USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Contributions to the ecclesiastical history of Essex County, Mass., 1865 > Part 41
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I say, then, that it seems to me that the Hopkinsians did accomplish the point they first aimed at. They checked the tide of formalism which was rolling in on our ancient manners, and they placed the means of grace in a more proper point of view. They drew the sharp line between the church and the world, and are entitled to the praise of whatever benefit came from that source. Their best influence was in THE SILENT CHANGE THEY WROUGHT IN THE MINDS OF THEIR OPPO- NENTS. But if the conclusion is received, that all these Calvinists (ex- cepting the two Danas) were verging to Arminianism, I should demur at such an undiscriminating involution. "If they called themselves
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Calvinists," says Dr. Bacon, " what they meant was, they were not Hop- kinsians." No, sir, no; you came from Connecticut and have not felt the pulse of Massachusetts. It was no doubt true of many of them ; but not of the whole ; for if we should give up such men as Mr. Homer of Newton, Dr. Holmes and Dr. Morse ; Dr. Pearson, so active in form- ing the Andover coalition ; it was not true of Dr. Tappan of West New- bury ; Dr. Hemmenway of Wells; Mr. Greenough of Newton; Dr. Bates of Dedham, - all the Baptist preachers to a man, and many, very many of the laity in our churches.
In my native town, John Flavel was in almost every family, and studied day and night. The fact is, when the third party began to be developed, it was the Calvinists who first took the alarm; they made the first motion for a new seminary ; they were anxious for the union. Dr. Pearson took thirty-six journeys to Newburyport to effect that union. How inconsistent it is, to claim for the Hopkinsians all the praise of stemming the tide of heresy, when it is well known they were cold for the union, were not aware of the danger, and were perhaps more jealous of their allies than of their enemies ! In my youth, there were three distinct parties in the convention of Congregational ministers in Massachusetts. There were the Liberals, as they were called, afterwards Unitarians ; the Calvinists, and the Hopkinsians. So distinet were they, that each had its preacher every three years. It was the rise of this third party that produced the union of the other two. But it was the Calvinist, whom some would represent as hand and glove with the liberals, that first blew the trumpet and sounded the alarm in the holy mountain. Why did they start their Seminary ? why did they adopt the Westminster Assembly's Catechism as the symbol of their faith ? Why did they propose the union, when they heard of their neighbors having. the same plan ? Why did Dr. Pearson make his thirty-six journeys to Newburyport ? unless it be that they were startled at the developments of heresy they saw around them. The fact is, if the union is a mound against the tide of error, more was done by the Calvinists than their colleagues to arrest that error; and I agree with Dr. Bacon most heartily in his opinion, that out of the fusion of the two parties in the Seminary, something better than the type of either has been produced. The paradoxes of Hopkinsianism have been softened ; its improvements have been adopted ; a free Bible has been brought forth ; and a unity and a strength have been exercised on our home churches and in the missionary cause which was never known before.
In all this, there was an IMPERSONAL REASON that led the way ; that is, these travellers came together because the roads in which they were walking compelled them to unite. It was the voice of Providence that
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overawed and subdued them. The decay of Hopkinsianism (if it has decayed) is not owing to the union, nor to Andover, but to the removal of that state of manners that produced it. The evils which it saw and shunned, and to which it owed its existence, have long since vanished with the morals of the day. Who now ean complain of too strict an education ? of too much family prayer ? of too much diligence in the use of means before conversion? of too much historical faith, or too much reading of the Bible, or too much attention on public worship? . We are glad now if we can get our people to church on any consideration. I am not disposed to depreciate the men whose hearts were so pure and whose services were so large and who were the great iconoclasts of the day. But after the idols have been broken and new ones set up, let us not lose their spirit by too loudly lauding their merits, or too severely imitating the letter of their example. If they were alive now, they would do, as they did then, read the page of life before them and receive a different lesson ; for it is the very nature of vibrations in theology, that the same man, like the pendulum, takes his direction from the point in which we find him ; he moves as gravitation demands ; and the same piety that leads him to oppose the evils of one age, would, at a different period, arm him against those of another.
