted the rad- ical tendencies pushing to the front in L^nglish Unitarian- ism, and (lid not choose to wear its name. Priestley's "materialism" was an object of vague, ignorant dread; anfl from lioston there had gone no word of greeting to him in his exile. Tills period of silent and dull neutrality was broken, in 1805, by the appointment of Henry Ware as Hollis pro- fessor of divinity in Harvard College. He was now, at the age of forty-one, a modest country minister, settled in Hingham, Mass., a man of singularly blended sweetness of temper, austere integrity of conscience, and a touching humility of spirit, well known as siding with the liberal 1 88 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. viii. party. His appointment was the first clear public mani- festo of that party's advanced strength. President Wil- lard had died in the autumn of 1804. Nearly two years later, Samuel Webber, professor of mathematics — also the " liberal " candidate, opposed by the Hebrew professor, Pearson, who had vainly contended against Mr. Ware's election — was appointed in Willard's place. His install- ment was soon followed by three others — Sidney Willard, John Quincy Adams, and John Farrar, in the chairs of Hebrew, rhetoric, and mathematics — all pointing the same way. These five appointments within two years made that university conspicuously the headquarters of intellectual and religious liberalism in America.^ The alarm or anger felt by many at the attitude thus taken by the university naturally turned, in particular, against the election of the theological professor. The chair had been founded in 1723 by Thomas Hollis, an English Dissenter, a Baptist, though not a Calvinist in the stricter sense. It had been further endowed by the "Henchman Legacy " of 1747 and strengthened by the "Hopkins Fund" of 1657, both representing the well- known New England theology. One of its conditions was , that the incumbent should be of " sound and orthodox " j belief. On these grounds the election had been actively opposed by Professor Pearson, himself a " fellow " - of the university and a candidate for its presidency. It was now; acrimoniously attacked as a flagrant breach of trust by! Dr. Jedediah Morse, minister of Charlestown. in a pamphlet of "True Reasons" assigned for it. All the grounds he presented had been fully considered by the Corporation, 1 Quincy's " History of Harvard University," vol. ii., pp. 284-291. Otlier apiMjintments made during the same period, but declined, further em- ]-)ha.sizc this fact : those of Fisher Ames as president, and of John Pickering, Nathaniel Bowditch, and Joseph McKean as professors. 2 A member of the Corporation, the immediate governing body. JOHN SHERMAN; ABIEL ABBOT. 189 which made answer " that this attempt to introduce a cat- et^orical examination into the creed of a candidate was a barbarous relic of Inquisitorial power, alien alike from the genius of our government and the spirit of the people; that Hollis, though agreeing with Calvinists in some points, was notoriously not a Calvinist ; and that by his statutes he prescribed the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the rule of his professor's faith, and not the Assembly's Catechism." ^ On these grounds the authorities of the university rested, not taking any part in the some- what virulent discussion that followed. As a direct result of the " gloom over the university " cast by this series of events, was the munificent foundation of the theological school at Andover, whose orthodoxy is protected by the periodical signing of its creed by each of its instructors. The liberal party were, and are, justly tenacious of their right of membership in the historic Congregational order. In MJissachusetts this has never been denied them. Rut in Connecticut the " consociation " was better able to deal 1 with heresy. 1 1 ere the process of separation, or exclusion, / was already begun. In 1805 the minister of Mansfield, i Mr. John Sherman (grandson of Roger Sherman), was | deposed for free thinking on the subject of the trinity. He retired to a small congregation in Oldenbarneveldt (now Trenton), N. Y., where he served for some years, till he was drawn aside into journalism and politics. Five years later, at Coventry in Tolland County, Rev. Abiel Abbot was taken in hand by the consociation of that dis- trict; but, appealing to a "mutual council," withdrew under its advice by a voluntary resignation, and went to Peterborough, N. H., where he has left the record of a 1 Quincy's " History," vol. ii., p. 2S5 ; compare p. 21 1 ; vol. i., pp. 16S- 170. Tlic Henchman Lci^acy prescribes " the well-known confession of faitli drawn up l)y a synod of churches in New I'",ngland " (sec aliove, p. 17.?) ; the Hopkins Fund is given " for the promotion of religion, science, and ciiarity." I90 THE rXITAKIAXS. \Q\\\v. VIII. loiiL^ term of useful service, and the memory of a saintly life. Difference of opinion has led since to many a sep- aration of minister and jjeople, doubtless painful, but, in the ConfjrcL^ational body, to few or no ecclesiastical trials. There has been within quite recent memory, if there is not now, a pretty wide diversity of doctrine in many con- gregations, without disturbing their outward peace. This should be remembered in judging those of more liberal views among the Congregational clergy, who have been so sharply charged with concealment or evasion. / The account given a few years later by Dr. Channing \ is the most precise testimony we have as to the position of those who afterwards ranked as Unitarian: "A majority of our brethren believe that Jesus Christ is more than man ; that he existed beifore the world ; that he literally came from heaven to save our race ; that he sustains other offices than those of teacher and witness of the truth ; and that he still acts for our benefit and is our intercessor with the Father. Others reject the distinction of three Persons, without judging on system as to his nature and work. Others believe the simple humanity of Christ." "We preach," he says, "precisely as if no such doctrine as the trinity had ever been known." " Non-biblical phrases ought not to divide us." " Should differences of opinion cause division of the church? — a solemn, infinitely impor- tant question." " We are vague, because we are faithful." This is as far as possible from the temper of controversy. At that time, indeed, there was an almost passionate de- sire, on the part of liberals, to escape from controversy. The best minds among them aimed to conduct the dis- cussion on the neutral ground of scholarship and letters. Buckminster, their brightest light, — of whom it was said that forty years after his death (in 1812) there were Bos- ton merchants who could not recall his memory without THE " M0\7'IILY AXTI/OLOaV." 191 tears, — was best known by his eloquent discourses on prac- tical piety and by his eager studies in the criticism of the Greek Testament. For ten years together the points at issue were discussed alternately, like moves in a friendly game of chess, iij the annual convention sermon — not by direct attack or defense of doctrine, but by defining the "essentials" of Christian faith. For once, in 181 5, after the close of the war with Great Britain, Channing departed widely from theological bickering to political ethics, in a discourse on war and peace. Still the controversy emerged at other points. In 1803 the "Anthology Club" was founded in Boston as a rallying-ground for- those of known liberal sym- pathies, and presently became the recognized exponent of the new spirit. It consisted of fourteen members, six of them ministers, and its gatherings were for some years the most important social events in that community. In November appeared the first number of the " Monthly Anthology," the first literary and critical magazine of note in America. It was continued till June, 181 1 ; and its ten volumes are still of interest for the contemporary notices they give of such topics as Scott's new poems and the total eclipse of 1806. Less space than we might ex- pect is given to theological discussion. But, indirectly, the new views were made sharply prominent in a defense of the position of Harvard College (March, 1805) against Dr. Morse's " True Reasons " ; in a discussion of the Sher- man case (May, 1806); in a review of Griesbach's text and the Improved Version (in 181 1); and especially in a very vigorous comment by Rev. S. C. Thacher on the position taken by the Andover school in demanding the periodical signing of a creed. These are the most impor- tant contributions of the " Anthology " to the literature of the liberal movement — disappointing those who would 192 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. viii. learn more of the inside history. It was followed by the "General Repository" (1812, 1813), conducted by Andrews Norton, with a sharper eye to the theological issue; the "Christian Disciple" (1813-24), in charge of Noah Worcester, " the apostle of peacQ," aiming chiefly to be a journal of practical religion and philanthropy ; and the "Christian Examiner" (1824-69), which, reflect- ing the several phases -of the intellectual change coming to pass in its day, became in its later years an independ- ent journal, including topics of political ethics, general his- tory, and the higher criticism. All these journals rather i avoided than sought matter of controversy, giving far the larger space to questions of general moral or literary in- terest.^ Two sharp shocks broke the uneasy truce so studiously . kept. Belsham's " Life of Lindsey," of which he sent a very elegant copy to Harvard College, contained a chapter on " American Unitarianism," giving correspondence that showed a much closer alliance of several Boston liberals with the movement in England than they had been sup- posed willing to admit. The story got wind. In 18 15 Dr. Morse saw the book, and caught gladly at the impli- cation. " The veil was now torn away," and the liberal party were compelled to accept, very reluctantly, the title " Unitarian." The reluctance was sincere, and not dis- honest. In their view, it was highly important, for the truth's own sake, that the movement should be sponta-j neous, independent of sectarian by-words or party name. Thus their hand was forced. But the result was inevi- table ; it was also right. If a party exist, it must carry its own flag and be known by its name. The name " Unita- 1 In ten years the " Disciple" contains only six articles that throw light on the theological issues of the time ; the " Examiner " in eight years has no more. Contrast this with the intensely polemical motive of the " Panoplist " (1805-20) and of the " Spirit of the rily;rims " (cstalilished in 1828). JOnX LOWELL; //'. E. CIIAXXLXG. 193 rian " was as little open to misconstruction as any other. It might come in time to be as broadly inclusive and hon- orable as any other. The immediate effect \\as to wake a sudden sense of courage and strength. It had been asked, " Shall we have the Boston religion, or the Christian religion?" Answer was made — not by a theologian, but by a man of the world — in a very vigorous pamphlet with the title " Are you a Christian or a Calvinist?" The pamphlet was written by John Lowell, brother of the preacher and one of the corporation of Harvard University. The conflict was waged " without gloves," in wdiolesome plainness of speech. Impatient of a tame and apologetic defense, the writer takes the tone of attack. He vindicates the atti- tude of the university; turns the tables upon Dr. Morse; scorns all attempts at a show of ecclesiastical domination ; reads a sound lecture from the history of intolerance ; dis- dains the rule of association, council, or consociation, just as it had been refused by the good sense of Massachusetts a century before.' Such words as these cleared the dull air. Theologians caught a new tone of courage from their lay champion. This is the tone we hear in Channing's Baltimore sermon of 1819, the first clear voice that roused the Unitarians of America to understand what tlie position they had drifted into really meant. Unitarianism, when this discourse was published, was charged as pure rational- ism. " W'e must choose," retorted Channing, " between rational Christianity and infidelity." The second shock was from the decision rendered in 1820 by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in the case of the parish at Dedham, from which a majority of the ' Natlianicl Emmons (i 745-1840) s.iid, in his sharp indivithialistic temper, ".Association leads to Consociation, Consociation to I'rcshyterianism, Preshy- terianisni to Episcopalianism, and I'lpiscopaHanis'" to Popery." 194 ^^^ UNITARIANS. LChap. viii. church-members had withdrawn on the election of a Hb- eral minister: that "when the majority of the members of a Congregational church shall separate from the majority of the parish, the members who remain, although a minor- ity, constitute the church in such parish, and retain the rights and property belonging thereto." This decision, though perhaps logically necessary, was bitterly resented : it lent, or seemed to lend, the hand of law to help the liberal as presumably the more secular party ; it added the sting of wrong to the sense of loss.^ It was, however, the decision of a lay tribunal, purely technical, and bear- ing but indirectly upon our proper topic. The general results of the period now brought to a close will be best told in the words of Dr. Lyman Beecher, speaking of the time (1823) when he came to Boston: "All the literary men of Massachusetts were Unitarian ; all the trustees and professors of Harvard College were Unitarian ; all the elite of wealth and fashion crowded Unitarian churches ; the judges on the bench were Unitarian, giving decisions by which the peculiar features of church organization so carefully ordered by the Pilgrim Fathers had been nulli- fied, and all the power had passed into the hands of the congregation." 1 See a full and dispassionate statement of the case in a volume entitled " Unitarianism, Its Origin and History," made by Dr. G. E. Ellis, president of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston: A. U. A.), CHAPTER IX. PERIOD OF CONTROVERSY AND EXPANSION. The Unitarians of Boston and its vicinity first felt the courage of their convictions, and knew where their real strength lay, when Channing delivered his celebrated dis- course in Baltimore, on the 5th of May, 1819. At this time we may reckon the number of their churches as about one hundred and twenty in eastern Massachusetts, with nine or ten in the other New England States. Of these not one called itself Unitarian, and only one has adopted that name since. ^ The movement represented by it was, further, confined within extremely narrow local boundaries. A radius of thirty-five miles from Boston as a center would sweep almost the whole field of its history and influence. Outside of this, twelve or fifteen churches lay in a belt a little to the north, running as far back as to the Connecticut River ; while the important towns of Port- land, Portsmouth, Worcester, Providence, and New Bed- ford made its frontier stations. Baltimore and Charleston were distant outposts, established in 181 7; New York and Springfield were added to the list in this very year. Channing was now at the age of thirty-nine. lie was best known, hitherto, as a fervent preacher of practical piety in the Boston pulpit : a man of slight personal pres- 1 That in North Chcl.sc.-i (Revere), wliich took the name in 1887. Of the twenty-nine Boston churches now known as Unitarian only four are so (lesif^nated in their title. That name had lieen given, in 1819, only to the two founded by Priestley in Pennsylvania, at Northumberland (1794) and Philadelphia (1796). 195 196 THE UNITARIAXS. ' [Chap. ix. ence and retiring ways, with little that would mark him as a probable leader in public controversy. Though, since the death of Buckminster in 18 12, he had been the fore- most champion of the liberal theology, no one was more solicitous than he that the movement should be kept within the lines of historic Congregationalism, or protested more sincerely against defining that movement by the one narrow term " Unitarian." Quite reluctantly, in 1815, he had been drawn into a very prominent position in the con- troversy with Dr. Samuel Worcester, when he pleaded as urgently for keeping the Congregational body unbroken as he contended earnestly against some of its cardinal points of doctrine. When Jared Sparks (better known \ since in the field of history) was installed minister of a \ church in Baltimore avowedly Unitarian; in a structure then probably the noblest in its architecture that any American Protestant body could boast, Channing chose so notable an occasion for appeal in a higher tone, to a far^ wider hearing, than any that had been had as yet. His discourse was not an argument addressed to theologians on disputed points of doctrine, but an impeachment of the orthodoxy of that day at the bar of the popular reason and conscience. The terms in which he described it were re- sented, even then, as exaggerated and unjust. Certainly we may well doubt whether at this day a single reputable pulpit in America would profess the naked Calvinism he arraigned. The argument of the discourse, which has become his- ^ torical, is cast in five divisions. Eirst, it deals with the \ unreason of the trinity, the perplexity it offers to the '• understanding, especially the confusion of thought as to the proper object of worship — here taking the familiar ground of the English Unitarians. Next, it sets forth the like confusion of thought as induced by the metaphysics C//AA'A'/jVG'S BALTIMORE SERMON. \g'] of Christ's double nature. Thirdly, it charges the moral paradox of the alleged conflict of justice and mercy in the Divine Nature, by which the reverence due to the Holy One is baffled and perplexed. Agarn, it dwells upon the moral enormity of a view of the Atonement which only exasperates and heightens the supposed conflict it clain:i3 to reconcile. Lastly, the true nature of Salvation is set forth as a moral or spiritual condition of the soul itself, and this is contrasted with the arbitrary " imputation " of another's righteousness. ') Channing, it may be charged, was not greatly learned in theology, not a master in met- aphysics, not elaborately trained in controversy. No be- liever in the trinity that ever lived, it may be, would admit his statement of it to be correct. But no man ever put more cogently than he the plain language of reason and conscience as it goes out to the common mind. For the purpose of his argument this was enough. It was enough, too, for the style of debate with which he had to deal. Even so scholarly an opponent as Professor Stuart has only to say, by way of reply, that the " persons" of the trinity mean " some distinction, not three beings or sepa- rate consciousnesses. What is that distinction ? I do not know. It is a fact, . . . but we do not pretend to under- stand what it is." " Unitarianism," he adds, "will come to pure rationalism — tlie sooner the better. Then the parties will understand each other." Not the argument of the Baltimore discourse, however, so much as its positive and aggressive tone, the total ab- sence of apology in it, accounts for the effect it appears to have had as argument. To this we must add, besides, the warm projihet-glow which made it not a bald essay of doctrinal theology, but a li\-ing discourse of positive re- ligion. It became, accordingly, the keynote of what is known to this day as " Channing Unitarianism." This 198 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. ix. style of doctrine clings very closely to the Scripture text, and shelters itself, a little anxiously, within the lines of church tradition, attenuated as they may be in the rare and chill atmosphere of modern speculation. But its main motive is ethical, human, secular. It addresses the con- science, rather than the sentiment of an unreasoning de- votion. Its aim is, through moral feeling and a purified affection, to tell directly upon action, and in that sense to interpret religion as a spirit and a life. In respect of doc- trine, it is unsatisfying and vague. Rejecting creeds, it has as yet no firm hold on scientific thought. Modern cosmology and modern criticism are a world unknown to it. The field it shows in to best advantage is the field of the larger and finer ethics of human life, ethics both per- sonal and social. It has done much to exalt and vitalize the common moralities, which it has always been charged with laying too much stress upon ; and it has, in particular, led the way to much of the best work of our day in edu- cation and the larger humanities. In the later years of his life, Channing was most widely known as a Christian philanthropist. It was he who perhaps contributed most, through his friend Joseph Tuckerman, to the earliest effective organizing of the charities of Boston in the Fra- ternity of Churches, established in 1835. Such topics as general education, temperance, humane legislation, refor- mation of criminals, international peace, had in him an eager, fluent, effective advocate. With a certain hardi- hood that might seem alien from his shrinking and vale- tudinarian temper, he stood openly upon the public platform beside the abolitionist leaders, whose counsel and methods he did not accept, when they were most vindictively assailed. The most elaborate essays he ever composed were the series treating the social and political aspects of American slavery. There is no more character- 1 C//AXXIXG UNITARIAXISM. 1 99 istic exhibition of his serene, idealizing, hopeful style of eloquence than in the Lenox address on emancipation in the British West Indies, delivered a few weeks before his death. ^ " The healthiest period in the moral life of Boston and its vicinity," wrote Dr. Gannett, " was during the quarter of a century between the years 18 10 and 1835." These were the days when Channing's purely religious influence , was most powerful ; before the days when the Unitarian body was sharply divided on points of critical theology, and when the questions touching slavery went so deep into our political life. It was not a period of special depth or earnestness in religious thought. The essays that fol- lowed up old lines of discussion were mostly re-statements of the familiar argument, void of the genuine though acrid heat of controversy. The time of scientific criticism was not yet, and doctrine as development had not come to be matter of historic curiosity. When the question of Christ's preexistence was stirred, in 1822, "Leave it alone," said Henry Ware, Jr. — then a young minister of Boston, singu- larly beloved, of sweet and humble temper, with occasional quick sharpness of speech and well versed in debate — " leave it alone ; it is a thing of small consequence ! " The "Christian Examiner" was founded in 1824 to take the place of the " Christian Disciple," whose tone was thought to be too smooth and vague, and was conducted by a series of able editors ; but in its first year it disclaimed sympathy with Universalism, which, as a kindred and more positive creed, might possibly have touched the mild liberalism of that day with a more virile temper. The advance in theology was timid and faltering. A tone of weariness and self-distrust has been found, or suspected, 1 He died of autumn fever, at Bennington, Vt., October 2, 1842, at tlie age of .si.\ty-t\vo. 200 THE UNITARIANS. [Ciiai-. ix. in the Unitarian literature of the years ensuing, as if from distaste or fatigue of tlie long-drawn battle. The most significant word spoken in this interval was but a half-way word of apology, appearing in the " Examiner" in 1829, to the effect that the Bible is, after all, " not a revelation, but the record of a revelation." Tlie formula passed cur- rent for a time, but soon caught the unfriendly eye. "There, it is out at last!" was the exulting cry of the " Spirit of the Pilgrims," eager to renew the battle. The "pure rationalism " predicted by Moses Stuart seemed to be already in the field. Unitarianism, said Channing ten years later, speaking of this time, was but " a protest of the understanding against absurd dogmas. We were early paralyzed by the mixture of philosophy, and fell too much into the hands of scholars and political reformers." The last word of the Unitarian controversy, as a still living issue on the old lines, is held to have been spoken when, in 1833, Rev. George B. Cheever delivered at Salem a discourse described as " vituperative," to which no formal reply seems to have been offered. With this, and a " Post- script " addressed to the " Examiner," we have " the last publication of any note before the controversy virtually ceased."^ "The result is," said Dr. Gannett, speaking in 1835, -J-, "we are a community by ourselves." The process by which the two " wings " of the Congregational body in Massachusetts had gradually drawn apart, began very far back. In 1812 Rev. John Codman, of Dorchester, an- nounced at his settlement that in tlie customary pulpit exchanges of courtesy with neighboring ministers he should be free (which meant that he would be bound) 1 Tlie nature of the questions at issue, and especially their bearing on the religious topics of the ihiy, should be studied in " .\ Half Century of the Unitarian Controversy," by George E. I^llis, D.P. (lidstmi, 1S57). LV.U.LV BEECH ER IN BOSTOX. 20I to draw the line against those not orthodox. This an- nouncement was reckoned harsh and strange, and it led to a local controversy of some sharpness, in which Mr. Cod- man gained his point. There remained, however, and has continued to this day, a neutral belt, within which the ancient courtesies are still exchanged. But the line of distinction was growing more broad and distinct with yeans. In 1823 the orthodox position, held till then by only one of the Boston Congregational churches, was greatly strengthened by the coming of Dr. Lyman Beecher to the charge of a congregation just gathered in Park Street — " Brimstone Corner," as it was fondly called during the years of orthodox revival which followed. In 1828 the "Spirit of the Pilgrims" was es- tablished, to aid in winning back the ground that had been lost ; and this fresh voice vigorously sustained the policy of excluding the new light from evangelical pulpits. In the same year the " Christian Examiner " showed also an unwonted access of polemical ardor: three articles on " infant damnation," the sorest spot of the old Calvinism, and a paper by Orville Dewey on " Orthodoxy and Lib- eralism," testify to the fresh zest of controversy. Charges • of bigotry were hotly pressed on one side, to be repelled disdainfully by the other; but " Are they not true?" asks Channing, in 1831. The zeal, however, w;is short-lived, and seems to have lapsed, in a year or two, into the some-^ what languid indifference before noted; and, with this,; Unitarian journals admit a certain lack and sterility of thd religious life in too many of their congregations, especiall)^ the country churches, in contrast with the new awakening of Evangelicanism in New l^ngland. In 1831 we hear the first note of " German Rational- ism " in a paper by P>ancis Cunningham (the earliest translator of Giesclcr into ICnglish), showing that Unita- 202 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. ix. rian tliought already begins to turn towards new issues. It is, further, an interesting point to remark that the fading out of the older controversy in 1833 exactly coincides with the withdrawal of all legal support from the churches of Massachusetts, which must rely thenceforth wholly on voluntary gifts. Here the advantage was to those of the more positive and aggressive faith. The disestablishment, it is probable, was more dreaded by the liberal party ; and the advocacy of it by some of the more orthodox may be taken as a damaging retort to the Dedham decision, which had turned over the old church powers and properties to secular hands. But the Unitarians were well content with the immense advantage they still held in that undisputed sociai<)<;rapliy, " ethtcd hy Rev. WilHam Ware (fJoston, 2 vols.), and in Dr. .Spraguc's "Annals of the American Pulpit," vol. viii. 206 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. ix. ing the Lord's Supper as a positive ordinance, and states briefly the practical objections to the customary form. It is, in short, quite the most formal and argumentative essay that remains to us of Emerson's composition.^ To these reasons he might have added that Congregationalism has never regarded the Lord's Supper as a sacrament vitally essential ; and that it was almost wholly suspended during the first nine years of the Plymouth colony, because it might not be administered by an elder, but only by an ordained pastor. The shock was nevertheless sharply felt — not least, it is probable, by the Unitarians, who were in general devout observers of that ordinance, and might feel a jar, as of suddenly opening the gates to a wide and un- familiar field of the religious life outside. Mr. Emerson thus withdrew, in his thirtieth year, to the rural life which his genius has made illustrious, and for some years lived content in that calm retreat. In 1836 that genius first declared itself to the world in the quaint, winning, lovely, and sometimes baffling pages of " Nature," the earliest poetic or prophetic breath of that fresh mental life then called "transcendental." It was received as the stirring of an air balmy and fragrant, it might be, but filled with strange odors, and of dubious effect on the spiritual climate. Some of us still remember a certain grave solicitude with which its phrases were first listened to by Unitarians of the elder school, who felt rather than saw whither that new influence might tend. The solicitude deepened when — heralded by the wholly unconventional style and charm of his address on " The American Scholar " given in 1837 — Mr. Emerson delivered in July, 1838, the most celebrated and influential of all his public discourses, that spoken to the graduating class of the Harvard Divinity School. This was the frankest 1 It is given in full in an appendix to 0. B. Frothingham's " Transcend- eiUalism in New England." £.U£A'SO.V'S DIVINITY SCHOOL ADDRESS. 207 challenge ever as yet thrown down to the traditional views of the Divine Nature, Jesus, Christianity, or the offices of the church ; and it proved the melodious, effective prelude to a conflict of opinion that has far more deeply than any other stirred the current of our religious thought. The feeling with which the Divinity School Address was received has been described by a listener to it as " a vague and exhilarating delight : it had shocked some, while it had charmed others, as the first clear word of ' another gospel, which yet was not another.' " Its covert doctrine was currently supposed to be Pantheism ; and this was described by one of the critics of the day as " Atheism disguising itself under a preposterous name," which only made the danger of it the greater. As a challenge to the dreaded tendency, Prof. Henry Ware, Jr., preached in the college chapel a sermon on " the personality of the Deity,"' a copy of which he sent with a friendly note to Mr. Emer- son, eliciting this very characteristic reply : " I could not possibly give you one of the arguments you cruelly hint at, on which any doctrine of mine stands ; for I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any expres- sion of thought." "Not," adds his biographer, "that he was incapable of reasoning, but always disinclined to argue;" and "upon this occasion argument would have been out of place." But controversy was in the air, and was formally opened tiic next year (1839) by Andrews Norton, late professor in the School, in a discourse on " the latest form of infidel- ity." This discourse w^is not an attack on any position distinctly taken by Mr. Emerson, or on the critical results of German scholarship, whiqli Mr. Norton had himself, in fact, largely adc^pted.' It dealt rather with certain ten- dencies in German thought charged as vague, delusive, 1 As .shown, later, in his " Note" on the Old Testament, and in his rejec- tion of tlic first two cliaj)tcrs of Matthew's Gospel (sec p. 210, IkIow). 208 THE UNITARIANS. [Cii.\i>. ix. ciiul " pantheistic," represented in particular by Spinoza, Schlciermacher, and De Wette. Its argument was a formal and very able defense of the doctrine, as commonly held, of a revelation proved by miracle. Mr. Norton was gen- erally recognized as the scholar and critic best equipped among the Unitarians, and his charges commanded instant attention. The positive tone of assertion and the combat- ive temper of the discourse at once brought forward new parties to the debate. Of the replies, much the ablest and most important was that of Rev. George Ripley, then minister of a congregation newly gathered in Purchase Street, since dissolved. Mr. Ripley addressed to Profes- sor Norton a series of " Letters," which were in fact elaborate essays, making a moderately thick volume. In these, with admirable spirit and ability, he gave citations so copious as to make his pamphlets a pretty full intro- duction and guide to the study of the famous writers whose names had been so thrust upon the public. These pamphlets, with one in which Mr. Norton sustained and reinforced his charges, amply cover the ground of the de- bate, though se\'eral writers of lesser note volunteered to the support of one or the other party. The real point at issue in that debate has been often misunderstood, as if it had been merely the question of admitting the miraculous or supernatural features of the gospel history. On the contrary, Mr. Ripley says, in one of his letters, " For my own part, I cannot avoid the con- clusion that the miracles related in the Gospels were actu- ally wrought by Jesus;" and Theodore Parker (then near the age of thirt)^), assuming the name " Levi Blodgett," with a style of unlearned and rustic plainness, and seeking to bring the whole case before the bar of popular com- mon sense, says, " I believe that Jesus, like other religious teachers, wrought miracles." It thus appears that the A0A'70Ar AA'D RIPLEY. 209 dispute was not as to their opinions, which at that time were in the main those generally held ; but as to a new and unfamiliar order of thought, which was seen to be powerfully afTecting the jjrinciples and foundations of men's religious belief. In this dispute Mr. Norton, whose method was in itself the more rationalizing and scientific, held to the hard-and-fast supernaturalism of the older Unitarian school ; while his opponents, claiming more for the distinctively spiritual side of man's intelligence, opened the way to the pure naturalism, with all its critical results, which he foresaw. They earnestly maintained the reality of the religious life, wholly independent of doctrinal form ;' while he honestly held that very clearly defined opinion is essential to any hold upon religious truth. To such a mind as his the language of Mr. Ripley, or that of thei German theologians whom he copied, must seem vague, delusive, and sophistical. Meanwhile the work of criticism had been going on, in •Hues quite independent of this debate. In 1 831, as we have seen, the first hint had been given of that form of exposition known as " German rationalism." In 1834 Rev. (afterwards Professor) George R. Noyes, then the studious pastor of a country parish, published an essay on the Messianic prophets, as fit answer to which was sug- gested a prosecution under the old Massachusetts law of blasphemy ; and Attorney-General Austin was understood to stand ready to conduct the case if the terms of the statute had seemed to warrant. Prof. John G. Palfrey's " Lectures on Jewish History and Antiquities," published in 1840, expounded the Book of Genesis as a later com- pilation from at least two independent sources, while defending the received opinion as to the other " Mosaic " writings. A " Note " on the Old Testament by Andrews Norton, appearing in 1844, rejected the opinion that 2 10 THE UXITARIAXS. [Chai'. i\. Moses was in any sense the author of the Pentateuch, or that the prophets were divinely inspired to foretell the mission of Christ ; it criticised with the utmost freedom the history, morals, and doctrine found in the Hebrew scriptures ; and maintained the exceptional inspiration of Moses and Elijah purely on the ground of allusions made to them in the Gospels, and as a position to be held in the argument for the Christian evidences. About the same time De Wette's " Introduction to the Old Testament," translated and copiously annotated by Theodore Parker, brought suddenly into view the whole wide range of Ger- man erudition in that province. So far, the discussion, though open to public hearing, was directly addressed to scholars, critics, and students of theology. But a word of note had been spoken, and was widely echoing, from the South Boston pulpit, where, on the 19th of May, 1841, Theodore Parker addressed the congregation gathered at the settlement of Rev. Charles C. Shackford, on " the transient and permanent in Chris- tianity." The wide "impression made by this discourse was due in part to its qualities of thought and style ; but still more to its bringing the most radical questions of crit- ical theology directly before the popular mind, and appeal- ing on them to the popular judgment, — we must add, the confident and warmly religious tone of that appeal. Hith- erto, miracles would seem to have been tacitly assented to on both sides, as marking the line of division between Christian belief and whatever lay outside. Now, the 'wonderful works ascribed to Jesus were suddenly, nay, ofTensively, brought to the level of those performed by such errant theosophists as Apollonius of Tyana, while his divine generation was compared to that of Hercules, son of Jove. And all this, in seeming unconsciousness of the shock which such comparison must give. THEODORE PARKER. 211 These things it is necessary to mention, because they counted far more than argument in the angry reaction that followed. That sharply reactionary temper prevailed, in a large majority of the Unitarian body, almost to the time of Theodore Parker's death ; and it has only been soothed, since, by a mood of religious thought to which the question of miracles itself is no longer essential but incidental. " Now we have a Unitarian orthodoxy!" was Channing's comment, in anticipation of the debate that followed. Of its later effect the following testimony, pub- lished in 1889, has been accepted without denial or dis- pute : that, respecting the miracles of the New Testament, "thousands among us receive- them with the same faith, comfort, and reverence as of old ; but not one of us thinks of defining the line of Christian fellowship by them, not one of us would stake a single point of his own religious faith upon them, not one of us appeals to them as argu- ment for the spiritual truth, — at most, as w^hat that * truth as it is in Jesus ' may help us to accept."' This great change of general opinion could not possibly be anticipated then. Tlie controversy, as it followed, w^s in great part a battle in the dark, for lack of mutual under- standing of the terms employed. To set his position more plainly before the public, Mr. Parker expounded it, the succeeding winter, in a series of five lectures, which ap- peared in the spring of 1842, enlarged into a thick volume, as a " Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion." This book is probably the best, certainly it has proved far the most effective, exposition of his style of religious thought. With great ardor of conviction, generous confidence in the power of naked truth, la\ish illustration from literary sources, and noble wealth of rhetoric, it disarmed by no reticence — nay, rather, exasperated by needless affronts — 1 " Unilarian Review" for Jamiaiy, 1889, p. 16. 212 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. ix. the angry prejudice already raised against its author, whom opposition now forced into a far wider field of influence than any denominational boundaries could permit. The death of Channing, just at this turning-point of our history, removed one bond of peace. He was in doubt whether to call Parker a Christian, but at least esteemed and loved him as a friend. Sharp lines of separation began now to be drawn. These showed first in the with- ( holding of pulpit exchanges, which then more than now were the accepted test of fellowship — an inconvenient one, since they suggested, if they did not imply, the right to be heard before an audience to which one might be neither asked nor welcome. Besides, as was aptly said at the time, the objection felt to these exchanges was not all on the conservative side. The earliest, and surely a quite gratui- tous, bitterness occasioned by the controversy thus grew out of a mere custom or convention, which would be sub- mitted to in no other walk of life, and at this day is hardly even understood. To avoid that token of fraternity or to withhold it was then counted a personal affront. Another step of separation was suggested, but was never carried out. It was, that Mr. Parker should be compelled, either by direct exclusion or by moral pressure, to retire from membership in the Boston Association. The subject was formally debated in his presence at a meeting held in January, 1843. When he was charged with holding a position outside of Christianity, he replied \ that he, on the contrary, accepted Christianity as " abso- i lute religion " ; and demanded, if any did not so regard it, i whether they held it to be more or less than absolute > religion, and if more, then what must be added to absolute religion to make it Christianity!' The obvious answer 1 He appears never to have defined quite clearly the meaning of the phrase " absolute religion." Thus he once wrote, " If to-niorrovv I am to perish THE BOSTON ASSOCIATION. 21 3 would be, that Christianity is absokite religion as testified by certain witnesses, embodied in certain customs and in- stitutions, and vouched by a special Divine authority, through which evidences it becomes, .in fact, valid and eflfectual for us. Discussion on this line seems not to have been taken up. Through much variance and some sharp- ness of opinion appearing in his own account of the debate, yet the common feeling, as he describes it, was generous and even tender. " The sharp arrows," says Mr. Froth- ingham, in narrating this incident, " fell harmless to the ground; the flushed faces became placid, the angry looks died away." Should the Association exercise its clear right of dismissal, wrote Mr. Parker, afterwards, " I will never complain ; but, so long as the world standeth, I will not withdraw voluntarily while I consider rights of con- science at issue. To withdraw voluntarily would be to abandon what I think a post of duty." He never did withdraw, and never was dismissed. One other test of fellowship remained. At the end of 1844, being just returned from a year's stay in Europe, Mr. Parker came in order of course to preach the " Thurs- day Lecture " at the First Church in Boston. This was an institution dating from early colony days, and in times of public stir was an occasion of much local importance. Tradition tells of a diligent hearer who walked weekly from Newburyport, thirty-five miles, to listen and then to pon- der upon the discourse during his homeward tramp. It was at first a stated serxice of the minister of the First Church, but had come by custom to be taken in turn utterly, then I shall take only counsel for to-day, and ask for qualities which last no longer. I shall care nothing for future generations of ininikind ; I shall know no higher law ; morality will vanish, and expediency will take its place ; courage for truth's sake, for love's sake, will be a thing no longer heard of." A Stoic would have said, " If to-morrow I am to perisli utterly, at least I will keep my faith in virtue to-day." This latter, surely, is the nearer to " ahsolute reli"ion." 2 14 THE UNn^ARIANS. [Chap. ix. by the members of the Boston Association, who generally (we may suppose) held it more a duty than a privilege. To Theodore Parker it was both. Before a crowded and unwonted audience he spoke, with the same freedom as before, on " the relation of Jesus to his age and the ages." The former offense was renewed, and the pastor of the First Church was officially notified that on any future occasion the doors of the church would be, at need, forci- bly closed to Mr. Parker. This compelled a revival of the question of his membership in the Boston Association, which made the topic of discussion at three protracted sessions — this time, in his absence. Two of its members (as I recall its debates^) were prepared to vote for his ex- clusion, pure and simple. The general feeling expressed was, however, kind and just. Old memories of protest against " the exclusive system " made a return to it im- possible. But it was urged that some step was necessary, to avoid a possible public scandal in contending for right of entrance to the church. The simplest course was taken by requesting the minister of the First Church (Dr. Froth- ingham) to resume into his own charge the conduct of the lecture. The lecture continued for some months to be kept up under the new conditions, and was then dropped by common consent. The one point gained was that, contrary to a very general expectation, the Unitarian body neither dissolved nor parted into two fragments on the threatened line of division. Controversy, misunderstanding, mutual distrust, could not be avoided. For more than half a generation there was a grave loss to the body in the angry withdrawal or neutral adhesion of many of its younger and bolder members, — a grave loss to its visible unity and its moral 1 There are, besides myself, two survivors of the Association as it existed then, Drs. Cyrus A. Bartol and George E. Ellis. THE BERRY STREET CONFERENCE. 215 Strength. The erasure from its calendar of several of its brightest names may show how great a power of growth and active energy it forfeited. But the question at stake was more fundamental and difficult, the religious tradi- tion and habit involved were more deeply rooted, than many of its younger adherents could possibly understand. Besides, the line of division just then drawn across the path of advance was sure to be come up with and over- passed by increasing numbers, as the course of opinion should tend in the direction long foreseen. There re- mained the greatly outweighing advantage, to the religious body as such, of keeping unbroken its historic continuity, with whatever gain might come to it of future opportunity. The angry sense of desertion on one part, or of injustice on the other, is long forgotten. The memory of divided feeling that once seemed past restoring is held out visibly, to those of a younger day, in the portraits of Channing and Parker that serenely face each other in our gallery of worthies, and in the memorial volumes of their writings, issued by the Unitarian Associations of both America and Britain.^ In the long division of opinion that ensued, which so greatly crippled the forces of the Unitarian body, three/ customs especially aided to prevent its falling apart, and, to save it for whatever service it might afterwards be capa- ble to effect. The first, and perhaps the most effective, was what is still known as the " Berr}- Street Conference " : an annual gathering of liberal ministers, who were first invited to meet at Dr. Channing's vestry, just off Federal Street. This was and is a strictly professional gathering, 1 T have given in " Our I-iheral Movement " a more extended study (from personal knowledge) of Tlieodore Parker's character and work than could be admitted here, preceded by a chapter (in tlie " fifteen years of contro- versy " which connect his work with Channing's. Me died in Florence, Italy, May 10, i860, a little before completing his fiftieth year. 2i6 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. ix. without witness and without reporter; having, therefore, the full freedom of private conversation on all matters of professional interest. It was, too, a meeting of gcntlonen, in which the amenities of friendly talk were rarely broken. The rules of debate were of the simplest ; the topic of it was introduced by a more or less formal address, which might touch upon any aspect of the question of the hour ; in the conduct of it the most advanced radical was on ex- actly equal terms with the gravest conservative ; the fervor of a rapt idealist, like William Henry Channing, might call out the equal fervor of an ardent denominational leader, hke Dr. Gannett ; one who had sturdily urged that the Unitarian body must and ought to be divided might find himself on the same bench with those very ones he would exclude, or next neighbor to one who anxiously dreaded lest they might be. In such an alem- bic as that, of friendly and free however warm discus- sion, not many years were needed to habituate those unlikest in opinion to accept the fact of a deeper ground of union. A like process went on in the public gatherings of "Anniversary Week," at the end of May, where all mat- ters of common interest appealed to the common judg- ment, and where the formal discussions of business were followed by the cheerful informality of the Thursday's Festival, which just about this time (1843) became a yearly custom. As the circle of fellowship widened out with the denominational growth, it took in an increasing majority of those whose opinions were not sharply defined on either side, thus diluting the asperities of local feeling; and a process of adjustment went on, hardly noticeable from year to year, but in the course of half a generation mak- ing all aware that the mental atmosphere was changed. THE AUTUMNAL CONVENTION. 217 Besides, other topics of hotter and keener interest than theological debate brought in other lines of sympathy or dissent. Conservative and radical might change places, when the discussion shifted to the temperance platform or the antislavery crusade. And in course of time, as all the moral forces of the community came to be enlisted to sustain the nation itself in its life-and-death struggle with Secession, theological differences and ^dienations dis- appeared in the fiercer heat of battle. These influences, all tending to reconciliation and better common understanding, were helped, again, by the custom which began at Providence, in 1841, of the "Autumnal Convention," held alternate with the annual gathering in Boston, in places so wide apart as Baltimore, Buffalo, Montreal, and Bangor. The exaggeration and heat of local controversy were thus tempered in the widening sense of a common interest and a common life. Difference of place was favorable to diversity and freedom of expres- sion. It was, above all other times, the period of moral and religious oratory. A new spirit went into the discus- sions, taking occasionally a tone of the finest and most moving eloquence which the cause of a free theology has ever, perhaps, called forth. Occasions such as these did as much as any single thing to invigorate the somewhat languid sense of one organic life, and prepare the way for that broader view of religion which must be had if the liberal body was to survive at all under the changed con- ditions, h^iftcen years of controversy, which had once seemed likely to rend it in pieces, led in fact to a revival of denominational unity and vigor, such as would never have been thought possible by its founders. With this simplest of denominational equipment, and under general guidance of the American Unitarian Asso- 2i8 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. ix. ciation ("A. U. A."), founded on the 25th of May,. 1825/ the growth in numbers, though slow, was very constant. Washington had -been added to the list of churches in 1820, Cincinnati and Louisville in 1830, Buffalo in 1831, New Orleans in 1833, St. Louis in 1834, Chicago in 1836. At the date we have now reached (i860), 218 of the churches still on the rolls were already in existence. Of these, something more than half were originally local par- ishes, founded under the polity of the Puritan colonists, and dating before the War of the Revolution. Of the remainder, ninety were established between the years 1820 and i860 — that is, after the line of separation from the orthodox Congregationalists had been drawn ; and of these, again, just one half date from the later period, after 1840, while interior difference and controversy were most active. Especially we note that the widest spread of Unitarianism, geographically, took place during these twenty years of divided counsel, when, outside of New England, new societies were first established in Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Kansas, Indiana, California, and Canada. This spread was due chiefly, no doubt, to the agencies of the A. U. A., which had shown its hand liberally from the start, sending a gift of six hundred dollars in 1827 to friends in British India. Its resources in money were extremely small, rarely amounting to as much as $10,000 in a single year. But from the beginning it gave direc- 1 By a chance coincidence, on the same year and day with tlie British and Foreign Unitarian Association, in London. The following have been the presidents of the A. U. A. : 1825-36, Aaron Bancroft, D.D., 1862-65, R. V. Stebbins, D.D., 1837-44, Ichabod Nichols, D.D., 1865-67, Hon J. G. Palfrey, 1S44-45, Joseph Story, LL.D., 1867-70, Hon. T. D. Eliot, 1845-47, brville Dewey, D.D., 1870-72, Hon. Henry Chapin, 1847-51, E. S. Gannett, D.D., 1872-76, Hon. John Wells, 1851-5'^, S. !■:. T.r-tlirop. D.D., 1876-85, PI. P. Kidder, Esq., 1858-59, v.. W. Hall, D.I)., 1885- ' , lion. Gcc S. Hale. 1859-62, E. H. Hedge, D.D., LACK OF SECTARIAN TEMPER. 219 tion, and such aid as it could, to the work of " church extension," on the modest scale befitting a religious body- that still refused to regard itself as a sect, and hence lacked the zeal, energy, and ambition of a sect. How many, in fact, of those still affiliated with it, whose names were even recorded in its lists, would accept the title " Unitarian," it is impossible to say. Its most hon- ored religious leader, Channing, and its most eminent crit- ical scholar, Norton, were among a large proportion of its best early representatives — at least ten to one, thinks Dr. Ellis — who protested strongly against accepting any sectarian name, especially one so narrowed and warped by controversy. To them the movement they embarked in was towards a larger intellectual and religious life, free of the restraints imposed by a doctrinal system they dis- allowed; and it was justified to their mind by scrupulous study and exposition of the Christian Scriptures — as far as possible from the form of " free religion " it seemed tend- ing to. Anything like denominational machinery, for the propagating of particular opinions, such men thoroughly disliked ; all the more when freedom of interpretation, through younger minds inspired by a strange philosophy, seemed to compromise them also, by claiming alliance with them under a title they disowned. So that any- thing like large increase of corporate strength to the moxement was blocked by the very men who had been its early inspirers and guides. It happened, accordingly, that among its later best known leaders some of the ablest, the boldest, and the most influential were of those wHo came into its ranks as new converts, in mature life, with experience gained and powers ripened by religious methods not its own, without either the sympathies or the restraints they w^ould have felt if bred in its tradition. Of itself, a religious move- 220 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. ix. ment whose motive force is mainly critical is in danger of becoming frigid and sterile when the glow of controversy has faded out of it. The Unitarian movement has by no means escaped this charge, either in others' esteem or in its own. As one result, its power of self-propagation has often lain more with those who have been trained in other communions, and have entered this with the joy of a new intellectual freedom, than with children of its own blood, critics rather than champions of its cause. The freeborn are sometimes less jealous of their liberty than those who have obtained it "with a great sum." Dr. Dewey's name stands eminent at the head of such loyal converts, without whose fresh zeal the movement itself might perhaps have slackened, leaving the banner of its faith to be borne by other hands under another name. Two monuments of the period now reviewed may be noted here. The Divinity School in Meadville, Pa., was founded by the Huidekoper family in 1844, and was con- ducted for twelve years under the most devoted and energetic administration of Dr. Rufus P. Stebbins. Its re- sources have since been greatly strengthened and enlarged. Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, O., originally a school sustained by the " Christian Connection," came about 1850 under Unitarian control ; and for eight years the Hon. Horace Mann, after relinquishing the seat in Congress that fell to him upon the death of John Ouincy Adams, gave to it, at times without pay, and literally at the cost of his life, the crowning work of his great career in the cause of education. Up to the time of these two foundations Unitarianism was still an exotic, or a work of frontier pioneering, in the West. And these must count chief among the influences that gave it, at this time, some faint claim to regard itself as having already the promise and the potency of a larger life. CHAPTER X. THE NEW UNITARIANISM. During the years of the Civil War questions of doctrine or sect were overshadowed by the vaster national interests at stake. The slow average growth of the Unitarian body went on about as before. But it is honorably true of all religious bodies in our country that their best activities were drawn away to other channels. Their life became an element in the nation's life, and was given freely to serve it or to save it. Of the Unitarians it may only be said that they contributed their share with others, and that in some ways they were enabled to render special service of their own. Of the record in the " Harvard Memorial Biographies " a large proportion, at least forty out of ninety-five, give names and memories that belong distinctly to the line of tradition we have been endeavoring to trace. These were high examples of a consecrated heroism on the field of battle, or in camp and hospital. In civic life the service was equally great. The imperial State of California, with perhaps all our Pacific Coast, was saved to the Union, said General Winfield Scott, " by a young man of the name of King." The aged general was perplexed to un- derstand the story he so repeated. What it meant was this: Early in i860, Thomas Starr King — then, at the age of thirty- five, of great and growing reputation as a preacher, a i^opular lecturer of wide and brilliant fame, of gracious and wonderful charm as a companion, of beaming wit and 221 222 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. x. humor, greatly beloved both as minister and as friend — was called from Boston to the Unitarian pulpit of San Francisco. Here, under pressure of the conflict he now took part in, the marvelously clear intelligence and bright talent of the popular speaker de\-eloped into the noblest cloc]uence of the political orator, liefore this time, a crit- ical and somewhat fastidious judgment of men and things, with a certain vein of self-distrust, had held him back from giving himself, heart and soul, to the great moral conflict of the day. Now that this conflict became one with that on which the life of the nation itself was staked, a new capacity of eloquent passion was found in him. He be- came the favorite and most eff'ective of popular debaters. He was the ready champion at every large public gather- ing. His voice was in demand at political centers widely scattered. Within four years he had literally given his life away in that magnificent service ; and he died on the 4th of March, 1864, a little past the age of thirty-nine. A work like this was done in Missouri by Dr. William G. Eliot, of St. Louis. He had begun in 1834 the task, which seemed almost hopeless then, of building up a frontier church in that great city. Nearly thirty years of work, followed up with extraordinary sagacity, persist- ency, and courage, and with rare singleness of devotion to all the higher interests of that community, had given him a position of influence which led a citizen there to say, " As much as any other man ? Dr. Eliot has done ten times as much as any other ten men to keep Missouri true to the Union as a free State!" Before his death, in 1887, he had long been most widely known as the chan- cellor of Washington University, an institution which he may almost be said to have himself created. Possibly more brilliant and even more essential than these two was the service rendered by Dr. Henry Whit- IIEXRY WIIITXEY BELLOIVS. 223 ney Bellows, of New York, in creating and directinj^ the National Sanitary Commission. This, under the organiz- ing skill of its secretary, Frederick Law Olmsted, became a powerful though unofficial arm of the national govern- ment. It has its own voluminous history as part of the annals of that time. But its real work grew out of the personal qualities that Dr. Bellows brought to it : his cheery, buoyant, indefatigable temper; his wide knowledge of the world, which put him on equal terms with any whom he might meet, of whatever civil or military rank, and might have made him as eminent a diplomatist or statesman as he was an orator of power ; his eager, gener- ous, and powerful sympathies, going out from a nature glowing with the warmest human afTection, and always expanding into some new field of service; a temper by nature dominating and masterful, with an equal fidelity to the cause he served, that made him at need one of its humblest and most hard-worked ministers. Throughout the war there was not a moment when his hand and voice were not ready at every call ; and after the war he was the indispensable leader of his own religious communion, opening out to it almost or quite all the new paths of action in which it has labored since. Full of high courage as he was, self-reliant in act and eloquent of speech, no man was more cordial and unreserved in common friend- ship, or of a more genuine humility of .spirit and generos- ity in judgment, while serving in the ranks with others. These three names may stand to represent the signal and eminent service done at this time by beloved leaders of the Unitarian body. Three other names may illustrate what was done by some of its ministers in other ways, whether in the army ranks, or as chaplains in field or camj:*. Augustus H. Conant, of Geneva, 111., who as a sturdy emigrant had gone to the prairie from Vermont, and 224 ^^^ UNITARIANS. [Chap. x. had been turned towards the Hberal ministry about 1840 by the chance finding of a Unitarian tract, died while serving heroically as chaplain on the terrible field near Murfreesboro, in the first days of 1863. Arthur B. Fuller, of Watertown, Mass., brother of Margaret Fuller and lit- erary editor of her writings, volunteered to join in a des- perate charge at Fredericksburg, and was shot down in the street, December 14, 1862. Frederick N. Knapp, a man singularly gifted alike with sweetness of nature and practical intelligence, and a scholar of fine mathematical ability, ministered personally to more than twenty thou- sand sick, wounded, or footsore soldiers while in charge of the Soldiers' Home, near Washington, and had the unique distinction of being the one man, who had borne neither sword nor musket, admitted to the military organization of surviving veterans of the war. At his burial, in Janu- ary, 1889, the shops in Plymouth were closed, and busi- ness was suspended, as for a day of public mourning. One other service of that time, more modest, claims a word of mention. When, early in 1862, the "Sea Islands " off" the coast of South Carolina were captured by the national fleet, a colony of teachers, under the govern- ment authority, went to take in hand the instruction of the negroes left behind on the plantations. The work was continued there till the end of the war ; and, when Charles- ton was occupied in the spring of 1865, the schools for both blacks and whites were at once organized (under appointment of James Redpath) by Prof. William P'rancis Allen, one of the same corps of instructors, who was after- wards long known in his connection with the University of Wisconsin, representing there and elsewhere the oldest and best traditions of the Unitarian faith, till his death, in December, 1889. At a .special meeting of the A. U. A. held December THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE. 22 5 7, 1864, it was resolved to call "a convention, to consist of a pastor and two delegates from each church or parish in the Unitarian denomination, to meet in the city of New York, to consider the interests of our cause, and to insti- tute measures for its good." This convention — the first formally representative meeting of that body in this coun- try— was held on the 5th and 6th of the following April, and was organized as a " National Conference of Unitarian and other Christian Churches." Its sessions were held regularly in September or October of the alternate years from 1866 to 1886, the last seven being at Saratoga. To avoid disturbance from the biennial political campaign, the date was changed, the Conference meeting in 1889, 1891, and 1894, while in 1893 it yielded to the claim of an " In- ternational Congress of Unitarians " held in Chicago, in connection with the " World's Parliament of Religions," as a feature in the great Columbian Exposition of that year. The National Conference is understood to have been both suggested and organized by the mind of Dr. Bellows, who was at this time the t)nc unquestioned leader of the body he belonged to. His experience during the war, con- firmed by a few months' stay in California in 1864, had deepened his conviction that the popular religion of the country was rapidly coining to be both liberal in theology and non-sectarian in spirit. He apparently looked for the sudden unfolding of a consciousness, in tiie national mind at large, of one religious life shared in such a spirit ; and the duty of the h(nir seemed to him to be the preparation for its coming. The great World's Parliament of 1893 has been sometimes spoken of as the realizing of that dream. The religion that should thus come to pass would not take the name " Unitarian," which properly signifies an opinion, not a faith. It would probably exist under many names and forms; but its life would be in harmony 226 THE UNITARIANS. [CnAi>. x. with that faith as he conceived it, not sectarian, not de- nominational. The organized form would be needed for practical service only: it should not signify, not even sug- gest, a creed. His own opinion, however devoutly held, was as little the test of such an order of faith as any other man's opinion. For himself, he was an eager champion of the Unitarian mode of belief as such. It would, he thought, do more than any other to define the type of a coming American religion. But in holding it his associ- ates should bear in mind that they held it /// trust, as pledge of some greater thing. In thinking thus, however, Dr. Bellows clung with great warmth of affection to the spirit, the belief, and even the phrases of the elder piety which had nourished his own life. He never, in fact, lost a certain humility of spirit in the presence or in the memory of his own religious guides, which checked, sometimes (it would seem) capriciously, the great boldness and vigor of his generous self-assertion. His hand is probably to be traced in the wording of those very phrases of the preamble which brought the only dis- cord in the counsels of the time — as if they somehow implied a creed, and so gainsaid his own words in asser- tion of perfect mental freedom. The preamble reads : " Whereas the great opportunities and demands for Chris- tian labor and consecration at this time increase our sense of the obligations of all disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ to prove their faith " by self-denial and devoted service, "therefore," etc. It was in vain to urge that these words are in their form not a creed, but the statement of a moti\'e ; that (as declared in the tenth article) "they are no authoritative test of Unitarianism, and are not intended to exclude from our fellowship any who, while differing from us in belief, are in general sympathy with our pur- poses and practical aims." Danger lurks even in a pre- JAMKS FRKEMAX CI.ARKI:. 22/ amble. To some there seemed a liint of sectarian narrow- ness in the name " Christian." " May we not," they asked, "consort reHgiously with freethinkers or with Jews?" To others the words appeared, if not a creed, at least to imply condescension or disparagement towards those " dif- fering from us in belief," tolerating their fellowship rather than frankly greeting it. And thus, while the National Conference pro\ed incomparably the most important con- sulting body the Unitarians have ever known, — absolutely free in counsel, far more effective than any other agency for harmony and working force, — its first effect was to stir a secession of what might well have proved a most valu- able ally. The issue was fought out at the first adjourned session of the Conference, in what was whimsically called " the battle of Syracuse." The foremost advocate of the offend- ing phrase was James P'reeman Clarke, who gave to the words their most generous interpretation, but was equally tenacious of the Christian tradition they express. His early experience of seven years' devoted frontier service in Kentucky, at the beginning of his ministry ; his still earlier alliance with the origin of the Transcendental movement, and intimate friendship with its leaders; his fine intelligence, enriched by letters, art, society, and travel ; his rare capacity of religious sympathy, which made it his special task and service to illustrate the har- monies of widely varying faiths, — all these might seem to pledge him to the most advanced assertions of intellect- ual liberty. But his studies of speculative theology had pledged him still more strongly to seek in a transfigured Christian dogmatics the final and absolute statement of religious truth, and to find in its terms the best setting forth of facts objectively real, so that he did not willingly part with any of its phrases. Besides, there showed in 228 THE UNITARIAXS. [Chap. x. ■ him at times a combative temper — finely exhibited in some recent phases of political debate — with a courage of attack or defense, generally disguised under a kindly cour- tesy of manner, that bore him promptly to the front in any war of words. In the debate at Syracuse he easily carried the overwhelming assent of the audience he addressed, already inclined that way. The words of the preamble stood, accordingly, as a manifesto of adhesion to historic f Christianity. But, as a counter-manifesto, the " Free I Religious Association" came presently into being; and ' the Unitarian body lost, for the time at least, the support that would have been given it by the great moral and in- tellectual force represented (among those no longer living) in the wayward, versatile, and delightful fancy and the fine religious and poetic genius of John Weiss (1818-79), or in the grave yet glowing and intense ethical spirit of David Atwood Wasson (1823-87). Meanwhile, the former doctrinal issues had been com- pletely overshadowed and dwarfed by the one great tragedy of the Civil War. They were, in parliamentary phrase, " laid upon the table," and they have never been taken from it since. It appears to be impossible for a later generation to understand how grave those issues were once supposed to be. " All the battles of theology," Dr. Putnam had once said in his pulpit, " are drawn bat- tles; all its questions are open questions." With his cus- tomary vigor he had once maintained the argument of the " Supernaturalist " party; but before his death he surprised his congregation by assuring them that that argument did not touch the substance of Christianity. The mental change thus brought about in one of the most conservative minds of the body was mainly due to two causes. One was the order of scientific thought that came in with the study of Darwin and Spencer, by which FREDERIC IIENRV HEDGE. 229 he, with all intelligent persons, had been strongly attracted. The other was the working out of a vein of religious philosophy which may be traced, in part, to the influence or the survival of Transcendentalism. To interpret and assimilate that philosophy made now the special task of the intellectual leaders in the Unitarian movement, of whom Dr. Hedge was conspicuously the chief. His vol- ume entitleji^ Reason in Religion" was by far the ablest and most influential expression of the order of thought here indicated. It was, in fact, to many minds a guide- book of the process by which dogma passes through met- aphysics on the way to become pure symbol of a truth of mental experience. Frederic Henry Hedge (1805-90) had the singular advantage, for those days, of a school training as a boy in Germany, so that the German idiom, in thought as well as speech, was to him a second mother-tongue. With high rank as a general scholar, he was widely familiar with the literature of metaphysics. He was master of a grave and studied eloquence, with a diction, at times, of rare poetic beauty. A faithful and laborious service of thirty- six years in his profession had put him as an intellectual leader as clearly at the head of the liberal jjulpit in Amer- ica as his illustrious contemporary James Martineau stood in England. He had been educated in a period. when rhetorical form counted greatly more than now towards a writer's general eminence, — a period when all the best in- tellectual work among us was shaped by the exigencies of popular speech rather than by the severe logic of the schools ; when even grave chapters of history, theology, or metaphysics^ became a series of effective popular ad- dresses, rather than steps in a methodical essay. The argument of " Reason in Religion " is contained in a ' For example, in Dr. Walker's inagniriccnl Lowell LieUircs of 1S42. 230 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. X. sequence of discourses, each rounded and complete in itself; and thus it develops a single order of thought with culminating effect, but with little of logical coherence. It may be contended, indeed, that the argument was the more readily grasped by those to whom it was addressed, and so was the more effective, because delivered in this form ; because, too, it was here and there cast in phrases that stamped themselves on the memory with the pun- gency and point of epigram. The alternative " Reason or Rome " tells more pithily than a labored paragraph the drift of modern speculation. " Heaven is the sum of ascending spirits, hell the sum of descending spirits," sets forth the law of retribution, as he conceived it, better than many an argumentative essay. " A movement is strong by what it includes, an organism by what it excludes," shows more clearly than a detailed explanation the strength and weakness of the body he served loyally until his death. Almost unconsciously, the tone and method were taken up by a whole generation of inquiring minds, and have be- come, on the side of pure thought, the most potent factor in determining the quality of later Unitarian doctrine. The service rendered by Dr. Hedge in this direction was the more effective because rendered in large part through the " Christian Examiner," of which he became editor in 1857. He sought to make of it an independent journal of religion and letters ; less than ever, the organ of any one school of theological opinion. Many of the essays just described appeared first in its pages; and the educating work begun in it under his direction was con- tinued in it by other hands. During the war its course was strongly controlled b}^the turn of public events, when it aimed to interpret or to influence the steps of that moral and political revolution going on under the surface of the struggle, and when political or social etliics were of more WIDENED RANGE OE ACTION 231 account to us than ecclesiastical life. In the Ljeneral ex- pansion of mind that followed the war, when the field of acti(^n so suddenly widened out before the Unitarian bod\-, the "Examiner" was transferred from Boston to New York; and here, under Dr. Bellows's guidance, it aimed to do the work at once of a denominational organ and of an independent journal, absolutely open and free to the advanced criticism of the day. In this efifort it lost the cordial support of one part without securing the full confi- dence of the other; and, though sustained with fair suc- cess as a private enterprise, it was absorbed into the fresh and more popular magazine " Old and New," at the end of 1869.1 Under the new impulse now given, the Unitarian body widened out on a scale and with a vigor which nothing in its earlier history had led one to look for in it. The yearly fund at the service of the A. U. A. rose at one step from a sum under ten thousand dollars to more than a hundred thousand, under the sagacious counsel of Mr. Henry P. Kidder, and the energetic effort of its president, Dr. Rufus P. Stebbins. From this time on it enjoyed for five years the service of its beloved and devoted secretary, Charles Lowe, who in 1874, a few months before his death, estab- lished the " Unitarian Review," to be an ally and inter- preter of its work.2 Among the first results of this ex- pansion, the policy was adopted of planting outposts at important university towns. This was done first in 1865 at Ann Arbor, Mich., where the State University had gathered a body of students larger than that at anv other 1 A full statement of the circumstances and reasons of this change m.iy be jnd in the " Unitarian Review" of April, 18S7, p. 363. 2 The" Unitarian Review" was discontinued at the end of iSqi. Tlie next year "The New WorM " was established as an ort^an of the hifjher liberal scholarship, and has been aided by m.any contributions from foreign writers. fou 2 232 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. x. American college. Such outposts now exist in at least twelve different States, making a most serviceable propa- ganda in a wide field of infiuence. This effect was espe- cially marked in the case of Ann Arbor, through the exceedingly able courses of class instruction given by Rev. Charles H. Brigham (1820-79), who retired from his charge, broken in health, in 1877. In Wisconsin, also, a rapid and very strong liberal development within the last fifteen years — consecrated now by the bright name of Henry Doty Maxson, who died in 1892 — was due to the same wise policy. In October, 1877, was held in Springfield, Mass., the first session of the " Ministers' Institute," for what would now be called " university extension " in the field of theol- ogy. The institute was gathered, by invitation and under the general direction of Dr. Bellows, to do for professional students that part of the work of a religious body most apt to be overlooked under the press of routine work or neglected in its widening missionary enterprises. The term " theology " was taken in its very widest sense, to include all knowledge that bears on the advance of relig- ious thought. The lines followed at this gathering were carefully planned beforehand, marking out the four divi- sions of the field, to each of which it was at first intended that one full day should be devoted ; and a doubt arising on the subject was determined by throwing the doors open to whoever might choose to enter. No discussions have in fact proved more attractive to the outside public than those which it was first thought to reserve for scholars' hearing. The topics were these : i. The higher criticism (so called) of the Bible, illustrated at this time in studies of the Old Testament after the school of Kuenen ; 2. Development of doctrine, as shown in the transition from the Old Testament to the New, and in a criticism of the THE MIXISTERS' INSTITUTE. 233 Pauline writings; 3. A discourse on Evolution by Prof. John \y. Draper, of New York, supplemented by a paper from Dr. Thomas Hill on Erasmus Darwin, including a critique of certain points in the later Darwinism ; 4. Re- ligious and scientific Ethics, especially as applied to social problems. A philosophic essay on " Personality " by Dr. Hedge is included in one of the later volumes of his published writings; and a brilliantly characteristic religious discourse was deli\'ered by Rev. William Henry Channing. Among the names just mentioned are those of two men, of very marked and peculiar quality, who now for the last time (it is believed) addressed a large representative gath- ering of their own religious body. William Henry Chan- ning (1810-84) was the preacher of most fervid and purely inspired genius of the bright dawn of Transcendentalism : capable at moments of an eloquence, electric and superb, such as is rarely heard from human lips ; a mystic, whose glowing speech seemed often to soar in a range where thought less rapt could scarcely follow, yet in simijlicity and sweetness of personal intercourse a child ; desiring to walk in humblest ways and do lowliest service, making his New York pulpit a popular platform of human rights and duties, and toiling in the modest task of conducting a cheap journal of Christian socialism ; w ho came home from an admired career in England, that he might ser\e his country in any open way throughout the war, whether to idealize and consecrate the struggle as chaplain of the House, or minister to the sick and wounded men crcnvded in the hospitals at Washington, where his own church was the first to be put to that pious use. Thomas Hill (1818-91) was a man conservative in theology and ordi- narily reticent of speech, in whom religious humilit\' of spirit and intellectual self-assertion made a coml)ination 234 ^^^^ UNITARIANS. [Chap. x. very marked ; a man of rare versatility in the ranges of accurate science, being a mathematician of high rank, a naturaHst widely trained, and a mechanician of extraordi- nary skill ; seeking his companionships among gifted men of science rather than in the ranks of his own profession, to the great loss of younger men in it who ought to have known him better; chiefly eminent in the work of higher education, as president of Antioch College and afterwards of Harvard University.^ These groups and names show the meaning and intent of the Ministers' Institute at its first founding. The name of Professor Draper, in particular, shows how widely its doors were open to topics and teachers, as well as hearers, quite outside the purely professional and even the Chris- tian field. As later representing faiths not Christian, Rabbi Gottheil, of New York, argued in an extended ad- dress at Providence, in 1879, that Jesus was never rejected by his own people, but was the victim of political passion and terror; Protap Chunder Mozoomdar, from Calcutta, speaking for the Brahmo Somaj, illustrated in a most eloquent address at Lowell, in 1883, the mingled good and ill of Christianity as found in British India; Felix Adler, in 1887, from the point of view of ethical culture discoursed with his fine insight on what have been hitherto ret^arded as phases of " Christian ethics." Thus the Institute, while in one way an offshoot of strictly Unitarian growth, has in its intellectual outlook been quite beyond the range of any denominational interest. It has often heard, or sought to hear, the voice of men from other Christian bodies ; and it has always solicited the teaching of science, that knows nothing of party lines in the religious world. Its sessions have generally been held on alternate years with those of 1 .Some of liis personal and mental traits are described in the " Unitarian Review" for December, 1891, pp. 463-470. ''TRANSCENDENTAL WILD OATS.'' 235 the National Conference, to which it is in some sense sup- plementary, but more truly an independent ally.^ So wide a welcome to great diversities of opinion, with so feeble a restraining power at the center, opened the way, inevitably, to considerable looseness of speculation, and even to a certain lawlessness, inviting- scandal, in some men's theory and practice of the religious life. Under such influences, Emerson became a far more potent leader of thought than either Channing or Parker: Emerson, with his brilliant defiance of conventionalism in the treat- ment of religious topics, but without the austere purity of tone and the profound ethical feeling which in him were the winnowed growth of the finest Puritan ancestry. 'The phrase "transcendental wild oats," happily employed by Louisa Alcott to describe her recollections of certain rue- ful experiments at farming in Utopia, might well be ap- plied to much that masqueraded as Christian doctrine, especially in remoter districts, where the restraints of a graver tradition were less observed. These escapades were oftenest innocently meant, and harmless; such eff"er- vescence as Kingsley has described in " Yeast." Some- times, however, they were the token or forewarning of a moral peril ; since, in the rapid external spread of Unita- rianism (or what called itself such), it would happen that supposed converts from more rigid creeds proved to be irresponsible adventurers, who took the name as a mere cloak of license : such converts, we may fancy, as those whom Paul encountered at Corinth. How to deal with this new symptom, without authority of ecclesiastical discipline, and with nothing of the check that would be given or promised by the simplest external rule of faith, became a ^ Its meetings were lield in 1879 at Providence, in 1S81 at Princeton, Ma.s.s., in 1883 at Lowell, in 1885 at Newport, in 1887 at Princeton, in i888 at Worcester, in 1890 at Salem, in 1892 at Newton. 236 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. \. problem of some difficulty. Either of those expedients would affront the best Unitarian tradition; while to wait the slow effect of time, and the wholesome working out of spiritual affinities, might in the view of many seem too grave a peril to be risked. The question so offered was brought to the front in the spring of 1886, in a small pamphlet entitled "The Issue in the West." The Western Conference, embracing almost the whole valley region of the Central States, was far the broadest in extent, and made up of far the most numerous and diverse elements, of all the local bodies allied with the National Conference. Moreover, there was a sense of local importance, and a common ground of character and interest, which (while the National Confer- ence had no treasury or agencies for separate action) seemed to require for the West funds and executive machinery of its own. Thus the question, as now brought forward, was limited to that one field. The points it raised must be decided by the Western Conference at its annual session, without concert of action in the East. This ses- sion was held at Cincinnati, in May, 1886. The solution proposed, when reduced to its simplest terms, took the form of a resolve, " that the primary ob- ject of this Conference is to diffuse the knowledge and promote the interests of pure Christianity." Now, with- out question, the body of the conference was made up of ardent theists and devout Christians^accepting their own definition of those terms. But to put the assertion of either position in the organic act that constituted the con- ference itself, so as to make it, really or seemingly, a con- dition of its membership, appeared to the majority a vio- lation of the absolute mental freedom which was a vital feature in the organization. Theism, which to some minds is implied in every phrase declaring a moral order in Till-: WESTERN ISSUE. 237 human life, would surely, when asserted as dogma, lead to troublesome and distracting definitions, alien to the pur- pose had in view. The name " Christian " might seem to cast a stigma upon some of their own number, even, of Jewish or other non-Christian antecedents. The proposal was accordingly met by the counter-resolve, adopted by a large majority, that the conference " conditions its fellow- ship on no dogmatic tests, but welcomes all who wish to join it to help establish truth, righteousness, and love in the world." These two counter-positions, thus narrowly distinguished, define what was known as " the Western Issue." The action at Cincinnati was supplemented the following year, at Chicago, by a pretty extended " state- ment of things commonly believed among us," which was a generous and eloquent setting forth of a far more full and elevated code of belief than could possibly have been included in the terms of any formal creed. The difference and even alienation occasioned by this act came (as was hoped) to an end in 1892, when it was resolved that the conference " hereby declares it to be its common aim and purpose to promulgate a religion in harmony with the foregoing preamble and statement." Among the objects effected at the sessions of the National Conference have been the planning and urging of .special tasks too large and costly to be properly taken into the lines of current expenditure. These sessions came to be very numerously attended, the formal delega- tion having been much more than doubled by the friendly throng ; and tliey have been occasions of great social de- light as well as religious im]:)ression. The spirit of the gathering has responded quickly and warmly to appeals that could have reached general sympathy in no other way ; while the lines of action it recommended have been followed up with a generosity which the elder Unitarians 238 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. x. were wont to bestow only on objects outside their own communion. A college, a hospital, a denominational school, or religious enterprise other than Unitarian might look for their bounty, and seldom looked in vain ; but they shunned even the appearance of vrhat might be charged against them as working for sectarian ends.^ Now, however, with some little demur, they gave heed to them of their own household. Costly churches have been built by common effort in Washington, New York, and elsewhere ; a Loan Fund of considerable amount aids the same work in a wider field; provision has been made for the divinity schools in Cambridge and Meadville, in sums not varying far from one hundred and fifty thousand dollars each ; a still larger amount has been devoted to construct a building ample for denominational or general uses in Boston ; help has been given to the straitened churches of Hungary and France, and to the Unitarian College of Transylvania ; a missionary work of instruction has been set on foot in Japan, at an annual cost equal to the entire denominational revenue of thirty years ago. These enterprises have felt the check, doubtless, of old prejudice and of a prudence sometimes anxious ; but they have been far less embarrassed by theological differences or mutual distrust than might be feared. The last, in par- ticular, was a new departure into a field doubtful and un- explored. A fund of moderate amount given for such use had for nearly thirty years maintained a single missionary, Rev. Charles H. A. Dall, in Calcutta, where his fine schol- arship and devoted service, till his death, in 1886, were of no effect to gather a native church, but were spent in greatly needed tasks of primary instruction, made after- 1 "Unitarians have given millions to colleges, academics, libraries, pliilan- thropic and charitable institutions, from whom it would have been impossible to draw a single dollar for the Association." — G. E. Ellis, " A Half-Century of the Unitarian Controversy," Introduction, p. xiv. M/SS/O.V COLLEGE IX JAPAN. 239 wards needless (it was thought) by the improved gov- ernment schools. In 1887 Hon. Horace Davis, of San Francisco (afterwards president of the University of Cali- fornia), was strongly impressed, during a stay of some months, in eastern Asia, by the seeming ineffectiveness of Christian missions founded on dogma, and by the apparent openness of the native mind to influences which, without dogmatism or controxersy, should convey the purely ethi- cal and spiritual teachings of Christianity. In these he saw the opportunity and duty of the Unitarian body, which had so completely outgrown the controversial stage of religious thought. Chiefly through his urgency, by public address or written appeal,^ the matter first gained hearing. The effort which followed had from the begin- ning the cordial welcome of those whom it addressed. Within six months the Japanese public read in its nati\e speech, diffused through its own new.spapers of widest circulation, the 'exposition, argument, or appeal addressed to it by aid of young students who had had their college training in America. After two years' trial the enterprise was expanded to a college of theology and moral science, having at the present time six instructors — three being native, three sustained from the United States — besides the friendly cooperation of liberal scholars from Germany, and of others from faiths not Unitarian. The college is just now (1893) seeking aid to build a permanent struct- ure for its educational work, that which it occupied hav- ing been destroyed in a conflagration at Tokio. Except for the new denominational building, the largest sum raised among Unitarians for a single object has been an endowment fund of something over $140,000, com- pleted in 1878, for the Harvard Divinity School. The school, though hitherto held and controlled as well as 1 Sec, in particular, tlic "Unitarian Review" for November, 1887. 240 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. x. wholly sustained by them, was at once declared unde- nominational, to conform with the general policy of the university. Both instructors and students hold their con- nection with it quite independent of any theological ante- cedents or tests. Such differences are lost, or overlooked, in the common study of "a scientific theology." This term includes the higher (or historic) criticism of the Bible, the comparative study of religions, intellectual philosophy, and scientific ethics, together with such allied courses of instruction as other departments of the university may offer. The school is understood to be especially strong in Oriental learning (including Hebrew, Arabic, and As- syrian), and in the study of religious or pliilosophical sys- tems of the East. Among its students are nearly always found several natives of Japan, with a considerable number of graduates from other schools of theology. The " regular " members of the last entering class (1893) number twenty. The university has thus amply atoned for whatever in- justice may have been done, in its name, in the early years of the century. Further, in keeping with this reconstruc- tion of the Divinity School, the College Church, estab- lished under President Kirkland and necessarily Unitarian in its affiliations, was discontinued in the summer of 1882. In its place a system of religious instruction was now de- vised, and has been carried out with signal success, in which the ordinary religious exercises, of both Sundays and week-days, are conducted by preachers of high stand- ing chosen each year from at least three of the leading Protestant bodies; while Jew, Catholic, and Hindoo have been invited on special occasions to address, and have addressed, the students in Appleton Chapel. It is by their own ecclesiastical rule that Catholic preachers are debarred from taking their place with others, as solicited, in the ordinary exercises of the college pulpit. RECENT NECROLOGY. 24 1 Contemporary with the changes now recorded, the Uni- tarian body has experienced the loss, within the past twenty years or a httle more, of almost all its well-known leaders who had survived from the earlier period. Dr. Gannett, long its most devoted champion, and one of the most eloquent of its preachers, perished in a railroad dis- aster at Revere in 187 1. President Walker, its weightiest logician and strongest teacher of ethics, died, at the age of eighty, in 1874; Dr. Putnam, its preacher of most brill- iant and sustained local reputation, in 1877, at seventy years. Dr. Bellows, its most sagacious organizer, its best beloved leader, and its most distinguished representative before the larger public, died at sixty-eight ; Dr. Dewey, perhaps its profoundest religious genius, and the eloquent Nestor of its pulpit, at eighty-eight; also, Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his eightieth year, whose great and unique fame in a wider field had never made him a stranger to his early associates — these three in 1882. Dr. Stebbins, to whose courage and zeal were due, more than to any other, its wider propagation in the West, died in 1886; Dr. Eliot, who as its first and noblest missionary carried out its pi(^ncer work on a grand scale in the Mississippi Valley, in 1887 ; James P'reeman Clarke, through whom its gospel had a broader and kindlier reception in the popular heart than through any other, in 1888; Dr. Pledge, eminently chief among those who led it towards the larger intellectual interpretation of its word, in 1890; Prof. Andrew P. Pea- body, who more than any otlier made its religious spirit to be felt and welcomed in the broad circle of other Chris- tian bodies, in 1893, at eighty-two, from the effect of accident. Among its elder teachers. Dr. P\irness alone remains, in his ninety-second year, the lifelong friend of Emerson and Hedge, whose heart is too young and his .spirit too joyous to admit any of the sad epithets of age, 242 THE UNITARIAXS. [Chap. x. true through the evil days of half a century ago to his high faith in human freedom, the beloved and genial inter- preter of the Christian gospel record to an entire genera- tion. Thus that body has come, almost suddenly, to feel that the period of controversy and of preparation is past, and that, for whatever of gain or loss, a New Unitarian- ism holds the field. As at present organized, the Unitarian body is repre- sented, first, by its larger central agencies, the American Unitarian Association (now a corporate body controlled by delegates from the churches) and the National Confer- ence, meeting at stated intervals for counsel and com- munion ; by twenty-live local conferences, made up of delegates representing groups of churches, and meeting commonly several times in the year (three of these are on the Pacific Coast, and one covers the extensive field of the Southern States) ; by five " Alliances," or other bodies for Christian work, organized and controlled by women ; by thirty-two organizations formed for various special ob- jects, local or general, under the names of " club," " guild," " association," or the like, besides those professional or educational. These all illustrate, in various ways, the great change that has come to pass since the time when Unitarianism meant what was merely theological, profes- sional, or controversial. The change has brought it at least to attempt the prac- tice of a religion wholly free of ecclesiasticism or dogma ; in equal alliance with every form of modern thought or learning; open to criticism or to instruction from every quarter; aiming, without prejudice of discipline or creed, to give its own interpretation of a Divine kingdom upon earth. Its historj- is the record of its advance from the position of challenging — often feebly, willfully, and pas- sionately— the established creeds of Christendom, towards THE NAME " UNITARIAN:' 243 that of accepting, as sooner or later it must come to do understandingly, whatever may be meant in the purely scientific phrase "positive religion," as opposed to that which is doctrinal or institutional. As one of its inter- preters has said, " We have walked out into the open day- light, and for us there is no going back." The name " Unitarian " may not seem adequate to cover so large a range and variety of opinion as is here im- plied. It was accepted reluctantly and under strong pro- test by those who led in the religious movement it denotes, who wished to be known as belonging, individually, to the "liberal wing" of New England Congregationalism. Many would greatly prefer that now. Esjjecially the name has been held unfit to be taken as a corporate name, to describe a church, or the larger communion made up of many churches. In fact, of the four hundred and forty-four churches on the list in 1893, less than two hundred (197) are known by that name in their proper title. On its roll of five hundred and ten ministers (of whom twenty are women) more tiian one hundred were educated in other forms of belief, and may not be pre- sumed familiar with the Unitarian tradition, or any way attached to it. What leads them to accept the name is the same reason that prevailed over the objections felt at first: not at all that it defines an opinion in which they arc all agreed, but that it denotes that very undefined and expanding mo\'ement of religious thought, which can be interpreted only by a proper understanding of its history and antecedents. One chief value of the name at the present day is that it serves as a symbol, or standard, recognized by a far wider range of pe()])lcs, dialects, and minds than the scant show- ing of its organized forces might seem to promise. Under the same title, and under like general conditions, are gath- 244 ^-^^ UNITARIAiVS. [Chap. x. ered nearly three hundred and fifty (344) congregations in the British Islands. These are well understood to rep- resent, in the main, that same non-dogmatic form of Chris- tianity towards which the movement we have traced has been gradually led. What has been said of the Harvard Divinity School may be said in almost the same terms of Manchester New College, their chief seat of instruction, now established at Oxford, which has been made illus- trious in the past by the names of Kenrick, Tayler, and Martineau, and now embraces the freshest European and Oriental learning. Two points are especially noticeable in defining their present position : a tenacious loyalty to the best traditions of English Unitarian Dissent, and a, keen sympathy with that tendency in politics which aims] at public education, justice, and a better social order. Under special embarrassments, their church life has been comparatively cramped and feeble ; but in the wider field they have been honorably known as a positive force in the intellectual and moral sphere. In France about two fifths of the Protestant body are well recognized as Unitarian, though not formally sepa- rated from the rest, and without break of the historic con- tinuity that links them with old heroic memories of the Reformation.^ Their two theological colleges, in Paris and at Nimes, with a humble but very devout community in the Landes near Bordeaux, testify to their learning and their piety. Prof. Bonet-Maury enumerates, as chief feat- ures in their work: (i) the faculty of Liberal Theology established at Paris in 1877 (to take the place of that at 1 The Rev. Atlianase Coquerel {pen-) spoke of himself to me, in 1855, as legitimate successor of the Huguenot leaders of the sixteenth century. The orthodox majority is large and dominant ; but dissenters from its creed have never lost their place or standing in tlie body. See an article by Rev. Narcisse Cyr on " The Reformed Cluirchcs of France," in the " Unitarian Review" for June, 1889, \->. 518. ON THE CONTINENT. 245 Strasburg), which " has remained faithful to the Hberal principles of its Alsatian mother, has constantly refused to subscribe to the synod of 1872, and still preserves for its pupils the independence of their opinions"; (2) a relig- ious section, under Albert Reville, in the " Ecole pratique des hautes etudes," wliich includes Catholic, Jew, and Huddhist along with Protestant Christians; (3) a liberal Press, whose most significant product is the great Bible commentary of Edouard Reuss, in twehe \olumes, " a colossal monument dedicated to the literary, moral, and religious worth of the Scriptures"; (4) a lay organiza- tion, or standing board, directed by leading jurists, which " has since 1872 supported the poorer and feebler churches in the departments, and sheltered them from the encroach- ments and illegal attempts of the orthodox majority " ; (5) representative conferences held at Paris, Nimes, or Mont- auban, which have secured important advantages to the liberal minority, especially — by the division of Paris into eight ecclesiastical districts— control of the " Oratoire," the chief Protestant church of France. The names of M. Waddington and Jules P^erry are cited among the statesmen who have shown an active interest in the founding of institutes for free religious education. Among other Continental nations the following evi- dences may be given. The late Professor Chastel, of Geneva, author of the most considerable church history composed from the Unitarian point of view, was a venera- ble witness how far that ancient city had departed from its older tradition and gone over to the liberal name and faith. In northern Italy an active Unitarian propaganda has for many years been conducted by Professor Ferdi- nando Bracciforti, of the Polytechnic college in Milan, and has had friendly recognition from the royal family. The long-established Unitarian community in Transylvania still 246 THE UNITARIANS. [Chap. x. exists, as one of the important educational and religious forces of eastern Hungary. In Germany the latitude of speculation admitted by the official Lutheranism gives less emphasis to the name ; but several theologians of eminence have both maintained cordial personal relations with Uni- tarian scholars in America, and have shared as collaborators in their later work. The Dutch school of biblical criticism, so well represented in Ley den by the late Professor Kue- nen, may be said to be fully naturalized in their later teaching; while a large part of the theological erudition or speculation current in Continental schools would in England or America be described simply as Unitarian. What effect this widening and diversifying of the asso- ciations belonging to that name may have on the work or fortunes of the body that has borne it for the last eighty years in America, it would be idle to conjecture. As many disclaimed it in the beginning, so there are those who think it is already outgrown and should be set aside. That point it would be futile to argue here. A different view, and probably the prevailing view, is that summed up in the following words of the most genial interpreter of some later passages in the movement that has here been traced : " The new Unitarianism is neither sentimental nor transcendental nor traditional. It calls itself Unitarian simply because that name suggests freedom and breadth and progress and elasticity and joy. Another name might do as well, perhaps be more accurately descriptive. But no other would be so impressive, or on the whole so hon- orable."' 1 O. B. Frothingham, " Boston Unitarianism," p. 267. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE. The following letter, here inserted by permission of Dr. Mar- tineau, was written- to accompany some marginal suggestions on pages 149-168, which have been adopted in the revision of the plates. It constitutes an independent chapter, or commentary, of special importance to the understanding of the period there included. 35 Gordon Square, LoNnoN, W. C, January 13, 1894. Dear Dr. Allen : I have read your proof-sheet with the greatest interest, and return it with a few marginal notes, indicating the only points at which, as it appears to nie, the mode of statement admits of somewhat more preci- sion. These refer to matters of detail, and will, I trust, sufficiently explain themselves. I am struck, however, with a difliculty which you have to encounter in prefixing to an "American Chureh History," which is fairly concurrent with American history of Doetrine, an account of our English history of the corre- sponding Doctrinal development, which ran its course, as its literature shows (witness Locke, Clarke, Whiston, P'irmin, Penn, Emlyn), on several eccle- siastical lines, and nez'er gathered itself tip into an organized c/ntrch at all. Prior to the date (Lindsey's change) from which you start, the Unitarian theology had its chief home in our English Presbyterian congregations of I'axterian descent and in the Dublin and Munster Presbyteries, because their fundamental principle of Christian fellowship was devotion to the service of God, in the spirit of Christ, unconditioned by any pledge, actual or tacit, lim- iting the varieties or checking the development of theological opinion. This utter repudiation oi any " orthodoxy" as alTecting the disciples' peace with God threw the whole emphasis of the fellow-worshipers' union on righteous- ness of life and the graces of the Christian mind, and rendered possible the coexistence of many shades of doctrinal thought within one communion. This feature of doctrinal catholicity rendered the congregations which it characterizeited in a Dialogue between a Minister and His Friend. Philadelphia, T. Dobson, 1792. THE UNIVERSALISTS. CHAPTER I. FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE REFORMATION. UNlVERSALIS^r, using the word in its present theologi- cal meaning, is the doctrine or belief that it is the purpose of God, through the grace revealed in our Lord Jesus Christ, to save every member of the human race from sin. The word suggests nothing with regard to any human founder, any place where it was first promulgated, any particular form of church polity, any rite or ordinance, any opinion of the equality or the subordination of the Son to the Father. Universalism is not dependent on these. It may be, and to some extent has been, and is still, embraced by those in Christian sects whose denominational titles em- phasize these respective peculiarities. The Universalist denomination, as an organized body of believers in Universali.sm, gratefully recognizes its founders, has adopted a definite polity of government, observes rites and ordinances, believes in the subordination of the Son to the Father. The presence of Universalism may be traced to the earliest period of Christian history. The existence of the Universalist denomination reaches but little beyond \ a century. The plan of this history is, therefore, twofold : to show where and how Uni\-ersalism has been advocated, and to 255 256 THE UNIVERSALISrS. [Chap, i, describe the rise, progress, and present status of the Uni- versahst Church. It is now generally conceded by writers on the history of Christianity and its doctrines, that the earliest known writings after the days of the Apostles are apologies or defenses of the facts in relation to the life and mission of Jesus and exhortations to the Christian life, rather than statements of eschatological opinions or beliefs. It is not improbable that there may have been several written state- ments of doctrines — as the opinions of some thereon are quoted by later writers — which have perished, it having been the policy of the persecutors of the early church to destroy all Christian documents they could reach. It may be conceded that there were then, as in later times and now, three general opinions held in regard to the destiny of the sinful : their annihilation, their endless suffering, and their final salvation. But it is very certain that for centuries the latter opinion was regarded as ortho- dox as were either of the others. Even where it was held by the several divisions of the Gnostics, A.D. 130, it was never charged by the orthodox that their Universalism was a heresy. In the second century, the church, on the ground that " the end justifies the means," perpetrated what is in- congruously called a "pious fraud." From an early pe- riod there had existed, preserved with great secrecy in the temple of Jupiter, writings known as the " Sibylline Books," containing oracles claiming to have been deliv- ered by the ancient Sybils, or pagan prophetesses. These books shared the fate of the temple when it was destroyed by fire, B.C. 83. Attempts for their restoration were made at various times, in which some Christian or Christians took part by forging what are now known as the " Sibylline Oracles," and putting them forth for the purpose of con- THE "s//n/././x/-: oA'.ic/.ES.'' 257 verting; the lieathen to Christianity on the pretended testi- mony of their own acknowledged prophetic writers. The " Oracles " have been attributed to Montanus, to Christians of Alexandria, to the Gnostics, and even to TertuUian; and ha\e also been regarded as the production of different ages, reaching from before Chri-st to A.D. 500. Much of this speculation as to time is absurd and impossible, and much is mere conjecture. It is very certain that they are of caily origin, and a portion undoubtedly belongs to the second century, to which they have been generally accredited. The}' were usetl as indubitable evidence in controversies witji the heathen, by Justin Mart}'r, Theophilusof Antioch, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, luisebius, etc. Origen in his controversy with Celsus says that the enemies of the Christians sometimes derisively called them Sibyllists.