Massachusetts, assembled in annual convention, "without a dissenting vote" adopted an address to their churches, wherein they expressed their deep sorrow and concern on account of " those atheistical, licentious and disorganizing principles which have been avowed and zealously propagated by the philosophers and politicians of France; which have produced the greatest crimes and miseries in that unhappy country, and like a mortal pestilence are diffusing their baneful influence even to distant nations." * A year later the same body of clergy, again assembled in their annual convention, formulated and later published an address similar in tone, but strongly emphasizing the American aspects of the case. The growing disbelief and contempt of the Gospel are loudly lamented; the lack of exemplary piety and morality even among the members of churches, and the dissipation, irreligion, and licentiousness prevalent among the youth of the day, are accounted to be of so much weight as to constitute a national apostasy. " The voice of God to us in these events," continues the address, " is emphatically this: Come out of the infidel, antichristian world, my people; that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." 2
- 1 The Massachusetts Mercury (Boston), June 19, 1798, contains the address in full.
- 2 This address may be found in the Independent Chronicle of July 4, 1799, and the Newburyport Herald of June 28, 1799. A further comment, of more than average significance, on the unparalleled degeneracy of the times may be found in the sermon preached by the Reverend William Harris, of Marblehead, Massachusetts, before the annual convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, held in Boston, May 28, 1799. Cf. A Sermon delivered at Trinity Church, in Boston. ... By William Harris, rector of St. Michael's Church, iMarblehead. Boston, 1799. A decade and a half later Lyman Beecher preached his famous sermon on "Building Waste Places." The impression which lingered in his mind concerning the period under survey is worthy of consideration. After having discussed the unhappy condition of religious life in the churches of New England during the first half of the eighteenth century, he said: "A later cause of decline and desolation has been the insidious influence of infidel philosophy. The mystery of iniquity had in Europe been operating for a long time. The unclean spirits had commenced their mission to the kings of the earth to gather them together to the battle of the great day of God Almighty. But when that mighty convulsion f Foot-note: The French Revolution] took place, that a second-time burst open the bottomless pit, and spread darkness and dismay over Europe, every gale brought to our shores contagion and death. Thousands at once breathed the tainted air and felt the fever kindle in the brain. A paroxysm of moral madness and terrific innovation ensued. In the frenzy of perverted vision every foe appeared a friend, and every friend a foe. No maxims were deemed too wise to be abandoned, none too horrid to be adopted; no foundations too deep laid to be torn up, and no superstructure too venerable to be torn down, that another, such as in Europe they were building with bones and blood, might be built. . . . The polluted page of infidelity everywhere met the eye while its sneers and blasphemies assailed the ear. . . . The result was a brood of infidels, heretics, and profligates a generation prepared to be carried about, as they have been, by every wind of doctrine, and to assail, as they have done, our most sacred institutions." Cf. Beecher, Autobiography, Correspondence, etc., vol. i, pp. 239, 240.
