crites." Thomas Paine. "Common sense opposed to mediation. Change in Franklin. Invasion of Canada. Siege of Quebec. Retreat of the Americans. Franklin and Madame Walker. Address of Congress to the Canadians. Treaty of America with France, Spain, and Holland. Letter of George Washington to his wife. English sympathy with the Americans. Struggle for ascendency, and the humiliation of Great Britain. Franklin's terms of peace. Declaration of Independence. Concession impracticable. Letter of George III. to Lord North. Contest embittered. Mutual complaints of Ameri- can republicans and loyalists. Violence of preachers. Champion's prayer. Adventure of Dr. Daggett at New Haven. Samuel Hopkins on the inconsistency of the Declaration of Independence with negro slavery. His earnest protest. Erection (of meeting-house. Samuel Newton at Olney. William Cowper. Newton proud of his position as a clergyman of the established church. Little artifices among the poor. Thomas Scott. Apologia. Samuel Walker of Truro. John Berridge of Everton, and his bishop. Letter to a dissenting minister on itinerant preaching. William Grimshaw. Movements of "Rational" dissenters. Decline and extinction of churches. No church discipline. Position of a "Rational" minister. Lost to society. Priestley on the practical effect of Freethinking. His advice to ministers. Rationalists contrasted with Independents. Enfield on church and dissent. Priestley on establishments. Rationalism in the Church of England. Archdeacon Blackburne and the freethinking clergy. Application to parliament for relief from subscription. Speech of Edmund Burke on the hardships of the latitudinarian clergy. Rejection of the petition. Dissenters' Relief Bill. Letter of the King. Bishop Newton's idea of liberty. Chatham's reply to Archbishop Drummond. William Hextal and the church at Northampton. No evangelical succession in the churches of the "Clapham Sect." "Societies" formed by the followers of Whitefield. Countess of Huntingdon's connexion. Howell Harris at Trevecca. Opening of the college. Quarterly meetings in Wales. William Shrubsole. Thomas Tupper at Portsea. Church formed at Bath. New English Academy 559-598 General resistance to American independence. Letter of the King to required. churches. Priestley against Kings. Loyalty of Congregational Stiles on the future glory of the United States. Speech of George III. Condition of the people of America at the end of the war. Dissatisfaction. Shays' rebellion. Jefferson on septennial revo- lutions. Return of Hopkins to Newport. Franklin on the conse- Obligation of the evangelical clergy to nonconformist pastors, Venn and Moorhouse, John Clayton, Edward Parsons. Letter of Harmer. Newton and Newport Pagnell. William Bull, Cornelius Winter, and William Jay. Thomas Northcote Toller. Rowland Hill. Jona- than Scott and the church at Congleton. James Somerville. David Bogue and the Haldanes. Academy at Gosport, Extinction of Rationalist academies. Unitarian leaven in Carmarthen. Resig- nation of Kippis and Rees at Hoxton. Funds withdrawn. Anomalous position of Belsham at Daventry. New "Liberal" College. Academy at Manchester. Rationalists and the movement in France. Priestley and Price on establishments. Letter of David Edwards. Hume and Rousseau. French philosophers in National Aseembly. Mutual congratulation of Priestley and Price. General joy. Priestley and riots at Birmingham. Threatening letters. Rage against dissenters. Burke and the Unitarians. Perils of the British Constitution. Manchester Constitutional Society. Arrival of French emigrants. Proceedings of the French Convention. Goddess of Reason at Notre Dame. Failure of the Rationalists. Macintosh. Robert Hall Paine. Trials for high treason. Thomas Hardy and Dr. Bogue. Temper of Congregational ministers. False accusation of Newton. CHAPTER XIX.-AMERICA AND ENGLAND. Priestley in the Land of Promise. Dread of his coming. New York and Philadelphia. Settlement at Northumberland. Change in American politics. The wild and broken state of things in Paris. Letter of Ashbel Green. Disappointment of Priestley. Letter of Samuel Miller. Timothy Dwight. Brighter prospects of the churches in New England. Metaphysical preachers. Old meeting-house at Andover. Sabba-day houses. Letters of Samuel Phillips New England divinity. Letter of Andrew Fuller. Jonathan Edwards the second. Hopkins and Granville Sharp. Hopkins in his old age. Letter to Fuller. "Fare- well to the world." Last days. Missionary Society of Connecticut. Missionary journey of David Bacon. Interview with Indian chief. Home letter. Summary of a cancelled