^ What these fraudulent " Oracles " teach is of little moment, oiil}- as it indicates what then entered into gen- eral Christian belief and was pressed with great zeal on the attention of the heathen ;is orthodo.x Christianity. In them we ha\'e an explicit declaration that the damned shall be restored. After describing the burning of the universe, tUc rising of the dead, the assembled world before the judgment-seat, and the horrible torments to which the damned are sentenced in the flames of hell, the " Oracle " proceeds to expatiate on the blessedness and the pi'ivileges of the saved; and concludes the account by saying that, after the general judgment: "The omnipotent, incorrup- tible God shall confer another faxor on his worshipers, when they shall ask him : he shall save mankind from the pernicious fire and innnortal agonies. This will he do. For, having gathered them, safely secured from the un- wearied flame, and a|)])()inlc'(l them to another place, he • "The Aiuc-Nici'iu' 1' alliens, '" vol. iv., \i. 570. 258 THE CNIVEKSALISTS. [CiiAi-. i. shall send them, for his people's sake, into another and an eternal life, with the immortals on the Elysian plain, where flow perpetually the loni^, dark waves of the deep sea of Acheron." If the early Christians desired the heathen to thus be- lieve in the restoration of the wicked, it undoubtedly was because the}^ received it as a Christian doctrine. And that the above-cited passage sets forth the fact that the " Ora- cles " do teach Universalism, learned translators of and commentators on the " Oracles," such as Musardus, Cas- talio, Galkeus, and Davis, in his translation of Blondel's " French Treatise," are agreed. 1 Theophilus, bishop of the church at Antioch, although he speaks of the wicked as enduring " ex'erlasting fire," " everlasting torments," also teaches a final universal res- toration ; thus showing that, like other early Greeks, he did not regard aionios as meaning endless. Speaking of " God's goodness in expelling man from paradise," he says : " God showed great kindness to man in this, that he did not suffer him to remain in sin forever; but, as it were, by a kind of banishment, cast him out of paradise, in order that, having by punishment expiated, within an appointed time, the sin, and ha\nng been disciplined, he should after- ward be restored. Wherefore also, when man had been formed in this world, it is mystically written in Genesis, as if he had been twice placed in paradise ; so that the one was fulfilled when he was placed theie, and the second will be fulfilled after the resurrection and judgment. For just as a vessel, when on being fashioned it has some flaw, is remolded or remade, that it may become new and en- tire, so shall it happen to man by death. For somehow or other he is broken up, that he may rise in the resur- • See a learned note by Thomas B. Thayer, D.I)., in " Universalist (Quar- terly," July, 1868, pp. 36911. CLEM EXT OE ALEXAXDKL-l. 259 rcctioii wliole ; I mean spotless, and riy;hteous, and ini- inortal." ' The first i^reat scholar in the cluirch, renowned for his knowledge of history and philosoph)-, was Clement of Alexandria, successor to Pantccnus as head of the theo- logical school at Alexandria. It was a fundamental doc- trine with Clement that man was created to he educated and not for a limited trial of his powers, and that his op- portunity for education is as lasting as his being. In view of this it wx:)uld be impossible to conceive of punishment as an end, much less of its being endless, or resulting in the annihilation of the i)unished. This is his teaching in his " Exhortation to the Heathen " : " Great is the grace of his promise, ' if to-day we hear his voice.' And that to-da}' is lengthened out da}' by tlay, while it is called to-day. And to the end the to-day and the instruction continue ; and then the true to-day, the never-ending day of God, extends o\er eternit}'. Let us then ever obey the voice of the di\-ine Word, h'or the to-day signifies eternity.'"' So in the " Pedagogue," Clement thus answers the ob- jection, " How then, if the Lord loves man and is good, is he aiigry and punishes? " : "We must treat of this point with all possible brevity^, for this mode of treatment is advantageous to the right training of the children, occup)ing the place of a necessary helj). P'or many of the passions are cured by punishment, and by the inculcation of the sterner precepts, as also by in- struction in certain principles. Rei)roof is, as it were, the surgery of the passions of the soul. . . . Reproach is like the application of medicines dissolving the callosities of the .soul and purging the impurities of the lewdness of the life. . . . Admonition is, as it were, the regimen of the 1 "Tin.' .\nlc-Nicenc Fathers," vol. ii., [). 104. 2 /A/,/., p. itj6. 26o THE UNIVERSALISIS. [Chap. i. diseased soul, prescribing what it must take, and forbid- ding what it must not. And all these tend to salvation and eternal health. . . . He who is our great General, the Word, the Commander-in-Chief of the universe, by admonishing those who throw off the restraints of his law, that he may effect their release from the slavery, error, and captivity of the adversary, brings them peacefully to the sacred concord of citizenship. . . . Those who are not in- duced by praise are spurred on by censure; and those whom censure calls not forth to salvation, being as dead, are by denunciation roused to the truth. . . . The vine that is not pruned grows to wood. So also man. The Word — the knife — clears away the wanton shoots ; com- pelling the impulses of the soul to fructify, not to indulge in lust. Now, reproof addressed to sinners has their sal- vation for its aim, the word being harmoniously adjusted to each one's conduct ; now with tightened, now with re- laxed cords. . . . Wherefore I will grant that he punishes the disobedient (for punishment is for the good and ad- vantage of him who is punished, for it is the correction of a refractory subject) ; but I will not grant that he wishes to take vengeance. Revenge is retribution for evil, im- posed for the advantage of him who takes the revenge. He will not desire us to take revenge who teaches us ' to pray for those that despitefully use us.' . . . With all his power, therefore, the Instructor of humanity, the divine Word, using all the resources of wisdoi]i, devotes himself to the saving of the children, admonishing, upbraiding, blaming, chiding, reproving, threatening, healing, promis- ing, favoring ; and as it were, by many reins, curbing the irrational impulses of humanity. To speak briefly, there- fore, the Lord acts toward us as we do toward our children. * Hast thou children? correct them,' is the exhortation of the book of Wisdom, ' and bend them from their youth. CLEMENT OE ALEXANDRIA. 26 1 Hast thou (lauL^hlcrs? attend to their body, and let not thy face brighten toward them,' — ahhough we love our chil- dren exceedingly, both sons and tlaug liters, above all else whatever. For those who speak with a man merely to l)lease him have little lo\e for him, seeing they do not jjain him ; while tiiose that speak for his good, though they inflict pain for the time, do him good forever after. It is not immediate pleasure, but future enjoyment, that the Lord has in view."^ It was a common belief among Christians of all sects or divisions in the second and third centuries, that Christ went down into hades, or the underworld, after his death on the cross, and remained there until his resurrection ; but there was not general agreement as to what he did while there. Clement was of the opinion that he went there " to preach the gospel to those that perished in the flood, or rather had been chained, and to those kept ' in ward and guard.' " And his argument based on his thus being employed reaches beyond the particular class of sinners then in the underworld, and includes all who there or elsewhere need .salvation. Thus in the " Stromata " : " If, then, the Lord descended to hades for no other end but to preach the gospel, as he did descend, it was either to preach the gospel to all or to the Hebrews only. If, accordingly, to all, then all who believe .shall be saved, al- though they may be of the Gentiles, on making their pro- fession there ; since God's j)uiiishments are saving and dis- ciplinary, leading to conversion, and choosing rather the repentance than the death of the sinner; and especially since souls, although darkened by passions, when released from their bodies are able to perceix'e more clearly, because of their being no longer obstructctl by the paltry flesh."- 1 " Tlie Antf-Nircne Fathers," vol. ii., pp. 225 ff. 2 //'/,/., p. 4()0 f. 262 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chai-. i. In another chapter, arguing that Christ is the Saviour of all, he says : " All men are his ; some through knowledge, and others not yet so ; and some as friends, some as faithful servants, some as servants merely. This is the Teacher who trains the Gnostic by mysteries, and the believer by good hopes, and the hard of heart by corrective discipline through sensible operation. . , . How is he Saviour and Lord, if not the Saviour and Lord of all? But he is the Saviour of those who have believed, because of their wishing to know ; and the Lord of those w^ho have not believed, till, being enabled to confess him, they obtain the peculiar and appropriate boon which comes by him. . . . For all things are arranged with a view to the sah-ation of the universe by the Lord of the universe, both generally and particu- larly. . . . Now everything that is virtuous changes for the better ; having as the proper cause of change the free choice of knowledge, which the soul has in its own power. But necessary corrections, through the goodness of the great overseeing Judge, both by the attendant angels and by various acts of anticipative judgment, obey the perfect judgment, compel egregious sinners to repent."^ \\\ the " Fragments," Clement makes this strong state- ment in commenting on i John ii. 2 : " ' And not onl}' for our sins ' — that is, for those of tlie faithful — is the Lord the propitiator, does he say, ' but also for the whole world.' He, indeed, saves all ; but some [he .saves], converting them by punishments; others, however, who follow vol- untarily [he saves] with dignity of honor ; so ' that every knee should bow to him, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth ' ; that is, angels, men, and souls that before his advent have departed from this temporal life." 1 "The Ante-Niccnc Fathers," vol. ii., pj). 524 IT. 2 //,/,/., p. 575. ORIGKN. 263 Clement was succeeded in the presidency of the theo- logical school by his pupil, the renowned Origen. Mos- heim says of him : " He had traveled through the whole encyclopnsdia of human knowledge in that age, and he was justly accounted a uni\ersal scholar, both by the Christians and by other people. . . . Origen possessed every excellence that can adorn the Christian character; uncommon piety, from his very childhood ; unequaled perseverance in labors and toils for the advancement of the Christian cause ; untiring zeal for the church, and for the extension of Christianity; an elevation of soul which placed him above all ordinary desires or fears ; the purest trust in the Lord Jesus, for whose sake, when he was old and oppressed with ills of every kind, he patient))- and perseveringly endured the severest sufferings. . . . Certainly if any man deserves to stand first in the catalogue of saints and martyrs, and to be annually held up as an example to Christians, this is the man: for, except the apostles of Jesus Christ and their companions, I know of no one, among those enrolled and honored as saints, who excelled him in holiness and virtue." ' The philosoi)hy of Origen had as its fundamental the doctrine of the preexistence of souls, which, at their crea- tion, had all been on a plane of equality ; that by the ex- ercise of their free-WMll — a characteristic of their being which will endure eternally — some had chosen to put themsch'es out of harmony witli God and were now in material investments for their education and discijiline. Tile higher order of souls — i.e., tliost who ha\e made the best choice — are lodged in those splendid material bodies, the sun, moon, and stars; such as liad chosen unwisely and uickedl)' are doomed to inhabit Iniinan bodies; while ' Mosliciiu's " Historical CoinineiUnries," vol. ii., p. 149 f. 264 THE UXl VERSA LISTS. [Chap. i. those Still more perverse become demons and are attached to bodies more tenuous than ours, and such as vehemently excite them to evil. Souls which resist temptation and choose righteousness are gradually purified; souls which neglect this duty will be subjected to some harsher mode of purgation until they repent and begin to exert their liberty for good. And when all souls shall have returned to their primitive state and to God, this material world will be dissolved. Origen's philosophy seemed to him so well founded and important that it colored all his theology as derived from the Scriptures, and necessitated his theory of interpreta- tion. The literal meaning of the Bible he did not deny in regard to many of its plainest statements, for he said : " The passages that are true in their historical [literal] meaning are much more numerous than those which are interspersed with a purely spiritual significance."^ Some passages are allegorical, and he supposed that the higher sense of the Scriptures as a wh.ole was the mystical or spiritual sense. By all his contemporaries, and by historians of Christian doctrines generally, Origen is regarded as teaching the doctrine of Universalism. By a few, chiefly in modern times, it is denied that he so taught ; the contention being that he intimates the possibility of " endless changes " from good to bad, or from bad to good. The foundation for this opinion is in a supposed passage in the " De rrinci])iis," and certain assertions of Jerome and yVugustine. The passage in the " De Princij^iis " is the following: " We are of opinion that, seeing the soul, as we have fre- quently said, is immortal and eternal, it is possible that, in the many and endless periods of duration in the immeasur- able and different worlds, it may descend from the highest 1 " Tlie .\ntc-Nicenc ]<"atlicrs," xcl. iv., p. 368. ON /a EN. 265 good to the lowest evil, or l)e restored from the lowest evil to the hi;^hest good."' Origen said nothing of the kind. It is a sheer invention of Ruhnus, vvh(j pretended to translate Origen from the Greek into the Latin, but, to meet his own ends, in setting forth Origen's opinions omitted much, added more, and whatever was not to his liking, changed. Unfortunately, only a few fragments of the Greek remain, and so we are not able lo detect all the unwarranted changes and ad- ditions ; but in the portit)n cited above, the Greek has been preserved and shows that Rufinus invented what he pre- tended to change into Latin. ^ Jerome had been a great admirer of Orige.n, had spoken of him in terms of highest praise, had followed him in forming his own opinions and in writing his conmientaries ; going so far in the latter as to subject Himself to the charge of appropriating more than accorded with strict honor and fair dealing. Drawn into a league with Epiphanius in seeking to bring reproach on Origen,- now a hundred and fifty years dead, he was both weak and dishonest ; and, like Rufmus, invented whatever would suit his purpose in damaging the reputation of one to whom he was so much in debt for his own learning and ability. Rufinus, indeed, appeals to the example of Jerome for justification of hi.'^ own misrepresentation of Origen's opinions.^ Neither of them stood on any such trifle as honest)' when something else would belter ser\'e their immediate purpose. This is abimdanlly shown in their letters to each (Hhcr in the xol- ume just referred to. 7\ugustine's opinion of (Origen's teachings, although honestly given, was founded on Jerome's statements, he 1 " The Antt'-Nicciu; Initials," vol. iv., p. 327. - See Rufinus' translation, unci a literal renderint; of Origen's Creek, in j^arallcl cuhiinns, in " The Ante-Nicene Fathers," vol. iv., p. 327. ^ " Niceiie ami I'ctst-N'icene I'"allu-rs," seeond series, v<"l. iii., p. 44(1. 266 THE UiYI VERSA LISTS. [Chap. i. having requested the latter to tell him wherein Origen had departed from the truth. He had not read for himself the Greek of Origen. He is not therefore, in this matter, an independent witness, but the echo of an unscrupulous one. If it is, as we have said, believed by contemporaries and generally agreed by historians of Christian doctrines that Origen taught universal salvation, then the presumption 'is that wherein his writings, as they have come to us through the manipulation of unscrupulous hands, disagree with or flatly contradict this teaching, they are not a true transla- tion of what Origen wrote. Jerome, in charging Rufinus with changing Origen's words instead of translating them, makes this just remark : " Origen is no fool, as I well know ; he cannot contradict himself."^ Here is what Origen says in the " De Principiis," as translated into Latin b\- Rufinus: " The end of the world, then, and the final consummation, will take place when every one shall be subjected to pun- ishment for his sins ; a time which God alone knows, when he will bestow on each one what he deserves. We think, indeed, that the goodness of God, through his Christ, may recall all his creatures to one end,'- even his enemies being conquered and subdued. For thus says holy Scripture, ' The Lord said to my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.' And if the meaning of the prophet's language here be less clear, we may ascertain it from the Apostle Paul, who speaks more openly, thus: ' For Christ must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet.' But if even that unreserved dec- laration of the Apostle do not sufficiently inform us v/hat is meant by ' enemies being placed under his feet,' listen to what he says in the following words, ' I^^or all tilings 1 " Niccne and Post-Nicene Fathers," second series, vol. iii., p. s"!^- 2 The late Rev. Dr. Ilosea Ballon, 2d, rendered this passat^e, " will cer- tainly restore all creatures into one final state." . ORIGEN. 267 must be put under him.' What, then, is this ' puttins^- un- der ' by which all things must be made subject to Christ? I am of opinion that it is this very subjection by which we also wish to be subject to him, by which the apostles also were subject, and all the saints who have been followers of Christ. For the name ' subjection,' by which we are subject to Christ, indicates that the salvation which pro- ceeds from him belongs to his subjects, agreeably to the declaration of David, ' Shall not my soul be subject unto God? From him cometh my salvation.' "^ Origen then gc^es on to connect this doctrine with that of the precxistcnce of souls, contemj)lating the end first described in its relation to the beginning, from which spring " many differences and varieties, which again, through the goodness of God and by subjection to Christ and through the unity of the Holy Spirit, are recalled to one end, which is like unto the beginning: all those, \iz., \\ho, bending the knee at the name of Jesus, make known by so doing their subjection to him: and these are they who are in heaven, on earth and under the earth: by which three classes the whole universe of tilings is pointed out. . . . From all which, I am of opinion, so far as I can see, that this order of the human race has been appointed in order that in the future "vvorld, or in ages to come, when there shall be the new heavens and new earth, .v.poken of by Isaiah, it may be restored to that unity promised by the Lord Jesus in his prayer to God the Father on behalf of his disciples : ' I do not pray for these alone, but for all who shall believe on me through their word: that they all may be one, as thou, I'^ither, art in me, and I in thee, thai they also may be one in us;' and again, when lu: sa\-s : 'That they may be one, even as we arc one ; I in them, and thou in me, that they may l)e made perfect in one.' "- 1 " Tlic Anti'-Niccnc Falluis," vnl. iv., p. 260. - //'/. iiiS. GREGORY NYSSEN. 28 1 ents for the communications of the original fountain of all good. . . . The expressions ' reward ' and ' punishment ' are but inadequate terms to denote the present existence or the disturbance of this harmony of relations; just as when the healthy eye, in the exercise of the power residing within it, perceives objects in tlie sunlight, or when it is prexented from so doing by disease. All punishments are means of purification, ordained by dix'ine love with a view to purge rational beings from moral evil, and to restore them back again to that communion with God which cor- responds to their nature. God would not ha\'e permitted the existence of evil unless he had foreseen that by the redemption all rational beings would, in the end, according to their destination, attain to the same blessed fellowship with himself." And in a footnote he adds that: " As this doctrine stands so closely connected with Gregory's whole system of faith, it belongs among the worst examples of an arbitrary caprice, regardless of history, to endeavor to show that all the passages in Gregory's writings referring to this doctrine were interpolated by heretics," ^ Neander mentions as among the works which Gregory wrote for the express purpose of teaching Univensalism, " his exposition of i Corinthians xv. 2'^, in his 'Catechetical Oration,' c. 8 and 35, in his tract on the soul and on the resurrection, and his tract on the early death of children." We content ourselves with an extract, " On the Soul and the Resurrection." As to questions relating to the Jioiv and zvhcu of death, and the character of mortal life, he says : " But whenever the time comes that God shall have brought our nature back to the primal state of man, it 1 " History of Cliristian Relitrion and Church," vol. ii., p. 677. To tlie same effect, see " Nicene and Tost-Nicene Fathers," second series, vol. v., pp. 14 ff. 282 THE L'XIVERSALISrS. [CiiAi'. I. will be useless to talk of such things then, and to imagine that objections based upon such things can prove God's power to be impeded in arriving at his end. His end is one, and one only ; it is this : When the complete whole of our race shall have been perfected, from the first man to the last — some having at once in this life been cleansed from evil, others having afterward, in the necessary periods, been healed by the Fire, others having in their life here been unconscious equally of good and of evil — to offer to every one of us participation in the blessings which are in him, which, the Scripture tells us, ' eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,' nor thought ever reached. But this is nothing else, as I at least understand it, but to be in God himself; for the Good which is above hearing and eye and heart must be that Good which transcends the uni\-erse. But the difference between the virtuous and vicious life led at the present time will be illustrated in this way, viz., in the quicker or more tardy participation of each in that prom- ised blessedness. According to the amount of the ingrained wickedness of each will be computed the duration of his cure. This cure consists in the cleansing of his soul, and that cannot be achieved without an excruciating condition, as has been expounded in our previous discussion." ' In the above-named work, as elsewhere, Gregory con- fesses great indebtedness to his sister, the .saintly IVIacrina, with whom, when she was near unto death, he lias the conversation which makes up this treatise on " The Soul and the Resurrection," and what we have just quotctl is given as her words. It is sometimes difficult to determine which is her part and which is his own, nor docs it mat- ter, since he indorses all the conclusions. They were at one in their views on destiny. Diodorus, appointed Bishop of Tarsus A.D. 37S, distin- 1 " NicLiie and Post-Niceiie I'^itliers," second series, vol. v., p. 465. DI ODOR us. 283 guished for the influence which he exerted in tlie Syrian churches, was of the Anliochian School, and in opposi- tion to the prevalent allegorical interpretation of Scripture he adhered to the natural and simple import of the text. Only a fragment is preserved of his oncc numerous writ- ings, but in this his Universalism is manifest. "A perpetual reward, " says he, "is appointed to the good, a recompense of their works, which is worthy the justice and equity of the Rewarder. V^yx the wicked, also, - there are punishments, not perpetu.il, however, lest the immortality prepared for them should become a disad- vantage ; but they are to be tormented for a certain brief period, proportioned to the desert and measure of their faults and impiety, according to the amount of malice in their works. They shall, therefore, suffer punishment for a brief space, but immortal blessedness, having no end, awaits them. For if the rewards of the good surpass their works as much as the duration of the eternity prepared for them exceeds the duration of their conflicts in this world, so the punishments to be inflicted for heinous and m.'uiifold sins are far more surpassed by the magnitude of mercy. The resurrection, therefore, is regarded as a bless- ing, not only to the good, but also to the evil. For the grace of God copiously and magnificently honors the good [that is, beyond tJicir dcscrts\ ; and it adjudges punishments to the evil in mercy and kindness."^ The ])revalence of Universalism in the fourth century is unmistakably evident. Origenists abounded, and many who opposed Origen yet advocated Universalism on other grounds. Of the six theological schools in the Christian world, in one, the School of Northern Africa, the doctrine of the eternal punishment of the sinful was taught; one, the School of Ephesus, taught the doctrine of the annihila- l r.allou's ".\ncicnt IliNtnrynf I'nivorsalisni," p. iSi;. 284 ^'^^^ UNI VERSA LISTS. [Chap. i. tion of the wicked ; four, the schools at Alexandria, Caesa- rea, Antioch, Eastern Syria — sometimes held at Kdessa and sometimes at Nisibis — taught Universalism.' Nean- der, speaking- of two of these schools, says that from them " there went forth an opposition to the doctrine of everlast- ing punishment, which had its ground in a deeper Christian interest [than that in which it was elsewhere manifest] ; inasmuch as the doctrine of a universal restoration was closely connected \\\i\\ the entire dogmatic systems of both these schools, namely, that of Origen and the school of Antioch."- Gieseler says: "The belief in the unalienable power of amendment in all intelligent beings and the lim- ited duration of future punishment was so general even in the West, and amongst the opponents of Origen, that it seemed entirely independent of his system." And he adds in a note the following, from " Augustin. Enchirid. ad Laurent," c. xii. 2 : " Some — nay, very many — from human sympathy, commiserate the eternal punishment of the damned and their perpetual torture without intermis- sion, and thus do not believe in it ; not, indeed, by oppos- ing the Holy Scriptures, but by softening all the severe things according to their own feelings, and giving a milder meaning to those things which are said in them more ter- ribly than truly. "^' Dr. Beecher bears witness that " all who held to uni- versal restoration in the early ages were, as a universally conceded fact, eminent and devoted Christians. Nor is this all. They were peculiarly distinguished for the ex- cellence and loveliness of their Christian character. ... It is also true that the defenders of the doctrine of restora- 1 " History of Opinions on the Scriptural Doctrine of Retribution," by Edward Tleeclier, I).])., chap. xxii. 2 " History of Christian Relit;ion and Church," vol. ii., j). 676. ^ " Text-book of Ecclesiastical History," vol. i., \>. 212. rilEODOKE OF MOPSUESTIA. 285 tion were not exceeded in intellectual power, learning, and Christian character by any men of the age."^ Doederlein, in his " Institutes of Christian Theology," says that : " In proportion as any one was eminent in learn- ing in Christian Antiquity, the more did he cherish and defend the hope of the termination of future torments." Passing into the fifth century, we first come to Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia, in Cilicia, A.D. 392-428. Neander says of him and his Universalism : " The doctrine of universal restoration was closely con- nected with the fundamental views of Theodore of Mop- suestia concerning the two great periods in the develop- ment of the rational creation, and concerning the final end of the redemption, whereby the immutability of a divine life should take the i)lace of that mutability an\.l exposure to temptation which had before prevailed in the entire rational creation. Moral evil appeared here, in fact, as a universally necessary point of transition for the develop- ment of freedom. Diodorus of Tarsus had already un- folded this doctrine in his work, which has not come down to us, on the incarnation of the I^eity, and Theotlore exhib- ited it in his Commentary on the Gospels. In these writ- ings they adduced many other special reasons against the eternity of punishment. . . . ' God would not revive the wicked at the resurrection, if they must needs suffer only punishment without reformation.' " - Theodore, in common with the Antiochian School, adopted the i)rinciples of historical and grammatical inter- pretation of the Scriptures, and published a work against the allegorical expositions of Origen ; nor did he hold to Origen's doctrine of j)reexistence. He was, says Dorner, " the crown and climax of the School of Antioch. The 1 " History <>f tlic Scriptural Doctrine of Rctril)Ution," pp. 303, 30S. - " History of riiristiaii Religion and C'luircli," \<)i. ii., jj. 679. 2 86 THE UNIVEKSALISTS. fCHAP, I. compass of his learning, his acuteness, and, as we must suppose, also, the force of his personal character, conjoined with his labors through many years as a teacher both of churches and of young and talented disciples and as a pro- lific writer, gained for him the title of Magister Orientis." ^ The following extracts from his writings are given by Dr. Beecher : " It pleased God to divide his creatures into two states. One is the present, in which he has made all things muta- ble. The other is to occur when he shall renew all things and render them immutable. Of this final state he has showed us the beginning, in the dispensation of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom in his human nature he raised from the dead and rendered immortal in body and immutable in mind, hy which he demonstrated that the same result shall be effected in all his creatures. . . . God knew that men would sin in all ways, but permitted this result to come to pass, knowing that it would ultimately be for their advantage. For since God created man when he did not exist, and made him ruler of so extended a sys- tem, and offered so great blessings for his enjoyment, it was impossible that he should not have prevented the ex- istence of sin if he had not known that it would be ulti- mately for his advantage. ... It was not possible that in any other way we should have a full knowledge of the nature and consequences of sin and the evils of our sinful passions and know our weakness disclosed in these experi- ences, so as to show by contrast the greatness of the im- mutability to be given us, unless it had been so ordained by God from the beginning, that by experiment and com- parison we might know the magnitude of those infinite benefits that are to be conferred on us. On this account, 1 " Hii tlie Person of Christ," vol. i., div. ii., p. 50. Wlicre, also (pp. t,t^— 50), SCO a full ttiatcmcnt of Theodore's doctrine. THEODORE OE AIOPSL'ESEEL 287 knowing that it would, on the whole, be for our advantage, he permitted sin to enter. . . . It is the prerogative of a rational creature to distinguish betw^een good and evil things. If, therefore, there were no opposite qualities, it would not be possible for him to discern the differences. Therefore, at the outset, he introduced these great con- trarieties into his creation. . . . God did not introduce death among men unwillingly, and contrary to his judg- ment, nor did he permit the entrance of sin for no benefi- cial end. He was not unable to prevent it if he desired, but he permitted it because he knew that it would be beneficial to us, or rather to all intelligent beings, that there should be first a dispensation including evils, and that then they should be removed and universal good take their place. ... In the latter he will bring all to immortality and immutability." ^ Theodore is supposed to have been the founder of the Nestorian Church, which is said to have equaled in mem- bership at one period in its history the combined adher- ents of both the Greek and Latin communions, and to have had no ri\al in missionary zeal. For this church Theodore prepared the sacramental liturgy, in which the priest sets forth " the Son of Man, an acceptable victim offered to God the Lord for all creatures in the universe." In his " Confession of Faith " he tluis speaks of Christ's relation to the .salvation of all: " He is called the second Adam by the blessed Paul ; constituted an Adam of the same nature, and showing to us the future state and exhib- iting so much difference from the first Adam as will exist between him who bestows the ineffable gifts of the future state and him who began the present mournful state of things. In like manner, he is called the second man, as disclosing the second state, because Adam began the first, 1 " IIist«>iy of the- Scriptural Doctrine of Rctril)iUion," jip. 222-224. 288 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. i. a state mortal and possibly full of many pains, in which he showed a typical similitude to him. But Christ the Lord began the second state. He in the future, revealed from heaven, will restore us all into communion with him- self. For the Apostle says, ' The first man was of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven,' that is, who is to appear hereafter thence, that he may restore all to the likeness of himself." ^ Johannes Cassianius, belonging to this period, declared, according to Ueberweg,- that he " could not admit that God would save only a portion of the race and that Christ died only for the elect." Hagenbach quotes him^ as say- ing that the doctrine that God " would save only a few is a great sacrilege or blasphemy." Neander says^ that his \'ie\vs on " grace " and " justification " took their direction and coloring from his views of divine love, " which ex- tends to all men, which wills the salvation of all, and refers everything to this ; even subordinating the punishment of the wicked to this simple end;" and he represents him as saying that we ought to thank God " that, by his secret influences, we are punished on account of our sins; that we are sometimes drawn to salvation even against our wills; that finally, he draws our free will itself, prone by its own inclination to what is vicious and wrong, into the path of virtue." Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, in Syria, A.D. 423-457, was also of the Antiochian School, Theodorus being his chief instructor. He also refers to his obligations to Diodorus. " As a shepherd of souls he was unceasing in his efforts to win heathen, heretics, and Jews to the true faith. His 1 " History of the Scriptural Doctrine of Retril)ulion," pp. 225, 227. '^ " History of I'hilosojihy," vol. i., p. 345. ^ " History of Doctrines," vol. i., p. 307. * " History of Christian Religion and Cliurch," vol. ii., p. 628. 'niEODORET. 289 diocese, when he assumed its government, was a very hot- bed of heresy. Nevertheless in the famous letter to Leo he could boast that not a tare was left to spoil the crop." ^ Called before a council, A.I). 450, where he was bidden to anathematize Nestorius, he testified: "I was brought up by the orthodox, I was taught by the orthodox, I have preached orthodoxy ;" - a declaration which shows that his Uni\-ersal!sm — which is unquestioned — as well as that of his teachers, was no bar to his and their orthodoxy. On Adam's being forbidden to take of the tree of life, Theodoret says it was " not because he grudged men im- mortal ' life, but to check the course of sin. So death is a means of cure, not a punishment." In comment on i Co- rinthians x\\ 27, 28, on the words " that God may be all in all " : " lie is everywhere now in accordance with his essence, for his nature is uncircumscribed ; as says the divine Apostle, ' in him we li\e and move and have our being.' But as regards his good pleasure, he is not in all, for ' the Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy.' But in these he is not wholly. ' For no one is pure of uncleanness, and in thy sight shall no man living be justified, and if thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand ? ' There- fore the Lord taketh pleasure wherein they do right, and taketh not pleasure wherein they err. But in the life to come, where corruption ceases and immortality is given, passions have no place; and after these have been quite driven out no kind of sin is committed for the future. Thus hereafter God shall be all in all, when all have been released from sin and turned to him and are incapable of any inclination to the worse." ^ Rev. Dr. O. Cone, president of Buchtel College, makes 1 " Niccnc and I'ost-Nicenc Fathers," second series, vol. iii., p. 4. 2 Ibid. ,]).!!. i Ibid. , p. 1 1. 290 THE UNIVEKSALJSTS. [Chap. i. the following quotations from various writings of Theod- oret. From his "Tenth Oration on Providence," this: " Wherefore he [Christ] says elsewhere, ' Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the Prince of this world be cast out.' For now that judgment has been established, he shall be condemned and ejected from his sovereignty, as one who has unjustly withstood me. Then, teaching that he would free from the power of death not only his own body, but, at the same time, the entire nature of t lie human race, he presently adds, ' And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto mc,' for I vyill not suffer what I have undertaken to raise the body only, but I will fully accomplish the resurrection to all nwn. For it was for this that I came, and assumed the form of a ser- vant, and as a lamb before its shearer I opened not my mouth. The blessed Paul also speaks to the same effect, writing to the Colossians, and through them to all men : ' And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumci- sion of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him- self, having forgiven you all trespasses,' etc. From this we learn that he has paid the debt for us, and blotted out the handwriting tliat was against us; . . . and ]ia\ing done these things, he quickened together tvitJi himself the entire nature of nwn. And there are myriads of other tes- timonies in the Holy Scriptures teaching these things, but the work of collecting them all, and giving to each its ap- propriate interpretation, would be immense." From iiis commentary on Ephesians i. 10, this: "For through the dispensation or incarnation of Christ the nature of men arises and puts on incorruption. . . . And the visi- ble creation shall be liberated from corruption and shall attain incorruption, and the inhabitants of the invisible worlds shall live in perpetual joy, for grief and sadness and groaning shall be done away." BAR SUDAILI. 29 1 Again, in his commentary on Hebrews ii. 9, "That he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man," he quotes Romans viii. 21, and says that the angels shall be filled with joy at the success of the work of Christ. " For if they rejoice on account of one sinner, much more shall they be filled with joy seeing the salvation of so many myriads. For all, therefore, he [Christ] endured his sav- ing passion." 1 Neander mentions, as belonging to this period, another Universalist : " A cloister at Edessa, in Mesopotamia, had for its head, in the last times of the fifth century, an abbot by the name of Bar Sudaili. . . . He maintained that as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one divine essence, and as the humanity formed one nature with the Godhead in Christ, and his body became of like essence to the divinity (was deified), S(j through him all fallen beings should also be exalted to unity with God ; so that God, as Paul ex- presses it, should be all in all. ... As a transition-point to that universal restoration, he supposed a millennial king- dom of exalted happiness on earth at the close of the earthly course of the world; . . . that the Sabbath of that millennial j;criod of rest, the Sunday, answered to the commencement of a new, higher, eternal order of the world, after the universal restoration." - In giving an account of the steps and motives leading to the condemnation of Origen by the Emperor Justinian, and, out of revenge therefor, the success of the Origenists in securing the condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Neander makes mention of a work by Facundus, l^ishop of Hermiana, against the movement in opposition to Origen. In it he refers to a book written by Domitian about the 1 " Universalist (^)uar«crly," N. S., vol. iii. (186(1), pp. 24S ff. S " History of Christian Religion and Cliurcli,'' vol. ii.. pp. 556, 537. 292 I'llI-- CXIVERSAIJSTS. [CuAi-. i. year 546. Dr. Ballou makes the following citation from FacLindus : " Domitian, formerly Bishop of Ancyra in Galatia, writ- ing a book to Pope Vigilius, complained of those who con- tradicted the doctrine of Origen, that human souls existed before the body in a certain happy state, and that all who are consigned to everlasting torments shall be restored, together with the devil and his angels, to their primeval blessedness. Domitian also asserts that ' they have even anathematized the most holy and renowned doctors, on account of those things which were agitated in favor of preexistence and universal restoration. This they have done under pretense of condemning Origen; but in real- ity condemning all the saints who were before him, and who have been after him.' " ^ It has been commonly asserted and very generally be- lieved that Origen's Universalism was pronounced hereti- cal and condemned by the Fifth General Council, A.D. 553. It is now conceded by the best authorities that this coun- cil has been confounded wdth the local synod which Men- nas convened by order of Justinian, at Constantinople, A.D. 541. Gieseler says that at the council, A.D. 553, " of the Origenists no notice was taken," and in a footnote adds: "Though as early as 'Cyril Scythopolit,' in 'Vita Sabae ' (c. 90) and ' Evagrius ' (\ol. iv., p. 37), the Fifth Council was supposed to have condemned Origen, as was afterward generally believed. The mistake arose from confounding this council with that under Mennas. For proof of the mistake, see Walch's ' Ketzerhistorie,' Th. viii., S. 280 flf." - Neander (" Mistory of the Christian Relig- ion and Church," vol. ii., p. 538) says that the condem- nation of Origen was by the " Home Synod," convened 1 " Ancient History of Universalism," p. 265. 2 " Text-book of Ecclesiastical History," vol. i., p. 326. MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR. 293 by Mennas. And Dr. SchafT (" History of the Christian Cluirch," \'ol. ii., p. 612) says that " Hefele conchisively proves the anathematisms against Origen were passed by a local synod of Constantinojjile, under Mennas." It is also in dispute whether the Council of A.D. 553 was a General Council. The Pope of Rome refused to recog- nize it from the first, and was not present in person nor by legate. It was composed of Eastern prelates, governed by an Eastern patriarch, and followed the dictation of Jus- tinian, an Eastern I^mperor, who had an itching for theo- logical leadership, and a stubborn pride of opinion which never allowed him to listen to reason wdien he had once committed himself to any measure. It is very certain that no ecumenical council has ever put the doctrine of endless punishment, annihilation, or Universalism into a creed. And it is as obvious to those who familiarize themselves with the motives for calling, the mode of conducting, and the shameful deceptions and wranglings which characterized the synods and coimcils held in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, that what they did is of very little consequence in deciding the truth of any doctrine ; although such was the malignity attend- ing the enforcement of their doings that many a good cause and a fair name greatly suflFered therefrom. It was the beginning and rapid progress to that peril. iv. AI.MARIC AND ALBERT. 297 the Latin Church were ignorant and scandalously immoral. All voices against their tenets were hushed by force, and the books in which the so-called heresies were declared were burned. Among those who thus suffered were Ray- nold, abbot of the monastery of St. Martin, at Nevers, France, who was accused of teaching among other here- sies " that all men will eventually be saved, as Origen had taught " ; and Almaric or Amalric of Bena, a teacher of theology and philosophy in the University of Paris, who taught that " all creatures, in the end, would return to God." For this and other heresies he was summoned to Rome, A.D. 1204, and there condemned by the pope. Soon after his return to Paris he died of grief. After his death it was found that he had established a sect, which, under the lead of David of Dinanto, had become thoroughly pantheistic. In A.D. T2I0 such of the sect as would not recant were burned at the stake ; the name of Almaric was anathematized and his bones dug up and thrown on a dunghill.' iVlbcrt — commonly called Albcrtus Magnus — Bishop of Regensburg, A.D. 1260, of whom Ncander .says, " I iis great mind grasped the whole compass of human knv)\vledge as it existed in his time," believed in the redemption of all. He says: "This [the restoration of allj will occur when all lo\-e, all desires, every effort, mind and thought, every- thing that has transpired, which transpires now, and which is yet to occur, everything that is said and hoped, shall belong to God ; and the unity which exists between the l^\ather and the S(M1 shall I)e maiu'fested in all hearts." - In the Fast, Solomon, Metropolitan Bishop of r)assorah, on the luiphrates, was a writer of considerable renown I Ncandcr's " History of Clnistian Rtli^Ion .and Cliurcli," vol. iv., pp. 445 (T. - " Univorsalisni : Tlint is. Co,] All in All." StuttL^.irt, iSri:;. (Jnotcd in " I'nivcTsalisl (,)ii:iitcrly,"' N. S.. \cil. i. (1S64). ]>. 2Z^2. 298 rilE UNI VERSA LISTS. [Chap. i. among the Nestorians. " Some of his works, in the Syriac language, yet remain, though only in manuscript. In one of them he discusses the question ' Whether the demons and sinners who are now in hell shall at length obtain mercy, after having suffered their appointed punishment and been purified?' In answer he quotes the affirmative opinion of Theodorus of Mopsuestia and of Diodorus of Tarsus, and subscribes to it himself. "^ Dr. Ballon quotes Dupin's " Ecclesiastical History " to the effect that the Lollards had for their leader Walter Lollard, who began to disperse his errors about the year 13 15, and that they spread through Germany, and that one of their errors was the belief " that the damned in hell and the evil angels should one day be saved."-' And the same authority is quoted for a council convened by Langham, Archbishop of Canterbury, A.D. 1368, in which judgment was given against thirty propositions that were taught in his province ; one of which was that " all the damned, even the demons, may be restored and become happy." As early as the ele\-enth century organizations were created within the church for the purpose of elevating the standard of .spiritual life. The first of these arose in the Netherlands, and was composed of women who called themselves Beguines. Early in the tliirteenth century they were joined by the male communities of the Beg- hards, and a hundred years later the Lollards came into notice and " became uncommonly numerous. These //v/jyt makers and chanters — for such is certainly the most cor- rect interpretation of the words Beghards and Lollard.^ — devoted their attention wholly to practical objects. Eor the most part they lived together in separate houses of 1 I!:ilIon's ".\iicient History of Universalisni,"' p. 300. - y/'/1. ii., p. 12. 300 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chai>, i, ure and proper religious treatises, but most of all by the instruction of the common people in Christianity, and the revival and improvement of the education of youth. In this last department they formed an epoch. They not merely gave instruction gratuitously and thereby rendered the arts of reading and writing attainable by all, both rich and poor, and not only promoted in every way the prog- ress of the more indigent class of students, but, what was of most consequence, they imbued education with quite a new life and a purer and nobler spirit."^ In the early part of the history of this society little was said of the doctrine of the last things. Later, John Wessel, their great theologian, evidently did not believe in Universalism ; but Ruysbroek, whose teachings led to the forming of the society, speaks plainly on the subject. " Man," he says, " having proceeded from God, is destined to return, and become one with him again. This oneness, however, is not to be understood as meaning that we be- come wholly identified with him and lose our own being as creatures, for that is an impossibility. What it is to be understood as meaning is, that we are conscious of being wholly in God, and at the same time also wholly in our- selves; that we are united with God, and yet at the same time remain different from him."^ Such, als(\ was the Universalism of John Tauler, Ruys- broek's most celebrated pupil: "As Jesus came from the Father, and returns to the P^ather again, st) is this the destination of every man."^ Or, as Petersen quotes liim more fully : " Christ is the brightness of God's glory and the express image of his ])crson ; for this essential Word and Son of God is eternally begotten of the Father, and remains none the less eternally in the fatherly "iieart, and 1 Ulliii.an's " Rcfornu'is l)c'fnic the Rfforniiation," \(il. ii., ]i]i. 70 IT. '■' //'/(/., i>. 40. :■ //)/,/., p. 20S. JOHN OF GOCll. 301 through him has tlic Father iiKule excrytliiiig that is made, as St. John has shown. Now in like manner as all things had their beginning and origin in the Deity, through the birth of tlie lUernal Word from the Father, so also do all creatures exist in their being through the same birth (f the Son, and therefore shall they all come again to their original, that is, God the Father, through the same, his Eternal Son."^ John of Goch, born about 1400, in the Duch}- of Cleves, was educated, as Dr. Ullman confidently assumes, " in one of the institutions of the Brethren of the Common Lot " ; and is described by him as " a man of great sensibility, with an intellect equally profouml and acute, of glowing piety, and a very subtle power of argumentation." Me was a biblical theologian, " imbued with tlie spirit of the Apostle of the Gentiles, and deej)ly and \itally smitten with a relish for his doctrine of justification through faith, working" by love." *' The whole substance of his theology," says Dr. Ullman, " may be condensed into the words Of God, tJirougli God, to God. God is the fountain alike of all being and of all well-being. Deriving as he does his existence from God, the chief end of man is fellowship with God by spontane- ous love. This end, however, now that m'ln is a sinner, can be attained only through God, and in the use of those means which his grace and spirit supply, so that the life of man here on earth, no less than the higher stage of its evolution, and tlie blessedness in which that is to terminate, are essentially a divine work and gift. . . . The history of the serpent, the woman, and the man is the moral his- tory of mankind, and what it t)'pically portrays is repeated afresh in every individual. In spite of sin, however, man 1 Translated by Rev. Dr. T. J. Sawyer, in " Christian Ambassador," June IS, 1853. 302 THE UNIVERSAf.ISTS. [Chap. i. still retains the will in a state of freedom from constraint and of susceptibility for good. This includes the possibil- ity of recovery. For man, however, once fallen into sin and guilt, recovery is inconceivable by any other means than grace. The mediator of recovering grace is Christ, the only perfectly righteous human being. . . . By this one person all who have fallen into a state of enmity are again reconciled to God, which does not mean that there is anything like hostility on the part of God toward man requiring to be removed, but which means that on the part of man the principle of opposition to God, or sin, is extirpated, and the principle of love implanted in its room." ' He frequently reverts to this latter thought, that the work of Christ is not to reconcile God to man, but, as the Scriptures teach, to reconcile man to God. Thus: " In forming to ourselves a conception of the rcdctnption instituted by Christ, we must not imagine that there had existed any such eimiity between God and man as some- times exists between two hostile individuals, for whose rec- onciliation it is necessary that, on both sides, friendship should be restored. No : the antithesis is that between righteousness and sin. Hence there is hatred only on the side of sin, and the moment sin is taken away enmity also ceases. Christ accordingly has reconciled us to God, not as foe is reconciled to foe. The method rather is, that our sin, through which we manifested hostility to God, being abolished by Christ's death, we now begin to love him, whereas he never withdrew his love from us, but loved us from the foundation of the world, and even while we were his enemies. "- Everything that God has made is, Goch maintains, good. 1 Ullman'.s " Reformers before the Reform.ition," vol. i., pp. 39 ff. 2 Ibid., p. 77 f. jojix OF aocu. 3uj But man, who is God's work, is both good and e\il. Whence comes the evil? In the misuse of his moral free- dom. " In virtue of this freedom, it was possible for man to stand and retain the goodness of his nature." He finds then tliat there are two evils in the world : " the first is sin, which (lod did not create, and which is therefore properly nothing but a mere privation of that which is naturally g(M)d ; the second is \\\ii penalty appointed for it by di\'ine justice. This second kind of e\'il, being produced by God, is for that reason likewise good, for although it may be bad for the body, which it destroys, it is yet good for the soul, which it heals." The doctrine of "total depravity" he repudiates. " Nay, it may be asserted generally that the bad never exists without the good, and can only exist in connection with it ; for if there were nothing good which couki be corrupted, there could also be nothing bad to corrupt it. The gocxl which cannot possibly be corrupted is the perfect; that, howex-er, which can be so greatly cor- rupted as in every respect to be despoiled of good is no longer competent to exist."' Not to multiply quotations setting forth his opinions, we add but this : " In fact, the thought which lies at the basis of all his theolog)' ma\- be expressed in S(jme such ft)rmula as this: God, who is love, is thereby the source of all good. Or, God is the everlasting and creative love, and man the created, which, having emanated from God, must through God lelurn to him again; and the means by which this return is elTected is Christ's work of redem})tion leading by love to liberty." - About 141 I there was discovered in Flanders a sect which called themselves "Men of Understanding." The 1 I'Uman's " Reformers before the Kcforniation," vol. i., p. 64. 2 Ibid., p. 52. 304 '^'JJ^ iWIl'KRSALlSTS. [Chap. i. learning and ability of one of its founders, William of Hildesheim, a Carmelite monk, is so far conceded that Mosheim regards it as proof that some of the fanatical sentiments attributed to the sect by its enemies could not have been taught by him. They are supposed to have been generally related to the earlier Brethren of the Free Spirit ; and to have especially antagonized the Roman Church on the power ckiimed by the latter to forgive sins and to teach that voluntary penances are necessary to sal- vation. They also taught " that the tjnly resurrection of the body which would ever take place had taken place already in Christ ; that the spiiit is not defiled by bodily sin ; that tlie punishments of hell are not eternal ; and that even the evil angels would be eventually saved. "^ John Picus, prince of Mirandula and Concordia, in Italy, was, according to Mosheim, " a very finished scholar, a great linguist and philosopher, a great disputant, and then a sober theologian, and at last a humble and zealous Chris- tian." He presented himself at Rome in i486 and set forth several hundred propositions, which, according to the custom of the time, he engaged to maintain in public disputation. One of these propositions was that " infinite pain is not due even to mortal sin; because sin is finite, and therefore merits but finite punishment " ; and another that " there is more reason to believe that Origen was saved than that he was damned." He was not answered, but silenced by the pope. Dr. Ballou makes mention of Peter d'Aranda, Bishop of Calahorra in Old Castile, Spain, as being degraded and condemned to pcrjietual imprisonment, A.D. 1498, on being convicted, it is said, of Judaism. But as he is known to have celebrated mass daily, it is certain that he was no 1 Mosheim's " Ecclesiastical History," vol. ii., p. 467 f. SchufT-IIcrzog Encyclopedia, vol. ii., p. 1466. PETER jy.lRANDA. 