History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 62

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534

USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 62

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A question which for twenty-five years had been a cause of hard feeling, and which had given rise to a bitter sense of oppression, was thus properly disposed of. It was not without ground of pride, therefore, that Mr. Hancock recorded " it was done before ever any act of this nature passed in the government." That it was settled in a way so creditable seems to have been largely due to Mr. Hancock's influence, who then gave evidence that he was possessor not only of some Christian spirit but of much good judgment. He always cultivated friendly relations between the two societies, as well as personally between himself and Mr. Miller ; and before Dr. Miller came the Pre- cinct church " admitted to their communion all such members of the church of England as desired to have occasional communion with them, and allowed them what posture of devotion they pleased; and they received the sacrament standing."

Through thirty-six years Dr. Miller remained the rector of Christ's Church, devoted to his parish, and accounted one of the ablest defenders of Episcopacy in New England. At the close of his ministry the society numbered fifty families and as many communi-

1 Chief Justice Sewall ; Sewall Papers, V. Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 386-87.

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cants. Indeed, he and his immediate successor so churchmen in Braintree were favorers of the Stamp Act. Ten years later they had not changed their raised the Braintree church that for a time it seems " to have exercised a maternal care over those of the | views, and when the news of the Quebec Bill arrived same communion in the vicinity who were weaker than itself." Revisiting England in 1747, Mr. Miller was then made a Doctor of Divinity by Oxford. On the 11th of February, 1763, " to the very great loss of this church, his family and friends, he departed this life.'

Not much more remains to be said of Christ Church during the period now under consideration,-that to 1830. It had already seen its best days, for the Revolutionary troubles were at the time of its first rector's death already impending. Indeed, a posthu- mous attack made on him just after his death, because of his connection with a project for establish- ing an American bishopric, led to one of the angry paper controversies which paved the way to war. The Rev. Edward Winslow, a Bostonian by birth and a graduate of the college in the class of 1741, suc- ceeded Dr. Miller. He was inducted into the living in July, 1764, and his connection with the society lasted through thirteen troubled years, until 1777. He left behind him in Braintree the reputation of being an earnest, faithful rector and an honest man ; but he was in his ministry at a time of great political ex- citement, and his was the vanquished side. And yet it may fairly be inferred that, for a time at least, the society did not languish under his charge, for the families belonging to it increased in number from fifty to sixty-eight, and in the year 1773 it was found necessary to enlarge and remodel the church building. During his ministry also a subscription was made " to provide a decent glebe" for the rector, and with the means thus obtained a piece of land was bought and a house built, the rent of which at a later period sufficed to keep the abandoned church in decent repair while the almost lifeless society awaited the return of better days.

Mrs. Adams wrote that they " hung their heads," and, " no matter how much provoked by those of the other side, they would not discuss politics." Before that " parties ran very high, and very hard words and threats of blows upon both sides were given out." A few days later there was something very like an actual outbreak in the town, the North Precinct of which had the reputation of being a nest of Tories. The stock of public powder was removed from it by an organized mob, and Mrs. Adams again wrote, “ The church parson thought they were coming after him, and ran up garret." The popular feeling was now so strong that it was no longer safe for Mr. Winslow to read the prayer for the king. Yet he seems to have struggled on, vainly hoping for better days, until his salary was stopped and many of his people had moved away. Then, taking very properly the ground that his ordination oath compelled him to conform literally to the Prayer-Book, he, " with sad and silent musings," resigned his charge. Going to New York, which was in British occupation, he died there in 1780, before the close of the war. He was buried under the altar of St. George's Church, in that city

The English society had spent, it is said, over thirteen thousand dollars in the attempt to build up the Braintree church, and it was now less than ever able to stand alone. The ritual was again in as great public odium as it had been a whole century before. To a certain extent Mr. Joseph Cleverly faced the storm in Braintree, and filled, as best he could, the place which Mr. Winslow had left vacant. A native of the town, and coming of a family long resident there, he had graduated at Harvard College in 1733, and, though never in orders as an earnest Epis- copalian, he now served Christ's Church for several years, reading prayers and services, and being referred to in its records as the society's teacher. He lived to extreme old age, dying in 1802.