chapter on Northern Academies. Haldane movement, Bengal Mission, and origin of London Missionary Society. William Vint. Samuel Bottomley. George Gill. John Cockin. William Carey. James Wilson. John Griffin. Village preaching. William Alexander. Thomas Hillyard. James Hinton. CONGREGATIONAL HISTORY. CHAPTER I. quietus of Nonconform AFTER the revolution of 1688, liberal Churchmen expected that Nonconformity would quietly subside. It was not thought decorous to disturb the last days of the venerable survivors of the Expected ejectment of 1662; but when in the course of nature they had passed away, the most tolerant of the bishops saw no reason why the pulpits left vacant by them should again be occupied. ity. The impolicy of coercion was freely admitted, but it was supposed that a slight modification in the Church services would be sufficient to bring the weak and erratic Dissenting brethren within the national fold. "To mollify them, we have tried Church censures," they said, "and penal laws, and inflicted them with a severity perhaps beyond what we can justify, but only to heighten our own divisions, and increase the divisions we endeavoured to remove. The only remedy left us is to remove the exceptional passages in our Liturgy, and those ceremonies in our worship to which they cannot conform with us, and to follow the steps which the State, by the Act of Toleration, has gone before us in, to reconcile them to us; for they are now no more in our power to force them to a conformity with us than we are in theirs." * William III. (a thorough Erastian) was entirely of this mind. His ecclesiastical advisers assured him that the whole matter of Dissent, with careful management, might be pleasantly arranged. "The Presbyterians especially," said Bishop Burnet, "and the Independents, will one day come into the Church of England themselves. Their old teachers, Baxter, Bates, Owen, and the rest of their great men, are gone." + Calamy, when a student of Oxford, waited to see if alterations would be made in the public settlement he could fall in with without doing violence to or disturbing his mind and conscience. To introduce a Bill for Comprehension was soon, however, found to be impracticable. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the flexibility of some, the descendants of the "old teachers" cherished their memory, and held fast their principles. The tears that fell upon the bier of the last of the Puritans were not those of hopeless sorrow for vanquished leaders in a cause henceforth to be abandoned, but with sincere and keen regret was mingled the sacred determination to grasp more firmly the banner to be "displayed because of the truth." JOHN CROMPTON, the nephew of Oliver Heywood, in a letter of condolence to his widow (Aug. 2, 1702), says: "God is raising up new ones to fill up the room and places of those more experienced ones that are gone. God Almighty make us as diligent and faith *Printed Letter to Convocation. + Memorial to the Princess Sophia. ful in our Master's work and glory, and the good of souls, as they were."* THOMAS WHITAKER, at the funeral of Joseph Lister, of Kipping, said: "When the godly perish, when the upright, and exemplary, and useful are taken away, what a vacancy do they leave! The world is but insipidness without them. What remains for us to do but to get our loins girt and lights burning!" 66 The young gownsman who sauntered in Christ Church meadows, dreaming of the settle- Hoadloy and ment that might bring back days like Calamy. those in which his grandfather, the Elder Calamy, preached before Parliament at Saint Margaret's, or in Westminster Abbey, was rudely challenged by Hoadley to account for acting as a Nonconformist teacher. Admit," he said, with unconscious insolence, "that some of your people might suffer loss, or be wounded in feeling, by your self-imposed silence. Are the people fit judges of your duty, and directors of your practice?" "I think myself obliged to declare to you," he added, with rising haughtiness, "that the provision made for you in the Church of England is what you ought to be very thankful to Almighty God for. Remember that you are to regard the peace of the Church as well as your own humours and fancies." Volumes had been written to justify the necessity for separation on the ground of the slender pasture provided by the Anglican shepherds. A plea of that kind Hoadley treated with the utmost scorn. "Supposing it is true," he said, "that there are sundry ministers in the Established Church * Additional MSS., 4275, 41. + Hoadley's "Reasonableness of Conformity," part ii., p. 19. |