305 Jew. In his prayers he said, " Glory to the Fatiier," with- out adding, " to the Son," or " to the Holy Ghost," and was doubtless a Unitarian Christian. " lie held that in- dulgences were of no avail, but were inxented for the profit that was drawn from them ; that there was neither purgatory nor hell, but only paradise." We have thus traced the history of Universalist thought, based on various philosophies and interpretations of Script- ure, to the closing years of the Dark Ages. We have found it most prominent in the brightest, freest, and most prosperous days of early Christian times, and not wholly extinct when put under the ban in years of repression of thought and speech, days of ignorance, intolerance, and gloom. CHAPTER II. FROM LUTHER TO THE PRESENT TIME. The Protestant Reformation, from which we date the modern history of Universalism, bet^an in October, 15 17, when Martin Luther, a Roman Catholic monk, preacher, and professor of philosophy in the University of Witten- berg, nailed to the doors of the castle church his ninety- five Latin Theses on the subject of indulgences, and invited a public discussion ; although his decisive act of breaking away from his church was delayed until December 10, 1520, when he publicly burned the pope's bull of excom- munication. Two years later (1522) Luther in a letter to Hansen von Rechenberg, on the c]uestion " Whether God can or will save those who die without faith," states that " there are among us here, as there have been at times among the most eminent people, as Origen and his like, those to whom it seems quite too harsh and severe, and so unbe- coming the divine goodness, that God should cast off men, and thus have created them for eternal torment. . . . They go still further, and maintain that even the devils will at last be released and not remain eternally damned." Personally he is convinced that eternal damnation is taught in the Scriptures, "and quite right," he says, " would it be to conclude, that, were it not a judgment of God, it would be mere malice, arbitrary power, and injustice. . . . 306 MARTIN LUTJIER. 307 For the eye of nature must be entirely plucked out, and mere faith substituted, otherwise (mic cannot avoid being shocked and dangerously ofTended at it ; and when the young" and inexperienced in faitli fall upon. it (as it com- monly happens that every one must commence at the highest point), and begin to contemplate it in a natural light, they are very near receiving a great and sudden fall, and being betrayed into a secret contradiction of will and hatred toward God, from which it is difificult afterward to recover themseh'es. Hence we should advise them to remain undisturbed on account of the judgments of God till they are well grown in faith. ... So it is not diffi- cult to answer this question ; but still it is dangerous. . . . Nature and reason cannot bear it; it terrifies too much for them : weak faith also cannot bear it ; it is too offensive for that. . . . What shall we do tlien? . . . We should put off this dealing of God as the highest and most excel- lent till we ha\e become firm and strong, or else what we think, write, and speak on the subject is vain and mis- chiex'ous. . . . Sec well to it with whom this subject is discussed, and keep silence or speak accordingly. Are they naturally rational, intelligent people? then avoid this question. Are they, on the contrary, simple, deep, spirit- ual, and exj^erienced jjeople? there is no more useful sub- ject to treat upon with them than this." " Now," he says, " to come to the answer. We have very strong" passages to show that without faith God neither will nor can .save any one. ... It is just as im- possible for God to save men without faith as it is for the Divine Majesty to lie. ... It would be quite another question whether God can give faith to some, in or after death, and so save them through faith. Who doubts that he can do this? l^ut that he does it we cannot prove; althoufjh we read that he once raised the dead and then 3o8 THE UNIVEKSALISTS. [CiiAi'. ii. gave them faith. Now, in this matter, he does what he does: he either gives faith, or he gives it not.''^ There are several things in this letter which may profit- ably be considered, but the very significant one to us is that he knows that there were some in his day and country who believed in Universalism, and that they commanded no little attention. Eight years later we have Universalists more particu- larly designated. The Augsburg Confession, drawn up by Luth«r and Melanchthon in 1530, was intended to express the views of the Reformers, and at the same time, if pos- sible, conciliate the Romanists. The latter had charged that Luther's movement was only the precursor of other and more heretical schisms, and that already other sects were springing up. In the Confession I.uther assented to some things which he knew were not true, in asserting the agreement of the Reformers with the Romanists in all matters of doctrine, while Melanchthon in " his desire for union and peace deceived himself " ;'-^ and they united in condemning all others who were opposing Rome. Zwingli, although not mentioned by name, fell under their ban; and *in the seventeenth article, after affirming their faith in the doctrine of the eternal torments of the wicked, they add : " We condemn the Anabaptists, who maintain that there shall be an end to the punishment of the damned and of the devils." These Anabaptists originated in Switzerland, where they were persecuted by both Reformers and Romanists. Thence they went to southern and middle Germany, and later they were in northern Germany and developed a won- derful missionary zeal. At Augsburg they had gathered 1 Translation by Thomas J. Sawyer, D.D., " Universalist Quarterly," vol. vii. (1850), pp. 356 ff. 2 Schaff's " History of the Christian CInirch," vol. vi., p. 709. THE ANABAPTISTS. 309 a congregation of -eleven hundred members, and had held a general synod in 1527. They were not all Unix'ersalists, but two of their principal leaders, Denk and Hetzer, are known to have been such and to have been influential in impressing their views on many. They were both men of learning, and unitedly produced and published a transla- tion of the Old Testament prophecies, several years before Luther's translation appeared. Dorner says that " while Denk maintained a universal restoration, Hetzer rejected it."' It is generally claimed that they were in agreement in regard to destiny. The Anabaptists have been charged with responsibility for serious political disturbances involving loss of life, in what is known as the Peasants' War, but it is now con- ceded that the true rise of these insurrections ought not to be attributed to religious opinions, from the fact that many Romanists, and a still larger number of people who had scarcely any religious principles, were active in them. The people were groaning under severe oppressions and sought to defend their civil liberties, and some of the Anabaptists took advantage of rather than originated the commotions. " The histor\- of the Anabaptists," says Dr. Schaff, " has yet to be written from an impartial, unsec- tarian standpoint. "- As the Anabaptists, however, did not manifest them- selves in Switzerland until about 1523, and in Germany some two years later, it seems evident that by the ex- pression " among us here " Luther alludes to some of the Reformers themselves as entertaining Universalist views. Who they were we have no means of knowing. Justus Jonas, " professor of church law and provost at Wittenberg, and one of the m(^st intimate friends and co-workers of ' " History of Protestant Tlieoloi^y," vol. i., p. iqi. Kdinhuigh, 1S71. '^ " Baptist Quarterly Review," iSS<), p. 263. 3IO THE UNI VERSA LISTS. [Chap. ii. Luther," his assistant in the translation of the Bible, and the author of " Annotations on the Acts of the Apos- tles," is claimed by some as a believer in Universalism. Dr. Bengel, in his " Gnomon," makes frequent use of the " Annotations," and, commenting on Acts i. 7, says : " Jus- tus Jonas writes : ' It is enough that you know from the Scriptures that it is about to come to pass that all things shall be restored ; but when this is about to be, belongs to God.' " Again, on " the restitution of all things," Acts iii. 21 : -"Justus Jonas says: * Christ is that king who has now received heaven, reigning in the meantime through the gospel in the Spirit, until all things be restored, i.e., until the remainder of the Jews and Gentiles be converted.' (Rom. xi.)"^ But aside from Luther's own declaration we have no positive knowledge of who the believers may have been, nor how numerous they were. The work of Luther was soon known and warmly wel- comed in England, and was antagonized as early as 1521 by the notorious Henry VIII., who wrote so vigorously against it as to be rewarded by the pope with the title of Defender of the Faith ; but being opposed not long after by the pope in his project of putting awa}' his wife in order that he might marry Anne Boleyn, he induced Par- liament to sunder the connection between England and Rome and recognize him as the head of the church. Thus become a Protestant, he followed illustrious examples and claimed for himself a monopoly in protesting against the influence of the pope in his kingdom. The doctrines of Rome he had no intention of changing. Heresies were punished with death ; and although the king had by proc- lamation given the people permission to read the Bible, a > " ('.nonion " (E-(^ \ Isa. xlv. 17.) The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it. (Isa. xl. 5.) The times of the resti- tution of all things, ichich God hath spoken by the month of his holy prophets since the i^'orld began. (.Acts iii. 21.) They shall in time be deli\ered from their bondage, for which deliverance they groan. Are not all, angels and men, obedient or disobedient, the creation of God? If so, the worst shall partake of the libert}' of the sons of God." Jeremy or Jeremiah White was preacher to the Council of State and chaplain in the court and family of Oliver JEREMY WHITE. 319 Cromwell. After the restoration of monarchy he retired to private hfe. He was a fellow of Trinity College, Cam- bridge. He Ijxjcame a believer in Univcrsalism after a study of \arious systems of divinity, all of which seemed to him inconsistent with the general trend of the Script- ures in teaching that God is good and benevolent. He wrote voluminously on the subject, but in his later years abridged what he had first composed, and prepared it for publication. It was not given to the public, however, until after his decease, and then withtnit the author's name. The title to the third edition was " The Restoration of All Things ; or, A Vindication of the Goodness and Grace of God, to be Manifested at Last in the Recovery of His Whole Creation out of the Fall. By Jeremy White, Chap- lain to Olixer Cromwell." This edition was pulilished by John Denis & Son, London, who had issued several books on Univcrsalism; and Mr. Denis, Sr., prefaced the work with an account of several writers and their various works on the same subject. An American edition appeared in 1844. Mr. White was a Trinitarian and a decided predes- tinarian ; and his Univcrsalism was highly prized by him chiefly because it enabled him to reconcile the decrees of God with his infinite benevolence. He began his work in devout supplication for divine wisdom, and closed it with rapturous thanksgiving. These were theconcludingwords : " We must believe thee to be infinitely good — to be good without any measure or bound — to be good beyond all expression and conception of all creatures, of men and angels: or we must give over thinking thee to be good at all. All the goodness which is everywhere to be found scattered among thy creatures is sent forth from thee, the fountain, the sea of all goodness. Into this sea of all good- ness I deliver my.self and all my fellow-creatures. Thou art love, and canst no more cease to be so, than to be 320 • THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. ii. thyself. Take thy own methods with us, and submit us to them. Well may we so do, in an assurance that the beginning, the way, and the end of them all is love. " To the inexhaustible Fountain of all grace and good- ness, from all his creatures, be ascribed all glory and praise forever and ever. Amen. Hallelujah!" In Holland, Peter Scrarius, a preacher at Amsterdam, wrote and published in 1668 a book entitled "The Fourth Book of Psalms, in which that grand mystery of the re- demption of the whole human race, hitherto hidden from the world, and restitution of all things, is graphically de- scribed and proposed to all men promiscuously." He was also the author of another work, " Secret of Redemp- tion," in which he regards Universalism as the message of redemption " written for the generation to come," spoken of in Psalm cii. 18-20, and to be manifested to the whole world " when Jehovah shall look down from the heights of his sanctity into the depths of the abyss, that he may ' hear the groaning of the prisoner and loose those destined to death,' or, as the original has it, tJic sons of death, i.e., that he may redeem even those who by the just judg- ment of God are doomed not to life but to death, and have received the sentence of death and not of life."' Jane Lead, a well-known English mystic, became in the latter part of her life a believer in, and through her writ- ings an advocate of, Universalism. She claimed to have had from about 1668 divine communications from the world of spirits ; but twenty-five years of such experi- ences had elapsed before a clear revelation of the final restoration of all souls was made to her. " For although I had heard of such a doctrine," she says in her treatise entitled " A Revelation of the Good News of the Ever- 1 Dr. Sawyer's translation of Petersen in " Christian Ambassador," May 28, 1853. JANE LEAD. 32 I lasting Gospel," published in 1693, "yet I paid no regard to it, and would neither gi\ e faith nor assent to the notion that eternal love should go out so immeasurably and finally restore all fallen creatures, without exception, till a clear vision opened it to me." Going to the Scriptures with a glad heart in view of the new light that had dawned on her, she was surprised to find that this great doctrine was sustained by many clear proof-texts, which her ignorance had heretofore hidden from her view. As examples of these she refers to Romans v. 14-21, i Corinthians xv. 22, I Timothy ii. 6, etc. She felt herself lost in what she calls "the sweet harmony of love." The view of a reconciled universe almost overpowered her, and she heard the voice of Christ saying in her heart, " Fear not; but go forth and vindicate the infinite love of God, thy Creator, and the priceless worth and virtue of the blood of thy Saviour." " Having now something clear and definite to say, and something withal important and worthy to be said, she found no difficulty in uttering her thoughts in a clear and rather impressive manner. She states her views plainly, and maintains them in a way creditable both to her head and her heart. Though naturally and by habit averse to all controversy, yet so profoundly had this subject moved her that she felt it to be her duty to stand forth not only to announce but also to defend a doctrine which was at once so sublime and so cheering." " Love and light," she said, " are without limit or end, I confess ; while death and darkness, the curse and punish- ment, must necessarily and unaxoidably come to a close. For what has no beginning — as love, wisdom, and good- ness— can have no end, and must remain through all eter- nities, and all that contradicts them must be overwhelmed and swallowed up and lost. Love overcomes all. ... I am persuaded that were this doctrine received and under- 322 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. ii. stood in its just and deepest grounds, it would certainly overthrow the strongholds of sin, and in millions of souls that are now lying in darkness and ignorance, it would move to tears over their past life and to repentance not to be repented of. Yea, when love shall penetrate them, then will it so open their eyes that they must mourn and lament that have lived so long only to despise the blood of the covenant of grace and love, and to trample it under their feet. In the spirit of prophecy I clearly see that the time is coming when the trumpet of love shall so be sounded that it shall gather such together from the four winds of heaven and out of the dark corners of the earth, that they may eat of the love-feast which is already pre- pared; but not with unwashen hands shall they partake. For a burning coal of love and life shall come from the altar, and frying around shall touch and purify such souls as have long been lying under the power of sin and death. . . . For the day is breaking and the acceptable year appears."^ " Dialogues on the General Restitution of the Creation " was the title of an anonymous French book published in Cologne in 1697. The author's argument seems to be based on a comparison between the first and the second Adam, and between the offense introduced by the first and the grace introduced by the second. The latter must not be less general or less effective than the former. " The writer," says Petersen, " was an eminent personage." At some time in the seventeenth century prior to 1690, which is the date of a Latin translation of the English, there appeared a volume entitled " Philosophical Tracts," a posthumous work ; the first tract in the collection being from the pen of the Viscountess of Conwa}', a sister of 1 Paper on Jane Lead, by Rev. Dr. T. J. Sawyer, in " Christian Ambas- sador," June 30, i860. THE VISCOUNTESS OF CONWAY. 323 Heneage r^inch, Chancellor of ICn^iand, and a pupil of " the learned and pious Dr. Henry More." She was, says the biographer of Dr. More, " mistress of the highest the- ories in philosophy and religion." Although an invalid from her youth and subject to intolerable pains of body, yet she mastered all the mental science of her day and sought relief from pain in the most abstruse studies. She was a clear and vigorous thinker and a terse writer. It was a fundamental truth with her that the justice of God must always be connected with his goodness, that there can be no opposition between his attributes ; goodness without justice being weakness, and justice without good- ness becoming revenge. In accord with this fundamental position she says : "The common notion of the justice of God that every sin, be it ever so little, is punished with infernal fire, and that without end, begets in men a horrible idea of God, as if he were rather a cruel tyrant than a kind Father to all his creatures. But if the amiable representation of God should become better known, as it exists in truth and as it is manifested in all his dispensations to all his creatures, and if our minds should in their inward sense and relish recognize him as love and kindness itself, such as he in- wardly re\-eals himself in the hearts of men through the light and spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord, then, and not till then, will men love God above all things, and acknowledge him to be the most just as well as the most compassionate and adorable of all beings, who is incapable of punishing all sinners with equal punishment. And this punishment must be equal, if an infinite duration of punishment in a lake burning with fire and brimstone awaits sin, however one may be punished more mildly and another more severely." In another passage she is, if possible, still more explicit 324 ^'-^^^^ UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. ii. as to the purpose and effect of the divuie justice and the punishment it inflicts. " As all the punishments inflicted by God upon his creatures have some proportion to their sins, so all these, even the worst not excepted, tend to their good and restoration, and thus resemble medicines designed to cure the diseases of those creatures and restore them to a better condition than any previously possessed." Prefixed to the original EngHsh edition, and preserved in Ward's " Life of Dr. Henry More," is an account of the life of the countess and a warm commendation of her writ- ings. " So sincere and pious a spirit breathing in them," as he expresses it, " it was thought by some to make them public ; it being hopeful that these broken fragments of so entire and sincere a soul may prove the bread of life to as many as have an unfeigned hunger after true holiness and righteousness." Would it be unfair to infer from this that Dr. More also entertained the views of his eminent pupil ?^ Dr. Thomas Burnet, " a clergyman of eminent genius, learning, and virtue," says Macaulay, wrote, about the close of the seventeenth century, although it was not published until after his death, a treatise " On the State of the Dead," in which he vigorously assailed the doctrine of the eternity of punishment. That he might have the judgment of his friends on his work he caused a few copies to be printed. Advised to keep the dissertation to himself and not let his sentiments be known, the work was laid aside. One of these privately printed copies being found in his study after his decease, several more copies were printed for a very few persons, as' it was thought by his learned friends a great pity that so elaborate a work should be entirely lost. A pledge of secrecy was extorted from all who re- ceived copies, and they were cautioned against allowing it 1 See " Universalist Quarterly," icSiSg, p. 288. DR. THOMAS BURNET. i^':) to be copied or sent to the press. In some way, howevt:r, the work came into the possession of a printer in Hol- land, where a surreptitious edition was pubhshed ; where- upon Dr. Burnet's friend, in whose hands were the origi- nal manuscripts, issued a corrected edition in 1727. Having established the reasonableness of the expecta- tion of a future life, he proceeds to set forth his view of the last judgment, after which human souls would undergo a purification by fire. This, he said, was the opinion of Origen, but he adds : " We ought not to fancy, as some imagine, that this opinion concerning this fiery purgation and trial is peculiar to Origen, when it was common to almost all the Fathers to the time when St. Austin li\-ed." He affirmed that at the time of Austin (a.D. 600) this opinion of the Fathers had begun to decline, and was finally corrupted into the purgatory of the Papal Church. I le aimed to restore the opinions of the Fathers on this suliject. The great question with regard to the continu- ance of pain to the wicked was, in his judgment, the most significant of any relating to a future life. " Whether," he says, " those punishments are to endure eternally, with- out cessation, without relaxation, without end? . . . The soul flies from the very thought and abhors the remem- brance of everlasting misery; and several things have occurred to me while I have been thinking on this sub- ject, by which I am sensible that others have been per- suaded, as well as myself, that God neither will nor can endure the perpetual affliction and torment of his own creatures; nor can nature itself endure it. Then we con- ceive the God of the Christians to be the best and wisest of Beings: that he is neither cruel nor unjust to the race of men ; that there is nothing barbarous or dismal in his worship; that he has neither instituted nor suffered any- thing that is barbarous, anything that is inhuman ; no 326 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. ii. blood, or wounds, or tearing of the skin or flesh ; nor does he love, after the manner of Moloch, to embrace liv- ing infants with his arms of fire. Besides, Jesus, the Head and the Captain of the Christian dispensation, to whom the Father has committed all judgment, is the greatest lover of humankind ; and suffered his own blood to be shed to redeem us from evil and misery. This King and merciful Father and this most righteous Judge govern entirely the fates of humankind; and yet you assert that, according to the sacred Scriptures, the greatest part of humankind will be damned to eternal punishments, even by the most merciful Father, by this most righteous Judge. . . . Con- cerning the number of those who will be miserable in another life I have nothing to say, not being able to know anything of it ; but that God should condemn his own creatures to a state of eternal misery, and should retain them in that state, seems to be repugnant both to divine wisdom and goodness, and I may add, likewise to justice: I say repugnant to wisdom ; for a state like this, of ever- lasting and unchangeable misery, would be in vain and of no use, and therefore unwise and unworthy of God ; for a torment without cessation and without end can neither be of service to God nor to man. Not to man most certainly, if there is no room for repentance, and he who is tor- mented can never grow better ; if no intermission and no ease is allowed, that the tormented may respire a little and deliberate concerning the change of his state and his mind. Let this punishment be severe, let it be bitter, nay, let it be lasting, but let it at length have an end ; it can otherwise produce no fruit, no, not the least degree of it ; nor would it be possible for these miserable sinners to repent and lead better lives, if amidst the pangs of their bodies and their minds they should haj)pen to be born again. By what argument will you pretend to con- DR. THOMAS BURNET. 327 vince me that the souls of the wicked are after death In- curable ? The Fathers seem not to have believed that, who were of opinion that the last would be a purgative fire. . . . Nor does it seem just to limit the divine power and wisdom and to oppress it with an evil, irresistible des- tiny, or an incurable disease ; for whatever this distemper of souls may be, if it can by any method or any medicine be driven out, no remedy certainly is more powerful or more effectual than fire or than fiery torments ; this pain, if any, will cause them to be touched with a sense of their former crimes, and to grow weary of their present misery. Besides, in that other life there will be no longer room for the infidelity of the wicked : ' When they shall have seen Christ coming in the clouds, surrounded with glory and with his mighty angels, triumphing everywhere over his enemies, and trampling them under his feet.' And then that fomentation of evil which dwells in this body and this flesh will, in that state, be extinguished and cease. There w^ill be no internal concupiscence, no external nourish- ment of vice, nor any allurements to pleasure, to ambi- tion, or avarice, or any incitements of the senses or pas- sions to wickedness. For my part, I cannot perceive by what argument, true or false, or by what impulse, internal or external, they can be moved to adhere eternally to their vices and impiety, unless they should be hardened by God himself. . . . The man whom God created, liable to fall, him, because he fell, God will not punish eternally; nor will he deprive liim to wh(^m he has gi\-en the power, or rather the impotence and the liberty of falling into vice, of the power and liberty of relinciuishing that vice. lUit you will say, perhaps, that God docs not deprive the wicked of this power and liberty, but it proceeds from their own will, that they j^ersist in o\il, immovable and inflexible. I answer that according to your lu'pothesis God has created 328 THE UN/VERSA LISTS. [Chap. ii. them of such a nature that they cannot be otherwise than inflexible and irrecoverable after they have once departed this life and descended into their torments. Grant me but this, that those miserable creatures are capable of repenting, and we will not throw away all hope of their being received into grace ; but you deny that they can repent ; I desire that you would prove that their repentance is impossible. If they continue to be reasonable creatures, indued with understanding and will, they can repent; but if they are deprived of reason and liberty, they can no longer sin." Taking up the Greek word aioiiios and other words and terms used in the Bible to denote the continuance of pun- ishments, he shows that they are often used in a limited sense, and very jjroperly concludes : " Therefore, from the use and force of the aforesaid words, nothing can cer- tainly be determined concerning the eternity of infernal punishments." ^ The eighteenth century opened with spirited contests between Universalists and their opponents. In the first ten years John William Petersen published in Germany three folio volumes of Universalist history and doctrine, entitled " The Mystery of the Restoration of All Things." When in his twenty-eighth year Petersen was appointed professor of poetry at Rostock ; afterward he was super- intendent at Liibeck, then court preacher at Lutin, and in 1688 superintendent at Liineburg. Cited before the Con- sistory at Zelle, in 1692, for preaching Universalism, and not being induced to renounce it, he was deprived of his office and forced into private life. Retiring to Magdeburg, he devoted the remainder of his life, which closed in 1727, to religion and literature. Johanna Eleonora von Merlaw, who became his wife in 1680, embraced Universalist views and wrote in defense of them before her husband came * Editit)!! of 1733, i^. 163 f., pp. 342 ff. PK 7 ERSEN—Dl 1 /■; I. MA IR. 329 into the full lit^ht of the truth. But when his mind was fully satisfied in regard to it his great aim in all after-life was its advocacy and defense. Besides the three volumes before mentioned on " The Restoration of All Things," he wrote and publisiied other books and tracts in exposition of his views and in answer to attacks on them. In the second and third volumes of his great work he has also replies to many who had attacked his faith. " Many per- sons," says Mosheim, " gave assent to these opinions, espe- cially among the laity ; but Petersen was also opposed by great numbers ; to w^hom he replied very fully, as he had a fruitful genius and abundance of leisure." Mosheim himself entered the lists, and in 1 725, on the solicitation of friends, gave a tract in " Defense of an Endless Hell." Petersen replied to him in two {publications, concerning which Mosheim said : " I shall regard them as if the}- had never been prepared. If he has so much confidence in the correctness of his opinion, what is the use of sending book after book upon it into the world? " A sharp word, which must, if it had any force whatever, have been as pertinent against Petersen's opposers. Ditelmair, who wrote against Universalism in the middle of the century, says : " How many and how deadly commo- tions in the Church of Christ that \-ery celebrated dogma concerning the apokatastasis of all things, or the end of infernal pains, which they would have to be understood by thi?; phrase, can, I think, escape no one who is not wholl}- ignorant of affairs transacted in the religious world. For not only in ancient times was it often disputed concerning this subject, but also in the recent age there were num- berless contests waged by the enemies of the infinite jus- tice of God against the received opinions of the orthodox church concerning eternal punishments; contests which raged vehemently enough within the \ery bounds of the 330 THE UNIVEKSALISTS. [Chap. ii. orthodox church, in the end of the last century and the beginning of the present." Speaking of those who chiimed Clemens Alexandrinus and others of the Fathers as holding Universalist views, Ditelmair says : " More than by the rest, this was done by that most noted one in these controversies, John William Petersen, a man otherwise not to be despised, second to few in piety and erudition, but often indulging his own fancy immoderately ; from whom, though a hundred times refuted, no one has yet tried to take away his historical weapons." This Ditelmair now attempts to do, with what success may be judged by the remark of Muenscher, in his " Manual of Dogmatic History " (vol. ii., p. 506) : " His grounds are nearly all wholly untenable." One of the most noteworthy treatises or tracts in Peter- sen's great work was entitled " The Everlasting Gospel," purporting to be written by Paul Siegvolck, a name as- sumed by George Klein-Nicolai, a German preacher, who, on account of his advocacy of Universalism, was deposed as pastor at Friessdorf. The title of the treatise was a favorite one, especially with German advocates of our faith, in that and the preceding century. It was of itself an avowal that there are no limits to the work of Christ. Siegvolck's work, appearing as it did at a time when much interest was manifest in the question which it discussed, attained great popularity and passed through at least five editions before the close of the first half of the eighteenth century. Several pens were kept busy in contro\erting it, and its author continued to write replies and to publish additional defenses of his faith until about 1730. Among his later works was a reply to Mosheim's tract, before referred to. John David Schaeffer was contemporary with Klein- Nicolai. He was a preacher at Franken, and on account of liis publishing two works, one on ihc " Doctrine of the Mil- GERMAN BELIE VERS. 3 3 I lennial Reign of Christ," and the other entitled " The Ever- lasting Gospel," gave up his office sooner than renounce his views. Rev. Dr. Sawyer remarks that : " Nearly, perhaps quite all those who at that time maintained the notion that Christ was to reign on earth a thousand years, connected the doctrine of universal salvation with it." Another .Univcrsalist contemporary was Christopher Schuetz, author of a work entitled "The Golden Rose." Of these three persons we shall make furtlier mention when we come to speak of the first printed attack on Universalism in America. The German Baptists, commonly known as the " Bun- kers," although they prefer to be called "The Brethren," originated in the \illage of Schwartzenau, in 1708, and chose one of their original number (eight persons), Alex- ander Mack, for their minister. They were believers in Universalism. Of their subsequent removal to America we shall speak in another place. In 1726 John Henry Ilaug, professor at Strasburg, with the assistance of ICrncst Christoph Hochman, De Marsay, John Conrad, [Christian] Dippel, and others, began the publication of the " Berleburger Bibel," an entirely new [German] translation and commentary of the Scriptures, in which they taught and defended Universalism, from the mystical standpoint. The work fills eight- large folio volumes, and was completed in 1742. De Marsay was born in France, and a volume of his " Discourses on Sub- jects Relating to the Spiritual Tife " was translated from the French, and publislied in Eflinburgh in 1749. The English edition contains a sketch of his life and opinions. Both the sketch and the discourses give proof of his belief in Universalism. In 1727 Ludwig Gerhard, professor of theology in the Uni\-ersity of Rostock, wrolc and piil)lislicd " A Complete 332 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. ii. System of the Everlasting Gospel of the Restoration of All Things ; Together with the Unfounded Opposite Doc- trine of Endless Damnation," etc. This also contained an examination of Mosheim's tract, and excited much at- tention and interest. It was a large and learned work. Walch, in his " Introduction to the Religious Controver- sies in the Lutheran Church," mentions no less than four- teen volumes which it called forth in a short time. In 1742 an anonymous work, entitled " Theosophic Heart Devotions," was published. It is attributed to Ernst August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar. The first part of the volume is purely devotional; the second part consists of various considerations upon the Divine Wisdom and Goodness. The doctrine of Universalism is brought out clearly. In vol. xi. (year 1747) of the "Acta Historica-Ecclesi- astica," published at Weimar, appeared the following: " Recent History of the Doctrine of the Restoration of All Things. " The doctrine of the restoration of the damned is mak- ing of late here and there, and especially in the Elector- ate of Brandenburg, no little commotion. There are men, both clerical and lay, who engage in the controversy on one side and the other. Among these is Provost and In- spector Siegmund Baerensprung, at Neuangermunde, who, as early as 1739, published under his own name a work of 368 pp. 8vo, under the title ' The Restoration of All Things to Their Good Original State at the Creation, Exhibited According to its Proof and Counter-proof.' In this work the author took great pains to explain the Hebrew and Greek words by which eternity is expressed, in such a manner as to remove the principal objection to the res- toration, and also to convince his readers that this doc- trine is founded on the eternal priesthood of Christ; on GERMAN WRITINGS. 333 the universal monarchy of his kingdom ; on all the divine attributes ; yea, on botli Scripture and reason, and thus indeed that pardon is promised to Lucifer himself and the whole host of wicked spirits. " Next to him an old inspector at Wusterhausen by the name of Woelner published a restorationist Catechism under the following title : ' The Holy Doctrine of the Res- toration of All Things, Briefly but Satisfactorily Exhibited to the Simplest Capacity from the Word of God, in Ques- tion and Answer.' The old man teaches the doctrine pub- licly from the pulpit, and jjrox-es it, among other things, by these words : ' He will lose his gray head — nay, he will pledge his soul — if it is not true.' In his Catechism he sets forth his opinion as gloriously as if he believed it profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for in- struction in righteousness, and that it would awaken men out of the sleep of security and incite them to true holi- ness. This indeed he expresses in a special hymn, which he subjoins. " Those who would be particularly pious abo\-e others teach and confess this doctrine to one another, and indus- triously read ' Siegvolck's Everlasting Gospel,' which Restel some time ago republished with some bad annotations ; insomuch that Whiston's prophecy in his ' Eternity of Hell Torments,' that this doctrine would soon come to be publicly preached, seems to be already fulfilled, as was remarked in 1745, in the thirteenth number of the Altona ' Literary Times.' In the Berlin ' State and Literary Times ' of 1742, in the one hundred and fifty-first number, we read the open-hearted confession: 'We cannot deny that the doctrine of the restoration of the damned finds such sound proofs in s(nind reason, in the Holy Scriptures, and even in the justice and mercy of God himself, that no one has yet,at least, been fully able to overthrow them.' " Then, 334 ^'^^^' UXIJ'ERSAL/srS. [Chap. II. after quoting in full the title of ""Restel's New Edition of Siegvolck or Klein-Nicolai's Book," the writer adds: " Before proceeding farther, we must mention that in the very same year in which an attempt was made to extend the doctrine of the restoration through the work of Baerensprung, another man in the neighboring Pome- rania set himself in opposition to it. For there was pub- lished ' A Confession of the Love of God According to the Truth, in the Doctrine of Endless Punishment, Drawn up from his own Conviction, and Published for the Con- firmation of Others, by Jacob Voss.' Stettin, 1739, 8vo, 152 pp. In this work the author labored to meet the friends of the restoration on the ground of reason and Scripture. " Meanwhile there were not wanting advocates of the res- toration after this. For when John Ernest Schubert, then adjunct at Jena, and now superintendent at Stadthagen, had published in quarto, at Jena, in 1741, his 'Rational Thoughts on the Eternity of Hell Punishments,' we im- mediately see ' The Universal Love and Grace of God, in the Salvation of All Men, Interspersed with Remarks upon Schubert's " Rational Thoughts on the Eternity of Hell Punishments." By a Friend of the Truth.' Frankfort and Leipzig, 1742, 8vo, pp. 368. The author remained anony- mous, chose obscure methods in the publication of his book, and employed such an obscure style that he who would understand him finds no little trouble. But scarcely was his work before the public, when Schubert brought out anew his tract mentioned above, enlarged it by Script- ure proofs, and made short work with his opposer. The title is ' Rational and Scriptural Thoughts on the Eternity of Hell Punishments, Together with a Vindication of Him- self against an Anonymous P'riend of the Restoration.' 4to, 592 pp. . " Last year there appeared against Mosheim a ' Script- GERMAX WRIIIXCS. 335 iiral and Rational Consideration of the Proofs for and against the landless Misery of the Transgressors of G(k1's Law, and their UUiiiiate Restoration and Reestabhsli- ment in liohness; Occasioned by Moshcim's " Thoughts on the Doctrine of the End of Hell Punishments," and Set Forth with All Modesty, Out of Love for the Truth, and the- Deepest Reverence for the Infinite Merit of Christ.' P^rankfort and Leipzig, 1747, 8vo, 272 pp. "This work was praised in the Berlin 'Times,' No. 131, and still was f©und fault with, because the author does not show how punishments can beget true \irtue, since this must spring from love ; and wishes to parley, as it were, on the supposition of a year of jubilee, and to make a thousand years out of every year or every day. After a while it was discovered that Schlitte, the adjunct inspector at Wusterhausen, w'as the author of this work, and that it was published at the expense of a wealthy nobleman, who Is deeply interested in this doctrine. The author has here opposed particularly the appendix of Mosheim in the first volume of his Sermons, and examined the letter which he published in the second volume against Pagenkop. He has also subjoined a peculiar appendix. P"or a French work under the title, ' The System of the Theologians, Ancient and Modern, Reconciled by the Exposition of Different Opinions upon the State of Souls Separated from the Body. In Fourteen Letters,' had been pub- lished in London, first in 1731 and afterward in 1733 and 1739, 8vo. In this work the author maintained the res- toration of all things, and also the doctrine of a middle state for souls after death. In a second part, ' Sequel to the System,' etc., he vindicated his opinion against a work, ' P^xamination of Origenism. By Professor R.' This work Schlitte introduces and praises as one in whicii the restora- tion is clearly pro\-cd, and he presents it as an evidence 336 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. ii. that this doctrine is revealed in the Scriptures and written in every heart, and must be true, because two persons so far removed from one another have been brought into it. But notwithstanding this, he finds some very suspicious principles in it, which he points out, and to which he will give no countenance." These are all the books in favor of Universalism men- tioned ; and the article concludes with a notice of opposing works, and chiefly those sustaining the position of Mosheim. The article is very instructive as showing the extent of public interest in the discussion. Later in the century the proofs multiply that Universalism had obtained a deeply rooted place in the minds of German theologians. Michael Hahn, John Augustine Eberhard, Samuel Mursinna, Jung Stilling, Gottfried Steinhart, John Frederick Gruner, and the renowned Schleiermacher contributed greatly to this result. Professor (afterward President) Sears announced in 1834, as the result of his observation and inquiry in Germany, that " the current hypothesis [there] is that in the middle state, intervening between death and the resurrection, the righteous will gradually attain to perfection ; and that to all the wicked, whether men or angels, the gospel will be preached, and that they will ultimately accept it and be restored." And to-day Universalism is not regarded in that country as a heresy, whether held by the Orthodox or by Rationalists. Universalism was carried to Holland at an early date by the Anaba})tists, and made part of the theology of the Mennonites, who succeeded them. It was on the authority of Stoschius, in his " History of the Eighteenth Centur\-," maintained by Samuel Crellius, a preacher and author in the first half of that period. " I remember," says the his- torian, " that Crellius, whom I visited at Amsterdam in TAUGirr IX HOLLAND. ^^ 1742, and with whom I had much conversation on many- heads of the Christian doctrine, declared, witli some emo- tion, that he did not follow the opinions of Socinus, but cordially believed in the doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ, as it was taught by the Remonstrants, and was persuaded that all men will be finally saved by Jesus Christ, and delivered from the torments of hell." At the present time Universalism is so far favorably received in Holland as to be advocated in its periodicals. R. Cremer, in a recent article on " The Dogma of Eternal Punishment," after noticing the arguments in its favor, and also those relating to the annihilation of the wicked, comes to consider " what is to be regarded as the truth with respect to this dogma," and concludes his paper thus; " As to the doctrine of the apokatastasis, of the restitu- tion of all who are separated from God by sin, this doc- trine is grounded in faith in God's unending love. If this love is the leading thought of God's creation, the source whence all has flowed, then by it also must the purpose be determined for which all has been created. God's sov- ereignty is no other than the sovereignty of his love. It must one day rule as the absolute power. It is not to be supposed that creatures can continue to hold aloof from it and refuse to come under its sway. If God is unending love, then he wills the salvation of all ; if he is all-power- ful love, then he works out the salvation of all. This can- not be denied, whatever emphasis may be placed upon his righteousness. God's love is a righteous love, which pun- ishes .sin because it cannot permit sin to exist. And so an expectation of a gradual and progressive growth and development of all, witlunit exception, is much more in harmony with the actual condition of man, and conse- quently much more reasonable than the thought of an irrevocable decision as to man's lot at his departure from 338 THE UNIVEKSALISTS. [Chap. ii. the earth. But with the expectation of the apokatastnsis, all punishment in the future is not thereby canceled, and free play thus given for frivolity and indifference. The truth of the apostolic saying retains its full force : ' What a man sows that shall he also reap.' But that does not infer that the punishment shall have no end to all eternity, that there can never be the smallest place for change and restitution. This comfortless thought cannot be cherished as the truth. With man's nature, with the purpose of punishment, above all, with the unbounded love of God, which admits of no everlasting division between a king- dom of light and a kingdom of darkness, the expectation of an apokatastasis is alone in harmony — a final restitution which shall be accomplished in the end of the ages."^ In Switzerland Universalism found an able advocate in the early part of the eighteenth century in Marie Huber. She was a somewhat voluminous writer of original themes, as well as a translator into French of publications in other languages. Her book on " The State of Souls Separated from their Bodies" is an argument for Universalism. It first appeared in 1736. Somewhere about 1 760 Ferdinand Oliver Petitpierre, a native of the Canton of Neufchatel, was pastor at a village in the same canton, and made himself obnoxious to his church and to his brother-clergymen by preaching Uni- versalism. The canton being at this time under the sov- ereignty of the King of Prussia, Frederick the Great was appealed to by the church to remove their pastor. Resist- ance and delay on the part of the king brought on a con- test in regard to ecclesiastical privilege, in which the church and clergy were victorious, and the king, in submitting to defeat, sarcastically informed them that " since they were 1 Translated from " Geloof en Vrijheid," 1893, 1st ail., ia " The Thinker," New York, July, 1893, pp. 71 ff. rKTiTriERRE—ci'rrE. • 339 so resolutely bent on beinjr eternally damned he should no loni,''cr oppose their determination." ' Retirini^" to London, Petitpierre engaged in business, and having in a few years obtained what he thought would suffice for his necessities the rest of his days, he was able to say: " I will now em- ploy the hapin' leisure which God's goodness affords me in the preparation of this work upon the plan of God, that I may do my duty in this respect in the only way that is now left me, and finish my career in this world as I began it, maintaining the Word of the Lord." He contemplated a treatise in four parts, on " The Plan of God toward Men, as lie has Manifested it in Nature and Grace," Only the first part, " Thoughts on the ]Ji\ine Goodness, Relative to the Government of Moral Agents, Particularly Displayed in Future Rewards and Punishments," was published. This first appeared in h'rench at Amsterdam in 1786. An Eng- lish edition followed in 1788. Beginning in 1794, five editions have beeti published in yVmerica. In France, Pierre Cuppe, curate of Boin, published in PVench at London, 1743, a book entitled " Heaven Open to All Men ; or, A Theological Treatise, in which, without Disturbing the Practice of Religion, it is Solidly Proved by Scripture and Reason that All Men shall be Saved." The author was a priest of the Church of Rome, and notwith- standing that church has for twelve centuries hurled its anathemas against Univer.salism and its advocates, this priest puts forth a clever work in defense of the salvation of all souls. His concluding words are : " In fine, this hypothesis yields a wonderful facility to explicate readily an infinite number of places in the Holy Scriptures, and ought to be one great consolation, by the hopes it enables us to cherish that God will separate us from our old man, in order to place us in his kingdom, where, without except- ' Williams's " Tmir in Switzerland," vol. ii., p. 148. 340 • THE UNIVERSALISrS. [Chap. ii. ing a single man, * he shall,' as St. Paul says, ' be all in all.'" Protestantism, it is well known, had great difficulty in get- ting a foothold in France. In 1559, at their first national synod, held in Paris, they adopted a confession, a cate- chism, and an order of worship, which had been prepared by Calvin. Until 1598 the nation was in constant turmoil and war, the parties being the Romanists and the Protestants, or, as the latter were designated, the Huguenots. When Henry IV. became king he deserted the Protestant party, and from political motives openly professed the faith of Rome. By the Edict of Nantes, which he issued in 1598, he secured, however, to his former associates, then num- bering more than seven hundred and fifty congregations throughout the kingdom, a legal existence, allowing them to establish public worship, making them eligible to all places of trust, giving them equal privileges in the schools and universities, and allowing from the public funds forty thousand crowns annually for the payment of their clergy. Under this edict they flourished greatly, substantially united on their Calvinistic basis, for nearly a centur}-, or until its revocation in 1685. No exercise of the Protestant religion was now tolerated in France, and all its ministers were commanded to leave the kingdom within a fortnight. For more than a hundred years Protestants in France had no civil rights. In 1787 Louis XVI., yielding to the force of public opinion, published an Edict of Toleration, authorizing the registry of Protestant births, marriages, and deaths, and forbidding that they should in any way be dis- turbed because of their faith ; but declaring also that " the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion alone shall con- tinue to enjoy public worship." Toward the close of the French Revolution, when under the consulship of Napoleon Christian worship was rees- FRA NCR— SCO TLA ND. 3 4 1 tablished, a law was enacted which, from the month of its date, was called the Law of Germinal, securing full liberty to the Protestants, regulating their ecclesiastical organiza- tion, and providing for an annual endowment or appro- priation for the sujjport of their ministers. The Calvinistic creed was ignored, the national synod was not preserved by law, and consequently there was no official or authoritative creed to be subscribed as the condition of being regarded orthodox. A national synod was held, however, in 1872, being the first to convene since 1659, at which, by a vote of sixty-one against forty-five, a short confession was adopted, and its subscription made obligatory on all young pastors. The minority withdrew, and the Protestants of France are not yet united on a credal basis. For a considerable time Univcrsalism has prevailed quite extensi\'ely in France. The elder Coquerel, for nearly forty years pastor of the Oratoire Church in Paris, and his son, also a Protestant preacher, were its ardent advocates. Many were in sympathy with them and they have many successors, freedom of opinion being favorable to its pro- mulgation.- It is estimated that at least a third of the Protestants in France are believers in Universalism. Tiie first preacher of Universalism in Scotland was Rev. James Purves, who took charge.of a congregation in Edin- burgh in I 771. Rev. Niel Douglass became a Universal- ist in 1 801, and began preaching his new faith in Greenock and subsequently in Glasgow. William Worrall was his assistant and on Mr. Douglass' death in 1823 became his successor, being followed in 1828 by Mr. Edmunds. Mr. Worrall al.so published a Universalist periodical. Societies were also organized in Johnstone, Paisley, Ayr, and Fal- kirk. T. South wood Smith, M.D., was pastor of a Unita- rian church at Yeovil from 1816 to 1820. He wrote a vol- ume entitled " Illustrations of the Divine Government," first 342 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. ii. published in Glasgow in 1816, and many times reprinted in England and America; a very able defense of Uni- versalism. He afterward became a physician in London, and died at Florence, in 1861. The monument erected to his memory sets forth that he was the pioneer of sanitary improvements. Such of the early Universalist societies as now survive bear the Unitarian name, Universalism being, in Europe a confessed doctrine in the Unitarian churches. But two churches in Scotland now bear the Universalist name, one at Glasgow and one at Larbert. The former is a mission church, supported by the Universalist Woman's Centenary Association of the United States. Agitation and controversy on the subject of Universal- ism were manifest in England very early in the eighteenth century. In 1 709 William Whiston, the translator of Jose- phus, while professor of mathematics as successor to Sir Isaac Newton, in Cambridge, wrote and published an essay entitled " Reason and Philosophy no Enemies to health," in which he made war against the dogma of the endless punishment of sinners. Ten years later he issued another work on the same subject, and a much larger volume in I 740. While, however, he was not an annihilationist, his views of destiny were more in the nature of a hope than an assurance of Universali.^m. In his " Memoirs of Rev. Dr. Samuel Clarke," Whiston says of his work in former years " against the proper eternity of the torments of hell " : " And I think I may \enture to add, upon the credit of what I discovered of the opinions of Sir Isaac Newton and Dr. Clarke, they were both of the same senti- ments. Na)', Dr. Clarke thouglit tliat 'few or no thinking men were really of different sentiments in that matter.' " Dr. George Cheync, in his treatise entitled " Philosophi- cal Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion," an edi- tion of which was published in 1715, and perhaps earlier. THE CHEVALIER RAMSAY. 