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SHANGHAI

THE GREAT AWAKENING

IN THE MIDDLE

COLONIES

CHARLES HARTSHORN MAXSON

Aiihtant Professor of Political Science in the
University of Pennsyl-vania

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

i; /Published 'March ig2«

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The UniTersity ol Chicago P'eM

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PREFACE

Centennial celebrations of what Jonathan Edwards called the
"Revival of Religion in New England in 1740," suggested to Joseph
Tracy the preparation of a history of that revival. His design was
admirably executed. Subordinate attention was given by him to the
progress of the revival in other sections of the country and in Great
Britain, but in the main his Great Awakening is an exhaustive history
of the revival proper in New England. It gives extended quotations
from the personal narratives of many promoters of the revival which
were written in 1 743 and 1 744 for Prince's Christian History.

Approaching my task almost three-fourths of a century after Tracy,
I find myself more in sympathy than was common in Tracy's day with
the catholicity of Whitefield and with the democratic tendencies of the
revival which were so largely responsible for the destruction of the
ecclesiastical system of New England. Tracy wrote with the purpose of
encouraging a similar quickening in his own time but wished to avoid
resort to measures which he imagined to be harmful. I find my purpose
not in the advocacy of a program but in the attempt to demonstrate
that the religious energies liberated by the Great Awakening were trans-
formed into forces, social, humanitarian, educational, and political, which
have been of almost incalculable importance in the making of the
American people.

This study, much briefer than Tracy's, will make only such reference
to the revival in New England as is demanded for understanding the
movement in the Middle Colonies. The statement of the relation of the
revival in the Middle Colonies to its extension southward will not be so
abbreviated, because that relation was very close, and because there is
no account of the revival in the South like that of Tracy for New England.

I made a journey from Boston, Massachusetts, to Charleston, South
Carolina, visiting most of the libraries which possess important collections
of colonial newspapers. I gathered a mass of material on the moral
and religious conditions of the colonies and the progress of the Great
Awakening. Though everywhere courteously received, I feel myself
xmder special obligation to the gentlemen in charge of the splendid col-
lections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. In the notes a number
of references to the newspapers, a neglected source material, will be
found.

740

vi PREFACE

I have also visited libraries at New York, New Brunswick, Princeton,
Trenton, and Philadelphia. Special mention must be made of some
among the many visited. At the library of Union Theological Seminary
I was given kindly assistance and access to rare books of the eighteenth
century. At the Sage Library, New Brunswick, I found useful material
on the relation of the Dutch church to the revival. At the Princeton
Theological Library I was given access to the incomparable Sprague
Collection. At Trenton the permanent clerk of the presbytery of New
Brunswick, Rev. George H. Ingram, permitted me to inspect the manu-
script records of that body and kindly presented me with a typewritten
copy of the first record book. He was then writing a history of the pres-
bytery of New Brunswick for the Presbyterian Historical Review. At
Philadelphia my indebtedness among a number of libraries is greatest
to that of the Presbyterian Historical Society. Here the extensive col-
lection of Tennent papers, mostly manuscript sermons of Gilbert
Tennent, was put at my disposal, as were also the records of the Second
Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia and many old books and pam-
phlets not found elsewhere.

Source materials other than those mentioned in the statement of my
obligations are the journals of Whitefield and Brainerd, Prince's Chris-
tian History, the Records of the Presybterian Church, and many excerpts
from eighteenth-century documents which are incorporated in the his-
tories of churches, presbyteries, and denominations and in the biog-
raphies of men who were concerned in the movement. The Ecclesiastical
Records of the State of New York are a mine of information upon the
progress of revivalism in New York and New Jersey and to some extent
in Pennsylvania.

The story of Pietism in Pennsylvania is based principally upon the
extensive researches of Sachse and serves as an introduction to the more
important phases of the revival, the story of which follows. Chapters
ii to viii and the greater part of chapter ix are based on original material.
So far as chapter ix deals with denominations other than the Presbyterian
and Dutch Reformed it is based for the most part on denominational
histories, secondary sources, though Edwards' Material may very
properly be regarded as original. This part of chapter ix simply fills
out the story and shows the remarkable parallelism in the results of the
Great Awakening in the various denominations. The final chapter
sums up a number of the distinguishing marks of the evangeUcal revival.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introduction, AND Pietism IN Pennsylvania ...... i

II. Frelinghuysen, and the Beginning of the Revival among

THE Dutch Reformed ii

III. The Tennents, and the Beginning of the Revival among
the Presbyterians 21

IV. George Whitefield, and His Alliance with the New Bruns-
wick Presbyterians 40

V. The Year 1740, THE Great Awakening AT High Tide ... 54

VI. The Schism in the Presbyterian Church in the Year 1741 . 69

VII. Period of Expansion and Organization 80

VIII. Whitefield the Pacificator 104

IX. Triumphant Evangelism IN AN Age of Unbelief . . . . 112

X. Conclusion 139

Bibliography . 152

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION, AND PIETISM IN PENNSYLVANIA

In the middle of the eighteenth century a tidal wave of religious
fervor and reforming zeal swept over the British colonies in America.
When this wave of emotionalism had passed, when the extraordinary
in Christian experience and activity had given place to the ordinary, the
friends of the revival, and after them their sons and sons' sons, called it
the Great Awakening.

The term "Great Awakening," however, is not employed in this
study in a restricted sense as applying only to the religious excitement of
1740, or even to the series of widely extended and closely related revivals
among which that of 1 740 was the most remarkable. The name is used
as an appropriate designation of the whole evangelical quickening in the
colonies. This change in the attitude of the people toward religion, by
which after a period of decay it became a power in the lives of thousands,
had numerous and widely separated beginnings very early in the century.
Among these beginnings the most important were the revival of Pietism
among the Germans of Pennsylvania, the rise of a radical evangelism
among the Dutch of New Jersey, a similar revival among the English-
speaking Presbyterians of the Middle Colonies, and, following these, the
remarkable outburst of old-time Puritan feeling among the Congrega-
tionalists of New England. Though this intercolonial and interdenomi-
national quickening rose at times to astonishing heights of excitement,
these seasons were but passing manifestations of an abiding movement.
It was still powerful in parts of the country at the breaking out of the
Revolutionary War.

Though the Great Awakening, conceived of as a long-sustained move-
ment, was professedly unsectarian, and its promoters were not concerned
with the ecclesiastical affiliations of the religiously awakened, yet the
denominations which heartily accepted its principles became strong
and popular. The degree of their acceptance of these evangelistic ideals
was the measure of their ultimate numerical strength. This building
up of large bodies of aggressive religionists which possessed no special
privileges and opposed the union of church and state contributed greatly
to a social and political revolution. However vivid to the imaginations

2 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

of New Lights and New Sides^ were heaven and hell, they excelled their
more conservative brethren in determined pursuit of practical aims.
Their awakened sympathy established orphanages and other institutions
for social betterment. They gave new life to missions. In that time
there were no other founders of schools like them. When a conservative
majority in a colony held the evangelical minority in unwilling restraint,
relief was found in emigration, and whole churches of the discontented
moved beyond the jurisdiction of the persecuting government. Thus
the Great Awakening was not wave on wave of excitement which, having
passed, left no trace upon the placid waters. sJt was a powerful ferment
which was destined to revolutionize colonial society. As an intercolonial
movement it was the beginning of a unifying process which was carried
still farther by common effort in the French and Indian War and to
political union by the Revolutionary War. }

"Not only was the Great Awakening an intercolonial movement ; it
was part of a larger awakening within the whole British Empire which
may very properly be called the Methodist Revival. Waves of influence
crossed the Atlantic in both directions. The remarkablfe revival which
began in 1 734 at Northampton under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards,
already mentioned as one of the beginnings of the Great Awakening,
was reported in Great Britain, first by the letters of American correspond-
ents, and afterward by the publication in 1737 of Edwards' Narrative of
Surprising Conversions.^ Dissenters and conformists were stirred by its
reading,^ and it was influential in the spread of the revival spirit in the
homelands." Pious colonists in turn became expectant and hopeful

' The former term was employed in New England and was frequently applied to
the radical supporters of the revival; the latter term was employed in the Middle
Colonies, but there it was applied to the evangelical party in the Presbyterian Church.

* Rev. W. Williams, of Hatfield, wrote a letter to Dr. Colman, of Boston, on the
"Remarkable Success of the Gospel" in Hampshire county, dated April 28, 1735,
which was published in the New England Weekly Journal, May 12, 1735. Colman
forwarded this and other accounts to his correspondents, Drs. Watts and Guyse, of
London. They asked for a fuller statement, which request Edwards received in a
letter written by Colman to Williams. The narrative was dated November 6, 1 736,
and was pubUshed in London in 1737. The Boston Gazette, December 20, 1736,
advertises that "An Account of the late wonderful Work of God by Rev. Jonathan,
Edwards is JUST PUBLISHED." This is the narrative of November 6, 1736,
abridged by Dr. Colman. The same paper, December 11, 1738, advertised Edwards'
Surprising Work of God. This was the unabridged narrative of 1 736. The statement
in Dwight's Edwards, Vol. I of Edwards' Works, pp. 137-40, is not accurate.

3 Hoskins, "German Influence," Princeton Theological Review, 1907-
^Tyerman's Wesley, I, 220; Macpherson, A History of the Church in Scotland,
p. 324.

INTRODUCTION, AND PIETISM IN PENNSYLVANIA 3

when the beginnings of a rehgious quickening in England were reported
to them. Readers of the colonial newspapers' in January, 1738, found
astonishing accounts of the preaching in the preceding October of a
young deacon of the Church of England, Whitefield by name, a member
of John Wesley's student club, derisively called the Methodists. Later
the colonial papers^ copied from their London exchanges almost incredible
stories of the throngs which crowded around the young orator, now become
a field preacher. When, therefore, he arrived at Lewes, Delaware, on
October 30, 1739, interest in the great evangelist was already raised to
the highest pitch. From that day George Whitefield, the English Metho-
dist, was the chief figure in the Great Awakening in the American colo-
nies. For nearly a decade there was constant interchange of reports by
both friends and enemies of the revival. English and Scotch tracts and
sermons were republished by enterprising printers from Charleston to
Boston, and colonial publications reappeared in Glasgow and London.

But the Great Awakening was not only part of the larger Methodist
Revival, a movement within the British Empire; it was part of an inter-
national evangelical revival which among the Protestants of Germany
was known as the pietistic movement.^ In this world movement
emphasis was not put upon distinctive names, formal creeds, the claims
of this or that system of church polity, or upon the efficacy of merely
external rites. Its fundamental ideas were vital piety, the mystic union
of the believer with God, the enthronement of emotion upon its rightful
seat, and a thoroughgoing reformation of morals.

Spener, of Frankfort, was the founder of Pietism.* Beginning in
1670 he established collegia pietatis, or private devotional societies,

' American Weekly Mercury, January 24, 1738, and other papers.

^ Boston Gazette, June 25, 1739, and many other papers.

3 Christian History for 1 744, pp. 262-84. This weekly paper, edited by T. Prince,
Jr., was the first religious periodical published in the colonies. Similar weekly histories
of religion had recently been established in London by Whitefield and in Glasgow by
McLaurin. These papers illustrate the international character of the revival, in the
promotion of which they were established. The Christian History prints an account
of the revival in Germany, which account was the preface to the English edition of
1705 of Francke's Pielatas Hallensis. Cotton Mather had previously corresponded
with Francke and contributed to his work. They exchanged books. Knowledge of the
revival in Germany must have awakened the desire for revival in New England and
may have contributed to the revival of 1734. On Mather see Hoskins, pp. 210, 225.

I The term "Pietism" is employed here in the sense of Riggenbach as a reaction of
practical faith from barren orthodoxy, not as a vague term including various specula-
tive and mystical phenomena. Yet there is an undoubted relation between the
Labadists, Quakers, Quietists, and Pietists. Kaufmann, " Latitudinarianism and
Pietism," in Cambridge Modern History, V, 753 ff.

4 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

within the churches, through which he hoped to leaven the whole lump.
In these societies the Bible was enthusiastically studied, and the spiritual
priesthood of laymen was exercised. Spener advocated gentleness in
the intercourse of Lutherans and the Reformed and was called to Berlin
by the king of Prussia as a pacificator. Under his influence the new
University of Halle was manned with professors of pietistic sentiment.
Halle accordingly became the center of evangelism in Germany. Pres-
ently the Lutheran communion was divided into two parties. The
minority held to Pietism, though repudiating every charge of separation
and heresy. The majority charged that the establishment of a church
within the church inevitably paved the way to separation, and that
the boasted Catholicism of the Pietists but opened the door to heresy,
enthusiasm, and chiliastic reveries.^

Spener died in 1705, but already Francke had succeeded him as a
vigorous leader of the movement. It was Francke who established the
famous orphan house at Halle with its affiliated schools and various
institutions for the propagation of this warm type of religion. Under
his direction Pietism continued to exercise a wholesome influence upon the
Lutheran Church, for it was a protest against dogmatism and formalism.
Yet it was narrow in its tendency to define conversion in the terms of a
single type. This narrowness was transmitted to the Methodist Revival.

The course of Pietism in the Lutheran Church of Germany may be
dismissed with this brief characterization, but a word is demanded
concerning the influence of the revival upon the various religious bodies
the members of which swarmed to the New World and here participated
in the Great Awakening. The Reformed as well as the Lutherans of
the Palatinate, from which principality the main emigration was made
from Germany to Pennsylvania, were under strong pietistic influences.
But none responded more quickly to the new touch of life than the so-
called "Sectarian" bodies. The pietistic propaganda was a boon to
them, for they too stood for experimental rehgion and the universal
priesthood of believers. In addition to these principles, held in common
with the revivalists of the established churches, they more or less gener-
ally held such doctrines as the separation of church and state, non-
resistance, prohibition of oaths, plainness of dress, the love feast, the
kiss of charity, and foot-washing.^

Of these Sectarians, aroused by the revival to activity, the most
numerous connection was that of the Mennonites, the representatives

' Mirbt, "Pietism," in New Schaff-Hersog Rel. Enc, Vol. IX.

* Kuhns, The German and Swiss Settlements of Colonial Pennsylvania, p. 173.

INTRODUCTION, AND PIETISM IN PENNSYLVANIA 5

of the Anabaptists of the Reformation. The Schwenkfelders were
another survival of the same period. More important than the Schwenk-
felders, but like them insignificant in numbers, were the Dunkers, or
German Baptist Brethren.' Though the spirit of Pietism was opposed
to the organization of new sects, this brotherhood was none the less the
fruit of the revival. The Moravians illustrated the opposite and pre-
vailing tendency of the revival, the tendency to union and affiliation
with all denominations. The Unitas Fratrum, the ancient Moravian
Church, uprooted from its ancestral home, was reorganized by Count
Zinzendorf in Germany and became beyond any other sect the very
embodiment of Pietism. Moravianism was a wonderful system with its
classes and discipline, with its hierarchy and co-operative business enter-
prises, with its orphanages and schools, with its vent for emotion and
recreation in strangely appealing music, and above all with its truly
heroic prosecution of foreign missions.^

Again the general international character of the whole religious move-
ment can be seen from the relation between the German reformers and
the men of England whom the new spirit was beginning to move.
John Wesley was converted through the instrumentality of Peter Boehler,
the Moravian. The Methodist societies in the Church of England
adopted many features of Moravianism. Indeed the members of that
brotherhood were pre-eminently the mediators of German Pietism to the
revivahsts of England. Moreover, George Whitefield, the chief apostle
of the Great Awakening, was influenced profoundly by Pietism. In
the story of his youth Whitefield tells of his first meeting with Charles
Wesley.^ Whitefield was then a young Pembroke College student, shy
but thirsting for spiritual friendship. Wesley understood his need and
put into his hands Francke's treatise, the Fear of Man. This was White-
field's introduction to the German Pietist whose orphan house at Halle
was the model of his own in Georgia, and to whose example he frequently
appealed. Whitefield 's reading was not in systems of doctrine^ but
in devotional books, pietistical and mystical, sometimes passionate in
their portrayal of the struggles of the tempted. Ardent and imaginative
as he was by nature, he experienced the very struggles of which he read,
even suffering the torments of the damned. His surrender to these
suggestions in such extreme fashion he afterward regarded as yielding to

' Brumbaugh, A History of the German Baptist Brethren, p. 12.

'Pennsylvania Gazette, February 24, 1743.

J Whitefield, Brief Account, pp. 19, 20.

^Whitefield, A Letter . ... in Answer to ... . Querists, p. 61.

6 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN TEE MIDDLE COLONIES

the temptations of Satan. But these struggles were very real to him
and threw him into serious illness. At last his cry for relief was heard.
Then his exaltation of spirit even exceeded the measure of his former
distress. He was the first of the band of Methodists to pass through
what the Moravians called "holy mourning" to its happy issue in
assurance.^

The influence of Pietism upon Whitefield did not end with his con-
version. There are frequent references in his journals to pietistic litera-
ture.* The native tendency of his mind to eschew plodding logical
processes and to leap at one bound to conclusions was encouraged by
the mystical books which he read and by his intercourse with the Mora-
vians. Deep impressions and sudden impulses were followed as inspira-
tions of the divine Spirit, but if they proved harmful and erroneous they
were afterward attributed to Satan. It was this that Jonathan Edwards
criticized in friendly conversation with Whitefield, and it was this that
Charles Chauncy openly denounced as Quakerish and Jesuitical super-
stition.3 But impulses and impressions were incidental; from Pietism
the evangelist had learned that Christianity is a life, not a creed; the
glow and warmth of that life he had come to feel himself.

But Pietism had another connection with the religious movement
which is to be traced in these chapters, more direct, if less potent, than
that indicated by its effects upon the Wesleys, Whitefield, and other
Methodist leaders, for Pietists came in great numbers to the Middle
Colonies, and their influence ultimately determined the dominant char-
acter of the colonial German population. In 1683, two years after
William Penn obtained his charter, the first body of German emigrants
arrived in Philadelphia and soon afterward founded German town. They
were attracted by the proposals of Penn's Holy Experiment. The com-
pany was composed of Mennonites and German Quake rs.^

The Mennonites were followed in 1694 by a strange body of mystics,
forty in number, including university men of varied learning. First of
all these mystics were Pietists, but they were also chiliasts.s It is remark-

' Whitefield, Brief Account, pp. 31, 40. Whitefield was converted in 1735 and
Wesley in 1738; that is, in those years they passed through the emotional experiences
which they accounted their conversions.

"Whitefield's Journals for January 6, 9, and March 26, 1738; September 15,
1739, etc.

3 Hoskins, op. cit., p. 223; Dwight, op. cit., p. 147; Chauncy, Seasonable Thoughts,
P- 173-

* Sachse, German Pietists, p. 4. * Ibid., pp. 37, 38, 80, 129, 130.

INTRODUCTION, AND PIETISM IN PENNSYLVANIA 7

able that every revival of religion revives too the belief of the early Chris-
tians in the speedy return of the Lord. This body was sometimes called
the Order of the Woman in the Wilderness, for were its members not
carried over the sea by the ''wings of the great eagle," and did they not
flee into the wilderness, where God, as they imagined, had prepared a
place for them ?' Here they would wait for the harbinger of the millen-
nium soon to dawn upon the world, according to the calculations of their
astronomers and astrologists. They were orthodox Lutherans, but
they held in addition to the usual articles of faith these esoteric doctrines.
Science and pseudo-science were strangely commingled, for they prac-
ticed medicine and manufactured amulets, studied botany and employed
the divining rod to determine the location of springs of water.^

In contrast with the coming of this little band of enthusiasts there
was in 1 709 the arrival of a horde of destitute Palatines. Most of them
were brought to the province of New York by the English government.
A few of those who first settled in New York made their way down the
Susquehanna River and finally reached the more hospitable province of
Pennsylvania. In 171 7 the immigration of Palatines direct to Pennsyl-
vania was suddenly swelled by the coming of six or seven thousand.
They were Reformed and Lutherans in approximately equal numbers,
many of both communions holding pietistic views. They were driven
from the fatherland by religious persecution and economic distress.^

Not all these Germans who year by year sought refuge in the New
World were members of the two leading churches. Little companies
of Sectarians arrived from time to time. In 17 19 the Dunkers came.
There were only twenty families, and these scattered to obtain suitable
lands. Ten years later their founder, Alexander Mack, brought a large
company to Germantown. The Dunkers were followed by the Schwenk-
felders in 1 734, and that year a few Moravian evangelists arrived. Thus
the several denominations which had been stirred by the new evangel
in the fatherland, and which were to be active in pious endeavor in the
New World, were now planted in Pennsylvania, and some of them
were also represented in New York and New Jersey.''

America was at first a disappointing refuge to these German immi-
grants. The hard conditions on the frontier, the exhausting labor of

' Rev. 12:1-6, 13-17; 20:4. ^ Sachse, o/». «7., pp. 62, 112, 120.

3 Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, p. 1 7 1 2.

* Brumbaugh, op. cit., p. 49. It is estimated that up to 1739 there had been
a German emigration to Pennsylvania of thirty to thirty-five thousand. Kuhns,
op. cit., pp. 55, 57.

8 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

clearing the forests, the isolation of life, the breaking of former ties, the
lack of encouragement from coreligionists — all these things had a
benumbing effect upon the German immigrants, much to the detriment
of their religious and intellectual well-being. Some, who had suffered
the spoiling of their goods for sake of conscience in the Old World, seemed
to lose their religion in the New World. They saw their children growing
up in ignorance. They were perplexed by the reUgious confusion, for
there were many sects among the Germans besides those mentioned,
and some of them held views dangerous to society. The members of
churches maintained by the state in the fatherland were unaccustomed
to voluntary support of the gospel. Even the Sectarians were baffled
for the time being. Such were the conditions in the early years when
the material foundation was being laid.^

The prospect was discouraging, but the event proved that these
plodding Germans had chosen the best lands and thus had the basis for
material prosperity, while the leaven of Pietism in time gave character
to the whole society. Among them mystical and pietistic leaders worked
efifectively. The forty mystics mentioned as coming to Pennsylvania
in 1694 sought to meet the religious needs of the German colonists.
Though these mystics had buried themselves in the western wilderness,
their tabernacle was but three miles from Germantown. Children were
received to be educated by them, and all who studied at the tabernacle
were deeply imbued with the spirit of Pietism. This was the first
charitable institution in Pennsylvania. Kelpius, the leader of the band,
professing love for all denominations, sought to unite the Germans in
one church. He was held in great veneration, but he died early, and
even before his death the symbolical number of forty was broken by
withdrawals.^

The associates of Kelpius were highly individualistic in their ideas and
practices. Koster observed the Seventh-day as a day of sacred rest and
immersed his converts from Quakerism when they insisted on following
scriptural precedent. Others he led back to the Church of England.
Thus the Baptists and Episcopahans were indebted to this Lutheran
minister whose chief work was among the German people.'' The Falkner
brothers, Daniel and Justus, also members of the order, gave years of
missionary service to their fellow Lutherans. They were itinerant

* Sachse, German Sectarians, pp. 50-52. ' Kuhns, op. cit., p. 86.

3 Sachse, The German Pietists, pp. 274, 277, 286; Morgan Edwards, Material,
p. 45 ; Vedder, A History of the Baptists in the Middle States, p. 64; McConnell,
History of the American Episcopal Church, pp. 80, 81.

INTRODUCTION, AND PIETISM IN PENNSYLVANIA g

pastors for a great part of New York and New Jersey. Others of the
band served as physicians and lay workers. At last the tabernacle was
deserted. Only a solitary recluse, here and there, was left of the com-
pany that were called "Pietists" in distinction from all others. White-
field tells of an interview with the hermit Matthai, the successor of
Kelpius. Some members of the order lived even until the arrival of
Muhlenberg, himself a Pietist from Halle, who was sent by Francke's
orphanage as a missionary to America.'

Notwithstanding the efforts of these missionaries of pietistic senti-
ment and of others of conservative opinion violently opposed to Pietism,
the religious destitution was great among the Lutherans and still greater
among the Reformed. There was difficulty in obtaining regularly
ordained and university-trained ministers, but the Sectarians, requir-
ing only that education which comes from the exercise of gifts, often
developed religious leaders of remarkable power. Furthermore, they
were self-supporting. For this reason the Mennonites, and notably the
Dunkers, were far more active and successful than the more numerous
Lutherans and Reformed. Peter Becker, the leader of the first company
of Dunkers, was discouraged by the separation of his people to obtain
homes, but his spirit was stirred by a Mennonite revival in Germantown
in 1722. The following year he organized a little church of the German
Baptist Brethren. There were other revivals under Dunker patronage,
though the principal evangelist was a mystic, Beissel, not of their
number.^

Beissel had come to America intending to join the mystics on the
Wissahickon, but finding the tabernacle deserted he became a recluse
like some of the surviving members of the order. He was a man of
genius. He had intercourse with the solitary Pietists, with the Labadists
of Maryland, and with Seventh-day Baptists. In 1723 he actually
joined the Dunkers, but he brought with him an eclectic assortment of
ideas and practices borrowed from all with whom he had had relations.
The result was a schism among the brethren. Finally Beissel established
the famous communistic institution at Ephrata.''

Though the Dunkers were greatly weakened by constant defection
to their brethren who kept the Seventh-day, they did not lose the evangel-
istic spirit. There was special evidence of this after Alexander Mack,
founder of the sect, came to Pennsylvania, seeking rest from wanderings

' Sachse, The Germaji Pietists, pp. 299-386, 402; Whitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 48.
' Sachse, The German Pietists, pp. 52, 78.
3 Ibid., p. 104.

lo THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

and persecutions in the Old World. As a result of frequent revivals
a number of churches were organized. The converts were taken, of
course, from the neglected Lutheran and Reformed population. When
Zinzendorf called the first Pennsylvania synod, of which an account will
be given in a later chapter, the Dunkers were able to send their delega-
tion to the united council of the German churches as representing a body
of earnest religionists of very considerable strength. In principles the
German Baptist Brethren were like the Quakers, but they retained a
propagating zeal which the Quakers were fast losing.'

Thus while the Great Awakening was part of the contemporaneous
Methodist Revival and part of a world movement which had begun in
Germany and was known on the Continent as Pietism, so the revival of
Pietism among the Germans of the Middle Colonies was one of the several
beginnings of the Great Awakening. This separate stream of emotional
religion has been traced in this chapter only to its junction in 1739
with other streams of like nature. The operations of Zinzendorf, the
Moravian, Muhlenberg, the Lutheran, and Schlatter, the organizer of the
German Reformed Church, belonging to a later period, will be described
in their appropriate connections. Throughout the eighteenth century
the Germans of Pennsylvania were peculiarly subject to religious excite-
ment.^ The pietistic sentiments of early and influential settlers and the
labors of itinerant evangelists kept alive warm religious feeling. Pietism
in its radical individualism brought to the New World men fantastically
diverse from each other. Yet in spite of superficial differences, as true
Pietists, they were sympathetic with all Christians and held as a funda-
mental principle that Christianity in its essence is the life of God in the
soul of man.

* Brumbaugh, op. ciL, pp. 165, 198.

* Kuhns, op. cit., p. 155.

CHAPTER II

FRELINGHUYSEN, AND THE BEGINNING OF THE REVIVAL
AMONG THE DUTCH REFORMED

A second distinct source of the Great Awakening is associated
with a family name honored in the annals of New Jersey, that of Freling-
huysen. The comparative afHuence of the Dutch in New York and New
Jersey was very different in the first half of the eighteenth century from
the almost servile station of the Germans in Pennsylvania and adjoining
colonies. The Germans were more acted upon than acting in the general
reUgious quickening, at least before the landing of Count Zinzendorf upon
our shores. The reformation throughout the country did not have its
one common origin among these recent comers. It did not spread from
them to the Dutch, Scotch-Irish, and New Englanders in the Middle
Colonies. The revival in the Dutch Reformed Church was a separate
movement in its early stages. Yet the originator of this movement,
Domine Frelinghuysen, was not a Hollander, and the Dutch language
was not his native tongue. He was a German and in the fatherland had
come under pietistic influence. So thoroughly was he the soul of the
evangelical revival among the Dutch until the coming of Whitefield
that the account of the movement up to that time is the story of his life.
These biographical details are nevertheless important, for their main
outline is strangely parallel with the course of the revival everywhere
else. The reformation within the Dutch Reformed Church was a notable
movement, but the direct influence of this revival upon the Scotch-
Irish Presbyterians was so powerful and through them the indirect
influence upon the general movement was so pronounced that some
have declared that the actual beginning of the Great Awakening was in
those stirring meetings in log churches and barns on the frontier of New
Jersey. This is claiming too much. A more accurate statement is that
the Dutch revival was the second of the distinct sources of the Great
Awakening in the Middle Colonies and more important for the general
movement than the revival among the Germans.

The " frontier of New Jersey "■ — what was the social and ecclesiastical
background of Frelinghuysen's labors ? The Valley of the Raritan had
been described to the multiplying Dutch of the Hudson Valley about the

12 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

middle of the seventeenth century as " the pleasantest country that man
can behold."' A degree of persecution in the province of New York was
an added incentive to the westward movement. The sturdy Dutch
farmers of New Jersey did not have the religious and educational advan-
tages of New England frontiersmen, but they were like them in this, that
as the New Englanders of each succeeding generation lost something of
the religious devotion and Old World culture of their fathers, so too the
Dutchmen of the Middle Colonies had lapsed from what the Hollanders
of the seventeenth century had been.^ These frontiersmen particularly
were rough and boorish ; the moral delinquencies of a primitive peasantry
were found among them.^ Nevertheless the Dutch settlers of the Raritan
were in a way religious — in quite the same way as other men of their
blood in both provinces.'^ In name their religion was that long before
defined by the synod of Dordrecht; in fact it was an instinctive attach-
ment to their Dutch nationality. The first article of their real creed was
therefore veneration for their language. The second article was the
preservation of the dependence of their churches on the classis of Amster-
dams as the ghost of their former political dependence. They were
strenuous supporters of orthodoxy, but orthodoxy to them was doing
every least thing in the same way in which it had always been done.^
Two venerable rites'' were in their minds the sum of reHgious duty and
privilege. Of spiritual struggles they knew nothing. There was no
demand upon the emotional nature and little upon conduct except in a
superficial conformity to certain universally accepted maxims of morality.
A generation passed after the beginning of the settlement in 1684
before the Dutch of the Raritan felt able to call a pastor.* Then as a
united congregation they sent a call through Domine Freeman, of Long
Island, to Holland. ' He committed the trust to a member of the evangel-
ical party, which, though containing great lights, was in the minority in

'Messier, Memorial Sermons, p. 159.

* Messier, The Hollander in New Jersey, p. 4; Memorial Sermons, p. 24.
J Frelinghuysen, Sermons, pp. 65, 88, 223, 224.

< Messier, Memorial Sermons, p. 24.

s The classis of the Reformed Church corresponds to the presbytery of the Presby-
terian. The jurisdiction of this one classis over the Dutch churches, established in
foreign parts, grew out of the custom of the trading companies to apply to the classis
of Amsterdam to appoint chaplains and pastors for their oversea factories and settle-
ments.

* Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, pp. 2198, 2208.
7 Baptism and Lord's Supper.

^M-Q^sXet, Memorial Sermons, p. 204. "> Ibid., pp. 163, 166.

FRELINGHUYSEN AND THE DUTCH REFORMED 13

Holland as in Germany. The choice fell upon a young man of enterprise
and piety, Theodorus J. Frelinghuysen, who had already made a name
for himself, but who welcomed the opportunity, according to the report
of the captain of the ship on which he sailed, of exercising his freedom
from restraint in the New World by leading a reformation such as the
majority of the ministers in Holland opposed/ It was said that he
hoped to bring over others of his fraternity. Landing at New York in
January, 1 720, he was invited to preach in the city.^ His first sermon was
like the proclamation of a new gospel, so animated was his plea for a
religion of power. Formalists like Domine Boel, junior pastor of the
Dutch Reformed Church, were offended and sharply rebuked the apostle
of revivalism, who had thus no sooner set foot on American soil than he
aroused the opposition of men in high place. Soon the university gradu-
ate was making the circuit of his four frontier churches, traveling great
distances between the scattered settlements, fording streams, and pick-
ing his way through forests. The change was quite as great for his
parishioners as for their pastor. Formerly a neighboring minister had
made them an occasional visit for the administration of the ordinances,
but their usual dependence had been upon the halting reading of a
voorleser.^ Now they had a pastor, and with him came a teacher, for
Dutch churches, like the German Reformed, aimed to establish schools in
connection with their churches.

Never had the people of the Raritan seen such earnestness, such pas-
sion, in the pulpit. Frelinghuysen defined life in terms of which they had
never dreamed. The doctrines he taught were so new that they seemed
a departure from the Dutch Reformed teachings. ^ He declared that
God hates the outward performance of religious duties apart from a
suitable frame of mind.s The pastor described regeneration as such a
thoroughgoing conversion, such a crisis in the believer's experience,^
that almost none of his hearers dared claim that they had been converted.'
The result was that even his elders and deacons who sat with him at the
table forbore to commune.^

'The captain denied the story in the form reported by the Boels. Eccl. Rec.
of New York, pp. 2182, 2260, 2333, 2386.

'Ibid., p. 2259.

3 The voorlescrs corresponded to the early readers in Scotch churches. See " Sum
of the First Book of Discipline" in Confessions of Faith, p. 56.

* Eccl. Rec. of New York, p. 2197.

5 Frelinghuysen, op. cit., p. 26. ' Eccl. Rec. of New York, pp. 2250, 2272.

* Ibid., pp. 48, 115. * Ibid., pp. 2255, 2289.

14 TEE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

The younger and poorer people were disposed to accept this teaching
as true. Frelinghuysen maintained that in every age it is just such that
accept the gospel/ The well-to-do and the former leaders in the settle-
ments were outraged by such teachings.^' They rushed to New York for
advice.^ Domine Boel set forth baptismal regeneration,'' while according
to Frelinghuysen a crisis without reference to a ceremony was necessary.
That a stage of this crisis might border upon despair was abhorrent doc-
trine to Boel. 5 The claim that a minister might examine another person
upon his spiritual attainments, and upon the basis of such examination
give his judgment as to his conversion, was to Boel unqualified heresy.^
The new emphasis upon the divine life in the soul and upon the leading
of the Spirit was in Boel's estimation Quaker doctrine.^ Boel was right
in this; it is extraordinary that the Quakers did not themselves recog-
nize the Great Awakening as a revival of their own doctrine. The
disaffected returned to their homes, reporting upon the authority of the
New York divine that Frelinghuysen was a schismatic and heretic.

Thereupon the domine in defense published three sermons which
contained his teaching upon the controverted points. Domine Bartholf ,
who had organized some, if not all, of the churches in the Raritan Valley,
and Freeman, who had introduced Frelinghuysen to them, united in a
recommendation. They judged the sermons not only "learned, well
digested, and thrilling" but "highly sound and scriptural."* Boel
accepted the challenge so far as to preach in his own pulpit in opposition
to the teaching of these sermons.' He visited the disaffected on the
Raritan and organized them for resistance." The majority of the North
Branch congregation signed a paper notifying the heretical domine that
their meeting-house was built only for orthodox worship." One promi-
nent member who, like many others, refused to pay his subscription was
compelled to pay by civil action." The disaffected also appealed to the
courts, but without success.'^ They even besought the governor to
remove the heretic;''' it was in vain.

' Eccl. Rec. of New York, p. 354. * Ibid., p. 2265.

'Ibid., pp. 2201, 2258, 2264. ^ Ibid., pp. 2272, 2328.

3 Ibid., p. 2266. " Ibid., p. 2264.

* Ibid., p. 2250. "Ibid., p. 2210.

^Ibid., p. 2249. "Ibid., p. 2387.

^Ibid., pp. 2252, 2253, 2260. '3 Frelinghuysen, op. cit., p. 353.

''Ibid., p. 2179. '■* Ibid., pp. 29, 31.

FRELINGHUYSEN AND THE DUTCH REFORMED 15

Frelinghuysen had advocated in his sermons the power of the keys,
the power of discipline in the hands of the consistory,' even to the extent
of excommunication of the disaffected.^ After long delay four of the
leaders were put under the ban.^ They represented the wealth and,
according to their own account, the majority of the membership of the
several congregations. Thus the reward of three years' toil was the
disruption of his churches. In the next two years the disaffected
gathered the evidence against the pastor, and Lawyer Boel, brother of
the domine of the same name, wove it together with considerable skill.4
This famous Complaint, making a printed book of two hundred and forty-
six pages, pubHshed in 1725, is alone sufficient to gain for the domine the
sympathy of the fair-minded. On every page what is now the usual
order of things is treated as the unheard-of and monstrous. The
defenders of Frelinghuysen among the pastors shared in the castigation
given the reformer. Thereupon Freeman published a defense^ and
Van Santvoord a dialogue^ in the interest of Frelinghuysen and evan-
gelical doctrine. The Complaint, on the other hand, was sent overseas
to the classis of Amsterdam, with a letter of approval signed by a number
of pastors.'' Thus the division which began on the frontier now divided
the Dutch pastors of the two provinces into hostile camps.

Frelinghuysen did not believe that the lack of success in his early
ministry was anything but the temporary rebuff which every faithful
minister must expect in an age when evangelical doctrine had become
so obsolete as to be mistaken for heresy. He denounced the sins rife
in the valley with such stinging directness that a reformation in morals
was slowly effected. He presented Christianity as a force that revolu-
tionizes the conduct of the believer. The domine was a university-
extension department, stimulating, wherever he went, the intellectual
life of the people. He had the genius to seize upon young men of excep-
tional abihty and charge them with something of his own force. The

• Eccl. Rec. of New York, pp. 2383, 2403; Talmage, A Sermon, p. 19. A consistory
was composed of pastor, elders, and deacons, one half of the lay membership retiring
each year. The new members were elected by the old consistory. This is pure
presbyterian government, in that the rulers are not elected by the people. See
"Westminster Directory" in Confessions of Faith, p. 487.

^ Frelinghuysen, op. cit., p. 82. * Ibid., p. 2244.

i Eccl. Rec. of New York, pp. 2201, 2206, 2212, 2291. ^ Ibid., p. 2307.

' Van Santvoord was pastor on Staten Island. Eccl. Rec. of New York, p. 2349.

"> Ibid., p. 2309.

1 6 TEE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

elders and deacons were converted one after another, until the last deacon
made his new confession in 1725.' The members of the four churches
were becoming a "very different people." The congregations of the
domine increased, and there were numerous conversions among people
who were not before upon the roll of the churches. In some years,
particularly in 1726, the ingathering was so great proportionately as to
give a foregleam of the time when Whitefield should come flaming
through the country. The subjects of the revival had all experienced
such a conversion as had never before been insisted upon in these prov-
inces— a severe spiritual conflict ending in a passionate determination
to make the attainment of their highest moral ideals the dominating
purpose of their lives.

The revival spirit was not confined to the four churches on the
Raritan. Frelinghuysen was invited by pastors to visit other places.
Lawyer Boel asked in irony, "Why does he not stay with those congre-
gations whose minister he is and first seek out the many unconverted
souls that are there, instead of depriving them of spiritual food by going
so often to other places?"^ In two instances he intruded on the fields
of other pas tors. ^ Though goaded to this by the publication of pam-
phlets against him charging heresy,4 and by constant intrusion upon his
own field,s this action was inconsistent with his reiterated complaint
against these pastors for this same offense. Perhaps in his own mind
intrusion was sometimes justifiable where shepherds were hireUngs,^
but reprehensible where pastors faithfully preached the gospel. At any
rate, by methods upon occasion disorderly but in general orderly, the
revival was spreading from the Raritan Valley to other parts. At the
same time pastors of other churches who opposed the revival kept alive
the opposition in the valley.

The revival begun by Frelinghuysen also spread to newly organized
Presbyterian churches in the valley. In 1726 there were English-
speaking dissenters scattered through the region who were like "sheep
gone astray. "7 Some of the people therefore called a young Presbyterian
licentiate, and he was ordained at New Brunswick in the autumn of
that year.* His name was Gilbert Tennent, who later became known
on both sides of the ocean as the foremost Presbyterian promoter of the

' Eccl. Rec. of New York, pp. 2288, 2289, 2387. ^ Ibid., p. 2275.
3 Of Morgan and Coens. Ibid., p. 2466.

