The same year, on May 31, the Congregational clergy of Massachusetts, assembled in annual convention, “without a dissenting vote” adopted an address to their churches, wherein they expressed their deep sorrow and concern on account of “those atheistical, licentious and disorganizing principles which have been avowed and zealously propagated by the philosophers and politicians of France; which have produced the greatest crimes and miseries in that unhappy country, and like a mortal pestilence are diffusing their baneful influence even to distant nations.”[222] A year later the same body of clergy, again assembled in their annual convention, formulated and later published an address similar in tone, but strongly emphasizing the American aspects of the case. The growing disbelief and contempt of the Gospel are loudly lamented; the lack of exemplary piety and morality even among the members of churches, and the dissipation, irreligion, and licentiousness prevalent among the youth of the day, are accounted to be of so much weight as to constitute a national apostasy. “The voice of God to us in these events,” continues the address, “is emphatically this: Come out of the infidel, antichristian world, my people; that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”[223] To a very considerable number of earnest lovers of religion in New England and elsewhere throughout the nation, the century’s sun seemed to be setting amid black and sullen clouds of the most ominous character. FOOTNOTES: [152] Quoted by Walker, in his _History of the Congregational Churches in the United States_, p. 216. [153] Green, _Life_, pp. 224, 225. [154] _Cf. supra_, pp. 36 and 37 _et seq._ [155] See Walker, _Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism_, p. 287.