USA > New York > Old New York : or, Reminiscences of the past sixty years > Part 18
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itself by his Discourse on National Sins. The Voice of Warning, a powerful Discourse by a pop- ular man, John M. Mason, was also widely circu- lated. The party feuds which had annoyed real believers of different denominations on such points as adult and pædo-baptism, on certain rituals, on ordination and the like, and which had hitherto been the only obstacle to the more earnest and greater extension of religious conformity by the clergy of different sects, were apprehended now as merely nothing, in comparison to the evils which seemed impending. The tranquillity of the whole clerical body stood on the borders of destruction. The prelacy was alarmed, and the so-called dis- senters of every faith were ill at ease. They had felt the whirlwind, they now dreaded the storm. The wolf threatened to destroy both the shepherd and his flock. The pulpit, so often and so effec- tively the means of relief of private sorrow, now waged uncompromising war with her thunderbolts from heaven, to rescue that only precious book, as Mason called the Bible, from the consuming influ- ence of atheism.
I am not to measure the extent of the benefits conferred by the ministry at that dark time when ominous formalities in the streets awakened the public gaze, when the ears were distracted by ter- rible blasphemy, and folly and infidelity had reached their climax ; but when I know that that
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majestic father of theology, Dr. Livingston, of the Dutch Reformed Church, Dr. Rodgers and Dr. John M. Mason, of the Presbyterian community ; that learned dignitary of the Episcopate, Bishop Pro- voost ; John Foster, of the Baptists ; Francis Asbury, of the Methodists, and Kunze of the Ger- man Lutheran Church, were of the number, and were enumerated among the best of men who en- countered the times and openly declared their faith, in order to rescue the people from them- selves ; I feel bound to infer that some of the lepers must have been cleansed. That eyesight was not received by all, and the scoffers not alto- gether silenced, the history of that period gives us painful proofs. That you may understand me the better, I will weary your patience a moment longer with a few circumstances which fell under the observation of every attentive person at that pe- riod. Nor will you accuse me of invective while I recite the story.
I believe it is set down as a political axiom that war is not conducive to the progress of re- ligious belief. Be this as it may, our revolutionary contest in its wide-spread desolation had left the institutions of learning and of theology encom- passed with perils and in the lowest temporal con- dition. Time was requisite to restore their ability and their influence ; and ecclesiastical affairs ne- cessarily halted in their march, from the penury
6*
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which pervaded the country and the overburdened cares of a people, full of gratitude at their liber- ation from the yoke of tyranny, yet hardly ready to summon the requisite means for sueh important and grave ends. In the meanwhile, the conelusion must be made that a sprinkling of philosophical belief, in eontradistinetion to that of religious, had here and there penetrated the publie mind and entered the soil of liberty, derived from the already seattered eirculation of the writings of Voltaire, Helvetius, Rousseau, and the Eneyelopædists. But the land was doomed to be still deeper im- pregnated and the dwellers thereon to partake in larger bounty of the products of a new husbandry, the fruits of a new revelation, in the enjoyment of which nature, rejecting absurdities and rejoieing in a higher knowledge, would understand her own powers and assert her inherent dignity. The work was therefore not entirely abortive, when, upon the arrival of the Ambuseade within our waters, was also brought that material which constructed the Temple of Reason and led numerous worshippers to her shrine. The Theophilanthropists reared their heads, and Deistieal Clubs were in formative operation. However repellent to the doetrines of a religion which, with uprightness of intention and the deepest convietion, the people at large main- tained in conseious purity ; however antagonistic to that faith which they had in infancy been
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taught and in riper ycars cherished as their great- est blessing, their allegiance to the God of their fathers was nevertheless in many instances neu- tralized by the poison they imbibed, and in many cascs broken asunder by pretexts of superior en- lightenment-a more tenable rationality, the pride of intellect. That these philosophical teachers well comprehended the avenues of triumph over the human heart, is now understood better than in the days of their active labors. At that period of our city's growth, scholastic knowledge was but spar- ingly diffused among us, and the manageable mul- titude were easily led captive by the dexterity of Jacobinical instructors, who knew how to accom- modate their lessons to the affections of the unen- lightened and untaught. Besides which, liberty and the rights of man were so insidiously inter- woven with the fallacies of skepticism, that while the former vouchsafed the dearest privileges, the latter was so masked that numbers unawares were indoctrinated and became the disciples of the the- istical school.
