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Browsing named entities in a specific section of Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 1, Colonial and Revolutionary Literature: Early National Literature: Part I (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.). Search the whole document.

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Rhode Island (Rhode Island, United States) (search for this): chapter 1.6
the two Massachusetts divines, Chauncy and Mayhew, one may traverse, by parallel paths, the whole controversy between old and new lights, a controversy beginning with a narrow emotionalism and ending with a rationalistic trend towards universalism. A similar course of thought, but expressed with far higher literary skill, may be pursued in the writings of the Connecticut scholar Samuel Johnson (1696-1772), a graduate of Yale College in 1714, a disciple of George Berkeley when he came to Rhode Island in 1729 and, in 1754, the first head of King's College, Now Columbia University. New York. Especially does Johnson's Elementa Philosophica strike a balance between extremes. Like the Alciphron of Berkeley, to whom the Elements was dedicated, Johnson's work was directed against both fatalists and enthusiasts. The author's situation was logically fortunate. He was familiar with both predestination and fanatical principles and avoided the excesses of each. Brought up in Yale College,
Enfield (Massachusetts, United States) (search for this): chapter 1.6
ven, though absolute, is not arbitrary. The Earthly Prince [he continues] may take off the head of the traitor, robber, or murderer, not to gratify his own anger, but for the common good. Contrariwise, punitive justice may be a branch of goodness, but how far from goodness it would be to condemn the bulk of mankind to eternal misery. Divine Goodness, p. 38. The amiable heretic of Massachusetts may here be contrasted with the rigid Calvinist of Connecticut. Edwards, in his dreadful Enfield sermon, implied that the majority of his hearers were in danger of hell fire. Mayhew calmly carried out that implication. He had taken as an appropriate text for his Thanksgiving sermon, The Lord is good to all. But this, for the sake of the argument, he is willing to change to, The Lord is good to three-fourths of His creatures, and His tender mercies are over three-fourths of all His works, --and so on down to the smallest fraction of mankind. Mayhew is a master of ironic attack. H
Connecticut (Connecticut, United States) (search for this): chapter 1.6
demn the bulk of mankind to eternal misery. Divine Goodness, p. 38. The amiable heretic of Massachusetts may here be contrasted with the rigid Calvinist of Connecticut. Edwards, in his dreadful Enfield sermon, implied that the majority of his hearers were in danger of hell fire. Mayhew calmly carried out that implication. Has that of a moderate man. Add to that his cheerful and benevolent temper, and he appears one of the most attractive of the colonial thinkers. His education in Connecticut, his trip to England, his friendship with Benjamin Franklin, were all part and parcel of his training in letters. Educated at New Haven at a time when the old of Truth and Wisdom, i. e. of the Objects and Rules conducing to true Happiness. Such a definition was in marked contrast with the atmosphere of the college of Connecticut, where, as Johnson's earliest biographer put it, the metaphysics taught was not fit for worms. In 1731 Johnson had enlarged this Cyclopaedia of learning, int
Newport (Rhode Island, United States) (search for this): chapter 1.6
by Franklin to Johnson, argues against these very issues as presented in the Elements. Our author, he explains, from a sincere zeal to vindicate the rights of the Deity, and a just abhorrence of the absurd system of the materialists, has gone farther towards the opposite extreme than will be justified by some philosophers. Preface to the Element. The extreme here referred to was, of course, Berkeleianism, against which the Philadelphian argues in substance as follows: The Dean, while at Newport, might have been justified in putting into his Minute philosopher rural descriptions exactly copied from those charming landscapes that presented themselves to his eye in the delightful island at the time he was writing,--that was all very well; but for the Dean's disciple to attempt to introduce into the schools and infant seminaries in America this unadulterated Irish idealism was another thing. Doctor Johnson, explains his critic, only pretends to teach logic and moral philosophy; his l
New Jersey (New Jersey, United States) (search for this): chapter 1.6
Society. Such was the ironical fate that befell Johnson. Though he had done good service against the enthusiasts, and had written the best ethical treatise of colonial times, he was nevertheless charged with being fantastical, and his work with undermining morality. A similar fate befell the last of our colonial thinkers, John Woolman (1720-1772), the Quaker, a sort of provincial Piers Plowman, whose visions of reform were far ahead of his day. In his Journal, the humble tailor of New Jersey takes up, in order, the evils of war and of lotteries, of negro slavery and excessive labour, of the selling of rum to the Indians, of cruelty to animals. Moreover, like the visions of the Plowman, Woolman's work might be called a contribution to the history of English mysticism. Whittier described the Journal as a classic of the inner life ; Channing, as beyond comparison the sweetest and purest autobiography in the language ; while Charles Lamb urged his readers to get the writings of