* Ibid., p. 2306.

s Frelinghuysen, op. cit.,p. $$$.

' Eccl. Rec. of New York, p. 2304. ' Ibid., p. 2557.

* Webster, A History of the Presbyterian Church, p. 387.

FRELINGHUYSEN AND THE DUTCH REFORMED 17

Great Awakening. The Dutch subscribed to his salary to encourage
the less numerous English.' Even some of the enemies of Frelinghuysen
did so at first.* The domine gave him the use of his meeting-houses
and of barns of adherents in which he was himself accustomed to preach.
After a time the two men entered upon exceedingly cordial relations, and
the direct and pungent method of preaching which gave offense to the
more worldly members of the Dutch churches was also adopted by the
younger minister.^ Sometimes they held joint services, one speaking
in Dutch and the other in English. This was shocking to the Dutch
complainants, and to them it was even sacrilege when the domine joined
with the "dissenter," as they called him, in the celebration of the Lord's
Supper.''

Henceforth one of the chief complaints against the domine was his
encouragement of Tennent. It was represented that the introduction
of the English language into Dutch churches was a violation of church
order. It was reported to the classis that this dissenter, like Freling-
huysen, held pietistic views.s In reply to inquiries the domine main-
tained that the churches of Scotland and the Netherlands were sister
Reformed churches. It was therefore proper to lend Dutch meeting-
houses for English services when they were not required for their own.^
In 1735 he reported that the English ministers in his neighborhood had
increased to three, and that he was still accustomed to permit them to
use the Dutch churches. ^ Here as everywhere the revival spirit tended
to break down denominational exclusiveness. The main point of interest
in this contention is that this group of Presbyterian ministers, so val-
iantly defended in their day of small things, was the nucleus of the New
Brunswick presbytery, and that this presbytery became the head and
front of the evangelistic movement in the Presbyterian denomination.

The splendid success and widening influence of Frelinghuysen had
its background of vexatious opposition throughout his entire ministry
and of serious bodily impairment through the greater part of it.^ The
development of the reUgious life of his adherents was made in a measure
independent of his stated ministry by the introduction of two innovations
in the several congregations. They demand a word of explanation.

The first of these, introduced by the domine very early, was private
meetings for prayer very much after the pattern of the collegia pietatis

' Eccl. Rec. of New York, p. 2557.

* Ibid., p. 2588. s Ibid., p. 2426.
^ Christian History for 1744, p. 293. ' Ibid., p. 2557.

* Eccl. Rec. of New York, pp. 2466, 2587. ' Ibid., pp. 2667, 2678.

* Ibid., pp. 2520, 2556, 2640; Frelinghuysen, op. cii., pp. 211, 355.

1 8 TEE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

of the German revival. The complainants in 1725 ask, "Is that the
way to win souls, when one holds secret meetings, into which those
whose souls are hungry are not admitted ? "^ In his memorial sermon of
1745 the domine announces that the prayer meetings "are hereafter to
be held in public."^ The inference is unavoidable that these private
devotional meetings for twenty years or more were open only to con-
verts and seekers whose loyalty to the new evangel could be trusted.

The justification for making these meetings private appears from
their connection with another innovation of Frelinghuysen, the intro-
duction of lay exhortation and lay preaching, a measure always opposed
in the eighteenth century.^ Apparently the first appointment of
"helpers" was tentative and informal, but in 1736 there was the election
by the united consistory of one or more lay helpers for each congrega-
tion.'' They led these private devotional meetings and also the public
meetings of the church in the absence of the pastor. In the public
meetings their functions at first were no doubt those of the voorleser,
but as several of them developed surprising powers of leadership and
effective public address they insensibly passed from readers to exhorters
and preachers. The most eminent of these helpers was Hendrick Fischer,
whose sermons were published and were greatly prized in the valley as
long as the language in which they were written remained in use.^ In
the evening of his life Fischer was the president of the New Jersey
Provincial Congress and chairman of the Committee of Safety.^ It was
the church within the church which trained such laymen as Fischer and
contributed to the high intellectual and spiritual character ultimately
attained by the members of this group of churches.

Another measure by which Frelinghuysen extended his influence
in New Jersey, New York, and in Holland itself was the frequent publi-
cation of sermons.'' His writings made a stir, and no wonder, for they
excelled in breadth of culture and emotional power.* These sermons
were not only an instrumentality but a proof of the virility of the move-
ment. The same may be said of the numerous church edifices which

^ Eccl. Rec. of New York, p. 2275. ' Frelinghuysen, op. cit., p. 360.

3 Messier, Memorial Sermons, pp. 27, 171.

* Ibid., p. 241; Steele, Historical Discourse, pp. 39, 41.

s Corwin's Manual, p. 271. * Steele, op. cit., p. 65.

7 The last publication is not dated. These sermons were published in English in
1856.

* Messier, Memorial Sermons, p. 174; Eccl. Rec. of New York, p. 2698; Freling-
huysen, op. cit., p. 10.

FRELINGHUYSEN AND THE DUTCH REFORMED 19

the energetic supporters of the revival erected, far outstripping in this
practical demonstration of their faith their once more numerous and
more wealthy opposers.

The genuineness of the man and the movement finally won the sup-
port of the moderate evangelicals who had feared what they considered
the rashness of the leader. Chief among them was the genial Domine
DuBois, senior pastor of the collegiate church of New York City.
DuBois began to concert measures with those who desired greater
independence for the establishment of a subordinate American classis.'
This body was to be called a "coetus" and was to be subordinate to the
classis of Amsterdam. No sooner did the progressive pastors, including
those of evangelical sentiment, begin this movement than Domine
Boel began a counter-movement showing irreconcilable opposition to the
plan.

Such was the alignment of parties in the Dutch Reformed Church
when Whitefield came in 1739 and again in 1740 as the apostle of the
Great Awakening. Domine Boel denied him the use of the Dutch
church,^ but the senior pastor was ready to cast his great influence on
the side of the revival.^ How exasperating it was in 1740 to Domine
Boel and his friend Commissary Vesey, of Trinity Church, to see the
aged and popular DuBois uniting with Frelinghuysen and the Presby-
terian minister, Pemberton, in the support of this reforming clergyman
of the Church of England! These three ministers mounted the plat-
form erected for the young orator, from which he preached to the
assembled thousands.

Thus the story of the revival among the Dutch, as among the Ger-
mans, has been traced to the time when under the leadership of White-
field the movement became general. Frelinghuysen had come to the
Raritan Valley with the announced purpose of leading in a "purer
reformation." He was rashly independent. His mission was to a
people stubbornly conservative. He maintained a position concerning
the qualifications for admission to church membership and communion
table which was disavowed by the classis of Amsterdam,^ a position which
Gilbert Tennent and the New Side Presbyterians never distinctly
attained,^ and which was not advocated by Jonathan Edwards until
after the close of the revival. When Jonathan Edwards changed his
view upon the subject and abandoned his former practice and that of his

' Eccl. Rec. of New York, pp. 2679, 2681, 2694, 2715.

'Ibid., p. 2798. i Ibid., p. 2799. *Ibid., p. 2678.

s Gilbert Tennent, Irenicum, p. 27.

20 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

eminent grandfather before him, he was dismissed from the pastorate
of the Northampton church, much to his own humiliation, the surprise
of all New England, and the everlasting regret of the church, which
through its relation to him and the Great Awakening had become
famous.' Frelinghuysen, on the contrary, maintained his position at
the head of four churches, not only from 1720 to 1739, but to the end of
his life in 1748, and he was followed in the pastorate over those churches
by men of his own blood and spirit.

' Dwight, Edwards, p. 305.

CHAPTER III

THE TENNENTS, AND THE BEGINNING OF THE REVIVAL
AMONG THE PRESBYTERIANS

The work of William Tennent, of Log College fame, and of his sons
and their associates was closely related to the work of Frelinghuysen,
but the revival among the Presbyterians was more than an expansion
of the revival among the Dutch Reformed. It was essentially an original
movement, and therefore may be treated as the third distinct source of
the Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies. To understand the course
of the revival among the Presbyterians it is necessary to look at the
historical background and see how like and yet unlike the Presbyterian
Church in America was to its sister Reformed churches, the German and
the Dutch.

When the presbytery of Philadelphia was formed in 1706 there was
no organic connection with the churches in Scotland and Ireland. The
new church in the colonies was not in a state of vassalage to the parent
bodies. It was not necessary, therefore, to obtain permission in Europe
to ordain candidates to the ministry. In other respects, especially in
the matter of creed, the church did not reproduce the rigid lines of a
national church. Had it done so it could never have possessed the propa-
gating and assimilative power which made it the educator of a large
section of the American people. The broad basis laid at the foundation
of the church was due to the composite character of its membership, for
while the major part was Scotch and Scotch-Irish, properly called
Presbyterian, the minor part was New England Congregational, then
also very generally called Presbyterian. The tremendous increase in
the Presbyterian population in the Middle Colonies between the years
1706 and 1739 was due less to the absorption of New England Presby-
terians than to the immigration from the north of Ireland.

A century of struggle had made the men of Ulster a race of iron and
blood. Their coming to America rose almost to the proportions of a
national exodus.' Those persecuted for religion were attracted to the
colony where Penn had made the conscience free. They settled to some
extent among the Quakers and Germans, but in great numbers they

' Thompson, Presbyterians, p. 23.

22 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN TEE MIDDLE COLONIES

pushed, or were pushed, to the frontier. There they were exposed to
Indian raids which were chargeable principally to French machinations
but in part to their own aggressions.' The stream of immigration,
deflected by the mountain walls and danger from the Indians, turned
toward the southwest, following the Valley of Virginia. In this way the
Presbyterians came into possession of the best lands of the southern
provinces. Thus they occupied the frontier from New York to Georgia.

The Presbyterian immigrants who were clearing farms for themselves
in the forests of Pennsylvania and other Middle Colonies entertained a
static conception of Christianity.^ The Westminster Confession was to
them a finality. Precedent was invested with the authority of law.
They were narrow, having no appreciation of the beauty of the English
ritual and hating prelacy and the forms that brought to mind the tyranny
under which they had suffered in Ireland. Their national prejudices
were strong and yet they were chronically subject to divisions among
themselves over infinitesimal questions of policy. These boisterous
Ulstermen were not congenial neighbors to peace-loving Quakers and
Mennonites,^ and still less to the Indians, who were Canaanites in their
eyes.-*

It was natural, therefore, that among conservatives and formalists,
such as the Irish Presbyterians were, men lacking the gentler graces of
Christianity, the doctrine of the new birth was little known.s A deep
conviction of sin, preparing the way for what the revivalists called "a
saving closure with Christ," was stigmatized as "melancholy, trouble of
the mind, or despair," whenever it did appear among this people. They
were without that deep emotional experience which the Pietists denomi-
nated "the life of God in the soul of man." They were strangers to a
consuming passion for God and personal righteousness. They made
no pretension to a new heart with its new sympathy for the distressed
and unfortunate of every race and creed. Therefore Rev. Samuel
Blair says, not only of his own church at Fagg's Manor, Pennsylvania,
which had been without a pastor from its erection in 1730 to the year
1739, but of the Scotch-Irish churches in general in those parts, that
religion "lay dying and ready to expire its last breath."^ The trans-
planting of this people from Scotland to Ireland involved a loss religiously

' Hanna, The Scotch-Irish, II, 64.

' Thompson, op. cit., p. 24. 3 Hanna, op. ciL, II, 63.

^ Gordon, The History of Pennsylvania, p. 410; Thompson, op. cit., p. 24.

5 Samuel Blair in Christian History for 1744, p. 243.

' Christian History for 1744, p. 244.

THE TENNENTS AND THE PRESBYTERIANS 23

and morally, and now a greater loss attended the removal to a wilderness.'
There was no sufficient curb upon rampant appetites. This people was
in danger of sinking to a condition of intellectual and moral degeneracy.

The leading men among the immigrants from Ireland appreciated
the danger of barbarism, but as the people longed for religious advantages
the hope seemed to be in a faithful ministry. Here a new danger con-
fronted the infant church. The blight of Arianism had appeared in the
church in Ireland, and ministers holding deistic and rationalistic prin-
ciples were coming to the colonies. Others whose usefulness at home
was destroyed by scandal sought in America to re-establish their reputa-
tions. There were instances in the colonies of seemingly good men
faUing victim to the prevailing laxity, and the church in its need of
ministers too easily forgiving their offenses.^ The majority of the Scotch-
Irish ministers were men of high character, conservatives though they
were, and they were alarmed at the danger to the church.

The problem was how to protect the Presbyterian Church from
heretical and immoral ministers. A solution proposed at an early date
by an influential section of the Scotch-Irish ministers, very natural to
men trained in the rigid system of their native country, was enforced
subscription to the Westminster Confession. Subscription had been
used in Scotland to rid the church of prelatical ministers and in Ireland
to drive out the Arians. In America the conservatives hoped to pre-
serve orthodoxy by the same means. ^

But to enforce subscription to a particular exposition of the Calvin-
istic system and to bring the local churches and their ministers under
the strict surveillance of the central governing body would be a radical
departure from the liberal policy adopted in 1706. The broad basis
of union had brought a number of churches of New England origin into
the Presbyterian Church. These churches and their pastors were not
strict Presbyterians in their views upon church government. As a
Puritan heritage they were more kindly disposed than were the Scotch-
Irish, with a few significant exceptions, to the ideals of personal religion
soon to be proclaimed by the evangelists of the Great Awakening.
Jonathan Dickinson, of Elizabethtown, was the intellectual giant of the
synod, for the one presbytery of 1706 was in 1722 a synod with four sub-
ordinate presbyteries. Among the American theologians of the period

' Thompson, op. cit., p. 29.

^Records of the Presbyterian Church, pp. 61, 65, 137; Gillespie, A Letter to the
Presbytery of New York, p. 27.

3 Hodge, Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church, Part I, p. 88; Thomp-
son, op. cit., p. 26.

24 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

he was second only to Jonathan Edwards. According to Dickinson's
sermon, preached before the synod of Philadelphia in 1722, Christ alone
is the lawmaker of the church, and the church has only administrative
functions. It may decide upon rules in application of the general laws
found in the New Testament, but these rules are not properly designated
as acts or constitutions. ' They do not have the authority of laws. A wide
liberty should be left to the individual whose conscience does not permit
him to follow them.^ Church judicatories may in cases of scandal and
heresy try ministers for the violation of Christ's laws, but these courts
ought not to censure ministers for the violation of ecclesiastical regula-
tions against which their consciences rebel. He concedes that a com-
prehensive creed may be useful, but insists that subscription to it must
not be required.^ Such, in outline, was the masterful New England
argument which stayed the hand of the conservative majority.

The Scotch-Irish conservatives were too much in earnest and too
much alarmed by a real evil to cease the advocacy of their favorite
measure. Dickinson then published an answer to their latest overture.
He advocated the strict examination of all candidates for the ministry
before their admission to office.^ The result of this debate, which threat-
ened to disrupt the infant church, was the adoption of a compromise
in 1729. All legislative power in the church was utterly disclaimed.
Ministers were required to declare their agreement with the Westminster
Confession "in all the essential and necessary articles," and if they
entertained scruples with respect to any article they were to make
declaration of these scruples, and the presbytery would decide whether
the disagreement was upon essentials or not. This was the famous
Adopting Act.5

This line of division, which was drawn at first on the basis of nation-
ality, Scotch-Irish against New Englander, came in course of time to
be drawn between the conservative majority and the progressive and
evangeHcal minority without reference to geographical origin. Dickin-
son had advocated an examination not only of a candidate's beUef
but of his experience. As the evangehcal party grew, it more and more
insisted upon the evidence of piety. Gilbert Tennent, son of Ireland
though he was, was a strenuous advocate of this principle.^ But the
formalists held the view that any inquisitorial prying into the hidden

' Dickinson's Sermon Preached at the Opening of the Synod, p. 11.
"Hodge, op. cit., Part I, p. 120. ^ Dickinson, op. cit., p. 22.

■• Dickinson's Remarks upon .... Overture, p. 16.
5 Records of the Presbyterian Church, p. 92. ^ Ibid., p. 108.

THE TENNENTS AND THE PRESBYTERIANS 25

experiences of men was an assumption of the divine prerogative. They
denied the right to judge candidates in this way but would pronounce
men fit candidates if they possessed the necessary educational training,
subscribed to the standards, and lived a moral life.^ Thus in the years
before the coming of Whitefield an evangeUcal and a conservative party
formed in the Presbyterian Church. The one sought for essential ortho-
doxy; the other insisted on exact conformity to fixed standards. The
one left the individual considerable latitude for self-direction when his
conscience bade him protest against the administrative measures of the
majority; the other held him to strict accountabihty to what it con-
sidered the laws of the church. The one emphasized piety as the first
essential in a gospel ministry and sought for evidence of conversion and
an inner call to the ministry; the other declared that it was a matter of
conscience with conservatives not to institute such proceedings. A
majority of New Englanders and a minority of the Scotch-Irish were
members of the evangelical party. With few exceptions the leaders of
both parties, New Sides and Old Sides, were sincerely devoted to truth
as they saw it.

The course of the revival among the Presbyterians is unintelligible
unless one grasps this distinction between the conservative and pro-
gressive parties. Furthermore, there was a distinction between the
radical advocates of revivalism and the moderate evangelicals. While
there were splendid figures among the New Englanders in the Middle
Colonies, Dickinson, Pemberton, of New York, and Burr, of Newark,
among them, warmly devoted to evangelical principles, they were not the
chief promoters of the revival. They did not, above all others, prepare
the way for Whitefield and continue his work. The itinerating evangel-
ists that set the country on fire were, for the most part, Scotch-Irishmen.
They were the ministers of the New Brunswick presbytery, the nucleus
of which had been fostered by Domine FreUnghuysen, and members of
other presbyteries who held close relations with this group. These
evangeUsts were, with very few exceptions, graduates of the Log College,
established by the elder Tennent at Neshaminy. This was the New
Brunswick or radical New Side party.

WilUam Tennent was a priest of the Church of Ireland who was
graduated at the University of Glasgow, and whose wife was the daughter
of a Presbyterian minister.^ He became dissatisfied with the hierarchical
system, as having no foundation in the Scriptures, and with the Arminian

' Ibid., p. 319; Hodge, op. cit., Part I, p. 204; Gillespie, op. cit., p. 5.
' Briggs, American Presbyterianism, p. 186.

26 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

principles of the clergy. Upon coming to America he was received into
membership of the synod in September, 1718.' He settled at East-
chester, New York,^ removing to Bensalem, Pennsylvania, in 17 21.*
Three years later he returned to New York. He resided at Bedford
and preached in the several towns of Westchester county with wondrous
zeal.'' In 1726 he retraced his steps to the neighborhood of Bensalem
and became pastor of the Presbyterian church at Neshaminy.s He
established an additional preaching station at Deep Run, twelve miles
distant, and in 1732 this was erected into a church. " William Tennent,"
according to Dr. C. A. Briggs, "was one of the greatest of the trophies
won by Presbyterianism from Episcopacy in the first quarter of the
eighteenth century."^ Webster, the conservative Presbyterian his-
torian, concedes that "to Wilham Tennent, above all others, is owing
the prosperity and enlargement of the Presbyterian Church. "^ No
little interest therefore attaches to the sermon notes made by this father
of Presbyterian education in America. One time-stained paper con-
tains the notes of a sacramental sermon preached in Ireland in 171 7,
when he was still a priest of the Irish church, and preached again at
Bedford, New York, on December i, 1724, when he was a minister of
the Presbyterian Church. In this sermon he distinguishes those who
come to the Lord's Supper from those who really partake of it. He
insists on spiritual qualifications to the profitable partaking of the supper.
Upon those not thus qualified exhortations are lost, and threatenings
addressed to them are spoken to the wind.* The elder Tennent was
evidently an extemporaneous preacher, for his sermon notes required
amphfication in preaching — a sign in that day of the extreme evangelical.
Though he is represented as having been a powerful preacher, and
certainly he was very much of an itinerant, his great work was that of
an educator.

William Tennent's study became a school for the education of his
four sons. Upon his settlement at Neshaminy in 1726, for the better
accommodation of his school and the reception of other students, he built
the log house which was called in derision the Log College. The praises
which Whitefield in his journal bestowed upon this school of the prophets

' Records of the Presbyterian Church, p. 49. ^ Briggs, op. cit., p. 187.

3 Murphy, The Presbytery of the Log College, pp. 69, 197.

* Briggs, op. cit., p. 187. s Murphy, op. cit., p. 70.

* Briggs, op. cit., p. 187.

7 "Webster, A History of the Presbyterian Church, p. 367.

* MS in Presbyterian Historical Society Library at Philadelphia.

THE TENNENTS AND THE PRESBYTERIANS 27

must have seemed extravagant to his readers, but the subsequent
history of the sixteen or more graduates and the work which they per-
formed as evangeUsts and educators justify the glowing words of the
great orator/ It was the mother not only of Princeton but of many
schools south and west and north. Other ministers prepared men for
college or superintended their theological reading after their graduation,
but the Log College gave ministerial candidates their college education
and frequently their entire training. The scholarship which several of
these men attained testifies to the thoroughness of their preparation
under the instruction of Tennent, but what distinguished them above
all others in the Presbyterian Church was their flaming evangelistic
zeal. Piety had chief place in the curriculum.^

Where did the Log College get its sacred fire ? Not from Domine
Frelinghuysen, though his influence on Gilbert Tennent was great.
The Pietism of Frelinghuysen but fanned the Puritanism of the Tennents. '
The religious teaching of the father was reflected in the religious experi-
ences of the sons long years before they knew of the Dutch domine.
When Gilbert Tennent was fourteen years old and his father was still
a priest of the Church of Ireland, "he began to be seriously concerned
for the salvation of his soul and continued so for several years, being
often in great agony of spirit." After the usual preparatory studies he
began the study of divinity, but his convictions that his state was bad
did not permit him to entertain the purpose of entering the ministry.
Therefore he began the study of medicine and continued it for a year,
but the emotional experience which he regarded as essential came to
him, and then, in the language of the time, "he was satisfied as to his
interest in the divine favor. "^ Thus in his youth he held to the absolute
necessity of conversion as a prerequisite to entrance into the ministry.
Yet the Old Lights in New England and the Old Sides in the Middle
Colonies stoutly contended that if a man were orthodox and moral he
could be a useful minister even without conversion.

After the conversion of Gilbert Tennent and before he had per-
manently left the home of his parents his brother John experienced a
far more cataclysmic change than his own had been. The life of the
youth was "free from gross enormities," but "his conviction of sin,"
says Gilbert, "and the state of danger and misery he was brought into
by it was the most violent in degree of any that ever I saw." It was
in vain that the promises of Scripture were presented to the seeker.

' Whitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 44. ^ Alexander, Log College, pp. 20, 44.

3 Finley, The Successful Minister, Appendix.

28 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

Finally, when John and his brother William were both so dangerously-
sick that their lives were despaired of, a rich discovery of God's love
suddenly came to John, even when his death was momentarily expected.
So rapidly did his strength return that in a few hours he was led exultantly
to the room of his brother William.^ Both recovered. Such experiences
in the Tennent household were regarded, no doubt, by conservative
Presbyterians as the excesses of enthusiasm, but the Tennents themselves
never lost the deep impress of such crises in their family history. Before
Gilbert Tennent began to learn from Frelinghuysen the practical meas-
ures of the Pietists the Tennent household was thoroughly committed
to the old Puritan conception of conversion. The evangeUstic fire of
the Log College men must therefore be attributed primarily to William
Tennent, their teacher.

The success of the sons of Tennent, presently to be related, brought
a storm of criticism upon the Log College. Conservatives feared that
the Presbyterian Church would be deluged by a hoard of half-educated
enthusiasts. What then was the character of the instruction given at
the Log College ? Gilbert Tennent was the first English-speaking candi-
date for the ministry who received his education privately in the Middle
Colonies, and not in the schools of New England or of the British Isles.
The presbytery of Philadelphia approved highly of his qualifications.^
After the usual trials he was licensed in May, 1725, and Yale College
conferred on him the honorary degree of A.M. in the following autumn.^
As required by the form of government, he was no doubt examined by
the presbytery upon his knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, logic,
philosophy, and divinity.'' It appears, therefore, that Gilbert Tennent,
first graduate of the school afterward called the Log College, fairly met
these requirements.

The published sermons of John Tennent, who died in 1732, throw
light upon the character of the training in his father's school. Each
sermon has an elaborate exegetical introduction, abounding in Greek
and Latin words, according to the taste of the time, while the body of
the sermon contains quotations from the ancient fathers and from British
theologians. Gilbert Tennent says of his brother: "He made no con-
temptible progress in the learned languages and also in philosophical

' Alexander, op. cit., p. 100.
» Finley, op. cit., Appendix.
3 Webster, op. cit., p. 387.

*"Form of Church Government" in Confessions of Faith .... Church of
Scotland, p. 180.

TEE TENNENTS AND THE PRESBYTERIANS 29

and theological studies; but he particularly excelled in the polemical
and casuistical branches of divinity."'

Without attempting to present all the evidence upon the character
of the instruction, the testimony concerning three other Log College
men will be added. Samuel Blair studied five years at the Log College,^
and we learn from his own pupil, Robert Smith, that frequently New Side
preachers obtained their education in that time, though most of them
studied longer.^ Blair died in 1751, and Samuel Finley in his funeral
sermon gave a very complete representation of the scholarly attainments
of his friend and fellow educator. He speaks of Blair's store of critical
learning, his scholarly habits in the impartial search for truth, and his
independence of thought in reaching conclusions. He was especially
conversant with the Scriptures in the original languages, and he made the
knowledge of divinity the business of his Kfe. His attainments in phi-
losophy were known to few, but in his last years he had " greatly improved
himself therein."" From this statement it is obvious that excellence
in science, particularly the various branches of mathematics, then the
vogue at Yale,5 was not attributed to Log College men.

Such was President Finley's characterization of his friend, but of
Finley himself it was said that he greatly surpassed his predecessor,
President Davies, of Princeton, a student of Samuel Blair, "both in
scholarship and skill in teaching," but that Davies had a more perfect
acquaintance with English Uterature.^ Again the inference is allowable
that the training at the Log College emphasized the ancient classics to
the neglect of modern literature.

When John Rowland died in 1745 Gilbert Tennent in his funeral
sermon said of Rowland " that he was completely qualified for the minis-
terial work in respect of natural and acquired endowment, and excelled
in those of a gracious nature. "^ Though the storm of conservative
criticism broke upon the head of Rowland, there was no charge that his

' Alexander, op. cit., p. 102. ^ Murphy, op. cit., p. 87.

3 Robert Smith, The Detection Detected, p. 124.

< Alexander, op. cit., p. 164.

'Thomas Clap, rector or president of Yale, 1739-66, was eminent as a mathe-
matician. In 1758 Livingston, at the age of twelve, entered Yale. He was chiefly
occupied during the first half of his collegiate life with the various branches of mathe-
matics. In riper years he considered this time spent to little purpose. Gunn, Memoirs
of the Rev. John H. Livingston, pp. 40-42.

^ Alexander, op. cit., p. 207.

7 Gilbert Tennent, A Funeral Sermon .... Rev. John Rowland, p. 39.

30 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN TEE MIDDLE COLONIES

preparation was in any respect different from that of other Log College
men who had been regularly admitted into the ministry.

The answer to the question, therefore, is that WilUam Tennent,
graduate of Glasgow University, drilled his students thoroughly in the
Latin and Greek languages.^ He led them to an acquaintance with
Hebrew. He taught them logic in such fashion that they became master-
ful debaters. He gave them a passion for theological study. The very
atmosphere of the Log College was one of enthusiasm. But there were
limitations in a school taught by one man who had received his own
education many years before. Only for a little time did he have the
assistance of his son Gilbert as usher. Therefore it may be assumed that
the training was less efficient in the group of subjects embraced in the
term "philosophy" than in the studies intimately connected with the
practice of the ministerial profession.

Such was the training at the Log College. As a fitting school for
ministers Whitefield pronounced it distinctly superior to the con-
temporary schools of New England and Europe.^ When the four sons
of Tennent — Gilbert, William, John, and Charles — and other early stu-
dents, who were almost sons of the household by adoption, were suc-
cessively admitted to the ministry, the older ministers, educated abroad
or in New England, must have remarked the absence of that dignified
carriage and poUshed manner which were then the badge of their order.
Yet these young men were admirably trained, as has been described, and
they felt themselves commissioned to propagate the warm type of religion
which had been cultivated in their home. We are now to trace the actual
beginning of the revival under their ministry.

When Gilbert Tennent began his work at New Brunswick in 1726
Domine Frelinghuysen was doubtful of the expediency of his own people
encouraging this English preaching, since Joseph Morgan, an opposer
of evangelistic methods, was one of the ministers who laid hands upon
the young candidate. The effort of the new preacher at first was to
build up a congregation and to commend his church and his person to
the favor of the English-speaking people. His success in this was such
that both the pious and the profane delighted in his sermons and in his
intercourse with them.^

Then he was taken ill and lamented the barrenness of his ministry,
comparing it with the success of the domine. He received a letter

' Alexander, op. cit., p. 20.

* Whitefield, Journal, for November 22, 1739.

3 Finley, op. cit., Appendix.

THE TENNENTS AND THE PRESBYTERIANS 31

from Frelinghuysen that excited him to greater earnestness and to the
adoption of the domine's method of preaching/ When he resumed his
work, therefore, he directed his message so pointedly to each class among
his hearers that every person imagined that he heard his own case
described. No longer did the speaker restrain his emotions; he gave
uncurbed expression to them. Indeed, like Frehnghuysen, upon occasion
he could pour the vials of vituperation upon the heads of opposers. He
passed beyond the domine in his vivid portrayal of threatened doom.
Some left his preaching with disgust. They charged him with blas-
phemy, "as assuming the divine prerogative of being a searcher of hearts,
and pretending to know, by seeing a man's face, whether he would be
saved or damned."^ The Dutch complainants reported to classis that
even the English leader who had approached them for their subscriptions
had himself become displeased and now had nothing more to do with
Tennent.3 A greater number of his hearers were sobered by the new
earnestness of their preacher, and many, though few at a time, experi-
enced the change by which religion became the dominant force in their
lives. Indeed there were seasons when feeling was so general and strong
that some "were compelled to cry out in the public assembly, both under
the impression of terror and love."'' This phenomenon occurred at New
Brunswick and other preaching stations, but it was most marked on
Staten Island about the year 1729.

It was a Uttle more than three years after Gilbert Tennent began
to gather the varied elements of his congregation that John Tennent
came to a long-established Scotch congregation. John was hcensed in
the autumn of 1729 and with the leave of the presbytery of Philadelphia
preached a few Sabbaths at Freehold, New Jersey. He found the con-
gregation in such a distracted condition that it was thought that there
could never be agreement upon the settlement of another pastor.s
Yet the young licentiate told the members that "if they called him he
would settle among them, albeit he should be put to beg his bread by so
doing. "^ His frankness and engaging manners won him a unanimous

' Christian History for 1744, p. 293.

' Finley, op. cit., Appendix.

i Ecclesiastical Records of the Stale of New York, p. 2589.

* Christian History for 1744, p. 295.

5 Joseph Morgan had been pastor of this church, though giving the greater part
of his time to Dutch churches. He was an opposer of Frelinghuysen. He was now
pastor at Maidenhead.

* Christian History for 1744, p. 300.

32 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

call, though his people well understood his adherence to the evangelical
doctrines which Morgan, his predecessor, had ridiculed.^

The preaching of John Tennent was vibrant with emotion, but while
his brother Gilbert overwhelmed his hearers with the threat of doom,
John's voice was mellowed by a sense of the divine pity. People of
every sort flocked to hear him. While the great majority did not accept
his teaching upon the necessity of regeneration, at least of regeneration
as he defined it, religious discussion became general. Bible study
was widely practiced, and there was a perceptible alteration in the moral
conduct of the people. He wept over his sermons in their preparation,
and frequently their delivery moved the whole congregation to tears.
It was no uncommon thing to see persons sobbing as if their hearts would
break, and there were instances of people being carried out quite over-
come. Yet there was no crying out, as had been the case under the
preaching of Gilbert Tennent.^

The affectionate regard of the people for their young minister waxed
the warmer as they saw him failing in health. His brother William,
who was older than John, but did not so soon finish his studies, came to
preach in his stead for the last six months of his life. The old father
came to deliver what was almost a funeral sermon a little more than a
month before the young man died. The text of that sermon compares
human life with the grass which flourishes in the morning but in the
evening is cut down and withers.^ John Tennent died in April, 1732.
Before that date there were many conversions, but for some months
after his death the number was much larger than at any time during
his life.''

William Tennent, Jr., was admirably fitted to continue the work of
his brother, for he too was a mystic.s The spell of his recent trance was
upon him. He was not aggressive and combative, like Gilbert, but
retiring. He would have preferred to weep and pray in some lodge in
the wilderness rather than to contend with opposition. Yet his influ-
ence was powerful and wholesome. The reformation at Freehold was

' Records of the Presbyterian Church, p. 135.
* Christian History for 1744, p. 300.

'MS sermon of W. Tennent, Sr., March 13, 1731, in Presbyterian Historical
Society Library.

4 Christian History for 1744, p. 301.

5 Not that he was a member of a mystical order or adherent of a mystical phi-
losophy, but that the mystical element, strong in all Pietists and revivalists, was
especially pronounced in him.

THE TENNENTS AND THE PRESBYTERIANS 33

permanent. William Tennent lived to become the Nestor of his denomi-
nation. The church in which he preached and which to-day is affec-
tionately called "Old Tennents" has become the Presbyterian pilgrim
shrine of New Jersey.

Gradually there settled on every side of New Brunswick ministers
who, like Gilbert Tennent, were actively devoted to evangelism. John
Cross, a Scotchman, was at Basking Ridge, in the upland country north
of the Raritan Valley, called "the mountain back of Newark." He led
a remarkable revival in 1734 and 1735. Three hundred conversions were
reported.^ His influence was great in that extensive region, and he was
much in demand as an itinerant evangelist. Unfortunately he held
antinomian principles, valuing religious emotion for its own sake, apart
from its connection with moral renovation.' In 1734 Samuel Blair, one
of the brightest lights of the Log College, settled at Shrewsbury and
served a number of scattered congregations. Eleazer Wales, a Yale
graduate, came to New Jersey about 1730 and settled at Kingston, on
the Millstone, a tributary of the Raritan, in 1735. He was a faithful
supporter of the evangelical movement. Thus the three Log College
men with Cross and Wales constituted a radical party, while the pastors
of churches of New England origin in the older section of New Jersey,
led by Dickinson, though evangelical in sentiment, were not yet drawn
into this active movement. The natural line of cleavage was followed
when in 1738 the presbytery of New Brunswick was erected with these
five ministers as members.^

Thus in 1738 the ministers who were actually engaged in the propa-
gation of a revival, and who, themselves thoroughly aroused, were trying
to awaken their brethren, were few. They were mostly confined to the
little group which was led by Gilbert Tennent and was erected by the
synod into the presbytery of New Brunswick. These zealous revivalists
possessed in the Log College, though Neshaminy was within the bounds
of the presbytery of Philadelphia, not only a school where young candi-
dates were given a splendid intellectual training, but a school where

' This incident is remarkable, not for the number of conversions, but that any
number at all is given. It was not the custom of Whitefield or of the various pastors
who published detailed reports of the course of the revival in their congregations to
state the number of conversions. Any estimate, therefore, of the number of conver-
sions in the Great Awakening is a mere guess, which I refrain from making. White-
field, Journal, No. 5, p. 41.

^This led to his undoing and suspension by the presbytery in 1742. Webster,
op. ciL, p. 414.

3 Records of the Presbyterian Church, p. 136.

34 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

their enthusiasm for the revival was fanned to white heat. And now
they had been regularly constituted a presbytery, the immemorial privi-
lege of which, according to the Directory, was the licensing and ordaining
of candidates suitably prepared.^ It was for this that they desired to
be made a presbytery.^

The privilege of examining and ordaining young men prepared at the
Log College, which was given by the institution of the presbytery of
New Brunswick, was in effect withdrawn at the same meeting of the
synod by the adoption of an overture proposed by the presbytery of
Lewes.3 This was a small body of small men. The lack of university
opportunities and of skilled professors within the bounds of the synod
was held forth at great length, with never a word of appreciation of the
singularly gifted teacher, William Tennent, who was at that moment
training a band of promising young men at the Log College. The
implication was that the men already admitted to the ministry from that
school were insufficiently qualified. Yet there was not a minister
among the conservatives, except Francis Alison, whose scholarly attain-
ments equaled those of Samuel Blair. There was not another man in
the synod who developed the pulpit power of Gilbert Tennent or who
could show the success in the ministry of WilKam Tennent, Jr.

By the new regulation presbyteries were permitted to examine and
ordain candidates who produced the diplomas of New England or Euro-
pean colleges. But candidates without such diplomas were to be previ-
ously examined by a committee of the synod, and the certificates of such
committee were to be presented to the presbytery in lieu of diplomas.
The unfriendliness of the measure to the Log College was further shown
in the personnel of the two examining committees. College professors
had a voice in the granting of diplomas to their students, but William
Tennent was not recognized so far as to be appointed on either of the
committees.''

The animus of this legislation is made the clearer by other acts of this
same year and the year before, framed to hold in check the young
evangelists prepared at the Log College. It was enacted that no pro-
bationer should supply any vacancy without the permission both of
the presbytery to which he belonged and of the presbytery to which the
congregation belonged.^ Neither was an ordained minister, although

^ Confessions of Faith, p. 179.

' Whitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 44.

' Records of the Presbyterian Church, p. 139.

* Ibid., p. 140. ^ Ibid., p. 133.

THE TENNENTS AND THE PRESBYTERIANS 35

a member of the synod, permitted to supply any congregation not belong-
ing to his presbytery, if a single minister of the presbytery to which the
congregation belonged protested. It mattered not whether he came
upon the invitation of a vacant congregation or of a settled pastor; it
was in the power of a single opposer of the revival to forbid such service
until the presbytery or synod gave its permission.' It was hostility to
the Log College and to the militant evangelism cultivated there that
caused the enactment of these laws. No wonder that Gilbert Tennent
cried out in one of the meetings that the synod aimed "to prevent his
father's school from training gracious men for the ministry."^

It is a surprise, therefore, upon turning the yellow pages of the
treasured minutes of the New Brunswick presbytery to find how evident
was the purpose that every action, taken only after prayerful deliberation,
should conform to order and precedent. Frequent meetings were held
in widely separated places. Though each pastor was more or less of
an itinerant locally, he was assigned in addition long preaching tours to
destitute congregations and new settlements — all within the bounds of
the presbytery. These men v/ere too busy to intrude upon other
pastors, but at their first meeting they licensed John Rowland, who had
finished his course of study at the Log College, and in due time they
ordained him, just as they did many others in the succeeding years, all
in defiance of the law of the synod forbidding such licensure and ordina-
tion.^ They fell back upon the arguments of Jonathan Dickinson, leader
of the New Englanders in the synod, presented in 1722 and 1729. Christ
is the lawmaker; the New Testament is the law. Presbyterian direc-
tories and accredited writers have all along defended this right of presby-
teries to examine and ordain candidates by appeal to the Scriptures.
When the synod attempts to deprive a presbytery of this right it exercises
a legislative power which it disclaimed in 1729, and which the presbytery
of New Brunswick refuses to concede to it. Indeed this power, they
think, opens the door to intolerable bondage. The other act of 1738
was, in their view, uncharitable and gave a commission to every membe
of a presbytery to play the tyrant.^

Not only did they license and ultimately ordain John Rowland,
a man of extraordinary power, but they recommended his acceptance

' Ibid., p. 136. ' Ibid., p. 185.

3 Yet there was unusual deliberation with adjournments. MS Minutes of the
New Brunswick Presbytery for August 8, 1738; September 5, 1739; and October 11,
1739-

* Hodge, op. cit.. Part II, pp. 104-8; Records of the Presbyterian Church, p. 144.

