USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > Thirteen historical discourses, on the completion of two hundred years : from the beginning of the First Church in New Haven, with an appendix > Part 18
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Within a year after receiving his first degree, Mr. Noyes, then about twenty two years of age, became a tutor in the College, where he continued till he came here as a candidate for the pastoral office .* A few months after his ordination,
* President Stiles says, " After the deatlı of Rector Pierson, and while the College was at Saybrook, and destitute of a resident Rector, the Rev. Phine- has Fisk, and the Rev. Joseph Noyes, were the pillar tutors and the glory of the College. Their tutorial renown was then great and excellent, although now almost lost."-Serm. on the death of Mr. Whittelsey, 25. In his Lit. Diary, for 1779, March 18th, Dr. S. speaks of examining Mr. Noyes's manu- scripts, and says, " From Rector Pierson's death, till the removal of the Col- lege to New Haven, Mr. Fisk and Mr. Noyes were very eminent and cardi- nal tutors, far beyond any other. After Mr. Fisk left it, the headship devolved upon Mr. Noyes, who was in the tutorsbip five years. So that he was per- fectly acquainted with College affairs."
Dr. Stiles transfers to the pages of his diary the following letter, which may interest some lovers of antiquity.
" Revnd. Sir,-I purposed to wait on you and to be our epistle to yourself; but many things prevent, especially Mr. Russel's absence. We content our- selves in sending one of the candidates to bear this epistle, which is to in- form you, Revnd. Sir, that on Thursday of this week according to the cus- tom of this school, the candidates were proved and approved,-present, Mr. Noyes of Lyme, the Rev. Mr. Ruggles, as also the Rev. Mr. Hart, Mr. Fisk, Mr. Mather, &c. Our request is that you would, Revnd. Sir, appoint them the commencement work. Moreover, it being granted at a meeting of the trustees, and recorded that candidates in this school may print theses and a catalogue as in other schools, we and they humbly request yourself would take the trouble to examine the tlieses and catalogue presented to you by the bearer ;- please to insert or reject theses as you please. It is also our humble request that yourself would give the theses a dedication. Students are all in health. We always, Revnd. Sir, request your prayers, knowing our charge is great. Our duty waits on Madam Andrew. We shall not add, but the offering of our humble service to yourself, testifying that we are your
Very humble and obedient servant, Jos. NOYES.
Saybrook, July 26, 1714.
To the Revnd. Mr. Samuel Andrew, Rector of the Collegiate School in Connecticut."
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the College was removed from Saybrook to New Haven. The land on which the first College edifice was erected, at the corner of College and Chapel streets, was previously the property of this Church, and was sold by the Church to the trustees of the collegiate school, " for twenty six pounds cur- rent money."*
For the first twenty years, and more, after Mr. Noyes's or- dination, there is no evidence that his ministry was not as acceptable and prosperous as that of his predecessor. Dr. Dana, who was partly contemporary with him, and who knew him personally, testifies that during all that period, the Church was harmonious and happy under his ministry.+ To the same effect his colleague and immediate successor, Mr. Whittelsey, testifies that during that period, the Church, "enjoyed much peace, dwelt together in love and good or- der, great numbers being added thereto year by year."} Yet he did not preach, during those years, to a congregation in which there was no piety, or no superior intelligence. All the instructors and students of the College were under his pastoral care. He had among his hearers, successively, such men as the presidents Cutler, Williams and Clap. Such men too as Samuel Johnson, afterwards the father of the Episco- pal Churches in Connecticut, Jonathan Edwards, Eleazar Wheelock, Aaron Burr, and Joseph Bellamy, sat under his preaching, enjoyed communion with the Church under his administrations, and left no record of their dissatisfaction, that has come down to us.