343 asserted his belief in Universalism. The First Cause, he says, " infinitely powerful and perfect, must necessarily subject, draw, and unite all intelligent beings to himself, to make them as happy as their respective natures can admit." He is the sole object of their happiness, and they must be brought to him to enjoy it. " This happi- ness is the very end of their creation, it being impossible infinite perfection should make intelligent beings for any less or any other end." Andrew Michael Ramsay, commonly called the Cheva- lier, was a Roman Catholic Universalist. In the " Travels of Cyrus," first published about 1720, passing in ten years through four editions, he teaches that God " drew spirits out of nothing to make them happy; and he punishes ihem that they may return into order." In a later work, bearing the same title as Dr. Cheyne's, just noticed, he fol- lows, as to the question of destiny, substantially the line of argument advanced by Dr. Cheyne : " God's design in creating finite intelligences could only be to make them eternally hap]))', in the knowledge and love of his bound- less perfections." " All reasonable agents act for an end. This end must be either doing good to themselves or to otiiers. God's design in creating could not be to do good to himself, and therefore it must be to do good to others." " Internal Pro\'idence desires, wills, and employs continu- ally all the means necessary to lead intelligent creatures to tluii- ultimate and supreme happiness." "Almighty powt:r, wisdom, and lo\-e cannot be eternally frustrated in his absolute and ultimate designs: therefore, God will at last pardon and reestablish in happiness all lapsed beings." A volume entitled "The Tmj^erial Standard of Messiah Triumphant," etc., by R. Roach, H.D., om his biog- rapher. Rev. William Field, we learn that " he believed that on the part of the great Creator no disposition to be reconciled to the truly penitent was wanting; that he was 348 THE UNI VERSA LISTS. [Chap. ii. placable in his own nature; and that it was the end of the Christian scheme, and especially of the death of its great Author, to reconcile men to God, to lead them to repent- ance and reformation. With regard to the future life, he believed that there were different degrees of future rewards and punishments, proportioned to the merits or demerits of every individual ; and he agreed with Bishop Newton, Dr. Hartley, and many others, that future punishments are corrective ; intended to produce moral reformation in the sufferer, and to prepare, ultimately, for the gradual attain- ment of greater or less degrees of happiness."^ Dr. Samuel Hartley, referred to in the foregoing quo- tation, was a physician, " equally and in the first degree eminent for skill, integrity, and charitable compassion." He published, in 1 749, " Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations." In it he devotes a section to an argument for " The Final Happiness of all Mankind in Some Distant Future State." This result he shows to be probable, in seven significant arguments from reason and by a mass of testimony in the Scriptures. Rev. James Relly, born at Jefferson, North Wales, in 1 720, was for a short time a preacher in Whitefield's com- munion, but in 1750 he became a Universalist, and soon organized a society of believers in London, to whom he ministered until his death, about thirty years later. His theology was peculiar, and will be described at length when we come to notice his most famous disciple, the pioneer of organized Universalism in America, Rev. John Murray. He published nine small works, some of them being mere tracts, in exposition and defense of his theology. It is doubtful if his society ever owned a church edifice. It assembled in halls, and last in a leased chapel. After Mr. Relly's death the society was ministered to by lay- 1 " Cliristi.in Kxaiiiiner," vol. v., p. 463.. REV. WILLIAM LAW. 349 men. This continued to be their custom until 1830, when, the lease of their chapel having expired, they disbanded. Rev. William Law, the renowned author of " A Serious Call," " The Spirit of Love," and numerous doctrinal and practical books, was a mystic, a great admirer of the writ- ings of Jacob Boehm. His " Spirit of Love " was first printed in 1752, and has passed through many editions. Much of it is misty and difficult to understand, but in places its Universalism is plainly avowed. " To know," he says, " that Love alone was the begin- ning of nature and creature, that nothing but Love en- compasses the whole universe of things, that the governing hand that overrules all, the watchful eye that sees through all, is nothing but omnipotent and omniscient Love, using an infinity of wisdom to rai.se all that is fallen in nature, to save every misguided creature from the miserable works of its own hands, and make happiness and glory the per- petual inheritance of all the creation, is a reflection tliat must be quite ravishing to every intelligent creature that is sensible of it." " It was Love alone that wanted to have full satisfaction done to it, and such a Love as could not be .satisfied till all that glory and happiness that was lost by the death of Adam was fully restored and regained again by the death of Christ." "That sui)ernatural Love and Wisdom which brought it forth presides over it and will direct it, till Christ, as a second Adam, has removed and extinguished all thai evil wliich the first Adam brought into the human nature." "He [Christ] has a power of redeeming us which nothing can liinder ; but sooner or later he must see all his and our enemies under his feet, and all that is fallen in Adam into death must rise and return into a unity of an eternal life in God." • " In how many ways," he says in a letter to a friend, " have I proved and asserted 1 London edition, 1754, part ii., pp. il, 100, 119, 236. 350 THE UNIVEKSALISTS. [Chap. ii. that there neither is nor can be any wrath or partiality in God ; but that every creature must have all that happiness which the infinite Love and power of God can help it to." " It is my capital doctrine that God is all Love ; that he must eternally will that to the creature which he willed at his creation." " As for the purification of all human nature, I fully believe it, either in this world or some after ages." ^ Thomas Newton, D.D., Bishop of Bristol in 1761, be- lieved in Universalism on the ground of the freedom of will and action extending into the future and the improb- ability of a sinner's holding out forever against repenting. The opinion that the future state of man is fixed and unal- terable is, he says, " without any real foundation in Script- ure, or in the nature and reason of things. To suppose that a man's happiness or misery to all eternity should be absolutely and unchangeably fixed and determined by the uncertain behavior of a few years in this life is a suppo- sition even more unreasonable and unnatural than that a man's mind and manners should be completely formed and fashioned in his cradle, and that his whole future fortune and condition should depend altogether on his infancy ; infancy being much greater in proportion to the few years of this life than the whole of this life is to eternity." " No creature can be so totally depraved and abandoned as to hold out, under the most exquisite tortures, obstinate and obdurate unto all eternity. Some may persist for a longer, some for a shorter, term ; but in the end all must be sub- dued, so that their punishment may more properly be called indefinite than infinite. "- In I 76 1 Sir George Stonehouse published the first of several works from his pen, in advocacy of Universalism. 1 " Collection of Letters," London, 1762, letter xii., pp. 172-175. 2 " Works," London, 1782, " Last Dissertation," vol. iii. A7/v' CEORGE srONKIIOUSE. 351 It was entitled " Universal Restitution a Scripture Doc- trine," etc. The author was educated at Oxford, and while there was a member of a society called, in deri- sion, the " Holy Club." John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, James Hervey, were also members. Between the years 1729 and 1735 the doctrine of human destiny was debated with great interest by them. Whitefield and Hervey took the Calvinistic view ; John and Charles Wes- ley, the Arminian ; others defended the Moravian senti- ments ; and Stonehouse stood alone in defense of universal restitution. He demanded fair attention to his arguments, and was told that if he would write out his thoughts they should receive a candid answer. Probably this led to his preparation of the work here mentioned, although some years elapsed before he put it in print. Meeting John Wesley after the book had been for some time before the public, Mr. Stonehouse is reported to have said: "Ah, John, there are only you and I living out of us all." To which Wesley replied: "Better that you had died too, George, before you had written your book." Stonehouse responded: "I expected you had eaten my book at a mouthful, John; but neither you, nor any of the rest, though you all engaged to do it, have answered a single paragraph of it." " You must not think your book unan- swerable on that account," said Wesley. " I am able to answer it, but it would take up so much of my time that I could not answer it to God." To Sir George this answer seemed captious and evasive, and he was so stung by it that he wrote and published " Universal Restitution Vin- dicated." 1 Another volume on the same subject came from his pen as late as 1773. His linguistic abilities were remarkable, as he qualified himself, it is said, to translate 1 .See paniplilet " I'rcexistcnce of Souls .ind Universal Restitution Con- sidered as Scripture Doctrines." Taunton, 1 7q8. 352 THE UAirJiKSA LISTS. [Chap. ii. readily any passage of Holy Writ into thirteen different languages. His pages overflow with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, or Chaldee references and quotations, making them difficult to read, and subjecting him to the charge of ped- antry. Like Origen, Stonehouse held to the doctrine of the preexistence of souls, and that they were sent into this world, with Adam as their head, with a view to their recovery from sins committed elsewhere. Those who here accept Christ experience sah-ation. Those who go out of this world neglecting salvation incur all the penalties of sin, but, crying out from their prison-liouse and being peni- tent, are forgiven and restored. Salvation belongs only to the present life; restoration only to the future state of existence. In 1772 Capel Berrow, a clergyman of the Established Church, published a volume entitled " Theological Disserta- tions," in three of which he advocates Unixersalism. " It shall be my business to prove," he said, from reason and revelation, " that by the infinite mercy of God, and through the merits of his Son, Jesus Christ, the whole creation will be brought, at last, into a right knowledge of the Deity, and an uniform obedience to his will and pleasure ; and that the souls of the reprobate will by degrees be so puri- fied and reformed by some successive fiery trials reserved for them in an after state, that all will, in the end, arrive at that state and degree of happiness for which they were at first created, and the Creator himself be freed from the supposed necessity of sacrificing to his justice that more amiable attribute of his nature, mercy." William Matthews, a Friend or Quaker, published in i 786 three volumes, entitled " Miscellaneous Companions," in the third of which and in two volumes of the " Recorder," published a few years later, he advocated Universalism. In the preface to the " Miscellaneous Companions " he ///■:.\7)/-: K.SOX— II vxc 'ri ester. 353 said : " I am now cheered uitli tlie rational, Scriptural, and, as I think, i^loritnis doctrine of the inuiishment of divine justice beini^ eventually subserxient to an universal purification and fitness for heavenl}- habitations." Sub- mitting his " Dissertation on Everlasting Punishment " to John Henderson, a famous linguist and scholar, the latter appended to it a postscript, the conclusion of which is as follows : " As, then, unceasing torments can answer no pos- sible good to any one in the universe, I conclude them to be neither the will nor the work of God. Could I sup- pose them, I must belie\-e them to be inflicted by a wan- tonness or cruelty which words cannot express nor heart conceive. But let this be the comfort of every humble soul, that known unto God are all his works — the Judge of all shall do right, and he ordereth all things well. It hath pleased him to reconcile all things to himself. There- fore, to him shall every knee bow, and every tongue shall say, Mn the Lord I have strength, and I have right- eousness.' In September, i >87, Re\-. Elhanan Winchester — of whose conversion to Universalism we shall speak in the American portion of this work — arrived, from America, in London. Almost unknown and unheralded, although he bore letters of commendation, he began, under many difficulties, the building up of a Universalist congregation. A series of "Lectures on the Prophecies that Remain to be Fulfilled," extending through the years i 788-90, attracted attention, and before their close his congregation so increased that they found a comfortable home in the Chapel in Parlia- ment Court. The influence exerted by means of his pub- lications was, however, greater than that of his preaching. In I 788 he printed his " Dialogues on Universal Restora- tion," by far his most \aluable production. Both the " Monthly Review " and the " C'itical Review " gave it 354 ^^^^ [WfJ^EKSA LISTS. [Chap. ii. hearty commendation. Subsequently he pubHshed other books and numerous tracts and pamphlets, and for two years conducted a Universalist periodical, the " Philadel- phian Magazine." In addition to all these labors he made many excursions as an itinerant, preaching in many places to large assemblies, but not attempting to establish soci- eties, feeling that union rather than division was desirable. His policy was a mistaken one, and for lack of organiza- tion much of his work was ephemeral. His acquaintance with dissenting ministers became extensive, and not a few of them announced their conversion to the faith which he preached.^ In 1794 Mr. Winchester returned to America and was succeeded at the, Parliament Court Chapel by Rev. William Vidler, who had been a Baptist preacher, but was con- verted to Universalism by the reading of Mr. Winchester's publications. In addition to his labors as a preacher Mr. Vidler began in 1797 the publication of "The Universal- ist's Miscellany," a periodical of which, with slight changes of title, thirteen volumes were issued.. He also assisted Mr. Nathaniel Scarlett, a member of his congregation, in preparing and publishing an improved translation of the New Testament. The translation was principally made, it is said, by Rev. Mr. Creighton, a clergyman of the Church of England. Changing his views with regard to the Trin- ity and vicarious atonement, Mr. Vidler thus caused a divi- sion in his society, from which it never fully recovered. On his. death, in 18 16, he was succeeded by Rev. William J. Fox, an eminent Unitarian, at one time the most elo- quent preacher in London ; a philanthropist, and finally a member of Parliament. The society is still in existence, and, like all the Unitarian societies of England, holds to the doctrine of Universalism. 1 See Stone's " Life of Wincliester, " chap. xii. THE "MOXTllI.y KKJ-f/ClV 355 This notice of Universalist writers and preachers in the eighteenth century might be very much extended by numerous citations covering the whole period; but the foregoing will suffice to show the activity of thinkers on this important question, and the varied methods in which the one result has been reached and the different theories on \\hich it was based. But with the mention of one very significant circumstance — the manner in which Uni- versalism was treated by the conductors of eminent liter- ary re\-iews — we pass on to another period in its history. In May, i 749, Mr. Ralph Grififiths, afterward Dr. Grif- fiths, established in London the " Monthly Review," and retained its chief direction more than fifty years, when, at his death, it passed into the hands of his son and was under his management until 1845, when it w^as discontinued. It was exclusively a book review, and in its nearly two hundred and fifty volumes may be found many scores of notices of books in defense of, and also books antagonistic to, Universalism. The favor of the reviewer is uniformly manifest toward the former. His treatment of the latter is as uniformly antagonistic, the i)ositions being ably assailed on grounds of Scripture, reason, and moral sense. There is evidently great delight in noticing an argument in favor of Universalism. A generally full analysis or summary and copious extracts are frequently introduced, and there can be no mistaking the hearty sympathy of the reviewer with the doctrine and with arguments in its favor. As a specimen note the following from a notice of a Univer- salist pamphlet, in 1754: The author " endeavors to show that the notion of the endless duration of sinners in a state of torment is not only unscriptural, but likewise highly absurd, being contrary to all our best notions of the Deity, as a Being of infinite justice and benignity. He observes, too, and we think justly, that the repeated attempts of 356 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. ii. many pious and well-meaning persons to represent this absurdity as a Scriptural doctrine has contributed not a little to the growth of infidelity among the rational part of mankind." In noticing, in 1817, a volume of sermons favoring the annihilation of the wicked, which the reviewer antagonized, he is led to say of the doctrine of the eternity of future punishment: "We have often expressed our notions of that doctrine as derogatory to the goodness of the Deity, and as tending to alienate many from the interests of revealed truth ; for who that seriously contemplates the perfections of God and the infirmities of man can bring himself to believe that the great and good Father of the world would subject his frail and erring creatures to inter- minable misery for the finite transgressions of a {q\n fugi- tive years? He who would wish to traduce the character of the Divine Goodness could not do it with more efifect than by representing it. as agreeable to that Goodness to condemn any of his creatures to a state of endless woe." The above are fair specimens of the criticisms which characterized this popular and long-lived review during the entire term of its publication. In I 756, seven years after the first issue of the " Monthly Review," the " Critical Review " was started in opposition to the former, under the direction of Tobias Smollett, M.D., the English historian. The one was regarded as the organ of the High Church and the other as the organ of the Low Church, and their antagonisms on several points were con- stant and sharp. But the " Critical Review " was as favor- able to Universalism and as hostile to the dogma of unend- ing punishment as it seemed possible for the " Monthly Review " to be. These. were prominent features in its book notices for nearly half a century. In a notice of [Stone- house's] " Universal Restitution a Scripture Doctrine," etc.. THE "CRITICAL REVIEW:' 357 the reviewer begins his notice by saying": "The author of the work before us has with great genius and learning refuted the strongest objection that e\er was made against the truth of Christianity. The doctrine of the eternity of hell torments is altogether irreconcilable with the idea of a benevolent Creator." And he closes his review with this encomium of the author and his work : " The learning and accuracy with which the author has proved a point that reflects the highest honor upon the Christian religion merits the applause of those who are sincerely attached to it ; and we doubt not but his performance will from all such meet with a fa\orable reception." The number, bulk, comprehensiveness, and ability of the books in favor of Uni\-ersalism which came under the notice of these two Reviews, and the uniform attitude of the reviewers in their favor, are an unmistakable indica- tion of the prevalence of belief in the final salvation of all souls, and of its acceptance by many intelligent and devout persons.^ Coming into the nineteenth century, we are embarrassed by the wealth of our material, and experience more diffi- culty in determining what to omit than in selecting what to present. Rev. Messrs. Richard Wright, John Prior Est- lin, LL.D., Theophilus Lindsey, Thomas Belsham, Lant Carpenter, LL.D., and Thomas Cogan, M.D., were promi- nent among the defenders of L^niversalism in the Unitarian ranks. Dr. Carpenter, in reply to Dr. William Magee's work on the Atonement, takes occasion to say : " Most of us (Unitarians) believe that a period will come to each individual when punishment shall have done its work, when the awful sufTerings with which the gospel threatens the 1 To Charles W. Tomlinson, D.D., wliohas given much attention to these Reviews, and noted many of their criticisms, the author is indebted for most of what he has said of them. 358 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. ii. impenitent and disobedient will have humbled the stubborn, purified the polluted, and eradicated impiety, hypocrisy, and every evil disposition, . . . and God shall be all in all." Thomas Erskine, of Linlathen, a Scotch lawyer, was a man of exalted Christian character, and a writer of more than ordinary ability. Brought up in the Episcopal Church, he had a hearty fellowship for Christians of every name. Of him Principal Shairp said in the " Scotsman," a few days after his decease : " The distinguishing" characteristic of Mr. Erskine, that which made him what he was, lay in the intense and pure religious faith that possessed him. This burned within him, a deep and central fire, absorbing or rather transfiguring his fine natural gifts and attainments — scholarship, refinement, humor, and powers of argument. To his loving nature, that first truth of Christianity, that God is love, had come home with a power and totality of conviction which it is given few to feel." And he added : " Arising, perhaps, out of this tendency in Mr. Erskine to be absorbed in one great truth, which he made to over- bear all other truths that opposed it, was his belief in the final restoration of all men. This seemed to him to be the legitimate issue of the gospel. The conviction that it was so grew on him latterly and he expressed it freely. He used to dwell much on those passages in St. Paul's epistles which seemed to him to favor this cherished belief of his. . . . No man that I ever knew had a deeper feeling of tlie exceeding evil of sin, and of the divine necessity that sin must always be misery. His Universalist views did not in any way relax his profound sense of God's abhorrence of sin." In the Schafif-Herzog Encyclopaedia he is spoken of as having rebelled at the current Scotch theology, and as having at length found a better way ; that his views were not " orthodox," and at first subjected him to con- DR. C ROME IE. 359 siderable adverse criticism. " But," the writer adds, " they gained favor ; and he numbered among his intimate friends some of the finest minds of the century — Thomas Carlyle, JKdward Irving, Frederick Uenison Maurice, John McLeod Campbell, Bishop Kvving, and Dean Stanley. Maurice and Campbell were indebted to him for those conceptions of the Atonement which have had so great an efifect upon later English and American popular religious thought ; and it was Campbell's public advocacy of them which led to his expulsion from the Kirk. Mr. Erskine's theology was part of his life, it permeated his being; and it was his unfailing delight to impress his views upon all he met. His sincerity, his earnestness, his pure and lofty charac- ter, gave him a great influence." His publications, begin- ning in 1820, continued until 1837. A posthumous work appeared in 1871. In 1829 Rev. Alexander Crombie, LL.D., pastor of a Presbyterian church in London, published, in two volumes, a work entitled " Natural Theology," etc. He is men- tioned in Hagenbach's " History of Doctrines" as one of " the recent representatives of Scotch theology," among such men as John Brown, Dick, Dewar, Symington, McCrie, lUichanan, Candlish, Cunningham, Eadie, Fairbain, and others, who " unite adherence to the older confessions with a liberal and earnest scholarship." At first he ex- presses himself with regard to the destiny of the race in a hoi)eful spirit : " As it would be a contradiction to believe that the counsels of Omnipotence can be defeated, we must con- clude that this faculty (conscience), evidently intended for our improvement in \irtiie and liappiness, will not ulti- mately fail of its ctTect; and that its salutary influence, its pains and its pleasures, will be continued until the scheme of l'ro\idence in the production of our s}-stem shall be per- 360 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. 11. fected. The dissolution of the body can effect no instan- taneous change in the habits of the soul. Whatever may- be the moral character at death, the same must accom- pany us into another state. The sting of sin must bring its punishment. But from the benevolence of the Divine Being, we have every reason to hope that the sufferings of the wicked will be remedial, that they will be propor- tioned to their various degrees of guilt, and continued until the purposes of the Divine Being shall be fully accom- plished. The Christian, surely, should be delighted to in- dulge this hope ; and though there be one or two passages in the New Testament which seem opposed to it, the gen- eral tenor of the gospel appears favorable to this expecta- tion. Reason forbids us to admit the Manichean doctrine of two eternal principles, one good and the other evil ; or to believe that evil of any kind will be eternal. Such a notion would amount to a denial of the infinite perfections and universal sovereignty of the Supreme Being. How much more pleasing to our best affections is the thought that the time will come when e\-ery creature in heaven, in earth, under the earth and in the sea, and all that are in them, will be found praising God." Finally, having gone over the proofs of a future state, Dr. Crombie thus announces his settled conviction : " These, then, are the grounds of my expectation of another state of being, when we shall be deli\-ered from the imperfections and evils inseparable from mortality, and fitted for a more intimate communion with our Maker; when it will be our occupation and delight to contemplate with improving faculties his stupendous works, and to adore with reverence his transcendent perfections ; when we shall be reunited to those whom we loved on earth, and join with them and every human being, of every nation and every language, whatever sufferings here or hereafter REV. DAVID TIIOM. 36 1 some for their correction may pre\iously undergo, in the sublime offices of devotion to our Creator and Benefactor, through the never-ending rexolutions of eternity. Blessed state, whence every malignant passion is excluded, and where peace, harmony, and felicity forever dwell!" Rev. David Thom, also a Scotch Presbyterian, deposed from the Rodney Street Church in Liverpool, in 1825, for heresies, in which, however, Universalism was not included, but followed by a portion of his former congregation to another portion of the city, where they duly organized, became a believer in Universalism in 1829. "Much the greater number of his hearers stood with hmi." His the- ology was eclectic and exceedingly unique, and he has probably had no successor. Human nature, he held, was not immortal and must be done away, swallowed up in the divine nature of Jehovah-Jesus. As to its merely human elements it must perish, but by Christ's union with it in the flesh, everlasting life will be freely conferred on all who have ever borne the image of the earthy. The gos- pel considers mankind in two characters and two natures. As connected with Adam, they are sinful subjects of pun- ishment and must be destroyed ; as connected with Christ, they are justified and saved with an everlasting salvation. For his knowledge of these views he claimed direct aid of the Spirit of God, but believed that it was improbable that many should be brought in this life to the understanding of them. He preached his theology with great confidence and zeal, and ha\ing no fellowship with American Univer- salists, objected to any and all proofs of the restitution of all things which were not based on his peculiar para- doxes. One of the most eminent names in Great Britain is that of Sir James Edward Smith, for half a century at the head of the botanists of that kingdom. " He found the science 362 THE UNIVEKSALISTS. [Chap. ii. of botany," said the " Philosophical Magazine," " when he approached it, locked up in a dead language : he set it free by transfusing it into his own. He found it a severe study, fitted only for the recluse : he left it of easy acqui- sition to all. In the hands of his predecessors, with the exception of his immortal master (Linnaeus), it was dry, technical, and scholastic: in his it was adorned with grace and elegance, and might attract the poet as \\€\\. as the philosopher." In his " Memoirs and Correspondence," edited by Lady Smith, his widow, and published in 1832, full proof is given of his belief in Universalism. " He was adverse," says Lady Smith, " to such a view of the Supreme Being as is injurious to the perfect goodness of Ills character, which, because his power is unlimited, has supposed it might please him to exercise that power to the subversion of his no less immutable attributes, justice and mercy. Such views of our Creator appeared to him dishonorable to that parental character which makes our admiration spring from the heart and delight in obeying his commands; such a view is to invest him in the e\il passions, the imperfection, and weakness of humanity. He believes that God's justice has for its end the highest vir- tue of the creation, and punishes for this end alone ; and thus it coincides with benevolence, for virtue and happi- ness, though not the same, are inseparably conjoined. He looked upon this world as a place of education, in which God is training men, by mercies and sufferings, by means and opportunities of various virtues, by trials of principle, by the conflicts of reason and passion, by a discipline suited to free moral beings for union with himself, and for sublime and ever-growing virtue in heaven." " The subject of the present memoir cherished a perfect faith in the good- ness of God. The goodness of God was ' the reason of the hope that was in him.' Relie\^ing that he framed the REV. JOHN FOSTER. 363 human soul for eternal duration and happiness, he never troubled himself about the time or manner of his future existence, or what was to constitute it ; considering him- self incapable of forming any judgment, he relied on the benevolence of that parental Being, who had ' vouchsafed to call him hither to this great assembly and entertain- ment, and had permitted him to contemplate his works, to admire and adore his providence, and to comprehend the wisdom of his conduct.' The apparent evil, the partiality, the injustice, in our present life were to him assurances, combined with revelation, of a more perfect state here- after." In 1841, only two years before his death. Rev. John Foster, world-famed as a brilliant essayist, a cautious as well as a jjrofound thiiik'cr, a\-(>wed, in a letter to a young clergyman, his disbelief in the doctrine of the eternity of punishment. The existence of such a letter was not gen- erally known until 1846, when his " Life and Correspond- ence," edited by J. \\. Ryland, was published ; but as early as 1796 he writes to his tutor and intimate friend, Rev. Joseph Hughes: " My o})inions have suffered some altera- tions. I have discarded, for instance, the doctrine of eter- nal punishment." His opinions in 1841 are not, therefore, simply the opinions of his old age, but those which he held for nearly half a century. In this letter of latest date he acknowledged that he had read very little of what had been written on the subject, nor had he cared to indulge in criticism of incidental passages of Scripture. " It is the moral argument, as it may be named, that presses irre- sistibly on my mind — that which comes in the stupendous idea of eternity. It appears to me that the teachers and believers of the orthodox doctrine hardly ever make an earnest, strenuous effort to form a conception of eternity ; or rather a conception somewhat of the nature of a faint. 364 ^-^-^ UNIVERSALISrS. [Chai-. ii. incipient approximation." He concedes that sinners de- serve punishment. " But endless punishment, hopeless misery, through a duration to which the enormous terms above imagined will be absolutely nothing! I acknowl- edge my inability (I would say it reverently) to admit this belief, together with a belief in the divine goodness — the belief that ' God is love,' that his tender mercies are over all his works. Goodness, benevolence, charity, as ascribed in supreme perfection to him, cannot mean a quality foreign to all human conceptions of goodness ; it must be some- thing analogous in principle to what himself has defined and required as goodness in his moral creatures, that, in adoring the divine goodness, we may not be worshiping an ' unknown God.' But if so, how would all our ideas be confounded, while contemplating him bringing, of his own sovereign will, a race of creatures into existence in such a condition that they certainly will and must, must, by their nature and circumstances, go wrong, and be mis- erable unless prevented by special grace — which is the privilege of only a small portion of them — and at the same time af^xing on their delinquency a doom of which it is infinitely beyond the highest archangel's faculty to apprehend a thousandth part of the horror." To the argument that sin is an infinite evil and deserves, therefore, an infinite penalty, he pertinently answers: " If an evil act of a finite being may be of infinite demerit, why may not a good one be of infinite excellence or merit as having also a reference to the Infinite Being? Is it not plain that every act of a finite nature must have in all senses the finite quality of that nature — cannot, therefore, be of infinite demerit? " Of the c^ssertion that there will be an endless continuance of sinning, with probably an endless aggravation, and therefore the punishment must be endless, he says : " Is not this like an admission of dis- KE\: JOIIX lOSTER. 365 proportion between the punishment and the orit^inal cause of its infliction? But suppose the case to be so — that is to say, that the punishment is not a retribution simply for the guilt of the momentary existence on earth, but a con- tinued punishment of the continued, ever-aggravated guilt in the eternal state — the allegation is of no avail in vindica- tion of the doctrine; because the first consignment of the dreadful state necessitates a continuance of the criminality ; the doctrine teaching that it is of the essence, and is an awful aggravation, of the original consignment, that it dooms the condemned to maintain the criminal spirit un- changed forever. To doom to sin as well as to sufl"er, and, according to the argument, to sin in order to sufTer, is inflicted as the punishment of the sin committed in the mortal state. Virtually, therefore, the eternal punishment is the punishment of the sins of time." The Scriptures, he feels, ought to be appealed to, and he is convinced that " on no allowable interpretation do they signify less than a very protracted duration and for- midable severity. But," he adds, " I hope it is not pre- sumptuous to take advantage of the fact that the terms ' everlasting,' ' eternal,' ' forever,' ' original,' or ' translated ' are often employed in the Bible, as well as other writings, under great and various limitations of import; and are thus withdrawn from the predicament of necessarily and abso- lutely meaning a strictly endless duration. The limitation is often, indeed, plainly marked by the nature of the sub- ject. . . . My resource in the present case, then, is simply this : that since the terms do not necessarily and absolutely signify an interminable duration, and since there is in the present instance to be pleaded, for admitting a limited in- terpretation, a reason in the moral estimate of things^ of stupendous, of infinite urgency, involving our conceptions of the divine goodness and equity, and leaving those con- 366 THE UNIVERSA LISTS. [Chap. ii. ceptions overwhelmed in darkness and horror if it be re- jected, I therefore conclude that a limited interpretation is authorized." As to the belief of some in the " annihilation of exist- ence, after a more or less protracted penal infliction," he confesses that he has not given it much thought. " Even this," he says, " would be a prodigious relief; but it is an admission that the terms in question do mean something final, in an absolute sense." It is not improbable to sup- pose that he clearly saw to what alternatix-e he was shut up ; but he made no confession of belief in Universalism, he could only say : " One would wish to indulge the hope, founded on the divine attribute of infinite benevolence, that there will be a period somewhere in the endless futurity when all God's sinning creatures will be restored by him to rectitude and happiness." Assuring his correspondent that other ministers stand with him in disbelief in the eternity of punishment, he puts in an apology for them for not publicly avowing it by saying that, " For one thing, a consideration of the unreasonable imputations and unmeasured suspicions apt to be cast on any publicly declared partial defection from rigid orthodoxy has made them think they should better consult their usefulness by not giving a prominence to this dissentient point ; while yet they make no concealment of it in private communi- cations, and in answer to serious inquiries." A year later than the date of this letter, writing to Rev. Dr. Harris, Mr. Foster makes use of an expression touching this " short term of mortal existence," that it is " absurdly sometimes denominated a probation." That seems still more closely to shut him up to Universalist views of the future. But whatever may have been the conclusion in which his own mind and heart rested, it is certain that the publication of his strong moral argument against the TOWXSJ/EXD—McDOXALD. ^fyj eternity of punishment lias led many into the acceptance of Universalism.' Rev. Chauncy Ilare Townshend, of the Church of Eng- land, published, in 1851, a volume of "Sermons in Son- nets," many of which teach Universalism. We give the first : The times of restitution of all things.— Acts iii. 21. Give evil l)iit an end — and all is clear! Make it eternal — all things are obscured! And all that we have thought, felt, wept, endured. Worthless. We feel that ev'n if our own tear Were wiped away forever, no true cheer Could to our yearning bosoms be secured While we believed that sorrow clung uncured To any being we on earth held dear. Oh, much doth life the sweet solution want Of all made blest in far futurity! Heaven needs it too. Our bosoms yearn and pant Rather indeed our God to justify Than our own selves. Oh, why then dr.)]i the key That tunes discordant worlds to liarnu)ny } Rev. George McDonald, formerly a Congregationalist, now in the Episcopal Churcli, has been preaching Uni- versalism, lo! these many years. In a volume entitled "Unspoken Sermons," published in London in 1867, lit-' distinctly avowed it as his faith concerning destiny. In the sernK^n on " God a Consuming Fire " he represents that It IS a fire of love, operative so long as whatever is opposed to it remains unconsumed. Sharp, severe, but beneficent, it must subdue and bless all who need purifi- cation : " lUit at length, O God, wilt thou not cast death and hell into the lake of fire — even into thine own con- suming self? Death shall then die everlastingly, Ancl hell itself will pass away, AikI leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day. ' " Life and Correspondence," Boston edition, iSco, vol. i., v. 27 vol ii pp. 2b3 If. , 290. t / ' • • ' 368 THE UMVERSALISTS. {(Iww. ii. Then, iiulced, wilt thou be all in all. For then our poor brothers and sisters, every one — O God, we trust in thee, the consuming fire — shall have been burned clean and brought home. For if their moans, myriads of ages away, would turn heaven for us into hell — shall a man be more merciful than God? Shall, of all his glories, his mercy alone not be infinite ? Shall a brother love a brother more than the Father loves a son ? — more than the Brother Christ loves his brother? Would he not die yet again to save one brother more? " In 1874 the Rev. R. W. Dale, of Birmingham, read a paper before the Congregational Union of England, en- titled " The Congregationalism of the Present — its Theol- ogy and its Spiritual Work." Speaking of the manifest "drift" of the English Congregational mind in respect to the doctrine of future punishment, the author expresses his conviction that it is likely to react disastrously on the whole structure of doctrines held by the church, unless the question is discussed " with the utmost frankness, and with a deep impression of its transcendent importance." He says in this connection : " Now, to what extent there has been a definite surrender on the part of Congrega- tional ministers and churches of the old faith in the end- lessness of future sufifering I cannot tell. That there is any general acceptance of the doctrine of uni\-ersal restoration I do not believe. I am inclined to think with many that the doctrine of our forefathers has been silently relegated, with or without very serious consideration, to that province of the intellect which is the home of those beliefs which we have not rejected, but which we are willing to forget. I have some fear that the possibility of universal restora- tion, wliile not consciously received, is exerting a consider- able influence on the thought of very many of our people, on our own thought, and on our own preaching." Pro- EAiJJJS/I COXGA'EGAT/OXALISTS. 369 ceediiify then to announce his own departure from the old standards, he avows his behef in the doctrine of the anni- hilation of the wicked. This address, reported in the " Eng- lisii Independent," the same issue containing also an account of the " Anniversary of the London Missionary Society," on which occasion Dr. Raleigh combated the notion that the heathen dying without a knowledge of Christ went their way to everlasting destruction — a declaration which was received with great applause — furnished an occasion for the late editor of the Boston " Congregationalist " to say : " We have heard it affirmed by those who professed to know, that this drift is especially true in regard to the doctrine of the future punishment of the impenitent; some even going so far as to affirm that there is but an incon- siderable percentage of the London Congregational pas- tors who would be willing to preach anything resembling the old theology on that subject — or whose congregations would consent to hear them if they did so. This has always seemed to us to be a. gross exaggeration, while we have been well aware that the minds of some of the most eminent Congregational pastors of London and its vicinity have felt so sorely the perplexities surrounding the sub- ject of the relation of the goodness of God to the doom of the wicked, as to lead them to speak most cautiously, if at all, with regard to it ; and to feel that more light is to be hoped for in further study of the Word in regard to it. Good old Mr. Binney is reported to have said, on more than one occasion, when pressed with these difficulties, that ' he hoped the infinitely good and infinitely fertile Intelli- gence wdiich presides over all may conceive of and adjust some way in which the horrible catastroj)he of the reme- diless wickedness of any human soul may be consistently averted.* ' As to this matter, we keep silence and wait,' was substantially the testimony gi\-en two years since to 370 THE UN-IVEKSALISrS. [Chap. ii. the writer by one of the fatuous preachers of England — a man well known and much honored, as well, on this side of the sea." In the twenty years which have elapsed since the above was written there has been no abatement of interest in religious circles abroad on this subject. In a recently published work entitled "The Wider Hope," containing " Essays and Strictures on the Doctrine and Literature of Future Punishment," is " A Bibliographical Appendix of Recent Works on Eschatology as Contained in the Brit- ish Museum." Of a total of one hundred and eighty vol- umes, one hundred and four were published on the other side of the water, eighty of them in London, and none at an earlier date than 1877. Besides these, fifty-seven arti- cles are noted as having recently appeared on the same subject in British critical and theological magazines and reviews. These facts indicate not only the prevalence of Universalism abroad, but also great activity in its propaga- tion and defense. The presence of Universalism abroad would be still more plainly manifest if, enlarging the field of our observation, we should include a notice of its advocacy in polite litera- ture, in song and in story. But although this is a large and delightful field and most fruitful in results, we have not entered it, preferring to call attention exclusively to the opinions and position of theologians and Christian philosophers and preachers. And we have also supposed that our effort in this direction would be most satisfactory and just, if, instead of giving what we might prepare as a summary of their views, we should present them in their own words, even at the risk of repetition in many cases where similar phraseology had already been cited ; or of obscure and somewhat involved phrases in other instances; or of quite lengthy quotations in a few cases. In calling OLSIIA USEN. 371 attention, as we have frequently done, to the learning, abilit}', and moral excellence of those whom we have named and quoted as believers in and advocates of the salvation of the world, we have, we are sure, confirmed the declaration of Olshausen that Universalism " has no doubt a deep root in noble minds — is the expression of a heartfelt desire for a perfect harmony in the creation."^ 1 Olshausen's Commentary, New York edition, 1857, vol. i., p. 460. CHAPTER III. IN AMERICA PRIOR TO OR INDEPENDENT OF JOHN MURRAY. Among those who were called heretics in the early New England days, one of the most noted was Samuel Gorton, who figures conspicuously in the history of the Massachu- setts, Plymouth, and Rhode Island colonies. He came from England in the spring of 1636-37, and stopping but a short time in Boston, went to Plymouth, where he met with so little favor that he found it conducive to his com- fort to obtain a home in Rhode Island. In a biographical sketch appended to a modern edition of Gorton's " Simplic- ity's Defence Against Seven-Headed Policy," Mr. .Staples warmly eulogizes him by saying that " nothing was ever alleged against him, even by his most inveterate enemies." On the contrary. Cotton Mather says that " he degener- ated into a beast," and calls his opinions " blasphemous and enormous." Gorton thought that the Puritans and Pilgrims were, as Coleridge says, too much concerned about " other world- liness," leading them to undervalue the present state of existence. He affirmed that the soul now exists in eter- nity, and insisted that there is no heaven or hell save in the mind ; that the soul is independent of place, and the future and the past are but eternal now. His whole religious thought ran in a mystical vein, and he was belligerent toward all differing views. He championed the Quakers in their efforts for toleration, but fought against their the- 372 GOR TON— VANE. 373 ology ; agreed with Roger Williams and the Baptists in their theory of freedom of conscience, but was strong in his opposition to their belief concerning ordinances, " beat- ing down," as one of his followers expresses it, " all out- ward ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper, with unanswerable demonstration." Occasionally he expounded his views orally, but preaching was not his business. His work was done with his pen. He delighted in titles based on his mystical opinions, and in one of his conveyances of land calls himself " Professor of the Mysteries of Christ." He so delighted in hidden meanings and in allegory, and had such fondness for far-fetched allusions and imagery, that a degree of obscurity characterizes his sentences and makes them the subject of speculation. But in several passages, both of prose and of poetry, his belief in Uni- versalism seems evident, as in the following, prefixed to " Simplicity's Defence " : The nations shall come forth at once, yea, at one birth ; Truth in the cliange of one renewetli all the earth ; Else were not perfect good in any one erect, Nor sin were full, through th' fall, that great defect. If change of one were not a world renewed, What nation, then, not brought in and subdued, When truth is published, though but unto one Embraced, received? Oh, happy state of man, All Gentiles brought in, who can want? < Sir Henry Vane, the younger, governor of Massachu- setts in 1636, was also a mystic. Bishop Burnett says: " Vane's friends told me that he leaned to Origen's notion of an universal salvation."^ Rev. Mr. Crouch, in a ser- mon in defense of the " Eternity of Hell Torments," pub- lished in England a century ago, says that " the doctrine of Origen formed part of the unintelligible creed of Sir 1 " Life and 'i'imes," p. 103. 374 ^'^^^^ UNIVERSALISIS. [CiiAi'. in. Henry Vane." To what extent Vane sought to propa- gate his religious opinions in Massachusetts is unknown. Cotton Mather ^ says that the evidence is conflicting, but cites a manuscript as saying that " before he was scarce warm in his seat " as governor, " he began to broach new tenets." In one of his latest works,- Vane, speaking of "the Incarnation and the fruits thereof," says: " We see thereby the Devil and his Angels disappointed in their wicked designs ; who, by the bringing in of Sin, were in hopes to have hindered the growing up of Jesus, the Branch that was to spring out of this Root ; but David's Root, sitting as Lord at God's right hand, had before ob- tained that power which was to subdue all enemies and lay them flat at his footstool. David's ofifspring, therefore, was in no danger of having his course stopped, or race hindered, wherein, as a Mighty Saviour and Redeemer, he was to go forth, and rescue the whole spiritual seed out of the hands of Sin and Satan, to bring them into the true Rest, and obtain a gracious reprieve and forbearance for the most obstinate and rebellious also" (p. 91). Speaking of Jesus as the second Adam, he says : " He did all that was needful, and all that God required to be done, for the remission of sin and the utter abolishing and removing it out of man's nature with an absolute incapacity of ever returning more upon the true and right heirs of salvation. In respect whereof it is said, that as by one man's dis- obedience many (that is, all) were made sinners, so by the obedience of one many (that is, all) shall be made righteous — having that ransom paid, and means provided in him to make them righteous : so that there shall be no necessity remaining upon any to perish, forasmuch as sufficient pro- 1 " Magnalia," book ii., chap. v. 2 "The Retired Man's Meditations; or, The Mystery of Ciodliness," Lon- don, ibqs, pp. 91, 95. DR. DE BEiXXEVILLE. 375 vision is made to bring all men to repentance and to the knowledge of the truth ; that as in Adam all died, so in this sense all, again, in Christ are made alive " (p. 95). Dr. George de Benneville, of French parentage, but born in London in 1703, settled in Pennsylvania in 1741. He began to preach when quite young, botii in England and in France. In Normand}- he found a few clergymen whose names he has recorded, Durant, Chevrette, Dumou- lin, L'Archar, who were willing to associate with him in preaching to the people in woods and valleys, where great crowds gathered to hear them. Some of their number were arrested and put to death, some whipped and branded, and some were sent to the galleys. At length Durant and De Benneville were seized and condemned to die, the former by hanging and the latter by the ax. Durant ascended the ladder, sung a psalm, and died joyfully. De Benne- ville was on his knees praying for the forgiveness of his enemies, when a courier arrived from the king with a re- prieve. He was taken to Paris, and imprisoned and finally liberated. Afterward he went to Germany and formed an extensive acquaintance, among others, with De Marsay, through wliom he became intimate with Ilaug, Hoch- man, Dippel, and others mentioned on a prex'ious page, as engaged in the translation and commentary known as the " Berleburger Bibel." After preaching several years in Germany he was takei\ sick, was supposed to ha\e died, and was placed in his coffin for burial. Reviving, he claimed, as ever after he believed with great sincerity, that he had been separated from his body while it la}' in the coffin, had been both to heaven and to hell, and had been privileged with a view of what is to take place in " the dispensation of the fullness of times — the restoration of all souls." Restored to health and again attempting to preach, he was again imprisoned, and on being set at lib- 376 THE UNI VERSA LISTS. [Chap. hi. erty came to America, feeling himself called on to preach the gospel in the New World. After his marriage, in 1745, he joined with his father- in-law in the erection of a substantial mansion at Oley, a large chamber in which was constructed especially for con- venience as a schoolroom and a place of worship. Prior to this he had occasionally preached in a Moravian school- house about three miles north of the spot selected for his residence. Some years after this he changed his residence to Milestown, where he remained until his death, in 1793, chiefly engaged in the practice of medicine, in which he is said to have had great skill. Until pre^■ented by old age, it was his custom to journey twice a year through the western portion of Pennsylvania and to Maryland and Virginia, for the purpose of preaching. In i 790 he wrote to his daughter: " In my old age, since I am eighty-eight years old, my mind is still set to preach the gospel." Having a strong aversion to the publication of anything relating to himself, he destroyed many of his manuscripts. Among the papers which remained was a manuscript Ger- man translation of Marsay's Commentary on the Apoca- lypse, which was published at Lebanon, Pa., in 1808. Many of the early settlers in Germantown were from Krisheim and Frankfort, Germany ; the former were either Mennonites or Quakers when they came ; the latter were German mystics. The mystics brought with them copies of Klein-Nicolai's "Everlasting Gospel," Schiitz's " Golden Rose," and Schaeffer's " Everlasting Gospel," mentioned in chapter ii. On the suggestion of Dr. De Benneville, Klein-Nicolai's work, still attributed to Siegvolck, was translated into English and quite extensively circulated "■^ 1753- These books, both the German and the Eng- lish, exerted no small influence, as is conceded by Rev. N. Pomp, in his " Kurzgefaste Priifungen der Lehre des GERMAXTOWN SETTLERS. 