I once heard Dr. Dwight say, " I have often been dubbed an Armin- ian because I defend the means of grace," and this was said under the pressure of the mitigated Hopkinsianism of Connecticut, when he made the speech, 1813. No wonder, then, under the first warmth of contro- versy, the old Calvinists should be dubbed Arminians because they had not clearly stated the legitimate use of their means. The chief way in which the old Calvinists had any hand in introducing Arminianism was, - by being unconsciously surrounded by a formalism, which welcomed its doctrines. As Dr. Increase Mather said, Election Sermon, 1677, "The neglect of this principle of truth, that such members of the church as are admitted to full communion ought to be regenerate, converted persons, - the non-attendance unto that, did (as a worthy divine of our own hath well noted) lay a foundation to great apostasy which the Christian church hath been long subject unto." In this evil, our New England people shared with the church in Geneva, Scotland, Holland, the Huguenots of France, indeed the whole world. How did Calvin's own church, by the silent tide of time. become Unitarian !! Let us do justice then to all men. Hopkinsians accomplished, in a good degree, what they aimed at. They destroyed formalism; they established the principle that a church should consist of converted persons ; they urged the duty of immediate repentance, and showed its importance. They won their first battle. But if it is claimed for them that in the second
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conflict - fencing out Unitarians - they did more than their allies and colleagues. - I must think the point ean be proved only to a very partial tribunal, and under very imperfect evidence. The fact is, they did less. They were too jealous to form the alliance or engage in the battle. The first man that broke off the system of promiscuous exchanges, was a decided Calvinist. Dr. Griffin was a Calvinist. The first proposal and the earnest plea for an union (and union is strength) came from the Calvinists. When they saw the precipice of heresy before them, they all started baek. Dr. Morse of Charlestown once gave me a long account of one of the meetings. Dr. Spring was present, Dr. Pearson, Mr. Bartlett, Leonard Woods, and others. " I had to plead," said Morse, " as for my life; I told them that heresy was coming in, destructive to us both, - I wanted all good men to join in resisting the common foe. Now was the time ; our differences were not fundamental. If we estab- lish two seminaries now, the discord will be perpetual in our churches ; and if cutting off my right hand could prevent such a disaster (these were his very words) I would gladly have it done on the spot." He represented himself as being very earnest and pathetic on the occasion. The turning point was Mr. Bartlett ; he put his foot down (whether literally or metaphorically I do not know - perhaps both) and said, It must not be. It is well known, that Drs. Spring and Emmons never relished the union ; though Dr. Woods did. But the Calvinistic party, Morse, Pearson. Farrar, Madam Phillips, Abbott, French, wished it in- tensely ; and I must add, the victory was owing to the union; for the bold paradoxes of the thorough Hopkinsian, must have kept them in the minority. They never could have been accepted by a comprehensive church ; and this they seemed to me to apprehend themselves. It was a manifest assumption in Dr. Emmons's mind.
The tendencies of the present day confirm what we have said con- cerning this tide in clerical opinions. We live in a very different age from that which by reaction and by resiliency engendered the IIopkin- sian view of the means of grace. The tendency now is to forsake the sanctuary, to neglect the Sabbath, to forget the catechism, to omit family prayer, and to be so far from making a righteousness of outward worship, that we find our self-justification in a very different line. The consequence is, that the very clergy, who claim most to inherit the falling mantle of Dr. Spring and his collaborators, are now slipping to the other extreme. Dr. Emmons marked the turning tide, and very consistently lamented it. We now multiply protracted meetings, inquiry meetings ; we urge sinners to pray ; we almost regard the establishment of family prayer as a signal of conversion ; we talk of our duties to baptized cliil- dren ; we are even verging to the ground of efficacious baptism; in a
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word, new times are producing new impressions; and I apprehend we are going to the opposite extreme. It is curious to observe the change in the mind of single individuals. Dr. Beecher. then of Litchfield in Con- necticut, published a dialogue in the Christian Spectator, some forty years ago, between a pastor and an impenitent inquirer, in which he seems to take the ground that the impenitent man ought not to try to repent ; he ought to do it. and not try to do it ; for trying without doing is only dilatory hypocrisy. This was wisdom in Litchfield in 1819; but in 1831, when he was in Boston, amidst a different population, and the excitement of protracted meetings came up. how altered was his tone! I heard him say. that if a serious inquirer would abstain from bad company and conscientiously attend the means of grace and avoid outward sin, in nine cases out of ten, he would be converted. I recol- leet asking one of Dr. Spring's firmest disciples, the late SAMUEL TEN- NEY, Esq., what he thought of the sentiment, and he frankly told me, that he. i. e. Tenney, had changed his mind on this subject. These remarks. far from being reproaches to individual inconsistency, only go to show we are all on a winding stream in a rapid current, and are in- duced (and almost forced) to guide our barge by the bending of the banks and the depth of the channel.
Let us view past theology in connection with all its causes, and with a discriminating eye which selects its benefits and leaves its imper- fections.
END.
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