Meanwhile the colony was slowly spreading itself over its vacant territory ; and, in the face of many obstacles, its pop- ulation and wealth were gradually increasing. The counties of Litchfield and Windham were in that age, not unlike what
Church Records. This was land given to the Church, by Mrs. Hester
Coster. Mr. Hooke's lot was alienated to the trustees, to be the site of the Rector's house. The vote of the trustees to remove the school to New Ha- ven, was on the condition that these two lots should be obtained for the uses specified.
t Sermon on the eighteenth century:
# MS.
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Illinois and Wisconsin are now, the remote wilderness where hardy enterprise contended with rude nature, and whither the adventurous emigrant turned his steps, hoping to find a home for his posterity. Efforts in England, to take away the charter and liberties of the colony, were renewed from time to time, keeping the people continually alarmed and agitated with the thought of losing all that they held dear. Wars with the Indians in the easternmost parts of New Eng- land, in which Connecticut, though remote from the danger, bore her full part by contributions of men and treasure, helped to demoralize, spreading the vices of military life through the puritan and rustic population. A fluctuating currency, the depreciation of the bills of credit which were issued to meet the expense of wars, and of constant vigilance and de- fense in England to maintain their chartered liberties, had a disastrous effect not only on business and general prosperity, but, what is of far more consequence, on morals, and against the influence of religion.
The Churches too, throughout New England, had gene- rally adopted the opinion first asserted by the excellent and venerated Stoddard of Northampton, that the Lord's supper is a converting ordinance, and that men of decent outward deportment, professing to be seekers after the grace of God, but with no experience of the power of the gospel, and no pretensions to spiritual religion, may with perfect propriety be received to full communion. And in Connecticut the " ecclesiastical constitution," as it was called, or confedera- tion of the Churches under the Saybrook articles, which as at first explained, and as now understood in practice, implies nothing inconsistent with the original Congregationalism of New England, was, by a series of little usurpations, acquir- ing more and more of the form and spirit of the worst kind of Presbyterianism. The Churches, for whose liberty and purity the country was planted, had lost in a measure both purity and liberty. They were brought continually more and more under the absolute power of the civil state. The parishes being established by law, and minorities, however
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dissatisfied or indignant, having no right of secession, except by attaching themselves to some other denomination, the rights and feelings of minorities were sometimes treated, both by parishes and by ordaining councils, with contempt. The minister, when once settled, being in a great degree inde- pendent of his people, was under strong temptations to indo- lence in his studies, and to an inefficient and perfunctory manner of performing his duties. The wonder is, that in these circumstances, the ministry and the Churches did not sink together into such an apostacy as was at that very time taking place in the Lutheran and Reformed Churches of Eu- rope. God remembered his covenant with the fathers, and would not forsake the children.
The year 1735 is commonly regarded as the commence- ment of that great religious excitement and revival, in New England, which made the middle of the last century so mem- orable in the history of our Churches. Occasional and local revivals of religion-seasons of awakening and ingathering in particular churches, had not been uncommon in New England, nor have they ever been uncommon in any country in which the gospel has been faithfully preached. But in the year 1735, there was a signal work of the grace of God in the town of Northampton, which was then blessed with the ministry of Jonathan Edwards. It began there without any extraordinary circumstances to awaken the at- tention of the people, or any extraordinary arrangements or efforts on the part of the minister. The young people of the place had for two or three years shown an increased sobriety in some respects, and an increased disposition to receive religious instruction. There had been, from time to time, instances of strong religious impression and of hopeful reno- vation, But in the latter part of December, 1734, five or six persons, one after another, became very suddenly the subjects of that grace of God which creates the soul anew. Among these was a young woman distinguished for her gaiety in youthful society,-"one of the greatest company-keepers in the whole town,"-who came to the pastor, with a broken