Episcopacy has ever been an exotic in Massachu- setts; and the cultivation of exotics is expensive for those engaged in it. The mother English society was always most liberal in dealing with its sickly After Mr. Cleverly's death the society for many years continued in what might fairly be called a state of suspended animation. It did not wholly die, for the church edifice and the rectorship were there, and the rent. collected from the latter sufficed to keep the former from tumbling down. The parish committee secured the assistance of clergymen and readers, so that from time to time church services were performed, and a few kindly-disposed ladies exerted themselves to keep up a Sunday-school, at which the children not Braintree offshoot, and, until the Revolutionary troubles took the shape of actual war, it annually sent over sixty pounds sterling for the support of the minister. Naturally the society was inclined to a friendly feeling toward the hand which fed it. To it the Apthorps, the Borlands, the Cleverlys and the Millers-indeed, all the gentry of the neighbor- hood, with the exception of the Quincys-belonged. The gentry were apt to be Tories, and as early as 1765, John Adams noted in his diary that most of the only of that society but of the precinct were taught

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the catechism. But, as a religious force affecting town life, Christ Church hardly made itself felt be- tween the close of the Revolution and the year 1825. It had lived on support from without, and that sup- port was withdrawn. Accordingly, with one period of faint revival between 1822 and 1827 under the fostering charge of a faithful and able rector, the Rev. B. C. Cutler, it continued to languish until long after 1830. At last the increase of wealth and the change in modes of life of the whole outside community brought in new and influential families, introducing elements in which the Episcopal form of worship found natural support. But the town had then lost its individuality. During the first hundred years of its existence the history of Christ Church in Brain- tree and Quincy is most interesting as showing how wholly alien Episcopacy was to the New Eng- land civilization ; how practically impossible it was for it there to take root and to flourish ; and how, sup- ported for a time at great effort and cost from without, when that support was withdrawn, it languished and

shillings " old tenor" per ounce, instead of six shil- lings seven pence, as it should have been. In 1645 there were in circulation bills of the " new tenor," of the " middle tenor," and of the " old tenor." Those of the two former, being of greater value than the latter, were hoarded. Apparently, in 1788, Mr. Briant's salary of sixty pounds "new tenor" was equivalent to about fifty-four pounds in silver, or to six hundred pounds in " old tenor," and in purchasing power was not less than what had been paid to his predecessor.

A graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1739, Mr. Briant, when he came to Braintree, was in his twenty-fourth year. His pastorate was brief, for he died before he was thirty-three ; but it was as troubled as it was short. Intellectually he was cer- tainly a remarkable man ; there is reason to suppose also that he was a somewhat eccentric one. An ad- vanced religious thinker and a born controversialist, he seems to have paid little regard to conventionali- ties. Had he lived he might have held his ground, and succeeded in advancing by one long stride the died away, having, so far as could be seen, in no way | tardy progress of liberal Christianity in Massachusetts ; influenced the growth of the native community. Like Catholicity, it was a wholly alien institution ; and, again, like Catholicity, it got a secure hold on the soil only when a new element was infused into the town's blood.

on the other hand, it is not improbable that he was too far in advance of his day, and that premature decline alone saved him from the loss of his pulpit, and theological ostracism. Yet his career, so far as it went, was indisputably an interesting one.