377 Ewigen Evangeliums " (" Examination of the Doctrine of the Everlasting Gospel"), published in 1 774. In it he states that the doctrine of the restitution of all things " was nev^er more widely spread than in the present cen- tury ; of which the numerous controversial writings, pro and con, that ha\-e appeared in Europe within the last fifty years, are sufficient proof. Yet nowhere has this doctrine been more successful and made greater progress than here in Pennsylvania. In Europe the industry of many learned and godly men has thrown insuperable obstacles in its way ; but here the stream has been allowed free course, and the fire has burned as it would. There were already many copies of the * Everlasting Gospel,' which, not being privileged in Germany, were purchased at a cheap rate by money-making people, and brought here ; and they have also been industriously scattered by the press. The charm- ing title, ' The Everlasting Gospel,' induced many ignorant people to buy the book, and the doctrine it inculcates in- clined many to believe." Four years before receiving from the king of England the grant of lands in the New World, William Penn made a visit to Holland and Germany as a Quaker preacher. The details of his trip were confided to his private diary, but a copy of portions, if not the whole, came into the hands of the Countess of Conway — of whom we have spoken in chapter ii. — and after her death the consent of the author was obtained for its publication. At P^ rank- fort he made the acquaintance of Johanna Eleonora von Merlau, afterward the wife of Petersen (as see chapter ii.), and at her residence held nearly all his meetings. Nine years later. Miss Von Merlau, with nine others, formed an association for the purchase of twenty- five thousand acres of land in Pennsylvania and the encouragement of emi- gration thereto. The sympathy of several of the company 378 THE UNIVERSAI.ISTS. [Chap. hi. with the \-iews of Miss Von Merlau gi\'e a hint of the source of the Universahst opinions of the emigrants who brought with them the books before named. ^ The German Baptists, commonly called Dunkers, and originating, as we have seen (chapter ii.), at Schvvarzenau in 1 708, came in a body to America in i 7 19, and originally settled in Pennsylvania. They were from the first believers in universal restoration, but have, in the main, held it pri- vately. In 1725 a division occurred in their ranks on the Sabbath question, Conrad Beissel, the leader of the seces- sion, insisting on the observance of the seventh day. Under his lead they established a semi-monastic establishment at Ephrata, Pa. Here, in 1740, they began a Sunday-school, the earliest, probably, in America. Both branches of the Dunkers published and preached universal restoration. They objected to being called Universalists, but did not hesitate to say that they believed in the restoration of all souls. Later they became reticent in regard to destiny, and as late as 1793 one of their number published a pam- phlet in which he severely censures his brethren for not giving the doctrine greater publicity, asserting that " the German Baptists all believe it." Some of the early Moravians, settling here in 1735, were believers in Universalism. Peter Bohler, their first pastor at Bethlehem, Pa., and afterward made Bishop of America, next in rank .to Count Zinzendorf, their leader, was out- spoken in its favor. Whitefield, in a letter to John Wesley in 1740, remonstrating against the Arminian views of the latter, warns him to beware lest he land at last with Peter Bohler, who had " lately confessed in a letter ' that all the damned souls would hereafter be brought out of hell.' " Israel Acrelius gives an account of his visit to Belhlehem 1 See " ^^'illian1 I'ciin's 'l"i".T\els in Ildlland nml (Icrmanv,"" Iiy Professor Seidcnstickcr, in " 'J'lie l'cnns\ Ivania ?Nlai;a/ine," vol. ii., pp. 237 ff., 1878. EPISCOPAL/A AS. 379 in 1754, and there finding Universalists.^ He made the acquaintance of " Mr. Ritz," one of the preachers. This man was a Dane, his name as written in that language being Matthew Reuz, which he afterward anglicized into Rights, but his contemporaries spelled it Wright. He was a Universalist from his early youth. While residing at Bethlehem he was sent out as a missionary to the Sw'edish settlers on the Delaware, frequently preaching at Cohan- sey, Penn's Neck, and Pile's Grove, N. J. To his efforts it was largely due, no doubt, that Universalist churches were organized in those localities as early as i 789, if not earlier. Universalism was also advocated in Episcopalian pulpits. In 1759 it was preached and defended by Rev. Richard Clarke, rector of St. Philip's Church, Charleston, S. C. Ramsay, in his " History of South Carolina," .speaks of Clarke as " better known as a theologian beyond the limits of America, than any other inhabitant of Carolina." Dalcho (" Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church of South Carolina") says that Mr. Clarke "was a Universalist, and appears to have been tinctured with the doctrines of Jacob Boehmen." The most of his mini.stry was in luigland, and at the time of his death the " Univer- salist Theological Magazine," London, said: "P\^r nearly fifty years he maintained, both by preaching and writing, the doctrine of universal restoration." Rev. Robert Yancey, settled in Loui.sa County, Va., announced, not long before his death, and in anticipation of it — being cut off by consumption in 1774. while yet a young man — that he was conxinced that the l^ible taught universal salvation, and that he would preach a discourse in defense of it. Three editions of the sermon were pub- lished. 1 " A History of New Sweden," ri>il:i(leli)1ii.'\ edition, 1S74, pp. 40S fT. 380 THE UNIVEKSALISTS. [Chap, hi. Rev. Jacob Duchc, first chaplain to Congress, and rec- tor of Christ Church and St. Peter's in Philadelphia, was a personal friend of Rev. John Murray, and in a volume of sermons, now scarce, speaks of the atonement, satisfaction, and redemption of Christ as that "all-conquering meekness which must finally extinguish all that is evil in the whole system of things, and leave not one single enemy to God and goodness unsubdued." Rev. Dr. William Smith, principal and founder of the University of Pennsylvania, and for many years president of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, was also a personal friend of Murray's and an attendant on his services when the latter preached in Philadelphia in the summer of 1790.^ He was one of the most influential churchmen in the reorganization of the Episcopal Church after political independence was won. As chairman of the committee to revise the Prayer-Book and adapt it to the changed circumstances of the country, he had the principal agency in its arrangement.- Two passages in that book are significant. The first, the omission of the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds, and the elimination of the clause in the so-called Apostles' Creed expressing the belief in the descent of Christ into hell. On the ground that this might be construed into belief in the existence of a hell of tor- ment and that Christ went down into that hell, they struck it out. When this change was objected to by the English bishops, whose good offices in the consecration of bishops for the United States were desired, it was replaced, but on condition that any church so desiring might substitute the words, " he went into the place of departed spirits." The English bishops also desired the restoration of the Nicene 1 Letters of Mrs. Murray in the author's possession. 2 " Annals of tlie American Pulpit," by William Sprague, D.D., vol. v., p. 160. McClintock and Strong's Cyclopa'dia, vol. viii., p. 674. KPISCOPA UA A 'S. 3 8 1 and the Athanasian Creeds. The former was inserted, but the latter was refused a place. ^ A second innovation was in a significant change in the seventeenth of the Thirty-nine Articles, concerning " Pre- destination and Election." The original article begins: " Predestination to life is the eternal purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ," etc. In place of this was inserted the following : " Predestination to life, with respect to every man's salvation, is the everlasting purpose of God," etc. The original wording had been the occasion of many con- troversies both in England and America, according as the disputants discussed it as Calvinists or as Arminians. Dr. Smith cut the knot by making the article an unambiguous declaration of Universalism. Thus it stood until 1801, when the convention, in session at Trenton, N. J., restored the original.- Rev. John Tyler, who became rector of Christ's Church in Norwich, Conn., in i 769, and so remained until his death, which occurred fifty-four years later, was an advocate of Universalism, both with voice and pen. He preached and published six sermons in its defense, the first edition appearing anonymously in 1798. Five editions in all have been published. He advocated it on Murray's Rellyan theory. He came into these views as early as 1782. In consequence of his making, as did Kelly and Murray, a distinction between salvation and redemption, he was often misunderstood and was sometimes accused of denying the sentiments taught in his book ; but he retained his Uni- versalist views until the close of life. Rev. Samuel Peters, 1 "Journal of the Convention," Oct()l)er lo, ii, 1786, p. 42. 2 //>i(/., September 8-12, 1801, p. 206. 382 THE UNn-RRSALISTS. [Chap. hi. " having heard that several of the Episcopal clergy in Con- necticut, his nuich-esteemed friends and fellow-laborers in the Lord, had joined with Mr. Tyler," printed " A Letter to the Rev. John Tyler, A.M., Concerning the Possibility of Eternal Punishments, and the Improbability of Univer- sal Salvation," that his endangered brethren might also have the advantage of it. Universalist views also gained a foothold among the Congregationalists. Dr. Charles Chauncy, ordained pas- tor of the P^irst Church, Boston, in 1727, became a believer in Universalism several years before publicly avowing his con\-ictions, though he expressed himself freely to his friends, and submitted to them his writings on the sub- ject. Two defenses of the doctrine were published anony- mously. Of one, Rev. Dr. John Clarke, his colleague, said in a note to his sermon at the fuueral of Dr. Chauncy, in 1787 : ■" Of the numerous productions of Dr. Chauncy, the most labored, and in his opinion the most valuable, is a work entitled ' The Salvation of All Men,' published in London, A.D. 1784. This was begun early in life, often reviewed, and completed at a time when the mental powers are most vigorous. Before its publication it underwent a severe examination from those whose theological and criti- cal knowledge qualified them to judge of such a work. Many esteemed it a valuable acquisition to the religious world. And all bestowed the highest encomiums upon the learning and ingenuity of the author." As early as 1768, in a letter to Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles, he speaks of hav- ing put the materials of the work together, and that " they have laid by in a finished quarto volume for years. This is written with too much freedom to admit of a publication in this country. ... I question whether it will ever see the light till after my death, and I am not yet determined whether to permit its being printed, or to order its being CONG REGA'IION A LISTS. \ 383 committed to the ilamcs. It is a work tiiat has cost me much thought aiul a great deal of hard labor." ^ In 1782 Dr. Chauncy published an anonymous pamphlet in Boston, entitled " Salvation for All Men." It contains little except extracts from the writings of English Univer- salists, and was publishetl, as its full title announces, to make known what has been said in favor of the subject by the " pious and learned men who have purposely writ upon it." If this pamplilct was published witli a view to ascertaining" how the larger work would be received, as seems probable, the author soon found out, as it was warmly attacked in responsive pamphlets by Rev. Messrs. Joseph I'xkley, Samuel Mather, Timothy Allen, Samuel Hopkins, William Gordon, and Peter Thacher. The last avows that he was imi^elled to his work by his " alarm at the progress of the errors which he attempts to refute, and at the patronage afforded them by some distinguished char- acters in our theological v^-orld." Sc'unuel Mather dwells at great length on the significance of the New Testament words "everlasting" and "forever," arguing that they denote absolute endlessness. Rev. Dr. John Clarke made a startling reply in a published " Letter to Dr. Mather." " How could you," he wrote, " pretend to argue the end- less punishment of the wicked from the application of the Hebrew word gnolaju, or the Greek aionios, when you have repeatedly said in private conversation it could be inferred from neither? A minister ought not to have one set of opinions for the closet, and another for the public view. What he asserts among his friends he ought to maintain openly, or, at least, he ought not to contradict, while there are any alive to detect his indiscretion. You have treated an opponent very unfairly, to offer him arguments which 1 " Collections of tlio Mns-^nclnisetts Historical Society," first series, vol. x., J). 165, iiSog. 384 THE UXI]-ERSA LISTS. [CuAr. in. you knoiv have no force in them, and which you have re- jected in private conversation." Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, probably more influential than any other preacher in America in producing the War for Independence, and characterized by Bancroft as " the bold- est and most fervid heart in New England," published two Thanksgiving sermons, in 1762, in which he declares that although there are " some things of a dark and gloomy appearance in the world when considered by themselves," yet when we consider the purpose of Christ's mission, and " that there is a certain restitution of all things, spoken by the mouth of all the holy prophets since the world began, . . . light and comfort rise out of darkness and sorrow." Rev. Dr. Jeremy Belknap, pastor of the Federal Street Congregational Church, Boston, and one of the founders of the Massachusetts Historical Society, has left an avowal of his belief in Universalism. His correspondence with Ebenezer Hazard, of Philadelphia, has been published by the Historical Society. In it Hazard acknowledges receipt of a copy of Dr. Chauncy's pamphlet in 1782, inquires who is the author, and adds: " If it is unscriptural, I am too ignorant to be able to see it. I think, however, it does honor to the mercy of the Deity, without doing in- jury to divine justice." Dr. Belknap replies: "The design of emitting this piece was good, but I am not altogether pleased with its execution, because it seems to be an at- tempt to recommend the doctrine by the force of human authority. . . . However, the truth of the case is this : the doctrine of universal restitution has long been kept as a secret among learned men. Murray has published some undeniable truths concerning it, mixed with a jargon of absurdity ; and one Winchester among you has followed his example. . . . As to the doctrine itself, of which you desire my opinion, I frankly own to you that I have for CONG KEG. I T J OX A LIS 7 S. 385 several years been growing in my acquaintance with it and my regard for it. I wished it might be true long before I saw any just reason to conclude it was so. . . . But at present I do not see how the doctrine can be disproved, if the Scripture be allowed to speak for itself, and the expres- sions therein used be understood in their natural sense, without any systematical or synodical comments." Of Rev. Dr. Joseph Huntington, pastor of the First Church, Coventry, Conn., from 1763 until his death, 1794, Dr. Sprague thus speaks at the close of a lengthy sketch of his life and labors: " The most remarkable circumstance in Dr. Huntington's history was not known until after his death. Among his papers was found a manuscript \-olume entitled ' Calvinism Improved,' which contains a \'igorous defense of the doctrine of universal salvation. This vol- ume was afterward published, though it had but a limited circulation — much of the greater part of the edition hav- ing been consigned to the flames by one of his daugh- ters, a lady of rare excellence, who loved simple CaK'inism better than ' Calvinism Improved,' and whose regard for orthodoxy seems to have been an overmatch even for her filial reverence. The system inculcated in this volume is, however, very unlike that which now ordinarily passes under the name of Universalism. It recognizes most of the features of old-fashioned Calvinism, but maintains that the atonement of Christ was commensurate, not only in its nature, but in its design, with the sins of the whole human family. Dr. Huntington had not been generally supposed to hold any other than the commonly recei\-ed orthodox views on this subject, until this manuscript was found; though some of his brethren afterward recollected to have heard remarks from him, which, in the review, seemed of a somewhat dubious character. It has been suggested that the book might have been written as a mere trial of polemic 386 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. hi. skill ; but the preface puts it beyond a doubt that it con- tains his deliberate and matured convictions."^ Near the close of the century five Congregationalist clergymen in four adjoining towns in western New Hamp- shire— viz., Thomas Fessenden of Walpole, Jacob Mann of Alstead, his successor, Samuel Mead, Dan Foster of Charlestown, and Mr. Taft of Langdon — became believers in Universalism, and, with the exception of Fessenden, were dismissed for their heresy. About the same time Rev. Samuel Whiting, of Rockingham, Vt., on the opposite side of the Connecticut River from Charlestown, became a Universalist, and was dismissed for that reason. To some extent Universalism also disturbed the Pres- byterian churches. In i 783 the " First Presbytery of the Eastward " published a volume against Dr. Chauncy's pamphlet, entitled '"' Bath Kol : A Voice from the Wilder- ness. Being an Humble Attempt to Support the Sinking Truths of God against Some of the Principal Errors Rag- ing at this Time." The preface sets forth that the "low state of religion and the awful floods of error induced the ' First Presbytery of the Eastward,' in session at Windham [Conn.], May 21, 1783, to appoint 'a committee to bring in a draught of a testimony ' against these evils ; and they were especially directed to begin with Origenism (or the doctrine of universal salvation), as lying nearest the root of all the impiety and wickedness now leading the fashion in places of public resort." Of a total of 360 pages in this volume, 222 are devoted to Universalism. Alluding to John Murray as a zealous disciple of the Rellys, the writer adds: "It is true that the Socinian form of this opinion had stolen a passage into this country long before the arri\-al of the itinerant last mentioned. Some church records, within forty miles of Boston, can show that it was 1 " Annals of the American Pulpit," vol. i., p. 604. n^H'.sn J ■ 7 7;a'/. / xs. 387 not first imported by him. And it is soundly asserted by many that nothing but a stock of Dr. Burnet's honesty has prevented its being fairly opened up to the world, under the sanction of the name of another doctor, thirty years ago. Wiiether the success of the traveler mentioned above awakened a jealousy that the honor of so important a dis- covery in theology should be carried ofT by an illiterate stranger, or whether the great fertility of the present aera in the invention of improvements in all departments of learning and science stung the divines now on the stage to emulation, we list not to inquire. One thing is become certain, that no sooner did the author of a pamphlet called ' Salvation for All Men ' give the word, than great was the multitude of the preachers that suddenly rose up in almost every quarter, and published it. And, if the best accounts we can obtain deser\'e credit, this doctrine rings from so many pulpits through the land already, that every minister of the gospel who does not wish it to become universally taught and recei\-ed is now called on, as he tenders the cause of God and the best interests of souls, to stand forth and openly disavow it." In 1787 the Synod of New York and Philadelphia rec- ommended to all their Presbyteries and members to be watchful and to guard against the introduction of Univer- salism among their people. In i 792 the General Assembly decided, on a question raised by the Synod of the Carolinas, that Universalists be not admitted to the sealing ordinances of the gospel ; and on an attempt to reopen the question in 1794, "unanimously agreed to adhere to its aforesaid decision." CHAPTER IV. JOHN MURRAY. ' Organized Universalism, the creation and establish- ment of the UniversaHst Church, had its chief, but not ex- clusive, incitement in the ministry of Rev. John Murray, who, born in Alton, England, December lO (O. S.), 1741, landed in America in the latter part of September, 1770. / Although then a young man, he had passed through try- ing experiences, and had come to the New World hoping to lose himself in its wilds and pass the remainder of his days in obscurity. His father was an Episcopalian and| his mother a Presbyterian, and both high Calvinists. His' early home-life was clouded by great religious severity ; his father, he says, " seldom indulging in a smile," and teaching him " that for any individual, not the elect of God, to say of God, or to God, ' Our Father,' was noth- ing better than blasphemy." All his early surroundings impressed him with "a terror of -religion." The coming of the Methodists into his neighborhood gave him new hope, and as he listened to their fervid preaching he began to find delight in religious themes and exercises. John Wesley gave him marked notice by appointing him " class- leader of forty boys," and soon after this he began to preach. He found himself, however, sorely haunted by the Calvinism which his parents championed ; and shortly after his father's death, having opportunity to listen to the preaching of Whitefield, his early opinions were reinforced by what he regarded as the preacher's demonstrations of JOIIA' MURRAY. 389 their truth. He was at this time residing with his mother in Ireland. Soon after becoming a preacher in Wesley's connection, and while perplexed with the questions of pre- destination and freewill, he went to London, where, for a while, he led a gay, but not immoral, life ; but soon con- necting himself with Whitefield's society, he became zeal- ously interested in all that tended to its advancement. Before long he was asked to interview and reclaim to the Whitefield congregation a young woman who had avowed herself a Universalist, and to read and criticise a refutation which a brother clergyman had written, of a book put forth by Rev. James Relly, who, from being a preacher in Whitefield's connection, had become a preacher of Universalism. He confesses' himself baffled and vexed by the young woman's observations ; is impressed with the want of candor of the reviewer of the book, and is greatly distressed that no better showing against Mr. Kelly's argu- ments is made. Not many days pass before the book itself falls into his hands. Its arguments stagger him, and he desires to hear its author preach. The privilege is soon granted, and from the meeting he goes to his closet and begins anew the study of the Holy Scriptures. The doc- trine of election becomes more and more clear and satis- fying to him, hw\. the doctrine of reprobation .seems to be wholly without foundation. Cited to appear before Mr. Whitefield's society, he is tried and excommunicated. Former friends become persecutors, death robs him of liis wife, and, well-nigh broken-hearted, he comes to the New World, determined, he says, " to close my life in solitude, in the most complete retirement." His experiences on landing on the shore of New Jersey, by reason of accident to the ship which brought him over; his interview with Thomas Porter, who declared that he knew as soon as he saw the ship that it had on board the 390 THE UNI VERSA LISTS. [Chap. iv. preacher for whom he had built a house of worship and for whose coming he had long been waiting; and his final consent to preach — border on the marvelous, but are well authenticated.^ From the date of this first sermon in \ America, September 30, 1770, until he was made help- less by paralysis in October, 1809 — although he remained '1 on earth until September, 1815 — he gave himself wholly/ to the ministry, making his home for the most part with Thomas Porter, at Good Luck, N. J., and itinerating from New Hampshire to Virginia, until December, 1774, when |. he settled in Gloucester, Mass., drawn there by the fact that several of its residents had, by reading the book of Relly's which first drew his attention to enlarged views of the divine economy, become Universalists. His mission " in this land, up to that time, had not been a constructive one. The thought of creating a sect, or even of organiz- ing a society or church of believers in Christianity as he interpreted it, had probably never entered his mind. It is notorious that in many places where he preached the legitimate inferences from the premises in his discourses were not fully apprehended either by the preachers or peo- ple who flocked to hear him. No doubt he was honest and sincere in adopting this course, since he justified it in after years, and on the occasion of his visit to England, in 1788, repeated it there; but it involved him in many diffi- culties, created suspicion, and in some instances great in- dignation. This was true in Providence, Newport, Boston, and during the first of his preaching in Gloucester. In Portsmouth, N. H., he was invited to settle over an estab- lished church and congregation, under the impression that he was a Calvinist. In Newburyport his patrons, on his 1 For this and all facts cited in the career of Murray (not noted as obtainetl elsewhere), see " Life of Rev. John Murray" (written liy himself to 1774, and continued by his wife to his death), Boston edition, 1869. JOHN MURRAY. 391 first visit, were the personal friends and adherents of Rev. George Whitefield, who had died in that town the day Mr. Murray preached iiis first sermon in America; and as Mr. Murray is said to have borne a strong resemblance to that popular divine, in the animation of his style and the fresh and copious power of his illustrations, it is proba- ble that they regarded him as in some sort a successor to Whitefield. Certainly they did not understand that he was a Universalist, for, concerning his second visit to Newburyport and Portsmouth, Mrs. Murray has written : " Those who adhered to him in those towns, having ascer- tained that he absolutely believed in the final restitution of all things, united with the many in the most unquali- fied censure." His own statement of this, to say the least, disastrous procedure and his justification or approval of it, he thus records : " The grace, union, and membership, upon which I expatiated, were admitted by every Calvinist, but ad- mitted only for the elect; and when I repeated tjiose glo- rious texts of Scripture which indisputably proclaim the redemption of the lost world, as I did not expressly say, ' My brethren, I receive these texts in the unlimited sense in which they are given,' they were not apprised that I did not read them with the same contracted views to which they had been accustomed. When they became assured of the magnitude and unbounded result which I ascribed to the birth, life, and death of the Redeemer, their doors were fast closed against me. For myself, I was in unison with Mr. Relly, who supposed that the gradual dawn of light would eventually prove more beneficial to mankind than the sudden burst of meridian day. Thus I was contented with proclaiming the truth as it is in Jesus in Scripture language only — leaving to my hearers deduc- tions, comments, and applications." 392 THE UNIVERSA LISTS. [Chap. iv. From the time of making his residence in Gloucester, with the exception, already noted, of his visit to England, Mr. Murray adopted a different policy. He became posi- tive and aggressive, in earnest, and zealous for the preva- lence of the theology which he regarded as the true in- terpretation of the gospel. That theology may be thus briefly described : It was trinitarian in its idea of God, and of Christ's nature and relation to God. It was Calvinistic in its theory of the sin of Adam as putting all souls out of harmony with God ; in its doctrine of vicarious atone- ment; in the justice of eternal suffering for all men, and that Christ had borne that suffering in the place of all who should ever be saved. It differed from Calvinism in its theory of the entire human race in its relations to Christ, predicating of all souls what Calvinism predicated of the ' elect only, their indissoluble union with Christ. Relly, whose disciple Mr. Murray was, had, as a Calvinist, worked out a theory which seemed to him to be a satisfactory reason why a transfer of human sin and penalty to Christ could be consistent with the divine law that the sinner and not the innocent should suffer punishment. This theory was that there is such a real and thorough union of Christ with the human race as made their acts his and his theirs. All men, he held, were really in Adam, and sinned in him, not by a fictitious imputation, but by actual par- ticipation ; equally so are all men in the second Adam, "the head of every man," and he is as justly accountable for what they do as is the head in the natural body account- able for the deeds of all the members united to that head. Accordingly Christ, in his corporate capacity, was truly guilty of the offense of the human race, and could be, as he actually was, justly punished for it ; and the race, because of this union, really suffered in him all the penalty which he endured, and thus fully satisfied justice. There Mi 'RRA ) ■ '.V THKOLOG V. 393 is no more punishment, therefore, due for sin, nor any fur- ther occasion for declaring the demands of the law, except to make men feel their inability to obey, and thus compel them to an exclusive reliance on Christ the head. He has efTected a complete and finished justification of the whole world. When man believes this, he is freed from the sense of guilt, freed also from all doubt and fear. Until he be- lieves it, he is, whether in this world or in another, under the condemnation of unbelief and darkness, the only con- demnation now possible to the human race. Those who in this life come to the belief of this com- plete redemption in Christ are, he taught, the elect, who, in consequence of their belief, are filled with joy and peace. Those who go out of this world in unbelief will rise to the resurrection of damnation, filled with despair and gloom, and through ignorance of God's purpose they will " call on the mountains to fall on them and hide them from the face of him who sitteth on the throne"; while the elect, ha\-ing already come to the knowledge of what God's judgment is, will be seated with Christ on the throne of judgment. The Judge will then make the final separa- tion, dividing "the sheep," or universal human nature, from " the goats," which are the fallen angels, and send the latter away "into everlasting fire." Then he will open another book, " the book of life," in which all his members, i.e., universal humanity, are recorded, and having, like Joseph of old, made himself known to his ignorant, unbelieving, and terrified brethren, he will receive them all into " the kingdom prepared for them before the foundation of the world." 1 1 " Life of Rev. John Murray," pp. 397 fF. " Union ; or, A Treatise of the Consanguinity and Affinity between Christ and I lis Church." By James Relly. Providence, R. I., edition, 1782. " Letters and Sketches of Sermons." By John Murray. 3 vols., Boston, 1813. Vol. i., pp. 95, 1 14, 279 ff. ; vol. ii., pp. 222 f., 247 f. ; vol. iii., pp. 351 (T. 394 ^-^^^ UNIVERSALISTS. [Chai-. iv. This very fanciful theory, as it must strike us — but not more fanciful than was the then dominant Calvinistic idea of the union of the elect with Christ, and his literally pay- ing their debt — John Murray accepted and preached. I have stated it briefly, but have, I am confident, given its peculiarities. And whoever understands it cannot fail to see that it thoroughly disposes of a vexed question often raised on the part of many, both Universalists and others, who have but a confused notion of what Murray taught: Whether or not he believed in future punishment? It shows that he believed in no punishment, present or future, to fall on any man for his sins. Severe punishment was due, and justice had exacted it, but it had all been inflicted on Christ, who is strictly and fully a substitute for every man. All men, therefore, would, he taught, on the score of strict justice, be saved from all the penal consequences of sin. His chief contention with Winchester, Rich, Ballou, and other Universalists who taught man's personal responsi- bility for sin and the certainty of personal retribution, was that they made Christ's work of no account, and wholly did away with the necessity of his mission and suff"erings ; and he was greatly distressed that they did not see and teach that Jesus had satisfied all the claims of divine jus- . tice. " I know," he said, " no persons further from Chris- / tianity, genuine Christianity, than such Universalists." As a preacher, Mr. Murray was an extemporizer. From such specimens of his sermons as he wrote out after preaching them, it is evident that his method of preaching was mainly either the combination and weaving together a large number of passages of Scripture, connected only by the slightest verbal relations, or by allegorizing a Scriptural incident or circumstance that supplied him with hints and which he dexterously manipulated into a whole body of divinity. As an example, take his discourse on Exodus INFLUENCE ON CALVINISM. 395 xxviii. 2, "And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother, for glory and for beauty." The argument which he makes is, that Christ is our high-priest, typified by Aaron ; that his garments are all mankind, for he clothed himself with our nature ; that we are all Jioly in him, for he is made unto us wisdom, sanctification, and redemp- tion ; and finally, that his garments, or all mankind, shall be glorious and beaiitifitl. This strikes us as a fantastic treatment of the Scriptures, but it can be matched by many orthodox sermons in that day, the preachers of which saw types of Christ in the furniture of the tabernacle, the regu- lations for the sacrifices, and in the most minute of the Levitical laws. What was the influence exerted by Mr. Murray as a preacher of the theological opinions just described? On the Calvinism of America it was startling and revolution- ary. The prevailing theory of the atonement at that time was wliat is known as the theory of Anselm, formulated A.D. 1 109, and was substantially this: sin is debt, and it is absolutely necessary that this debt should be paid, i.e., that the penalty incurred by the guilt of sin should be suffered ; that this penalty must be inflicted upon the sin- ner in person, unless a substitute can be found having all the legal qualifications for his office. This was alone real- ized in Jesus Christ, a divine person embracing a human nature. Cotton, Edwards, and Owen held that the meri- torious obedience of Christ in fulfilling the law imputes a righteousness to those for whom the atonement secures sal- vation, which gives them a claim to the reward of right- eousness in everlasting Hfe. John Murray showed that the Scriptures represent that Christ's death was for all ; " he tasted death for every man," he is " the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world," he " gave himself a ransom for all," and as the debt had been fully paid, all 396 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. iv. men could justly claim release. Those who held to the debt and payment theory could evade this only as they denied that Christ died for all. In this perplexity, Rev\ John Smalley, of Berlin, Conn., came to the rescue, preach- ing and publishing a sermon in i 785 which bears this title : "Eternal Salvation on No Account a Matter of Just Debt; or, Full Redemption, not Interfering with Free Grace. A Sermon Delivered at Wallingford, by Particular Request, with Special Reference to the Murrayan Controversy." A year later he appeared in print again, with this title-page: " The Law in All Respects Satisfied by Our Saviour, in Regard to Those Only who Belong to Him; or. None but Believers Saved through the All-Sufficient Satisfaction of Christ. A second Sermon, Preached at Wallingford, with a View to the Universalists." This new departure of Calvinism, and what it effected, is .thus stated in the " Bibliotheca Sacra " for January, 1889 : " With reference to the idea derived by Relly from Old School theories and expressed in his ' Union,' that salva- tion is a matter of necessity, or put by others in the more sober form, that it is a matter of justice, Smalley proposes to show that ' eternal salvation is on no account a matter of just debt,' and hence a fortiori no mechanical neces- sity. After some preliminary statements in explanation of the meaning of justification, he takes up the redemp- tion wrought for us by Christ for the purpose of showing how it is consistent with free grace in justification. He proceeds to present a new theory of the atonement, which has since been called the New England theory [or the governmental theory], and which, deriving its leading idea from Hugo Grotius [who first published it in 161 7], teaches that God, in exacting punishment for sins, did not act as the offended party, but as a Ruler, and that consequently the atonement of Christ was not the payment of a debt, INFLUENCE ON CAL17N/.SM. 397 but ' an astonishing expedient of wisdom and goodness that we transgressors might be saved and yet God be just, and his righteous law suffer no dishonor ' — a penal exam- ple making forgiveness consistent with the authority of the government, but in no way establishing a right upon the sinner's part to forgiveness. The great argument of Relly- anism was thus refuted. Smalley had stated it thus : ' God is obliged in justice to save men as far as the merit of Christ extends, but the merit of Christ is sufficient for the salvation of all men; therefore God is obliged in justice to save all men.' The new theory removed the major prem- ise of this syllogism. " Universalism was thus the occasion of the introduction into the world of the New England theory of the atone- ment. In fact, the New England divines could make no other reply. The position that the merit of Christ was sufficient for the salvation of all men, or that he died for" all, seemed too Scriptural to be denied, and indeed never had been except in extreme schools of Calvinism. Upon the old theories of the atonement, Smalley's predecessors in New England had sometimes acknowledged the validity of the idea that the sinner could claim salvation, or that it was a matter of justice, as he proves by quotations from Edwards and Hooker. But these two positions necessi- tated the scheme of Relly and Murray. The only way of avoiding the conclusions was to acknowledge the invalidity of the premise ; and hence it was that all the next follow- ing New England divines employed the new theory of the atonement as the great argument against their Universal- ist opponents." ^ The influence of Mr. Murray's preaching in making con- 1 The fifth of a series of papers on " The Eschatology of the New England Divines," by Rev. J. II. Foster, Ph.D., professor of church history in Ober- lin Theological Seminary. 398 THE UNJ\-EKSALISTS. [Chap. iv. verts to Universalism is not easy to estimate. For the first four years of his ministry it could not have been extensive, since, as we have seen, when his real views were suspected or definitely ascertained, he was deserted and censured by many of those who had on first hearing him been his ardent admirers. Within ten years from thai time of his settlement in Gloucester, seven other preach ers of Universalism had arisen in Americaj and if we also' count Rev. John Tyler, an Episcopal rector in Norwich, Conn., there were eight. But Mr. Tyler never desired to be considered other than an ^Episcopalian ; and as late as I 798, when he published his views, he preferred not to be known as the author of the book in which they were set forth. Of the seven openly avowed preachers of Univer- salism, only one. Rev. Noah Parker, of Portsmouth, N. H., advocated the Rellyan theology. Mr. Parker died in 1787, •whereupon Mr. Murray wrote to a friend : " I do not know of a single preacher in this countr}^, if I except Mr. Tyler, of Connecticut, who is with me in sentiment respecting gospel truth." And after briefly characterizing the views j of Mr. Winchester, he added: "I am, I do assure you, | beyond expression distressed." As early as 1783 Mr. Murray, while on a visit to Phila- delphia, had preached in Mr. Winchester's pulpit, but he records that " a greater part of his congregation are ene- mies to me," i.e., to his theology. Indeed, I think I am warranted in saying that, after other Universalist ministers began their preaching of Universalism on other than the Rellyan basis, Mr. Murray had no considerable following except in the localities where he was personally employed. The impression, therefore, made by his theology on the body of Universalist believers was ephemeral. He was \ present at the organization of the Association in 1785, formed for the purpose of securing the rights of Univer- , IXFI.rEXCE ox iXJlEKSALISTS. 399 salist societies in their legal struggle with the established parishes, and at its final session two years later. He was also in attendance at the New England Convention wheni it was organized for more strictly ecclesiastical purposes ill 1793. as also at the sessions in 1795 and 1804, but at no other session. At his last attendance he was very much distressed that he stood alone in his Rellyanism, and greatly disturbed the harmony of the occasion by the manifestation of a bitter spirit toward those who held other: views. "Brother Murray," wrote Rev. George Richards,! in a letter making mention of that session, " is a little like/ Ishmael. His hand is against all the Convention." Mrs/ Murray, in her continuation of her husband's " Memoirs," says that " in the last stage of his pilgrimage he fre- quently regretted that his attendance upon this Conven- tion had not been more uniform; as he might possibly, \ by his years and experience, have met and obviated the ] difficulties which distressed him." At Mr. Murray's death, Rev. Paul Dean, his colleague, and Rev. Edward Mitchell, of New York, were the only known advocates of the Rellyan theory. The former sub- sequently became a Unitarian preacher, and the latter held himself wholly aloof from the Universalist denomination, and on his death his church became dormant. Gloucester, Boston, and Philadelphia were probably more : influenced by Mr. Murray's views than were other locali-' ties. His labors in the first two places were constant, and his intermittent work in the last was more frequent than elsewhere. I^Some form of organization was made in ) these places and also in Portsmouth, N. H., which gave the work a permanence unknown in other localities where his visits were few. What were called " Articles of Associa- tion : Association of the Independent Church in Glouces- ter," were drawn up and subscribed on the 1st of January, 400 rilE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. iv. 1779, by four men and eleven women who had been sus- pended from the First Parish Church in Gloucester " for absenting themselves from the worship and ordinances of God in his house," and becoming regular attendants on the preaching of Murray. This is generally regarded as the earliest form of organization by American Universal- ists. They called themselves " a true independent Church of Christ " ; agreed " to walk together in Christian fellow- ship " ; " as far as in us lieth, to live peaceably with all men " ; " to receive as our Minister, that is, our Servant, . . . our friend and Christian brother, John Murray"; " but should he at any time preach any other gospel than that we have received, we will not wish him God- speed, but consider him as a stranger." They further agreed, since they recognized the fact that Mr. Murray must often be away from them, preaching in other places, that, " whether blessed with the public preaching of the Word or not," they would meet together as often as con- venient, for religious worship, and " once every month to 1 hold conference, and to deliberate on whatever may tend \ to our mutua.l profit." ^ This instrument seems to have been rather a declaration of intention to keep together, than a form or mode for cre- ating an organization. In the records it is neither accom- panied nor followed by any minute of proceedings. Nearly I ,two years after signing this agreement the original signers, " and several added associates, dedicated and took possession of a house of worship, viz.,, December 25, 1780. Before this date they had held meetings in private houses, chiefly "in the spacious parlors of the house" of Winthrop Sar- gent. Mr. Murray had been absent several months in the army as chaplain of the Rhode Island Brigade, and fre- quently on extensive preaching-tours. But their num- TKOUBLE IN GLOUCESTER. 40I bers had steadily increased, and tlie "spacious parlors" no longer furnished adequate accommodations. The assessors of the First Parish claimed the right, how- ever, to tax all the inhabitants in their territory for the support of their minister, and in i 782 they enforced their demand by seizing and selling. at auction property belong- ing to three prominent members of the Universalist con- gregation. It was at first suggested and urged by some of their associates that the easiest way out of the difficulty "was to obtain a special act of incorporation from the legis- lature. To this it was objected that the Bill of Rights pre- fixed to the newly adopted constitution of the common- wealth covered the case, and that should they " fly to the law-makers instead of that great law made by the people to govern the legislature itself, they should, in their appre- hension, betray their country's freedom and act a cowardly part." They therefore entered suit in the courts, basing their claim on the guarantees of the constitution. These were, as set forth in the 13ill of Rights, that " All religious societies shall, at all times, have the exclusive right of electing their public teachers, and of contracting with them for support and maintenance. And all moneys paid by the subject for the support of public worship shall, if he require it, be uniformly applied to the support of the pub- lic teacher or teachers of iiis own religious sect or denomi- nation, provided there be any on whose instruction he attends." The application of this provision to this par- ticular case was denied by the First Parish, on the ground that the congregation of Mr. Murray was not a church or religious society — " not being incorporated by any order or authority known in this commonwealth — but a mere jum- ble of detached members;" nor was Mr. Murray a teacher of religion, but was to be regarded as one who, " without a 402 THE UXIVERSALISTS. [Chap. iv. character, credentials, or ordination, has assumed the char- acter of a pubHc teacher of piety, religion, and morality, and styles himself clerks The first suit instituted was withdrawn, as it was found necessary to bring it in the name of the religious teacher from whom the money had been diverted. To this Mr. Murray strenuously objected. His " reluctance to this step," says Mrs. Murray, " was decided and affecting. He had passed through the country without allowing or accepting contributions ; and to be considered a prosecutor for moneys said to be due to h\m for preaching the gospel, which he had determined to promulgate free as the light of heaven! — the very idea was a stab to his long-cherished feelings." Becoming convinced that the issue affected not simply himself, but every religious denomination in the commonwealth that was not of " the standing order," and also that persistence in his refusal was a sacrifice of the personal interests of his friends and a cowardly giving up of a constitutional right, he at last had the suit brought in his name. It came to trial in 1783, and was continued by appeal and review until 1786, when it was decided in favor of Mr. Murray. At the trial in 1785 the court ruled! against him, giving it " as their full opinion that no teacher but one who was elected by a corporate society could recover money paid by his hearers to the teachers of the parish." The jury gave a verdict contrary to this ruling, and so a review of the case was ordered. At that trial Judge Dana declared that he had changed his opinion as to the meaning in the clause of the Bill of Rights on which the suit was brought. " He had heretofore been of opin- ion it meant teachers of bodies corporate ; he then thought otherwise. As the constitution was meant for a liberal purpose, its construction should be of a most liberal kind/ It meant in this instance teachers of any persuasion what- OXFORD ASSOC J A 71 OX. 403 ever, Jew or Mohammedan. It would be for the jury to determine if Mr. Murray was a teacher of piety, moraUty, and religion. That matter, he said, had, in his opinion, been fully proved. The only question, therefore, before them was, if Mr. Murray came within the description of the constitution and had a right to require the money. ' It is my opinion,' he decidedly declared, * that Mr. Mur- ray comes within the description of the constitution, and has a right to require the money.' "^ The verdict of the jury was that " the judgment obtained the preceding year was in nothing erroneous." This decision secured the legal rights not only of Universalists, but of Episcopa- lians, Baptists, Presbyterians, and all other sects as well. In 1 790 a case from some other quarter was brought into court and the decision of 1786 was reversed by a ruling that " a resident of a corporate parish could not divert the tax imposed on him for the support of religious worship to maintain an unincorporated society." The Gloucester Universalists then obtained an Act of Incorporation. While Mr. Murray's suit was in the courts, a newly organized society in Oxford, Mass., feeling that they were concerned in the issue, sent out, July 21, 1785, letters to believers in various localities urging a conference or con- vention, saying " that our strength depends on our being cemented together in one united body, in order to antici- pate any embarrassment of our constitutional rights." A meeting was agreed upon and held on the 14th of Sep- tember. Mr. Murray wrote to a friend that he was to be present, and that the meeting was " for the purpose of deliberating upon some plan to defeat the designs of our enemies, who aim at robbing us of the liberty wherewith the constitution has made us free." Toward the last of the month he again wrote : " Well, I have been to Oxford, 1 " Life of Murray," p. 335 f. 404 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. iv. and the assembly convened there was truly primitive. We deliberated, first, on a name ; secondly, on the propriety of being united in our common defense ; thirdly, upon the utility of an annual meeting of representatives from the different societies ; and fourthly, upon keeping up a con- stant correspondence by letter." There were present Rev. Messrs. John Murray, Glouces- ter ; Caleb Rich, Warwick ; Adams Streeter, Milford ; El- hanan Winchester, Philadelphia. Laymen were present from Boston, Milford, Bellingham, Oxford, Taunton, Mass., and Providence, R. I. Mr. Murray brought with him a form for society or parish organization which had been adopted by the Gloucester Universalists, a week previ- ous, entitled a " Charter of Compact." It was an instru- ment with provisions for business meetings, officers, rais- ing money by voluntary subscriptions for the " purpose of supporting a teacher or teachers of piety, religion, and morality, and for the purpose of assisting poor and dis- tressed brethren," and an agreement to afford all necessary legal measures for the relief of such as should be unlaw- fully persecuted for choosing their own religion. The name selected was " Independent Christian Society com- monly called Universalists." The Association voted its approval and recommended the " Charter of Compact " as the form of organization for all societies. It was also agreed to propose to their constituents " the propriety of an annual meeting, and that the first be held in Boston the second Wednesday in September, 1786." In a short time the " Compact " was adopted by the societies in Milford, Oxford, and Warwick. Boston Uni- versali.sts did not adopt it. It is probable that they had an organization of some kind before the meeting at Ox- ford, but no records are found of earlier date than Janu- ary I, 1786. Taunton and Providence had no organization MR. MURRAY IN BOSTON. 405 until several years later. The Milford Universalists were organized as early as August, i 785. The Warwick organ- ization will be described hereafter. There is no record of the meeting of the Association in 1 786. A session was held at Milford in 1787, which was probably the last. At all events, there is no mention of any subsequent session. Late in the year i 786, on request made by the Boston Society, the Gloucester Universalists released Mr. Murray the third Sunday in each month, and he thus supplied at Boston until 1793, with the exception of absence in Eng- land from January to July, 1788. The occasion of this visit abroad was his being prosecuted and fined for per- forming a marriage ceremony, the Supreme Court ruling that he had not been ordained. The legislature alone could remedy the matter, but as it did not convene until I'^ebruary and he was liable to a suit for each of his many marriage ceremonies, he went to London. The legislature passed an indemnifying act in the following March. Mr. Murray and his people contended that to appoint and set apart a minister was ordination without further ceremony. The courts ruled that such an act was not sufficiently pub- lic. After his return from England the society gave him formal ordination and published an account of it in the " Columbian Sentinel," printed at Boston, thus giving it all required publicity. The movement in Boston assumed such importance and wakened so much interest that Mr. Murray could not re- sist the importunity of the church there to give them the benefit of his undivided attention and residence among them. Accordingly he reluctantly left Gloucester and be- came a resident of Boston in 1793. Until October, 1809, he continued in the active discharge of his duties. Stricken on the 19th of that month with paralysis and from that time utterly helpless in body, his mind remained clear, his 406 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. iv. faith undaunted, and his desire for release from bodily in- firmity constant ; and he joyfully put on immortality on the 3d of September, 18 15. His wife thus speaks of his tnental occupation in his days of physical weakness: " His Bible was his constant companion. Seated by his affec- tionate assistant in his easy-chair, and the Book of God opened before him, the man of patience, during six suc- ceeding years, passed the long summer mornings, from the sun's early beams, in examining and reexamining the will of his August Father. He had, through a long life, been conversant with a variety of English authors. Poets, dramatic writers, essayists, and historians were familiar to him ; he took great delight in perusing them. But travel- ing through those multiplied pages might be termed his excursions, while the sacred volume was his intellectual home." A scurrilous letter, written by an eminent New England clergyman not long after Mr. Murray's arrival in America, made some vile insinuations in regard to his moral char- acter and spoke of him slightingly as a man of no educa- tion. He promptly called the writer to an account, and endeavored to meet him and induce him to retract " the false and scandalous reports he had sent out " ; but, said Mr. Murray, " no arguments made use of by his best friends could bring him to my face. He told them, in- deed, that he was sure he said no Jiarni of me ; and that if he had said anything to my disadvantage, he was ready to ask my pardon ; that he wrote to Mr. Forbes in confi- dence, not expecting that I would ever hear of it."^ It was impossible, however, to wholly stay the influence of such a libel, and although his moral reputation suffered very little thereby, he came to be generally regarded, even ^ See " Answer to an ' Appeal to the Impartial Publick,' " and Mr. Murray's Broadside in Reply. Both publislicd in 1785. A.V EFFECTIVE PIONEER. 