These clandestine movements were not without their consequences in other sections of the State, more especially at and about Newburgh, in the county of Orange. That county had been known as the residence of a fierce democracy for some time. It was patriotic in revolutionary times, and its political sentiments generally ran high. It was
-
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destined afterwards to become the scene of the Druidical Society, for so the free-thinkers nomi- nated their fraternity. They feigned the principles of the Illuminati and the Jacobin Clubs ; their public avowal was liberty and the rights of man. They alternately conducted their public worship in New York and at Newburgh ; and at this latter place I have assurances that the typical symbols of Christianity were sometimes outrageously profaned, and the holy sacraments prostituted to the vilest ends.
I might mention the names of several of the leading officials of this confederacy, were this the occasion-with a number of them I afterwards became well acquainted in my professional life. There were talents and knowledge among them, and an ardent thirst for liberty : they had warm feelings, strong affections, but lacked the conser- vative and wholesome principles on which a re- public must depend for its prosperity and duration. I would draw a veil over the closing scenes of some of their lives. How often we behold a mys- tery ! The county which had given to Noah Web- ster the school-house in which he first imparted juvenile knowledge, and where he first concocted the famous Spelling-book which has since given instruction and morality to millions of the youth of both sexes of this nation, became in the pro- gress of events the patron of a society whose every
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act seemed destined to demolish those very princi- ples on which both liberty and life depend.
In the midst of these commotions, certain presses were not tardy in the diffusion of works favoring the great designs of infidelity : Condorcet and Volney, Tindall and Boulanger, became ac- cessible in libraries and circulated widely by pur- chase. But no work had a demand for readers at all comparable to that of Paine ; and it is a fact almost incredible that the Age of Reason, on its first appearance in this city, was printed as an or- thodox book, by orthodox publishers, of a house of orthodox faith, doubtless deceived by the vast renown which the author of Common Sense had obtained, and the prospects of sale ; acting on the principle given in the Cyclopædia, in its definition of a good book, in booksellers' language, "one that sells well." The same publishers, however, made early atonement for their bibliographical error, in their immense circulation of Watson's Apology.
We had in those days other commotions touch- ing articles of belief of another order of delusion. I mean the promulgation of the rhapsodies of Richard Brothers, who affirmed he had received a special gift, and who in England had aroused attention by his revelations and prophetic visions not altogether unlike those of the Millerites of the other day in this metropolis. David Austin, an
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ardent preacher, of New Jersey, came hither to our relief, and occupying a prominent pulpit de- nounced Brothers as a deceiver, imparting his own learned disquisitions on the millennium ; while Townley, a worthy man and laborious expositor, the last in the city of that denomination of preachers of the old Oliver Cromwell belief, in a neighboring edifice in Warren street was expound- ing the " unsearchable riches," and demonstrating the decrees of infinite wisdom by enlightening his audience with a burning candle on his desk, in which I observed he protruded his finger in order to elucidate that passage of holy writ, "when thou walkest in the fire, thou shalt not be consumed, and the flame shall not burn thee."
