A History of American ChristianityBacon, Leonard Woolsey
Religion
A History of American Christianity
Bacon, Leonard Woolsey
United States -- Church history; United States -- Religion
The faults of Whitefield were intensified to a hateful degree in some of
his associates and followers. Leaving Boston, he sent, to succeed to his
work, Gilbert Tennent, then glowing with the heat of his noted
Nottingham sermon on "An Unconverted Ministry." At once men's minds
began to be divided. On the one hand, so wise and sober a critic as
Thomas Prince, listening with severe attention, gave his strong and
unreserved approval to the preaching and demeanor of Tennent.[169:2] At
the other extreme, we have such testimony as this from Dr. Timothy
Cutler, the former rector of Yale College, now the Episcopalian minister
of Boston:
"It would be an endless attempt to describe that scene of
confusion and disturbance occasioned by him [Whitefield]: the
division of families, neighborhoods, and towns, the
contrariety of husbands and wives, the undutifulness of
children and servants, the quarrels among teachers, the
disorders of the night, the intermission of labor and
business, the neglect of husbandry and of gathering the
harvest.... In many conventicles and places of rendezvous
there has been checkered work indeed, several preaching and
several exhorting and praying at the same time, the rest
crying or laughing, yelping, sprawling, fainting, and this
revel maintained in some places many days and nights together
without intermission; and then there were the blessed
outpourings of the Spirit!... After him came one Tennent, a
monster! impudent and noisy, and told them they were all
damn'd, damn'd, damn'd; this charmed them, and in the most
dreadful winter I ever saw people wallowed in the snow night
and day for the benefit of his beastly brayings, and many
ended their days under these fatigues. Both of them carried
more money out of these parts than the poor could be thankful
for."[170:1]
This is in a tone of bitter sectarian railing. But, after all, the main
allegations in it are sustained by the ample evidence produced by Dr.
Charles Chauncy, pastor of the First Church in Boston, in his serious
and weighty volume of "Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in
New England," published in 1743, as he sincerely says, "to serve the
interests of Christ's kingdom," and "faithfully pointing out the things
of a bad and dangerous tendency in the late and present religious
appearance in the land." Dr. Chauncy was doubtless included in the
sweeping denunciation of the Christian ministry in general as
"unconverted," "Pharisees," "hypocrites." And yet it does not appear in
historical evidence that Chauncy was not every whit as good a Christian
as Tennent or Whitefield.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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