36 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN TEE MIDDLE COLONIES

of the invitation of the New Side churches of Maidenhead and Hopewell.
These towns were just outside the bounds of the New Brunswick presby-
tery. The former pastor, Morgan, an opposer of the revival, had been
suspended by the synod for drunkenness. There was a separation of
evangelicals and conservatives. The former were erected by the presby-
tery of Philadelphia into separate congregations with liberty "to invite
any regular candidate from other parts to preach among them." If
the regulation of the synod requiring previous examination by its com-
mittee was beyond the competency of the synod there was no irregularity
in Rowland's acceptance of the invitation of these neighboring churches,
but if the first-named action of the synod was constitutional Rowland
was guilty of intrusion.'

To observe the course of the revival at Maidenhead, Hopewell,
and Amwell^ apart from the contest over Rowland's entrance into the
ministry it is necessary to return to the time of his Ucensure. A rural
community sharply divided into two factions, each served by a young
licentiate, was not the probable scene of a helpful quickening of the
religious life. Yet there was an awakening in these three townships
quite as remarkable as the earlier reformations at New Brunswick,
Freehold, and Basking Ridge. Mr. Gould, the minister-elect of the
conservatives, was a quiet, conciliatory man, under whom the New
Sides and Old Sides ultimately united. It was a pity that the Presby-
terians of the three towns did not unite under the two men whose gifts
were complementary, but in 1738 the division of sentiment among the
people did not permit of this, and the alleged irregularity of Rowland's
license was a barrier. At first Rowland was denied the use of the
meeting-houses at Maidenhead and Hopewell, and, like Frelinghuysen
before him, he preached in barns. So great were the congregations
that the largest barns of his adherents were required. Later he was
granted the use of the meeting-house at Maidenhead, and a new one
was built in the township of Hopewell. At Amwell he did not meet
with organized opposition, but, though he found the people agreeable,
few in the beginning were deeply interested in religion. ^

The debate among the people was quickly turned from the knotty
problems of ecclesiastical law and the unfortunate division in the com-

' Hale, A History of the Old Presbyterian Congregations of ... . Maidenhead and
Hopewell, pp. 56, 1 10-12; Gilbert Tennent, sermons on "The Solemn Scene" and
on "Duty" published with Unsearchable Riches.

^ Amwell was within the bounds of the presbytery of New Brunswick.

3 Rowland, A Narrative of the Revival.

THE TENNENTS AND THE PRESBYTERIANS 37

munity to the deeper question of personal relation to God. For six
long months Rowland with terrible earnestness preached upon the two
themes, conviction and conversion. The most arousing texts were
selected. Though he divided his ministry among three townships, the
interest was not permitted to subside by long intervals between meet-
ings in one neighborhood, Sunday-night meetings were introduced, a
marked innovation in the eighteenth century, and week-day meetings,
so that the young enthusiast was constantly going from one service to
another. Presently the one topic of conversation in these towns was
heart religion. Everyone was asking himself whether he was really
converted. A deep gloom began to settle over the three New Side con-
gregations. Now one person and now another broke down and owned
himself convicted. Yet the months passed, and the prophet of woe but
increased their anguish by his arraignment of sin and declaration of the
divine displeasure.'

Finally, when the number of the convicted was very considerable,
and the people who looked upon themselves as converted were aroused
to earnest effort in their behalf, the preacher changed his method. The
most inviting and encouraging subjects were taken. The eye that had
flashed with the anger of God was now a well of tears. Solemn weeping
came over the congregation. From this time on conversions were more
numerous. Sometimes it was the aged to whom the joy of pardon
came, and sometimes it was the children. The negroes were included in
the invitation, and Rowland reports that some were very earnest after the
word. Kindly Christian fellowship found new ways of expression in the
three congregations. The little differences which often trouble good
people were practically unknown among them.^

The movement spread beyond the circle of families which originally
composed the three New Side congregations. While Rowland does not
report the conversion of any who at first opposed the revival, many who
had been quite indifferent to the claims of reUgion were reached. Again
there were some who were little affected by the doctrine of the new birth
when it was first preached among them, but who three years later were
visibly affected. There were striking illustrations of the power of Row-
land's preaching. At one meeting in 1739, just before the arrival of
Whitefield, only fifteen persons were present, owing to an insufficient
"warning," as the circulation of an invitation in a neighborhood was
called. Not being dependent upon the number of his listeners, he was
carried quite out of himself by the awful purport of his message, when

' Ihid. ' Ibid.

38 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN TEE MIDDLE COLONIES

suddenly he was compelled to stop by the outcries of his hearers. Sur-
prised, he asked why they cried out in such a manner. The answer
of some was "that they saw hell opening before them, and them-
selves ready to fall into it." The most remarkable outbursts of
feeling were in spontaneous gatherings in private houses. Some of
the largest accessions were in 1740, when the movement, so far as con-
versions were concerned, had apparently spent itself for lack of new
material. Rowland reports that sometimes when he cast the gospel net
many slipped out as soon as they were caught. Yet of the multitude
that gave evidence of conversion no considerable number were reckoned as
backsliders in after-times when the period of stress had given place to
the ordinary routine of life and feeUng.^

From the foregoing account two characteristics of the Presbyterian
revival in New Jersey must have been noted by the reader. The first
is that the conservative majority in control of the church, centering at
Philadelphia but strongest on the frontier of Pennsylvania, aimed to
restrict the troublesome promoters of strenuous religion to a sharply
defined territory in New Jersey and to cripple their power of action
even within that territory. The second characteristic is that the revival
fire did not leap from town to town and rapidly envelop a wide stretch
of country in a general conflagration, as in the New England revival of
1734. The Edwards revival of 1734 spread throughout western Massa-
chusetts and the adjoining colony of Connecticut, and in its special
phenomena came to an end. It was so like the larger movement of
1740 that it is often represented as the beginning of the Great Awakening.
The revivals in New Brunswick and Freehold were earlier than the begin-
ning of the Edwards revival at Northampton, but the fire was not imme-
diately carried to neighboring settlements. The diversities among the
people in blood and sentiment and their less compact organization were
obstacles to a movement like that in western Massachusetts. Never-
theless the several revivals which have been traced in this chapter were
parts of a whole, for the promoters of them acted in close co-operation,
and the reports of startling events in one town stimulated the desire of
the pious in other towns for a like spiritual rejuvenation.

It was the common appreciation of the power of publicity that sug-
gests another comparison of the Freehold awakening of 1732 with the
Northampton awakening of 1 734. The Edwards revival had widespread
influence in America and abroad through the printed reports which were
given to the public, but Gilbert Tennent was also prompt in summoning

' Rowland, A Narrative of the Revival.

THE TENNENTS AND THE PRESBYTERIANS 39

the printing-press to his aid. In 1734 he sent to the press the two ser-
mons of his brother John on regeneration and adoption, with a bio-
graphical sketch of their author. In 1735 he pubhshed at Boston a
" Solemn Warning," based on fear, and strongly justified his method in an
introduction. This discourse was terrifying in its denunciation of sin
and threat of judgment. He also pubUshed that year *' An Expostulatory
Address," which was based upon the complementary idea of the winning
power of divine love. Here he applied the method of persuasion so
successfully employed at Freehold. In this discourse, with abandonment
of restraint, he revealed that warmth of sympathy which so endeared him
to his friends. This address and the sermons of John Tennent were
pubUshed in London in 1741 under the patronage of Whitefield. Thus
the printed accounts of the revival in New Jersey contributed in the
colonies to an expectation of an outburst of the old-time Puritan fervor,
and in England later the rough but vigorous words of these Log College
men added force to a movement already begun. This expectation was
heightened when the report of the work in the Highlands and in the
three towns of Maidenhead, Hopewell, and Amwell, so potent and mys-
terious, was carried to every quarter. Above all, the almost incredible
stories of the success of George Whitefield in the home land gave promise
of a general revival. It was a time gladdened by hope, and yet hope
tempered by dread.

CHAPTER IV

GEORGE WHITEFIELD, AND HIS ALLIANCE WITH THE NEW
BRUNSWICK PRESBYTERIANS

Three contributory streams have been traced to their point of junc-
tion. They have been broadly designated as the German, Dutch, and
Scotch-Irish contributions to the Great Awakening. The breadth
and power of these movements are not to be measured by the number
and duration of such local revivals as have been described. An increas-
ing number of people were beginning to shake off the lethargy of their
times; they longed for a religion of energy and passion. Hoping, de-
spairing, praying, struggling, they measurably attained it. These were
the evangelicals. Some of the pastors were thrilled by the vision of a
new reformation; their very faces reflected the inner light. Here and
there this growing interest became intense and passionate, attended by
numerous conversions which were often so revolutionary and extraordi-
nary that the strange visitation seemed miraculous. The story of each
community thus visited was carried by the winds to every quarter,
stimulating the religious desires of thousands, spurring evangelical
pastors to greater earnestness and warmth, and binding them together
in close fraternity. In spite of the frowns of the coldly intellectual,
still constituting a majority of the church members, the country was
ready to be swept by a wave of emotionalism, if only a leader could be
found who was broad in sympathy, deep in emotional experience, and
commissioned by a prophet's gift of utterance. This leader was found
in George Whitefield.

But just as these three streams were to unite in a seething flood of
emotionalism, a fourth source of the Great Awakening in the Middle
Colonies added its contribution. If this were a study of the whole
intercolonial movement, unquestionably the New England revival of
1734 would be considered as the most important, though not the earliest,
of the several contributory movements. But the Edwards revival had
no direct and immediate effect upon the Middle Colonies. The Presby-
terian congregations of New England origin, located mostly on Long
Island and in East Jersey, whether incorporated with the synod or still
independent, were for the most part evangehcal in sentiment, though

GEORGE WHITEFIELD 41

their pastors were not in full harmony with the more radical Log College
men. Some of these pastors had been converted in the Edwards revival,
and now, years after that revival had come to an end, a very similar
religious interest began to appear in their congregations. The most
important of these local revivals was at Newark under the pastorate of
the brilliant Aaron Burr.' It began in August, 1739, and gathered
momentum from month to month. Other pastors in the neighborhood
were hoping for its spread to their congregations.^ While these trans-
planted New England towns were, no doubt, stirred by the reports of the
renewed power of religion among the various nationalities west of them,
the strongest incentive was their intimate acquaintance with the New
England awakening of 1734. The Edwards revival was thus itself
revived, and just before the landing of Whitefield became one of the
sources of the Great Awakening in this section of the country.

While these four religious movements, more or less independent of
each other, were essentially parts of one general and even world move-
ment, this was not patent to all until Whitefield came as the chief apostle
of the Great Awakening. Not till then were men everywhere arrested
by the call of the Spirit. Not till then did every other issue pale in the
general debate upon religion. Furthermore, not till his coming was
a sustained interest manifested by the people of one colony in the course
of events, whether religious or secular, in the sister colonies,^ but all
ears were open for news from "home." The newspapers were filled
with transcripts from the London papers. At this point it will be appro-
priate to give an ampler representation than that in the opening chapter
of the preparation for the Great Awakening made by the newspapers
through the publication of startling accounts of Whitefield's career before
he landed at Lewes, Delaware, on October 30, 1739. These accounts
also give us a fresh view of the man who was soon to electrify greater
audiences than had ever before gathered within the hearing of a single
voice in the colonies.

With this twofold purpose we turn over the time-stained pages of
the colonial papers. The Virginia Gazette tells of the great concourse
of people that filled the church of St. Mary Magdalene, London, long
before the time of service, and of several hundred persons in the street
who in vain endeavored to force themselves into the church and past the
constables stationed at the door to preserve the peace. Such was the

' Christian History for 1743, p. 252; Stearns, Historical Discourse, p. 156.

^Christian History for 1743, p. 254.

3 Hoskins, "German Influence," Princeton Theological Review (1907), pp. 70-73.

42 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

mad desire to see and hear the eloquent youth who had volunteered to go
to Georgia as a missionary.^ Directly a longer article appeared in the
Mercury, published at Philadelphia, stating the amounts of collections
for charity schools taken at these services.^ But a discordant note was
sounded when an English paper, the Weekly Miscellany, began an anti-
Methodistic campaign by the publication of articles against enthusiasm.
Next there was the announcement in the South Carolina Gazette of White-
field's departure from London on his way to Georgia.^ The last-named
paper and all the others to the northward were strangely silent on his
movements in Georgia, his resolution to found an orphan house, even
his preaching in Charleston and his return to England to receive priest's
orders. But when he was once again in England the papers from end
to end of the colonies were filled with reports of his phenomenal career.
It was these later reports especially that excited curiosity to hear
him and fanned the hopes of the pious when it was learned that he was
about to visit the Middle Colonies, He was ordained at Oxford on
January 14, 1739,'' and sailed for America on August 14, following. In
the interval he journeyed about England in the interest of his projected
orphan house, but it very soon developed that his peculiar calling was
that of an evangelist. The papers had told of riots among the colliers
at Bristol consequent upon a reduction of their wages from sixteen
pence to a shilling.^ Some months after these riots Whitefield visited
Bristol and, being refused the churches, preached in the open to these
abused, besotted colliers.^ Thus began his famous field preaching.
Sometimes the accounts of his movements were taken from the London
papers, and sometimes they appeared to be summary reports sent directly
to America. Highly laudatory verses were copied from the Gentleman' s
MagazineJ When Whitefield had returned to London from this tour
the papers told of his preaching from a tombstone, for the warden of a
church in which he had been invited by the vicar to preach denied him
the pulpit.* Then the colonial readers were informed of his preaching

» Virginia Gazette, January 6, 1738.
'American Weekly Mercury, January 24, 1738.

3 South Carolina Gazette, May 4, 1 738.

4 Whitefield, Journal, No. 3, p. 9.

s New York Gazette, February 27, 1739.
^ Ibid., May 7, 1739.

"> American Weekly Mercury, June 21, 1739.
* Boston Gazette, Jime 25, 1739.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD 43

to twenty thousand people and even to fifty thousand on Kensington
Common and at Moorfields.'

According to some of the accounts his preaching had become an
offense to the clergy of the Church of England,^ but a dissenter wrote to
his ministerial friend in the colonies of these Methodists as providentially
raised up to lead a reformation from profaneness to piety.^ Indeed
already the face of things had been changed in parts of Wales through
the efforts of men of a spirit kindred to Whitefield's. The simple but
fundamental doctrines into which he breathed the spirit of life the
descendants of the Puritans read in their century-old books. His
fidelity to the articles of his church, which were Calvinistic in character,
and the closing of pulpits against him by his brethren commended the
evangelist not a little to pious dissenters in the colonies.

When Whitefield landed in Delaware in 1739 on his way to Georgia
he came with certain prepossessions which greatly affected his ministry.
The first of these was a spirit of censoriousness, a disposition to judge his
critics rashly. This was due to the pecuhar experiences of his brief
career and was foreign to his generous nature. Therefore a larger
experience in the world corrected this tendency in a very few years,''
but the wild-fire by that time had spread, so that from his day to the
present censoriousness has been the fault in a class of itinerant evangehsts
whose influence in other respects has been good.s

A glance at these experiences easily accounts for this unfortunate
habit. As a member of the Holy Club at Oxford he came to look upon
himself and his Methodist associates as a band of faithful disciples

' South Carolina Gazette, September i, 1739. WTien Whitefield was preaching to
a great throng in Philadelphia from the court-house steps Franklin walked down the
street "till the speaker's voice was obscured by the noise of the street." Then imagin-
ing a semicircle, filled with auditors, to each one of whom he allowed two square feet,
he computed that more than thirty thousand could hear the preacher, so loud and
clear was his voice and so perfectly articulated were his words. This reconciled Frank-
lin to the newspaper accounts of Whitefield's preaching in England. Franklin,
Autobiography, pp. 132, 133.

'New York Gazette, November 19, 1739.

^'Qoston News-Letter, November 15, 1739.

* Whitefield, Some Remarks on a Pamphlet entitled, The Enthusiasm of Methodists
and Papists compared, pp. 14, 16.

s The writer in his own ministry has had experience with evangelists of this type
and in his studies has found them appearing in every period. As WTiitefield was the
greatest evangelist of the eighteenth century his faults as well as his virtues were imi-
tated.

44 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

persecuted and held in scorn by a multitude of nominal Christians.*
Ministers called him an enthusiast. His first journals, which he had
sent home from Georgia, were, contrary to his directions, published with-
out editing.^ Therefore the private thoughts of an ardent youth con-
cerning his elders in the ministry, mentioning them by name, were
published to the world. His journals were immensely popular and went
through many editions. Though he was more circumspect in later
numbers, it was impossible not to offend. Then returning to England
he was greeted by a fierce storm of opposition. Mobs were set upon him.
Yet the people hung on his words, and strong hearts were melted by his
ministry. He came into friendly relations with Griffith Jones and Howell
Harris, who had brought reformation to Wales in spite of years of liti-
gation and persecution by the clergy .^ Whitefield concluded that the
possessors of genuine piety in his own church were but a remnant.''

He had but little reason to think better of non-conformists. Though
he was taunted with being a dissenter,^ most dissenters in his country
held aloof from him, unable to overcome their prejudices and fearful
of the effects of his untempered zeal. He was a correspondent of the
Erskines in Scotland. Their expulsion by a corrupt majority in tempo-
rary control of the general assembly but confirmed his opinion, common
with the aggressive promoters of vital rehgion, that the body of the
ministry in all lands was unconverted.^ The battles forced upon the
pacific Spener in Germany and upon his successor, Francke, were addi-
tional evidences. Therefore he came to the colonies prepared to accept
the opinion of Frelinghuysen and the Tennents concerning the major-
ity of ministers of all denominations in the American possessions.

Thus Whitefield was predisposed to give hearty support only to men
who like himself advocated a religion of energy and passion; further-
more he liked such men the better if they were Calvinists in their religious
philosophy, for when he landed at Lewes he was already a Calvinist.
Before his ordination as deacon he thoroughly compared the Thirty-nine
Articles with Scripture, verifying them, in his opinion, and therefore in
subscribing to them he gave unqualified assent to their truth.^ Though
his study at first was almost entirely in pietistic literature, his interest

^ Whitefield, Brief Account, p. 26,

' Whitefield, Journal, No. 2, Preface.

3 Tyerman, Wesley, I, 221.

< Whitefield, Journal, No. 3, pp. 75, 109. ^ Ibid.,p. S9-

' Ibid., p. 97; Gledstone, George Whitefield, p. 97.

7 Whitefield, Brief Account, p. 56.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD 45

being in regeneration and conversion, it was inevitable that he should be
drawn on to "the whole counsel of God," as he expressed it.' His
intimacy with Howell Harris stimulated this tendency. On Whitefield's
voyage across the Atlantic in 1739 he gave attentive reading to Calvin-
istic attacks upon Arminianism.^ These studies tended to hasten his
rupture with churchmen in America and to win the favor of the more
numerous dissenters. An itinerant missionary who preached with
Whitefield in Christ Church, Philadelphia, during his first visit taunted
him with making man a machine.^ Nevertheless there were many
expressions in his journals and printed sermons which were open to
criticism by strict Calvinists.* He had been deeply influenced by
German mystics and Moravians, though escaping some of their practices
which were freely adopted by John Wesley.

In spite of his gradually stiffening Calvinism a marked characteristic
of Whitefield was his catholic spirit. It is true that in general evangeli-
cals as compared with conservatives had little denominational prejudice,
but Whitefield was extraordinary in his sympathetic attitude toward
Christians of all names who were promoters of vital religion. On his
voyage to America in 1739 he even lent his cabin to a Quaker preacher,
who held meetings there. Whitefield consented freely to the Friend's
teaching upon the Christ within but regretted his slight of the objective
Christ and the ordinances instituted by him.s Then too Whitefield
had spent pleasant hours of Christian conference with Baptists, though he
himself held the Episcopal theory of ordination and of the real presence
of Christ in the elements of the Lord's Supper.'^ In England he had
collected money for the Lutherans of Georgia^ and enjoyed fellowship
with the Moravians, though his Calvinism was a barrier to the fullest
intercourse with them.^

With these predispositions Whitefield arrived at Lewes. We are
now to follow the gradual alignment of forces and the marshaling of the
cohorts of militant righteousness. But though Whitefield believed him-
self the possessor of a prophet's call and knew full well the power of his
oratory, he was, withal, a gentleman and entertained no purpose of
antagonizing those who were not in full agreement with him. He

' Gledstone, op. cii., p. 116. ^ WTiitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 19.

^ New York Post-Boy, January 21, 1745.

* Whitefield, A Letter .... in Answer to ... . Querists, p. 61; Franklin,
op. cit., p. 134. ^

5 Whitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 16. ' Ibid., No. 3, p. 7.

* Ibid., No. 4, pp. 7, 12, 24. 8 Ibid., No. 3, p. 97.

46 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

preached at Lewes, the adherents of various denominations attending,
and though the minister "subscribed to the articles of the Church of
England in his own sense" he opened his pulpit to Whitefield then, and
again the following year.' This was more considerate treatment than
he had learned to expect in England. The same privilege was accorded
him at Philadelphia by Commissary Cummings. The newspapers record
that he preached in Christ Church every day, "people of all persuasions
going to hear him."^ A week later, besides the morning service in the
church, he added an afternoon service in the open air. This he excuses
as a concession to the sentiment of the province. Thereupon the papers
say that he had begun "to preach from the court-house gallery at six at
night to near six thousand people before him in the street, who stood in
awful silence to hear him." He did not make public appeals for gifts
toward the building of his orphan house during the time of this journey,
though goods given in England for this purpose were offered for sale in
Philadelphia.^ Delighted with the warmth of his welcome he announced
through the papers his future plans, first that he intended to visit all
the southern provinces on his way to Georgia,'' and later that he would
preach the gospel in every province before his return to England.^

During his visit at Philadelphia he had intercourse with members of
the Society of Friends, exceeding kindness being shown him by some of
them. He speaks of them as honest, open-hearted, and true.^ The
Presbyterian and Baptist ministers came to his lodgings to tell of their
pleasure in hearing "Christ preached in the Church." There is no
intimation yet that the former, Jedediah Andrews and Robert Cross,
would become bitter opposers, and the latter, Jenkin Jones, his special

I Whitefield, Journal, No. s, p. 25; No. 6, p. 49; Pennsylvania Gazette, No-
vember 8, 1739.

^ American Weekly Mercury, November 8, 1 739. Franklin says, "The multitudes
of all sects and denominations that attended his sermons were enormous." He
adds that when Whitefield preached from the court-house steps in the middle of Market
Street, both Market and Second streets were fiUed with his hearers to a considerable
distance. Franklin gives no hint that the reports in his own and other papers of the
number of Whitefield's hearers at Philadelphia were exaggerations (Franklin, op. cit.,
pp. 129-33). Yet these reports are to be regarded as rough estimates. Friends of
the movement might easily in perfect honesty overestimate the number. The pub-
lished statements probably came from them, as we know was the case in the beginning
when Seward was the traveling companion of Whitefield.

3 Pennsylvania Gazette, November 8, 1739- ^ Ibid.

s Boston News-Letter , November 30, 1 739.

'Whitefield, Journal, No. 5, pp. 27-29, 47.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD 47

friend and supporter.' He had fraternal intercourse with the Swedish
minister and received repeated courtesies from Commissary Cummings."
The commissary was a poUtic man, very different from the combative
Vesey, of New York, as both were different from the strong and evan-
gehcal Blair, of Williamsburg. For all this it must not be supposed for a
moment that Whitefield was dumb upon a conviction which was burned
into his very soul. He believed that the people could not be brought to
embrace the truth until they were convinced that they had been falsely
led. Therefore Jonathan Allen, the church missionary, took great
offense when the young preacher asserted at Philadelphia that the
majority of Anglican ministers did not preach the truth, making them
wolves in sheep's clothing. ^ In a dissenting meeting-house he would
have condemned the body of dissenting ministers, but it was classes,
not individuals, that he branded as unconverted.

The ministerial intercourse which most delighted the young preacher,
now in his twenty-fifth year, was that with the old, gray-headed William
Tennent, of Neshaminy, Whitefield says in his journal that Tennent
was a great friend of the Erskines, and just as they were hated by the
judicatories of the Church of Scotland, and as his Methodist associates
were despised by their brethren of the Church of England, so too were
Tennent and his sons treated by the majority of the synod. But just
as surely as Elijah overcame the prophets of Baal, so would the few
evangelicals overcome their opposers, thought Whitefield. The aged
founder of the Log College had made the journey of twenty miles from
Neshaminy, called by the voice of spiritual kinship, and the result was
an alliance between Whitefield, chief exponent of storm and stress in
religion, Anglican though he was, and the New Brunswick Presbyterians,
who above all others had made the Middle Colonies ready for a religious
revolution.''

After nine days at Philadelphia, Whitefield journeyed toward New
York, preaching at Burlington, the old capital of West Jersey, and at New
Brunswick, the home of Gilbert Tennent. s In the company of riders was
Jonathan Allen, the clerical itinerant already mentioned. He bitterly
attacked the Calvinism of Whitefield and rebuked him for publicly
condemning the dead Tillotson and the living bishops and clergy.
Whitefield's recourse was to pronounce him a carnal man unable to

' Ihid., p. 28. ' Ibid., pp. 29, 31.

i Ihid., p. 32; Boston News-Letter, November 30, 1739.
* Whitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 31. s Ibid., p. 34.

48 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

discern the things of the Spirit.^ Possibly restrained by the chastisement
which he had received on the way to New Brunswick, Whitefield excuses
every shght divergence from the usages of his church. There was at
that time no place in New Brunswick set apart for the worship of the
Church of England. But learning that it was the custom of the country
for dissenters and conformists to worship at different times in the same
building, he accepted the invitation of Gilbert Tennent to preach in his
meeting-house. It was none the less an Anglican service, for the
liturgy was used.^ The remaining miles to New York were short ones,
for Whitefield and Tennent cheered each other by the relation of their
similar struggles and victories.

The travelers were welcomed at New York by an influential layman
who had twice invited Whitefield to visit the city. With this gentleman
and Seward, his traveling companion, the evangelist called upon Com-
missary Vesey, but the interview was a stormy one. The use of the
church was denied. Vesey charged Whitefield with breaking the canons,
and Whitefield returned the charge, for he had been informed that Vesey
was a frequenter of taverns,^ Vesey, a graduate of Harvard, had come to
Long Island as a dissenting minister. Indeed as such he was elected
minister in New York, but the wily Governor Fletcher had already won
him over to the Anglican communion. Having been imposed upon an
overwhelmingly dissenting population by a trick, he remained a clerical
politician. The unscrupulous Cornbury was a governor after his heart,
but milder governors were bitterly opposed by Vesey.^ Such was the
man who had listened to the story of Jonathan Allen and abetted him in
his newspaper war upon Whitefield.

Allen followed Whitefield up, determined to dispute with him.
Whitefield was just at that time the guest of WilHam Smith, a Presby-
terian and a leading lawyer, one of the few college graduates in the
province and father of its future historian. Smith lent himself so far
to the purposes of Allen that he invited him to his table. Here Allen
violated the laws of hospitahty, so abusive was he of Whitefield, who
refused to enter into disputation with him.s Thereupon Allen published
several letters against Whitefield, remarkable for their billingsgate. In
them he urged the people to treat with neglect and contempt the pre-

^ New York Post-Boy, January 21, 1745-

* Whitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 35. ^ Ibid., p. 36.

* Eccl. Rec. of New York, p. 2016; Briggs, American Presbyterianism, pp. 108,
144, 145-

s Boston Evening Post, February 11, 1740-

GEORGE WHITEFIELD 49

tender to divine inspiration.' He also turned upon his host, William
Smith, making him a deceiver. Then Smith replied in measured judicial
language but clearly proved Whitefield to have shown himself the gentle-
man, and Allen the ruffian.* Whitefield did not reply in public print,
and his journals make not the slightest allusion to Allen. Others came
to the defense of the evangelist, among them Mangus Falconer, a New
Side of Philadelphia, and wielder of an acrid pen.'' These letters, pro
and con, were copied from one paper to another, and so the debate
attained the proportions of an intercolonial controversy occupying the
pubUc mind from Boston to Charleston.

On the evening of Whitefield 's arrival at New York he listened to a
sermon preached by Gilbert Tennent in the Presbyterian Church. Never
before had he heard such a searching discourse.'' The polished Oxford
graduate was taking lessons in the art of effective oratory from the
rough product of the Log College. So deeply was he moved by the
truth, as he considered it, presented by his new friend and by the evident
success of a method so overwhelming and so terribly direct that his own
method of preaching was sensibly changed by his intercourse with the
Tennents. When he visited New York again, early the next year, a
roughness was noticed by his hearers which was said to have been lately
acquired.^ Just as his Calvinism was stiffened by his intercourse with
Presbyterians, so, fully conscious of his youth and inexperience, he was
ever ready to learn from men whose piety and success commanded his
admiration.

With the pulpit of Trinity Church closed to Whitefield he applied
for the use of the Dutch church, but Domine Boel, the antagonist of
Frelinghuysen, refused him.^ Pemberton, of the Presbyterian church,
offered the use of his meeting-house, but Whitefield was slow to accept
it because of the bitterness between Anglicans and Presbyterians.^
Under the governorship of Cornbury, Presbyterians had been persecuted
in New York, and even now their congregation in the city was unable to
obtain a charter. Whitefield, lest he should appear as the spokesman
of a party and his influence be restricted to its foUowng, resorted in New
York to field preaching. A long, sympathetic account of his activities

' Boston News-Letter, November 30, 1739; American Weekly Mercury, January 10,
1740; New York Gazette, January 22, 1740; New York Post-Boy, January 21, 1745.
^American Weekly Mercury, December 13, 1739.
i Ibid., December 6, 1739.

< Whitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 35. ^ Eccl. Rec. of New York, p. 2798.

5 Boston News-Letter, June 5, 1740. ^ Whitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 37.

50 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN TEE MIDDLE COLONIES

was contributed to a New York paper, and this was copied by others.
With a deft pen Mr. Pemberton, for the article was attributed to him,
described Whitefield's preaching from a Httle eminence to a great multi-
tude disposed upon the descent before him and on either side. There
were two companies, a compact body of people who hung upon his
words, and an encircling assembly whose laughter and scofl&ng aroused
the speaker to subdue these "vassals of the devil." He succeeded,
for a solemn awe fell upon the whole assembly, and the author of the
description was astonished at what he saw and felt. Every scruple
vanished, and he confessed that he had never seen or heard the like.'

Whitefield consented to preach in the Presbyterian meeting-house
when he learned that even Mr. Vesey had preached in the Dutch Re-
formed. He did so in the evening, following his afternoon sermon in the
fields, and he continued to speak there twice a day in addition to the
daily preaching in the fields. The outdoor assemblies increased in
spite of the cold November air. On Sunday morning he preached at
eight o'clock in the meeting-house and from thence went to Trinity
Church to hear his doctrines assailed. At the close of the day, in
the meeting-house, the windows of which were removed to permit the
throng outside to hear, he retorted by cautioning the people against the
scribes and Pharisees of his own communion. Thousands had come
to hear his farewell sermon.^ In four days he had won a great popular
following. In a city where deep rehgious emotion was almost unknown
Whitefield by his frankness, earnestness, and pathos had opened a foun-
tain of tears. Great was the lamentation of the people at his going.

On the return journey toward Philadelphia Whitefield accepted the
previously given invitation of Jonathan Dickinson, Presbyterian pastor
at Elizabethtown. In his sermon the young enthusiast did not fail to
"open his mouth" against both ministers and people among the dis-
senters who contented themselves with a bare, speculative knowledge of
the doctrines of grace, "never experiencing the power of them in their
hearts."^ Dickinson had not previously entered into cordial relations
with Gilbert Tennent. Whitefield's journal does not show the warmth
of fraternal feeling toward the theologian which he always expresses
when recording his intercourse with ministers of the New Brunswick
party. But Dickinson was sincerely evangelical, and this invitation to
the most prominent exponent of revivalism thoroughly committed him

^American Weekly Mercury, December 27, 1739; Christian History for 1744,
P-359-

' Whitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 39. 3 Ibid., p. 40.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD 51

to it. At the same time the commendation given to Whitefield by
Pemberton contributed to a union in evangelistic endeavor between the
presbytery of New York and the more radical New Brunswick party.

Coming again to New Brunswick the evangelist met several of the
leaders of the evangeHcal movement in the Middle Colonies. Among
them was Domine Frelinghuysen, whom Whitefield calls "the beginner
of the great work in these parts."' Another was John Cross, Presby-
terian pastor at Basking Ridge. The members of his hill congregation
were called "enthusiasts and mad men" by those who were ignorant of
the hidden Christ-life, reports Whitefield. Still another was James
Campbell, of Newtown, Pennsylvania, a neighbor of the elder Tennent.
Campbell, under distress of soul from the conviction that he was uncon-
verted, had ceased to preach, but Whitefield persuaded him to resume
preaching and expressed his belief that the new unction of the preacher
would convict many hypocrites among the dissenting ministers.^

At Maidenhead Whitefield preached from a wagon to a great
assembly gathered from the surrounding country. Here he met John
Rowland, of whose success he speaks approvingly.^ At Trenton, the
next point on the way toward Philadelphia, he preached in the court-
house in the presence of a condemned criminal, but no mention is made
of David Cowel, Presbyterian pastor at Trenton, leader of the conserva-
tives in those parts. At Neshaminy he found a crowd gathered from
far and wide, which he estimated at three thousand." He describes the
log house, in contempt called the college. To his mind it resembled the
schools of the old prophets. Carnal ministers, according to Whitefield,
opposed the venerable teacher because his faithful preachers drew the
people away from their ministry.^ At Abington, near Philadelphia,
the traveler preached to another throng, speaking from a window of the
meeting-house. Richard Treat was pastor here. So deeply affected
was Treat by the pathetic appeal of the evangelist that he concluded he
was himself a stranger to grace. He attempted to preach, but could not,
and confessed to his people how he had deceived them and himself.

■ Ibid., p. 41. " Ibid., p. 42.

■5 Ibid., p. 43.

* Ibid., p. 45: "It is surprizing how such Bodies of People so scattered abroad,
can be gathered at so short a Warning. I beUeve at Neshamonie there might be near
a thousand Horses." Yet in the Kentucky Revival of 1801 some wilderness congre-
gations were estimated at the time from eighteen to twenty-five thousand. Cleve-
land, The Great Revival in the West, p. 75.

s Whitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 44.

52 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

Nevertheless he continued to preach, sorrowing, in the hope that assur-
ance would be granted him.^

After these triumphs in three provinces Whitefield returned to Phila-
delphia. The enthusiasm of the people mounted higher and higher.
It was estimated that his congregation at Germantown numbered five
thousand people, and that his farewell sermon at Philadelphia had ten
thousand hearers.^ With the exception of these two meetings in the
open air his twice-daily preaching services were in the church. After
five stirring days he left Philadelphia, accompanied by one hundred and
fifty horsemen, stopping and preaching at various points until he reached
White Clay Creek, the home of Charles Tennent. Whitefield's appoint-
ments had been well advertised, for the number of his hearers far exceeded
those of his journey across New Jersey.^ This region had been longer
settled, and the population was greater. Charles Tennent was a less
gifted brother of Gilbert, but he was an ardent supporter of the evangeli-
cal cause in a region where opposers were numerous. Another Presby-
terian minister of that region who assured Whitefield of his good will
was George Gillespie, of Christiana.

Upon entering Maryland there was an abrupt change in the size of
the audiences as reported in the papers. No longer were the hearers
of the evangelist computed by thousands. This was true of the long
journey through the coast district where "roads were very bad," till
he reached Charleston and later distant Savannah.

A very just representation of the effect of this first journey of White-
field through the Middle Colonies was published in the South Carolina
Gazette: "We hear from Philadelphia and New York that since Mr.
Whitefield's preaching in those places several week-day lectures have
been set up, which are much crowded, and that sermons, which used to
be the greatest drug, are now the only books in demand. "^ The adver-
tising columns of the papers substantiate this statement, for the sudden
output of religious books was astonishing, especially of Whitefield's
sermons and journals and the Wesleys' hymns. That the effects of
Whitefield's ministry in Philadelphia were more than a passing wave
of emotion is shown by the establishment of daily religious services
which were continued for over a year, and of meetings of the same char-

' Whitefield, Journal, No. 6, p. 20.
' Pennsylvania Gazetie, November 29, 1739.
3 Virginia Gazette, January 18, 1740.
* South Carolina Gazette, March 15, 1740.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD 53

acter three times on Sunday. Twenty-six associations for prayer were
formed.' For the future reUgious Ufe of the country there was even
greater significance in the alUance of this young priest of the Church of
England with the extreme evangehcal party within the Presbyterian
Church. The witcher>' of Whitefield's oratory and the prestige of his
name were given to the Tennents in their struggle against formality
and lifelessness in the church.

' Webster, A History of the Presbyterian Church, p. 165.

CHAPTER V
THE YEAR 1740, THE GREAT AWAKENING AT HIGH TIDE

The Great Awakening is often called the revival of 1740/ for that
was the year of Whitefield's journey through New England, a year when
New England turned from religious indifference to a quickened interest
as great as animated the foimders of the commonwealth of Massachu-
setts, It was also the year of high tide in the religious excitement
throughout the Middle Colonies. The two journeys of Whitefield and
the meeting of the Presbyterian synod divide the year into five parts.

I. Progress oj the revival before the spring tour of Whitefield. — This
period embraces the first three and a half months of the year. It was
during this time that the revival at Newark, New Jersey, attained its
height, "when the whole town in general was brought under an uncom-
mon concern about their eternal interests." This revival had begun
among the young people in August, 1739, as noted in the preceding
chapter. As late as February, i74i' — for we must sum up the work at
Newark in a single paragraph' — the interest was still intense, when "the
greatest concern appeared among the risen generation." Yet at no time
was there a special preaching of terror. The convicted did indeed cry
out in agony, but Burr, and Dickinson, who came to Burr's assistance,
strove to repress excessive emotionalism. In spite of their efforts to
avoid just cause of censure a spirit of censoriousness did appear among
some of the new converts. This and other blemishes, almost inseparable
from religious excitement, aroused opposition at Newark, even among
some who had acknowledged a beneficent and mysterious power as
working mightily in their midst.*

The general but smoldering religious fire burst into flame at other
points in that section of the country. There was a revival during the
spring of 1740 in the highlands of New York under Leonard, of Goshen,
and William Tennent, Jr., went to his assistance.^ In the same province

' Edwards, Thoughts on the Revival of Religion in New England in 1740; Tracy,
The Great Awakening, p. iii of Preface.

" Christian History for 1743, pp. 252-54.

3 Whitefield, Journal, No. 6, p. 30; Webster, A History of the Presbyterian Church,
p. 458.

THE GREAT AWAKENING AT HIGH TIDE 55

at the eastern extremity of Long Island James Davenport went forth
like the Hebrew prince with his armor bearer against the Philistines.
Davenport was in his twenty-fourth year, and Barber, his assistant, was
his college classmate. Under them "lasting good was done" at East-
hampton, but their methods were so fantastic that people not in sym-
pathy with the itinerants thought them mad.^ Dickinson, Burr, Leon-
ard, Davenport, and Barber were all Yale men, and, Dickinson excepted,
all were of about Whitefield's age.

At the same time that numerous communities in New Jersey and
New York, notably Maidenhead, Newark, Goshen, and Easthampton,
were highly excited over frequent and startling convictions and con-
versions, a more surprising outburst of the same spirit occurred in the
very stronghold of Scotch-Irish conservatism, the southwestern Pennsyl-
vanian settlements of that day. It began in the congregation of Samuel
Blair at Fagg's Manor.^ The sermons of Blair were directed principally
to the unregenerate and were very searching. In March, 1740, he was
returning from a fortnight's absence in New Jersey, when a hundred miles
away from home a message reached him that a "deep soul concern" had
appeared among his people. The fame of the revival soon attracted
people from afar. Blair frequently exhorted his hearers to moderate
their passions without stifling their convictions. The greater part
silently wept, but some were overcome and fainted. He could not con-
demn as spurious the experiences of those who were the subjects of
imusual bodily motions. Yet there were a few who, seeing others weep
and faint, endeavored to be affected in the same way; their bodily agi-
tations did not come from a sense of un worthiness, or even from terror
at the displeasure of Jehovah. Blair gives a careful analysis of the cases
which came under his observation.^

Members of other congregations who had flocked to Fagg's Manor
carried the revival spirit back to their respective communities. One of
these towns was Nottingham, twenty miles from Fagg's Manor, a
vacancy* in the presbytery of Donegal. This presbytery was the center
of opposition to the revival. Only two of its ministers, Creaghead and

' Whitefield, Journal, No. 6, p. 32; Webster, op. cil., p. 536.