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heart and a contrite spirit, and with faith and hope in the Savior of sinners, before any one had heard of her being at all impressed with serious things. The sudden, yet, as time proved, real conversion of this young woman, was the power of God striking the electric chain of religious sympathies, that had imperceptibly, but effectually encircled all the fami- lies of Northampton. Mr. Edwards says in his "Narrative," " The news of it seemed to be almost like a flash of light- ning upon the hearts of young people all over the town, and upon many others." "Presently a great and earnest concern about the great things of religion and the eternal world, be- came universal in all parts of the town, and among persons of all degrees and all ages. All talk but about spiritual and eternal things was soon thrown by ; all the conversation in all companies was upon these things only, except so much as was necessary for people carrying on their ordinary secular business. The minds of people were wonderfully taken off from the world : it was treated among us as a thing of very little consequence. All would eagerly lay hold of opportu- nities for their souls, and were wont very often to meet to- gether in private houses for religious purposes : and such meetings when appointed were generally thronged. Those who were wont to be the vainest and loosest, and those who had been most disposed to think and speak slightly of vital and experimental religion, were now generally subject to great awakening. And the work of conversion was carried on in a most astonishing manner, and increased more and more. From day to day, for many months together, might be seen evident instances of sinners brought out of darkness into marvellous light. In the spring and summer following, the town seemed to be full of the presence of God, it was never so full of love, and yet so full of distress, as it was then. It was a time of joy in families, on account of salvation being brought to them ; parents rejoicing over their children as new born, and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands. The goings of God were then seen in his sanc- tuary, God's day was a delight, and his tabernacles were
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amiable. Our public assemblies were then beautiful ; the congregation was alive in God's service, every one eagerly intent on the public worship, every hearer eager to drink in the words of the minister as they come from his mouth. The assembly were, from time to time, in tears, while the word was preached ; some weeping with sorrow and distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and concern for their neighbors."*
But that which was newest and most remarkable about this work of God's grace, was that it was not a local awak- ening. That which I have recited from Edwards's Narra- tive, is only a specimen of what was going forward at the same time, not only in the neighboring towns of Massachu- setts, but still more extensively in Connecticut, and even in some parts of New Jersey. This Church shared in that first general revival. In the Narrative from which I have already quoted, and which was written in 1736, Mr. Edwards says, " There was a considerable revival of religion last summer at New Haven, old town, as I was once and again informed by the Rev. Mr. Noyes, the minister there, and by others. And by a letter which I very lately received from Mr. Noyes, and also by information we have had otherwise, this flourishing of religion still continues, and has lately much increased. Mr. Noyes writes that many this summer have been added to the Church, and particularly mentions several young per- sons that belong to the principal families of that town."+ One of the persons brought under the power of religion during the progress of that revival in this Church, was Aaron Burr, afterwards President of the College of New Jersey, who was then pursuing his studies here as a resident graduate.}
The awakening of 1735, here and elsewhere, was followed by several years of comparative declension ; though it could not be denied, that great and abiding reformations were made, in those places which had been so remarkably visited.
* Works, (Dwight's ed.) IV, 22. I have abridged the language of Ed- wards.
t Ibid, 26. # Allen, Biog. Dictionary.
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In the year 1739, the Rev. George Whitefield, whose fame was already great in England, where he preached his first sermon in June, 1736,-and in the infant colony of Georgia, which he had visited in 1738,-came for the second time to America. He arrived at Philadelphia in November ; and af- ter preaching there and at New York, and at a number of places in New Jersey, just long enough to be heard by thou- sands with unmingled and enthusiastic admiration, he pro- ceeded through the southern colonies, where he labored amid great excitement, and with great success, till the last of Au- gust, 1740. Then at the earnest invitation of some of the ministers of Boston, he embarked at Charleston for New England, where another revival had already commenced, far more extensive, and in respect to the strength of excitement, far more powerful, than that which had been enjoyed five years before. The town of Boston, however, notwithstand- ing the earnest endeavors of the ministers there, had remained unaffected. The fame of Whitefield prepared the people of that place to receive him with awakened curiosity. The liberality of his Christian feelings, and the strangeness of his position-a minister of the Church of England, venerating the piety of the Puritans, seeking to walk in their steps, and giving the right hand of fellowship, without reserve, to all the followers of Christ-propitiated their good will. His pe- culiar style of oratory, depending for its power far more upon imagination, fervor, pathos, voice and gesture, than upon ar- gument, riveted their attention to those simple and familiar truths which had been a thousand times inculcated upon them in vain. He preached to crowded thousands, not only in all the meeting houses, but upon the common. He made ex- cursions into the adjacent country, preaching as he traveled, at the rate of sixteen sermons in a week. It was supposed that at his last sermon in Boston, when he took his leave of the town, he had not less than twenty thousand hearers. The excitement, thus begun, did not subside when the im- mediate occasion of it was removed. Boston was at that time blessed with the revival of true religion.
