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Our record has now brought the history of King's Chapel, and that of several of the families most intimately connected with its annals, through the critical period of the Revolution, into the modern era, when the influences that shaped its course and policy were such as are wholly familiar to us of a later day. Before, however, going on with the incidents and the ministries that belong to this later period, it will be instructive to go back and trace, briefly, those conditions in the history of religious opinion, which made the change now impending in its theo- logical position more natural and less revolutionary than has generally been supposed. The immediate antecedents of that change, and the way in which it was brought about, will accord- ingly make the topics of the two succeeding chapters.
1 In our Burial Register his name appears under date of March 3, 1802.
A notice of the death of Dr. Bulfinch will be found in the Boston Gazette of March 1, 1802. See also footnote in a subsequent chapter (xxi.) on Dr. Free- man's Ministry, p. 379.
2 A record of the family of Joseph Coolidge is in the New-Eng. Ilist. and Geneal. Register (1853), vii. 143, where also may be found an account of the Jo- honnot family, long identified with King's Chapel. See also chapters xxi. and xxiv. post, for notices of the Coolidges.
CHAPTER XX.
RELIGIOUS OPINION IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
HERE can be no doubt that the dogma of a co-equal Trinity had, in the last century, lost its strong hold on the faith of Christians both in England and in Amer- ica. In the established Church of England, Unita- rian beliefs were in many instances publicly professed, and in others well known to exist, and that among the most distin- guished divines, and those holding the highest official positions. How they were able to use the liturgy, is their own secret, which perhaps perished with them ; but we have no reason to doubt their honesty and integrity of purpose. There are two ways in which their course may be accounted for. In their tra- ditional reverence for forms which they had from infancy identi- fied with the very essence of religion and soul of piety, they may have unconsciously and gradually come to attach to those words meanings which to one unaccustomed to their use they would not bear, pouring the new wine into the old bottles so slowly as not to burst the bottles. The alternate solution, which we should be slow to suppose where it was not professed, is best given in the words of a latitudinarian churchman well known on both sides of the Atlantic, who, when asked how he could with a quiet conscience repeat three creeds neither of which he believed, replied, " An historic church has a right to have its past beliefs recognized in its worship."
Chief among the Unitarian clergy of the English Church was Samuel Clarke, as a philosopher and a theologian second to no man of his time, who compiled a revised liturgy excluding all Trinitarian phraseology, which was adopted, with very slight changes, by Theophilus Lindsey, and published by him for use in Unitarian congregations. As in avowed sympathy with him we might name Whitby, by far the most learned and able Eng- lish commentator on the New Testament till late in the present century. Bishops Pearce and Hoadly were generally regarded as in the same category, and so was Sykes, whose numerous trea- tises in defence of Christianity have faded from memory only
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because the types of infidelity which he assailed are no longer rife. Henry Taylor, vicar of Portsmouth, was a professed Arian, and Bishop Watson says of one of his books that it contains the most formidable attack on what is called the Athanasian system that is anywhere to be met with. Even Archbishop Tillotson was charged with Arianism ; and while it might be difficult to establish, it would be impossible to refute the charge from his writings. Lindsey, who resigned his living in the Church because he could no longer feel justified in using its liturgy, writes that his father-in-law, Archdeacon Blackburne, agreed with him in opin- ion, but did not deem himself obliged on that account to leave the Church.1 Curwen, in his Journal, in describing a sermon by Bishop Watson, says that he closed his discourse with the as- cription, "To the King eternal, immortal, invisible," instead of the usual Trinitarian doxology. It is well known that the Atha- nasian Creed, though its repetition is required by the Rubric thirteen times a year, had lapsed into general disuse ; and had it been proposed afresh for adoption as a symbol of the actual belief of the Church, it would have been accepted by an infini- tesimal minority 2
There was among English Dissenters equally prevalent loose- ness, or, it may be said in many cases, indefiniteness, of belief as regards the Trinity. Beside those who professed Unitarianism, and who were for the most part members of denominations that in the previous century were untainted by what the most rigid dogmatist would term heresy, the most orthodox believers seem to have generally regarded Christ as in no sense self- existent, but as derived from and subordinate to the Father. Under the terms of the Athanasian Creed neither Watts nor Doddridge would have escaped the sentence of everlasting per- dition. Indeed, it is difficult to discriminate between the Chris- tology of these men and that of Richard Price, the most orthodox
1 Blackburne, in an autobiography written in the third person, says : " The friendship between Mr. Lindsey and Mr. Blackburne was not nearly so much cemented by this family connection as by a similarity of sentiment in the cause of Christian liberty, and their aversion to ecclesiastical imposition in matters of conscience." Blackburne's treatise, entitled "The Confessional," shows beyond a doubt that he was not a believer in the creed of his own Church ITis opponents, who attempted to answer his book, admit his perfect
probity and undoubted excellence of character ; and it is impossible that so good a man should have retained so false a position unless it was held by so many other good men as to cause assent to the established dogmas of the Church to be generally regarded as an unmeaning formalism.