Returning to the history of the original pre- In the year 1749, Mr. Briant published a sermon on moral virtue. He seems before to have preached it several times in different pulpits, and it had excited a good deal of remark. In his native town of Scituate, especially, it had produced so great an impression that the minister of that place had felt moved to con- trovert its teachings. This he had essayed to do by means of a series of discourses, in regard to which it was at the time remarked the main difficulty was to discern the " difference between his doctrine and that of Mr. Briant." The progress of religious thought has since been so great, that it is not easy now to see in the Briant sermon anything to excite remark. In it moral and religious truisms seem to be set forth in plain, strong English, which at times rises into elo- quence; while it throughout possesses the better quality of plain speaking. The writer said what he meant; and he said it in a way not to be misunder- stood. He drew his text from Isaiah Ixiv. 6,- " All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags,"-and he proceeded to vigorously denounce the absurdities to which a lifeless, conventional religion had led. The distinctness with which he gave utterance to the truth that was in him startled those who had quietly settled cinet church, around which the whole religious life and mental activity of the town still centred, the Hancock pastorate, ending with premature death in May, 1744, was followed by an interim of a year and a half. During that period the church twice invited Mr. Benjamin Stevens to occupy the vacant pulpit, but he declined to do so. At last, on the 16th of September, 1745, the Rev. Lemuel Briant, of Scit- uate, was unanimously chosen pastor, and on the 11th of the following December he was formally ordained. The salary of the new minister was fixed at " fifty pounds per year in bills of credit on this province of the last emission" during the first two years of his set- tlement, to be thereafter increased by a further annual sum of " twelve pounds and ten shillings in bills of the like emission." This salary was considerably smaller than had been paid either to Mr. Hancock or to Mr. Fiske, but it was payable in bills of credit of the last emission. How clergymen and the few others who, in Massachusetts, were dependent on fixed incomes contrived to live in those days must always remain a mystery. At the time of Mr. Hancock's death, bills of the tenor in use when he was settled passed in cir- culation for about sixteen per cent. of their nominal down in the faith that Calvinism was not only the value; in other words, silver was worth nearly forty foundation of all things, but that it was a good founda-

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tion. Once more accepted formulas had been chal- lenged, and declared to be pernicious cant.

Formulas, and religious and educational formulas in particular, rarely lack defenders. Several of his brethren at once entered the lists against Mr. Briant, and the theological rancor with which they did it was expressed on the title-pages, even, of the sermons in which they thought to confute him. The Rev. Mr. Niles, of the Middle Braintree Precinct, for instance, called his discourse a vindication of certain gospel doctrines and teachers " against the injurious reflec- tions and misrepresentations" of the " Rev. Mr. Lemuel Briant ;"' and the Rev. John Porter, of Bridgewater, improved on this by entitling a sermon "The ab- surdity and blasphemy of substituting the personal righteousness of men in the room of the surety righteousness of Christ, in the important article of justification before God." Mr. Briant was not a man to be summarily suppressed. He was young, it was true, but his church was with him, and he had a vigorous Yet it did not end then. Referring, in one of his notes to Winthrop, to some forgotten controversy of earlier days, Mr. Savage has alluded to what he calls " the exquisite rancor of theological hate." Mr. Briant seems to have stirred those waters to their depth, nor did they subside during the short remain- pen. Accordingly, in 1750 he published, in the form of a letter, some " friendly remarks" on Mr. Porter's effort, to which, in the printed form, had been appended an " attestation," as it was called, signed by five other clergymen, in which they expressed their hearty con- currence with their brother, Porter, and dolefully la- | der of his life. At the time of his second letter he mented the " dreadful increase of Arminianism and other errors in the land."

This reply of Mr. Briant's must have been very irritating to his opponents, for he met them in a way they could not understand. They were narrow- 1 minded men of no great intellectual strength, and, after the manner of such, they could not grasp a new idea even when it was plainly set before them. Because it was new, was with them sufficient proof that it must be unimportant or erroneous. Nevertheless, they were men thoroughly in earnest and of implicit belief. Briant in his reply trifled with them. Hardly troub- ling himself to conceal his contempt, he permitted a vein of irony to run through his answer, which, while it must have bewildered as well as exasperated his opponents, was out of place. The subject-matter under discussion should at least have made the discus- sion serious. As it was, he very distinctly, to use a modern word, chaffed his reverend critics.