407 by Otherwise liberal-minded men, as illiterate. Personal acquaintance always corrected this impression, but those who never met him were, of course, most numerous, and their opinions have prevailed in some quarters to the pres- ent. In fact, his education was good for his day, his abili- ties were in certain directions quite remarkable, and his moral and Christian character was of a high order. And while he never to any great extent nor for any great length of time stamped his opinions and methods upon the denomination which he did so much to call into being, the Universalist Church regards him as entitled to a large place in its remembrance and esteem. He was a much needed and an effective pioneer ; and the results which we rejoice in to-day show that he laid the foundation on which others have planned, aftd builded better than he knew. CHAPTER V. ELHANAN WINCHESTER AND CALEB RICH. As early as 1771 Mr. Murray had visited Philadelphia, and until his removal to New England, three years later, he often preached there. Anthony Benezet, Christopher Marshall, and Thomas Say, prominent Philadelphians, were his personal friends ^ and sympathized with him in belief in Universalism, though evidently not wholly accepting its Rellyan foundation. After 1774 his visits were less fre- quent, but were not wholly given up, and many were con- verted by his preaching. No organization resulted from these labors. This came from another and unexpected source, the conversion and labors of Rev. Elhanan Win- chester. Mr. Winchester, a native of Brookline, Mass., born Sep- tember 30, I 75 I, was ordained by the " Open Communion Baptists " as pastor of a church of that faith in Rehoboth, Mass. Before the year closed he had adopted the plan of close communion, and ere long he renounced Arminian sentiments and became one of the most thorough Calvinist preachers in the country.^ He continued to preach in various parts of Massachusetts until the autumn of 1774, when he took a journey to South Carolina and became minister of the Baptist Church of Welsh Neck. Here he had put in his hands a copy of Siegvolck's " Everlasting Gospel," with a request to tell the lender " what it meant 1 A. C. Thomas's " Century of Universalism," p. 23 f. My " Universalism in America," vol. i., pp. ^;^, 406 ff. 2 Stone's " Life of Winchester," p. 23. 408 PHILADELPHIA BAPTISTS. 409 to hold forth." " When I had satisfied my friend in that respect, I laid the book down, and I believe we both con- cluded it to be a pleasant, ingenious h}-pothesis, but had no serious thoughts of its being true ; and for my part, I determined not to trouble myself about it, or to think any more of the matter." Returning from a vacation spent in New England in the early fall, i 780, he paused a few days in Philadelphia, and the First Baptist Church there being destitute of a pastor, and anxious to secure his services, he remained. Crowds were attracted by his eloquence. Soon the house of wor- ship was insufficient to accommodate the congregation, and the largest church edifice in Philadelphia was opened for him. Soon another copy of " The Everlasting Gospel " fell in 'his way, and this time it was read and studied. Before long he obtained access to Sir George Stonehouse's treatise on " Universal Restitution," and conviction of the truth of lUniversalism w\as wrought in his mind. I"or a while he ut it was an interpretation defended by drotius, Whitby, and others. 2 " Life of Rev. Ilosca Ballou," vol. ii., p. 28. 3 " Universalist Magazine," vol. iv., p. 126. 448 THE UNI \-KKSA LISTS, [Chap. vii. place until this^in 1817. And I may as confidently add, that no general interest in the subject had been manifested by Universalists. While the Ballon and Turner discussion was in progress, Rev. Jacob Wood put forth a pamphlet entitled " A Brief Essay on the Doctrine of Future Retribution," in which he combated with ingenuity and commendable fairness the two opposite doctrines of endless punishment and no future punishment, and advocated a limited punishment for sin beyond the grave. After quoting sharp and bitter state- ments from Relly and Chauncy, to the effect that the doc- trine of no future punishment gives " encouragement to sin," Mr. Wood added: " I will not call those who believe in this system * stupid animals, and regret the time spent in writing to them,' as a modern Universalian writer has,^ but I really think the opinion very erroneous. The many gross absurdities to which the doctrine of immediate uni- versal salvation is liable, and the vicious effects which it is calculated to produce, render it a doctrine justly deserv- ing of disapprobation and contempt." This language roused bitter feelings in the minds of the believers in no future punishment, and was character- ized by Rev. Dr. Hosea Ballon, 2d — a believer in future punishment — as "harshness." And he pertinently asked, " Who can produce so severe and contemptuous an ex- pression as this in all that has been written against future punishment?" Unfortunately, it was afterward imitated by several writers on both sides of the controversy, who strangely mistook invective for rational criticism. The discussion between Mr. Ballon and Mr. Turner ceased, as has been said before, when the publication of the "Gospel Visitant " was suspended. In 1819, when ^ Rev. Dan Foster, in his examination of Rev. Nathan Strong's " Doctrine of Eternal Misery Reconcihil)le with the Infinite Uenevolence of God," etc. UNITARIAN ATTACK. 449 the publication of the " Universalist Magazine " — the first weekly journal of the denomination — began, Mr. Ballou took the editorial charge. It was expected and desired by those who agreed with him in regard to no future pun- ishment, that he would make the paper a very pronounced exponent of these views. The expectation was also shared by those from whom he dififered. Both parties were dis- appointed. He was not a man to stir up strife, and had no desire to wound the feelings of any of the household of faith, whatever their opinions might be with regard to God's time and method of reconciling all souls to himself. The editor of the " Boston Kaleidoscope," in his paper of July loth — one week after the first issue of the " Uni- versalist Magazine " — made an attack on Universalism and propounded four questions to which he solicited answers. One of the questions was so framed as to involve in its consideration the doctrine of no future punishment. The editor was a Unitarian, and the next week after making this attack issued an address " To the Public," in which he announced that the first page of his paper would, in future, be devoted to the explaining and defending of " what is now called rational and liberal Christianity, as distinguished from Roman Catholicism, Calvinism, Hop- kinsianism, Universalism, and Deism." Mr. l^allou's an- swers to the four questions were unambiguous, but cour- teous, moderate, and in no sense offensive. His treatment of the proposed defense of " rational and liberal Christian- ity " was thorough and manly. He would be ready, he said, to abandon Universalism when it should be shown to be either unreasonable or illiberal ; and he desired the editor of the " Kaleidoscope " to show, if he could, any- thing that was more " liberal and rational than Universal- ism." The contnnersy continued about three months, and the mild and considerate manner in which Mr. Ballou 450 THE INIVEKSALISTS. [Chap. vii. conducted his part is manifest in a remark made by the editor of the " Kaleidoscope," in August, that he had not been able to understand whether " Mr. Ballou believes in any future punishment, or none at all." And he added: " If he merely believes the ^ final restoration,' so called, he stands on very dififerent ground from what we have sup- posed. Till this point is ascertained, we dfeem it useless, if not worse, to continue the controversy. If not incon- sistent with his views and feelings, we respectfully request him to inform us and the public on this point." We give nearly in full Mr. Ballou's reply, as indicating the manner and spirit in which he conducted his part of the discussion with an outsider, and also as a specimen of the mildness and candor with which he always championed his views on this subject : "There seem to appear some strong intimations in what he has here stated that he has no objection to the doctrine of the salvation of all men finally, if a future pun- ishment be allowed for a time. He says, * If he merely believes the final restoration.' This form of expression would indicate that he has no particular objections to make if this be the doctrine. Well, we will receive him on this ground with all cordiality. If he will allow that all man- kind shall finally be reconciled to God, love and enjoy him through the power of his grace revealed in him who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time, we will not disagree about the times and seasons, which God holds in his own power, nor will we disagree on the quan- tity or duration of that chastisement which our heavenly Father may administer for the sinner's profit. " But he says if we allow any future punishment we stand on ' very dififerent ground ' from what lie expected. We will endeavor to show him and our readers that the ground or prineiple is the same in both cases — that is, the MA'. B ALLOC S A A 'S 1 1 LiK. 4 5 l Universalist who believes that this mortal state, in flesh and blood, is the only state of sin and misery, stands on the same principle as does his brother who believes that there may be a state of future discipline which will event- uate in bringing all sinners to a state of holiness and hap- piness. " Neither difference respecting the time when the crea- ture is to be made happy, nor the particular means by which tliis event is brought about, makes the least differ- ence in principle. Two brothers, sons of the same father, may perfectly agree in their sentiments respecting their parent. They both believe that he will not fail to give them all the instruction they need, that his discipline over them is all designed for their benefit, and yet they may entertain different views respecting time and means. One may think that they are to be kept at school until they are eighteen, the other may be of the mind that they are to be continued under tutors and governors a year longer; yet both believe that their father knows best and will order their concerns according to his own wisdom and goodness. He who believes that all sufferings end with this mortal state, and he who belie\'es that they end at the expiration of any other period, differ only as it respects time, not as it respects principle, for both believe that all discipline is for the good of the punished, and therefore the sentiment is the same. " But the editor of the ' Kaleidoscope ' thinks it may be worse than useless ' to continue the controversy ' until we decide the question whether we believe in future pun- ishment or not. But why should this be the case? Our controversy is not concerning the question which he here states; we may say, with propriety, that this question has no immediate concern with the subject of our controversy. He had promised to explain and defend ' rational and lib- 452 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. vii. eral Christianity,' as distinguished from Universalism ; and we have endeavored to keep him to his promise, but we do not succeed ; and we think his sagacity has made the discovery that we were right in our opinion that he never would fulfill his promise. " On a subject so vast, of such infinite importance as the one embraced in his promise, to discover any desire to avoid coming directly to the main question, in the most direct manner for decision, is a defect of such a character as gives us very disagreeable sensations.. What has he answered to the numerous arguments which we have brought to disprove his statements ? Nothing. What has he even pretended to say against universal salvation that we have not fully refuted? Nothing. What next? A new question is started: Do we believe in future punish- ment or not ? Why does not our friend act on the noble principle which would lead him to say, ' I cannot prove, either by Bible or reason, that all men may not finally be saved, but I think that future limited punishment may be supported.' Then if we disagreed at all, it would not be on principle, it would only be concerning times, ivays, and means. "... But, after all, will it do to answer the question? There would be no danger if we could say we believe in a state of. future punishment — that is, if no one would call on us to prove it from the Scriptures. But there lies the difficulty. We are sensible that we cannot prove that sin and misery will exist in a future state of being." At a later date, in the first volume of the " Magazine," Mr. Ballou, in response to a request for an exposition of the passage relating to Christ's preaching to the spirits in prison, republished the letter which originally appeared in the " Gospel Visitant " in connection with his discussion with Mr. Turner. In the second volume, a synopsis of CHANGE OF ED I TORS. 453 one of his sermons was published, in which were less than twenty lines on the subject of no future punishment.- These, I believe, were the only instances in the first two volumes of his paper in which he advocated his views of this subject. He had now been pastor of a rapidly grow- ing church in Boston since 181 7, and finding his health and strength unequal to the extra work which the editing of the " Magazine " imposed, he withdrew from the edi- torial charge. Mr. Henry Bowen still remained the pub- lisher, " and the paper was then very unwisely put into the hands of an individual by the name of Foster, who had been improperly recommended to Mr. Bowen ; for he was utterly ignorant of Universalism and every other kind of theology, and unfit in every respect for such a post." ^ Under this incompetent management the columns of the paper were soon largely taken up with a crudely conducted and provoking discussion of the future-punishment ques- tion. Before the volume closed the publisher felt com- pelled to make a change in its editorial supervision, and announced that " the Rev. Hosea Ballou, of Boston, the Rev. Hosea Ballou, 2d, of Roxbury, and the Rev. Thomas Whittemore, of Cambridgeport, would edit the paper in future." Mr. Whittemore was in full aQCord in sentiment with the senior editor on the controverted subject, while Rev. H. Ballou, 2d, a grand-nephew of the senipr I^allou, for whom he had been named, was, as we have said before, a believer in future punishment. The unhappy conse- quences of the injudicious management of the paper in the past ten months could not now be averted by change of editors. It is a fact beyond all dispute that some of the participants in the discussion on the future-punishment side were determined on having their views indorsed as the views of the denomination at large, and all opposing 1 " Early Days of Thomas Whittemore," p. 31 1. 454 ^-^^-^ UNIVEKSALISTS. [Chap. vii. views put under ban. While Mr. Foster was editor they had held a meeting to deliberate on the matter, but had deferred action until Mr. Ballou was again in charge. Sub- sequently Rev. Messrs. Jacob Wood, Edward Turner, Paul Dean, Barzillai Streeter, Charles Hudson, and Levi Briggs met and joined in issuing an " Appeal and Declaration," " signed, by the request and in behalf of others," by Jacob Wood ; the names of the others being for a while, until discovered by Mr. Ballou, withheld from the public. Rev. Messrs. Briggs, Hudson, and Streeter afterward disclaimed any agency in writing or publishing the " Appeal," which proved to be an announcement of a personal grievance of Mr. Wood's, while the " Declaration " was a setting forth of the doctrinal views of Mr. Wood and the five others who met with him. Mr. Wood was not a man of sufficient ability and influ- ence to have occasioned particular notice in this contro- versy. He became the mouthpiece and the not unwill- ing tool of Mr. Dean, the colleague and afterward the suc- cessor of Rev. Mr. Murray, in Boston. Mr. Dean was at the bottom, and wholly for personal reasons, of this attempt at division and ostracism. Long jealous of Mr. Ballou's suc- cess, he had declared to the latter — who had been invited by some of Mr. Murray's dissatisfied hearers to settle in Boston some years before Mr. Dean came there, and had replied that he would not during the lifetime of Mr. Murray do anything that could possibly disturb his relations with any of the people — that should he ever accept an in\'ita- tion to come to Boston he " should consider it a breach of fellowship and treat it as such." Mr. Ballou delayed the starting of a new church in Boston until Mr. Murray had been two years dead. From that time on Mr. Dean was his enemy. He withdrew from the fellowship of the con- vention in 1823, and started a new movement in Boston. THE KKSI'ORATIONISTS. 455 Further details concerning this future-punishment con- troversy within the denomination are omitted here. Tliey are given in full elsewhere, as indorsed by the survivors in 1885, as fair and accurate in statement.' In 1831 the L- dissatisfied seceded and set up a new denomination, organ- ' izing as the " Massachusetts Association of Universal Res- torationists." Eight clergymen were in the movement. Their last meeting was held in 1841, when the organization was dissolved. During the ten years of its existence the ministers either in fellowship or otherwise openly avowing sympathy with the movement numbered thirty-one against five hundred who stood by the Universalist name and con- vention. At its dissolution some returned to the Univer- salist fellowship, some found a congenial home with the Unitarians, and a few threw all their time and energy into the Reforms, particularly the Antislavery Reform. The secession was a mistake and a disappointment and failure. It was participated in by a far less number of believers in future punishment than remained in the Uni- versalist denomination, who failed to see any cause for a division. They were convinced that any question of this nature was of secondary consideration, and that the cause of truth could not be helped by divided energies and internal dissensions. The opinion of the senior Ballon all through the controversy, although not approved, -was, they thought, one that did not deserve the censure and bitter opposition with which the seceders visited it. However younger men who sympathized with his views may have matched the invective and bitterness of those who opposed him, they recognized his great fairness and honesty of opinion, and the charitable manner in which he treated the views of all. Freedom of difference of opinion oh this sub- ject he not merely tolerated — he pleaded for and demanded 1 See my " History of Univcrsalisni in America," vol. ii., pp. 260 ff. 456 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. vii. it. He was misrepresented and his theory was called by- ugly names, and such instances of it as came to his knowl- edge he replied to courteously, fairly, decidedly, but with- out malice. The seceders indulged in gross misrepresenta- tion of his views, as was to have been expected ; but out- side the ranks of those who professed belief in the final salvation of all souls, especially among those who prided themselves on being preeminently " rational and liberal," his views were also caricatured. Dr. Channing, even, was among those who gave this interpretation of his opinion : " Moral evil is to be buried in the grave." Mr. Ballou was indignant, and characterized Dr. Channing's assertion as having " the appearance of a canting throw at what he is not disposed to treat with his usual candor." Again, the same eminent divine said that Mr. Ballou and his school ascribe the " power to death of changing and purifying the mind." This was such an egregious mistake, and evinced such ignorance of Mr. Ballou's belief, that it drew from him these words of unmistakable import : " He cer- tainly never heard any of us state such views, nor has he ever read any such statement in any of our writings." " Never," he said, " did we ascribe the power of cleansing from sin to anything but that which the Scriptures mean by ' the blood of the Lamb.' " Whatever may be thought, either by Universalists or by others, in regard to the tenableness of the no-future- punishment views of Mr. Ballou, the fact of his holding them ought to occasion no surprise. The wonder is, rather, that under the circumstances anything less extreme should have been set against the doctrine of eternal suflfering for sin. In the beginning of the present century, and until within a comparatively short time, the Protestant theology con- tained as a fundamental tenet the thought that this world EX TKEME I -IE WS. 457 had no awards either for goodness or for sin. Here the saints are sufferers and the wicked are happy. Rewards for enduring the hardships incidental to Christian Hving and penalties for indulging in the delights of sin belong exclusively to eternity, and the duration of each will be endless. There is nothing here but trouble and sorrow for the righteous, notliing but success and happiness for the wicked. All will be reversed hereafter, and the trouble and sorrow will never end. Murray, Winchester, Ballou, all the early Universalists, were born into this belief. Mur- ray escaped out of it by his mystical union of the race with Christ, by which all suffering was his inheritance in our stead. Winchester projected the severest material sufferings for sinners far into the immortal state, but hap- pily saw an end of them at last. Ballou, whose only text- book was also the Bible, and who was emphatically a man of ojic book, read therein that " the judgments of God are in the earth," that " the wages [i.e., the daily pay] of sin is death," that he " who sows to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption," that " there is no peace, saith my Goci, to the wicked, they are like the troubled sea which casts up mire and dirt"; and from these and kindred declara- tions he was sure that there is retribution for sin here. He also saw that all passages of Holy Writ which seem to teach that punishment is eternal express the thought in words necessarily limited as denoting duration when used elsewhere, and therefore, in themselves, afford no proof of endlessness. He saw, too, that sometimes these words, from their connection, could not be used as denoting in any degree a measure of time, but must stand for its qual- ity only; and setting over against these the unambiguous declarations in regard to the certainty of present retribu- tion, he contended that this latter was the only doctrine of the Bible in regard to punishment. Shall we call it an 458 THE UNIVEKSALISTS. [CiiAi'. vii. extreme view ? Was it really more extreme or more un- justifiably so than that which it combated ? And did it not well and naturally illustrate the saying that " one ex- treme is sure to follow another " ? The attitude of Universalists to-day with regard to this /question of the time and place and duration of punishment of sin may well be given in the language of another. In 1878 the Universalist ministers of Boston, after a friendly discussion continued many weeks at their Monday meet- ings, committed to Rev. Messrs. A. A. Miner, T. J. Sawyer, C. R. Moor, O. F. Safford, and A- St. John Chambre the preparation of a statement which should embrace essential principles held in common by the Universalist preachers generally. Their report, modified as the discussion pro- gressed, finally took shape in the form in which it is here given. The vote on a motion for its adoption stood thirty- three in favor to two against. The negative votes did not denote objections to the points affirmed, but were based on other considerations. This approach to unanimity may be confidently said to indicate the attitude of our church: " We, the Universalist ministers of Boston and vicinity, observing the widespread agitation in the religious world with respect to the final destiny of our race, and more especially of those who die in impenitence and sin, and desirous that our views on this important subject should not be misunderstood, after much earnest thought and prayerful consideration present the following, not by any means as a full statement of our faith, but as indicating its general character: " I. We reverently and devoutly accept the Holy Script- ures as containing a revelation of the character of God and of the eternal principles of his moral government. " 2. As holiness and happiness are inseparably con- nected, so we believe that all sin is accompanied and fol- PRESENT ATTITUDE. 459 lowed by misery, it being a fixed principle in the divine government that God renders to every man according to his works, so that ' though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished.' " 3. Guided by the express teachings of revelation, we recognize God not only as our King and Judge, but also as our gracious Father, who doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men ; but though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. " 4. We belie\'e that divine justice, ' born of love and limited by love,' ^ primarily requires ' love to God with all the soul,' and to one's neighbor as one's self. Till these requisitions are obeyed, justice administers such discipline, including both chastisement and instruction, and for as long a period, as may be necessary to secure that obedience which it ever demands. Hence it never accepts hatred for love, nor suffering for loyalty, but uniformly and for- ever preserves its aim. " 5. We believe that the sal\-ation Christ came to effect is salvation from sin rather than from the punishment of sin, and that he must continue his work till he has put all enemies under his feet, that is, brought them in complete subjection lo his law. " 6. We believe that repentance and salvation are not limited to this life. Whenever and wherever the sinner truly turns to God, salvation will be found. God is ' the same yesterday, to-day, and forever,' and the obedience of his children is ever welcome to him. " 7. To limit the saving power of Christ to this present life seems to us like limiting the Holy One of Israel ; and when we consider how many millions lived and died before Christ came, and how many since, who not only never 1 Rev. Mark Hopkins, D.D. 46i) THE UNIVEKSALISTS. [Chap. vii. heard his name, but were ignorant of the one Hving God, we shudder at the thought that his infinite love should have made no provision for their welfare, and left them to annihilation, or, what is worse, endless misery. And it is but little better with myriads born in Christian lands, whose opportunities have been so meager that their endless dam- nation would be an act of such manifest injustice as to be in the highest degree inconsistent with the benevolent character of God. " 8. In respect to death we believe that, however im- portant it may be in removing manifold temptations and opening the way to a better life, and however, like other great events, it may profoundly influence man, it has no saving power. Salvation, secured in the willing mind by the agencies of divine truth, light, and love, essentially rep- resented in Christ — whether effected here or in the future life — is salvation by Christ, and gives no warrant to the imputation to us of the ' death-and-glory ' theory, alike repudiated by all. " 9. Whatever diflferences in regard to the future may exist among us, none of us believe that the horizon of eternity will be relatively either largely or for a long time overcast by the clouds of sin and punishment, and in com- ing into the enjoyment of salvation, whensoever that may be, all the elements of penitence, forgiveness, and regener- ation are involved. Justice and mercy will then be seen to be entirely at one, and God be all in all." CHAPTER VIII. POLITY — MISSIONS— HISTORICAL SOCIETY. Uniformity in organization and the establishing of a polity acceptable to all has been of slow growth. In the beginning each congregation was radically independent in managing its affairs, and the earliest forms of convention and association organizations did not attempt to abridge this independence. Each society claimed, and at its pleas- ure exercised, all the powers which were claimed by any larger body. In consequence there was frequent embar- rassment and trouble, especially in matters of fellowship and discipline. As early as 1821 an effort was made in the General Convention to remedy this defect, but it en- countered too much opposition to succeed. Six years later a proposal to alter the plan of representation in that body, and to require all associations and State Conven- tions' to adopt the Articles of Belief professed by the General Convention and to be governed by the rules of the General and State Conventions, or such as they may adopt in conformity thereto, was received with unanimous favor, and a committee was appointed to draw up " the outlines of a revised plan for the better government of the Convention, the associations and societies in its fellow- ship." This committee proposed a plan which unfortu- nately attempted to do away with lay representation^ and on its reference to the societies it was disapproved. Some difficulty, growing out of the failure to recognize authority in the General Convention, caused the appointment of a 461 462 THE UNJVEKSALISrS. [Chap. viii. committee to visit the Maine and New York State Con- ventions for the purpose of ascertaining their views of the relations existing between them and the General Conven- tion. The former body replied that it desired to preserve harmony with the General Convention and other conven- tions and associations, but that it regarded itself as " a distinct and independent religious body, having a right to transact its own business without the intervention of any other religious body w^hatever. . . . Our convenience and interest can be better served in entire independency." The New York Convention passed a resolve acknowledg- ing " with pleasure its regard for the General Convention as a sister ecclesiastical body — that we have ever ex- pressed a Christian fellowship for that body, and that we regard each as independent of each other so far as is con- sistent with strict and mutual fellowship." In 1832 the conventions in Maine, New York, and Pennsylvania consented to a reorganization, provided the powers of the new General Convention were advisory only. A revised constitution was therefore adopted in 1833, and the title of the convention Avas changed to " The General Convention of Universalists in the United States"; and it was to be composed of four clerical and six lay delegates from each State Convention. " It disclaims all authority over, or right of interference with, the regulations of any State Convention or minor association, and will only ex- ercise the privilege of advising the adoption of such meas- ures and regulations as in its opinion shall be best adapted to the promotion of the general good of the cause." All that was gained by this revision was the securing of a def- inite instead of an indefinite composition of the conven- tion. The first attempt of the General Convention to avail itself of this "privilege of advising" was in 1838, LACK OF I'M FORM rrV. 463 when it asked " tlie several State Conventions to respect the official acts of discipline of each sister State Conven- tion." This reasonable advice and request was disre- garded, and the denomination at large suffered from its inability to rid itself of unworthy ministers, who, if disci- plined and disfellowshiped in one State, sought, and in some cases obtained, good standing in another State. The experience of difficulties of this nature in Ohio caused an association in that State to memorialize the General Convention in 1841, on the adoption by that body of a constitution and plan of church compact and rules of discipline for societies, associations, and conven- tions. The committee to whom the memorial was referred, with instructions to obtain from each State Convention its approval or otherwise of such action, reported the follow- ing year that but two States — New York and Ohio — had responded, each approving. The committee was contin- ued and instructed to draw up a plan of organization and discipline, and report the next year. No progress was made until 1844, when a carefully drawn plan of the powers and jurisdiction of the General Convention and of the State Conventions and associations was presented. In bringing' it forward, the Rev. T. J. Sawyer, the com- mittee, alluded to the fact that our different organizations, seemingly so regularly graded from the smallest to the largest and most important, were mere names, having in reality no gradation in rank and influence. " For," he said, " the moment we inquire into the more important relations of these bodies, into their respecti\e powers and limitations, we shall be surprised at the chaotic state in which they are found. We shall observe that there is little or no uniformity of action ; that there is no bond of union between especially the State Conventions; no court 464 ^'■^^^' UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. viii. of appeal for them, and indeed, no power to regulate their intercourse or make the acts of one body respected by another ; and finally, no authority to determine many points of practice of universal concernment and of vital interest to the denomination. To account for this anom- alous state it is only necessary to remind you that this body, professedly the highest and the most comprehen- sive, has actually the least power of any, or, more prop- erly, no power at all. . . . As it is now constituted, it seems to me a sad approximation to a mere nullity. . . . In the important matter of granting Letters of Fellowship, including license to preach, it is a well-known and, I may add, a lamentable fact, that we have no general and es- tablished rules, and have no uniformity of action. As a natural consequence resulting from such a state of things, the fellowship of the denomination thus granted is but an indifferent recommendation, and is in fact reduced to its minimum value. . . . We owe it to ourselves, and to the great cause in which we are engaged, to give to our Fel- lowship and Ordination a higher significance than they now possess. And whatever is done should be done, not by State Conventions, but by this body. This is a mat- ter closely identified with our interests and prosperity; it concerns the whole denomination. It does not, therefore, belong to the legislation of particular neighborhoods, nor has it a thousand varying interests in various localities. They who give fellowship in Maine, or Alabama, or Iowa Territory, give what belongs to all of us, as well as to themselves. They speak, not in their names alone, but in ours also, and sign a draft which we are expected to honor in every part of the United States." What the committee proposed was laid over for con- sideration at the next session ; and that it might be thor- oughly understood by that body, a committee of one from INADEQUATE MEASURES. 465 each State was appointed to bring it before the associa- tions and State Conventions at their sessions in the in- terim. The session in 1 845 was largely attended, and the following, slightly modified from the original report of a year before, was made a part of the constitution : " The United States Convention has jurisdiction over the several State Conventions of which it is composed, and may, from time to time, enact such laws for regulat- ing the relations and intercourse of said conventions as the general good of the denomination may require. It may also pass such laws as are necessary to secure a uni- form and wholesome discipline throughout the denomina- tion. It has original and exclusive jurisdiction over the subject of fellowship and ordination, and may prescribe the terms on which fellowship shall be granted and ordi- nation conferred by ail subordinate bodies." At first view it would seem that an important end had been gained by the adoption of this article ; but the con- cession as to what the convention might do became an empty form of permission, which was practically inter- preted as meaning nothing when attempts were made to do anything where uniformity of law and practice was most needed. At the very next session (1846) the rules were suspended at an early hour, to permit the introduc- tion of a resolution to repeal the amendment and restore the original article ; but although this was laid on the table and a committee was appointed to draft " Rules and Reg- ulations governing the subjects of Fellowship and Ordi- nation," they never reported ; and when, in 1847, a protest against this resolution, as interpreted by the Illinois Con- vention, was introduced by a delegate from that body, the General Convention " Voted, That it had never prescribed any rules in regard to the subject of the protest." But a rule had become a necessity, and at that session a com- 466 THE UXII'ERSALISTS. [Chai>. viii. mittee was appointed to report at the next session " some plan of securing uniformity of ministerial fellowship." This committee reported that " e\-ery State Convention should be required to make the recognition and acknowl- edgment of the Bible, as containing a special revelation from God, sufficient, for faith and practice; and also a declaration on the part of every candidate to devote him- self to the work of the ministry, an indispensable condition of granting Letters of Fellowship, or license to preach." This was adopted, with the following annexed penalty : " Any State Convention or association refusing to ac- knowledge the principle embodied in the above Article, or to conform to the unity of action and fellowship therein required, shall not be entitled to the fellowship or privi- leges of this convention." This was at a time when German rationalism was being pressed into notice and the claim was made for it that all so-called " Liberal Christians " should give it acceptance. It was fascinating to a few young preachers, but was emphatically and decisively condemned, in so far as it at- tempted to eliminate the supernatural element from the Christian records, by the denomination at large. When- ever occasion has required, the associations and conven- tions have not hesitated to declare in unambiguous lan- guage that the Universalist Church bows to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and accepts his religion as a revelation from God. Universalists, like all others, must, in order to holding a defensible belief, use their reason and accept whatever is proven true ; but this is very different from assuming that reason is sufficient for discovering every- thing that treats of God in his relation to and his purposes concerning man ; and different, too, from discriminating between what contradicts reason and what is simply above and beyond reason. When the " higher criticism," so A DEFINITE POLITY. 467 called, settles any fact relating to the authorship and date of the contents of the Divine Record, men will be unwise to reject its findings; but at present it has reached no such certainty, and no man can say that he yet has its final word. The masters in it are constantly changing their opinion as to what it has proven, and are probably -a long way from unanimity as to what its final word will be. They are un- wise men in any church who are so eager to tell new things that they treat guesses as discoveries and tentative views as demonstrations. The advice given by some few now among us who are so enamored of novelties as to jump at conclusions which to-morrow may be repudiated by the wise, to lea\-e our work of interpreting and enforcing the truths and duties revealed by the Son of God, as recorded by the Evangelists, and to announce the advent of the " higher criticism," may well be unheeded and unnoticed. Passing by further notices of experiments in seeking uniformity of action, we come to the year 1855, when a new constitution was adopted by the General Convention, in which occurred the following mandatory clause :. the convention " shall adopt such Rules and Regulations as shall be necessary to secure a Uniform System of Fellow- ship and Discipline throughout the denomination. ... It shall also be the ultimate tribunal by which shall be adju- dicated all cases of dispute and dififerences "between State Conventions, and a Court of Final Appeal before which may be brought cases of Discipline and questions of Gov- ernment not provided for nor settled by subordinate bod- ies." In 1859 an effort was renewed to make a " more complete organization of the State and General Conven- tions." From year to year the whole subject was in the hands of committees who were giving much time and labor to its consideration. The coming on of the war greatly hindered their work, as the public mind was pre- 468 THE UNIVEKSALISTS. [Chap. viii. occupied with the affairs of the nation. When at last they reported and their action was ratified by a majority of the State Conventions, an entirely new order of manage- ment was entered upon in 1865. An Act of Incorpora- tion was obtained in 1866, and from that time on to the present the General Convention has been an authority and power, standing at the head of the Universalist organiza- tions and guiding their enterprises. Slight modifications in the form of some of the laws have been made from time to time since 1865, but all with the intent to make more efficient the purpose and work to which the national organization was then committed. The most notable of these was made in the new cast of the constitution in 1870. Under this we now have uniformity in rules of fellowship, ordination, ^nd discipline, the collection of needed statistics, the raising and disbursing of money, and the general management of important church enterprises. The sessions of the convention are now held biennially, and its work in the interim is carried on by a board of trustees. In 1870 occurred the one hundredth anniversary of Rev. John Murray's first sermon in America. It was commemorated by the creation of a fund designated as the Murray Centenary Fund, amounting to $102,228, the income of which is devoted to " the aid of theological stu- dents, the distribution of Universalist literature, church extension, and the missionary cause." Other offerings during the year, which included payment of church debts, building of churches, and endowment of schools and col- leges, aggregated $846,309. The Murray Fund is ad- ministered, with other funds since accumulated, by the trustees of the General Convention. These funds now aggregate $262,259. State Conventions and other mis- sionary bodies hold, in addition to the foregoing, funds MISS/ON TO JAPAN. 469 for home missionary purposes amounting to $360,000, making in all $600,000 for general denominational pur- poses. To assist in the work of the centenary year, the women of the Universalist Church formed an Aid Association and rendered great service. When this work was accomplished they enlarged the sphere of their operations and became incorporated as " The Woman's Centenary Association." Since 1875 they have supported a missionary in Scotland and have also contributed to home missionary enterprises. They have a permanent fund of $12,603, ^'"icl their annual receipts and disbursements are about $4000. They publish a large number of valuable tracts, and are now seeking to organize parish and State auxiliaries. In 1890 the sum of $62,000, one fifth payable annually, having been subscribed, the General Convention estab- lished a mission in Japan and sent out George L. Perin, D.D., missionary in charge, Rev. I. W. Gate and Miss M. C. Schouler, assistants. Subsequently Rev. Clarence E. Rice was added to the corps. Beyond the most sanguine hopes the mission has to the present time won great suc- cess. The results are thus summarized by Rev. Dr. Perin: "A church building with settled pastor in Koji- machi, Tokyo; another church with settled pastor at Shiba, Tokyo. Two preaching-stations with two evan- gelists in Osaka. One preaching-station and regular evangelist at Shizuoka. One preaching-station and one ordained minister at Sendai. One station and one evan- gelist at Okitsu. One church with meeting-house and regular student supply at Hoden, and in all these places regular baptized members of the church. [Baptized con- verts about one hundred and fifty.] In literature we have six tracts, one book, and a regular monthly magazine in the vernacular. In schools we have one theological school in 470 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. viii. Tokyo [ten students], one girls' school in Tokyo, and one girls' school in Shizuoka." ^ Much home missionary work is done by the General Convention in localities where there are no State organi- zations and also in aiding weak State organizations. In addition to and independent of the Woman's Centenary Association, Women's State Missionary Associations exist in California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Wisconsin. At the session of the General Convention in 1834 the Universalist Historical Society was formed. Its object is " to collect and preserve facts pertaining to the history and condition of the doctrine of Universalism ; together with books and papers having reference to the same sub- ject." As incorporated in 1877 the society is "composed of such persons interested in its objects as shall sign its By-Laws, and by the payment of One Dollar become members for one year, Life Members by the payment of Twenty Dollars at one time, Honorary Members for Life by the payment of Fifty Dollars, and Patrons by the pay- ment of One Hundred Dollars." The first president of the society was Hosea Ballou, 2d, D.D. ; its secretary, who has held the office to the present time, Thomas J. Sawyer, D.D. A very valuable library, consisting of over three thousand volumes of books and perhaps an equal number of sermons, discussions, pamphlets, tracts, and man- uscripts, has been collected, and has its present home in the Miner Hall, a building erected for the Divinity School of Tufts College, Massachusetts, by A. A. Miner, D.D. No such collection of works on tlie subject of Universalism, both pro and con, can be found elsewhere. 1 " Our Word and Work for Missions," Boston Universalist Publishing House, 1894, p. 125. CHAPTER IX. LITERATURE — IIVMNOLOGY. The literature created by the agitation of the questions involved in the doctrine of Universalism, both in its de- fense and in antagonism thereof, has been voluminous. Some hints in regard to it in foreign countries have been given in chapters i. and ii. In this country it had reached, in 1886, 2096 titles of books and pamphlets.^ This in- cludes many written and oral discussions, and other polem- ical works ; theological treatises ; books of devotion and for the cultivation of the spiritual life ; histories and historical discourses ; biographies and sermons. To the above enu- meration of titles must be added 182 periodicals, including weekly, monthly, and quarterly papers and magazines. Many of these were short-lived, some were merged in more vigorously sustained publications, a few of which have been in existence from sixty-seven to seventy- five years. Four weekly papers, one semi-monthly, three monthly magazines, and a register published annually since 1836, i"epresent the periodicals now issued. The first Universalist periodical in America was "The Free Universal Magazine," edited by Rev. Abel Sarjent, whose " Unitarian Universalism " has already been referred to. It was in existence only a year, and was issued quar- terly, published part of the time in New York and a part in Baltimore. One of its most prominent contributors 1 See Bibliography a]ipendecl to my " History of Universalism in Amer- ica," vol. ii., pp. 485, 589. 471 472 THE UNIVEKSALISTS. [Chap. ix. was Christopher Marshall, of Philadelphia, eminent among the patriots of his day. The first weekly paper was the " Universalist Magazine," edited by Rev. Hosea Ballon, and issued in Boston in 1819. Under various names it survives to the present and is the " Christian Leader." The first magazine, "The Universalist Expositor," began in 1830, and was published once in two months, edited by Rev. Messrs. Hosea Ballou and Hosea Ballou, 2d. With some interregnums, the publication was continued until 1 840, and it was a valuable medium for conveying to the public important papers which were too lengthy and learned for the weekly papers. It was followed in 1844 by the " Universalist Quarterly," edited by Rev. Hosea Ballou, 2d, for the first fourteen years. After a useful career for the public for forty-eight years, but at a con- tinuous loss to the publishers, its publication was discon- tinued. The first monthly magazine was " The Univer- salist " ; the name soon changed to "The Universalist and Ladies' Repository." For many years this was a very popular magazine and introduced to the public many literary women of the Universalist Church. Its first edi- tor was the Rev. Benjamin Whittemore. Its publication ceased in 1874. The desire for a Universalist Publishing House was long cherished, but no decisive step was taken toward its reali- zation until the last of January, 1862, when a meeting was held to consider the ways and means of establishing " a denominational paper, to be the organ of the Universalists of Massachusetts, and of such other States as shall elect." It was proposed to organize a corporation the total num- ber of shares in which should be two hundred and fifty, an act of incorporation to be sought when the full number of shares had been subscribed. The Executive Committee of the Massachusetts Universalist Convention cordially ruBLisiuNG HOUSE. 473 approved the plan, and the stock was at once taken, the originally proposed amount being enlarged. The stock- holders organized in April, 1862, as "The New England Universalist Publishing House." In 1867 the name was changed, the words " New England " being dropped. One of the early adopted by-laws contained a provision that " When the business of the Corporation shall have paid its expenses and redeemed the stock, the stockholders shall transfer all its rights and interests, in trust, to twenty-one permanent, or Life Trustees, for the benefit of the Uni- versalist denomination. Said trustees to be at first elected by the stockholders, the principle .of selection to be based on the pro rata interest in the subscription list of the weekly paper at the time of said election." This contin- gency was met in 1871. Fourteen members of the first board were from Massachusetts, two from Rhode Island, two from Vermont, and one each from Maine, New Hamp- shire, and Connecticut. A Publication Fund was created in 1873. The total assets of the house are now $200,390. It publishes and owns the titles and copyrights of one hundred and fifty vc^lumes and five periodicals, one of the latter being published in Chicago, 111., where the house has a branch office. From the hymn-books in general use a hundred and twenty-five years ago, it was difficult for Universalists to select any that did not decidedly antagonize their belief. To remedy this difficulty, Mr. Murray published in 1776 a collection originally issued in London, entitled " Christian Hymns, Poems, and Spiritual Songs, Sacred to the Praise of God our Saviour. By James and John Relly." An- other edition, with hymns added by Mr. Murray, was pub- lished in 1782. These hymns were all pervaded with the peculiar Rellyan theology, and many of them were simply arguments, therefore, in rhyme. As a general thing they 474 ^'-^^^ UiVirERSA LISTS. [Chap. ix. were lengthy, some having as many as thirty and few less than seven verses. They were also in very irregular meters, for the most part, and a peculiar tune must have been needed to sing a verse like this : Now, through the Saviour's blood, we prove The Fatlier's heart and nature love. And all our warfare finished ; Nor good, nor bad, as wrought by man, Availeth here; nor rs this plan Added to or diniinish'd. Our bliss Is this : Jestcs lives us, Freely gives us (True the story) All his Sonship, fruits, and glory. In 1784 Mr. Winchester prepared for his congregation who had followed him out of the Baptist Church, a book bearing this title: "A Choice Collection of Hymns from Various Authors, adapted to Publick Worship. Designed for the Edification of the Pious of all Denominations ; but more Particularly for the Use of the Baptist Church in Philadelphia." It was a selection of 150 hymns from former books and was appended to an older collection, by Mr. Winchester, of 204 hymns. At the session of the Philadelphia Convention, 1791, and as the result of a discussion on the desirableness of a collection of hymns that should be acceptable to all the Universalists of the country, a committee consisting of four clergymen and five laymen was appointed to prepare such a book. At once proceeding to their work, the com- mittee had their selections made, and the book agreed upon with a printer by the following November. But cor- respondence with brethren in the Boston church, whose in- CONVENTIOX IIWMX-BOOK. 475 dorsement was desired, but who prefered something differ- ent, delayed the publication, in the hope that differences might be satisfactorily adjusted. The committee desired a book which should give prominence to Universalist doc- trines, while the Bostonians insisted that it should be ex- clusively a book of praise, and not of argument. As no agreement was possible, the convention instructed their committee to proceed at once with the publication. The Boston church issued their book about the same time. The title of the convention book was : " Evangelical Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs ; Selected from Vari- ous Authors ; and published by a Committee of the Con- vention of the Churches believing in the Restitution of All Men." The book contained 192 hymns. About one half were selected from so-called orthodox collections, and the remainder were by Uni\-ersalist writers. Silas Ballou, a layman residing in Richmond, N. H., published a hymn- book in 1785, and several of its hymns are in the conven- tion book. Mr. Ballou could rhyme with great ease, and had made himself quite famous in writing patriotic odes, funeral elegies, and festive songs for social celebrations, but his hymns were deficient in poetic form, and full of argument. Rev. Artis Seagrave, one of the committee, was a man of devout spirit and possessed no little poetic taste. He contributed twenty-one h}-mns to the collec- tion. One of the best was the following, to be sung at closing a session of the convention : Dear Lord, we now must part — A parting Messing give : With thy rich love fill every heart, That we in love may live. And though we're far away, May we unitelier before un- known Universalist authors. Our space does not permit a special notice of but one more : " Hymns for Christian Devotion ; especially adapted to the Universalist Denomination. By J. G. Adams and \\. II. Cliapin." The compilers were well fitted for their work, which they brought out in 1846, and which, ha\-ing passed through about seventy editions, is still in use in many congregations. It contained over a tiunisand well- 480 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. ix. selected hymns, many of them from later Universalist writers than had appeared in preceding hymn-books. Here appears Rev. Dr. Chapin's beautiful Christmas hymn: Hark! hark! with harps of gold, What anthem do they sing? The radiant clouds have backward rolled. And angels smite the string. Glory to God! bright wings Spread glist'ning and afar, And on the hallowed rapture rings From circling star to star. Dr. Adams's hymn of faith : Heaven fs here ; its hymns of gladness Cheer the true believer's way, In this world where sin and sadness Often change to night our day. Mrs. Caroline M. Sawyer's finely expressed prayer: We gather in the name of God, And, bowing down the head, We stretch our waiting hands abroad. And humbly ask for aid. For aid, when o'er the spirit's day, Thick clouds of darkness rest. That we may chase the gloom away, And light the darkened breast. Here, too, first appeared Mrs. Mary A. Livermore's hymn on the reclaiming power of love : Jesus, what precept is like thine, " Forgive, as ye would be forgiven! " If heeded, O what power divine Would then transform our earth to heaven. I/VMX- IVKl TERS. 48 1 Here, also, are hymns from the gifted pen of Rev. Henry Bacon, from Julia A. Fletcher, Mrs. L. J. B. Case, Sarah C. Edgarton, Sir James Edward Smith, and many others whose work has enriched the literature of the Universalist Church. CHAPTER X. EDUCATION — YOUNG PEOPLE. Sunday-schools in America no doubt date from the establishing of one by the branch of the Dunkers located at Ephrata, Pa., in 1740, but discontinued in 1777 in con- sequence of the occupation of the buildings of that com- munity for hospital purposes after the Battle of Brandy- wine. The action of the Philadelphia Convention, 1790, on the subject of schools somewhat model eel after those es- tablished ten years before by Robert Raikes, of Glouces- ter, EnglaiTd, has been mentioned in chapter v., as well as the part taken by Dr. Benjamin Rush in arranging what the convention adopted. This may have some significance in connection with the fact that later that year he held a consultation with Bishop William White, Episcopalian, and Matthew Carey, Roman Catholic, which resulted in a pub- lic meeting called by them in December, at which time a constitution for " The First-Day or Sunday-school So- ciety," of Philadelphia, was adopted. Their object was the same as that of Raikes in his work. After petitioning the legislature in vain for the establishment of Sunday- schools as free schools, they raised the necessary funds for carrying on the work by voluntary contributions. During the first year the number of schools increased to three, containing about two hundred pupils each. Early and persistent efforts were made to use these schools for secta- rian purposes, but they were defeated by the managers. 