2 In the time of George III , proba- bly in accordance with the Queen's wishes, the Athanasian Creed was omitted in the service of the Royal Chapel.
RELIGIOUS OPINION IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 373
among the Unitarians of the last century, except in their retain- ing the term Trinity, with their own peculiar definitions.
In Boston the prevalent religious belief in the latter part of the last century retained very little of the Puritan element. There is reason to believe that at the close of the War of the Revolu- tion there was but one Congregational clergyman in the town who by carlier or later standards would have been reputed as orthodox, and he was pastor of a church of a widely different complexion ; while Rev. Mr. Eckley, the pastor of the Old South, the only church which could be accounted as orthodox, denied the supreme deity of Christ, and was the first minister to propose an exchange with Mr. Freeman after his ordination as a Unitarian. Here there was neither concealment nor eva- sion. What we know of the opinions of the ministers is for the most part derived from their printed sermons; and the creeds of their churches contained no specifications of dogmas, having been transmitted from the time when there was no dis- sent from Calvinism, and therefore no need of dogmatic detail.1 In fine, the religious atmosphere of the time in Boston was so entirely non-Trinitarian that any stress laid on the Trinity as an essential part of Christian belief would have been regarded as exceptional, almost phenomenal.2
It was impossible, with this prevalence of non-Trinitarian belief on both sides of the Atlantic, that the American Episcopal Church should have remained entirely loyal to its traditional dogmas. There are not wanting manifest tokens of dissent in the meagre documentary evidence to which we have access. Rev. William IV. Wheeler (H. U. 1755), rector of the church in Scituate, re- fused to sign the manifesto of which we shall presently speak, disclaiming King's Chapel and its minister, and Mr. (afterward Bishop) Parker ascribed his refusal to sympathy with Mr. Free- man's heretical opinions. Rev. Mr. Fisher, of St. Peter's Church in Salem, expressed at the outset sufficient interest in Mr. Free- man's revisal of the liturgy to lead to the presentation of a copy of the new Prayer-Book, which, however, he returned, and with no little discourtesy. Dr. Bentley says of him, " He recommended to me Taylor's Arian Scheme," - it is hard to say why, unless he regarded it as sound and scriptural. When
1 It is worthy of notice that church- creeds in all times have had their form determined not so much by the beliefs of those who made them as by the pre- vailing errors (so deemed) against which it was thought necessary to defend their specific beliefs. To draw a figure from
photography, a creed is generally a nega- tive of the heresy or heresies most dep- recated at the time of its formation.
2 See Dr. Andrew P. Peabody's chap- ter on "The Unitarians in Boston," in Memorial History of Boston, iii. 467 et seq. - EDITOR.
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asked how he could read the Athanasian Creed without believ- ing it, he replied, "I read it as if I did not believe it." One of his successors, Rev. Dr. Mason, speaks of the entire non-recog. nition of the distinguishing doctrines of the Episcopal Church in a volume of Mr. Fisher's sermons published after his death, and ascribes it to the fact that the volume was edited by Judge Story, who had been his parishioner, but who several years after- ward was known as a Unitarian. The more probable reason was that Mr. Fisher did not preach these doctrines.