Puritan (Ohio, United States) (search for this): chapter 1.6
tion holds for the joy of the new lights. It may have its rise in the animal nature, for some have made it evident, by their after lives, that their joy was only a sudden flash, a spark of their own kindling. And when this is expressed among some sorts of people by singing through the streets and in ferryboats, from whatever cause it sprang it is certainly one of the most incongruous ways of expressing religious joy. It must not be inferred from these strictures that Chauncy was a sour Puritan, averse to people's happiness. The contrary was the truth. His objections lay in the superficial and ephemeral character of the religious emotions among the new lights. Their joy was evidently but the reaction of relief from the fearsome tenets of their preachers. The doctrines of total depravity and eternal damnation struck terror into the heart of the sinner. Now it was by a sort of incantation, by a promise of immediate assurance of salvation, that the itinerant removed this terror
Maine (Maine, United States) (search for this): chapter 1.6
t to go and hear such a heretic. Mayhew was really that, for he violently resisted the doctrine of irresistible grace, and entirely rejected the doctrine of the Trinity as taught by the Athanasian and Nicene creeds. In this he pointed the way to the coming Unitarianism, and that almost two generations before the Unitarian manifesto of 1819. Although on the new side, Mayhew was opposed to the new lights. Long before the coming of Whitefield, he had been present at a religious revival in Maine, noticed its extravagance and fanaticism, and the people's violent gestures and shrieks. From this early experience, he came to value rational religion the more highly. The phrase is significant. Upon the arrival of Whitefield in Boston in 1749, Mayhew claimed that the evangelist's hearers were chiefly of the more illiterate sort, and that the discourse itself was confused, conceited and enthusiastic. The old term of reprobation reappears. So, like Chauncy himself, Mayhew offers the
Providence, R. I. (Rhode Island, United States) (search for this): chapter 1.6
131. In a life that nearly spanned the eighteenth century, Chauncy affords an excellent example of the double reaction of the age of reason against the doctrines of irrationalism. His works had these two merits; they undermined the harsh doctrines of Calvinism which the new lights had utilized to strike terror into the hearts of the unthinking; and they afforded a substitute for sentimentalism, for, in place of violent joy, one could gain a placid contentment in the ways and works of Providence. Another thinker of ability, but of a less noble and elevated style, was Chauncy's younger contemporary, Jonathan Mayhew (1720-1766), a graduate of Harvard in 1744, and best known for his lively attacks upon the Tory doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance. Mayhew gained a reputation for bringing a new style and manner into preaching. The son of a father who argued with ingenuity in behalf of human liberty, he was reputed to be a cheerful, liberal man, opposed to the gloomy
New England (United States) (search for this): chapter 1.6
the way in which he did it. Against this inspired son of a tavern keeper the New England clergy united in using the adjective low, and naturally, as leaders of proviforth in fields and barns and preferred emotional tests to cool conviction. New England now saw revealed the old struggle between masses and classes, between town aes that pernicious thing-enthusiasm. This attack was to be expected. The New England clergy, as chosen members of a close corporation, abhorred the disturbers ofopposition to the establishment of English episcopacy in the land. When the New England fathers had both pence and power, as Tom Paine would say, it was natural thaThis was the volume entitled Seasonable thoughts on the state of religion in New England (1743). That state, in the eyes of the pastor of the First Church in Boston, were loath to abandon, there must be brought a new and emollient doctrine. New England's nervous diathesis called for something to soothe the system. This came to
King's college (United Kingdom) (search for this): chapter 1.6
may traverse, by parallel paths, the whole controversy between old and new lights, a controversy beginning with a narrow emotionalism and ending with a rationalistic trend towards universalism. A similar course of thought, but expressed with far higher literary skill, may be pursued in the writings of the Connecticut scholar Samuel Johnson (1696-1772), a graduate of Yale College in 1714, a disciple of George Berkeley when he came to Rhode Island in 1729 and, in 1754, the first head of King's College, Now Columbia University. New York. Especially does Johnson's Elementa Philosophica strike a balance between extremes. Like the Alciphron of Berkeley, to whom the Elements was dedicated, Johnson's work was directed against both fatalists and enthusiasts. The author's situation was logically fortunate. He was familiar with both predestination and fanatical principles and avoided the excesses of each. Brought up in Yale College, under the rigid Rector Clap, he came to dislike the s
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