* Blair had removed from Shrewsbury, New Jersey, to Fagg's Manor, Pennsyl-
vania, in 1 739. He was the second Log College man to join the presbytery of New
Castle, Charles Tennent having preceded him. MS Minutes of the New Brunswick
Presbytery for July 31, September 5, October 11, 1739.

3 Christian History for 1744, pp. 242-60.

* A pastorless congregation.

56 TEE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

Alexander, were favorable to it. The revival at Nottingham in the
midst of hostile territory began under the preaching there of Samuel
Blair, and he was followed by the Tennents, and even by John Cross.*
There was a party of opposition within the church, and Cross was denied
the use of the meeting-house. Other vacancies from time to time were
supplied by New Side ministers upon the invitation of the people. Some-
times pastors who were unfriendly to the movement yielded to the
importunities of their parishioners and invited these itinerating evan-
gelists into their pulpits.^ Preaching under such circumstances was
not intrusion. It was not a violation of synodical rules.

On March 8, 1740, Gilbert Tennent preached his famous Notting-
ham sermon on the "Danger of an Unconverted Ministry." It was a
terrible arraignment of men who entered the ministry as a trade, and
who, though approved by the public institutions of learning and regu-
larly admitted by the ecclesiastical authorities, were strangers to a con-
suming religious zeal. Unconverted themselves, they were unconcerned,
though many years passed without a conversion in their congregations.
Yet in a day of quickened interest they raised their voices against the
frenzied preachers, as they represented them to be, who by uncharitable
methods put poor people out of their wits. These Pharisees of his day
resembled those of old, thought Tennent, "as one crow's egg does
another." He advised his hearers, who were gathered from many
congregations of the Donegal presbytery, to frequent the meetings of
preachers from whom they received the greatest benefit, each applying,
however, first to his own pastor for his consent.^ No names were
mentioned, but every minister recognized by his people as hostile to
Whitefield, Tennent, and the revival interpreted the sermon as an attack
upon himself. The popular mind was decidedly favorable to the revival,
and these opposing ministers — a number of them assuredly — were brave
men who lifted their voices against what they imagined to be dangerous
tendencies. Many of them lost the more active and spiritual from their
congregations. They attributed their losses to the instigation of this
and similar discourses. The Nottingham sermon, which was repeatedly
published and widely circulated, was one of the causes of the disruption
of the Presbyterian Church, but its ultimate effect was to make its doc-
trine the dominant policy of that church.''

* Whitefield, Jotirnal, No. 6, p. 43.

* Christian History for 1744, pp. 260, 261, 297.

3 Gilbert Tennent, The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry.

* Gledstone, George Whitefield, p. 122.

THE GREAT AWAKENING AT HIGH TIDE 57

2. The spring tour of Whitefield. — We have just seen how full advan-
tage was taken of the impetus given by Whitefield to a religious reforma-
tion. Now he was coming again to lend the good cause the magnetism
of his presence, but we shall presently discover another side, the humani-
tarian, of this many-sided movement. Whitefield's second evangelistic
journey through the Middle Colonies was made in the spring of 1740.
He landed at New Castle, Delaware, on April 13, and sailed from Lewes
on May 25. It was now that he made his appeals in behalf of his orphan
house.^ Georgia was itself established as a charity, but the distressed
from the Old World, as a critic of Whitefield put it, had found their
graves in the New World. Georgia " turned out to be to them the sever-
est cruelty." They "died in numbers, leaving their helpless babes
quite destitute, and in a wilderness; so that out of the ruins of this first
charitable project, sprang up grounds for a second, that of an orphan
house. "^ Whitefield from the first proclaimed that he founded his
orphan house upon the model of the famous one at Halle. He intended
to make it part of an evangelistic and educational propaganda. He was
encouraged by what he saw of the diminutive orphan house established
by the Salzburgers in Georgia, and by his intercourse with the
Moravians, who sustained a similar enterprise at Herrnhut, Saxony.
Though Bethesda, as he called his orphan house, has an honorable name
in the early history of Georgia, its greater significance is that it furnished
the occasion of its young founder preaching in every American province.''
In a cold, unsympathetic age he awakened the mellowing and civilizing
emotions, so that men had a strange, new passion for their fellows, as
well as a new delight in their God.

Still other philanthropic enterprises were contemplated by White-
field at this time. Through his whole life his boundless humanity and
inextinguishable enthusiasm led him to establish, or at least, actively
assist, all manner of benevolences. When he had made his first long
journey through the southern provinces he published an address to the
planters on behalf of the oppressed slaves. He wrote like an Old Testa-
ment prophet stirred by the wrongs of the poor. It was not the insti-
tution of slavery which he attacked but its abuse. He asked that the
negroes be treated humanely and, most important of all, be instructed
in the principles of the Christian religion.'* Men like Commissary Gar-
den, of Charleston, criticized the address as an incitement to insurrection,s

' \Vhitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 48. ^ Boston Evening Post, November 19, 1744.

^ Whitefield, Journal, No. 6, p. 46.

* New England Weekly Journal, April 29, 1740.

s Garden, Six Letters to the Reverend G. Whitefield, pp. 145-50.

58 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

but it did not cost Whitefield his popularity in South CaroHna. Pub-
lished in many of the papers, it was the one strong appeal in that time
in the interest of the negro, and it turned the newly awakened sym-
pathies of Christian people to the extension of a helping hand to the
African in America.

Two projects illustrative of this new attitude to the black man were
planned by Whitefield at this time. Even though the primary purpose
of this journey was the collection of funds for Bethesda, the forlorn state
of the negroes in the North, as well as in the South, made him cry out
in their behalf and led him to the resolution to found schools for them in
Philadelphia and at the Forks of the Delaware. He actually set up
the school in Philadelphia with the former dancing-master as teacher.^
The other project was more ambitious. At the Forks of the Delaware,
near Easton, he purchased a manor of five thousand acres on which to
estabhsh a negro school. To this tract he gave the name of Nazareth,
which it still bears. It was intended not only as a charity for negroes
but also as a refuge for oppressed English Methodists.^ The erection
of the school building at Nazareth was committed to the Moravians, and
the wealthy William Seward, who had already purchased a sloop and
lent it to Whitefield, now advanced the purchase money for the Nazareth
tract. Seward's sudden death obhged Whitefield to sell the manor to
the Moravians, who had in the meantime purchased the neighboring
tract of Bethlehem. The dedication of Nazareth to education and
rehgion was splendidly fulfilled by the Moravians, though not in the
specific form that was intended by the first great friend of the American
negro.5

The second journey was, however, no less evangehstic than the
first. It is not necessary to follow his itinerary, for he traveled along the
same highways between the two leading cities as the year before, except
that a greater nimiber of side excursions were made. Instead we shall
study his relations with the various denominations of Christians and
first with his fellow churchmen. Commissary Cummings took umbrage
at Whitefield 's strictures upon the latitudinarian teachings of Archbishop
Tillotson and ostensibly upon this ground denied Whitefield the use of
Christ Church. Furthermore the commissary complained that the press
of the city was shut up against opposers.^ Franklin denied the truth of

' Boston News-Lelter, August 21, 1740.

* Franklin, Autobiography, p. 130; New England Weekly Journal, May 6, 20,
Junes, 1740-

3 J. T. Hamilton, The Moravian Church in the United States, p. 439.

* Whitefield, Journal, No. 6, p. 19; Pennsylvania Gazette, April 10, 1740.

THE GREAT AWAKENING AT HIGH TIDE 59

the report that Whitefield had engaged all the printers to suppress criti-
cism upon him.' The philosopher-printer became the lifelong friend
and admirer of the evangelist.^ The favor of the three papers reflected
the state of public opinion. Now that the Church of England was closed
to Whitefield he preached twice a day in the open to crowds which the
church could never have held.

One evening he went to the Baptist meeting-house to hear Jenkin
Jones, the pastor, of whom he said, reporting the sermon, "He is the only
preacher that I know of in Philadelphia who speaks feelingly and with
authority."^ Afterward Whitefield preached at the Baptist meeting-
house at Pennypack to a great throng. He speaks of Abel Morgan as one
sent forth in this day of grace to preach with wonderful unction.-* A
denomination which was insignificant in Whitefield's day and sadly
divided was receiving its baptism of power, which subsequently made it a
mighty force in the religious life of the nation.

In the preceding year the Germans of Pennsylvania had received the
young orator as if he were Spener or Francke come to life again. We
have already seen how he was associated with the Moravians in the
founding of Nazareth in the present year. Now he preached at some of
the German settlements in the interior and noted with admiration the
simplicity and fervor of their worship. Peter Boehler, in these German
meetings, was both interpreter and assistant. s This Moravian mission-
ary, now described by Whitefield as a dear lover of the Lord, had been
the instructor of John Wesley in his search for a personal experience
similar to what he so admired in the Moravians. Some hostile critics
later said that Whitefield brought swarms of Moravians to the Middle
Colonies. He did give passage to a little company of them when they
abandoned their mission in stricken Georgia and came on his sloop to
New Castle.^ He later broke with them over doctrinal questions, but
his heart was too genial and his sympathy too broad to allow him long to
be at variance with so good a people. Whitefield and the Moravians
fanned the spirit of Pietism again into flame among the German immi-
grants.

The Dutch of New Jersey and New York were also stirred by the
visits of Whitefield in 1739 and 1740. The greatest of the revivals under
Frelinghuysen was now in progress. In our account of the contest
within the Dutch Reformed Church reference was made to the stage

' Ibid., May 8, 1740. * Ibid., p. 36.

* Franklin, op. cit., p. 132. s Jhid., p. 26.

3 Whitefield, Journal, No. 6, p. 35. 'Hamilton, op. cit., p. 439.

6o THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

erected for Whitefield at New York, whereon sat Domines DuBois and
Frelinghuysen, one the most influential of Dutch pastors and the other
the leader of the reforming party. It was at this time that Whitefield
accepted the invitation of Domine Freeman to preach in his church at
Flatbush. Thus the evangelist joined with the party of Frelinghuysen
to extend the revival among the Dutch/ with what ultimate results
will be told, in a later chapter.

It must always be remembered that while the great popular following
of Whitefield included numerous representatives of every denomination,
even of Quakers and Anglicans, yet the chief interest lies in the contest
within the Presbyterian Church. The most active itinerants resident
in these colonies were Presbyterians, and soon the most outspoken
critics of the Great Awakening were to be of this communion. At
Woodbridge on this journey Whitefield preached for John Pierson, thus
further drawing the presbytery of New York into union with the presby-
tery of New Brunswick. But the meetings which exceeded all others in
the absence of restraint upon the emotions were held at Nottingham and
Fagg's Manor, where the New Brunswick men had brought feeling to
high tension. As the orator, quickly responsive to the sympathetic
atmosphere, spoke out of the fulness of his love, certain of the auditors
fainted, revived, listened, and fainted again. In the midst of such
scenes at Fagg's Manor an opposer, a member of the synod, challenged
Whitefield to public disputation. There was no appreciable doctrinal
difference between the debaters, except that Whitefield urged Christians
to seek assurance, while his critic would leave them in a state of uncer-
tainty. The real meaning of the incident was that opposition to revi-
valism now became outspoken. It was the answer of the conservative
Presbyterians to Gilbert Tennent's Nottingham sermon . In Whitefield's
farewell sermon at Philadelphia, preached to a greater throng than he
had ever before faced in America, he recommended to his hearers the
Tennents and their associates as most worthy preachers.^

3. The meeting of the synod.- — Three days after Whitefield preached
his last sermon at Lewes, Delaware, the synod of Philadelphia met. The
act concerning presbyterial bounds had been trampled under foot by a
priest of the Church of England and by the Presbyterian pastors and
congregations that had invited him to their pulpits. The synod yielded
to the demand for the repeal of the measure, declaring that it "heartily
rejoiced in the labors of the ministry in other places besides their own
particular charge," and now agreed that ministers should "conduct

» Whitefield, Journal, No. 6, pp. 30, 31. ^ Ibid., p. 39.

THE GREAT AWAKENING AT HIGH TIDE 6i

themselves as though it had never been."' This is the language of
conciHation and was part of an intended healing measure.

A compromise, satisfactory to neither side, was also reached dealing
with the anomalous position of the probationers and ministers of the
New Brunswick presbytery who had not submitted to synodical examina-
tion. In the language of the overture "the synod declared that they
do not thereby call in question the power of subordinate presbyteries
to ordain ministers but only assert their own right to judge of the
qualifications of their own members." They therefore acknowledge
men in the position of Rowland to be "truly gospel ministers," but they
refuse to admit them to the synod till they have fulfilled its require-
ments. The synod consents, however, " that they be in all other respects
treated and considered as ministers of the gospel, anything that may be
otherwise construed in any of our former proceedings notwithstanding."^

When Gilbert Tennent had wrested from the majority the repeal of
a measure which was intended to restrict the operations of the New
Brunswick ministers and had vindicated the assertion by that presbytery
of its scriptural and historical rights, as represented in Presbyterian
directories and treatises, he might well have left to the future the com-
plete victory of the Log College party. But the pugnacity of his race,
highly developed by a life of contention, did not permit him to accept
from the majority anything less than absolute surrender. Thrilled by
the thought that the day of opportunity had come to the church for
effective evangelistic labor when the public mind was aroused to the
importance of reUgion, he could not understand why ministers held
back. He felt that their insistence upon synodical authority, their
exaltation of order, and their fear of an uneducated ministry were all
masks to cover their hatred of vital religion. Therefore he wrote a
terrific indictment of his fellow members of the synod who had taken
the stand against the movement. Samuel Blair wrote another not so
passionate but no less offensive. The synod listened to the reading of
these papers in the presence of a great congregation which sympathized
with the position taken by the writers. If Tennent and Blair aimed to
convince their opposers they had taken an unfortunate course. If their
purpose was to incite them to disorderly measures in retaliation they
had succeeded. Thus ended the meeting of the synod with the majority
exasperated and indignant.^

' Records of the Presbyterian Church, p. 152.

'Ibid., p. 152.

3 Hodge, Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church, Part II, p. 120.

62 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

4. Progress of the revival from the meeting of the synod to the autumn
tour of Whitefield. — While Jonathan Dickinson and other advocates of
conciliation were endeavoring in synod to formulate measures of peace
between the extreme reactionaries and the belligerent advocates of
revivalism, Gilbert Tennent and his associates were interested less in
the proceedings of the synod than in the great meetings held on Society
Hill, Philadelphia. During the five days' session fourteen sermons were
preached by the Tennents and Samuel Blair and by two preachers who
were not members of the synod, James Davenport, of Southold, Long
Island, and John Rowland. There were other special services in the
Presbyterian and Baptist meeting-houses and expoundings and exhorta-
tions in private houses according to the custom of Whitefield. The
alteration was said to be surprising. Never before had the people
shown greater willingness to attend preaching services, nor the preachers
greater zeal in their ofi&ce. ReHgion was the one interest of the time.'

Some of the New Side evangelists were detained in the city by the
clamor of the people after the adjournment of the synod. On the
Sunday following, Gilbert Tennent preached four times, twice on Society
Hill, once in the Presbyterian meeting-house, and once in the Baptist.
His largest audience was estimated at eight thousand. Rowland
preached twice in the Baptist meeting-house. At one of these services
the people were so overcome by his description of the undone condition
of sinners that Tennent went to the pulpit stairs and cried out, "Oh,
Brother Rowland, is there no balm in Gilead?" Then the speaker,
startled by the effect upon his hearers of his fearful words, began to
unfold the way of recovery.^ Tennent refers to this emotional power
of Rowland, which was sometimes too little restrained, when in his
funeral sermon he says: "Being young in years, and of a warm temper,
he was thereby led into some indiscretions in his honest and earnest
attempts to do good, which it pleased God to convince him of and
reclaim him from a considerable time before his last remove."^

The criticism of Rowland was not all so kindly. Jenkin Jones, the
pastor of the Baptist churches at Philadelphia and Pennypack, was a
warm friend of the revival, though he shared Tennent's desire to curb
any excess of emotionalism among the people. His assistant, Ebenezer
Kinnersly, subsequently a professor in the University of Pennsylvania,
had no jJatience with emotional demonstrations. In the absence of

' Boston News-Letter, June 26, July 31, 1740.

^Webster, op. cit., p. 471.

^ Gilbert Tennent, A Funeral Sermon .... Rev. John Rowland, p. 42.

THE GREAT AWAKENING AT HIGH TIDE 63

the pastor he bitterly condemned the sermons of Rowland. He said
that the people were terrified to distraction, driven to despair, or filled
with enthusiastic raptures. The speaker's characterization of Rowland's
method was so resented by his hearers that many left the building.
Charges were made against Kinnersly in church meeting, and he was
temporarily barred from communion. The abusive letter which he
wrote, for the publication of which Franklin apologized to the public,'
was itself a severe censure upon the conduct of Kinnersly,^ but there was
doubtless some basis for his objections to the unregulated emotionalism
which sometimes attended the impassioned oratory of Rowland.

The progress of events takes us back to the neighborhood of Newark,
where the revival early in the year had been so remarkable. It is to be
recalled that Jonathan Dickinson joined in that work and invited
Whitefield into his own pulpit. Dickinson now reports a remarkable
manifestation of the divine presence at Elizabethtown, beginning in
June of that year. A sudden and deep impression came upon the people,
but there was no crying out or falling down, though there were audible
sobbing and sighing in all parts of the assembly. The work here, as at
Newark, began among the young people, but persons of all ages were
reached. Conversions were not sudden, for converts were a long time
under "law-work." This was usual among Calvinists. When the
consciousness of God's love burst upon the converts there were no ecstatic
raptures, such as had been reported in some places. The number
reached by this movement is suggested by a passage in a private letter
in which Dickinson says, "I have had more young people address me
for direction in their spiritual concern within these three months than in
thirty years before."''

The presbytery of New Brunswick, not the presbytery of New York,
was the center of evangelizing itineracy. We must therefore trace its
activities in sending out laborers to the white fields, and, this done, we
must follow its leading member in his greatest successes. James McCrea
accepted the call of a group of congregations newly constituted within
the bounds of the presbytery.'' William Robinson, who possessed an
attractive and amiable personality and later attained great success in
Virginia, was sent to a group of churches formerly served by Samuel
Blair. Samuel Finley, a man who combined the scholarship of Blair and
the disputatious spirit and preaching power of Gilbert Tennent, was

^Pennsylvania Gazette, July 24, 1740. ^ Ibid., October 9, 1740.

J Christian History for 1743, pp. 254-58.

* MS Minutes of the New Brunswick Presbytery for April i, 1740.

64 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

licensed to preach as a probationer wherever Providence might direct.
He went to Nottingham in the presbytery of Donegal. His presence
there was most annoying to the Old Side ministers of that conservative
presbytery.

The late summer and early autumn were devoted by Gilbert Tennent
to a two months' journey "southward" through the destitute regions of
what is now called South Jersey, a tour that was extended even to Mary-
land.' Samuel Blair had previously itinerated in the same region. In
the whole extent of country from Gloucester, near Philadelphia, to
Cape May there were in 1740 but two pastors, Elmer, of Fairfield, and
Evans, of Piles Grove, both Old Side ministers. In this region a number
of ancient churches sent out a feeble cry for help.^ Whitefield, after his
autumn tour, reported the singular power of Tennent's meetings at
Cohansey and Salem.^ The success of both Tennent and Whitefield
in this region was apparently greatest at Greenwich in Cohansey, where
the New Side interest was afterward strong. Aided now and later by
the New Brunswick presbytery, new life was given to the South Jersey
churches. They continued prosperous until the Revolutionary War.''
Just what churches were visited by Gilbert Tennent in Delaware and
Maryland is not recorded, but they probably included the churches of
Charles Tennent, Gillespie, and Hutchinson, who were friends of the
revival and reported a great reformation in some of the congregations
in those parts.*

The success of this evangelistic journey immediately became a
decisive factor when a larger opportunity was presented. When White-
field entered the Middle Colonies again after his astonishing triumph
in New England and Tennent returned from his "southward" journey,
the two itinerants held a conference at New Brunswick. Whitefield
was accompanied by Daniel Rogers, tutor in Harvard College and a
recent convert. Rogers brought to Tennent an invitation from several
prominent ministers of New England to visit Boston and New England
in general for the extension of the religious interest so powerfully awak-
ened by Whitefield, Tennent was distrustful but was persuaded by

^ New England Weekly Journal, January 27, 1741.

^ Brown, History of the Presbyterian Churches in West or South Jersey,
pp. 10-14.

3 Whitefield, Journal, No. 7, p. 74.

■* Brown, op. cit., pp. 20, 24.

^ Gillespie, A Letter to the .... Presbytery of New York, p. 7; Whiteheld, Journal,
No. 7, p. 61.

THE GREAT AWAKENING AT HIGH TIDE 65

Whitefield and other friends and encouraged by his late success to under-
take the mission.'

Tennent went to Boston with Rogers, and for three months, accord-
ing to the hostile Dr. Cutler, "people wallowed in the snow for the
benefit of his beastly brayings."-* His dress and personality were ridi-
culed, but nearly all of the pastors, and the most eminent of them, testi-
fied to the power of his preaching. The results exceeded those under
the preaching of Whitefield. Nothing so wonderful had ever been
witnessed in Boston,^ and there were similar results in many other places.
When he preached at New Haven a number of the students were con-
verted. Several of these entered the Presbyterian ministry in the
Middle Colonies. Among them was James Sprout, for twenty-four
years pastor of the church later established by Gilbert Tennent in Phila-
delphia.'' Tennent left home in November, 1740, and he returned just
before the meeting of the synod in 1741.

5. The autumn tour of Whitefield. — Repeated reference has been made
to the triumphal progress of Whitefield through New England. He
landed at Newport, Rhode Island, on September 14, 1740, entered the
Middle Colonies at Rye, New York, on October 29, and sailed from
Reedy Island in the Delaware Bay on December i. He traveled more
than eight hundred miles in this autumn through New England and the
Middle Colonies and collected a sum in excess of seven hundred pounds
sterhng.s

His experiences in the Middle Colonies were like those of his two
earher journeys. There was no diminution of his popularity. His
route was little changed from that taken before. At Rye he was invited
by the rector to preach in the English church, an encouraging sign that
his own church was not wholly unsympathetic with an evangelical
reformation. At Trenton he was invited by the Old Side Presbyterian
minister, Cowell, to preach in his meeting-house, an indication that all
the conservative ministers were not committed to extreme measures of
hostility. He enjoyed preaching most in places thoroughly committed
to the movement. When appointments were made in such places great
assemblies gathered from a wide extent of country. Meetings of this
character were held at Basking Ridge, New Jersey, the home of John
Cross, which Whitefield had not visited before, and at other New Jersey

^ Ibid., p. 65; New England Weekly Journal, January 27, 1741.

* Webster, op. cit., p. 390. ^ Christian History for 1744, p. 391.

< Beadle, The Old and the New, pp. 85-87.

s Whitefield, Journal, No. 7, p. 78.

66 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

towns, at Fagg's Manor, Pennsylvania, where there was a general weep-
ing, and at Nottingham, where the people stood in the rain to hear him.
There were precious times at Bohemia, Maryland, the home of Hutchin-
son and the Bayard family, friends of the evangelical cause.

We have seen how, early in the year, in one of those picturesque out-
of-doors meetings, where thousands of hearers had yielded assent to a
message which awakened every holy aspiration, Presbyterian oppositon
Hfted its hoarse voice of protest. Now in the autumn it opened a cam-
paign of pamphlets against Whitefield. When he reached New York
upon leaving New England there came to his notice a "bitter pamphlet,"
called the Querists, printed with the approval of the presbytery of New
Castle. The tract began in a tone of moderation, but it ended by doubt-
ing the genuineness of the conversion of great numbers because they had
never before shown any regard for rehgion, and by charging the chief
instrument in their reclamation with being a Papist under the disguise
of a Calvinist. Whitefield immediately pubHshed a letter in New York
in answer to the tract.' The Querists presents the argument of the con-
servatives against Whitefield personally and against the movement of
which he was the chief promoter. The answer is a luminous illustration
of the spirit in which Whitefield met criticism, however hostile, that had
a semblance of sincerity.

One class of objections was from the point of view of men trained in
the exact terminology of the Shorter Catechism against one who employed
scriptural figures and the broad expressions of Pietists and mystics.
The authors of the Querists, for example, objected to his speaking of
Christ being spiritually formed in men's hearts, as being equivalent to
the Quaker Barclay's representation of the "Christ within."^ Charles
Tennent urged in defense of Whitefield that his expressions were capable
of an orthodox interpretation, and that this should be given them, since
his teaching in general was in accord with Calvinistic doctrine.^ But
Whitefield in his answer acknowledged the justice of the criticisms of this
class. He excused himself as insufl5ciently trained in the Calvinistic
system when he left the university, having been led into the light by
degrees. He therefore desired the prayers of his critics that he might
be led to a more perfect understanding of the truth, and to this end he
professed himself ever willing to receive correction.''

' Boston News-Letter, November 27, December 4, 1740.

^ Querists, p. 23.

3 Pennsylvania Gazette, October 16, 1740.

< Whitefield, A Letter . ... In Answer to Querists, pp. 59-64.

THE GREAT AWAKENING AT HIGH TIDE 67

Another class of objections was directed against this cathohc spirit.
If a Calvinist could join the Lutherans and Arminians in religious work,
would he not turn Papist at Rome ? If a churchman reproved clergy-
men for leaving the Church and at the same time encouraged dissenters
in their separation by preaching in their meeting-houses, was he not
helping to perpetuate the rent in the robe of Christ ?' To these objec-
tions Whitefield answered that his design was to bring poor souls to
Christ. In prosecuting his mission to meet this design he hoped to avoid
the extreme of bigotry on the one hand, and on the other that of con-
founding order and decency.^

A third class of objections was bitter and even malignant in statement.
Whitefield declined to answer them in detail. His critics charged him
with superstition. They insinuated that his aims were sinister. They
doubted the reported charitable deeds of the English Methodists. They
denounced their associates who idolized a raw, unstable novice with his
"unturned cakes," even to the overthrow of Presbyterian judicatories
and discipline. They expressed their contempt for the rabble which
now deserted its former ministers.' They decried convulsions and revela-
tions. Whitefield regretted that they had dipped their pens in gall and
suggested that their insinuations were contrary to the charity which the
apostle recommends.

It is a relief to turn from the impotent rage of good men whose
horizon was appallingly narrow to a splendid exhibition of evangelical
cathohcity. A permanent monument to the influence of Whitefield
in the eventful year of 1740 was erected at Philadelphia. When the
English church was denied him in May many of his supporters, in the
warmth of their indignation, proposed to build him a great church. He
feared that the evangelical revival would be narrowed by the adoption
of such a policy to the walls of a building and to the limits of a party .^
Yet after his departure the plan was accommodated to his principles,
as will presently be explained, and in July the trustees announced their
purpose to erect a large building.^ In November, upon his return to the
city, he preached sixteen times in the New Building, as it was called,
though it was not yet covered. ^

' Querists, pp. 40-43.

^ Whitefield, A Letter . ... In Answer to ... . Querists, p. 67.
3 Whitefield, Journal, No. 6, p. 40.

^ Pennsylvania Magazine, quoted by Pennypacker, Origin of the University of
Pennsylvania in 1740, p. 413.

5 Pennsylvania Gazette, November 27, 1740.

68 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

The purpose of the New Building was twofold. Whitefield says:
"None but orthodox experienced ministers are to preach in it, and such
are to have free liberty, of whatever denomination."^ It was also to be
a charity school, and the appointment of its master was committed
to Whitefield, who was made one of the trustees. Lest the building
should be appropriated to the use of a single denomination, it was pro-
vided that one trustee should be a churchman, one a Presbyterian, one a
Baptist, one a Moravian, and so on till the number was complete.^
The New Building lacked the financial backing of a permanent organiza-
tion, and it was built for an itinerant preacher who could only after
long intervals occupy its pulpit. Yet it was a memorial to the charm in
the name of Whitefield. It will be necessary in its proper connection
to say something more concerning the Old Academy, as it was afterward
called, and the generous fulfilment of its twofold trust. The picture of
Whitefield preaching to a delighted multitude in the roofless New Build-
ing, even in the cold days of November, fittingly closes the story of a
wonderful year in the Middle Colonies.

^Pennsylvania Gazette, December 4, 1740.
' Franklin, op. cit., p. 149.

CHAPTER VI

THE SCHISM IN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE

YEAR 1741

At the beginning of the year 1741 the two great itinerant evangelists,
George Whitefield and Gilbert Tennent, were beyond the borders of
the Middle Colonies. Yet the conservative Presbyterian ministers
looked in vain for a subsidence of the religious excitement. The Great
Awakening had now become a people's movement.

The Old Side ministers lost a splendid opportunity to build up their
churches and contribute to a moral revolution. They desired both these
things, but they lacked vision. All recognized that there had been reli-
gious decay. Now was the time to arrest it when the people were awake.
When the need of the hour was warmth of appeal to men to live for higher
things, they were warm only in their denunciation of their associates
who were making such appeals. The answer of Whitefield to the Querists
had been so conciliatory that the authors might well have declared them-
selves satisfied. He had made every doctrinal concession to them that
they could demand.' Yet they returned to the attack upon him in
their former bitter spirit.^ They opposed impressions and impulses.
So did Jonathan Edwards, but he entered into hearty co-operation with
Whitefield.^ They opposed bodily agitations. So did Jonathan Dickin-
son, but he was none the less a promoter of the revival.'' The relations
of Whitefield and the Boston pastors were beautifully harmonious, but
in that city these bodily agitations were openly discouraged and were
absent from his meetings.^ Indeed the preaching of Whitefield, not-
withstanding its overmastering appeal to the emotions, was not of a
character to terrify and so result in cries and faintings as was the preach-
ing of Jonathan Edwards and Gilbert Tennent. These phenomena

^ South Carolina Gazette, January 22, 1741.

^Pennsylvania Gazette, June 11, 1741; August 26, 1742.

3 Dvvight, Edwards, p. 147. Yet Edwards did not oppose bodily agitations.

* Christian History for 1743, p. 155. Gilbert Tennent denies that he was an
instrument of promoting bodily agitations, but claims that from their first appearance
in New Jersey he spoke against them {Examiner Examined, p. 46). Neither Blair
nor Rowland desired to produce them.

5 Christian History for 1744, p. 386.

70 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

were therefore most unusual in his ministry and never were regarded as
having any relation to true conversion. The conservatives opposed
convulsions. So did Whitefield himself. He looked upon them as
blemishes, the work of Satan to cast discredit upon the revival.^ The
Old Side ministers did not avail themselves of the assistance of the great
orator. They did not adopt any of the measures which were open to
them to promote a revival. They stiffly closed their pulpits to the pos-
sessors of evangelistic gifts, or so grudgingly opened them that their
hostility was apparent.^ Thus they appeared to the zealous of their
own congregations and to pastors who threw themselves unreservedly
into the movement as enemies of the work of God, even as strangers to a
work of grace in their own hearts.

The storm center was the presbytery of Donegal.^ This, as we have
seen, was the frontier region of Pennsylvania. Its territory lay on both
sides of the Susquehanna River. The crisis came over the question of
intrusion, the preaching of one minister in the parish bounds of another
without his consent. It is often assumed that Gilbert Tennent and his
associates intruded upon other pastors, but their denial is supported by
the weight of evidence.'' Whitefield, to be sure, had no hesitation to
preach within the parishes of clergymen who denied him their pulpits.
He asserted his right as a gospel minister to preach anywhere.^ Without
resort to intrusion and field preaching the Methodist Revival in England
would have been an impossibility, at least as a movement within the
national church. Gilbert Tennent did not hold quite the same theory.
He held that it was a time of great opportunity, when religious necessity
took precedence of ecclesiastical regulations,^ at least of relatively unim-
portant administrative measures and usages proper enough to a time of
normal church activity. Therefore he was free to preach in vacancies
under the care of other presbyteries than his own, even before the law

' Gledstone, George Whitefield, pp. 226, 227. Whitefield's Journals report frequent
melting times in his audiences, but it was seldom that demonstration was carried
farther. Gilbert Tennent, while discouraging extreme appearances, thought them
otherwise to be explained than as coming from the devil. Gilbert Tennent, Examiner
Examined, p. 46.

' Christian History for 1744, p. 260; Tracy, The Great Awakening, p. 350.

* Webster, A History of the Presbyterian Church, p. 160.

* Hodge, Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church, Part II, p. 140.
s Whitefield, Journal, No. 4, p. 18; No. 5, p. 36; No. 6, p. 11.

^ New England Weekly Journal, January 27, 1741. This principle, to which he
made frequent appeal, was clearly stated in the Directory. Confessians of Faith,
p. 179.

THE SCHISM IN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 71

prohibiting this was repealed by the synod. He was not incapable of
intruding upon pastors unfraternal enough to deny him their pulpits,
but that he did so there is no proof. It is to be remembered, however,
that he did not recognize the binding authority of the law just men-
tioned, but he fully recognized the legal power of a pastor within the
bounds of his own parish. In fact he repudiated the charge of intrusion
upon the fields of other pastors.

The theory and practice of the New Brunswick party were further
illustrated by the course of Samuel Blair, who was the pioneer of the
party in the territory distinctively Scotch-Irish. He went before Ten-
nent and Whitefield to Nottingham as an itinerant evangelist. He
preached in other places in the presbytery of Donegal.' It is evident
that he had not intruded upon pastors before the meeting of the synod
in 1740, for he then threatened in the name of the evangelical ministers
to answer the invitations of people whose pastors opposed the revival by
going to preach to them.^ At a meeting of the presbytery of Donegal in
that same year a representation was made that he had intruded upon
several of the members.^ Notwithstanding the vague charges then
made, it can be shown that he did not intrude but went upon consent
reluctantly given. The nature of these so-called intrusions is described
in his own account of the revival in the province. According to this
account ministers whose discourses were searching and whose manner
was pathetic were earnestly sought by vacant congregations ; and minis-
ters who did not put their shoulders to help yielded to the importunities
of their people to invite such brethren to their pulpits.'' Robert Smith,
son-in-law of Blair, writing afterward in defense of the New Side minis-
ters, says : " Some of our ministers preached at their brethren's invitation
in their pulpits ; but that they ran into their congregations with a design
to rend and divide them is not true."s

Not all advocates of revivalism kept within the law of their church
by threatening to apply the higher law of necessity. Samuel Blair was
a visitor from the neighboring presbytery of New Castle, but all the
ministerial members of Donegal were hostile to the revival, with two
exceptions, Alexander Creaghead, of Middle Octorara, and David Alex-
ander, of Pequea. These two men were independent sympathizers
with the New Brunswick party. Creaghead co-operated with this party

' Whitefield, Journal, No. 6, p. 43.

" Hodge, op. cil., Part II, p. 135. 3 Ibid., p. 141.

* Christian History for 1744, p. 260.

5 Smith, The Detection Detected, p. 1 20.

72 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

until August, 1 741, but in principles he was a Cameronian. Notwith-
standing his strict notions on subscription Creaghead held that ministers
ought not to be confined to particular charges. He roamed about as
the most impassioned advocate of the revival. He preached within the
territorial limits of the congregation of Francis AHson, of New London,
in the presbytery of New Castle, without the consent of the pastor.
AUson complained to the presbytery of Donegal, and that body, meeting
at Middle Octorara, suspended Creaghead from the ministry.'

Like Creaghead in his insurgency was his friend David Alexander, the
young pastor at Pequea. He also for a little time co-operated with the
New Brunwsick men. He intruded upon the field of Samuel Black, of
the Forks of the Brandy wine. Black was not a man of unsullied reputa-
tion, as is evidenced by his suspension for a season by the presbytery.
Alexander gloried in preaching in the congregational bounds of such a
minister. The presbytery met at Alexander's meeting-house in May,
1741, and he too was suspended from the ministry.^ The fact that these
two cases of intrusion were tried by a presbytery, and appeal was carried
to the synod, indicates that there was no clear basis for similar action
against the more prominent promoters of the revival. This world
movement generally put the loyalty to the church universal above the
loyalty to the denomination. For this reason the Cameronians and
even the Seceders of Scotland raved in impotent fury against Whitefield.
But here we find men of the narrow Cameronian type uniting with White-
field and his supporters. Creaghead and Alexander were evidently not
esteemed by Blair and Smith as actually identified with their party.
Creaghead particularly was an extremist not only in his Cameronianism
but in his utter disregard of presbyterial authority and in the divisive
methods which he employed.^ In that day of extravagant asseveration,
when the licensing of one, two, or three men each year was denounced
as the letting loose of a horde of illiterate licentiates, so too the unregu-
lated activities of two men easily led to an outcry against all revivalists
as rebels against ecclesiastical authority and as intruders everywhere
upon the parishes of their brethren.

Thus the battle-ground between the extreme advocates of the revival
and extreme conservatives was in the presbytery most remote from New
Brunswick. This was due to several causes. The majority of the
Donegal ministers were rigid Presbyterians, placing stress on subscrip-

' Hodge, op. cit., Part II, p. 142.

^ Ibid., pp. 143, 144; Webster, op. cit., pp. 162, 438.

^ Ibid., p. 435; Gilbert Tennent, Examiner Examined, p. 121.

THE SCHISM IN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 73

tion to formulas and on presbyterial authority. Yet inconsistently they
resisted compliance with the rule of the synod requiring examination of
candidates for the ministry upon their gracious experiences, and they
were culpably lenient in their treatment of grave moral offenses.'

Another cause of intense partisanship was in the character of the
people. Scattered among the immigrants were those who clung defiantly
to Cameronia ^ principles. Others sympathized as hotly with the Seced-
ers of Scotland. The Scotch and Scotch-Irish in their numerous revivals
have been peculiarly susceptible to unrestrained emotionalism, with its
attendant phenomena.^ At the same time the rigid formalists were
hostile to the cultivation of the subjective side of religion. Extremes
therefore met not only among the ministers of the presbytery but among
the people. Feeling ran high on account of the trials of Creaghead and
Alexander. The supporters of the revival in several of the churches
presided over by ministers bitterly antagonistic to it petitioned the pres-
bytery of New Brunswick at the close of May to send supplies to them.'
Some of these people were probably bent on their erection as separate
congregations.

The synod met at Philadelphia on May 27, 1741. Gilbert Tennent
had just returned from New England. He was still under the spell
of his phenomenal success and was as determined and aggressive as
ever. The New Brunswick men were confident that the seal of divine
approval was upon the course which they had so earnestly pursued.
The first question that came up was the right of the two suspended
members to seats in the synod. Objection was made especially to Creag-
head, and the contest was waged over his case. Charges and counter-
charges were made by the Donegal presbytery and Alison on the one
side and by Creaghead and his congregation on the other.'' Gilbert
Tennent thought that in a great crisis the saving of life was more
important than the precise observance of mere rules of procedure, but
he was not prepared to maintain that Creaghead had correctly applied
the theory. Neither was he willing to desert Creaghead and admit the
intrusion without justification. His hoped-for solution, it seems, was
in the mediating findings of an investigating committee, censuring both
Creaghead for his lawless support of a good cause and Alison for his

' Gillespie, A Letter to the ... . Presbytery of New York, p. 7; Webster, op. cit.,
P- 457.

' Davenport, Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, pp. 60, 87.

3 MS Minutes of the New Brunswick Presbytery for June 2, 1741.

< Records of the Presbyterian Church, pp. 154, 155.