The great instrument in the promotion of deistical doctrines during that singular period in New York, was Elihu Palmer, a speaker of much earnestness, whose pulmonary apparatus gave force to a deep, sonorous, and emphatic utterance. He was a native of Connecticut, born in 1763, was graduated at Dartmouth College, brought up a Congregationalist-assumed the ministry, but after a short period was suddenly transformed into a Deist. In his study he was reading the psalm, paraphrased by Watts, "Lord, I am vile, conceived in sin." He doubted, he denied the declaration ; he abandoned preaching. Riker, in his valuable Annals of Newtown, gives an interesting detail of
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the circumstances. Palmer proceeded to Phila- delphia for the purpose of the study and practice of the law, took the yellow fever of 1793, became totally blind, and gave up his law pursuits. He now in right earnestness assumed the function of a deistical preacher in this city, in 1796. He died in Philadelphia of pleurisy, in the winter of 1805 or 1806. In what manner he added to the stores of his wisdom after his loss of sight, I know not ; but must infer that his associate followers became in turns readers to him. His information, from early inquiry and a strong love of knowledge, with the means referred to, secured to him the title of a man of parts ; such was the general reputation he bore. I have more than once listened to Palmer ; none could be weary within the sound of his voice ; his diction was classical ; and much of his natural theology attractive by variety of illustration. But admiration often sunk into de- spondency at his assumption, and his sarcastic assaults on things most holy. His boldest philippic was his discourse on the title-page of the Bible, in which, with the double shield of jacobinism and infidelity, he warned rising America against con- fidence in a book authorized by the monarchy of England, and inveighed against royalty and the treacherous James, with at least equal zeal as did that sensualist issue his Counterblast against the most innocent recreation that falls within the
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scope of weary mortals. Palmer delivered his sermons in the Union Hotel, in William street. His audience was composed of a large body of the free-thinkers of that day. His Principles of Na- ture, a 12mo, was reprinted in London about the time of the Thistlewood riots. Palmer's strongest personal friends were John Fellowes, an author of some volumes ; Rose, an unfortunate lawyer ; Taylor, a philanthropist, and Charles Christian.
During the later years of his pastoral func- tions, as he called them, he was aided by a co- laborer in another part of the city, of physical proportions even more stately, of still more daring speech, whose voice was as the surge of mighty billows, whose jacobinism was, if possible, still fiercer ; I allude to John Foster : I have heard many speakers, but none whose voice ever equalled the volume of Foster's. It flowed with delicious ease, and yet penetrated every where. He besides was favored with a noble presence. Points of dif- ference existed in the theological dogmas of Fos- ter and Palmer, yet they had the same ends in view ; radicalism and the spread of the jaco- binical element. Foster's exordium consisted gen- erally in an invocation to the goddess of liberty, now unshackled, who inhaled nutrition from heaven, seated on her throne of more than Alpine heights. Palmer and Foster called each other
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brother, and the fraternity was most cordial. I have sometimes thought, could we find more fre- quently the same strenuous efforts, as these men employed, called into action by that exalted order of persons whose aim is the diffusion of evangelical truth, we should also find a wider extension of the gospel dispensation. Methinks there is a de- ficiency somewhere :
" "l'is of ourselves that we are thus or thus : Our bodies are our gardens, to the which Our minds are gardeners."
The improved temporal condition of our houses of worship in this city, after the war of indepen- dence, their great numerical increase, with the higher culture and augmented zeal of the preach- ers of different denominations in Christian exhor- tation, produced, if I may be allowed the lan- guage, a more formidable and well-disciplined phalanx against the inroads of infidel doctrines, and the front of deism was now less obtrusive, when the notorious author of the Age of Reason arrived among us in 1802. Nevertheless, his pro- digious political renown secured him vast atten- tions. The press on every side, from the north to the south, was filled with the highest eulogies of his merits and his services, or with direct invectives on his character. He was once the strong arm on which, in its darkest hour, the revolted colonies
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depended, and he had become the reviler of re- vealed truth and of the immaculate Washington. Jefferson, who had proved his friend, for reasons not necessary here to specify, was doomed to re- ceive a full share of the vituperation heaped on Paine. But Paine had many friends ; and, as he here sought retirement rather than office, and felt that as he had vindicated the rights of man, he was able to protect his own, seemed indifferent to public censure, and preserved the vials of his indignation almost solely for the head of Gouver- neur Morris, to whom he had long owed a grudge. In his Letters to the People of the United States, his shafts of ridicule were repeatedly aimed at the great statesman who had penned the Constitu- tion. Morris, who, unfortunately for himself, had suffered amputation of a limb, rendered necessary by an accident, was made the subject by Paine of sarcastic remarks from his calamity ; and Paine, triumphing in the fact, assured the public that Morris was little to be depended upon in serious difficultics with other nations, inasmuch as in such a crisis he would not dare to show a leg. He often treated the physical infirmities of his oppo- nents as he treated the miracles recorded in Scrip- ture. Penury pleaded most successfully with his feelings, and from the abundance of anecdotes concerning him, he seems to have been generous when his means allowed him. A sorry author,
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while Paine was abroad, had fabricated a book which he vended advantageously among us, as the Recantation of Paine's Religious Creed. He was desirous, upon Paine's arrival, of a personal intro- duction to him, which was accordingly allowed. " Are you not, sir," said Paine to the stranger, " the writer of my Recantation ? Did you do well with the affair as a business transaction ?" An affirmative being given to both interrogatories, " I am glad," rejoined Paine, "you found the ex- pedient a successful shift for your needy family ; but write no more concerning Thomas Paine ; I am satisfied with your acknowledgment-try some- thing more worthy of a man."
