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Samuel May (search for this): chapter 8
usually appear by initials,--who, coming to New Haven one Saturday evening, and being dressed in black, was taken for a minister, and asked to preach: he was apparently a little insane, and at first talked demurely, but at last railed like Rabshakeh, Cotton Mather says. There was also M. J., a Welsh tanner, who finally stole his employer's leather breeches and set up for a preacher,--less innocently apparelled than George Fox. But the worst of all was one bearing the since sainted name of Samuel May. This vessel of wrath appeared in 1699, indorsed as a man of a sweet gospel spirit,--though, indeed, one of his indorsers had himself been a scandalous fire-ship among the churches. Mather declares that every one went a-Maying after this man, whom he maintains to have been a barber previously, and who knew no Latin, Greek, Hebrew, nor even English,--for (as he indignantly asserts) there were eighteen horrid false spells, and not one point, in one very short note I received from him. Thi
Newbury (search for this): chapter 8
st be no prayer uttered. The secret was, that the traditions of the English and Romish Churches must be systematically set aside. Doctor, said King James to a Puritan divine, do you go barefoot because the Papists wear shoes and stockings? Even the origin of the frequent New England habit of. eating salt fish on Saturday is supposed to have been the fact that Roman Catholics eat it on Friday. But if there were no prayers said on these occasions, there were sermons. Mr. John Calf, of Newbury, described one specimen of funeral sermon in immortal verse-- On Sabbath day he went his way, As he was used to do, God's house unto, that they might know What he had for to show; God's holy will he must fulfil, For it was his desire For to declare a sermon rare Concerning Madam Fryer. The practice of wedding discourses was handed down into the last century, and sometimes beguiled the persons concerned into rather startling levities. For instance, when Parson Smith's daughter Mary was t
Warham (search for this): chapter 8
the Mathers. To these might be added many an obscurer name, preserved in the quaint epitaphs of the Magnalia :--Blackman, in spite of his name, a Nazarene whiter than snow ;--Partridge, a hunted partridge, yet both a dove and an eagle ;--Ezekiel Rogers, a tree of knowledge, whose apples the very children might pluck ;--Nathaniel Rogers, a very lively preacher and a very preaching liver, he loved his church as if it had been his family and he taught his family as if it had been his church ;--Warham, the first who preached with notes, and who suffered agonies of doubt respecting the Lord's Supper ;--Stone, both a loadstone and a flint stone, and who set the self-sacrificing example of preaching only one hour. These men had mingled traits of good and evil, like all mankind,--nobler than their descendants in some attributes, less noble in others. The most strait-laced Massachusetts Calvinist of these days would have been disciplined by them for insufferable laxity, and yet their moder
Winthrop (search for this): chapter 8
ntly displeased with something, the General Court should publish a list of the evils of the time. And among the twelve items of contrition stood this: Long hair like women's hair is worn by some men, either their own or others' hair made into periwigs;--and by some women wearing borders of hair, and their cutting, curling, and immodest laying out of their hair, which practice doth increase, especially among the younger sort. Not much was effected, however,--divers of the elders' wives, as Winthrop lets out, being in some measure partners in this disorder. Tile use of wigs also, at first denounced by the clergy, was at last countenanced by them: in portraits later than 1700 they usually replace the black skull-cap of earlier pictures, and in 1752 the tables had so far turned that a church-member in Newbury refused communion because the pastor wears a wigg. Yet Increase Mather thought they played no small part in producing the Boston Fire. Monstrous Periwigs, such as some of our ch
Bellingham (search for this): chapter 8
, the captain must officiate instead. One would naturally add to this record of labors the attendance on weddings and funerals. It is strange how few years are required to make a usage seem ancestral, or to revive it after long neglect. Who now remembers that our progenitors for more than a century disused religious services on both these solemn occasions? Magistrates alone could perform the marriage ceremony; though it was thought to be carrying the monopoly quite too far, when Governor Bellingham, in 1641, officiated at his own. Prayer was absolutely forbidden at funerals, as was done also by Calvin at Geneva, by John Knox in Scotland, by the English Puritans in the Westminster Assembly, and by the French Huguenots. The bell might ring, the friends might walk, two and two, to the grave; but there must be no prayer uttered. The secret was, that the traditions of the English and Romish Churches must be systematically set aside. Doctor, said King James to a Puritan divine, do