But the strongest testimony to the unsettled belief of the American Episcopal Church at this time is derived from Bishop Provoost of New York, one of the two American bishops who were consecrated in Lambeth Palace in 1787. Before his con- secration, while he by no means promised ordination to Mr. Freeman with his profession of Unitarianism, instead of dismis- sing the application, he postponed it till the next Convention of the Church. His disposition as to this subject may be seen in the following passage of a letter, dated three days before his election as bishop, to Rev. Dr. White, bishop-elect of Pennsyl- vania : " I am sorry to find that your Convention has not been without its altercations.1 The doctrine of the Trinity has been a bone of contention since the first ages of Christianity, and will be to the end of the world. It is an abstruse point, upon which great charity is due to different opinions, and the only way of securing ourselves from error is to adhere to scriptural expressions, without turning into definitions." He then refers to Bishop Watson, as "showing a truly liberal spirit, when after mentioning Newton and Locke and Lardner as esteemed or avowed Socinians, Clarke and Whiston as Arians, Bull and Waterland as Athanasians, he says, 'Surely we ought to learn no other lesson from the diversity of their opinions except that of perfect moderation and good will toward all those who hap- pen to differ from ourselves.'" Before writing this letter Dr. Provoost had proposed the omission in the Litany of the peti tions to "God the Son," "God the Holy Ghost," and the "Trinity." This suggestion was not accepted ; but the " Pro- posed Book " of Common Prayer, the only book of the kind that antedated the consecration of Bishops White and Provoost, omitted the Nicene as well as the Athanasian Creed.2
1 What follows, certainly implies, be- yond all reasonable doubt, that these "altercations " were concerning the Trinity.
2 It omitted also the clause, " He de- scended into hell." There is still ex. tant at least one altar-tablet in which the creed lacks that clause ; and for many
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RELIGIOUS OPINION IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
These statements have been made to show, in the first place, that in the religious medium in which the King's Chapel congre- gation had been placed, it is by no means a matter of surprise that at the close of the war a majority of its remaining members and voters should have been professedly or virtually Unitarians ; and secondly, that being so, they would not have deemed them- selves necessarily excluded from the fellowship of the Episcopal Church.1
It should be also borne in mind that at the close of the war the American Episcopal Church had neither legal existence, definite organization, established forms, nor a determinate fu- ture. It was necessarily cut off from its mother-church ; for no American minister could obtain ordination without swearing allegiance to the British Crown, and no American bishop could be consecrated without a special Act of Parliament to that effect. At the time when worship was resumed in King's Chapel in 1782, it seemed by no means impossible that presbyterian ordi- nation would remain the only way in which the Church could recruit its ministry. This condition of things undoubtedly brought the Episcopal and Congregational clergy into closer professional relations than they had previously borne, or have borne within the last half century.
In 1783 the Episcopal clergy of Connecticut chose Rev. Samuel Seabury as their bishop.2 He applied in vain for conse- cration in England, and late in the following year he had re- course to the bishops of the Scotch Episcopal Church, which then held a barely tolerated, not a legalized existence, having been suppressed on account of the adherence of its principal
years after its restoration, almost every officiating minister read instead of it the alternative clause, permitted by the Rubric : "Ile went into the place of departed spirits."
1 That even Episcopalians did not re- gard them as outside of their own Church four years after the ordination of Mr. Freeman and the adoption of the revised liturgy, would appear from the following vote, passed by the proprietors of Christ Church in Cambridge : -
" At a Meeting of the Proprietors of Christ Church, Cambridge, on the 25th April, 1791, the following Vote was passed : -
" That, Jon. Simpson, jun", & Na- thaniel Bethune communicating a letter from the Wardens of the First Episco-
pal Church in Boston, enclosing a Vote of their Wardens & Vestry, presenting two Folio Prayer Books to this Church, - Voted, That the Thanks of the Proprie- tors of this Church be presented to the Wardens & Vestry of the First Episco- pal Church in Boston for their' gener- ous token of regard to this Church, & particularly for the manner in which they liberally & affectionately presented them. And that the Wardens of this Church be desired to acquaint the Wardens & Vestry of the First Episcopal Church in Boston of our cheerful acceptance of the same.
2 In the Panoplist for June, 1815, Dr. Freeman describes the ordination of a priest in Boston by Bishop Seabury. See p. G21, fost.
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ANNALS OF KING'S CHAPEL.
members to the Stuart dynasty. He was the only bishop in this country till 1787. It was not till 1789 that Massachusetts was represented in a General Convention, and not till 1797 that she had a bishop of her own, or that her churches formed a part of any diocese.