482 SUNDA Y-SCIIOOLS. 4}i3 By 1816 so many of the patrons had withdrawn their sup- port for the purpose of forming sectarian schools, that the work of the society ceased. It is to be regarded, however, as the pioneer of the continuous Sunday-school enterprise in this country. One month after it began, viz., in April, I 79 1, Oliver Wellington Lane, a school-teacher in Boston, and a deacon in the Universalist Church, opened a Sunday- school in his school-room. This was continued until Mr. Lane's death in 1 793. This was also according to the plan of the Raikes' school, and there is no doubt that it was the first Sunday-school set up in New England. The Universalists of Philadelphia probably did their share in supporting the schools of " The First-Day So- ciety " ; and when it ceased operations, they organized two schools on the .same plan, one for girls, October, 18 16, and one for boys in December of the same year. The children of the very poor were sought out, decently clothed, and well instructed. One of the rules was : " The tutors shall instruct the children in reading, and in committing to mem- ory passages of Holy Writ; They shall enjoin their fre- quent attendance at church, and endeavor to lead them in the path of virtue by pointing out the happiness attending it, and the fatal effects and misery of vice." Applicants became so numerous, teachers so few, and funds so low, that ere long it became necessar)^ to limit each department to fifty .scholars. The first Universalist Sunday-school on the modern plan was formed in the Universalist church in Boston, in 1817, under the ministry of Rev. Paul Dean. When Mr. Dean resigned in 1823, the school became dor- mant several years. Our oldest Sunday-school having un- interrupted existence from the time of its organization in June, 1820, is at Gloucester, Mass. There are now about seven hundred Sunday-schools, with a membership of nearly fifty-nine thousand. 484 THE UNIVEKSALISTS. [Chap. x. During his residence in Gloucester, probably as early as 1780, Rev. Mr. Murray instituted the rite of the Dedication of Children, parents bringing their young children to church and having them received by the minister, and dedicated as God's gift, to his loving service. This ceremony, peculiar to the Universalist Church, has been more or less observed through our entire history, but for many years no particu- lar day was designated for it. On the second Sunday in June, 1856, C. H. Leonard, D.D., then pastor of the church at Chelsea, Mass., instituted " Children's Sunday," a day for the special observance of this rite, and for services par- ticularly adapted to the capacity, needs, and enjoyment of the children of the Sunday-school. The service has been annually observed in that church ever since, and was soon taken up in other Universalist churches. In 1867 the General Convention commended the observance to all, and in 1868 "recommended that the second Sunday in June of each year be named and set apart as " Children's Sun- day." The day is now very generally observed, and has been so designated and used by other Protestant churches. A very serious annoyance to Universalists in the early years of this century arose from the fact that the boarding- schools, academies, and colleges of the land were nearly all controlled by denominations of Christians hostile to the doctrine of universal grace, who often considered it more important to indoctrinate the pupils with their sectarian views than to give instruction in the branches which they had advertised to teach. Not only were pupils compelled by school regulations to attend a particular church, against their wishes and the preference of their parents, but they were also subjected to ridicule for any manifestation of re- spect for the religious opinions avowed in their homes, and were insulted by being compelled to listen to denunciations of those opinions made in the most opprobrious terms, and NICHOLS ACADEMY. 485 by hearing the characters of their parents traduced and aspersed on account of their reHgious faith. The first concerted effort to remedy this grievance by estabUshing schools which should be under more liberal control, was made in 181 4, and continued in the conven- tion and outside until 1819, when report was made to the convention that their committee had succeeded in estab- lishing the " Nichols Academy, in the town of Dudley, Mass." It was arranged that the trustees should be mem- bers of the convention. Every step in this action was doubtless incited by Amasa Nichols, Esq., a successful merchant, and an ardent Universalist of Dudley, who erected in 181 5, wholly at his own expense, at a cost of $10,000, a building for academical purposes. The build- ing was ready for occupation and a school had been opened in it by Barton Ballou, A.M. — a graduate of Brown Uni- versity, class of 1813, and afterward a Universalist preacher — in 1 8 16, when by accidental fire it was destroyed. It was at once proposed to build anew, and outside aid was solicited. In 1818 the new building was so far completed as to be opened for school purposes, and in 18 19 it was in- corporated by the legislature, the corporators being all Universalists. They were in debt, the building incom- pleted, and by the terms of the deed of gift, by Mr. Nichols, were obligated to maintain a school. In 1823 they peti- tioned the legislature for aid, the precedent of aiding such institutions having been long established. The petitioners were given to understand by the Board of Education that, if they would raise and secure to the academy a fund of not less than $2000, their prospects would be good for a grant of half a township of wild land in Maine. This was done, the grant obtained, and the land was at once sold for $2500. With this amount and that from subscriptions, the building was finisliod and improved. At this time the 486 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. x. trustees made a fatal blunder. Overlooking the conditions of support by the convention, as expressed in its votes in 1 8 19, or, perhaps, believing themselves able to change the conditions, the majority of the board reached the conclu- sion that if a portion of their number should be selected from other denominations of Christians, it would be to the advantage of the school in giving it a non-sectarian char- acter. To this Mr. Nichols stoutly objected, but was overruled, and two vacancies in the board were filled by gentlemen not Universalists. Mr. Nichols refused to be reconciled to the change of policy, resigned his position as trustee and the office of secretary, and never after took any interest in the affair of the academy. The majority of the board yielded to annoyances and discouragements, and resigned their positions, and the school soon passed from the control of the Universalists. The subject of a denominational school was agitated in the State of New York in 1831. The plan embraced a literary institution, " not only for general purposes of science and literature, but with a particular view of fur- nishing with an education young men designed for the ministry of reconciliation." At a meeting held in the in- terest of the proposal it was set forth that " the respective boarding-schools, academies, and colleges of this State are exclusively controlled by various Christian denominations hostile to the doctrine of the final holiness and purity of all men ; that in all these institutions the most unwarrant- able means are employed to overawe and control the minds of the pupils ; that they are generally obliged by school regulations to attend a particular church, without respect to the choice of the pupil or the preference of friends ; that they are tantalized by ridicule and menace for avowing respect for principles and doctrines not approved by the managers of the institution ; that they are perpetually in- ACADEMIES. 487 suited by hearini;' the sentiments of liberal Christians de- nounced in the most unfeeling manner and opprobrious terms, and by hearing the characters of their parents or guardians traduced or aspersed on account of their religious faith ; that they are perplexed and harassed with systematic attempts to win them over to the doctrines of a favorite sect. For which purpose the catechism has been substi- tuted for books of science, religious meetings have taken the place of school instruction, and instructresses and teachers of grammar and geography have become lecturers on theology." The project was heartily indorsed by the Universalists of the State, and in November, 1831, the male and female departments of the Clinton Liberal Institute were opened at Clinton, Oneida County. Suitable buildings were soon furnished, and largely under the direction of the Rev. Stephen R. Smith, who may be said to have been the originator of the project, certainly the most persistent and untiring worker for its success, the State was canv^assed for funds, and many pupils entered the school. Like most institutions of its kind, the institute has had its trials, re- verses, pecuniary embarrassments, and fluctuating fortunes. In 1879 it moved to I'ort Plain, where it has well-equipped buildings, a large corps of teachers, and an increasing patronage. Westbrook Seminary, located at Deering, Me., was opened for pupils in 1834, preparation therefor having been begun in 1831. In 1863 its charter was so amended that it was empowered to prescribe a course of study for young ladies equivalent to that of any female college in New ICngland, and to confer the honors and degrees that are generally granted by female colleges. Since that time the title of the institution has been the " Westbrook Semi- narv and I'Y'malc CollcLre." 488 THE UNIVERSALISTS. [Chap. x. The Green Mountain Perkins Academy, at first called the " Green Mountain Liberal Institute," located at South Woodstock, Vt., was opened for pupils in 1848. Dean Academy, in Franklin, Mass., takes its name from Oliver Dean, M.D., its most bountiful patron, who gave at first $50,000 as a permanent fund, and $10,000 toward the erection of a suitable building, together with eight acres of land formerly a part of the farm oi the famous Nathaniel Emmons, D.D. Subsequently Dr. Dean's gifts were very largely increased. The academy has a fine property and is largely attended. Goddard' Seminary was first named the " Green Moun- tain Central Institute." Located in Barre, Vt., it was opened for students in 1870. In November of that year the name was changed, in memory of Mr. Thomas A. Goddard, then deceased, who, with his wife, was deeply interested in our educational enterprises. It is a flourish- ing seminary. An institution called the Throop University, in honor of Hon. A. G. Throop, who endowed it with $200,000, was opened in Pasadena, Cal., in 1891. Subsequently its name was changed to the Throop Polytechnic Institute. By provision of its charter the majority of its board of trustees must always be persons connected with the Uni- versalist denomination. Other schools have been temporarily put in operation by us, but the above-named have alone reached permanence. It formed part of the plan in the effort begun by the convention in 18 14, to make provision for theological edu- cation as well as for secular and classical instruction. To this end a conference was sought with the Western Asso- ciation, at its session in 181 5. Tenacious opposition to a theological institution and to the proposal to give gratuitous instruction to indigent young men, which, it was argued. THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL. 489 had " proved deleterious to other denominations," defeated the effort. In 1827 the General Convention appointed a committee to report a practicable plan for establishing a theological seminary. The committee made no progress, and no further action was had until the session in 1835, when on motion of Rev. T. J. Sawyer, " the subject was recommended to the consideration of the members of our denomination." Agitation succeeded, and the Massachu- setts Convention, at its session in 1840, resolved that it was expedient to act, and appointed a committee to nom- inate " a board of trustees, whose duty it shall be to select a site for an institution, to take a deed thereof in trust for this convention, to raise the funds, and to erect a suitable building, to appoint its principal and other officers," etc. At one of the meetings of this committee, " in consequence of an offer made by Mr. Charles Tufts, of Charlcstown, to make a gift of ten acres on Walnut HilV as a site for the institution," they agreed to call the proposed theological school the "Walnut Hill Evangelical Seminary." The board of trustees named by this committee, organized on the 25th of January, 1841, with Dr. Oliver Dean, president, Rev. Thomas Whittemore, secretary, and Timothy Cotting, Esq., treasurer. An agent. Rev. Calvin Gardner, was ap- pointed to solicit funds for the endowment of the seminary. But the time evidently had not arrived for success. Strong opposition developed as the canvass was pushed, and the records contain no entry after October, 1841. In 1845 Rev. Thomas J. Sawyer, D.D., took charge of the Clinton Liberal Institute, and in addition to his duties as principal undertook to devote two hours each day to the instruction of such students in theology as should at- tend. The instruction was without cost to the students, a pledge having been made that compensation should be ob- 1 The liill now occupied by Tufts College. 490 THE UA' I VERSA LISTS. [Chap. x. tained for Dr. Sawyer by general subscription and a fund of $10,000 should be created for the support of the school. The latter was not done, and the former was very incon- siderable. Still, under manifold difficulties and discour- agements. Dr. Sawyer persevered until the class was sur- rendered in the autumn of 1853. In all, thirty-seven were thus fitted for the ministry. At the present date twelve of this number are in the Universalist ministry, two in the Unitarian, one in the Congregationalist, twelve in secular business, and ten are dead. Some of those in secu- lar business never received ordination. In May, 1847, pursuant to a call issued by Rev. Dr. Sawyer, as advised by prominent Universalist clergymen, a meeting was held in the City of New York for the pur- pose of discussing the question of establishing a college and theological school. It was a meeting of representative men of the denomination, who, after much earnest discus- sion, decided that it was desirable to establish a college to be " located in the Valley of the Hudson, or the Mohawk," and that " the wants of the denomination require the per- manent establishment of a theological school, to be located by a committee " then chosen. The plan for a college was pushed, with results to be mentioned presently ; but the effort in regard to a theological school languished until taken up and forwarded by an educational societ}^ organ- ized in 1852, at a session of the New York State Conven- tion. Subscriptions amounting to a little more than $26,- 000 having been obtained by November, 1854, a committee was instructed to receive " applications from any place thought to be a suitable location for such an institution." Twelve applications with offers of local help were received, and the committee decided on locating the school at Can- ton, N. Y., which had offered a site of twenty acres of good arable land valued at $3500, and \n erect a suitable build- COLLEGES. 49 1 ing at a cost of $i 1,500. The school was opened in April, 1858. Tufts Divinity School, a department of Tufts College, was opened in 1869. A theological department, now called the Ryder Divinity School, was opened in Lombard University in 1881. Tufts College, located in Medford, Mass., was the chief outcome of the discussions at the Educational Convention in New York in 1847. It occupies the site originally pro- posed for The Walnut Hill Evangelical Seminary, and is named for the late Charles Tufts, the donor of the land. His original gift was twenty acres, increased by subsequent gifts to over one hundred acres. The college was char- tered by the legislature in 1852, with power to grant every kind of degrees usually given by colleges, " except medical degrees." This restriction was removed in 1867. A med- ical department was added to the college in 1893. Chief among the benefactors of the college have been Charles Tufts, Dr. William J. Walker, Dr. Oliver Dean, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas J. Goddard, and Hon. P. T. Barnum. Lombard University, located at Galesburg, 111., grew from an effort to establish " a high-school, to be owned, taught, and controlled by liberal Christians." It was orig- inally chartered in 185 i, as the " Illinois Liberal Institute." By an amendment of the charter in 1853, the institute be- came a college. Amended again in 1857, it took the name which it now bears, in honor of Mr. Benjamin Lombard, at that time its largest benefactor. After it had been determined in 1856 to locate a theo- logical school in Canton, St. Lawrence Co., N. Y., it oc- curred to the friends of the enterprise, that as no collegiate institution existed in that section of the State, a college might be established and sustained in connection with the theological school. An Act of Incorporation was therefore 492 THE UNIVEKSALISTS. [Chap. x. obtained, bearing date April 3, 1856, giving legal existence to the institution under the title of "The St. Lawrence University," with power to establish a college and also a theological school, the funds of each to be kept separate. In April, 1859, a collegiate and preparatory department was opened for students fitting for college, or pursuing an advanced collegiate course. In 1865 the preparatory de- partment was suspended and the college proper inaugu- rated, and its first class was graduated. In 1869 the Ohio Universalist Convention authorized its board of trustees and committee on education to pro- ceed to establish a college. A year later, after considering several applications for the location of the proposed college, it was voted that the institution be proffered to the city of Akron, on condition that the citizens of Summit County should legally secure to the State Convention $60,000. In a short time the sum required had been exceeded by several thousand dollars. Being duly incorporated in ac- cordance with the provisions of a general act of the legis- lature, the institution was named " Buchtel College," in honor of its chief patron, Hon. John R. Buchtel, and was opened for students in September, 1872. These thirteen educational institutions are all open to men and to women. They employ 154 professors and teachers, have 1564 students, and possess property and funds aggregating $3,981,037. The Young People's Christian Union of the Universalist Church was organized at Lynn, Mass., in 1889. Its ob- ject is to unite the religious organizations of the young people, which exist under various names, but most of them as Young People's Christian Unions. Their purpose is similar to that of the Societies for Christian P^ndeavor, the King's Daughters, the P^pworth League, and kindred or- ganizations in the churches of other Christian denomina- CONCLUSION. 493 tions — Christian culture and spiritual growth. A national organizer is employed, and local organizers in several of the States having State organizations. There are about 300 organizations in connection with local parishes or churches, and a membership probably aggregating over 15,000. With this brief mention of our youngest auxiliary, we bring this imperfectly sketched history to a close. The Universalist Church, whose story we have thus faintly out- lined, is of American origin, taking its rise in the very birthday of the new nation, and largely helped on in its career by men foremost in the struggle for political liberty. Its fundamental doctrines forbid its standing in any other than a loyal attitude toward a government which cham- pions for the world the rights of man. While it would not immodestly boast, it can rightly claim that its constituency has borne an honorable part in securing and perpetuating the Union, that it has consistently championed the cause of liberty, and that it greatly rejoices that in a land so highly favored, it has been able to plant itself in proclaim- ing to all the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. INDICES. THE UNITARIANS. Abbot, Abiel, 189. Aconzio, Jacopo, 128. Adam Pastor, 76, 77. Adams, John, 175. Adoptianism, i. Aikenhead, Thomas, 144. Albigenses, 2, 3, 26. Alcott, Louisa M., 235. Alziati, Paolo, 61. Am. Unit. Association, 218. Anabaptists, 3, 4, 47, 65, 93, 127. Andover School, 189, 191. Anniversary Week, 216. Anthology Club, 191. Antinomians, 3, 47, 127, 177. Antioch College, 220. Arianism, 2-5, 62, 67, 72, 91, 122, 128, 138, 160, 180, 190. Arminianism, 176, 177, 181. Ashwell on Socinus, 72. Association, 174; of Boston Minis- ters, 178, 212-14; Am. Unit., 318. Augsburg Conferences, 28, 29. Augustinowitz, Paul, his bequest, 1 18. Autumnal Convention, 217. Bacon, 121, 126. Bagshaw against Socinians, 130. Bancroft, ."Varon, 186. Baptism, 3 ; Ser%'etus, 44 ; in Poland, 65, 66, 76 ; in Transylvania, 66. Baptists in ICngland, 4, 122, 123, 147. Barclay, Robert, 137. Barnard, Thomas, 181. Bathori, Christopher, 65, no; Sigis- mund, 113; Stephen, 83, 84, no. Baxter, Richard, 129. Baxterians, 155. Bayle on Socinians, 93 ; Socinus, 66. Bellows, H. W., 223, 225, 232, 241. Belshani, Thomas, 159-161, 192. Bembo, cardinal, on Ochino, 16. Benefit of Christ, n, 13-15. Bentley, William, 182, 183. Berry Street Conference, 215. Berthelier, opp(jnent of Calvin, 42. Bethlen Gabor, 114. Beza, Theodore, 21, 61, 87. Biddle, John, 131-135. Birmingham riot, 158, 159. Blackburne, archdeacon, 149. Blandrata, 61, 62, 64, 65, 85, 104, 107; hostility to David, 110-112. Blasphemy, law of, 128, 133, 144. Bocskai, Stephen, 114. Bohemian Brethren, 75. Bolsec vs. Calvin, 53. Boston Synod (1680), 173. Boston Unitarianism, 187, 190, 194, ! 199, 202. Bostwick on independency, 128. Bowditch, Nathaniel, 184. Bradford's " History," 170. Briant, Lemuel, 175. Brigham, Charles IL, 232. Bristol riot, 164. Buckminster, J., 186; J. S., 187, 190. Bull, George, on trinity, 138. BuUinger, 51, 54, 55. Burke, Edmund, 159. Bury, Arthur, 139. Calvin, 25, 38, 39, 40, 42, 47, 60, 61. Calvinism as a power, 47, 58, 60 ; in Transylvania, 97, 98, 108, 115. Cambridge Platform, 173. Cappe, Catherine, 150, 165. Caraffa, cardinal, 17, 79. 495 496 INDICES. Carnesecchi, Pietro, ii, i6. Carpenter, Lant, 161-164. Channing, W. -E., 190, 193, 195-199, 200, 212, 219; W. H., 233. Charles II., consequences of his resto- ration, 173. Charles V., 6, 16. Chauncy, Charles, 177. Chewney, "Anti-Socinianism," 130. Cheynell vs. Chillingworth, 125, 127. Chillingworth, William, 125. "Christian Disciple," 192; "Ex- aminer," 192, 199, 200. Christology of Valdes, 12; of Me- lanchthon, 31 ; of Servetus, 23, t,t„ 44; of Socinus, 70, 72; of F. Da- vid, 64, III; of Belsham, 160; of Channing, 190. Civil War in U. S., 221. Clarke, J. F., 227; Samuel, 142, 146. Claude of Turin, 2. ' Colonna, Vittoria, li, 17. Commerce, its effect in Salem, 184. Conant, A. H., 223. Consociation, 174, 1S9. Cossacks in Poland, 84, 89. Covenant, Half-way, 172; covenants of New England churches, 170-172. Cranmer, 10, 18. Cromwell: Articles, 129, 130. Cunningham, Francis, 201. Dall, C. H. A., 238. Davenant, Charles, cited, 142. David, Francis, 63-65, 105-112. Dedham case, 194. Deistical Controversy, 146, 148. Dewey, Orville, 203, 241. Dissent in England, 147 ; terms of subscription, 148. Dissenters' Chapels Act, 145, 153. Divinity School (Harvard), 239. Doddridge, 147, 160. Edward VI., 18. Edwards, John, 142; Jonathan, 176; Thomas (" Cangrasna "), 127, Eliot, W. G., 205, 241. Elizabeth, 18, 121-123. Emerson, R. W., 205-207. Emlyn, Thomas, 143, 175. Erasmus, 4, 8, 27. Essex Street Chapel, 152, 153. Familists, 127. Farel, 38, 43. Felix of Urgel, i. Firmin, Thomas, 133, 135. Flaminio, Marcantonio, 11. Fox, George, 137. Free Religious Association, 228. Freeman, James, 185, 186. Frothingham, N. L., 203. Fuller, Arthur B., 224. Gannett, E. S., 199, 200, 204. Gay, Ebenezer, 175, 179. Gentile, Valentino, 62. German Rationalism, 201, 209. Goniondski, 76. Gonzaga, Giulia, 10, 16. Great Awakening, 170, 176. Gribaldo, Matteo, 61. Half-way Covenant, 172, 173. Hartley, 156. Harvard College, 181, 187. Hedge, F. H., 229. Henchman legacy, 188, 189. Henry VIII., 4, 18. Henry of Valois in Poland, 82. Heresies, medieval, 2, 3. Hewley trust, 153. Hill, Thomas, 233. Hollis foundation, 188. Howard, Simeon, 180. Humanists, 4. Hutchinson, Ann, 172. Huxley on Priestley, 154, 158. Improved version of New Testament, 161, 191. Independents in England, 124, 126, 147. Inquisition, 9, 12, 17, 40, 49, 56, 59. Italian Reformers, chap, i., 59; refu- gees in Sw'itzerland, 51, 54, 61. Jagello, royal house of, 78-82. Japan, w'ork in, 239. Jesuits in Poland, 86, 87 ; in Tran- sylvania, no. Joan of Kent, 4. John Casimir, 90. John Sigismund, 63, 104-109. Joseph II. of Austria, 117. Ket, Francis, burned, 123. King, Thomas Starr, 221. King's Chapel, 185. Knapp, F. N., 224. Lardner, Nathaniel, 146, 157. INDICES. 497 Laski (a Lasco), i8, 75. Laud, arclil)ishop, 124, 126. Legate, Bartholomew, 123. Leopoldine Compact, 116. Lewes, John, burned, 122. Lindsey, Theophilus, 149-152. Locarno, exiles of, 54. Locke, John, 142; Samuel (president of Harvard College), 180. Lowe, Charles, 231. Lowell, John, 193. Luther, 4, 29, 58. Mann, Horace, 220. Maria Theresa, 100, 116. Martineau, James, 166-168, 247. Martinengo, Celso, 52, 55. Mary Tudor, 12; her prisons, 18. Materialism (Priestley's), 157. Mather, Increase, 174; Cotton, 176. May, Samuel J., 204. Mayhew, Thomas, 177; Jonathan, 178-180. Meadville Divinity School, 220. Melanchthon, i, 4, 15, 27, 29, 34, 38, 44, 49, 51, 53, 55, 106, 107. Melius, Peter, 108. Milton, 126, 127, 138. Ministers' Institute, 232. Morata, Olimpia, 11. Morse, Jedediah, 188, 191, 192. Murray, John, 182. Myconius, his confession, 52. "Naked Gospel" (Rury), 139. Naples in 1532, 11. National Conference, 225. Necessarianism, 156. New England, antecedents in (chap. viii.), 170-194. New Unitarianism (ch. x.), 221-246. Newman, F. W., 167. Norton, Andrews, 207-209; John, doctrine of atonement, 172. Noyes, G. R., 209. Oblivion, Act of, 134. Ochino, B., 10, 16, 20-23, 55> 6'> 77- CEcolampadius, 30. Ordinance of 1648 against heresy, • 133- Owen, Jolin, 25, 130. Oxnard, of Portland, 186. Paget, John, 118. Pagitt, E., on Socinus, 128. Pagnini's Bible, 36, Paleario, Aonio, 12. Paleologus, James, 109. Park Street Church, 201. Parker, Theodore, 210-214. Peabody, A. P., 205, 241; E., 204. Pearson, Eliphalet (professor in Har- vard College), 187, 188. Penn, William, 137. Philpot, John, 19. Pickering, Timothy, 18 1. Pinczow, Synod of, 62, 85. Poland, 53; chap, iv., 73-96. Pole, cardinal, 12. Polygamy, discussion of, 22. Presbyterian party, 128, 136; Dis- senters, 147, 152, 165. Price, Richard, 152, 154, 156. Priestley, Joseph, 154-159, 187. Prince, John, 182. Prisons, Queen Mary's, 19. Protestant, the name, 28. Przypkowski, S., 50, 92, 94. Puritan, the name, 121, 124. Putnam, George, 204, 241. Pynchon, W., on redemption, 172. Quakerism, 137. Quintana, 28. Racovian Catechism, 70, 88, 95. Rakow (Racovia), 85 ; College, 88, Reformation in 1575, 58. Renata (Renee) of Ferrara, 11, 17. Ripley, George, 208. Sabbatarians in Transylvania, 1 14. Sabunda, Raymond de, 26. I Sacraments, doctrine of, 14, 29, 106, I 205. St. Abraham, Michael, 1 17. Salem, liberalism in, 181-184. Savoy Confession. 173. Saybrook Platform, 174. Servetus (chap, ii.), 6, 59, 61, 72. Sherlock, W., on trinity, 140. ! Sherman, John, 189. Simultaneum, the, 1 1 5. Socinian, the doctrine, 69-72 ; the ] name, 85. Socinians expelled from Poland, 91. I Socinus, L. and F. (chap, iii.), 44-72. I South, Roliert, 140. Sparks, Jared, 196. I Spirit, Biddle's doctrine of the, 132. 49« IXVICES. " Spirit of the Pilgrims," 192, 200. Stebbins, Rufus P., 220, 241. Stephen Bathori, 80, 84, no. Strangers' Church, 18, 75. Stuart, Moses, 197. Szekely, Moses, 113. Szeklers, 98-101. Taylor, J. J., 168. Three nations of Transylvania, 98. Tillotson on Socinians, 95. Toleration Act (1689), 139. Torda, Diet of, 63. Toulouse, 3, 26. Transcenderitalism, 206. Transylvania (chap, v.), 97-120. Tuckerman, Joseph, 198. Tyscowitz, barbarous execution of, 86. Unitarian name, 63, 168, 192, 219. Universalism, iSo, 182, 199. Usher, archbishop, 132. Vald^s, the brothers, 6; John, 8-15. Vane, Sir Henry, 132. Venice, suppression of heresy, 49. Vergerio, P. P., 52, 55. Vermigli, P. M., 10, 17, 18, 21.. Vicenza, society at, 49. Vincent, Thomas, 137. Vittoria Colonna, 11, 17. Waldenses, 2; in Calabria, 9; in Poland, 74. Walker, James, 203, 241. Wallis, John, on trinity, 139. Ware, H., 187; H., Jr., 199, 207. Wasson, D. A., 228. Watts, 147. Weiss, John, 228. Western Conference, 236. Western Issue, the, 237. Westminster Assembly, 126. Whitby z's. Bull, 139. Whitefield, 176, 177. Wightman, Edw., burned, 123. WiUard (pres. H. C), 181, 187. Works, doctrine of, 15, 46. Wyszowaty, 66, 91. Zamoyski, John, 73, 81, 85. Zapolya, John, 103. Zwingli, 5. THE UNIVERSALISTS, Academies and colleges, 485-492 ; proselyting in, seventy-five years ago, 4^4, 486. Acrelius, Rev. Israel, finds Universal- ists among the Moravians, 378. "Acta Historica-Ecclesiastica," 332. Adams, John G. , D. D. , his hymn-book and hymn, 478, 479. Alabama, 440. Albertus Magnus, 297. Allen, Rev. Timothy, Congregation- alist, 383. Allin, Thomas, D.D., quotations from his " Universalism Asserted," 279, 312. Almaric of Bena, 297. Ambrosius on Universalism in the eighth century, 294. Analiaptists, 308, 336. "Ante-Nicene Fathers " quoted, 257, 259, 261, 262, 264, 265, 267, 269, 272, 274, 277, 280, 281. "Appeal and Declaration," 454. Articles of Faith adopted in 1790, 414; in 1794, 429; in 1803, 431; the first interpreted against Unita- rians, 417- Athanasius, 280. Atonement, Anselm's theory of, domi- nant in America, 395 ; Murray's preaching necessitates the substitu- tion of Grotius's theory, 396 ; Rev. Hosea Ballou's theory, 435. August, Ernst, 332. Augustine on early Universalists, 284. Bacon, Rev. Henry, 481. Baerensprung, Siegmund, 332. Ballou, Rev. Barton, 485. Ballou, Rev. David, 427. INDICES. 499 Ballou, Rev. Hosea, 427-436 ; adopts Unitarian sentiments, 429 ; becomes a Universalist, 427 ; discussion witli Rev. Edward Turner, 444; with editor of the " Boston Kaleido- scope," 449; edits tlie " Universal- ist Magazine," 449; great fairness in controversy, 455 ; hymn-books and hymns, 476, 478; " Notes on the Paraljles," 433; on committee to draft "Articles of Relief," 430; ordained, 428 ; reordained, 430 ; re- fuses to settle in Boston during the lifetime of Mr. Murray, 454 ; teaches school, 428 ; theology, 435 ; " Trea- tise on Atonement," 434; unites with the Baptist Church, 427 ; views on punishment, 434, 446, 450. Ballou, Hosea, 2d, l).l)., author of the ' ' Ancient H istory of U ni versalism, " 280 ; quotations from, 266, 280, 283, 292, 295, 298, 304; edits the " Uni- versalist Magazine," 453 ; " Expos- itor," 472; "Quarterly," 472; hymns and hymn-book, 479 ; on the future-punishment controversy, 447 ; president of the Historical So- ciety, 470. Ballou, Rev. Maturin, Baptist, 427. Ballou, Silas, writes hymns and pub- lishes a hynm-l)Ook, 475. Baptist church in Pliiladelphia, Mr. Winchester's connection with, 409 ; its excommunicated members or- ganize the " Society of Universal .Baptists," 'and purchase a hall, 410. Baptists, many become Universalists in 1790, 411. Bar Sudaili, 291. Barns, Rev. Thomas, 437. Barnum, Hon. P. T., 491. Basil, 280. Beeclier, Edward, D.I)., author of " History of ( )]iinions on the Script- ural Doctrine of Retribution," 283; quoted, 284, 285, 286. Beghards and Lollards, 298. Belknap, Jeremy, D.D., 384. Belsham, Rev. Thomas, 357. Benedict's " History of the Baptists " quoted, 411. Benezet, .Anthony, 408. Bengel, Ji)liann Albrecht, 310, note. " Berlcburgcr IJibel," the, 331. Berlin " State and Literary Times," Berrow, Rev. Capel, 352. " Bibliotheca Sacra" on the influence of John Murray on Calvinism, 396. Binney, Mr., Congregationalist, 369. Boehm, Jacob, 314. Bohler, Rev. Peter, 378. Boston, Mass., Mr. Murray's minis- try in, 405 ; church in, publishes a hymn-book, 475, 476 ; Sunday- school in, 483. " Boston Kaleidoscope," the, attacks Universalism, 449. Bourignon, Antoinette, 315. Bowen, Henry, 453. Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spir- it, 299. Brethren of the Common Lot, 299. Briggs, Rev. Levi, 454. British Museum, recent works on Eschatology in, 370. Buchtel, Hon. John R., and Buchtel College, 492. Burnet, Dr. Thomas, 324-328. California, 442. Calvinism, Rev. John Murray's influ- ence on, 395. " Calvinism Improved," 385. Campbell, Rev. John McLeod, 359. Canada, 443. Canton Theological School, 490. Carey, Matthew, Roman Catholic, 482. Carpenter, Lant, LL.D., 357. Case, Mrs. L. J. B., 481. Cassianus, Johannes, 288. Cate, Rev. I. W., 469. Chambre, A. St. John, D.D., 458. Channing, W. E., D.D., Unitarian, 456. Chapin, Edwin H., D.D., his hymn- book and hymn, 479, 480. " Charter of Compact," adopted by Universalists, 404. Chauncy, Charles, D.D., 382; his writings in advocacy of Universal- ism, 383. Cheyne, Dr. George, 342. 500 INDICES. " Children's Sunday," 484. " Christian Leader," the, 472. Clarke, John, D.D., 383. Clarke, Rev. Richard, 379. Clarke, Samuel, D.D., 342. Clement of Alexandria, 259-262. Clinton Liberal Institute, 487. Coffin, Rev. Michael, 438. Cogan, Thomas, RLD., 357. College, efforts to establish, 490. Cone, O., D.D., on Theodoret, 290. " Congregationalist," the, Boston, 369- Congregationalists and Universalists pronounced one sect by l^ew Hamp- shire courts, 432. Congregationalists, Universalism among the English, 368 ; among the American, 382. Connecticut, 437. Conrad, John, 331. Coppin, Rev. Richard, 317. Cox, Rev. Nicholas, 411. Crellius, Rev. Samuel, 336. Cremer, R., 337. " Critical Review," the, 356. Crombie, Alexander, LL.D., 359. Cuppe, Pierre, 339. D'Aranda, Peter, 304. D'Marsay, Count, 331 ; his commen- tary on the Apocalypse, 376. Dakota, 443. Dale, Rev. R. W., Congregationalist, 368. Davenant, Bishop John, 315. Dean, Dr. Oliver, 488, 489, 491. Dean, Rev. Paul, 399 ; Restoration- ist leader, 454. Dean Academy, 488. De Benneville, George, M.D., 375. Dedication of children, 484. Denk, Hans, 309. " Dialogues on the General Restitu- tion of the Creation," 322. Didymus the blind, 279. Diodorus, 282. Dippel, Christian, 331. Ditelmair, testifies to spread of Uni- versalism, 329. Doederlin on early Universalists, 285. Domitian, 292. Dorner, on Denk and Hetzer, 309 ; on Theodore of Mopsuestia, 285. Douglass, Rev. Niel, 341. Duche, Rev. Jacob, 380. Dunkers, the, 331, 378, 441, 482. Earbury, William, 317. " Eastern Association," 437. Eberhard, John Augustine, 336. Eckhart, Henry, mystical pantheist, 299. Eckley, Rev. Joseph, Congregation- ^ alist, 383. Edgart^on, Sarah C, 481, Education, 484-492. Edwards, Rev. Thomas, his " Gan- grcena," 316. England, Universalism in, 342. English Congregationalists, 368. Episcopalians, Universalists among the, 379; the American change the seventeenth of the Thirty-nine Ar- ticles, eliminate words from the Apostles' Creed, and object to the Nicene and the Athanasian creeds, 380. Erasmus, publishes the works of Ori- gen, 312. Erigena, John Scotus, 295. Erskine, Tho!nas, 358. Estlin, John Prior, LL.D., 357. Eusebius, 278. Evans, Rev. David, 411. " Everlasting Gospel, The," by Sieg- volck (George Klein Nicolai), 330, 333, 376, 408; by Schaeffer, 331, 376 ; attacked by Rev. N. Pomp, 377- Facundus, 291. Farewell, Rev. William, 439. Ferris, Rev. Walter, committee to draft a " Form of Fellowship in Faith and Practice," 430. Ferriss, Rev. Edwin, 438. Fessenden, Rev. Thomas, 386. Fifth General Council, the, did not condemn Origen's Universalism, 292 ; doubtful if it was ecumenical, 293- First- Day or Sunday-school Society, 482. Flagg, Rev. Joshua, 439. Fletcher, Julia A., 481. INDICES. 501 Florida, 440. Foster, Rev. Dan, 386. Foster, Mr., edits the " Universalist Magazine," 453. Foster, Rev. J. H., Ph.D., on " Tlie I'lschatulogy of tlie New Enghind Divines," 397. Foster, Rev. Joel, Congregationaiist, 446. Foster, Rev. John, Baptist, his moral argument against endless punisli- ment, 363. Fox, Rev. William J., a successor to Winchester, 354. France, Universalism in, 339, 341. Frederick the Great on complaints against the preaching of Universal- ism, 338. " Free Universal Magazine," 471. Free-will, Origen on its being no bar to universal salvation, 275. French Protestants, 340. Georgia, 440. (ierhard, Ludwig, 331. German hymn-book, 479. German Rationalism, attitude toward, 467. Germany, Universalism in, 298, 308, 309, 328, 330, zzz, 336. Giesler, on early Universalists, 284; on Origen's Universalism not con- demned by a General Council, 292. Gloucester, Mass., 390; Articles of Association, 399 ; builds a meeting- house, 400 ; Charter of Compact, 404; church organized, 416; law- suit with first parish, 401 ; impor- tance of decision of suit to all other sects, 403; Mr. Murray's labors in, 399 ; Sunday-school in, 483. Goddard, Thomas A., and wife, 488, 491. Goddard Seminary, 4S8. " (iolden Rose, The," 331, 376. Gordon, Rev. William, Congregation- aiist, 383. Gorton, Samuel, 372. " Gospel Visitant," the, 446. Green Mountain Perkins Academy, 488. Gregory Nazianzen, 280. Gregory of Nyssa, 280. Gregory Thaumaturgus, 276. Griffiths, Dr. Ralph, 355. Groot, Gerhard, 299. Cjruncr, John Frederick, 336. Hahn, Michael, 336. Ilalcyonists, the, 442. Halifax, N. S., 443. " Harleian Miscellany, The," 346. Hartley, Dr. Samuel, 348. Haug, John Henry, 331. Hazard, Ebenezer, 384. Iletzen, Ludwig, 309. " Higher Criticism, The," 467. Hilary, 280. Ilochman, Ernest Cluisloph, 331. Holland, Universalism in, 336. " Holy Cub, The," Universalism dis- cussed in, 351. Hopkins, Rev. Samuel, Congrega- tionaiist, 383. Huber, Marie, 338. Hudson, Rev. Charles, 454. Huntington, Rev. Dr. Joseph, his " Calvinism Improved," 385. Hymn-books and hynms, 473-481. Iilaho, 443. Illinois, 441 ; protest of the conven- tion, 465. Indiana, 441. Iowa, 441. Japan Mission, 469. Jerome, 265, 280. John of Goch, 301. Jonas, Justus, 309. [ones, Rev. Thomas, 416. Kansas, 442. Kentucky, 441. Lane, Oliver Wellington, committee on Boston hymn-book, 476 ; starts the first Sunday-school in Boston, 483- Law, Rev. William, 349. Lead, Jane, 320. Lindsey, Rev. Theophilus, 357. Livermore, Mrs. Mary A., her liymn, 480. Lollards, the, 298. Lombard, Benjamin, and Lond)ard University, 491. Luther, Martin, on eternal punish- ment, 306. Mack, Alexander, 331. 502 INDICES. Macrina, 282. Maine, 436. Mann, Rev. Jacob, 386. Marcellus, 279. Marshall, Christopher, 408. Massachusetts, 437. Massachusetts Association of Uni- versal Restorationists, 455. Mather, Dr. Cotton, on Samuel Gor- ton, 372 ; on Sir Henry Vane, 374. Mather, Rev. Samuel, Congregation- alist, 383. Matthews, William, 352. Maurice, Rev. Frederick Denison, 359- Maximus the Confessor, 293. Mayhew, Rev. Jonathan, 384. McDonald, Rev. George, 367. McLean, Rev. Duncan, 411. Mead, Rev. Samuel, 386. " Men of Understanding," 303. Merlau, Johanna Eleonora von, 328, 377- Methodius, 276. Michigan, 441. Miner, A. A., D.D., LL.D., 458, 470. Minnesota, 442. Mississippi, 442. Missouri, 441. Mitchell, Rev. Edward, 399. Montana, 443. " Monthly Review," the, its attitude toward Universalism, 355. Moor, Rev. Clark R., 458. Moravians, the, 378. More, Sir Thomas, his " Utopia," 313- Mosheim, John Lawrence von, D.D., his tribute to Origen, 263 ; on Chris- tian mysteries, 276; on " Men of Understanding," 304; on John Pi- cus, 404 ; his defense of the doctrine of eternal punishment, 329 ; replies to his defense, 329, 330, 334. Murray, Rev. John, 388-407; adopts an aggressive policy, 392 ; arrives in America, 388, 389 ; at the Associa- tion in 1 785, 404 ; at the Convention in 1790, 411; in 1793, 1795, 1804. 399; brings suit against the first parish in Gloucester, 402 ; centen- nial observance of his first sermon in America, 468 ; chaplain of the Rhode Island brigade, 400; decis- ion of his suit against the first par- ish, 403 ; education and mental abil- ities, 406 ; his death, 406 ; his the- ology, 392 ; hymn-writer, 473 ; in- fluence on Calvinism, 395 ; influence on the spread of Universalism, 397 ; jealous of Universalism that had not a Rellyan basis, 423 ; justifies his non-avowal of Universalism, 391; ministry in Gloucester, 400; ministry in Boston, 405 ; opposed to water baptism, 416; ordination, 405 ; personal relations with Win- chester, 422 ; place in the esteem of the Universalist Church, 406 ; Rel- lyan Universalist, 392 ; republishes the Relly hymn-book, 473 ; Rev. Dr. Stiles's attack on his character, 406 ; standing alone in his Rellyan- ism, 398 ; visits England, 405. Murray Centenary Fund, 468. Mursinna, Samuel, 336. Neander, Augustus, D.D.,' on the Universalism of Marcellus, 279; of Gregory Nyssen, 281 ; of Theodore of Mopsuestia, 285 ; of Johannes Cassianus, 288 ; of Bar Sudali, 291 ; on Universalist theological schools in the fourth century, 284; on Ori- gen's not being condemned by a General Council, 292. ' Nebraska, 442. Nestorian Church, Universalism in its sacramental liturgy, 287. New Brunswick, 443. New England Convention. See Uni- versalist Convention. New Hampshire, 437 ; courts rule that Universalists and Congregational- ists are the same, 432 ; legislature declaresUniversalists a distinct sect, 432- New Jersey, 439. Newton, Sir Isaac, 342. Newton, Bp. Thomas, 350. New York, 438. " Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers" quoted, 265, 266, 269, 2S0, 281, 2S2, 2S9. Nichols, Amasa, 485. INDICES. 503 Nichols Acatlemy, 485. Nicolai, George Klein, 330, 376. Ni)rth Dakota, 443. " Notes on tiie Paraljles," 433. Nova Scotia, 443. Ohio, 440. Old Testament doctrine of rewards and punishments, 344. Olshausen's tribute to Universalism, 371- Ontario, 443. " Open Gates of the Heart," 315. Ordination, Vermont law and rule of, 430 ; New England Convention rule in regard to, 433. Oregon, 442. Origen, 263-276; Erasmus publishes his works, 312; foundation of his philosophy, 263 ; his Universalism not condemned by a General Coun- cil, 292 ; Jerome's opposition to, 265 ; misrepresented by Rufinus, 265, 266 ; reply to Celsus, 271-274 ; teaches that free-will is no barrier to universal salvation, 275. Oxford, Mass. See Universalist As- sociation. Pamphilus, 277. Parker, Rev. Noah, 398. Parr, Dr. Samuel, 347. Penn, William, (Quaker, intimacy of, with German Universalists, 377. I'ennsylvania, 376, 440. Perin, George L., D.D.* 469. Peters, Rev. Samuel, Episcopalian, 381. Petersen, John \\ illiam, 300, 320, 322, 328, 330. Petitpierre, Ferdinand Oliver, 338. Philadelphia Haptist Association and Rev. IClhanan Winchester, 409; spread of Universalism in, 41 1. Philadeljihia Convention. .See Uni- versalist Convention. " Philadelphia Magazine," 354. Philadelphia Universalists organize as " Universal Baptists," 410. Philadelphia Universalist .Sunday- school, 483. Picus, John, 304. Plan of this history, 255. Plumptre, E. II., D.D., on Univer- salism condemned in the Forty-two Articles, a.d. 1552, 312. Polity of the Universalist Church, 461-468. Pomp, Rev. N., writes against Uni- versalism, 376. Pope, Alexander, 345. Pope Gregory II. gives instructions against Universalism, 294. Postell, William, 313. Potter, Thomas, 389; Memorial Church for, 439. Presbyterian Alarm, 386. Priestley, Dr. Joseph, 419. Protestant theory of retribution as ab- sent from this life and reserved for the future, 456. Punishment, attitude of Universalists in regard to, 458 ; extreme views of. 457- Purves, Rev. James, 341. Quebec, Province of, 443. Ramsay, Andrew Michael, 343. Raymond of P" ranee, 296. Relly, Rev. James, 348 ; his theology, 392. Relly, James and John, their hymn- book, 473. Restorationists, 444-456 ; secession of, a great mistake, 455 ; their policy, 453. Reuz [Rights or Wright], Rev. Mat- thew, 379. Rewards and punishments, Old Testa- ment doctrine of, 344. Rliode Island, 437. Rice, Rev. Clarence E., 469. Rich, Rev. Caleb, 423 ; ordination, 425; organizes a "General Soci- ety," 425; religious experiences, 424 ; reordained, 430 ; theology of, 426, 446. Richards, Rev. George, a hymn-writer, 476 ; committee on Boston hymn- book, 476; on Mr. Murray's atti- tude in convention, 399 ; prepares and publishes a hymn-book, 476. Richardson, Rev. .Samuel, 317. Rights. See Reuz, Rev. Matthew. Ritler, Hcinrich, on the Universalism of .Maximus, 294. Roach, R., 343. 504 INDICES. Rogers, Rev. George, 442 ; his hymn- book, 479. Rufinus, his translation of Origen's " De Principiis," 265 ; his misrep- resentations, 265, 269. Rush, Dr. Benjamin, arranges the Ar- ticles and Plan of the Philadelphia Convention, 413; assists in organ- ization of Sunday-school Society, 482 ; becomes an Arminian and confesses obligations to Rev. Mr. Fletcher, 412; becomes a Univer- salist and urges Mr. Winchester to go on a mission to England, 413; correspondence with Mr. Winches- ter, 413; eulogizes Rev. John Wes- ley, 413 ; on Mr. Winchester's later preaching, 420. Ruysbroek, John, 299. Safford, O. F., D.D., 458. Sarjent, Rev. Abel, 446 ; edits the " Free Universal Magazine," 471 ; puts forth a Unitarian-Universalist Creed, 417. Sawyer, Mrs. Caroline M., her hymn, 480. Sawyer, Thomas J., D.D., committee on views of Universalists in regard to punishment, 458 ; on organiza- tion, 463-465 ; principal of Clinton Liberal Institute and teacher in theology, 489 ; quotations from his historical papers, 301, 308, 314, 320, 322, 332-336 ; secretary of Universalist Historical Society, 470 ; urges the importance of col- leges and theological schools, 489, 490. Say, Thomas, 408. Scarlett, Nathaniel, 354. Schaefifer, David, 330, 376. Schaff, Philip, D":D., LL.D., his writings referred to or quoted, 293, 294, note, 296, 308, 309. SchafT-Herzog Encyclopcedia, referred to or quoted, 304, 310, note, 344, 358. Schlitte's review of Mosheim, 335. Schouler, Miss M. C, 469. Schuetz, Christopher, 331, 376. Scotland, Universalism in, 341. Seagrave, Rev. Artis, 410, 411; his convention hymn, 475. Sears, Professor Barnas, on Univer- salism in Germany, 336. Serarius, Peter, 320. Sibylline oracles, the, 256. Sieglvock, Paul. See Nicolai, George Klein. Smalley, Rev. John, Congregational- ist, 396. Smith, Sir James Edward, 361, 481. Smith, Rev. Stephen R., his " His- torical Sketches," 439, note; his labors in founding the Clinton Lib- eral Institute, 487. Smith, T. Southwood, M.D., 341. Smith, Dr. William, 380. Smollett, Dr. Tobias, 356. " Society of Universal Baptists," 410; merged in " The First Independent Church of Christ," 417. Solomon, Bishop of Bassorah, 297. South Carolina, 440. Sprague, Wm. B., D.D., on Rev. Joseph Huntington, D.D., and his Universalism, 385. St. Lawrence University, 492. Stacy, Rev. Nathaniel, 438. State Conventions, funds of, 468. Steinhart, Gottfried, 336. Stilling, Jung, 336. Stonehouse, Sir George, 350, 356; his distinction between salvation and restoration, 352. Streeter, Rev. Barzillai, 454. Sunday-schools, 482, 483. Switzerland, Universalism in, 338. Taft, Rev. Mr., of Langdon, N. H., 386. Tauler, John, 300. Taylor, Rev. John, Congregationalist missionary, 438. Tennessee, 442. Texas, 442. Thacher, Rev. Peter, Congregation- alist, 383. Thayer, Thomas B., D.D., on the Sibylline oracles, 258, note ; on Theodoret, 291. Theodore of Mopsuestia, 285. Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, 288. Theological schools in the fourth cent- ury, 283 ; attempts to establish, in America, 489 ; Dr. Sawyer's, at Clinton, 489; at Canton, N. Y., INDICES. 505 490 ; in Japan, 469 ; Ryder Divin- ity School, 491 ; Tufts Divinity School, 491. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, 258. " Theosophic Heart Devotions," 332. Tiioni, Rev. David, 361. 'I'honias, Rev. Abel C, his " Century of Universalism," 408; hymn and tune book, 478. 'I'hroop, Hon. A. G., and Throop Polytechnic Institute, 488. Titus, Bishop of liostra, 280. Tonilinson, Charles W., D.D., 357, note. Townshend, Rev. Chauncey Hare, 367- Tufts, Charles, 489, 491. Tufts College, 491. Turner, Rev. Edward, associated with Rev. H. Ballou in preparing hymn- books, 476, 477 ; discusses question of future jjunishment with Rev. H. Ballou, 444 ; Restorationist leader, 454- Tyler, Rev. John, Episcopalian, a Rellyan author, 381. L'eberweg on the Universalism of Maximus, 294. Ullman, Dr. C., on the theology of John of Goch, 301 ; quotations from | his " Reformers before the Refor- mation," 299-303. I I'nitarian opposition to Universalism, ! 449.. 456- ... . I Unitarian societies in England, Uni- versalism of, 354. Unitarian Universalists, 357, 417, 4.29-. I'nitarian-Universalist Creed, 417. L'niversalism among the Congrega- tionalists, 368, 382-386; the 1 Dunkers, 331, 378, 441 ; the E]iis- copalians, 379-382; the Millenari- ans, 331 ; the Moravians, 378; the j Unitarians, 354, 357; attacked by the " Boston Kaleidoscope," 449; condemned in the Forty-two Articles of 1552, 311; condemnation ig- nored in Thirty-nine Articles of 1562, 312 ; author's " History of, in America," referred to, 408, 433, 455> 47'; defined, 255; in the ii. century, 256; iii., 263; iv., 277- 283; v., 285-291; vi. and vii., 293; viii., 294; ix., 295; xiii., 297; xiv., 298, 301; XV., 303; xvi., 306-310, 312; xvii., 315-328; xviii., 328-357; xix., 357-371; in America, 372-493 ; in England, 294, 297-303, 306, 308, 310, 328- 336; P'rance, 339; Germany, 294, 297-303, 306, 308, 310, 328-336; Holland, 320, 336; Scotland, 341 ; ^Switzerland, 338; United States and British provinces, 372-493 ; in the "Critical Review," 356; the "Monthly Review," 355; its at- titude toward slavery, 416; its spread alarms the Presbyterians, 386 ; laws condemnatory of, in I'^ngland in 1552, 311; not regarded as heretical in the Church of Eng- land since 1562, 312; of Rev. Ho- sea Ballou, 434'; Charles Chauncy, D.D., 382; Dr. Alexander Crom- bie, 359 ; Dr. George De Benne- ville, 375; Thomas Erskine, 358; Samuel Gorton, 372 ; David Ilart- ley, 348; John Henderson, 353; Joseph Huntington, D.D., 385; Rev. William Law, 350; William Matthews, 352 ; Rev. George McDonald, 367 ; Rev. John Mur- ray) 392; Bishop Newton, 350; Rev. Caleb Rich, 426 ; Sir George Stonehouse, 350; Rev. David Thom, 361 ; Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend, 367; Rev. John Ty- ler, 381; Sir Henry Vane, 374; Rev. Elhanan Winchester, 421 ; Olshausen's tribute to, 371 ; pen- alty for holding, in seventeenth cent- ury, 316; Pomp, Rev. N., on the spread of, in Pennsylvania, 377. Universalist ^Vssociation organized at Oxford, Mass., in 1785, 404; object of, 403 ; not long in existence, 405 ; recommends form of organization for societies, 404. Universalist Convention organized at Philadelphia in 1790,411; adopts Articles of Faith and Plan of Church Government, 414 ; holds no session after 1809, 419; publishes a hymn-book, 475 ; receives and grants requests for organizing con- 5o6 INDICES. ventions in New England and at the West, 418; recommends the establishing of schools, 415 ; recom- mendation against slavery, 416; Rellyans in the minority in, and generosity of the majority toward them, 416. Universalist Convention organized in 1793 as the " New England Con- vention," 428 ; adopts Articles of Faith and Plan of Philadelphia Con- vention, 429; adopts "The Wfti- chester Profession of Belief," 431 ; becomes " The General Convention of the New England States and others," 433; becomes " The Gen- eral Convention of Universalists of the United States," 462; attempts to perfect uniform organization, 461-468; definite and effective pol- ity adopted, 468 ; its deliverance on the Bible as containing a special revelation, 466 ; its foreign-mission- ary work, 469 ; its funds, 468. Universalist Convention organized at Morganstovvn, Pa., in 1793, 419. " Universalist Expositor," 472. Universalist Historical Society, 470. Universalist hymns and hymn-books, 473-481. Universalist literature, 471. " Universalist Magazine," 449, 453, 472. Universalist ministers of Boston and vicinity on the question of punish- ment for sin, 458. " Universalist Miscellany," 354. Universalist mission to Japan, 465. Universalist Publishing House, 472. " Universalist Quarterly," 472; re- ferred to or quoted, 258, note, 290, 295, 297, note, 306-308, 313, 315, 3.24- Universalist State Conventions, 436- 443- Universalist Sunday-schools, 483. Vane, Sir Henry, 373. Vermont, 437 ; laws and usage in re- lation to ordination, 430. Victorinus, 280. Vidler, Rev. William, 354. Viscountess of Conway, the, 322, 377. Voss, Jacob, 334. Walker, Dr. William J., 491. " Walnut Hill Evangelical Semi- nary," 489. Warburton, Bp. William, 344. Washington, 443. Washington, D.C., 443. Wesley, Rev. John, Methodist, 351. Wessel, John, 300. W^est Virginia, 442. Westbrook Seminary and Female Col- lege, 487. Western Association organized and visited, 439. Whiston, Rev. W'illiam, t,t,t„ 342. White, Rev. Jeremy, 318. White, Bp. William, 482. Whitefield, Rev. George, his warning to Rev. John Wesley, 378. Whiting, Rev. Samuel, 386. Whittemore, Thomas, D.D., 447. William of Hildesheim, 304. W'inchester, Rev. Elhanan, 353, 408- 413 ; correspondence witli Dr. Rush, 413 ; his abilities, 420; hymn-book, 474; theology, 421; influence of Universalist writings on, 409; pas- tor of Baptist church in Philadel- phia, 409 ; ministry in England, 353 ; preaches at ordination of Rev. HoseaBallou,428 ; returns to Amer- ica, 419; sickness and death, 420; writings, 353, 420. Winchester, Rev. Moses, 411. " Winchester Profession of Belief," tradition as to cause of its adoption, 431 ; acceptable to all, 432. Winstanley, Gerard, 316. W'isconsin, 441. Woelner, T,'i,'t,. Wolf, Rev. George, 441. Woman's Centenary Association, 469. Women's State Missionary Associa- tions, 470. Wood, Rev. Jacob, 447, 448, 454. Worrall, Rev. William, 341. Worth, Rev. William, 411. Wright, Rev. Richard, 357. Yancey, Rev. Robert, Episcopalian, 379- Young, Rev. Joal), 428, 438. Young People's Christian Union, 492. Xlbe Btncricau Cburcb HDistori^ Series. Bv Subscription, .... in Twelve VoLUiMEs, at $2.50 i'er Volumr Vol. I Vol. 11 Vol. Ill Vol. IV Vol. V Vol. VI Vol. Vll Vol. VIII.- Baptists, . Congiegationalists, Lutlierans, Methodists, Presbyterians, . Protestant Episcopal, Moravian, Vol. IX. Roman Catholics, Vol. X. Vol. XI. Vol. XII.- The Religious Forces of the United States, H. K. Carroll, LL.D., Editcir of The Independent, Supt. Church Statistics, U. S. Census, etc. Rtv. A. H. NtwMAN, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Church History, McMaster University of Toronto, Ont. Rev. WiLLisTON Walker, Ph.D., Professor of Modern Church History, Theological Seminary, Hartford. Conn, Rev. H. E. Jacobs, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Systematic Theology in the Ev. Lutheran Seminary, Phila., Pa. Rev. J. M. Buckley, D.D., LL.D., Editor of the New York Christian Advocate. Rev. Robert Ellis Thompson, D.D., Philadelphia. Pa. Rev. C. C. Tiffany, D.D., New York. Reformed Churcli, Dutcii, Rev. E. T. Corwin, D.D., Rector Hertzog Hall, New Brunswick, N.J. Reformed Church, German, Rev. J. H. Dubbs, D.D., Professor of History, Franklyn and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa. Rev. J. T. Hamilton, D.D., Professor of Church History, Theological Seminary, Bethlehem, Pa. Rev. T. O'Gorman, D.D., Professor of Church History, Catholic .University, Washington, D. C. Rev. J. H. Allen, D.D., Late Lecturer on Ecclesiastical History, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Rev. Richard Eddy, D.D., Providence, R. L Rev. Gross Alexander, D.D., Professor CJreck and N. T. Exegesis, Nashville, Tenn. Rev. Thomas C. Johnson, D.D., Professor Ecclesiastical History and Polity, Hampden-Sidney, Va. Riv. James B. Scouller, D.D., Newville, Pa. Rev. R. V. Foster, D.D., Professor Biblical Exegesis, Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tenn. Rev. R. B. Tyler, D.D., New York. iProf. A. C. Thomas, M.A., Haverford College, Haverford, Pa. Ir. H. Thomas, M.D., Baltimore, Md. Rkv. D. Beroer, D.D., Dayton, Ohio. Rev. S. p. Sprenc, Editor Evangelical Messenger, Cleve- land, Ohio. Rev. Samuel Macauley Jackson, New York. Unitarians, Universalists, . M. E. Church, So., Presbyterians, So., . United Presbyterians, Cumb. Presbyterians, Disciples, . Friends, United Brethren, . Ev. Association, Bibliography, . Dat^ Due ~^^^fS\ BX9830 .A42 Historical sketch of the Unitarian Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library 1 1012 00002 6155 '. " rr, :i.:k;.'''-'^y!','-'S5[