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On Thursday, the 23d of October, Mr. Whitefield, having visited Mr. Edwards at Northampton, where he spent several days, arrived at New Haven. Here he was entertained at the house of Mr. James Pierpont, the brother in law of Mr. Edwards and Mr. Noyes. The legislature of the colony be- ing in session, he remained till after the Lord's day ; "and had the pleasure of seeing numbers daily impressed" under his daily ministrations in the old polygonal meeting house. Several ministers of the vicinity visited him, "with whose pious conversation he was much refreshed." Good old Gov- ernor Talcott, on whom with due politeness, he waited to pay his respects, said to him, " Thanks be to God for such refreshings in our way to heaven."*
The great religious awakening which was then in pro- gress throughout New England, was accompanied with many errors and extravagances. We have heard much, and some of us have seen something, of the extravagances and enthusiasm connected with religious excitements at the pres- ent day ; but nothing in our day,-whether "new meas- ures," or "Finneyism," or " Burchardism," or by whatever name of terror you may choose to call it,-nothing that has had place within the pale of the Presbyterian and Congrega- tional communion, can be represented as equal to the heats and disorders of the great revival of 1740-41. And the great reason is, the revivals of our day do not find the Churches, or the country, in so low and unprepared a state as did the revivals of that day. There is now a more intelligent and skillful ministry ; the word of God is better understood ; the nature of true piety is better understood ; the differences be- tween genuine and false religious experience, are more clearly and commonly apprehended ; and, what is of equal conse- quence, the various methods and processes by which the re- newing Spirit actually leads the minds of men to repentance and to holiness, have been more extensively and carefully observed. It were indeed a shame to the Churches and a
* Trumbull, II, 153.
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reproach to the gospel itself, if ministers and Churches had learned nothing from the revival of 1740, with its blessings and its incidental evils, and nothing from the many similar visitations of Divine mercy between that day and the present.
One of the first symptoms of disorder, was the springing up of a corps of lay exhorters, untaught, uncalled, self-sent, who usurped the function of preaching the gospel, and brought themselves into collision with the instituted ministry and the organized Churches.
Another alarming indication was seen, in a disposition to follow not truth nor reason, nor any rule of conduct, but inward impulses,-a disposition which was naturally accom- panied with a pretended power of knowing the state of men's hearts by some spiritual instinct, quicker and surer than the old process of inferring the state of the heart from the com- plexion of the life.
Another phenomenon of the times, was the appearance of a class of itinerating ministers, who either having no charge of their own, or without special call forsaking their proper fields of labor, went up and down in the land, making their own arrangements and appointments, and operating in ways which tended more to disorganize than to build up the Churches. I do not mean such men as Wheelock, Pomeroy, Bellamy, and Edwards himself, who went where they were invited, and calculated to demean themselves every where with Christian courtesy and propriety, and whose preaching wherever they went,-certainly that of the two latter,-was much better than the preaching of Whitefield, for every pur- pose but popular excitement. I mean those men of far inferior qualifications who, moved by an unbalanced excitement, or by the ambition of making a noise, or by the irksomeness of regular and steady toil, "shot madly" from their appropriate spheres if they had any, and went wherever they could find or force a way among the Churches, spreading as they went, denunciation, calumny, contention, spiritual pride, and con- fusion.
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These things were signs, not of the revival of religion, but of its decay. Enthusiasm in religion,-the predominance of imagination and blind unthinking impulse over the soberness of truth, and thought, and conscience,-may coexist for a sea- son with the revival of religion,-is even, in a sense, and to some extent, inseparable from a great religious awakening ; yet it always indicates the presence and the power of the en- emy ; and where it spreads, and bears down all before it, there the enemy triumphs. Over-doing, says Baxter, is the Devil's way of undoing.
DISCOURSE XI.
EXTRAVAGANCES AND CONFUSION .- THE NEW HAVEN CHURCH DIVIDED .- MR. NOYES IN HIS OLD AGE.