74 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

opposition to the revival. After three days' debate the synod could not
yet agree upon the personnel of the committee which was to go to Middle
Octorara for the trial of Creaghead. In the heat of debate it was easy
to pass from the actual case before the synod to the larger question of
the attitude toward the revival itself.^

A temporary adjournment was the moment of quiet before an
explosion. Robert Cross, junior pastor of the church at Philadelphia,
brought in a protestation, signed by several members, which he read in
the presence of the congregation that filled the galleries. Indignant that
the presbytery of New Brunwsick had violated the act of the synod upon
examination of candidates, they declared that they themselves would
recognize no determination of the synod which was contrary to their own
judgment. They pronounced the members of the offending presbytery
and those who upheld them in their practices to have forfeited their
right to sit in the synod. They asserted that they, the protesters, and
those who should join them were the true Presbyterian Church, while
the persons now accused in this protest were alone to be looked upon as
guilty of schism. The only privileges remaining to the accused, hereby
denied the right to vote or to defend themselves, were confession of guilt
and satisfactory assurance of future obedience. Thus the champions
of order, protesting loudly their loyalty to it, committed an act of
supreme disorder.^

The New Brunswick men were not disposed to be excluded without
a word of defense, but it was impossible for them to be heard in the
uproar. The moderator left his chair. There was a rush of elders to
sign the protestation. It was a disorderly marshaling of forces, each
party, the New Side and the Old Side, thinking itself in the majority.
The sympathies of the galleries were vociferously with the members
protested against. When it was found that the New Sides were in slight
minority, they and a large part of the congregation left the meeting-house.
Thus without a formal vote and without the semblance of a trial the
men who had a year before protested against an act which they regarded
as exceeding the power of the synod were now excluded from membership
in it. 3

The disruption of 1741 was quite as appalling a fact to the men of
that generation as the division nearly a century later was to the member-
ship of the reunited Presbyterian Church which had become opulent,

' Gilbert Tennent, Examiner Examined, pp. 89, 121, 126; Hodge, op. cit., Part II,
p. 147-

'Records of the Presbyterian Church, pp. 155-58.
3 Hodge, op. cit., Part II, pp. 147-61.

THE SCHISM IN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 75

influential, and continental in its jurisdiction. How lamentable was this
first division of forces, with all the resultant alienation and dissipation
of energy at a time when the back country of the Middle and Southern
Colonies was filling up with a population overwhelmingly Calvinistic,
prevailingly Scotch-Irish, and therefore as virile as it was turbulent!
How unfortunate that the Presbyterian synod did not catch the new
enthusiasm of the day and press forward to the work of education and
unification! But better strife and division than stagnation and death.
The sequel will show that the minority, thrown out of the synod because
too zealous to be altogether decorous, leaped forward to do the work
which the synod had rejected and, with an energy born of the Great
Awakening, magnificently succeeded.

While the disruption had such momentous meaning to the infant
church and to all observers keenly interested in religious developments,
the actual number of ministers engaged in the struggle was ridiculously
small. The voting of lay elders may be disregarded, as they generally
followed their pastors. The whole ministerial membership of the synod
was less than fifty. All were required to attend the meetings of the
synod, but the distance was so great for members living farthest from
Philadelphia that frequently the large New York presbytery was not
represented at all. This was the case in 1741, while there were absences
from all the presbyteries except Donegal, which was that year exercised
over the cases of Creaghead and Alexander. Accordingly there were
but twenty-six ministers present, and nine of these were from Donegal.
Of these twenty-six members twelve were protesters, including seven
of the Donegal ministers, and nine were protested against, including the
two remaining Donegal ministers, so that the decision really fell to five
men. Of these five moderates two were sympathizers with the revival,
who in spite of their conservative misgivings threw in their lot with the
protested against, and three were critics of the revival, who in spite of
their disgust at the unparliamentary procedure of the protesters either
took their stand with them or bolted for home. At any rate, in the dis-
orderly counting of supporters the conservatives were successful, and
the advocates of revivalism withdrew.'

On June 2, the day following the disruption, the presbytery of New
Brunswick held a meeting at Philadelphia. It was attended not only
by its own members but by other ministers now excluded or withdrawing
from the synod. The first minute declared that the exclusion was with-
out just ground. An appeal to the public in answer to the protestation

' Ibid., p. 167; Records of the Presbyterian Church, pp. 155-58.

76 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

was decreed. Undaunted, they resolved to form themselves into two
presbyteries. The excluded members at first took their expulsion
to be a finality. They assumed the state of an independent Presbyterian
Church. But soon, upon reconsideration, they contended that they
were still legally members of the synod of Philadelphia and entitled
to seats in it. Then their own temporary supreme judicatory was called
the meeting of the conjunct-presbyteries.^

The protestation had charged the accused members with holding
principles ''diametrically opposite" to the doctrines of the church.^
The New Brunwsick men, resenting the reflection upon their orthodoxy,
formally declared that they adhered as closely and fully to the West-
minster Confession as did ever the synod of Philadelphia in any of its
public acts concerning it.^ The protestation had further charged the
presbytery of New Brunswick with having dissented from the Presby-
terian system of church government, divesting the judicatories of all
authority. At their first meeting after the schism the excluded ministers
declared their unanimous adherence to the Directory. But these deliver-
ances on doctrine and government must be interpreted in harmony with
the New Side principle that the church does not possess legislative power.
One of the unpublished sermons of Gilbert Tennent is quite as em-
phatic on this question as anything that was ever uttered by Jonathan
Dickinson."

Having determined matters of organization and declared themselves
on doctrine and government, the reformers were ready to concert meas-
ures for the extension of the revival and the establishment of congre-
gations devoted to the cultivation of experimental religion. At this
meeting in June petitions were received from a great number of congre-
gations and parts of congregations that were favorable to the revival.
The greater number were vacancies, most numerous in the district
assigned to the presbytery of Donegal, but some were as far distant as
the James River in Virginia. Several congregations, already served
temporarily by New Side men, appHed for appointments, but it is sig-
nificant that at this early date a number of congregations under the
charge of Old Side ministers, members of the Donegal presbytery,
besought the New Brunswick presbytery to send them preachers. At
Nottingham Gilbert Tennent had advised his hearers to seek such minis-

^MS Minutes of the New Brunswick Presbytery for June 2, 1741.
^Records of the Presbyterian Church, p. 157.

3 MS Minutes of the New Brunswick Presbytery for June 2, 1741.
< Gilbert Tennent, MS of sermon on James 4:12.

THE SCHISM IN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 77

trations as were helpful to them. Now they were acting upon his advice,
forgetful, however, of the limitation which he had set.

In addition to these petitions for supplies it was expected that pro-
vision would be made for preaching in the New Building, where undoubt-
edly this meeting of the presbytery was held. The purpose of the great
house was to provide an undenominational preaching-place for White-
field and other promoters of the revival. Whitefield had commended
Tennent and his associates, and they had been the most active in
preaching there, though it cannot be supposed that before the schism
there was an organized congregation. Most of those who flocked to
the New Building whenever there was an opportunity to enjoy the new
ministry of life and feeling had been converted under the preaching
of Whitefield, and all denominations were represented among them.'
A number of these supporters of ardent evangelism who were Pres-
byterian in sentiment now permanently withdrew from the First
Church, and they were joined by a larger number of others in forming a
separate congregation. At this meeting of the presbytery Finley,
Treat, and Rowland were appointed as the first supplies of the new con-
gregation.^ At the same time, in congregational meeting, Gilbert Ten-
nent baptized eight Quakers. •J Therefore the organization of this
Presbyterian congregation, which soon became and long remained the
most influential in the Presbyterian communion, may be dated Wednes-
day, June 3, 1 741.

In answer to the supplications from vacancies and dissatisfied con-
gregations or parts of congregations appointments were made for itinerat-
ing journeys by New Side evangelists. The meetings were to be held
on both Sundays and week days. These evangeUsts were James Camp-
bell, John Rowland, William Tennent, Jr., Richard Treat, David Alex-
ander, and Samuel Finley.

James Campbell, the probationer who in 1739 had stopped preaching
for a season because of the conviction that he was unconverted, was
directed to make a circuit of sixteen congregations, mostly within the
bounds of the presbytery of Donegal. He was sent as far west as the
frontier town of Carlisle and as far east as Greenwich in Cohansey,
New Jersey. 4

' MS Records of the Second Presbyterian Church for May, 1743, and September
25, 1746.

'MS Minutes of the New Brunswick Presbytery for June 3, 1741.
^Pennsylvania Gazette, June 11, 1741.
< Whitefield, Journal, No. 5, p. 42.

78 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

John Rowland was directed to follow Campbell. This is the first
notice of the longer itinerations of this remarkably awakening preacher.
Wherever he went there were outbursts of feeling, and strong men were
broken down under the new consciousness of sin. From this time until
the removal of his residence from Maidenhead to Charlestown, Pennsyl-
vania, he was occupied with these evangelistic journeys. It was when
thus engaged that his message met with a surprising reception at New
Providence. In the space of two months the awakened were led through
the various stages of conviction and conversion' — a shorter period than
had generally been required at Maidenhead. At the neighboring settle-
ment of Charlestown the people made profession of various denomina-
tional beliefs, but all was in vain in the opinion of Rowland. He saw
only vileness in their lives. Here too he met with success, though not
so marked as at New Providence. As the result of a great ingathering
the united churches of Charlestown and New Providence called Rowland
to become their pastor. He died at Charlestown in 1745, universally
esteemed. Like so many other New Side evangelists, he died in the
morning of life, and, like theirs, it was a morning of strange brilliancy.
Long after in the region of Norriton and Providence grandparents told
their grandchildren of the wonderful days of Rowland.'

The tour covering the widest extent of country was assigned to
Samuel Finley, probationer. He was to begin at Nottingham in the
Donegal presbytery, where he had served before the rupture, to pass
through Baltimore county in Maryland, then, having preached at Dover
and Lewes in Delaware, to cross to Cape May in New Jersey, and, com-
pleting his great circuit, to preach at Greenwich in Cohansey, the final
appointment of Campbell. This was the beginning of Finley's suc-
cesses in South Jersey.^ He had been preceded in this destitute region
by Samuel Blair, Gilbert Tennent, and Whitefield.

The protestation had operated to release the energy of these
splendidly gifted young zealots who with the afflatus of prophets and
the martyr spirit of apostles made the journeys outlined for them.
The Old Sides, by excluding so violently and irregularly the young and
vigorous preachers of the New Brunswick party, but increased their
own difficulties. The number of separations was far greater than is

' Rowland, A Narrative of the Revival . ... in ... . Hopewell, Amwell, and
Maidenhead .... and New Providence; Alexander, Log College, pp. 245, 246;
Muq)hy, The Presbytery of the Log College, pp. 107, 108, 202-4; Gilbert Tennent, A
Funeral Sermon, p. 39.

' Brown, History of the Presbyterian Churches in West or South Jersey, p. 19.

THE SCHISM IN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 79

indicated by the supplications first made to the presbytery of New Bruns-
wick. There were divisions in nearly all the congregations in the four
Old Side presbyteries.' The best of men were blinded, not so much by
their own zeal as by the extravagant language which had been used
against them. According to the protestation the doctrines of the New
Side men were heretical, their government anarchical, and their revival
spurious. Therefore the young evangelists broke in upon the congre-
gations of ministers who had developed such hostility to spiritual
religion, confident that they were delivering sheep from wolves and
from hireling shepherds.^ While we may assert with some degree
of confidence that the preachers who were permanently and genuinely
New Side men had never before the disruption of the church
intruded upon their brethren, now they went wherever the cry of
the discontented called them. The conservatives were not behind
them in resort to intrusion, for the Old Side presbyteries sent supphes
to the congregations in their bounds whose New Side pastors had
been excluded by the synod. ^ They treated the excluded ministers
as heretics and schismatics now barred from their communion. They
attacked them in the press with a virulence which had not been
reached before in their most objectionable contributions.'' The New
Side men, though always charged with censoriousness, were, in print
at least, as sober and dignified as their opposers were violent. The
synod thus lost all influence with these stirring evangehsts. Yet it
was not they that caused the divisions. It was a spontaneous uprising
among the people. It was an outburst of religious feeling against the
coldness of the age.

' Webster, op. cit., pp. 185, 197.
' Boston News-Letter, September 23, 1742.
J Webster, op. cit., pp. 408, 446, 461.

* Pennsylvania Gazette, November 5, 1741; August 26, October 21, December 8,
1742; Boston Evening Post, April 2, 1744.

CHAPTER VII
PERIOD OF EXPANSION AND ORGANIZATION

The period extending from the close of the year 1 741 to the time when
Whitefield was again itinerating through the Middle Colonies in the
years 1745-46 was a period of expansion and organization. It was then
that the operations of the Moravians attracted universal attention.
The Second Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia became the center of
New Side influence. The synod of New York was organized. New
Side missions were founded, which were to exercise a profound influence
on world-wide missions. Schools upon the model of the Log CoUege
were established. Most remarkable of all was the extension of the
revival to Virginia. Thus the awakened religious life did not confine
its expression to evangelistic endeavor, strictly construed, but found
new channels for its pent-up powers in related acti\'ities of an ever-
widening range.

I. Zinzendorfs Pennsylvania synods. — What Whitefield was to the
English-speaking colonists Zinzendorf was to the German. And as the
former fraternized with Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, and Moravians,
so the latter in 1741 resigned his ofl&ce of bishop of the Moravian Church
that he might not confine his testimony to one denomination.^

When, therefore, Zinzendorf landed at New York late in 1741 and
began a systematic visitation of the German settlements in Pennsyl-
vania, interest in the Moravians, keen already because of their connection
with the religious awakening in Germany and England and their mis-
sionary successes in South Africa, was heightened by the visit to the
Middle Colonies of the gifted but visionary nobleman who stood at their
head.^ Coming in the spirit of Whitefield, Zinzendorf very naturally
desired to take full advantage of his connection with the Methodist
leaders, but he claimed too much when he announced that his brother,
George Whitefield, was a son of their church, brought to the blood of
Jesus by Peter Boehler.^

' Sachse, German Sectarians, p. 460.

' Boston News-Letier, September 25, 1740; New England Weekly Journal, Novem-
ber 4, 1740; Pennsylvania Gazette, February 24, 1743.
i South Carolina Gazette, August 30, 1742.

PERIOD OF EXPANSION AND ORGANIZATION 8i

The student of the Great Awakening finds striking illustrations of the
syncretic tendencies of the Moravians of that period. One of their
missionaries in the province of New York testified in court that he had
not separated from the Church of England by joining the Moravian
brotherhood, for the Moravians were united with all Protestants.*
Just so Zinzendorf was a Lutheran minister and a Moravian minister
at the same time. The Moravians at Bethlehem endeavored to con-
ciliate the Siebentagers of Ephrata by observing both Saturday and
Sunday as days of rest.^ As Zinzendorf found a bewildering confusion
of religious beliefs among the Germans he desired to unite the evangel-
istic efforts of the various sects.^ Therefore he sought to form "one
congregation of God in the Spirit," though its members were to retain
their denominational affiliations. To this end a synod was called to
meet at Germantown on January 12, 1742. There came to it Lutherans,
German Reformed, Mennonites, Schwenkf elders, Dunkers, Sieben-
tagers, Separatists, one hermit, and Moravians.'' Seven of these synods
were held. Though the purpose was worthy of all praise, Zinzendorf
failed to make the distinction between ecclesiastical acts, like baptism
and ordination, which were proper to denominational organizations
alone, and those common endeavors which could be undertaken without
violating the distinctive beliefs of the various bodies represented. The
result was that after the third meeting four of the denominations with-
drew from the movement. The spirit of contention, quieted for a season,
broke out again.s

The result of the mission of Zinzendorf was thus a disappointment
to him. Nevertheless it was highly beneficial to the religious interests
of the Germans. Many of the Separatists in Permsylvania, religious
enthusiasts without denominational organization, when called from
their isolation by Zinzendorf, joined the Moravian brotherhood, adding
strength to that body of earnest evangelists and missionaries.^ Con-
versions under the preaching of the count and his co-workers were
numerous. After he had served the Lutheran Church at Philadelphia
for the greater part of a year a separation took place,^ and the Moravians

' Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, pp. 2851-54.

' Sachse, German Sectarians, p. 440. ^ Hid., p. 442.

* Brumbaugh, A History of the German Baptist Brethren, p. 474.

s Ibid., p. 484. ' Sachse, op. cit., p. 423.

'This was occasioned by the arrival in 1742 of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg as a
missionary sent from Halle, Germany. Spangenberg, Life of Count Zinzetidorf, p. 298;
Bolles, Pennsylvania Province and State, II, 378.

82 TEE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

of the congregation organized according to the Herrnhut pattern.^
Indeed both the Lutheran and German Reformed authorities in Europe
were stimulated by the labors of Zinzendorf in America to send superin-
tendents and pastors to their destitute coreligionists.^ Even the Bunkers
found the suggestion of their annual meetings in the synods of Zinzen-
dorf.3 Thus on the one hand the tendency to excessive individualism
among the Germans was checked, and on the other aggressive church
extension was undertaken through emulation of Moravian aggressive-
ness.

Successful as were the Moravian itinerants among the Germans and
measurably even among the Enghsh-speaking people, their master
passion here as in other lands was the prosecution of missions among the
heathen. The story is a long chapter of heroic efforts, cruelly obstructed,
particularly at the very first, in the province of New York. Christian
Ranch had opened his mission at Schecomoco in Dutchess county.
New York, in 1 740, and great was his triumph to be able to present three
converts at the second of Zinzendorf's synods.^ But Horsmanden, of
the New York council, defended the provincial law which was enacted
against the missionaries as vagrant preachers and popish emissaries on
the ground that they were suspected of endeavoring to seduce the Indians
from their fidelity to His Majesty, and that they, like all the German
Sectarians and the Quakers, refused to take the oath to the government.^
The report of the sheriff and the examination of the missionaries before
the council, however, amply refuted the charges of wrong-doing.^ Yet
the missionaries were ordered to desist from further teaching and to
leave the province.^ Fortunately the province of Pennsylvania was
still liberal, and so was Connecticut in this respect. In these colonies
the Moravians continued their missionary activity when for a time New
York was closed by a wall of bigotry.

2. Calvinistic recoil from Moravian catholicity. — Whitefield had
described Gilbert Tennent as one of the most catholic men he knew, but
Tennent's catholicity was not broad enough to include the Moravians.
Zinzendorf, on his journey from New York to Philadelphia, was invited
to a conference at New Brunswick. The oracular, paradoxical, mystical
language of the count was exasperating enough to one of Tennent's

' Ritter, History of the Moravian Church in Philadelphia, p. 19.

* Kuhns, The German and Swiss Settlements of Colonial Pennsylvania, pp. 164, 165.
3 Brumbaugh, op. cit., p. 477.

* Sachse, op. cit., p. 466. ^ Ibid., p. 2851.
s Eccl. Rec. of New York, p. 2906. "> Ibid., p. 2861.

PERIOD OF EXPANSION AND ORGANIZATION 83

training. The mental processes of the two men were so different, and
both were men of such determination, that neither could appreciate the
truth for which the other stood or realize their essential unity. Based
upon the statements of the count at New Brunswick, an unfavorable
estimate of the Moravians was drawn up and published in book form.
This was followed by another.' Zinzendorf answered through the news-
papers, and Tennent continued the debate through the same medium.^

Calvinistic criticism of the mystic philosophy of the leader was
aroused to this public protest by the methods of evangelism adopted by
the brotherhood and the directions given to religious seekers. The
Moravians made use of lay itinerants who traveled through the country
with smiling faces and affable manners, warmly expressing sympathy
with all Christians but drawing converts to their own communion.^
These methods, in the opinion of Gilbert Tennent, were divisive and
dangerous. ,IIewas too much of a Presbyterian to tolerate lay preaching
and was quite as insistent upon an educated ministry as were his Old
Side antagonists. The Moravians made little use of the law in dealing
with the unconverted. They did not consider the prolonged distresses
attending law-work necessary. In this, strangely enough, they were
at one with the Old Side Presbyterians. The brotherhood defined
faith as persuasion, and in this agreed with the Scotch Seceders. The
Moravians believed in perfection, as did the Quakers. Therefore the
Moravians were described by the Calvinistic supporters of the revival
as Antinomian, Arminian, and Quakerish in principle. It was intimated
that their removal from Romanism was slight. ^

Contact with a strange people who had been among the most active
promoters of the revival in the country of its origin, yet whose doctrines
were so foreign to his own, and whose methods threatened to divide his
own following, persuaded Gilbert Tennent, erroneously, as a student of
this world movement must conclude, that his proper affiliation was with
the men of his own race and doctrinal training, from whom he had

' Gilbert Tennent, Some Accaunt of the Principles of the Moravians, and sermon on
Rev. 2,-Z-

* Pennsylvania Gazette, May 19, June 30, July 7, 1 743. The account of Zinzendorf
was contributed by Boehler, who remained in America after the departure of the
count.

3 Gilbert Tennent in a sermon published with Some Account of the Principles of
the Moravians, pp. 52, 54, 65, 66; Livingston in Independence Reflector, January 4,
1753-

* Gilbert Tennent, op. cit., p. 61.

84 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

lately separated. Early in 1742 he wrote his letter of lamentation over
the schism in the Presbyterian Church to Jonathan Dickinson, the most
eminent supporter of the revival still in the membership of the synod of
Philadelphia. The letter has been called a recantation. For months
Tennent had been in an agony of spiritual desertion. He regretted
his mismanagement of the debate in the synod; he felt a disposition to
fall on his knees and beg both parties to be at peace. After his collision
with the Moravians he was apprehensive of the danger in divisive meas-
ures as practiced by them. The news from New England also disquieted
him. The extravagances of his friend Davenport had subjected the
revival to ridicule. Tennent in his letter of lamentation gives a list- of
these objectionable practices, but the only one properly censurable was
Davenport's unfortunate habit of pronouncing by name individual
ministers unconverted.''

David Evans, Old Side Presbyterian, asserted in print that wherein
Tennent condemned Davenport he passed sentence upon himself. Evans
suggested that the letter of Tennent carried "ill designs under a new
mask."^ A New England opposer arrayed "Gilbert against Tennent,"
making charges similar to those of Evans. The publication of Tennent's
lament inspired him to explain that it was the manner of performing
what he still considered a duty that he regretted as mismanagement. ^
The storm of criticism reawakened his combative spirit, but he soon
returned to his plea for harmony. He pursued his new aim with the
same whole-hearted determination which he had previously given to the
spread of the revival.

That the essential cleavage in colonial society on the question of
religion did not follow the lines of race and inherited creed but was
determined by individual attitude to the new evangel was demonstrated
by an exciting occurrence in the spring of 1742. This was the famous
trial of William Tennent, Jr., in April, at Trenton, before the malignant
chief justice of New Jersey. It seems almost incredible that a minister
who inspired all who knew him intimately, among them the Hon. Elias
Boudinot, his biographer, with veneration as for a man of extraordinary
saintliness should be subjected to the indignity of standing trial on the
charge of perjury. The more incredible would it be, if one were unac-
quainted with other examples of partisan hostility in colonial days, that
this trial was in effect a retrial of John Rowland on the charge of horse

' Boston News-Letter, July 22, 1742.
'Pennsylvania Gazette, August 26, 1742.
3 Boston News-Letter, September 23, 1742.

PERIOD OF EXPANSION AND ORGANIZATION 85

stealing — the very Rowland who had led the reformation at the neigh-
boring town of IVIaidenhead and who was then faming through the
adjoining province in a blaze of glory. The evidence clearly proved the
innocence of Rowland and the truth of the alibi which Tennent had
furnished him, yet the acquittal appeared to the saint of Freehold, whose
whole life was filled with what he judged to be divine interpositions, as
nothing less than miraculous.' Gilbert Tennent charged the opposers
of the revival with joining the profane in the persecution of Rowland
and greatly exulted in the thoroughness of the vindication of both his
brother and his friend.^ Even this experience did not quench his new
passion for Presbyterian Church unity.

3. The Second Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. — Though Gilbert
Tennent, the very soul of his party, was exerting all his powers of master-
ful leadership to reconcile the contending factions within the synod of
Philadelphia, for the New Brunswick men claimed still to be members,
he evidently recognized that it was quite impossible to drive the demon-
strative admirers of Whitefield, who had put themselves as a congrega-
tion under the charge of the presbytery of New Brunswick, into the
chilling atmosphere of the old First Church. Such a course would have
been disadvantageous both to revivalism and to Presbyterianism, for
the new congregation was speedily to become the leading church of the
denomination and one of the greatest in the country. Philadelphia was
and is the capital city of American Presbyterianism. The old First
Church, though originally congregational in polity and not actually the
oldest Presbyterian church in the Middle Colonies, nevertheless gave
its name to the first presbytery and the first synod and is appropriately
regarded as the mother church of the denomination. What the First
Church was to the Old Side Presbyterians the Second Church was to the
New Side. "No church ever had more distinguished ruling elders from
the old times down to its later days."^ It was a power in the political
and social life not only of the city but of the province and country."
The names of its Hodges, Bayards, Boudinots, Hazards, Eastburns,
Redmonds, Bourns, Shippens, and Grants were widely known in the
eighteenth century, and many of them in the nineteenth as well.

■ Green, "The Trial of the Rev. William Tennent," Princeton Review, July, 1868;
Alexander, Log College, pp. 127-34.

' Gilbert Tennent, Examiner Examined, p. 127.

J Nevin, History of the Presbytery of Philadelphia, p. 300.

* Beadle, The Old and the New, p. 43.

86 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

The historian of this venerable church dates its organization as a
Presbyterian society in the year 1743, when Gilbert Tennent became
its pastor/ but in reality its distinct existence as a congregation began,
as already shown, in June, 1741. The minutes of the presbytery for the
next two years show that in answer to repeated supplications nearly all
the great lights of the party were sent as supplies, some of them as
stated suppHes.^ Finally, in May, 1743, a call to Gilbert Tennent was
brought into the presbytery. In August commissioners presented their
arguments, those from New Brunswick for his continuance there, and
those from Philadelphia for his removal to that field of greater influence.
He himself desired the dissolution of his former pastoral relation, and
the presbytery acceded to his request in view of the difficult situation
at Philadelphia.3

How these transactions were regarded by the Old Side opposers of
the revival is reported by the witty but unscrupulous Fleet, of the
Boston Evening Post. In their view Gilbert Tennent had gone to a
congregation of Separatists, using the term in the opprobrious sense of
an irregular and unrecognized organization. Furthermore, this congre-
gation had taken possession of the "great Babel," built for Whitefield,
though the Moravians claimed the better right to it. A running fire
of criticism on Tennent, supplied by Old Side enemies in Philadelphia, was
maintained by this newspaper. They soon noted a change in the pastor
himself. Tennent, it was said, had "cast off his native clumsiness,"
and from a "slouch" had become a "beau" with a "polite and courtly
air. "4 It is quite true that he now yielded to the taste of polite society
not only in dress but in the delivery of his sermons. His usual method
in the time of his itinerations, when as a forceful preacher he was unsur-
passed, was that of extempore speaking. In Philadelphia he became
so wedded to his notes that in his later years he negatived the choice of
a colleague by his congregation because the people were so immoderately
desirous of extempore preaching. The candidate thus opposed was
George Dufiield, almost, if not quite, as powerful a preacher as Tennent
had been in his prime. Evidently the people of this congregation, active,
emotional, and demonstrative, retained Whitefield's aversion to reading
as a method of pulpit delivery.s

' Beadle, The Old and the New, p. 11.

' MS Records of the New Brunswick Presbytery for May 29 and August 2, 1742;
MS Records of the Second Presbyterian Church for July 7, 1742.

^ MS Records of the New Brunswick Presbytery.

* Boston Evening Post, November 14, December 12, 1743; January 16, April 2,
1744.

s Gilbert Tennent, MS on Use of Notes, 1762; Alexander, Log College, pp. 58, 59.

PERIOD OF EXPANSION AND ORGANIZATION 87

Thus from the multitude of Whitefield's converts and supporters
a goodly company of the most ardent had put themselves as a distinct
congregation under the presbytery of New Brunswick. A constantly
growing membership proved that Whitefield's spirit was in the new
leader and his workers, but a surprise came to this congregation after it
had been eight years in possession of the great house of worship. On
January 25, 1749, the report was made at a congregational meeting
by the trustees of the New Building that "agreeable to their deed of
trust" they had decided to convey the title to the trustees of the public
academy "in trust for the uses and purposes in their original deed
expressed." One of the conditions of the transfer was that Mr. Tennent
and his congregation were to have free use of the New Building as a
place of worship for three years. This concession to the peculiar rela-
tion existing between this people and their hero, Whitefield, must have
seemed to them less than the equity of the case demanded, yet they
could make no protest, for it was one of the original articles of agreement
that this great brick monument to New Light evangelism was not to
be devoted to the exclusive use of any one denomination.^

This unforeseen difficulty stirred a man of Gilbert Tennent 's metal
to determined effort to erect a monument to New Side Presbyterianism
surpassing in beauty and churchly dignity the great auditorium of which
he was soon to be dispossessed.^ But many of his people, warm advo-
cates of emotional religion though they were, were Methodists and
Quakers in their hostility to ornament and churchliness in religious
architecture, just as they favored plairmess of dress and speech. Tennent
would call his meeting-house a church and suit the building to the name,
braving the ridicule of Anghcans without and the disgust of Methodists
within. Furthermore, their New Light energy had not yet brought them'
large wealth. Franklin, who was a trustee of the projected academy
and also of the New Building, suggested that the pastor appeal to the
citizens generally for subscriptions. ^ This Tennent did, throwing his
unconquerable will into the work. The result was that the gifts of
outsiders far exceeded the contributions of the members.-* Nearly all
the officers of the province, county, and city subscribed to this public
enterprise. The liberal-minded of all denominations contributed.^ It
was, however, to the ministers of his own party that Tennent looked for

' MS Records of the Second Presbyterian Church.

^ Gilbert Tennent, Divine Government, pp. 51-53, 66-68.

3 Franklin, Autobiography, pp. 156, 157.

•» Gilbert Tennent, MS Remonstrance of 1762, p. 19.

s MS of Subscription List; Gilbert Tennent, Divine Government, p. 55.

88 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

the aid that should give success. Subscriptions were taken, accordingly,
at Neshaminy, Maidenhead, Abington, White Clay Creek, and Fagg's
Manor. With what elevation of spirit the pastor opened the new house
in June, 1752, with two sermons! He saw a divine providence in all the
train of surprising events that began with the formation of this society.
There was providence too in the donations of large-souled gentlemen
who were above every suggestion of bigotry and blind party spirit.
Though the Christian world was divided into parties which too often
censured the conduct of their brethren, there was really one visible
Kingdom of Christ with many branches. Every true Christian, there-
fore, should rejoice in the success of every society that retained the
fundamental principles. Tennent in conclusion summarized the law
and gospel in humility, charity, and kindly feeling.^

4. The New Side synod of New York. — The narrative of the early
formative years of the foremost New Side congregation has taken us in
time beyond the organization of another body which had even greater
significance in the ultimate triumph of New Side principles. The
synod of New York was formed in 1745, but the efforts in the preceding
years to avoid the necessity of its organization must first be recounted.

In the year 1742, before the meeting of the synod of Philadelphia,
George Gillespie, supporter of the revival but stickler for order and
regularity, published a letter addressed to the presbytery of New York.
He appealed to the members of that presbytery to be present at the com-
ing meeting at Philadelphia. The conjunct-presbyteries were to meet
at the same time and place. His contention was that the illegal protest
ought to be dropped and all members "allowed to meet together judi-
cially." He defined a protest as an appeal of a minority from the action
of the majority to God's bar, but the protestation of 1741 was the
condemnation of the minority by the majority without a trial. He
traced the beginning of the division to the " antiscriptural, lording act"
of 1738 requiring synodical examination of candidates.^

The synod of Philadelphia met in May, 1742. A greater number of
ministers from the New York presbytery attended the meeting than had
ever come before. The protesters claimed that they and those who had
acted with them were the synod of 1741. They refused to be called
to account by absent members or by any judicatory on earth. Six of
the seven ministers present from the New York presbytery, one Old
Side minister, and several elders joined in a protest against the illegal

' Gilbert Tennent, Divine Government, pp. i, 6, 45, 51-56, 66-69.

' Gillespie, A Letter to the ... . Presbytery of New York, pp. 3, 15, 18, 22.

PERIOD OF EXPANSION AND ORGANIZATION 89

«xclusion of the year before and against the refusal of the protesters of
the previous year to have the legaHty of their protest determined by the
present synod. They declared that the members excluded by protest,
in violation of scriptural rule and Presbyterian usage, were still members
of the synod. Finally they made solemn declaration against all the
pamphlets published in these parts which reflected on the work of divine
grace which had been carried on so wonderfully in many congregations.^

These efforts in 1742 were futile, and the rent was the wider in 1743.
The real obstacle to reconciliation was the spirit of division in the local
churches which was sweeping over them like a whirlwind. All the New
Side ministers could not have stayed it, had they joined in Gilbert
Tennent's lament. As it advanced, the Old Side ministers became more
embittered, and their public attacks were the more abusive.^ Then
Gilbert Tennent replied that when ministers conspired to blacken the
revival and brand it with terms of contempt he did not see how God-
fearing church members could sit under their ministrations.^ Therefore
the possibility of reconciliation was more remote in 1 743 and 1 744 than
it was before.

In May, 1745, three commissioners came as representatives of the
presbytery of New York. They requested the consent of the old synod
for the erection of a new one^ — the two bodies to act in mutual concert
and brotherly kindness. The synod replied that the withdrawal of the
New York brethren was without just ground, yet they would maintain
charitable affections toward them.^

On September 19, 1745, the synod of New York was organized at
Elizabethtown, New Jersey. Nine ministers of the presbytery of New
York were present, nine from the presbytery of New Brunswick, and
four from the New Side presbytery of New Castle. A testimony to the
work of God's glorious grace carried on in these parts of the land was
unanimously adopted by the synod. The fundamental articles of syn-
odical union are of special significance as attempting a solution of ques-
tions upon which the radical and moderate supporters of the revival
had not been in entire agreement. s

' Records of the Presbyterian Church, pp. 159-62.

» Boston Evening Post, July 26, November i, 1742; January 10, 1743; Pennsyl-
vania Gazette, August 26, October 21, 1742; December 8, 1743; Boston News-Letter,
October 28, 1742.

^Pennsylvania Gazette, August 26, 1742.

4 Records of the Presbyterian Church, pp. 175-79.

s Ibid., pp. 232-34.

90 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

The first article reaffirmed the adopting act of 1729, by which the
Westminster Confession was accepted as an excellent statement of the
Calvinistic system, without binding the candidates for the ministry
to agreement with the verbal statement of any single article of the con-
fession. That act denied the legislative power of the synod and made
the Scriptures the supreme law of the church. Thus the New Side
synod was established on the basis of progressive orthodoxy.' This was
in accordance with the spirit of the whole evangelical revival, whether
in Germany, Great Britain, or America, to put the emphasis on life, con-
duct, and experience, to throw off the shackles of formal statements of
belief adopted in past time, and to make possible the restatement of
doctrines with more ample recognition of principles brought to the fore
by this world-wide quickening.^

By the second article a solution of the problem of final authority
in matters of discipline was attempted. This had been a weak point in
the argument of Jonathan Dickinson in 1722 and of Gilbert Tennent in
1739. They had both sought a constitutional limitation by which the
individual and the minority were to be protected from the tyranny of
the majority. In 1722 Dickinson restricted ecclesiastical censures to
cases of heresy and scandal.^ In 1 739 Tennent in the name of the presby-
tery of New Brunswick refused to obey two acts of the synod regarded
as illegal and tyrannical. Now it was decided that when a member
could not in conscience abide by a determination of the majority and,
the synod was not able to make concession to his scruples, judging the
determination essential to the well-being of the churches, the dissenting
member promised peaceably to withdraw from the synod. Distinction
was thus made between the circumstantial and the essential. Gilbert
Tennent always maintained that the rules of the synod, violated by the
New Brunswick men, were upon circumstantial matters.^

The two remaining articles promised the avoidance of divisive
methods, no condemnation of ministers by other means than those pre-

'Briggs, American Preshyteriamsm, pp. 269-72; Gillett, History of the Presby-
terian Church, I, 88-90.

^ Jonathan Edwards was the philosopher and theologian of the Great Awakening.
Bellamy and Hopkins were his successors, uniting Calvinism with the pietistic and
humanitarian spirit.

2 Dickinson, Sermon Preached at the Opening of the Synod, p. 21.

* Gilbert Tennent, Irenicum, p. 99. Among the Tennent manuscripts is a carefully-
prepared sermon for a presbyterial meeting on Christ as the only lawmaker. Its
date is about 1753, but the same theory appears in the writings of Tennent, Blair, and
Gillespie before 1745. The contest between the presbytery and synod was on govern-
ment, not on doctrine, but the same principle applies to both.

PERIOD OF EXPANSION AND ORGANIZATION 91

scribed in the Directory, no granting of supplies outside of presbyterial
bounds to parties separating from Presbyterian and Congregational
churches, and the maintenance of correspondence with the synod of
Philadelphia. ' There was no re-enactment of the rule requiring synodical
examination of candidates, regarded by all supporters of the Log College
as illegal. On the contrary, there was a distinct agreement that all
possessing a competent degree of ministerial knowledge, orthodox in
doctrine, regular in life, diligent to promote vital godliness, and willing
to submit to the discipline, were to be cheerfully admitted to this union.
Several ministers, trained at the Log College, who would have been barred
from membership in the old synod by its law enacted in hostility to that
school, were constituent members of the new synod, and others were
to be admitted, until death claimed in 1746 the incomparable teacher of
zealous evangelists.

5. Missions to the heathen. — The new fire would have flashed like
powder and gone out but for organizations such as have been described.
They gathered the converts, maintained the new ideals, and sent out
men of splendid enthusiasm to extend the Great Awakening among
peoples and in regions not reached before. The new birth of religion
throughout the world resulted in the establishment of modern missions.
Accordingly in America missions to the heathen were undertaken as a
direct result of the Great Awakening. A glance will be given to the
efforts in behalf of the negro and then a more extended account of the
missions to the Indian, which form an important stage in the develop-
ment of modern missions.

Although the first German immigrants to Pennsylvania, straight from
the home of Pietism, spoke out against slavery, the first powerful cham-
pion of the black man was Whitefield. He addressed words of special
tenderness to the negroes. A new appreciation of a common humanity
came to whites and blacks as they wept together. Though efforts were
made in different colonies in behalf of the negroes, some directly inspired
by Whitefield^ and others stimulated by his appeal,^ the stupendous

' There was such granting of supplies from 1741 to 1745 both by the New Bruns-
wick and the Old Side Presbyterians.

' Boston News-Lctier, August 21, 1740; New England Weekly Journal, May 6, 20,
June 3, 1740; Pennsylvania Gazette, November 27, 1740; American Weekly Mercury,
January 8, 1741; New York Weekly Journal, February 4, 1741; South Carolina
Gazette, March 6, 1742.

3 A year after \Miitefield's letter advocating the Christian training of slaves his
friend Hugh Brj^an published a letter denouncing the clergy of the establishment for
their failure to show pity to the perishing. A year later he and his brother were

92 TEE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

task of their evangelization was left to the Methodists and Baptists of a
later day. It was necessary that the Great Awakening in successive
advances should win the allegiance of a dominant portion of the white
population of the states where slaves abounded before the Christianiza-
tion of the negroes, the greatest missionary triumph of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, could be effected.

Missionary effort in behalf of the American Indians, also powerfully
stimulated by the Great Awakening, was rewarded by earlier fruitage
than were Whitefield's enterprises for the uplift of black men. Indeed,
in the period before the revival the New England governments had
co-operated with Scotch and Scotch-Irish societies in the maintenance
of missions to the Indians in their borders. The results were not com-
mensurate with the efforts put forth. ^ But when the revival swept
over New England the Indians were caught in the same movement.^
These successes gave new life to missionary endeavor. The mission
at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, conducted by Jonathan Edwards after
his dismissal from Northampton, came into direct contact with the
Indians of New York, and its beneficial influence was felt far into the
interior of that province.^ Dartmouth College, founded by Eleazer
Wheelock, was another gathering-point of Indian youth from the Middle
Colonies. Samson Occum, Wheelock's first Indian pupil, and a number
of other missionaries who looked to Wheelock for direction and support
operated in the Middle Colonies. Whitefield's influence in England
brought very considerable aid to these Indian missions conducted by
friends of the revival.^

indicted for holding religious meetings for negroes. In the meantime, but more than
a year and a half after Whitefield's letter was issued, letters of the bishop of London
were advertised exhorting masters to instruct their negroes in the Christian faith.
Dissenting pastors, supporters of the revival, seem to have been the first to take public
action in adopting the proposals of the bishop. Finally Garden published an Account
of the Negro School at Charleston for the year 1 743 . South Carolina Gazette, January 8,
September 5, 1741; March 27, April 17, 1742; April 2, 1744. Ramsay refers to a
report of the school published in 1752. Ramsay, South Carolina, II, 467.

