RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Nevin
New England Theology
as to the individual men being remitted to the special articles upon them.
II. Preliminary Conditions: The emigrants to New England were, in England, Calvinistic Puritans. In Holland, John Robinson (q.v.) had come in contact with the Arminians, and had taken sides against them. Arminianism was a recoil from the extreme positions of a scholastic Cali. The vinism, but as it had no better psychol-
Period of ogy or philosophy by which to estab-
Settlement lish its objections than Calvinism had in America, developed, it was unable to obtain the
1620-69. general assent of minds of the first rank which had been thoroughly trained in the old system. At a disputation which was held in the University of Ley den in 1613, Robinson had appeared for the Calvinistic party, and subsequently published a Defence of the Doctrine Propounded by the Synod of Dort (Leyden, 1624). Two years after the Westminster Confession (see Westminster Standards) had been prepared in England it was adopted in New England (1648) as the general theological standard of the new churches. The type of theology thus fixed remained unchanged during this period, the two theological events which occurred exercising no perceptible influence upon it. The first of these was the Antinomian controversy, which was stirred up by the teachings of Mrs. Ann Hutchinson in Boston, and which was brought to an end by the Synod of 1637 and subsequent civil action (see Antino-
MIANISM AND ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSIES, II., 2).
Mrs. Hutchinson taught that the evidence of justification was the immediate revelation of the indwelling Spirit, and was independent of sanctification; and this was no sooner fully understood than it was rejected. The second event was the publication in 1650 of a treatise upon The Meritorious Price of our Redemption by William Pynchon (q.v.), the leading personality at Springfield, and a layman. Pynchon's principal contention was against the idea that Christ suffered the pains of hell, but he also rejected the imputation of our sins to Christ and of Christ's merits to us, making justification to be forgiveness, and presenting for a positive theory of the atonement the thought that Christ's obedience more highly pleased God than our sins displeased him, thus repeating substantially the theory of Anselm. The book met with a stern reception, being publicly burned by order of the General Court, and then, by order of the same body, refuted by John Norton (q.v.) who pursued quite the line of the standard orthodoxy. And thus the book fell into obscurity without leaving a trace of its influence. But meantime this Westminster theology of the New England Fathers was working out its natural results. It was characteristic of Calvinism to lay so much stress upon the sovereignty of God as to neglect the freedom of man. The tone of mind in New England was unphilosophic. The sovereignty of God was the great doctrine of theology in the popular estimation. Man was abased that God might be exalted; and hence the common preaching dwelt so much upon man's helplessness that the function of the pulpit to rouse the people to repentance and the exercise of vigorous faith
was suspended, if not destroyed. Man's activity was so lost sight of in the contemplation of God's agency that faith was represented as something to be waited for as a mysterious gift from on high. It could not be understood as primarily an act of the will, for the will itself had not been separated from the other faculties of the mind so that theology could ascribe to it any independent activities. As was natural, a paralysis spread over the churches. Conversions were rare, and the second generation of New England was largely unconverted, and even failed to bring their children to baptism. The results were alarm and that effort to remedy the evil by outward means which was the first event with which the next period opens, the " Half- Way Covenant " (q.v.); but the effort was vain.
The religious paralysis continued, degeneration of the public character followed, indifference to religion increased, and immorality began to abound. Things grew so bad that in 1679 a " Reforming Synod " was called in Boston. The account given
by the synod of the state of morals is
2. The so dark that some exaggeration must
Period of be suspected. But the positive sins
Decline, mentioned, the increase of profanity,
1660-1726. intemperance, and licentiousness, show
that there was rising about the Church a community which the Church was not making its own. The causes of this decline were not all theological, for the roughness of frontier life, the perils and losses of the Indian wars, the deprivation of the privileges of education which the fathers had enjoyed in England, and even the effect in the new country of such untoward events in the old as the restoration of the Stuarts, are to be considered. But the theological currents of the times had contributed their part. Latitudinarianism and that form of Arminianism which was represented by Tillotson, Clarke, Whitby, Taylor, and others, whose writings were freely read in New England, helped to loosen the hold of conviction upon the minds of men, producing a state of indecision and inactivity, accompanied by some new sense of the dignity of human nature, without performing any deep and thorough work of theological reconstruction. The tide soon set toward Arminianism; the Arminian theories were more or less accepted; the doctrine of the new birth which, in the forms of a theology of dependence upon a sovereign God, was inconsistent with the new feeling of freedom which was stirring in the thought of the times, was forgotten or denied; under the operation of the Half- Way Covenant and the theory of Solomon Stoddard (q.v.) that the communion should be opened to unbelievers as a converting ordinance, vital piety was neglected for an outward piety of good works; and thus not only the Calvinistic theology, but even the religious life of New England was endangered. An Increase Mather might still be found to preach powerful revival sermons and to protest against destructive innovations, but protest was rare and ineffectual. New England was in a bad way. The Puritan experiment of founding a pure church to sustain and extend vital piety and pure doctrine from generation to generation was near utter failure. Who would or could save it?
New England Theology