1 COR. i, 13 .- Is Christ divided ?
AT the time of Whitefield's first visit to this place in 1740, Mr. Noyes was in the 25th year of his ministry, and in the 49th year of his age. No doubt of his piety or orthodoxy, and no complaint against his ministry, appears to have found public utterance. But soon afterwards an opposition was or- ganized against him, which not only resulted in a large secession from the Church, but involved all the evening of his life in storm and conflict.
Whitefield began his career in England, where it was not, and never had been, a breach of charity or candor, to say that not a few of the clergy on whom the people depended for religious instruction, were entirely ignorant of the power of religion. It is much better there at this day; but even now there are not a few, among the clergy of the established Church, who take up the ministry as a profession, not only from the lowest and most mercenary motives, but even with- out the decency of hypocrisy. It was perfectly natural, therefore, for Whitefield, in his preaching, to speak strongly against unconverted ministers. Whether this was wise, even in England, may be doubted. But when he came into this country, where every minister was both by the most solemn profession on his own part, and by the most solemn recogni- tion on the part of the Churches, a man renewed by the Spirit of God, and where any good evidence of a minister's being unrenewed would be a sufficient reason for deposing him from office,-it was impossible that strong and sweeping de- clarations against unconverted ministers, could answer any good purpose. Unconverted ministers there doubtless were, even in New England; but Whitefield erred in spreading sus-
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picion among the ardent and impetuous, respecting the piety of their pastors. The effect on the people, was bad ; the ef- fect on the pastors whose piety was called in question, was bad ; and the effect on the itinerants who would fain follow in Whitefield's footsteps, was worst of all.
One of the earliest and most distinguished of these itiner- ants, was the Rev. James Davenport, a son of the Rev. John Davenport of Stamford, and great grandson of the first pastor of this Church. This man, having been educated at Yale College, where he graduated in 1732, had been for several years settled in the pastoral office at Southold on Long Island, and had been esteemed a pious, sound, and faithful minister. But in the general religious excitement of 1740, he was carried away by enthusiastic impulses, and without asking the approbation or consent of his people, set out upon an itineracy among the Churches, leaving his own particular charge unprovided for. Wherever he went, he caused much excitement and much mischief. His proceedings were con- stantly of the most extravagant character. Endowed with some sort of eloquence, speaking from a heart all on fire, and accustomed to yield himself without reserve to every enthu- siastic impulse, he was able to produce a powerful effect, upon minds prepared, by constitution or by prejudice, to sym- pathize with him. His preaching was with the greatest strength of voice, and with the most violent gesticulation ; it consisted chiefly of lively appeals to the imagination and the nervous sensibilities, and, in the mimicry, or pantomime, with which he described things absent or invisible as if they were present to the senses, he appears to have been more daring, if not more powerful, than Whitefield himself. He would make nervous hearers feel as if he knew all the secret things of God, speaking of the nearness of the day of judgment like one from whom nothing was hidden. He would work upon their fancy, till they saw, as with their eyes, the agony, and heard, as with their ears, the groans of Calvary, and felt as the popish enthusiast feels when, under the spell of music, he looks upon the canvas alive with the agony of Jesus.
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He would so describe the surprise, consternation, and despair of the damned, with looks and screams of horror, that those who were capable of being moved by such a representation, seemed to see the gate of hell set open, and felt as it were the hot and stifling breath of the pit, and the " hell-flames flash- ing in their faces." And if by such means he could cause any to scream out, he considered that as a sign of the special presence of the Holy Spirit, and redoubled his own exer- tions, till shriek after shriek, bursting from one quarter and another in hideous discord, swelled the horrors of the scene. In one instance it is recorded of him as follows,-and this I suppose to be an exaggerated description of the manner in which he ordinarily proceeded at the close of his sermon, when he found sufficient encouragement in the state of his audience. " After a short prayer, he called for all the dis- tressed persons (who were near twenty) into the foremost seats. Then he came out of the pulpit, and stripped off his upper garments, and got up into the seats, and leaped up and down some time, and clapped his hands, and cried out in these words, ' The war goes on, the fight goes on, the Devil goes down, the Devil goes down,' and then betook himself to stamping and screaming most dreadfully."*
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