^ New England Weekly Journal, December 13, 1733; September 9, 1735; October
26, 1736; Dwight, Edwards, p. 449; Robe, Christian Monthly History, No. 5, pp. 3-12.

2 Boston Weekly Post-Boy, October 5, 1745; Prince, Christian History for 1744,
pp. 21, 109, 113, 154.

3 Dwight, op. cit., p. 534-

* Wheelock, A plain and faithful Narrative and A Cmitinuation of the Narrative;
Brainerd, The Life of John Brainerd, p. 347.

PERIOD OF EXPANSION AND ORGANIZATION 93

These New Light enthusiasts did not come to an absolutely untilled
field, for the English Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had been
and was still co-operating with the province of New York in raissionary
endeavor among the Indians. The society sometimes employed Dutch
pastors. The purposes, however, were less religious than political, for
they were conceived as counter-movements against the French and
Jesuits.' Mention has been made of a genuinely religious elTort among
the Indians of New York, that of the Moravians. They were remark-
ably successful, because the missionaries threw all their powers with
passionate self-sacrifice into the lowly service of their heathen brothers.
They brought them a religion of fervor and taught them the common
arts of civilized life.^ The expulsion of the Moravians, however, was
compensated, in part at least, by the coming of men of kindred spirit.

Far more important than these New England missions in the Middle
Colonies were the missions conducted by the New Side Presbyterians.
Heroic as were the efforts of the Moravians in the province of Pennsyl-
vania, these Presbyterian missions had a wider influence in stimulating
missionary interest among the English-speaking people. The New
Side Presbyterians joined with the Scotch Society for Propagating Chris-
tian Knowledge in the establishment of Indian missions in the Middle
Colonies. Asariah Horton began his labor on Long Island in August,
1 74 1. James Davenport had already begun a remarkable work among
the Indians there. The missionary came, therefore, at the most oppor-
tune time. His earnestness overcame the native lethargy of his hearers.
Though they were not convulsed by bodily agitations, like so many oi
their white neighbors among whom Davenport preached, they went
through the usual deep distresses, ending in voiceful exultation, which
were regarded by the New Side Presbyterians as the normal method of
conversion. The converts often spoke of seeing Christ, but Horton
explained the expression as due to their figurative speech. The Indians
meant that they saw Christ by the heart, for the New Side Presbyterians
had great horror of raptures, visions, and all pretense to immediate reve-
lation.^ Horton continued his mission up to the year 1753. Webster,
the historian, reported one hundred years afterward that two of the
Indian churches still remained.''

Though Horton earned honorable mention, the name that is spelled
in capital letters is that of Brainerd. There is no more saintly figure

' Eccl. Rec. of New York, pp. 1443, 1466. ' Brainerd, op. cil., p. 73.

3 Robe, op. cit., No. 5, pp. 14-66; No. 6, pp. 1-17.

< Webster, A History of the Presbyterian Church, p. 465.

94 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

in American missionary annals than that of David Brainerd. A his-
torian of missions has said of Brainerd's work in New Jersey that "at
Crossweeksung his success was perhaps without a parallel in heathen
missions since the days of the apostles."' His diary is a classic and came
as a personal call to a number of gifted young men who later were recog-
nized as among the greatest missionaries to non-Christian lands.^ He
was another appointee of the correspondents of the Scotch Society.

David Brainerd stood at the head of his class at Yale and was in his
third year there when Gilbert Tennent's preaching was rewarded by the
conversion of a large number of the students. The college authorities
showed little sympathy with the movement. The rector fined some of
the students who followed Tennent to Milford. Brainerd was heartily
devoted to the revival and in private conversation spoke harshly of one
of the tutors. For this he was expelled from college.^ After Brainerd's
appointment as a missionary he was sent in April, 1743, to Kaunaumeek,
New York, and later to the Forks of the Delaware, where now at Easton
a church bears his name. In September he returned to New Haven,
hoping to take his degree. He made the most ample apology. There
was no question of his attainments in scholarship, but in spite of the
entreaties of Aaron Burr and Jonathan Edwards the college authorities
held out stiffly and unreasonably for an additional year's residence.
The rebuff given Brainerd, following numerous acts of hostility to the
revival, was so resented by the ministers of the New York presbytery,
who were nearly all graduates of Yale, that some of them attributed the
founding of Princeton College to this incident as the main cause.'' In
June, 1744, Brainerd was ordained by the presbytery of New York in
violation of the rule of the synod, from which the presbytery had not
yet formally r withdrawn. 5 The synod in a letter to Rector Clap con-
demns the presbytery for "improving in the ministry" scholars that
Clap had expelled.^

Brainerd's missionary journeys were in the provinces of New Jersey
and Pennsylvania as far west as the Susquehanna River. From March
to November of one year he traveled three thousand miles. In June,
1745, he began his mission at Crossweeksung, New Jersey, bringing
together at that point a number of the scattered bands of Indians. The

' Brainerd, op. cit., quoting Ashbel Green, p. 80.
' Notably Henry Martyn, of India and Persia.
3 Edwards, Brainerd, p. 50.

* Alexander, op. cit., p. 78; Steams, Historical Discourse, p. 176; Brainerd, op. cit.,
p. S6.

5 Edwards, Brainerd, p. 142. * Records of the Presbyterian Church, p. 186.

PERIOD OF EXPANSION AND ORGANIZATION 95

successive revivals here were the marvel of that time and have been
with succeeding generations of readers. His converts were proposed by
neighboring pastors to their congregations as examples of piety. The
meetings were frequented by the members of white congregations, who
saw in the experiences of the children of the forests experiences in every
respect similar to their own in the revival which had previously been so
remarkable among the whites. There were the same results in the lives
of the converts, the mastery over drink, and the new religious energy
transmuted into industrial energy. Brainerd gathered his Indians
together on Indian lands at Cranbury, and the progress of their village
astonished all visitors.'

David Brainerd made his last visit to the Susquehanna when already
stricken with disease; afterward by slow stages he journeyed back to
New England, where he died in the home of Jonathan Edwards. John
Brainerd, his brother, succeeded him in the mission. His were the dis-
couragements attendant upon the training of such a people. The
greatest difl&culty was not in the refractory nature of the Indians but
in the rapacity of Chief Justice Morris and his fellow conspirators, who
ejected not only the Indians from their new town of Bethel but large
numbers of white farmers from their holdings.^ The Indian town of
Brotherton was then founded with ample legal protection.^ A genera-
tion after the death of John Brainerd the remnant of the Indians migrated
to western New York, where they amalgamated with the Oneidas.'*

6. The revivalists as educators. — The new impulse given to education
by the evangelical revival was even more significant than the new enthu-
siasm for missionary endeavor. The Great Awakening as a popular
movement and as a return to primitive Christianity appeared to its
opposers to be imfavorable to education. The Separates of New Eng-
land, the Baptists, with whom to a considerable extent they united, the
Moravians, and after them the Methodists, all made use of lay preachers
and advanced to the regular ministry men who did not possess college
diplomas. Yet the Separates founded the Shepherd's Tent at New
London, and the other bodies have an honorable history as promoters
of education. But whatever the attitude of these bodies, which were
then looked upon as irregular, the leading Calvinistic revivalists were
everywhere insistent upon ministerial education and favorable to popular
education. They held this position and struggled to found schools at

'Edwards, Brainerd, pp. 194-307; Brainerd, op. cit., pp. 79-81, 113.

'Ibid, pp. 153-58, 284-91.

^ Ibid., pp. 292-97. * Ibid., pp. 417-23.

96 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

the very time during which they were ridiculed in public print as the
apostles of ignorance.^

The founding in 1726 of WilUam Tennent's school has been described
in an earUer chapter. For twenty years this school of the prophets justi-
fied the name of Log College. He sent out as many young men into the
ministry in the last five years of his life as he had in the preceding fifteen.
This was itself a fruit of the quickened religious interest. In 1742 he
was so bowed down by the weight of years that he begged assistance
from the presbytery, and suppUes were granted him. In 1743 Charles
Beatty, trained by him, was ordained as his colleague.^ Beatty was
later widely known for his journeys among the Indians, his service as
chaplain to provincial troops, and his voyages to foreign parts in the
interest of Princeton College and church extension. He had not the
quiet, scholarly tastes to continue the Log College. Therefore when
the patriarch of education died in 1 746 the Log College ceased to exist.^

The great majority of the young men trained at the Log College
entered upon their work after the schism of 1741. They were sharply
distinguished from the men trained in European imiversities, as most of
the Old Side ministers had been. The distinguishing marks are well
indicated by the criticisms of George Gillespie upon the latter,4 though
he was himself educated in Scotland, and by the newspaper attacks of
unnamed correspondents upon the former. The Old Side ministers had
been destined by their parents to the ministry without being able to
tell of a spiritual crisis in their lives and without a burning zeal to make,
converts to Christ. They resented any prying into their secret experi-
ences, though this was required by the order of the synod and the
discipHne of the church. The Log College men, on the other hand, were
caught up by a wave of revivalism. They dared not prepare for the
ministry until they had passed through a period of conviction, had
attained assurance, and believed themselves driven into the ministry
by divine compulsion. Most of these young men followed other occu-
pations, from which they turned to ministerial preparation. At the
completion of their studies they went out like the apostles to turn the
world upside down. Then their enemies cried out, "Could the great
Gilbert be persuaded to remit these strollers to their looms, their lasts,

^ Boston Evening Post, April 2, October 15, 1744; Boston Gazette, July 24, 1744;
Pennsylvania Journal, June 30, 1743; South Carolina Gazette, July 4, 1743.

* MS Minutes of the New Brunswick Presbyten' for December 14, 1743.

3 Alexander, op. cit., p. 247; Murphy, Presbytery of the Log College, p. 68.

•» Gillespie, op. cit., pp. 5, 6, 20.

PERIOD OF EXPANSION AND ORGANIZATION 97

their packs, their grubbing hoes, from whence in his great zeal he took
them, to support his father's Log House College, we might soon hope
to see a new face of affairs; but this is not to be expected."' All the
sixteen or eighteen New Side ministers who were trained at the Log
College were men of fiery zeal, and fully half of them were preachers of
extraordinary power. Such were the two B lairs and Samuel Finley, who
were equally eminent as educators; and such were the four Tennent
brothers, John Rowland, William Robinson, Charles Beatty, and John
Roan.

Samuel Blair, one of the strongest of this group of strong men,
established a classical and theological school at Fagg's Manor upon the
model of the Log College. His first pupil, Samuel Davies, was ready
for licensure in 1746.^ The expenses of this promising student were
borne by William Robinson. The reward of both instructor and bene-
factor was that as a preacher Davies was the admiration of England and
America, and as president of Princeton College he was greatly beloved.
Yet Davies declared that in all his travels he heard no preacher equal to
his teacher, Samuel Blair.^ Other students at Fagg's Manor were Dr.
John Rodgers, of New York, Alexander Cumming, of Boston, James
Finley, brother of Samuel, and Robert Smith, of Pequea, all leaders of
note. After the death of Samuel Blair in 1751 his school was continued
by his brother, John Blair, also educated at the Log College, until his
election in 1767 to a professorship at Princeton. i

Another famous educator trained at the Log College and ranking
with Samuel and John Blair was Samuel Finley. There was no more
aggressive itinerant than he. After his settlement at Nottingham,
Pennsylvania, he established an academy there which attracted not only

' Boston Evening Post, April 2, 1744.

' Blair is said to have opened his school soon after his removal to Fagg's Manor,
but Davies may have come under his instruction at Shrewsbury, New Jersey, for
Davies received the rudiments of classical training under Rev. Abel Morgan, Baptist
pastor at Middletown, New Jersey. Webster, op. cit., p. 549; Murphy, op. ciL, p. 88.
The famous John Rodgers entered Blair's school in 1743, completed there his academ-
ical studies, including the moral and physical sciences, as well as the languages, and
made considerable progress in the study of theology. "At Mr. Blair's Academy, Mr.
Rodgers was so happy as to find a number of young gentlemen, of excellent talents,
and of eminent piety, preparing for the gospel ministry, in whose friendship he
found much comfort, and whose society contributed not a little to his improve-
ment."— Miller, Memoirs of Rev. John Rodgers, D.D., pp. 17-23.

3 Alexander, op. cit., p. 193; Webster, op. cit., pp. 430, 550.

* Alexander, op. cit., pp. 197, 198; Murphy, op. cit., pp. 87-95.

98 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

students preparing for the ministry but others as well. Among the dis-
tinguished men educated at Nottingham were Governors Martin, of
North Carolina, and Henry, of Maryland, Dr. Benjamin Rush, of Phila-
delphia, and Dr. William M. Tennent, of Abington, son of Charles Ten-
nent and grandson of the founder of the Log College. Upon the death
in 1 761 of Samuel Davies, president of Princeton, Samuel Finley was
elected his successor. He held the office till his death in 1766.^ It was
during his presidency that an amazing revival swept through the college,
when about half the entire number of students were converted, so that
nearly the whole college was experimentally Christian.*

The relation of the Log College to Princeton is intimate but not so
direct as its relation to private schools giving collegiate instruction
at Fagg's Manor, Nottingham, and Pequea.^ Jonathan Dickinson and
Aaron Burr, the first and second presidents of the College of New Jersey,
as Princeton was called in the eighteenth century, were members of the
presbytery of New York and were not Log College men. Yet the new
school was chartered not six months after the death of WilHam Tennent,
and its ideals were the same as those of the Log College. The ministers
of that presbytery had come to distrust the colleges of New England,
much as did Whitefield, his friend Governor Belcher, Jonathan Edwards,
and Gilbert Tennent. In the refounding of the college in 1748 New
Brunswick men were prominent, and it was removed eight years later
to Princeton, within the bounds of the presbytery of New Brunwsick,
and centrally located, like Neshaminy, between New York and Phila-
delphia. Burr was followed in the presidency by his father-in-law,
Jonathan Edwards, whose death soon followed. His successors in ofiice
were Samuel Davies and Samuel Finley. All these men were great
preachers and eminent promoters of the revival. Their deaths came in
rapid succession. The names of so many presidents who had been
foremost in the Great Awakening have indissolubly associated the infancy

* Ibid., pp. 95-101; Alexander, op. cii., pp. 204-14; Webster, op. cit., p. 490.

' Gilbert Tennent, Discourses on ... . Important Subjects, Preface, pp. iii-x;
Davies, Little Children invited to Jesus Christ, pp. 13, 14.

' This was a school of the third generation from the Log College, for it was estab-
lished by Robert Smith, who studied under Samuel Blair, who studied under William
Tennent, Sr. At Pequea, McMillan, pioneer of western Pennsylvania and founder
of Jefferson College, was educated, as well as other trainers of preachers. Among
them were the two sons of Robert Smith — S. S. Smith, president of Hampton-Sidney
and later of Princeton, and J. B. Smith, president of Hampton-Sidney and later of
Union College. ' Webster, op. cit., pp. 612, 614.

PERIOD OF EXPANSION AND ORGANIZATION 99

of Princeton University with warm evangelical religion. It was virtu-
ally an offspring of the school on the Neshaminy.'

Though New Jersey rejoiced in the possession of a college, the pro-
vincial government felt no financial responsibility for its maintenance.
Therefore the New Side Presbyterians resorted to various expedients
to secure funds. Finally in 1753 the synod appointed Gilbert Tennent
and Samuel Davies to go to Great Britain to solicit aid.^ The character-
istic perseverance of the one and the affable persuasiveness of the other
made their mission an entire success, even though the Presbyterians
of England were rapidly approaching Unitarianism and were quite
out of sympathy with the evangelical spirit of the visiting Americans.*
Furthermore, the Old Sides threw obstacles in their way,'' yet President
Finley says that Tennent's mission, in spite of numberless discourage-
ments, was successful beyond all expectation. ^

The debt of education in the United States to the Great Awakening
is merely suggested, not adequately expressed, by the enumeration of the
colleges which were the direct fruits of the revival. Among them must be
named not only Princeton of the Presbyterians, Dartmouth of the Con-
gregationalists, Brown of the Baptists, Rutgers of the Reformed, but
also, as Governor Pennypacker has shown, the University of Pennsyl-
vania, which may trace its pedigree back to George Whitefield as its
original founder. The undenominational character of the institution and
the attachment of a charity school were features impressed upon
academy, college, and university by the original Whitefield enterprise
of 1740.^

7. The extension of the revival to Virginia. — It is one of the conten-
tions of the present writer that the Great Awakening is not to be regarded
only in the terms of that extraordinary emotionalism which accompanied
impassioned evangelistic endeavor but which was limited in every com-
munity to a year or two at the very longest. Moral reform and philan-
thropic endeavor were essential parts of it, and so were the organic
activities which have been outlined in this chapter and which gave form
and direction to American Protestantism. Yet it would be a mistake
to suppose that in the period following 1742 the religious quickening

' Alexander, op. cit., pp. 76-85.

* Records of the Presbyterian Church, p. 251; Livingston, op. cit., p. 22.

i Alexander, op. cit., pp. 54-57; Webster, op. cit., p. 394. ^ Ibid., p. 555.

5 Finley, The Successful Minister, p. 20.

' Pennypacker, Origin of the University of Pennsylvania in 1740, p. 421.

lOO THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

nowhere possessed that which in the height of the revival was its char-
acteristic feature. In 1740 Virginia was not ready to give emotional
response to the appeal of Whitefield, but in the years following his first
visit forces were silently operating which finally issued in passionate
expression. The Log College evangehsts were the active promoters of
this revival. How their itinerations came to be extended to Virginia must
first be told.

In the Middle Colonies themselves during this period the revival was
generally described as the "late work of God." There was no longer a
general excitement kept alive by numerous instances of conviction, and
these followed at intervals by the joyous proclamation of conversion.
Yet the lives of great numbers were still determined by the decisions they
had made in the time of intense religious interest. Isolated communi-
ties were reached long after the general movement had passed. The
rapid influx of settlers and the growth of the young made possible here
and there the exultant announcement of the return of the revival spirit.
But the characteristic work of these years was the organization of
churches, the building of meeting-houses, and the supplying of congre-
gations with preachers.

Although the revival sent a considerable number of young men to
the various schools to prepare for the ministry, the number of congre-
gations appealing for preachers increased in far greater proportion.
Several worthy pastors withdrew to the Middle Colonies from Connecti-
cut, where they had been made uncomfortable by the reign of the reac-
tionaries. Among them were Timothy Allen' and James Davenport,^
now reclaimed from their excesses. The supply from all sources was
inadequate. There was but one possible method approximately to
meet the religious needs of the scattered settlements. That was through
an itinerating ministry. The probationers and young ministers were
sent upon extensive tours. All the ministers of the presbytery of New
Brunswick, always the center of evangelistic endeavor, were sent upon
numerous missions, some of them upon long journeys to the southern
provinces.

The mission of one of these men led to unimagined results. William
Robinson, who was remarkable for his sweet temper and evangelistic
power, was sent in 1743 to the new settlements in Virginia and North
Carolina on both sides of the Blue Ridge. In after-years aged men told

' Webster, op. cit., p. 583.

= Ibid., p. 531; MS Minutes of the New Brunswick Presbytery for October 13,
1743; May 21, October 16, 1746.

PERIOD OF EXPANSION AND ORGANIZATION loi

wonderful stories of what they witnessed in their youth where he
preached. Congregations were organized by him in the Presbyterian
population that was filling up the back country.^ An earnest invitation
was sent to him to preach upon his return northward at Hanover in
the Anglican part of Virginia. Here he was introduced to one of the
strangest phases of the whole evangelical movement.

A spontaneous revival had developed in that region. The awakened
people had no preacher, for they were dissatisfied with the lives and
doctrines of the clergymen of the established church. As they were
unaccustomed to extempore prayer, none of them dared attempt it.
Whitefield had preached at Williamsburg in 1740, but none of these
people had heard him. In 1743 a book of Whitefield's sermons was
brought to this group of earnest seekers for deeper spiritual life. Mr.
Samuel Morris began to read it in his house to his friends who assembled
to hear it. "The concern of some was so passionate and violent that
they could not avoid crying out, weeping bitterly." His dwelling-house
was soon too small to contain the people; thereupon it was determined
to build a meeting-house solely for the reading of sermons. Called
upon by the court to assign reasons for absenting themselves from
church, they took the name of Lutherans, since they knew that Luther
was a reformer, and they had little acquaintance with dissenting bodies.
Of Robinson's preaching Morris said, "We were overwhelmed with the
thought of the unexpected goodness of God in allowing us to hear the
gospel in a manner that surpassed our hopes." After the visit of Robin-
son invitations came to Morris to read sermons in many places, and as a
result other meeting-houses were erected and readers appointed.^

The newly awakened in Hanover county put themselves under the
care of the New Side Presbyterians. John Blair paid them a visit, and
later John Roan. The revival was greatly extended by the preaching
of these Log College evangelists. Roan was outspoken against the
degeneracy of the clergy of the estabhshed church. This led to a general
alarm, and measures were taken to suppress the movement. Roan was
charged with blasphemy, and some of the people who had opened their
homes to him were fined. The governor issued an order against any
meetings of New Lights and Moravians. The synod of Philadelphia
at its next meeting adopted an address to Governor Gooch explaining
that these persons against whom charges were made assumed the name
of Presbyterians and had been excluded from the synod because of their

' Alexander, op. ciL, pp. 215-20.

' Morris' narrative in Alexander, Log College, pp. 221-23.

I02 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

sending abroad ill-qualified persons to trouble the churches.^ The
conjunct-presbyteries sent Gilbert Tennent and Samuel Finley to Vir-
ginia with an address. Before their arrival the trial of Morris, which was
virtually that of Roan, who had left the province, was held, at which it
was proved that the blasphemous expressions attributed to Roan were
not uttered by him. Upon the approach of Tennent and Finley the
complaining witness fled, and the governor gave the visiting ministers
the liberty to preach.^

After the removal of this cloud William Tennent, Jr., and Samuel
Blair were sent to the Hanover Presbyterians, making altogether seven
Log College men who itinerated in Virginia. Then Whitefield came,
who was readily received by the members of the Church of England.
Finally in 1747 Samuel Davies was sent to supply Hanover for a few
weeks. The governor had just issued a proclamation prohibiting all
itinerant preaching. Davies, however, obtained a license to preach in
four meeting-houses and later was established as the pastor of the
congregations meeting in them. His ministry was wonderfully success-
ful in the conversion both of gentlemen and, at the other extreme, of
slaves. He was the very soul of urbanity and courtesy, yet the extension
of Presbyterianism in the eastern part of the province was effected in
the face of official hostility.^ Davies assured Commissary Dawson that
he had no "ambition to presbyterianize the colony," but he was zealous
to "propagate the catholic religion of Jesus in its life and power,"
since the religious condition of the province was lamentable.''

Although we have given our attention almost exclusively to the
activities of the Presbyterians during this period of organization, they
were by no means the only people who, having caught a new vision, now
bestirred themselves to give it concrete embodiment. The aged Freling-
huysen was gathering about him young men of power to win the Dutch
church to revivalistic ideals. To the aid of the German Lutherans came
that superb organizer, Muhlenberg, straight from Halle, the fountain-
head of Pietism and the new evangelism. The Philadelphia Baptist
association, strongly Calvinistic and evangelistic, sharing in general the
ideals of the New Side Presbyterians, was now advancing to dominant
influence in this otherwise unorganized denomination. But most of
these religious bodies were more slow-moving than the militant Ulster

' Records of the Presbyterian Church, pp. 180-82.
^ Morris in Alexander, pp. 223-26.
^ Davies' letter to Bellamy in Alexander, pp. 226-32.
* Davies' dedication of the sermon on Duties, p. 10.

PERIOD OF EXPANSION AND ORGANIZATION 103

men, and the story of their activities more naturally belongs to a some-
what later period.

As the leaders of the revival in the days of excited and general
feeling had been Presbyterians, with the exception of the chief apostle
of the Great Awakening, so now their manifold activities were the most
important. We have seen, accordingly, that the New Side Presbyterians
were sobered and steadied by the strictures upon their friends, the most
radical of the promoters of the revival in New England, and by their
own contact with a strange but worthy people whom they could not
understand. Then their leaders sought to placate the men of their own
blood who had cast them out. Repeatedly rebuffed by the passionate
advocates of a passionless religion, the New Side Presbyterians perfected
their organization and proved their Presbyterianism by the schools they
set up. They cultivated every generous sentiment by admiringly fol-
lowing the fortunes of David Brainerd. Above all they retained their
devotion to evangelistic ideals and renewed their old-time fervor by the
success of the gospel in the province of Virginia, where the Log College
men were the chief itinerant evangelists. Though the account of some
of these characteristic activities has been carried to a point beyond the
limits of the period to fittingly conclude their story, the account of the
triumph of New Side Presbyterianism, as of the triumph of the ideals of
the Great A-wakening in other denominations, is reserved for a later
chapter.

CHAPTER VIII
WHITEFIELD THE PACIFICATOR

While the Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies had passed from
the generating to the harnessing of the spiritual energies of the people,
Whitefield, who had been the chief instrument of their awakening, was
now exemplifying in his own person the characteristic developments of
the whole movement. These experiences help to explain the man he
was when again he was touring the Middle Colonies in the years 1745
and 1746.

In 1 74 1 Whitefield was back in Great Britain meeting the strangest
alternations of fortune. The adoption of Calvinistic principles which had
commended him to the active religionists of the colonies was resented
by his fellow Methodists of the Church of England, who, in common with
a great body of that communion, had practically repudiated its Cal-
vinistic articles. Seward, the wealthy friend of Whitefield, had been
murdered by brutal opposers of the revival, and Whitefield was suddenly
called upon to meet money advances which Seward had made to him.
He was burdened by the orphan-house debts of many thousands with
scarcely a penny to pay. Bitterly lamenting his break with John Wesley,
deserted by former converts who now stopped their ears lest they should
be won by the witchery of his voice to the acceptance of a creed which
they detested, and threatened by incarceration in a debtor's cell, the
undaunted young warrior, not for a moment questioning the truth of his
doctrines or regretting the responsibilities which he had assumed, laid
his plans both to pay his debts and to build a great tabernacle on Moor-
fields in London. He resumed field preaching in the interior with the
same striking success in the opening of both hearts and purses which had
previously attended it. The Calvinism which was a real, though not
insuperable, handicap to the evangelist's mission in England was a
compensating advantage when he accepted an invitation to visit Scot-
land. He had long been a correspondent with the Erskines and felt
his heart closely knit with theirs, yet he was unwilling to reject all
invitations in Scotland but those of the Seceders and to subordinate
his mission as an awakener of spiritual reUgion to the propagation of
fine-spun theories upon church government. The result was that he

104

WHITEFIELD THE PACIFICATOR 105

was rejected by the men who could not monopolize his assistance. One
of them, Adam Gib, carried his denunciation of the visitor to sudh
extravagant lengths that in Gib's last days he longed for the power to
destroy every copy of his embittered philippic. In spite of t)ie thrusts
of reformers and conservatives alike Presbyterian Scotland received
the young churchman as a messenger of the King of Glory. Whitefield
was formally presented the freedom of cities. Men of all classes owned
him their spiritual father. Never since the Reformation had there been
such a religious awakening. So great were the gifts of the people to his
charities that a foolish cry of impoverishing the country was raised.
Back again in England, Whitefield helped the Methodist influence to
rise still higher. To his tabernacle, the "soul trap," came not only the
multitude but the nobility of the land. Statesmen, men of letters, and
actors were there, enthralled by an oratory which they confessed to
be without compare. Yet bishops railed against the evangelist as an
enthusiast and a fanatic. Church wardens refused to aid the poor who
frequented Methodist meetings, and hired ruffians were set upon their
preachers. Repeatedly Whitefield was the object of physical violence,
and his life was spared as by a miracle. Once a gentleman ruffian,
impelled by an instinctive hatred of aggressive religion, made a murder-
ous assault upon the preacher when he was in his bed. Such were the
strange \acissitudes of a frail young man who crowded into every week
work that would speedily crush the average man. It is not strange
that Watts thought him the wonder of the age.^

But during these years, and indeed throughout the remainder of
his life, Whitefield was never soured by defeat or made vain by victory.
Although there was not the least abatement of his zeal, the early note of
asperity gave place to ripened sweetness, which won at last the respect
and even the affection of early detractors. It was natural that this
Methodist reformer at the beginning of his career judged the men who
gnashed their teeth at him to be strangers to grace, but he slowly learned
the injustice and impolicy of personal recrimination and became tolerant
of good men whose prejudices led them astray. It was characteristic
too of this movement that at first representatives of all religious schools
were brought into practical harmony by the new insistence upon regenera-
tion and piety, but as they put their new earnestness to the exploration
of other regions of doctrine and practice it was inevitable that they
should divide, as all the world had done before. Thus, though the

' Gledstone, George Whitefield, pp. 162-224. The colonial newspapers followed
his career during all these years but were most interested in his campai<?n in Scotland.

io6 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN TEE MIDDLE COLONIES

Methodist societies in the Church of England were divided into two
branches, one Calvinistic and the other Arminian, Whitefield was too
genial and generous to permit for long a doctrinal difference to separate
himself from the Wesleys in the higher unity of Christian love and co-
operation. When Whitefield in Scotland, chastened by this separation,
suffered abuse from the friends of the Erskines, he still protested his
love for them and was betrayed into no bitter words afterward to be
regretted. When again he met Ralph Erskine it was to embrace him as
a brother. One of the most engaging qualities of Whitefield was his
willingness to be the most severe judge of his own conduct, to make the
most ample reparation for every possible mistake, to be tolerant of the
foibles of good men, to condone the injustice of evil men, and, without
counting the cost to himself, to take into his sympathy every man who
laid claim to it. In all these things the essential characteristics of the
revival attained pre-eminent development in Whitefield.

Such was the man who braved the sea in time of war in response to
repeated invitations from the colonies. Whitefield's desire to settle the
affairs of the orphan house and audit its accounts constituted another
call to America. In the autumn of 1744 he arrived at York, Maine.
A number of the ardent supporters of the revival flocked to the port to
greet him, but they found him hovering between life and death. When
he had partially recovered, his enemies said that his sickness was all a
ruse to gain the sympathy of the people.' All New England was now
sharply divided between the friends and the foes of the revival. The
extreme conservatives and the men of rationahstic trend formed a
majority of the ruling aristocracy in church and state. On the other
side the Boston ministers, the partisans of Jonathan Edwards in western
Massachusetts, and a great number of pastors all over New England,
with a tremendous popular following, were still warmly devoted to the
revival and attached to its chief apostle, Whitefield. The leaders
naturally regretted certain popular tendencies of the movement that
threatened the overthrow of the ecclesiastical system of New England,
though now it may be claimed as one of the glories of the Great Awaken-
ing that it set in operation forces which ultimately battered down that
system. Whitefield's journey through New England was a tour of
pacification. While preaching the same doctrines with the same emo-
tional power, he explicitly warned his hearers from all the extremes which
had been revived by the general awakening of religious interest.^

' Boston Evening Post, November 19, 1744.

' Christian History for 1744, pp. 320, 336.

WHITEFIELD THE PACIFICATOR 107

The same ripening goodness was evidenced in this New England
mission which had been noted in Great Britain. It must have been a
relief to Whitefield to be free from the danger of physical violence, as he
always was in America, but from the day of his arrival at York the
reactionary Boston Evening Post fulminated against him and, generally
withholding the names of the contributors, published vulgar attacks
upon him. On the other hand the Boston Gazette, as the organ of the
evangehcals, defended the cause of reform with dignity and sobriety,
while Whitefield himself, when he chose to notice the action of pubhc
bodies, answered with convincing sincerity and sweetness. Harvard
College had pronounced against him, stung by well-deserved criticism,
but Whitefield now and later so persisted in studied acts of good will,
notably by his benefactions in the time of Harvard's distress, that at
last that institution was compelled to acknowledge his candor and do
him honor. The opposers of revivalism sharply criticized the Boston
pastors for their immoderate attachment to Whitefield and for their
direction of his movements throughout New England, but it was admitted
that the evangelist was the idol of the people, so much so that the dis-
turbance of industry threatened an increase of the town rates.' Indeed
at this time the admirers of Whitefield offered to build for him at Boston
the largest auditorium in the country if he would but remain. Though
his personal triumph was quite as remarkable now as in 1 740, and many
were converted in his meetings,^ no general revival was stimulated by
his mission, as when he first visited this section. The ecclesiastical
organization of New England and the homogeneity of the population were
such that the revival had already run its course in towns where pastors
favored the movement. In other towns the only recourse was to the
incursions of irregulars, such as the Separates, the Baptists, and later
the Methodists. Whitefield did well to strengthen the hand of the
evangelical party within the churches of the standing order.

In August, 1746, he passed from eastern Connecticut to Long Island,
thus avoiding Yale College, the authorities of which had issued a testi-
mony against him. Having preached in various friendly congregations,
he reached New York, where the multitude hung upon his words as in
time past.3 Then, traveling through New Jersey, he was conducted
into Philadelphia by fifty horsemen.'' Though Gilbert Tennent had

' Boston Evening Post, December 17, 1744.
' New York Post-Boy, February' 18, 1745.

3 Boston Gazette, August 20, 1745; New York Evening Post, August 26, Septem-
ber 2, 1745.

^ New York Post-Boy, September 16, 1745.

loS THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

organized a Presbyterian church which held its stated services in the
New Building, the affections of the people went out as undividedly to
the great orator as formerly, but in vain did they importune him to
make Philadelphia his home and so permanently occupy the building
which had been erected especially for him. He made a pilgrimage to
Neshaminy to visit the venerable William Tennent, whose hour-glass
had almost run out, and then preached his farewell sermon in Phila-
delphia.' Time and excessive labors had not dulled his enthusiasm or
deprived his words and gestures of their subtle charm, but friends and
enemies remarked that the asperity which formerly marred the pulpit
utterances of the young reformer now gave place to a noble charity.^

That he so happily blended universal kindness with zeal for righteous-
ness did not result from the stilling of the voices of opposition. In
anticipation of Whitefield's visit to New York, Jonathan Arnold again
made war upon him in the newspapers, reiterating all his old charges
and incorporating a letter of the bishop of Gloucester. The bishop
had refused to see the evangelist or to answer his letters. Nevertheless
Whitefield had just presented him a volume of his sermons and an
account of his orphan house, accompanied by a letter written "in a
very obliging manner," but as he continued his itinerating evangelism
his ecclesiastical superior thought that his letters deserved no return of
ci\dlity.3 As in the case of Arnold's earlier attacks, Whitefield paid not
the slightest attention to them now.

Not only in New York but in the Southern Colonies he was driven
into the unwilling appearance of undermining the power of his own church
when his single aim was to bring men to Christ. His ministrations
were more extended in Maryland, where he was importuned to settle,''
and in Virginia than they had been in his earlier journeys. The Great
Awakening as a wave of emotionalism had reached Hanover, Virginia,
two years before, and now under the preaching of Whitefield many
Church people came under its quickening influence.^ In Charleston,
South Carolina, a hot newspaper dispute was on between the opposers
and the promoters of revivalism. Indeed it had been on during all the

^ Pennsylvania Journal, September 12, 19, 1745.
^ Ibid., February ii, 1746.
3 New York Post -Boy, January 21, 1745.
* Pennsylvania Journal, February 11, 1746.

5 New York Post-Boy, September 16, 23, October 14, November 25, 1745; Morris
in -Alexander, p. 225.

WHITEFIELD THE PACIFICATOR 109

years of Whitefield's absence, but now it was unusually demonstrative
over the validity of Whitefield's suspension from the ministry by Com-
missary Garden. The brilliant Josiah Smith, of the Congregational
church, as defender of Whitefield, was able to show that the EngUsh
authorities had treated the action of Garden as a nullity, but Garden
with learned coarseness would make it appear that either a novice was
defended by a knave or a knave by a novice.' Yet when Whitefield,
bringing with him an atmosphere of serenity, reached the little city of
hotbloods, he preached with such winning grace that praises were ex-
torted from some of his worst enemies.' Finally he reached his beloved
Bethesda, planning when he had settled its affairs to resume his itin-
erations in the Southern and Middle Colonies.

Whitefield had previously given to the public narratives of his orphan
house, Bethesda, with statements of receipts and disbursements. Now
his purpose was to join with his business agent in a final statement
covering all the operations since the founding of the home. All the
accounts and vouchers were laid before the auditors, whose finding was
highly creditable to Whitefield's methodical benevolence. Now we
find Franklin with evident satisfaction publishing the explanatory
letter of Whitefield and a summary financial statement.^ During the
years of the founder's absence the very existence of the orphan house
was sometimes questioned, and stories quite as incredible were told
about it. The sober accounts of visitors of the highest repute were
brushed aside by enemies of the work as fairy tales. Whitefield from
the first had hoped to make Bethesda something more than an orphan-
age. Later he developed his plan to add a college to the orphanage,
a plan heartily approved by the Georgia legislature. The home govern-
ment withheld the granting of the charter and referred the petition of
Whitefield and the address of the legislature to the archbishop of Canter-
bury, who insisted on making the proposed college a Church of England
institution. This was a denial of the liberal charter for which the founder
petitioned. By the acceptance of a narrow-bottomed charter he would
break faith with his contributors, who were largely dissenters. Accord-
ingly the only alternative was the establishment of an academy as an

' Not only was disproportionate space given to this dispute for a long time, but
frequently extra pages were added to give it room.

^ Pennsylvania Journal, February n, 1746.

3 Pennsylvania Gazette, May 22, 1746; Franklin, Autobiography, p. 131; Gladstone,
op. cil., p. 238.

no THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

adjunct of the orphanage, with the hope that a more Hberal future
would permit the realization of his plan.^

In the year 1 746 Whitefield made his fifth tour through the Middle
Colonies. It was more extended and occupied a greater length of time
than any previous tour in these provinces, for he arrived in Philadelphia
in May and did not preach his final sermon there till late in September.
He made excursions into Delaware and Maryland. He traveled in
Pennsylvania as far west as Lancaster and as far north as Easton at the
Forks of the Delaware. He went to the extremity of New Jersey at
Cape May and along the beaten path to New York and Long Island,
stopping for the first time at Princeton, which name was beginning to
appear on the records of the presbytery of New Brunswick. At the
close of his eight days' mission at New York a eulogy in the style of
Pemberton was pubHshed. It was said that though Whitefield had been
preaching incessantly for ten years, and was now but thirty-two years
old, he had triumphed over an army of opposers and had demonstrated
the correctness of the opinion of Dr. Watts that Providence had raised
up the young evangelist to awaken a stupid and ungodly world.^ After
daily preaching in Philadelphia at intervals all summer Whitefield
turned southward. Franklin then said of him, "He was never so
generally well esteemed by persons of all ranks among us; nor did he
ever leave us attended with so many ardent wishes for his happy journey
and a safe return to this place. "^ His success in 1746 was quite as
remarkable as the burst of applause which first greeted him in 1739,
for now the Anglicans, the Old Side Presbyterians, and the Quakers were
arrayed against the revival, and his old friends the Moravians were not
on good terms with the Lutheran and Presbyterian supporters of the
revival. Yet the evangelist now so happily united zeal with charity
and the religion of power with Christian courtesy that even violent
opposers apologized for the injustice they had done him.-*

Whitefield journeyed through the Middle Colonies again in 1754,
in 1763, and finally in 1770. Enmity skulked in corners, while churches,
formerly closed to him, opened their pulpits.^ Courts would adjourn

' Whitefield, Letter to Governor Wright.

^ New York Post-Boy, August 4, 1746.

^Pennsylvania Gazette, September 25, 1756.