Naturally they were not slow to respond, and, as is the custom of men of their calibre, they forthwith proceeded to identify themselves with the sacred cause of which they were the self-appointed and in- competent advocates. They accused Mr. Briant of levity in the treatment of religious truths, and of pre- varication ; and they proceeded in their labored way | to show that he was an Arminian and unsound. The

Rev. Mr. Foxcroft, the colleague of Dr. Chauncey in the First Church of Boston, Mr. Briant had in his letter referred to as "a verbose, dark, Jesuitical writer," and, accordingly, Mr. Foxcroft now returned the compliment by accusing Mr. Briant of being not merely Arminian, but Socinian even. To this contri- bution to theological debate Mr. Briant speedily re- plied in a piece dated April 15, 1751, which he entitled "Some more friendly remarks on Mr. Porter and Company. In a second Letter to him and two of his abettors, namely, Mr. Cotton, appendix writer, and Mr. F-xcr-ft, marginal noter." The title alone is sufficient. In pointed controversy his op- ponents were no match for Mr. Briant, and he now fairly convicted them of having brought serious charges against him on the strength only of conjecture and suspicion ; but the discussion had drifted away from great doctrinal issues to mere personalities, and it ceased to be of importance.

was not yet thirty, but he was already drawing to- wards that decline which, only two years and a half later, caused him to sever his connection with his parish. The closing months of his short pastorate must have been very trying to him. Among his brethren he was not without sympathizers, and he counted the celebrated Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, of the West Church in Boston, as his intimate friend ; but his controversial methods must have startled even those who believed as he did, and prevented their rallying to his support. Nor were his own people undivided. The majority sustained their pastor, but some were greatly disturbed by his liberal views. Through their agency an Ecclesiastical Council was called to consider the case of the Braintree church. Mr. Briant declined to acknowledge the authority of the Council, or to be present at its sessions. It ad- journed ; but met again in January, 1753, and, Mr. Briant still declining to appear, it proceeded to take cognizance of his case. Eight causes of complaint had been preferred. They related to all grades of offense from the sermon on moral virtue to whispers of " scandalous immoralities."

In their findings the Council expressed its opinion that there did exist grounds of complaint against the pastor, but it added the belief that the " aggrieved brethren," as the minority of the society was termed,

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had gone too far in their charges. The members of the Council concluded its report by giving " their best advices" to the two parties ; thus, in the words of Mr. Briant's most eminent successor, effecting " as much as Councils ever effect,-that is, nothing at all, except, it may be, to increase the difficulty in which they intermeddled." But these findings of a respon- the theatre in which the debate went on; one pre- cinct was arrayed against the other. Under these circumstances young Adams could not but have taken a lively interest in it. More than sixty years then passed away, during forty of which the New. Eng- land mind was wholly drawn off from problems of theology, and concentrated on questions of civil rights sible tribunal could not be overlooked. Accordingly, first and of government afterwards. Then, at last,

they were referred to a committee of the North Pre- during the earlier part of the present century, an established order of things was brought about, and once more religious issues come to the front. Growth had meanwhile been going ou, quietly, slowly, giving no outward sign, and all at once it revealed itself in the Channing protest against Calvinism. New Eng- land Unitarianism assumed its shape. Then Dr. Morse, of Charlestown, sent a pamphlet setting forth cinct church composed of its most respected mem- bers. At its head was John Quincy, then one of the most prominent men in the public affairs of the province, and others of its members bore names which had appeared on almost every page of the town records since the records began. The report of this committee was dated April 14, 1753, and, breathing a high order of the true Protestant spirit, it wholly | the tenets of the new church to the ex-President, who justified the pastor. As to the immoralities charged was now verging on his eightieth year. In reply he wrote as follows, under date of March 4 and May 15, 1815 : on Mr. Briant, the committee reported that they had " never been proved in any one instance."

On the 22d of the following October a precinct- meeting was held to take action on the pastor's re- quest for dismission. His health was failing. As was usual in the town- and precinct-meetings of that period, John Quincy served as moderator, and it was presently voted that the pastor's request be granted, his parishioners apparently having considered that it was hopeless " to wait patiently some time longer to see if it may not please God in his good Providence to restore our reverend pastor to his former state of health." Mr. Briant did not survive his dismissal quite one year, dying at Hingham in the early au- tumn of 1754. At the time of his death he was but thirty-two, and of all those who have served as pas- tors of his church, his remains and those of his elo- quent successor a century later, William Parsons Lunt, alone do not moulder in the old First Precinct graveyard. Briant was buried in the neighboring town of Hingham in September, 1754, while Mr. Lunt, in March, 1857, a tired wayfarer, was laid, decently, reverently, beneath the sands of the Syrian desert, as he journeyed towards the Holy Land. A little heap of stones alone marked his resting-place.