Paine's writings, it is well known, were gene- rally the promptings of special occasions. The yellow fever of 1803 brought out in 1804 his slender pamphlet on the causes of the pestilence. Some masonic agitations led shortly after to his History of the Origin of Masonry. His pen was rarely idle for the first year or two after his return to America, nor were the deplorable habits which marked his closing years so firmly fixed. Like the opium-eater, inspired by his narcotic, Paine, when he took pen in hand, demanded the brandy-bottle, and the rapidity of his composition seemed almost an inspiration. During the first few years after his return, he was often joined in his walks about town by some of our most enlightened citizens in
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social conversation, and his countenance bore the intellectual traces of Romney's painting. He now too received occasional invitations to dine with the choicer spirits of the democracy ; and none could surpass him in the social circle, from the abun- dance of his varied knowledge and his vivid imagi- nation. The learned and bulky Dr. Nicholas Ro- mayne had solicited his company at a dinner, to which also he invited Pintard, and other intelli- gent citizens, who had known Paine in revolution- ary days. Pintard chose this occasion to express to Paine his opinion of his infidel writings. “I have read and re-read," said Pintard, "your Age of Reason, and any doubts which I before enter- tained of the truth of revelation, have been re- moved by your logic. Yes, sir, your very argu- ments against Christianity have convinced me of its truth." "Well, then," answered Paine, with a sarcastic glance, "I may return to my couch to- night with the consolation that I have made at least one Christian."
The plaster-cast of the head and features of Paine, now preserved in the gallery of arts of the Historical Society, is remarkable for its fidelity to the original, at the close of his life. Jarvis, the painter, thought it his most successful work in that line of occupation, and I can confirm the opinion from my many opportunities of seeing Paine. Paine, like Burr, towards the close of his
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earthly career, was subjected to the annoyance of repeated removals of his residence in New York ; and as time proved, even death did not secure repose for his mortal remains at New Rochelle.
A singular coincidence led me to pay a visit to Cobbett, at his country seat, within a couple of miles of the city, on the island, on the very day that he had exhumed the boncs of Paine, and shipped them for England. I will here repeat the words I used on a late occasion, and which Cob- bett gave utterance to at the friendly interview our party had with him. " I have just performed a duty, gentlemen, which has been too long de- layed : you have neglected too long the remains of Thomas Paine. I have done myself the honor to disinter his bones. I have removed them from New Rochelle. I have dug them up ; they are now on their way to England. When I myself return, I shall cause them to speak the common sense of the great man ; I shall gather together the people of Liverpool and Manchester in one assembly with those of London, and those boncs will effect the reformation of England in Church and State." The result of Cobbett's experiment is not forgotten .- Paine created so much history, that it seems but justice that a bricf notice of the man should find a few lines in a discourse on his- torical matters. The moral and the refined may think that more than is needful has already been
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said concerning Paine, arguing that the corrup- tions of his advanced life outweighed the patriotic benefits of his earlier career. The principle of gratitude will not, however, allow a genuine spirit to forget the magical influence once wrought by liis Common Sense over the millions who read it at the most critical moment in the nation's story. He fell, low indeed in process of time, from his high estate, and I have not been indifferent in sift- ing the accounts by his visitors of his loathsome hab- its, and his coarse jests with things sacred. Cheet- ham, who with settled malignity wrote the life of Paine, though he himself had long been in familiar intercourse with the deistical clubs, felt little desire to extenuate any of the faults in Paine's charac- ter. I have a suspicion that sinister motives of a political nature were not overlooked by the biogra- pher. He was wont in his editorial career to seize upon circumstances which might effectually turn the tide of popular favor in his behalf. He had done so with the tergiversations of Burr, he had done so with the renown of Hamilton ; he had done so in the case of Dewitt Clinton, and why not preserve his consistency in his strictures on the fruits of unbelief in the degradation of the wretched Paine ? Paine clung to his infidelity until the last moment of his natural life. His death-bed scene was a spectacle. He who in his early days had been associated with and had re-
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ceived counsel from Franklin, was, in his old age, deserted by the humblest menial : he, whose pen had proved a very sword among nations, had shaken empires and made kings tremble, now yielded up the mastery to the most treacherous of monarchs, King Alcohol.