■» Pennsylvania Journal, February 11, July 3, 1746.

s Whitefield preached to a great concourse in Christ Church, Philadelphia, in 1763,
and also in St. Paul's, erected by the evangelical party in the Church of England.
Watson, Annais, I, 385,

WHITEFIELD THE PACIFICATOR in

and the noise of traffic cease wherever Whitefield was to preach, until
the very day of his death. When he was dead America from end to
end mourned him as the prophet of triumphant evangeUsm.*

' Among the many memorial sermons published after his death two demand refer-
ence. Ebenezer Pemberton, who had welcomed Whitefield to New York in 1739 and
had published such a favorable account of the evangelist that he was promptly invited
to New England, now a pastor i.t Boston, published a funeral eulogy stating sub-
stantially what is given above in the text. James Sprout, pastor of the Second
Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, in a funeral sermon affirmed that Whitefield
had lived long enough to convince the most malignant of his enemies of his uprightness.

CHAPTER IX
TRIUMPHANT EVANGELISM IN AN AGE OF UNBELIEF

The eighteenth century was an age of unbelief, for the passionless
orthodoxy of nominal and apologetic believers was nearly akin to the
negations of deists. The world-wide religious awakening was a counter-
movement, sometimes threatening to sweep away all opposition but
never really changing the trend of the age. The new evangel, however,
changed the lives of thousands and called into being a church within
the church, a saving nucleus in almost every communion, composed of
divinely illuminated men. They set themselves to square their lives
by the new pattern and to win their churches and society to the ideals
of experimental religion. It is my immediate task to show how this
minority, working against the drift of the age, became a majority in
most communions and gave to American Protestantism its dominant
characteristics.

The successive journeys of the great Whitefield, outlined in the pre-
ceding chapter, won successive generations to a boundless admiration of
the man and of the cause of which he was the most conspicuous exponent.
Multitudes were converted in his later itinerations, yet never again
after 1740 did he set whole colonies afire by his preaching. He con-
tributed, it is true, to movements inaugurated in Virginia by Presby-
terians and in the Carolinas by Baptists, which were quite as intense,
if not as widely extended, as the revival of 1740. He also prepared the
way for the Methodist preachers whom Wesley sent to America. In
spite of the diverting of public attention in the Northern Colonies to
war and political debate, there were local revivals in New England and
more of them in the Middle Colonies, while the South became peculiarly
the field of successful evangelism. All these evangelizing efforts of the
various denominations and all the related activities were parts of the
Great Awakening in its larger and truer meaning. The story of nearly
every denomination in the last half of the eighteenth century is that of
triumphant evangelism.

I. Triumphant New Side Presbyterianism. — When at the beginning
of the Revolutionary War and again at the close of the century evangel-
ism was clearly in the ascendancy, the denomination in the Middle

TRIUMPHANT EVANGELISM 113

Colonies which counted the greatest number of adherents and most
influenced for good other denominations was the Presbyterian. In that
denomination by far and away the most influential element was the New
Side party. To the day of his death Gilbert Tennent was the leading
spirit of that party. We have seen how catholic he was, for he felt
quite at home as a worshiper in a Baptist meeting or as toastmaster at a
Lutheran banquet. We have seen that hard upon the supreme success
of his life he was cast into profound dejection by his share in the Presby-
terian schism. It must also be recalled that when the New Side synod
was organized in 1745 one of its fundamental agreements aimed at a
concert of measures with the Old Side synod for the promotion pi com-
mon religious interests. At this point I resume the story of the events
which led to reunion and demonstrated the superior vitality of the new
evangehsm.'

In 1748 Gilbert Tennent preached a sermon on brotherly love at
Philadelphia. In this sermon he warned his hearers from confining their
love to men whose opinions coincided with their own upon every minute
point and from judging professors of Christianity who were without
fervor as being actually graceless. The experienced Christian, he main-
tained, learns to be merciful from his own blunders and falls. True,
there is a temptation to attribute to ill designs the weaknesses and defects
of those with whom we differ, but the more Christian course is to hope
all things of offending brethren. In fine, the doctrine of this sermon
is that the liberty one takes for himself he should accord his neighbor.^

The very next year, 1749, Tennent published his famous Irenicum.
In his Nottingham sermon his one aim had been the reformation of the
church and the triumph of the new evangelism. He was then unjustly
severe upon the critics of the revival. Now the reunion of the Old

' How earnest was the effort of the presbytery of New Brunswick to come to
amicable relations with the Old Side men is shown by their action in 1746 in relation to
Maidenhead and Hopewell. A committee headed by Gilbert Tennent was appointed,
with four ministers of the presbytery of New York as correspondents, to confer with
Pastor Guild and the congregations of both sides for the purpose of effecting a union.
The Presbyterian population of the two townships did not admit of the adequate
maintenance of so many churches, and it would have been a distinct gain to the old
congregations to receive the warm, new blood of the evangelical party. The state
feeling did not permit reunion at this time, but it was effected a few years later. This
friendly attitude of the New Sides in 1746 was in sharp contrast with the hostility
toward them manifested by the synod of Philadelphia in its letter of that year to Rector
Clap, of Yale College. MS Minutes of the New Brunswick Presbytery for May 21,
1746.

' Gilbert Tennent, Brollicrly Love Recommended.

114 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

^ Sides and the New Sides was the single object in his range of vision, and
he minimized the differences between the two parties, going to the oppo-
site extreme. He would have his readers beheve that the differences
between the two sides were over mere circumstantials in discipline and
over divergent estimates of the number of genuine conversions in the
revival.'

One concession made by Tennent in the Irenicum shows how con-
fused even the evangelicals sometimes were concerning a practice which
'•was a necessary application of their fundamental principle of conversion.
He disavows the authority of the church to judge the "inward experi-
ences" of those who seek admission to membership in the church or
.participation in the Lord's Supper.^ In this he failed to follow the
example of his teacher, Frelinghuysen. Jonathan Edwards attained
the advanced position at about the same time that Tennent published
his Irenicum, and thereby Edwards lost his church at Northampton in
the following year, but his courage ultimately saved CongregationaHsm
from the blight of rationalism.^ Had Tennent been logical, he would in
addition have denied the authority to judge the gracious experiences
of candidates for the ministry, but this would have been the surrender
of one of the main contentions of the evangeHcals.

In the year of the Irenicum, 1749, the synod of New York made
proposals of union to the synod of Philadelphia. These were cordially
received, but in the subsequent exchange of plans the old synod held
out stiffly for impossible concessions, while the new synod insisted upon
the annulment of the protestation of 1741, and it urged some recognition
of the revival as a glorious work of God. Thereupon the synod of Phila-
delphia declared that the protestation was made upon justifiable grounds,
and its members were not in the least convinced that the synod had taken
a wrong action in relation to it. So far from recognizing the revival
they suggested the propriety of the synod of New York pointing out
what was the work of God and what were the artifices of Satan in the
late religious appearances.''

The reply of the synod of New York, prepared by a committee of
which Gilbert Tennent was chairman, was framed to smooth the ruffled
spirits of the conservatives and continue the negotiations at a time when
the difficulties in the way of reunion appeared to be insuperable. The

' Gilbert Tennent, Irenicum, pp. 84, 99.

'Ibid., pp. 26, 27.

3 Dwight, Edwards, p. 298; Allen, Jonathan Edwards, p. 263.

* Records of the Presbyterian Church, pp. 237, 193, 239, 195, 242, 199, 202, 245, 205,

TRIUMPHANT EVANGELISM US

old synod maintained that the protestation, being made by individual
members, could not be disannulled by the synod itself. The new synod
saw in this answer the suggestion of a possible solution of the knotty
problem. It proposed that the protestation be disavowed as a sy nodical
act and be regarded henceforth as only the act of its signers as individuals.
In the interest of peace this concession was finally made. Then in the
assurance that union was at hand the synod of New York appointed its
meeting for the year 1758 at Philadelphia. A joint committee of both
bodies prepared a plan of union which was adopted by the synods, thus
happily ending the schism which had been made in 1741 by the irregular
expulsion of the active promoters of the revival. Great was the triumph
of Gilbert Tennent to be the first moderator of the newly organized
synod of New York and Philadelphia, holding its first meeting in his
church at Philadelphia.^

The plan of union was conceived in a spirit of fairness and friendliness.
In the debate between the New Sides and the Old Sides the former had
made a distinction between determinations of the synod in doctrine and
government which might properly be regarded as indispensable and
those in which forbearance might well be exercised toward tender con-
sciences. They did not think that agreement in every truth and duty
should be made a term of communion. This principle was adopted in
the plan. A protestation was defined in the agreement between the
synods as a solemn appeal from the bar of a judicatory to God against a
public determination of that judicatory with which the protestor's
conscience was offended. The implication was that the famous protes-
tation of 1 741, which was now disavowed as a sy nodical act, was alto-
gether irregular. Provision was made against intrusion, but it was
considered unbrotherly for a minister to refuse his pulpit to a regular
member of the synod. The examination of candidates for the ministry, -
as to their learning and experimental acquaintance with rehgion was com-
mitted to the presbyteries, and nothing was said of synodical examination
and college diplomas. This was a complete surrender to the original
contention of the presbytery of New Brunswick.^

In this agreement the members of the synod of New York reaffirmed
their adherence to their former sentiments in favor of the late religious
appearances, and the united synod made an unequivocal declaration in
favor of the evangelical principles which the New Sides had held forth.
When men bewail their sins, choose Christ for their Savior, and make it

^ Ibid., pp. 250, 251, 116, 267, 221, 275, 279, 224, 230, 284.
' Ibid., pp. 253, 286, 287.

ii6 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

the business of their Hves to please God and to do good to their fellow
men, this is to be acknowledged as a glorious work of God, even though
it be attended with unusual bodily commotions through the infirmity
of some of its subjects. But when persons judge themselves converted
because of visions, voices, and faintings and do not give the evidence
of a changed life, such persons are believed to be under a dangerous
delusion. The members of both synods engaged to promote such a work
of grace as their united testimony had thus described, to pursue spiritual
and awakening methods, and to cultivate harmony among themselves
and piety among the people. Though the Old Side ministers retained
their unfavorable opinion of the Great Awakening, they were now
thoroughly committed to its aims.^

The most eloquent testimony to the triumph of the evangelical
party is given by the increase in the number of ministers during the
period of separation. In 1741, at the time of the schism, there were
forty-three ministers in the synod of Philadelphia, including the absent
members.^ Of this number nine were excluded, but not more than seven
may properly be regarded as constituting the New Brunswick party. In
1745, when the synod of New York was organized, the Old Side synod
numbered twenty-five and the New Side synod twenty-two. Among
these twenty-two New Side ministers the New Brunswick party had
increased from seven to thirteen. ^ In 1758, when the reunion was
effected, the Old Side synod numbered twenty-two and the New Side
synod seventy-two, so that in the united synod the evangelical party
was more than three times as numerous as the conservative."*

This gain is not to be explained by a comparison of the Presbyterian
immigration from New England with that from Ulster, for upon this
basis a greater proportionate growth of the conservative church might
be expected. The Great Awakening itself supplies the only sufficient
answer. Many of the ministers of the synod of Philadelphia were old
men. The recruits from abroad were sometimes morally unfit, and
sometimes they were discouraged by the hard conditions of colonial life.
Much the same may be said of the candidates prepared in the schools
of the conservatives in the colonies. The losses of the synod were there-
fore great. On the other hand the young enthusiasts of the synod of
New York were in many instances soon worn out by their constant itiner-
ations and the heedless expenditure of their powers. .John Rowland,

' Records of the Presbyterian Church, pp. 287, 288. \^__

* Ibid., pp. 147, 153, 159- ^ H'id-, PP- i75> 232.

^ Ibid., pp. 228, 280, 285.

TRIUMPHANT EVANGELISM 117

William Robinson, Samuel Blair, and Samuel Davies all died young.
The New Side churches were active, growing, and full of young people.
The heroism of these leaders and others like them attracted splendid
young men to take their places. The synod therefore grew in spite of
its losses.'

Though the conservatives and evangelicals came together upon an
evangelical platform, the two parties still existed, with their sharply
contrasted programs. The conservative minority, which had proudly
waved the banner of synodical authority when it was in control of the
synod, now resisted that authority, and a permanent rupture was
prevented by practically allowing the conservatives to put their own
interpretation upon the Directory and the Articles of Union. The
center of disturbance now, as in 1741, was in the presbytery of Donegal,
where alone the conservatives were in the majority.^ The divisions in
the congregations in that region were not healed in 1758 and in some
instances continued to the close of the century. This long-drawn-out
bitterness is attributed by the historian of the presbytery of Donegal
to ''honesty of convictions and characteristic Scotch-Irish obstinacy."*

Though we cannot accept Gilbert Tennent's exaggerated representa-
tion of the essential agreement of the two parties, for there were funda-
mental differences between them, his action and that of the majority
demonstrate the fact that the Great Awakening was not so much a divid-
ing as a unifying force in the realm of religion, and, whether dividing or
unifying, it was a force. From the point of view of more developed
American Protestantism the failure to insist on regenerate church mem-
bership may be criticized, but the evangelicals must be praised for not
founding a separate church upon a too restricted test of what constitutes
regeneration. The two parties still existed. The one was Methodistic
in its emotional warmth and propagating zeal, in its advocacy of moral
reform, and in its humanitarian spirit. The other party was described
by non-Presbyterians as being quite the opposite in each of these par-
ticulars.'' No doubt there were endless shadings between them; but it
was the dominant evangelical party that gave the Presbyterian Church its

'Webster, A History of Ihc Presbyterian Church, p. 251; Hodge, Constitutional
History of the Presbyterian Church, Part II, p. 210.

^ Records of the Presbyterian Church, pp. 317, 319, 321, 330, 344, 347-50, 355-60,
366, 371, 372, 383-85-

3 West in Centennial Memorial of the Presbytery of Carlisle, I, 93.
* Smith, Life and Letters of James Osgood Andre'iv, p. 30.

ii8 TEE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

influence in colonial society. Though both sides, true to their Presby-
terian training, advocated mihtary defense, it was the New Side lead-
ers who were the more active in calling men to arms in times of crisis,
thus overcoming Quaker opposition.' Though both sides inherited an
aversion to the Church of England, it was the New Side propagandists
that came into actual collision with it in the several provinces.^ Further-
more, in New York they resented the diversion to a Church institution
of funds raised for a provincial college. It was their friend Whitefield
whose application for a college charter in Georgia was negatived by the
British authorities because he refused to accept a charter modeled upon
King's College.^ The synod, now controlled by the evangehcals, united
with the Congregationalists in concerted measures to oppose the imposi-
tion of bishops upon the American Colonies.'' The Anglican church
was looked upon as the handmaid of the Anglican government. It was
easy to transfer their resentments from the church to the government.
Gilbert Tennent extolled limited monarchy as the ideal government, for
as a Presbyterian he hated democracy and as a son of Ireland he dreaded
tyranny.s The Presbyterians loudly protested their loyalty to the king,
but they feared the designs of the English government to deprive them
of their constitutional liberty. When at last the Revolutionary War
came, the Presbyterian ministers of the Middle Colonies outnumbered
all others combined.^ They were still prevailingly New Side. It was
the Great Awakening that gave the church this splendid body of leaders.
The ministers had trained the people of their churches till they were an
intelligent, resolute, aggressive host for the defense of their ecclesiastical
and political privileges. At their schools the youth of the land had
imbibed evangelical principles in religion and an American program in
politics. It was the Great Awakening that swept into their churches
and welded together such seemingly discordant elements as were then
included in the population of the Middle Colonies.

' Franklin, Autobiography, p. 136; Gilbert Tennent, The Late Association for
Defence Encouraged, The Late Association Further Encouraged, a third publication of
182 pages on same subject. Sermon for Day of Fasting and Prayer, and Sermon before
Capt. VanderspiegeVs Company; Brainerd, The Life of John Brainerd, pp. 311-14;
West, op. cit., I, 71-85; Watson in Centennial Memorial of the Presbytery of Carlisle,
II, 167-69.

' Miller, Rodger s, p. 105.

3 Whitefield, A Letter to his Excellency Governor Wright.

< Miller, op. cit., p. 185.

5 Gilbert Tennent, A Sermon on Occasion of Victory, Funeral Sermon for Captain
Grant, and Danger of Persecution.

' Briggs, American Presbyterianism, p. 343.

TRIUMPHANT EVANGELISM 119

2. Triumphant evangelism in the Dutch Reformed Church. — There
is a remarkable parallelism between the history of the Church of Scot-
land in America and that of the Netherlandish church here, for both were
presbyterian in polity and Calvinistic in creed. But every difference
between the two parties in the Dutch church, the conservative and
formalist on the one hand and the evangelical and progressive on the
other, was carried to exaggeration. The development was slower in
the Dutch church than in the Presbyterian, though Frelinghuysen had
early introduced the new teaching.

Revivalists in the Dutch church, as in the Presbyterian, sought out
promising candidates for the ministry, superintended their studies, and
then united in practical measures to induct them into office without
actual violation of the rules of the church. The founder of ministerial
education among the Dutch was Domine Dorsius, a friend of Freling-
huysen and a neighbor of William Tennent, of the Log College.' Dorsius
prepared a number of young men for the Dutch ministry, the first of
whom, John Henry Goetschius,^ was to become after Frelinghuysen
the leading promoter of the Great Awakening among the Dutch. At
the completion of his studies a call was presented to the young candidate
by the churches of Queens county, Long Island. ^ They had waited
nine years in vain for a minister from Holland. Now Dorsius and
Frelinghuysen ordained Goetschius, and in April, 1741, he was installed
by Domine Freeman.''

Was the ordination of Goetschius valid ? Dorsius based his author-
ity in part upon the indefinite charge committed to him in Holland.
His main reliance was upon the teaching of Voetius "that in a country
where there was no synod or classis one minister might make another.''^
It had been the custom of the trading companies to look to the classis
of Amsterdam for ministers who were desired from time to time for the
foreign plantations. Out of this custom had grown the ecclesiastical
jurisdiction of this presbytery over all the foreign possessions of the
Netherlands. Even after New York was lost to the Dutch politically
this ecclesiastical relation continued.^ One or two German Reformed
ministers of Pennsylvania owned the jurisdiction of this classis over
them. 7 The classis did not think it possible that an adequate education

' Ecclesiastical Records of New York, p. 2701.

'Ibid., pp. 2684, 2833, 2837; Records of the Presbyterian Church, p. 131.

^Eccl. Rec. of New York, p. 2743. '' Ibid., p. 2752. s Ibid., p. 2782.

* Ibid., p. 2826; Gunn, Memoirs of the Rev. John H. Livingston, D.D., p. 82,

' Eccl. Rec. of New York, pp. 2478, 2484.

I20 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

could be obtained in the colonies, and therefore, with the greatest
reluctance, from time to time it appointed ministers in the colonies as
a committee of the classis.to examine and ordain candidates. But
each time the classis protested that the permission was not to be regarded
as a precedent, and that the request ought not to be made again. ^ The
classis had not shown a friendly disposition to Frelinghuysen and his
evangehcal associates. Therefore Dorsius and Frelinghuysen, both
independent and aggressively evangelical, exercised a power which
seemed to be granted by the acknowledged text-books and by the neces-
sity of the churches, and which was not without support in the canons
of Dordecht. This bold action and the fear of the loss of its jurisdiction
no doubt led the classis to authorize the ordination of a number of the
students of Dorsius, Goetschius, and other ministers. Most of these
young men were ardent supporters of the revival.

At first Goetschius was the admired pastor of all the elements of his
several congregations, but when his deep interest in spiritual religion
became apparent to all, and the work of conversion began as it had
under the preaching of Frelinghuysen in the Valley of the Raritan,
opposition closed in upon the young man from every side. Boel, of
New York, directed the course of the disaffected, as he had done in the
troubles of Frehnghuysen.^ Goetschius was a powerful and successful
preacher. He won the hearty support of the neighboring Presbyterian
pastors.'^ When Ritzema came from Holland to New York City, free
from bias, he was enabled to write to the classis in commendation of
Goetschius."! it was impossible for the classis to recognize the validity
of an ordination which was clearly an assumption of independence.
For the sake of peace Goetschius yielded to the authority of the classis,
which after interminable delays gave judgment that he was to be regarded
only as a candidate, and that after his call by any church outside of
Queens county the newly organized coetus was authorized to ordain him
as pastor. 5 He was promptly called to Hackensack, reordained, and
again New Jersey became the center of evangelical influence and minis-
terial training.^

The coetus, an inchoate classis or presbytery, was organized by a
number of the Dutch ministers in the year 1747, with the long-delayed
approval of the classis of Amsterdam.^ The main purpose of several of

' Eccl. Rec. of New York, pp. 2468, 2673.

' Ibid., pp. 2777, 2781, 2798, 2885. 5 Ibid., pp. 2842, 2939.

3 Ibid., p. 2882. ^ Ibid., p. 3027.

■> Ibid., p. 2913. ' Ibid., p. 2974.

TRIUMPHANT EVANGELISM 121

the pastors was to expedite the ordination of ministers trained in this
country. They hoped ultimately to transform the coetus into a classis
and to estabKsh a college in America. The Dutch in the two provinces
were increasing in numbers and wealth. The revival spreading among
them sent many young men to prepare for the ministry in the schools
established here and there in the studies of evangelical pastors. But
the classis became more and more reluctant to permit their ordination
unless they crossed the ocean to complete their studies in Europe. The
Dutch church order, the classis affirmed, required of candidates the
certificate of professors and two years' university residence.' When
finally the proposition of an American classis and college was presented
to the classis of Amsterdam and the synod of North Holland, the answer
was that an American classis was an impossibility, for what authority
could it possess in a land where the decisions of church courts were not
enforced by the civil government ? The thought of a Dutch college in
America was an "airy castle," for where was its treasury, they asked, and
what professors would teach in it ?^ In vain did Theodore Frelinghuysen,
son of the founder of the evangelical party, attempt to show that the
Presbyterians, belonging to the Reformed family of churches, maintained
their presbyteries and synods and had erected a college with the aid of
their British sympathizers.^

While the evangelicals and moderate conservatives associated them-
selves together in the coetus, the extreme conservatives, like Boel, of
New York, refused to join it, even when urged to do so by the classis
itself. They preferred to be in direct subordination to the classis,
alleging that the coetus would lead to independence. They asserted that
the church was in danger of being deluged with half-educated ministers."

' Ibid., pp. 2935, 2956.

^Meeting of coetus {ibid., pp. 3490, 3493); withdrawal of city churches {ibid.,
PP- 3495, 3497, 3499); Ritzema's reasons {ibid., pp. 3505, 3518, 3532); Dutch pro-
fessorship {ibid., pp. 3506, 3515-17, 3542, 3554, 3557, 3574, 3613); convention {ibid.,
PP- 3541, 3546, 3551, 3561); reply to petition of convention {ibid., pp. 3566, 3636,
3656).

ilbid., pp. 3610, 3648, 3672, 3674, 3738, 3739, 3750, 3751, 3761. Four sons
of the elder Frelinghuysen studied in this country and then went to Holland for the
required two years. Upon their return Theodore became the eloquent preacher at
Albany, and John succeeded his father in three of the Raritan churches, but two sons
died on the return voyage. John petitioned the classis to permit the ordination of
Henricus, his youngest brother, without requiring him to encounter the dangers of a
voyage, but the appeal was denied. Theodore, having gone to Holland as the repre-
sentative of the coetus and convention, also was lost on the return voyage. Henricus
was finally ordained by the coetus without the consent of the classis.

* Ibid., pp. 2798, 2999.

122 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

The actual danger of the Dutch church was its extinction through the
loss of its young people, since many congregations were unable to obtain
ministers from Holland. This party was increased in 1755 by the
opposers of the revival who then withdrew from the coetus in consequence
of the efforts to establish an American classis and college. They took
the name of the "Conferentie."^ Upon the apparent collapse of the
coetus several of the conservative ministers intruded upon the fields
of other pastors, responding to the calls of the disaffected. The sup-
pressed antipathy to the principles of the Great Awakening suddenly
burst into flame, and one of the most deplorable chapters in the history
of the Dutch church was opened.^ Thus the schism which was effected
in the Presbyterian Church in 1741 was delayed in the Dutch church
until 1755. In the one the opponents of the Great Awakening irregularly
excluded the active promoters of the revival; in the other the conserva-
tive minority withdrew and organized a rival body, though both the
coetus and the Conferentie professed subordination to the classis of
Amsterdam.

Nowhere was the struggle between the evangelicals and conserva-
tives more vital to the future character of the Dutch church than in the
collegiate churches of New York City. The conservatives emphasized
ritual and formal profession; they clung to the dependence on Holland
and the Dutch language. The evangelicals held the conception of
religion which was now dominant in the Presbyterian Church, and they
proposed the establishment of English preaching in the Dutch churches.
The consistory gave a call to an English minister in Holland, Archibald
Laidlie. His preaching in New York was so popular and attended by
so many conversions that the opposers of revivalism raised a hue and
cry against him. One of his co-pastors led the opposition. The con-
sistory was sued at law, but the decision of the court was against the
complainants. An overwhelming majority of the members sustained
the consistory. So great was the rage of many of the disaffected that
they went over to the Church of England.^

The lapse into formality and the loss of the yoimg were arrested to
such a degree that another English preacher was demanded. Dr.
JohnH. Livingston, a native of the province then pursuing postgraduate
studies at the University of Utrecht, was called. He had come under
the spell of the Great Awakening in his youth. Fervor, wisdom, and

' Eccl. Rec. of New York, pp. 3582, 3589, 3597.
=> Ibid., pp. 3540, 3548, 3608, 3624, 3644.
3 Gunn, op. cit., pp. 99-109, 131-55.

TRIUMPHANT EVANGELISM 123

courtesy made him the pacificator of the troubled churches of his faith.
The schism in the Dutch church lasted from 1755 to 1772. Livingston
brought a plan of union which the classis of Amsterdam had approved.
Every claim for which the coetus had so long struggled was at last
conceded. Under this plan a synod and five classes were organized to
meet the requirements of the now expanded Dutch church.' Livingston
was afterward the president of the college for which Theodore Freling-
huysen had died, of which Hardenbergh, the student of John
Frelinghuysen, was the founder.^ Livingston was the exponent of the
doctrines of the Frelinghuysens, the Tennents, and Whitefield, and he
lived to see these doctrines cherished throughout the communion.

Thus the Great Awakening saved the Dutch church from becoming
a rituahstic passageway to the Church of England. The revival as a
continuing force brought the Dutch church into its more natural position
of fraternal correspondence with the Presbyterian Church. Thus it
became charged with the same religious spirit, adopted the same political
tenets, and was able to take a pronounced stand in favor of the American
cause in the Revolutionary War. The wealth, influence, and strategic
position of the Dutch gave significance to this stand of their church.

3. Pietism versus conservatism in the German Reformed Church. —
The history of the German Reformed Church in the Middle Colonies is
that of the familiar contest between two parties, one pietistic and one
conservative, and the contest leading to schism.

In the year 1744 Domine Dorsius, of Neshaminy, in behalf of the
synods of Holland, entered into negotiations with the Presbyterian
synod of Philadelphia with a view to a union of Presbyterians, German
Reformed, and Dutch Reformed. The synod was now controlled by the
Old Sides, who were naturally adverse to organic union, but they did
express their willingness to join in measures of mutual assistance.^ As
late as 1750 the synod of North Holland was still favorable to the union
of the three Reformed bodies in America, but in 1751 it came to a differ-
ent determination. A report from the colonies had come to the synod
that "the Scotch presbytery," meaning the synod of Philadelphia, was

^ Ibid., pp. 197-205, 221-40.

' All five sons of T. J. Frelinghuysen died within ten years of the death of their
father. Only one, John, left a son. From him is descended the honored New Jersey
family. John established a theological school at Somerville, New Jersey. One of
his students, J. R. Hardenbergh, was his successor in the pastorate and was the first
president of Queens College, incorporated in 1770, and later known as Rutgers.
Messier, Memorial Sermons, pp. i8i-gi.

^Records of the Presbyterian Church, p. 174; Briggs, op. ciL, p. 284.

124 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

"not only entirely independent, but without forms of doctrine and litur-
gies." When it is remembered that the Old Sides were sticklers for
orthodoxy and precedent, it is ridiculous enough to read of their synod
"that neither now, nor ever, can one be sure of its opinions."' Dorsius
was an evangelical, but now German conservatives had the ear of the
Dutch authorities.^

These words of censure may have had an innocent origin in the
purpose of an active missionary not to permit the Holland authorities
to resign their responsibilities to a sister Reformed body in the colonies
which was still in its infancy and torn by strife. Whether the author
of the criticism or not, such a missionary was Michael Schlatter, who,
as representative of the synods of Holland, organized a German coetus
in 1747. He had but four associates in the service of a German Reformed
population of thirty thousand. His energy in organizing congregations
was remarkable. In Europe he collected a large contribution for the
support of the work in Pennsylvania, and upon his return to America
brought a number of young ministers, Otterbein, who was to become
the leader of the evangelicals, among them. Church people in England
became interested in his appeal and raised an immense sum for the
establishment of charity schools among the Germans. Schlatter was
made the superintendent of these schools. The published statements
of the English advocates of the scheme greatly ofifended the Germans of
Pennsylvania when they were reported in the province. The project
was believed to have a political bearing and to pave the way, in the pur-
pose of its managers, for the establishment of the Church of England.
The Germans spurned the foreign charity, following the lead of the
Dunker Saur rather than the hesitating encouragement given the schools
by Reformed and Lutheran pastors.^

Thus the spirit of conservatism among the Germans isolated this
people from both the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and the Enghsh church-
men and aroused that hostility to the English language and to education
which was long a barrier to the progress of culture in Pennsylvania.
Nevertheless the revival of religion was a powerful ferment among the
people, for Pietism was itself a German product. The Germans in
spite of themselves were also acted upon by EngUsh-speaking promoters
of the revival. In the coetus of the Reformed Church Otterbein was

' Eccl. Rec. of New York, pp. 2874, 3165.

* Dorsius broke down through drink and left the colonies about 1748. Corwin,
Manual, p. 244; Eccl. Rec. of New York, p. 3138.

3 Ibid., pp. 2960, 2984; Dubbs, The Reformed Church, German, p. 287.

TRIUMPHANT EVANGELISM 125

the leader of the Pietists against the more numerous conservatives.
In the rehgious destitution of the German people the partisans of Otter-
bein advocated sending out evangelists to win the people to Christ.
They were willing to waive the usual educational requirements if candi-
dates showed piety and ability. The conservatives placed all dependence
on the church school and the stated religious services. Upon the sug-
gestion of Superintendent Asbury, of the Methodist conference, and
under the leadership of Otterbein the class system was introduced into
a large number of German Reformed churches. These classes were like
the Methodist societies in the Church of England and the collegia
pietatis in the churches of the fatherland. The conservatives opposed
this movement strenuously and finally excluded one of the class leaders.
A new denomination, known as the United Brethren, was then organized.
Otterbein remained in the Reformed Church, but like Wesley he gave
ordination to the preachers of the new church. The coetus became
extremely conservative, while the United Brethren did a work among
the Germans like that of the Methodists among the English.' As in
other instances where the Great Awakenmg led to schism, the evangelistic
church in time became the more numerous.

4. Triumphant Pietism in the Lutheran Church. — The foregoing
brief account of the German Reformed suggests a similar treatment of
the Lutherans, for in Germany these denominations were sister state
churches, and in America their early history was strangely interwoven.

Muhlenberg is known as the father of the Lutheran Church in
America because he was the organizer of the denomination, not the first
Lutheran minister. He came to Pennsylvania in 1742 as a missionary
from the Orphan House at Halle. He found the group of congrega-
tions which he was to serve and the Lutheran population of the province
in general to be "needy emigrants and a people scarcely recovered from
long servitude."^ They had not the means to build churches and schools
and to support ministers. This was their own thought, at least, ar^d
accordingly they left the support of their missionaries to the fathers at
Halle. Muhlenberg was a Pietist in the true sense and earnestly sought
for the conversion of his hearers. He often found that the Lutherans
who had come under Moravian influence gave greater evidence of piety
than those who had indignantly resisted the Moravians; but he abhorred
the custom of some members of the brotherhood who intruded upon
Lutheran churches under the guise of Lutheran ordination. On the

' Ibid., p. 312.

* Jacobs, The Lutherans, pp. 218, 254. ,

126 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

other hand he was himself despised by the conservatives of his own
communion as a Pietist and a heretic from the scorpion nest at Halle.
Like Spener and Francke, he was loyal to the standards of his church,
but he sought to lead the people to a deeper spirituaUty and more
Christian conduct. He did not exclude the unconverted from the Lord's
table or from the eldership in the churches, but he strove earnestly for
their conversion. The destitute Lutherans of Pennsylvania began to
lift up their heads.

As churches were built for the congregations which originally called
Muhlenberg and schools were opened where grown youths learned their
letters, the young missionary began to extend his itinerations to the
pastor less congregations of his communion. Soon there arrived from
Halle additional pastors and catechists. In 1748 the synod, or minis-
terium, of Pennsylvania was organized by four missionaries from Halle,
one other German, and one Swedish minister, and a large number of
lay delegates from different parts of the province.' In 1760 the synod
was reorganized upon a broader basis than that of the Halle missionaries
and their closest friends. The master spirit was still Muhlenberg,
whose itinerations extended from New York to Georgia.^

While the founder of the Lutheran Church in America sharply criti-
cized the blurring of denominational lines as illustrated in the mission
of Zinzendorf in Pennsylvania, he had drunk too deeply of Pietism at
Halle not to show much of the same catholic spirit. He and the minis-
ters trained at Halle felt kindly toward Whitefield, for had not the
evangelist upon his first return to England taken collections for the
Lutheran Salzburgers? As late as 1770 the great orator preached in
Muhlenberg's church to a crowded auditory and then took occasion to
honor Francke, who had so greatly influenced his own career. The
relations of the Lutherans and the Episcopalians were peculiarly inti-
mate. It was reported to the bishop of London that there were sixty-
five thousand Church people in Pennsylvania, including forty thousand
Lutherans "who reckon[ed] their service the same as that of the Church."
Some of the Lutheran ministers, like General Muhlenberg, son of the
founder, accepted episcopal ordination, intending thereby not to leave
the Lutheran ministry but to obtain greater legal privileges in some of
the colonies.3

This emphasis upon a common Christianity, so generally character-
istic of the evangelicals of that period, was illustrated by the intercourse

' Jacobs, The Lutherans, p. 243.

' Ibid., p. 258. 3 Ibid., p, 283.

TRIUMPHANT EVANGELISM 127

of the Halle missionaries with other denominations. With Michael
Schlatter, superintendent of the German Reformed churches, Muhlen-
berg entered into hearty co-operation for the religious development of
the German settlers. Sometimes they held union services, as Freling-
huysen and Tennent had done at New Brunswick. Muhlenberg was
particularly friendly with the Tennents and other New Side Presby-
terians.*

Thus the men who gave character to the American Lutherans of the
eighteenth century demonstrated the possibility of uniting the culti-
vation of a rich liturgy with the prosecution of a warm-hearted evangel-
ism. While enduring hardship in the service of their own denomination
they were first of all Christians.

5. Methodism versus formalism in the Church of England.' — The Great
Awakening, as promoted by Whitefield and later by the Wesleyan mis-
sionaries from England, did not have the quickening effect upon the
Church of England in the colonies that Pietism, as promoted by Muhlen-
berg and other missionaries from Halle, had upon the sister ritualistic
church. Whitefield, like Spener and Francke in Germany, had not the
slightest desire to lead a separation from the church.^ He lived and
died a priest of the Church of England.^ Whitefield accepted the Thirty-
nine Articles in their literal and original meaning, in this differing from
the greater part of the clergy of his day. He was warmly attached to
the ritual, without ridiculously imposing it upon non-ritualistic congre-
gations whenever invited to preach in their meeting-houses. In the
cities of New York and Philadelphia and in the southern provinces he
contributed to the growth of the Presbyterian and Baptist denominations,
for great numbers of Church people were won to the acceptance of
evangelical doctrine and a stricter moral code because the evangelist was
one of their own clergy. Then, finding that these doctrines were opposed
by their own rectors, it was easy for numbers to follow the advice of
their spiritual awakener to seek stimulating ministrations wherever they
could be found.

The churchman thus undermined the power of the Church by putting
religion before mere organization, or, better, not Whitefield but the
clergy did this by failing to improve the supreme opportunity of their
time to fulfil their proper function and, incidentally, to attach the people

' Ibid., pp. 288, 289.

' Gledstone, George Whitefield, p. 219.

3 South Carolina Gazette, February 13, 1742; January 6, May 5, 1746; Whitefield,
Letter to his Excellency Governor Wright; Ravenel, Eliza Pinckney, pp. 21-24.

128 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

to their church. Whitefield does not give a favorable view of the rectors
of his time, yet the correspondents of the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel report that as the century advanced there was an improve-
ment in the character of appointments.^ Dissenting ministers, educated
in the colonies, who conformed, appear to have made the more efl&cient
missionaries among the English-speaking people. French and German
Reformed and Lutheran ministers, now finding themselves subject to
the English government and oppressed by poverty, felt the attraction
of the English national church.^ In Virginia the contemporaneous cor-
ruption of the English church and state was reflected in the life of the
clergy. ^'Davies exhorted the clergymen of the establishment to preach
the doctrines of the Thirty-nine Articles and, stimulated by the success
of the Presbyterians, to lend a hand in the reclamation of the province. ^
Later in the century a Virginia rector wrote to John Wesley that of
ninety-four ministers of the Church of England in the province ninety-
three appeared to be without "the power and spirit of vital religion."''
These Anglican clergymen in America looked to the English government
for the advancement of their interests. Their hostility to the Great
Awakening and their outspoken Tory sympathies led to the collapse of
their influence in the period of the Revolutionary War.s

At every period, however, there were clergymen here and there who
braved the scorn of their associates and defended the principles and
practices of the Great Awakening. When Edwards' exaltation of the
affections to the seat of honor in the religious life of thinking men had
become the common possession of Protestant America, there were not
wanting Episcopal clergymen who warmly accepted this philosophy.
They preached the fundamental doctrines of Whitefield and Wesley.
The low-church party shared with other parties in making the communion
which first erected a Protestant altar in the colonies a power again in
the spiritual training of the people.^

Whitefield had never attempted in the colonies to establish a society
within the church, much less a separate church, to perpetuate his influ-
ence. It was the genius of Wesley,, however, to multiply himself by the

^ Eccl. Rec. of New York, pp. 1551, 1609, 1883, 1892, 1899, 1906, 1909, 1917,
1951, 1991, 2014, 2096.

'Ibid., pp. 1559, 1816, 1861.

3 Davies, sermon on Duties, pp. 3, 4, 8-1 1.

4 Year of 1773. Tyerman, Wesley, III, 151.

s McConnell, History of the American Episcopal Church, pp. 180-89, 205-11. It
is convenient to cite this popular autlaor, but the text is based on wider reading.

* Ibid., p. 145.

TRIUMPHANT EVANGELISM 129

organization everywhere of Methodist societies. As early as 1765
Methodist famihes emigrated to New York, and after a time PhiHp
Embury began to preach. He was assisted by Captain Webb, who
founded a society at Philadelphia. In response to an appeal to Wesley
for help the conference in 1769 sent Boardman and Pilmoor to America.
They preached to throngs. In two years the membership reached three
hundred and sixteen.^ In 1770 Wesley wrote to Whitefield, then making
his last journey through the colonies, to beg him to encourage the
Methodist preachers.* Afterward Jonathan Bryan, Whitefield's friend,
wrote to Wesley that the evangelist's preaching was of unspeakable use
to many, but as Whitefield's ministry was mostly in the populous flistricts
the inhabitants of many parts were still in deplorable ignorance. Bryan
pleaded for teachers for these people. His words referred especially to
the Southern Provinces, and it was in them that the Methodist lay
preachers under the leadership of the heroic Asbury had the most aston-
ishing success. 5

The Methodist society thus established in the colonies was within the
Church of England, though condemned by the remnant of its clergy.
It was a living, expanding society in a dying, unyielding church. The
inevitable result followed, as in the Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, and
German Reformed denominations. In the period following the Revolu-
tionary War thousands of members had been deprived of baptism and
the Lord's Supper for years. Wesley saw but one way to prevent schism
in his American conference. The bishop of London had blindly refused
to ordain a Methodist preacher destined for the American states.'' Then
John Wesley exercised the right of an elder, as he had long conceived it,
to join with other elders of the Christian church in ordaining men as
ministers of the gospel for the Methodist societies in America. These
ministers, upon their arrival in America, were to ordain Asbury and other
lay preachers, making them elders like themselves. The superin-
tendents, Coke and Asbury, were given the title of bishop by the head-
strong Americans, but it was an episcopacy based upon presbyterian
ordination. 5 The success of Methodism was not altogether due to the

' Tyerman, op. cit.. Ill, 47. Pilmoor eventually became rector of St. Paul's.
Watson, Aytnals of Philadelphia, I, 455.