In October, 1790, it first became obligatory on the Episcopal churches to use in public worship the Book of Common Prayer then just issued. Previously, individual ministers and churches had been free to make such changes as they saw fit in the Eng- lish liturgy. All of them had of course omitted such portions as the altered form of government had made obsolete, and there was no central authority to forbid other changes, or even an entire revision like that subsequently made under the auspices of the General Convention. In its revision King's Chapel did, on a large scale, indeed, what in a smaller way every church had been forced to do, and what every church, being independent of every other, had a right to do.
In this unorganized condition it became common for Congre- gational ministers to officiate in Episcopal churches. An arrange- ment was made for an exchange between Mr. Parker, of Trinity Church, and Mr. Freeman, when he first became a reader - actually a preacher - at King's Chapel, and the exchange failed to take effect because Mr. Parker was unwilling that Mr. Free- man should read the parts of the service which by the English Rubric priests alone were competent to perform, - an objection which seems to have been regarded as a special token of high- churchmanship. For many years Congregational ministers were often permanently employed in Episcopal churches under the title of readers, but preaching sermons of their own if they chose, as Mr. Freeman did while he was a reader. Christ Church in Cambridge was for more than half a century without a resident rector, and for a large part of that time was served by readers who were also preachers. In 1809 a Christmas sermon, preached in Christ Church by Rev. Dr. Holmes, of the Congregational Church, was printed by request of the society. In 1806 St. John's Church, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was burned. On the ensuing Christmas the services were held in the North Congregational Church, and as the rectorship was vacant, Rev. Dr. Buckminster, the pastor, officiated as reader and preacher. The members of St. John's Church subsequently worshipped with the South Congregational Church, which had no pastor, and for several months an arrangement was made by which the same minister, at different hours, was preacher to one portion,
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RELIGIOUS OPINION IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 377
and reader- preacher too, if he chose so to be -- to the other portion of the united congregation ; and when the new church was ready for occupancy, the consecration service was performed, in part, by Rev. Mr. Morss, of Newburyport, and, in part, by Rev. Mr. Parker, the recently ordained Congregational [Unitarian ] minister of the South Church. Nearly half a century afterward it was discovered that the church had not been duly consecrated, and on the completion of certain changes in the interior of the building, the service was performed, in accordance with the ritual, by the Bishop of New Hampshire. As late as 1813, and during Bishop Griswold's episcopacy, after the death of Mr. Fisher, of Salem, Rev. Messrs. Barnard, Bentley, and Prince, all of them Unitarians, preached, each an entire Sunday, at St. Peter's Church, as an expression of sympathy with the bereaved congre- gation, the service on these occasions being read by one of the parishioners.1
We recapitulate these facts, not because we question the fit- ness of the present organization and canons of the American Episcopal Church, nor even that of the exclusion of ministers of other denominations from its pulpits; for were there in other ways the mutual Christian recognition that there ought to be, pulpit reciprocity might perhaps be deemed on all accounts un- desirable. Our sole aim has been to show that when the events which will have record in the following chapter took place, at the date of Mr. Freeman's ordination and settlement, there was no authority to which King's Chapel owed allegiance, no episcopate to which it belonged, no established usage by which a minister not episcopally ordained could be excluded from its pulpit, in fine, no reason why that individual corporation might not consult its own edification and spiritual well-being, amenable only to conscience and to God.
1 There was in the immediately post- Revolutionary time no exclusiveness as to the use of Episcopal churches.
In the summer of 1782 the Rev. Wil- liam Rogers, a Baptist clergyman, offi- ciated " in his way " in St. John's Church, Providence, R. I., at the request of the Wardens. Updike, p. 416.
In 1790 the use of Trinity church, Boston, was given for the performance of high mass, with its full paraphernalia of ceremony, and of a funeral requiem, in commemoration of a French Roman Catholic recently deceased, - an occa- sion for no little bitterness of censure on the part of zealous Protestants.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE MINISTRY OF JAMES FREEMAN.1
66 AMES FREEMAN, son of Constant and Lois (Cobb) Freeman, was born in Charlestown, April 22, 1759. His parents were both natives of Truro, in Barnsta- ble County. His father is said by Dr. Greenwood, in his Memoir of Dr. Freeman, to have been 'a man of strong mind and excellent character, and his life marked by enterprise and vicissitude.' The son attended the Boston Latin School, under the famous Master Lovell, and graduated at Harvard Col- lege in 1777. Although the opening years of the Revolutionary War seriously interrupted the course of the college studies, he brought away an excellent amount of scholarship for the times, in the languages and in mathematics, - the latter constituting his after-dinner diversion, with slate and pencil, even in old age."