There is much in the Historical Library con- cerning Paine, and not the least of value is the revised copy, for a second edition, of Cheetham's work, which he gave me for the institution.
But the programme of our theological warfare in those remarkable times is not yet complete. While these scenes were enacting, there were other establishments not idle. The Society of Friends, peaceable as from the beginning, and devoted with characteristic benevolence to works of charity, held their service in the Pearl street and Liberty street meeting-houses ; not as yet disturbed by the inno- vations on primitive Barclay, introduced by Elias Hicks, an able preacher of strong reasoning pow- ers, and which subsequently agitated that religious community from the city of their American origin through various States of the Union : yet, in the end, unavailable to suppress that inward comfort (as Penn calls it) "which leads the soul to silent converse with heaven, and prompts to acts of be- neficence for suffering mortals."
The Universalists, with Edward Mitchell and William Palmer, though circumscribed in fiscal
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means, nevertheless drew together a most respect- able body of believers to their house of worship in Magazine street. They were both men of elo- quence and good pleaders in behalf of their tenets, and had large auditories. Occasionally they were sustained in the work of their conviction by the preaching of John Murray, an Englishman by birth, whose casual absence from his people in Massachusetts enabled him to gratify the disciples of their creed in New York. Murray had a rival of a like name to his own, of the Calvinistic faith, a man of sound erudition and rhetorical powers, and in contradistinction they were designated by the sobriquet Salvation and Damnation Murray. These men moved together so harmoniously, that they often alternately occupied the same pulpit, on the same day, in New England. The Univer- salist, little John Murray, had much of the primi- tive about him ; his rich humility, his grave ac- cent, and his commentaries on the divine love, won him distinction from every discourse. None could withhold a kindly approbation. He seemed to me always charged with tracts on benevolence, and engaged in distributing a periodical called the Berean, or Scripture Searcher. He called himself a Berean.
The doctrines of the Universalists had been entertained and promulgated in New York and elsewhere among Americans, long prior to the time
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of the public discourses of Mitchell and Palmer. Chauncey's book had been read by thousands ; William Pitt Smith, a doctor of physic, and a professor of materia medica in Columbia College, in this city, had published his Letters of Amyntor ; Winchester's Lectures on Universal Restoration and on the Prophecies, had been circulated with a strong recommendatory letter from the pen of Dr. Rush ; and Huntington's Calvin- ism Improved, or the Gospel Illustrated as a Sys- tem of Real Grace issuing in the Salvation of all men, had gained much notoriety from the peculiar circumstances which accompanied its publication as a posthumous work, and the able reply to it by the celebrated Dr. Strong, of Hartford. We moreover had a slender volume on the same topic from a medical prescriber in this city, by the name of Young. Seed therefore had been sown broad- cast, ere Edward Mitchell had mounted the pul- pit. Nevertheless, the Universalists may look back with equal emotions of gratitude at the labors of Mitchell and Palmer for a series of years in their service, begun some fifty years ago, while their society was in its infancy, as at the present day they hail their accomplished orator, Dr. Chapin, as their ecclesiastical leader.
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