Whitefield (search for this): chapter 8
ll of no metal but the tone of a kettle! thou wheel-barrow! thou whirlpool! thou whirligig! thou fire-brand! thou moon-calf! thou ragged tatterdemalion! thou gormandizing priest! thou bane of reason and beast of the earth! thou best to be spared of all mankind! --all of which are genuine epithets from the Quaker books of that period, and termed by Cotton Mather, who collected them, quills of the porcupine. They surpass even Dr. Chauncy's catalogue of the unsavory epithets used by Whitefield and Tennent a century later; and it was not likely that they would be tolerated by a race whose reverence for men in authority was so comprehensive that they actually fined some one for remarking that Major Phillips's old mare was as lean as an Indian's dog. There is a quaint anecdote preserved, showing the continuance of the Quaker feud in full vigor as lately as 1705. A youth among the Friends wished to espouse a fair Puritan maiden; but the Quakers disapproved his marrying out of th
Ann Hutchinson (search for this): chapter 8
Eighty-two pestilent heresies were counted as having already sprung up in 1637; others say one hundred and six; others, two hundred and ten. The Puritans kept Rhode Island for what housekeepers call an odd drawer, into which to crowd all these eccentricities. It was said, that, if any man happened to lose his religious opinion, he might be sure to find it again at some village in Rhode Island. Thither went Roger Williams and his Baptists; thither went Quakers and Ranters; thither went Ann Hutchinson, that extraordinary woman, who divided the whole politics of the country by her Antinomian doctrines, denouncing the formalisms around her, and converting the strongest men, like Cotton and Vane, to her opinions. Thither went also Samuel Gorton, a man of no ordinary power, who proclaimed mystical union with God in love, thought that heaven and hell were in the mind alone, but esteemed little the clergy and the ordinances. The Colony was protected also by the thoughtful and chivalrous
Scarlet Letter (search for this): chapter 8
rants left in Holland the aged deaconess who there presided, birch in hand, to con-.trol the rising generation in Sunday meetings, yet the urchins are still herded on the pulpit and gallery-stairs, with four constables to guard them from the allurements of sin. And there sits Sin itself embodied in the shrinking form of some humiliated man or woman, placed on a high stool in the principal aisle, bearing the name of some dark crime written on paper and pinned to the garments, or perhaps a Scarlet Letter on the breast. O the silence of this place of worship, after the solemn service sets in! People do not sneeze or cough here in public assemblies, says one writer, triumphantly, so much as in England. The warning caution, Be short, which the minister has inscribed above his study-door, claims no authority over his pulpit. He may pray his hour, unpausing, and no one thinks it long; for, indeed, at prayer-meetings four persons will sometimes pray an hour each,--one with confession, on
Skelton (search for this): chapter 8
lly discussed at Thursday Lecture, March 7, 1634. Holy Mr. Cotton was utterly and unalterably opposed to veils, regarding them as a token of submission to husbands in an unscriptural degree. It is pleasant to think that there could be an unscriptural extent of such submission, in those times. But Governor Endicott and Rev. Mr. Williams resisted stoutly, quoting Paul, as usual in such cases; so Paul, veils, and vanity carried the day. But afterward Mr. Cotton came to Salem to preach for Mr. Skelton, and did not miss his chance to put in his solemn protest against veils; he said they were a custom not to be tolerated; and so the ladies all came to meeting without their veils in the afternoon. Beginning with the veils, the eye of authority was next turned on what was under them. In 1675 it was decided, that, as the Indians had done much harm of late, and the Deity was evidently displeased with something, the General Court should publish a list of the evils of the time. And among
Norton (search for this): chapter 8
policy preventing the original order from being rescinded. These were some of the labors of the clergy. But no human being lives without relaxation, and they may have had theirs. True, ministers have little to joy in in this world, wrote old Norton; and one would think so, on reading the dismal diaries, printed or manuscript, of those days. I can compare with any man living for fears, said Hooker. I have sinned myself into darkness, said Bailey. Many times have I been ready to lay down mought. It is the old distinction; but for which destiny is the ship built, to be afloat or to be at anchor? Such were those pious worthies, the men whose names are identified with the leadership of the New England Colonies,--Cotton, Hooker, Norton, Shepard, the Higginsons, the Mathers. To these might be added many an obscurer name, preserved in the quaint epitaphs of the Magnalia :--Blackman, in spite of his name, a Nazarene whiter than snow ;--Partridge, a hunted partridge, yet both a do
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