" His father, who had been a sea-captain in earlier life, had be- come a merchant in Quebec some time before the outbreak of the war. His mother died soon after the beginning of hostilities, when all communication was suspended ; and the husband and father, who was obliged to remain at Quebec to protect the pro- perty of those whose agent he was, was unable for some time even to visit the children whom he pathetically describes, in a petition to the Governor of Quebec, as his ' poor motherless babes in New England.'
" The sympathies of young James were strongly on the patriot side, and although he did not enlist in the army (probably be- cause of the inconvenience and peril which such a step would bring upon his father under these circumstances), after gradu- ating, on visiting his relatives on Cape Cod, where he taught a school at Barnstable, he drilled a company of Cape Cod troops which was raised for the Continental army. In the summer of
1 The portions of this chapter desig- nated by quotation-marks, without refer- ence to their source, are copied from a valuable and instructive article by Mr. Foote on " James Freeman and King's Chapel, 1782-1737. A chapter in the
Early History of the Unitarian Move- ment in New England," in "The Re- ligious Magazine and Monthly Review" (Boston) for June, 1873, xlix. 505-531, which see. - EDITOR.
JAMES FREEMAN.
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THE MINISTRY OF JAMES FREEMAN.
17So he sailed for Quebec with his sister and youngest brother, to place them with their father. 'The vessel in which he em- barked was fitted out as a cartel ; but not being acknowledged as such by the Governor of Quebec, on his arrival he was made a prisoner, and put on board a guard-ship. He remained in this situation till December, when, the severity of the weather no longer suffering the guard-ship to lie in the river, he was ad- mitted on shore a prisoner on parole. In the summer of 1782 he obtained permission of the Governor to go to New York, and embarked in a letter of marque, which, after she had been out a week, was captured by a privateer from Salem, and he carried into that port. Immediately on his arrival he began to preach,' - first, probably, for Rev. William Bentley, of Salem, his classmate and intimate friend, - not without preparation ; for he had passed a year at Cambridge as a resident graduate, and had read theology since, after the fashion of the time (for there were no divinity schools), with such helps as he could.
" At this time, the Old South congregation were worshipping in King's Chapel, jointly with the regular congregation, - each using its own form of worship for one half the day. But it had been determined by the remnant of the congregation whom the war had left, to resume exclusive possession of their church as soon as possible."
Accordingly, on the 8th of September, 1782, Dr. Thomas Bulfinch,1 the Senior Warden, commenced a correspondence with Mr. Freeman ; and a favorable reply having been received, “ on Sept. 28, 1782, the Wardens wrote him a formal letter, inviting him 'to officiate for the Proprietors of the Chapel in the ca- pacity of a reader for six months, .. . hoping and trusting that' his 'further continuance in the service of the church will be acceptable both to' him 'and to them. The duty ex-
1 Thomas Bulfinch, the second of the name, was the son of Dr. Thomas Bul- finch, who was educated in his profes- sion at Paris, and returning to Boston in 1721, was for thirty-six years in the successful practice of medicine, and held a foremost place among the ablest and best men of his time. The son was born in 1728, graduated at Harvard College in 1746, studied medicine under his fa- ther's direction, and then at the Uni- versity of Edinburgh, where he took his medical degree in 1757. He was eminent as a physician, and honored and beloved for his personal merit and his
public services. He was Senior Warden of King's Chapel at its re-opening after the war, and remained in office for twelve years. He died in 1So2. His son, Charles Bulfinch, the architect of the State House and of the national Capitol, was con- nected with King's Chapel till his re- moval to Washington. Thomas, the son of Charles, was for many years Warden of the Chapel, and is still held in grateful memory there. Rev. Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch, - divine, poet, and saint, - than whom no man can have been more worthily honored or dearly beloved, was also a son of Charles. See ante, p. 368.
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