There is high authority to the fact that, in his re- ligious views, Lemuel Briant was a man half a cen- tury in advance of his time. During the controversy of 1749-53, John Adams was a growing lad, for he entered Harvard in 1751. It was an open question with him whether he would prepare himself for di- vinity or the law, and in the minds of the college students of those days theological disputes had all the active interest which new scientific or philosophical theories now have. His own town of Braintree was

" I thank you for your favor of the 10th, and the pamphlet enclosed, entitled ' American Unitarianism.' I have turned over its leaves and find nothing that was not familiarly known to me. In the preface Unitarianism is represented as only thirty years old in New England. I can testify as a witness to its old age. Sixty-five years ago my own minister, the Rev. Lemuel Briant, Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, of the West Church in Boston, the Rev. Mr. Steele, of Hingham, the Rev. John Brown, of Cohasset, and perhaps equal to all, if not above all, the Rev. Mr. Gay, of Hingham, were Unitarians. . .

"In short, sir, I have been a reader of theological, philo- sophical, political, and personal disputes for more than sixty years, and now look at them with little more interest than at the flying clouds of the day."

Mr. Briant died in the autumn of 1754, and the last French war, that which resulted in the English conquest of Canada, had then already begun. At the time of his death Washington was reconnoitering on the Ohio, and Lord Monkton was preparing for the removal of the Acadians; Braddock's defeat took place in the following July. The Revolutionary struggle followed close on the French war. The rapid sequence of great events outside materially affected even the First Precinct church of Braintree. A long period of doctrinal quiesence ensued, which amounted at last almost to torpidity. It was on the 22d of October, 1753, that Mr. Briant was dis- missed, and just one year later, on the 8th of October, 1754, the parish extended a call to the Rev. Anthony Wibird.

Mr. Wibird, a graduate of Harvard in the class of 1747, was at the time of this call in his twenty-eighth year. He at first declined, apparently on the ground that the salary voted would not suffice for his support. It was small, being but eighty pounds a year, with a

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further sum of one hundred and thirty-three pounds, six shillings, and eightpence, " lawful money," for " a settlement." This it will be noticed was not so much as Mr. Fiske had received nearly a century before. Subsequently the parish modified its terms, offering a salary of one hundred pounds a year, with no sum at settlement, and this proposition Mr. Wibird accepted. Accordingly, on the 5th of February, 1755, he was ordained. His pastorate, the longest in the annals of the parish, covered forty-five years, outlasting the century. During it the colonies sepa- rated from the mother-country, and the North Pre- cinet of Braintree became the town of Quincy. What with French and revolutionary wars and reigns of terror, the downfall of the old and the upbuilding of the new, the world in those days moved rapidly ; but amid all the turmoil without,-stamp-acts, tea-riots, Bunker Hill fights, Declarations of Independence, and elections of Presidents,-the Rev. Mr. Wibird seems to have pursued the even tenor of his way. His colleague during the closing years of his minis- try wrote of him that " he was a learned man, though in his habits somewhat eccentric, and withal of great dignity, and beloved and respected by his people." He was, as his name implies, a genuine New Eng- lander, also; and traditions still linger among the grandchildren of his parishioners touching the dry, quaint humor with which he observed on men and and things. He was never married, nor was anything bearing his name ever put in type, though he was once chosen to deliver the annual election sermon. He was about seven years older than John Adams, who saw a good deal of him during the years while the former was picking up a practice at Braintree, and in 1759 the active-minded young lawyer wrote of the divine that his soul was lost in " dronish effeminacy," though he had " his mind stuffed with remarks and stories of human virtues and vices, wis- dom and folly, etc." On yet another occasion he remarked upon Parson Wibird's popularity, " He plays with babies and young children that begin to prattle, and talks with their mothers, asks them familiar, pleasant questions about their affection to their children ; he has a familiar, careless way of con- versing with people, men and women ; he has wit and humor."

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 62

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1534

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534