' Tyerman, op. cit., Ill, 60. ^ Ibid., Ill, 116.

* "It is doubtful if any single action of a bishop has ever been more fruitful for
evil than his refusal." — McConnell, op. cit., p. 170.

s John Wesley, assisted by other ordained ministers of the Church of England,
ordained Whatcoat and Vasey as presbyters, and he ordained Dr. Coke, who was
already a presbyter of the Church of England, as superintendent. Tyerman, op. cit.,
Ill, 426-38.

I30 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

felicitous union of appropriate organization with fervent evangelism.
Revivalism had already won the favor of the American people through
the preaching of Edwards, Whitefield, Tennent, Davenport, Davies,
and the Baptist evangelists. Asbury, at the head of his traveling
preachers, entered into the apostolic succession of these American bishops.

6. The changing policy of the Moravian brotherhood. — Episcopacy and
Methodism suggest that the Moravians be considered next in order.
In Germany the Moravian Church had participated in the pietistic
movement; in England, through Wesley, it was one of the sources of the
Methodist Revival; in America Zinzendorf's itinerating "fishers" were
successful propagators of the Great Awakening. No sooner had the one
hundred and twenty immigrants settled in their frontier town of Bethle-
hem than they began to send out a very considerable portion of their
number as itinerant evangelists. By 1748 there were thirty-one centers
of such labor. One of these circuits embraced eighteen stations, others
less. These itinerants from Bethlehem reached the extremities of the
country in Georgia and Maine. The stupendous sacrifices of the
Moravians in men and money were made possible by their zeal and semi-
communistic system.^

In spite of the heroism of the brotherhood time wrought changes in
its policy. Conferences, still called Pennsylvania synods, were held as
late as 1748, although union with other denominations was no longer
possible, for Muhlenberg had come to organize the Lutherans, and
Schlatter, the German Reformed. The ideal of unity was noble, but
the form of unity attempted was chimerical. This method of thought
and activity was after a time condemned by the Moravians themselves
and was abandoned. The Unity of the Brethren no longer in their
thought included this Lutheran church member and that Reformed, for
the Moravian brotherhood was now conceived of as quite a separate
church. Their economic system made actual incorporation with them
difficult. Even after this was given up their sufferings in the French
and Indian War and the weight of debt which came upon them after the
death of Zinzendorf hindered their evangelistic work and growth in
numbers. Then the fear of being charged with proselytism drove them
to the opposite extreme from their early practices, and they refused to
employ the legitimate means by which the Methodists became a national
blessing.^ Yet by their Nazareth Hall they shared with other evangelical
bodies in the honor of being pioneers in education.^ Their train of

' J. T. Hamilton, The Moravian Church in the United States, p. 456.
* Ibid., p. 469. 3 Ibid., p. 466.

TRIUMPHANT EVANGELISM 131

Indian mission stations from Connecticut to Alabama tells a wonderful
story of sacrifice and success, of opposition and outrage. As the Moravi-
ans failed to do the work among the Germans which the Methodists
were doing among the English, and as the so-called Sectarians were
quite unable to meet the religious needs of the Germans on account of
\their peculiar and extra-Christian rules and usages, this task fell to new
denominations not handicapped by outworn regulations and customs.
Therefore the mission of the Moravians in part fell to the United Breth-
ren, representing a union of progressive elements in the German Reformed
and Mennonite denominations, and the Evangelical Association, another
German Methodist church.

7. The Baptists as revivers oj the revival. — The Baptist denomination
was like the Moravians and the German Sectarians in that it was without
the prestige of the national churches of the Old World transplanted in
the New World. Even in Rhode Island it was not an established church,
for it condemned the union of church and state. Everywhere in the
colonies Baptists were looked upon as irregulars, by the conservatives
at least, and classed with the Quakers of Pennsylvania and the Separates
of Connecticut. At the present time the numerical strength of this com-
munion is two or three times that of any of the national churches or of
any denomination which possessed in the colonies the exceptional privi-
leges of an established church. This change in relative popular following
is a result of the Great Awakening. No denomination therefore owes
more to the world-wide quickening than the Baptist, yet the churches of
this communion, more generally than the Presbyterian and Congrega-
tional, in the beginning held aloof from the movement. The wonderful
expansion of the denomination, when the mantle of Whitefield, Tennent,
and Davenport had fallen upon its evangelists, came later than the period
usually assigned to the Great Awakening. Baptist success belonged
chiefly to the period following the Presbyterian revival in Virginia and
antedated the early Methodist successes already recounted.

The baptism of fire that transformed this denomination was never-
theless a part of the Great Awakening, however weak were the Baptists
in the beginning, and however hesitating was their adoption of the new
methods. In the year 1740 and long afterward the Dunkers out-
numbered in Pennsylvania the English-speaking Baptists.' In the
Middle Colonies, as in other sections of the country, the Baptists
were divided between Calvinists and Arminians, the former known as

■ Benedict, A General History of the Baptist Denomination, II, 430-36; Vedder,
A History of the Baptists in the Middle States, p. 75.

132 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

Particular Baptists and the latter as General Baptists. While the Presby-
terians stormed over rules, precedents, and psalm-singing, the Baptists
were no less at variance with each other over their interpretations of
Scripture. Their churches were in a ferment over such questions as the
Sabbath, laying on of hands, foot- washing, terms of communion, and
psalm-singing.' It is true that a Httle group of five churches as far
back as the year 1707 had organized the association of Philadelphia,
the earliest Baptist association in the colonies. In stating the number
as five the congregations at Pennypack and Philadelphia were treated
as one church, the only one in the province. The others were scattered
from Welsh Tract in Delaware and Cohansey in south New Jersey to
Middletown in northeastern New Jersey.^ Though the number of
churches had increased to about twelve in 1740, what was that com-
pared with the strength already attained in the Middle Colonies by the
Presbyterians?^ In 1742 the Philadelphia Confession was adopted.
This confession was the model formula for associations subsequently
organized. It was based upon the Westminster Confession and put the
Baptists of the Middle Colonies in essential agreement with the foremost
promoters of the revival.^ While the Great Awakening itself brought a
new subject of contention into the churches, it did not lead to a disrup-
tion of the association, for that body, being a league of independent
churches, did not assume the legislative and judicial powers of a unified
church, the assumption of which had led to the schism in the synod of
Philadelphia. The Great Awakening turned the minds of the people
from petty subjects of debate to questions of moment. The members
of the churches who caught the spirit of the world movement gained a
breadth of view and an evangelizing zeal which they had not known
before.

While the memory of past wrongs tended to isolate the Baptists,
religious fervor was native to many of their leaders and people. The
Welsh preachers among them possessed in goodly measure the Keltic
gifts which made Christmas Evans pre-eminent among British evangel-
ists.s When Whitefield heard Jenkin Jones preach he pronounced him
to be the only Philadelphia pastor who spoke "feelingly and with
authority."^ One of the young men baptized by Jenkin Jones was

' Vedder, A History of the Baptists in the Middle States, pp. 62, 66; Benedict, op^
cit., I, 581.

' Ibid., I, 595; Vedder, op. cit., p. 90.

3 Benedict, op. cit., II, 508-17. 5 Benedict, op. cit., I, 587.

■i Vedder, op. cit., p. 91. ^ Whitefield, Journal, No. 6, p. 35.

TRIUMPHANT EVANGELISM 133

Oliver Hart, who was a hearer of Whitefield and caught much of the
spirit of pastor and evangeUst. Hart went to Charleston and was the
leader of the Baptists in their remarkable expansion in South Carolina
after the death of Chanler, Whitefield's friend. Hart and William Ten-
nent, a Presbyterian minister and son of William Tennent, of Freehold,
were foremost supporters of the Revolution and itinerated in the interior
of South Carolina under the appointment of the Committee of Safety,
stirring up the people to the support of the patriot cause.'

Baptist history is continually interwoven with Presbyterian in the
period of the Great Awakening and until the Revolutionary War.
Abel Morgan, though educated by an Old Side Presbyterian minister,^
was the first Baptist who was inspired by Whitefield's example to go
upon extensive evangehstic journeys.^ Hopewell, memorable for the
revival under the leadership of Rowland, had also a Baptist church, in
which were great ingatherings in the years 1747, 1764, and i766.-» The
period frequently represented as deistic and religiously dead, when the
people were distracted by war and poHtical debate, was really marked by
phenomenal revivals in a number of Baptist and Presbyterian churches.
But it is true that there was no general religious excitement like that of
1740. John Gano, of Hopewell, a young Presbyterian, when troubled
upon the subject of baptism after his conversion, resorted to one of the
Tennents for advice. Tennent told him to think for himself and not to
let the devil destroy his usefulness by indecision. Gano became one of
the most eminent Baptist ministers of his generation. Few evangeUsts
extended their itinerations over so many colonies and with such con-
spicuous success. Directly after his ordination in 1754 he was sent to
South Carolina upon the solicitation of Oliver Hart. Whitefield was one
of his hearers when he preached his first sermon at Charleston. In
South Carolina the piety and eloquence of Gano were remarkably fruitful.
Afterward he was the first pastor of the church in New York, was a
chaplain in the Revolutionary army, and ended his career in Kentucky,
where, though far advanced in years and partially paralyzed, he partici-
pated in the great Kentucky Revival, preaching with astonishing power.
John Gano, orator and itinerant, Hnked together the Great Awakening
and the Kentucky Revival.^ One of the ministers whom Gano accom-

' Benedict, op. cit., II, 139, 323-30.

= Ibid., I, 564; Foote, A Sketch of the Life of Rev. Abel Morgan. In the Minutes
of the Trenton Baptist Association, 1883.

3 Whitefield, Journal, No. 6, p. 36. * Benedict, op. cit., I, 573-

s Ibid., II, 306-23.

134 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

panied to Virginia before his ordination was Miller, of Scotch Plains.
Miller was converted under the preaching of Gilbert Tennent. He,
like Tennent, was a man of ardent piety who made friendships for life.^
The career of another of the New Jersey pastors, Carman, of Hightstown,
illustrates the ferment of the time. In his youth he was baptized into a
Baptist church. In manhood he joined the Quakers. Then he went to
the New Side Presbyterians. Finally he returned to the Baptists and
was ordained to the ministry.^ In the region that was profoundly stirred
by Frelinghuysen and the itinerants of the presbytery of New Brunswick
there were large accessions to Baptist churches. From this region
Baptist evangelists went forth to proclaim the gospel in the most distant
provinces.

In the neighboring province of Pennsylvania the Baptist success
in New Jersey had no counterpart. Though the labors of the Dunkers
were rewarded by frequent revivals among their fellow Germans, the
regular Baptists had no rapid growth.^ The sons of Ireland with few
exceptions knew but one way to become religious, and that was the
Presbyterian way. In New York, however, the growth of the Baptists
was rapid, for into that province there was pouring a population of the
dissatisfied and enterprising from New England. There was discrimina-
tion still in parts of New England against the Baptists and Separates,
or Strict Congregationalists. The Separates fraternized with the Bap-
tists, and the greater part coalesced with them. The remaining Sepa-
rates in course of time reunited with the regular Congregationalists. It
was in such a population that Drake, of New Canaan, first a Separate and
then a Baptist, itinerated till he had gathered a church of nearly six
hundred members scattered on both sides of the Hudson River. This
unwieldy body was divided into five distinct churches.-* Vermont, the
Hudson Valley, and central New York were overrun by these immigrants
from the older colonies. Baptist sentiment was strong among them,
and frequent revivals built up the httle Baptist churches which were
established in the new country .^

We have seen that the Baptist preachers of New Jersey were to a
considerable extent the heirs of Whitefield and the Log College men,
and that the pioneers of the same denomination in New York were
continuing the mission and methods of Davenport and the founders of
the Shepherd's Tent. Like all other promoters of the Great Awakening,

' Benedict, op. cit., I, 576.

» Ihid., I, 575. " Benedict, op. cit., I, 549-

3 Vedder, op. cit., p. 75. s Vedder, op. cit., pp. 33-37.

TRIUMPHANT EVANGELISM 135

they were described as purveyors of ignorance. It is true that they did
not require a college diploma or its equivalent of candidates for the
ministry, not unwisely barring from the pulpit men whose spiritual gifts
and knowledge of the world fitted them for great usefulness in the minis-
try. Nevertheless the Baptists of the Middle Colonies who came under
the influence of the New Side Presbyterians caught their enthusiasm for
education. Private academies upon the model of the Log College were
set up by several of the pastors.' The most famous of these was Eaton's
academy at Hopewell, New Jersey, founded in 1756, where many
preachers and representatives of other professions received their educa-
tion. The Hopewell Academy stands in the same relation to Brown
University as the Log College to Princeton.^ James Manning, after
studying at Hopewell and later at Princeton, where he was graduated,
founded the College of Rhode Island in 1765.3 Rhode Island was
selected for the location of the college because Baptists were in control
of the government in that colony, where alone a charter could be
obtained. The prime movers in the founding and later in the endowing
of the college were members of the association of Philadelphia. Man-
ning also brought the First Baptist Church of Providence into the Cal-
vinistic fold. Others of the Arminian order followed the example of
the mother church. Thus the energies born of the Great Awakening
led to the establishment of the first Baptist college and the practical
unification of the churches under the banner of Calvinism.''

The itinerant evangelists of the Philadelphia association, such as
Hart, Thomas, Miller, Van Horn, and Gano, achieved their greatest
successes in Virginia and the CaroUnas. In this they were like their
predecessors, the New Side Presbyterians. Before the coming of these
traveling preachers of the Middle Colonies and of Shubal Stearns, a

' As early as 1722 Abel Morgan, then pastor at Philadelphia, proposed to the
association the establishment of an academy, hoping to obtain the assistance of Thomas
HoUis, a London Baptist and the most liberal benefactor of Harvard College. Mor-
gan's study at Middletown was a school, and so was that of Jenkin Jones, his successor
at Philadelphia. Under the leadership of Jones the association raised money for a
Latin grammar school at Hopewell under Isaac Eaton. Morgan Edwards, the suc-
cessor of Jones, was the prime mover in the founding of the College of Rhode Island,
Brown University. Keen, The First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, pp. 27-48.
Rev. E. Kinnersly, the assistant of Jones, became a professor in the college at Phila-
delphia, and a later pastor of the same centur>% Dr. W. Rogers, was also a professor in
the university. Benedict, op. cit., I, 588.

'Ibid., I, 573; 11,449-

3 Ibid., II, 443-48; Vedder, op. cit., pp. 207-12. * Ibid., p. 93.

136 TEE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

Separate Baptist of Connecticut, there were General and Particular
Baptists in Virginia, but their influence was a negligible quantity until
ministers commissioned by the Philadelphia association adjusted their
difficulties and filled them with evangelistic zeal. The church at
Opeckon, after the visit of Stearns, went to such lengths of New Light
emotionaHsm that some of the members lodged a complaint with the
association of Philadelphia. Miller was sent to adjust the new difficulty,
but he was so deUghted with the experiences of these warm-hearted
Christians that he expressed the wish that his own church-members were
like them.^ Thomas, prepared at Hopewell Academy, came to lead the
regular Baptists of Virginia. Though he was assaulted by mobs, ruffians
even attempting to take his life, the people came from great distances
to hear him. The regulars, however, did not suffer the same degree of
persecution as did the Separates, for some of their meeting-houses
were licensed, and they were thought to be less enthusiastic than the
Separates.^

The religious, social, and political revolution in Virginia and adjoin-
ing provinces was begun by the New Side Presbyterians of the Middle
Colonies; the Philadelphia association of Baptists made a larger contri-
bution, while in the end the Separate Baptists, originating in Connecticut,
who finally united with the regular Baptists, furnished the greater num-
ber of voices, votes, and muskets. Shubal Stearns was a minister of the
Separates who became a Baptist. He was without college training,
like most of the Separates, because the Shepherd's Tent had been
abolished by law, yet he was acquainted with men and books. Believing
in the immediate teaching of the Spirit, he was strongly impressed that
there was an important work for him in the distant west. He therefore
led a bit of a colony to Opeckon, in the Valley of Virginia, and afterward
to North Carolina. In 1755 a Separate Baptist church with sixteen
members was constituted at Sandy Creek. This was the beginning of
the Separate Baptist denomination in the South.^

To the surrounding population the principles and practices of the
newcomers were grotesquely novel. To these North CaroHnians the
performance of certain outward duties was the sum of religion, for they
were unacquainted with the ideas of conviction and conversion. Stearns's
voice was so pathetic and his glance so penetrating that stories were told
in that country of his power to enchant. Young men, drawn by curiosity

' Semple, A History of the ... . Baptists in Virginia, pp. 375-77; Benedict,
op. cit., II, 23-28.

^Ibid., II, 28-36; Semple, op. cit., 378-85. ^ Ibid.,pp. 13-16.

TRIUMPHANT EVANGELISM 137

to his out-of-door meetings, fell to the ground and afterward became
ministers. The sixteen members of the little church were increased to
six hundred and six. The churches which grew out of this revival at
Sandy Creek formed an association in 1758, the third organization of the
kind, for the missionary labors of Oliver Hart in South Carolina had
led to the formation of a second in 1751.'

Daniel Marshall was a lay preacher in the little church at Sandy
Creek. He had been a deacon in New England, but he was set on fire by
the preaching of Whitefield and became an exhorter. Believing that the
millennium was about to dawn and that the Indians were the lost tribes of
Israel, he penetrated the wilderness for their conversion without scrip or
purse. He was rewarded with some degree of success, but war necessi-
tated his removal. Then he joined Stearns in Virginia, became a Baptist,
was licensed to preach, and later was ordained to the ministry. Marshall
organized the first Separate Baptist church in Virginia. Among his
converts were men of influence.^ Then he moved to South Carolina
where his one church became an association of Separate Baptist churches.
At last he went to Georgia and established the Baptist cause there. Like
many other Baptist preachers, Marshall suffered for his adherence to
the Revolution.^

The spread of the new evangel was like fire in the Old Dominion.
The men in power took alarm lest the old order of things should go
down in a wave of democracy. Several preachers were arrested in
Spottsylvania county as disturbers of the peace, for it was charged
that they could not meet a man on the road without ramming a text of
Scripture down his throat. While in prison at Fredericksburg, Waller
and his associates preached through the grates to the people outside.
The discharge, which came after long waiting, issued in a popular tri-
umph. Now the preachers of water and fire carried their crusade into
the older counties, for appeals came to them from all quarters. Mobs
broke in upon their meetings. They suffered much as the Methodists
were suffering in England. Yet their persecution won them friends in
all classes. Larger and larger numbers of the sober common people
were convinced by the burning words of the Baptist preachers and by
their Uves and trials, which attested to the truth of their teaching.^

The unlettered preachers who were thrown into the foul jails of the
eighteenth century because they preached the gospel to the poor with

' Benedict, op. cit., II, 366-68; Vedder, op. cit., pp. 95-97.
* Sample, op. cit., pp. 19-24; Benedict, op. cit., II, 330-39.
3 Ihid., II, 350-55; Semple, op. cit., pp. 16-19. '' Ibid., pp. 24-42.

138 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

such alarming success turned upon their tormentors and charged the
ministers of the estabhshment with ignorance of true reHgion and with
the violation of the rules of morahty. Whatever the measure of truth
in these accusations, the accusers believed them and so did their hearers.
More and more the established church was felt to be an appanage of
monarchy, but the common people were becoming passionately repub-
Ucan. The dissenters became so strong that the Revolutionary leaders,
even when churchmen and members of the old aristocracy, were com-
pelled to make concession after concession to them/ The overthrow of
the established church was the victory of the Baptists and Presbyterians.
The regular Baptists supported the more numerous and aggressive
Separate Baptists in their warfare on privilege. After maintaining
friendly relations for years they entered into union in the year 1787.^

Thus we have seen that in the Baptist denomination the supporters
of the revival were few in 1740 and its critics many, but the revival
gave its supporters such dynamic power that the denomination fairly
leaped into a position of influence. Impelled by the Great Awakening,
the churches united under the creed of Whitefield and the leading pro-
moters of experimental religion in the colonies. It was the Great
Awakening too that bestirred the Baptists to set up schools of higher
learning. Those who opposed these changes were either convinced of
their error or left far behind to stagnate and disappear. Those who felt
the deepest, who threw discretion to the winds by giving full vent to their
emotions, but who were at the same time thoroughly genuine, making
every sacrifice for their religion, and who united fervor to the strictest
morality then known — the Separate Baptists — made the greatest con-
tribution to triumphant evangelism. The history of this communion,
as of all others considered in this chapter, illustrates the power of religion
in society when belief, made red-hot by feeling, becomes faith.

' Semple, op. cit.. pp. 43-54; Benedict, op. cit., II, 64-86.
* Semple, op. cit., p. 99,

CHAPTER X
CONCLUSION

The purpose of this concluding chapter is to give a summary view
of the boundaries, characteristics, and results of the evangelical revival,
with special reference to its course in the Middle Colonies.

The Great Awakening has sometimes been represented as a tempest
of ungoverned passions that swept over the colonies, leaving wreckage
everywhere in the alienations and divisions in families, neighborhoods,
and churches, the undermining of cherished institutions, and a relapse
into indifference, debauchery, and irrehgion.' An impartial study of
the period, however, free from partisan and denominational bias, leads
to a very different conclusion. It is that thousands and thousands^
were given by the Great Awakening a new view of life's values, and
from this view were derived new energies and new sympathies which
gave direction not only to the subsequent career of these thousands but
to the development of the whole American people. It was more than
wave on wave of excitement; it was a transforming process in the nation's
life.

The background of the international revival, of which the Great
Awakening was a part, was the decadent civilization of the eighteenth
century. The trend of the age was away from reUgion, away from the

' This is the burden of Charles Chauncy's Seasonable Thoughts. Chauncy was
in sentiment a Universalist and was a particular friend of Mayhew, who was of pro-
nounced Unitarian views. See Bradford's Life of Dr. Mayhew. F. M. Davenport, in
his Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, is led astray by the exaggerations of Chauncy.
A reading of the two volumes of the Christian History, consisting of sober accounts by
pastors of New England churches which came under the powerful influence of the
revival, would correct an unfavorable view, but Professor Davenport seems not to
have consulted these testimonies of the most eminent and pious ministers of New
England.

' President Davies, of Princeton, referring to the power of the gospel in his student
days, says: "I have seen thousands at once melted down under it, all eager to hear as
for life, and scarcely a dry eye to be seen among them. Thousands still remain
shining monuments of the power of divine grace in that glorious day" (Wesbter, A
History of the Presbyterian Church, p. 550). Chapell, in The Great Awakening of 1740,
gives an estimate of fifty thousand conversions in the Great Awakening, but the pres-
ent writer makes no estimate, finding no definite basis for such attempt.

139

I40 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

ideality, strenuousness, and rigor of a former time. A new period of
moral laxity, religious indifference, and philosophic revolt had opened
in Europe. These influences were quickly felt in the colonies, for every
window was open toward the home lands, but there was Httle communica-
tion of ideas between the colonies. Though the colonies differed greatly
from each other in their religious conditions, there were causes of religious
decline in all peculiar to colonial life.

What was to be done to stem the tide of irreligion ? The word " con-
servatism" sums up the answer of the majority of the sincerely religious.
The conservatives of each denomination revered their own particular
creed as the creation of a superior race of men, and therefore as a finality.
Several of these denominations were national churches in the Old World.
Therefore every reforming movement or spirit of change had to make
headway against racial prejudices and veneration of ancestral faith.
The customs of the past were invested with sanctity. Leaders sought to
quarantine their people from the contagion of change. But the enthusi-
asm of the fathers could not be reproduced. The religion of the sons
was without vitality and power.

Then it was that primitive Christianity sprang up in different parts
of the world almost spontaneously, though generally there was an influ-
ence traceable to German Pietism. In the new teaching emphasis was
not placed upon an inherited and formal profession, or upon the magic
eflEicacy of ceremony, but upon an inner experience with its new passion
for the service of God through the service of man. The seat of rehgion
passed back from the head to the heart, and religion became again a
force.

The Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies had several distinct
sources. One of them was German Pietism. The revival at German-
town in 1722 may be selected somewhat arbitrarily as the date of the
beginning of the Great Awakening among the Germans. Most assuredly
the ministry of Frelinghuysen was an important source. His first
ingathering in 1726 may be selected as the beginning of the Great
Awakening among the Dutch. The establishment of the Log College
in 1726, followed by the revivals of its early graduates in 1729 and 1732,
was the third source, ranking second to none in the history of the Great
Awakening in the Middle Colonies. This was the beginning of the
revival among the Presbyterians. The Edwards revival of 1734 in its
influence on New England men in the Middle Colonies was another
source, evidenced by the revival at Newark in 1739. This influence in
the Middle Colonies was cumulative, following and strengthening the

CONCLUSION 141

earlier evangelical influences. The establishment of the Holy Club
at Oxford and the coming of the Methodist evangehst to the Middle
Colonies in 1739 were the fifth source of the Great Awakening in this
section. It was then that the various streams united into a mighty
river, a flood of flame, which swept over the country.

The name "Great Awakening" was especially appropriate to the
Whitefield revival, which became powerful in the Middle Colonies and the
"coast region of the far southern provinces, and then in 1740 burst into
astonishing flame in New England. A characteristic feature of the
evangelical revival in this and in all lands was religious excitement,
more intense than at any previous time since the Puritan Revival, and
more widely extended than in any other religious movement since the
Reformation. Waves of feeUng, comparable to that seen in war or
financial panic or political crisis, swept from community to community.
The same phenomenon had appeared in the earlier Edwards revival,
which began at Northampton and spread through western Massachu-
setts and Connecticut. Accordingly the name "Great Awakening"
was applied in New England to these two waves of religious excitement.
The subsequent Presbyterian and Baptist revivals in the South, the
one beginning at Hanover in 1742 and the other at Sandy Creek in 1755,
were in close dependence upon these earlier revivals and were quite as
remarkable. Therefore they must be included in the four great revivals
of the Great Awakening.

But the name must not be Umited to the four most widespread excite-
ments. Other revivals mentioned in the list of distinct sources of the
Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies were certainly parts of it.
There were many revivals in the Middle Colonies and in other sections,
later than the Whitefield revival, which must be included, for they were
all parts of the new religious quickening. Some were as late as the sur-
prising outburst at Easthampton, Long Island, in 1764, under the
pastorate of Samuel Buell.^ Recognition must also be given to the early
successes of the Methodists before the Revolutionary War. Some of the
revivals of the various denominations were quite as phenomenal, though
circumscribed in extent, and some were quite as important in their
ultimate results as were the four great revivals. The Great Awakening
is therefore best defined, not as successive waves of reUgious excitement,
but as an intercolonial evangelical movement, part of the Methodist
Revival in the empire and part of the world-wide Evangelical Revival.

' Buell, A Faithful Narrative of the Remarkable Revival of Religion in the Congre-
gation of Eastliamplon on Long Island.

142 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

Whether the Great Awakening is conceived of as a remarkable
effusion of the Holy Spirit, borrowing the description of its promoters,
or as quickened religious activity, it was followed by a period of compara-
tive stagnation. This first came to New England, then to the Middle
Colonies, and finally to the South at the beginning of the Revolutionary
War. When Whitefield gave a motto to the soldiers who sailed away
with his friend Pepperrill to take Louisburg,^ the significance of his act
was that the New Englanders were now for a full half-century to turn
their minds away from the exclusive attention to the affairs of religion
which had occupied them during the progress of the revival. The
earlier expeditions against the French did not command the same inter-
est in the Middle Colonies that they did in New England, but the French
and Indian War, the fierce debate with England, and the Revolutionary
War combined with previous causes of religious decline to retard the
progress of evangelism in the Middle Colonies, and finally in the whole
country. There was, however, no section without occasional religious
revivals. As a movement the evangelical revival never for a moment
ceased to exist and to exert a powerful influence.

Having seen that the fundamental principle of the movement was the
necessity of conversion and that the most striking characteristic was
religious excitement, and having defined the boundaries in time, there
remains to set in array other distinguishing marks of the Great Awaken-
ing. From the doctrine of the new birth there logically followed the
belief in the divine guidance of the converted person, an assistance akin
to inspiration. Evangelicals did not believe that their unaided intelli-
gence could properly interpret the Bible, and in this they approached
the Quaker position.^ This rehance on divine guidance sometimes led
to a whimsical following of impulses, impressions,^ and the lot.'' This

' Billingsley, Life of the Rev. George Whitefield, p. 245.

^ Timothy Allen, for declaring "that the Bible could not, of itself, or by any man's
efforts, do the unregenerate sinner any more good than the reading of an old almanac,"
was deposed from the Congregational ministry in 1741. Webster, op. cit., p. 584;
Fox, Journal, p. 72.

3 Guidance through impulses and impressions constantly appear in the writings
of Quakers, Pietists, Moravians, and Methodists. There were also Calvinists, like
Davenport and Barber, who held this notion before coming under the influence of
Whitefield. Jonathan Edwards opposed this dangerous tendency; his attitude toward
this question became dominant among American Calvinists. Yet there were surpris-
ing instances of its recurrence, as when the learned Morgan Edwards, of Philadelphia,
relying on a strong presentiment, prophesied in a sermon that he would die in the
year 1770, but he lived till 1795. Keen, The First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, p. 4g.

^ Whitefield reproved Wesley for relying on the lot when he published a sermon
against Calvinism. The Moravians employed the lot, and from them the early
Methodists borrowed the custom. Tyerman, Wesley, I, 323.

CONCLUSION 143

extreme tendency in Whitefield and Davenport was soon corrected, but
it has survived in certain circles to the present time.

To a measurably different attitude toward spiritual illumination
from that entertained by conservatives was added a strikingly different
attitude toward creeds. The evangelicals accepted the creeds of their
respective denominations, but the tendency was to emphasize the
fundamental agreement of the leading Protestant bodies and to treat
the Bible alone as authoritative. They had closer sympathy with
evangeUcals of other denominations, respectively, than with opposers
of the revival in their own. Therefore Whitefield was content to see
his converts leave his own communion and join the Presbyterians and
Baptists.' He was so true an exemplar of the spirit of this world move-
ment that he founded no new sect.* It was only necessity, laid upon
Wesley by conservatives, that drove him to a different course against
his will.3 Evangelism was a unifying principle in that it minimized
accidental differences, while conservatism magnified them. Yet revival-
ism eventually led to various restatements of religious philosophy to
give more adequate expression to the principles it had brought into
prominence.''

It is sometimes represented that the unprecedented success of the
Great Awakening, in the face of bitter opposition and in spite of serious
defects in itself, was due to the Calvinistic doctrines preached through-
out the colonies. 5 No doubt individual experiences of thousands were
molded by the Calvinistic teaching in which they were drilled and by the
form of that teaching employed by Whitefield, Tennent, and other lead-
ing evangelists. But the successful propagators of the revival in the
colonies were not all Calvinists. The Moravians, Lutherans, and Metho-
dists shared in it. When regarded as a world movement the success of
the revival is clearly shown not to have been dependent upon any par-
ticular form of religious philosophy.

A more insistent question than creed was polity. Church govern-
ment, as well as civil government, has its constitutional questions, and
these were hotly debated in the period of the Great Awakening. The

' Whitefield, Journal, No. 6, pp. 23, 39.

* New England Weekly Journal, Januar>- 8, 1 740; Whitefield, Journal, No. 6, p. 40.

3 Tyerman, op. cil., Ill, 436.

•* The works of Jonathan Edwards and Joseph Bellamy are illustrations. Bellamy,
True Religion Delineated, or Experimental Religion.

s This is the view of Hodge. See his Constitutional History of the Presbyterian
Church, Part II, pp. 46-50.

144 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

conservatives were in the majority in the various denominations. The
evangehcals were compelled to insist on the right of the individual to a
wider liberty than the conservatives were disposed to grant him. The
battle cry of the conservatives was therefore "order and discipline." Of
the evangelicals it was ''the right of conscience." They made a dis-
tinction between essential and circumstantial rules. The position of
the evangelicals was strikingly similar to that of the Americans in
their debate with England after the French and Indian War, for they
sought to establish constitutional limitations upon the authority of
rulers.

The main questions of polity concern the terms of admission to church-
membership and the ministry. In this connection we must consider
the charge of censoriousness preferred by the conservatives against the
evangelicals. The national churches of England, Scotland, and Holland
received candidates into full church-membership if they possessed a
competent degree of religious knowledge and lived a moral life. It was
hoped that such were converted. The evangelicals assumed that a large
percentage of the church-members were unconverted, addressed them as
such, and exhorted them to seek clear evidence of conversion. They
were also convinced that a majority of the ministers were unconverted,
and proclaimed this conviction from the housetops. This attitude to
the majority of church-members and ministers was resented by opposers
of the revival as uncharitable. Reformers are always charged with
censoriousness. Several of the leading evangelists in the beginning,
it must be confessed, did show toward their opposers an asperity more
exasperating than convincing. As the revival advanced the early
narrowness in the definition of conversion was corrected in many, and
asperity toward opposers of the revival was quite overcome in such men
as Whitefield and Tennent. On the other hand, from the beginning to
the end the scurrility and baseness of most publications against the
revival were in sharp contrast with the sobriety of most published
defenses of the movement.

The opponents of the revival exaggerated beyond measure the bodily
agitations which sometimes resulted from the strong emotional appeal
of the evangelists. Sudden fears and joys had their natural effect upon
persons who were unrestrained by public sentiment from unmeasured
expression of their emotion. There was always the danger of the
propagation of these phenomena by suggestion. Promoters of the
revival sometimes yielded to the temptation of utilizing these commo-

CONCLUSION 145

tions to increase the religious excitement.' It was a dangerous expedi-
ent, but where public sentiment was not arrayed against it more good
than evil was the result. Yet sometimes ignorant persons imagined
themselves converted because of these physical disturbances, although
there was no revulsion against their former manner of life and no pas-
sionate surrender to higher aims. In Germany Francke did not at
first repress such extravagance but afterward attempted to do so. It
was only on very rare occasions that there was any excessive emotional-
ism in the meetings of Whitefield. Terror had a larger place in Tennent's
preaching than in Whitefield's, but he endeavored to curb emotional
demonstration. Edwards gave these phenomena qualified approval, but
Dickinson set his face against them, and so did the Boston pastors.
Warned by the excesses of a few under the frenzied leadership of Daven-
port, all these promoters of the revival became outspoken against emo-
tional extremes. Very soon Davenport returned to a perfectly sane
course and was afterward an effective evangelist in the Presbyterian
revival in Virginia. The Separate Baptists of the South inherited from
the Separates of Connecticut an enthusiasm which was remarkably
effective in the propagation of a reUgious and moral reformation. The
excrescences of this enthusiasm were gradually eliminated in subsequent
revivals of the Baptists in those parts, but its fire and force happily long
remained.^

If there was little ground for the criticism of physical phenomena,
still less was there for the criticism of itinerant preaching. Itineracy
in the view of the conservatives was unwarranted by Scripture and was
destructive of order.^ This term was applied to the evangelistic journeys
of Whitefield and others like him who left their parishes, or were without
parishes, and preached in the charges of other ministers as promoters of
the revival. The conservatives declared that it was the duty of White-
field to remain at Savannah, and of Tennent at New Brunswick.''
Itineracy of this sort was then a novelty and one of the most effective
engines of the movement. A large number of gifted men were thus
employed in the height of the revival, going from church to church upon

' This may have been true of the early preaching of Davenport and Rowland,
before they were convinced of their mistaken methods, yet they were probably
unconscious of endeavoring directly to produce bodily effects.

* Semple, A History of the ... . Baptists in Virginia, p. 59.
3 Boston Evening Post, November 19, 1744.

* The first bad thing attending the Work, according to Chauncy, was itinerant
preaching. Seasonable Tlwughls, pp. 36-76.

146 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

the invitation of the pastors. Itineracy of another sort was also
successfully employed by the New Side Presbyterians. Having few
ministers and many vacancies, the ministers and probationers were sent
on long journeys, bringing encouragement to many lonely settlements.
Later the Methodists reduced this kind of itineracy to a system.

Lay preaching was another measure for the promotion of the revival
which was regarded by the conservatives as supremely disorderly.
Indeed the Presbyterian and Congregational promoters of the revival
agreed with the conservatives in this particular.^ Collegia pietatis,
religious societies, bands, and classes were organized among the people.
Through these agencies the Great Awakening became a people's move-
ment. Many laymen became effective leaders and forceful speakers.
In some of the denominations, as the Separates, Baptists, Moravians,
and Methodists, the transition was easy from lay exhorters and lay
preachers to ordained ministers. The Methodists and Baptists, by
encouraging lay preaching and the advancement of men whose gifts
were developed in the school of life, became great popular denominations,
while the Presbyterians and Congregationalists, by insisting upon an
artificial and unbending requirement, lost the advantage which was
given them as the early promoters of the Great Awakening.

Paradoxical as it may seem, the Great Awakening gave a tremendous
impulse to education, both ministerial and secular. The Presbyterian,
Reformed, and Congregational churches required a thorough educa-
tional preparation of candidates for the ministry. There were no public
academies in the Middle Colonies. Therefore evangelical ministers
bestirred themselves to provide educational facilities for the multitude
of gifted young men that the revival thrust forward, to prepare them to
preach the gospel. Thus were bom not only many private schools,
modeled upon the Log College, but chartered schools like the College
of New Jersey at Princeton and Queen's College at New Brunswick.
A great number of colleges and other educational institutions, westward,
northward, and southward, were founded by men whose educational
ancestry may be traced back to the Log College. Other schools, from
Dartmouth in New Hampshire to Bethesda in Georgia, were fruits of the
Great Awakening. ReHgious bodies like the Separates, Baptists,
Moravians, and Methodists, which did not make a diploma an invariable

' Gilbert Tennent wrote a letter to a minister in Connecticut strongly condemn-
ing public and authoritative exhortation and instruction by laymen. He restricts
this to men "called of God as Aaron," that is, ordained ministers. He thinks that the
itinerations of laymen would lead to dreadful consequences to the churches. Boston
News-Letter, April 15, 1742.

CONCLUSION 147

requirement for ordination, nevertheless coveted the best education pos-
sible for their ministers. The energy generated by the revival led to the
founding of such schools as Hopewell Academy, Brown University,
Nazareth Hall, and Cokesbury College. The evangelicals of every
denomination ranked piety higher than intellectual training as a quaUfica-
tion for the ministry. The conservatives therefore everywhere railed
against them as the apostles of ignorance. Some promoters of the
revival, it is true, in their loyalty to piety decried education. This
spirit has survived to the present time in ever-narrowing circles.'

So much for the measures employed ; doctrine has had little emphasis
in this study, but a history of the Great Awakening must make some
reference to Luther's doctrine and the relation of this doctrine to moral
reform. The evangelicals restored the old Reformation doctrine of
justification by faith. The conservatives therefore called them Anti-
nomians.^ Frankhn thought that Andrews, his conservative Presby-
terian pastor, neglected moral questions,^ and Andrews complained of
the evangelicals, alleging the same neglect.'' According to Gilbert Ten-
nent the Moravians were Antinomians.s This term was also cast upon
the Separates of Connecticut. It was a charge lightly made against all
lovers of Luther's doctrine. Only an insignificant number failed to see
the necessary connection between Christian experience and right moral
conduct.^ The evangelicals held their followers to a rigorous moral code
that greatly promoted the sobriety, industry, and moral progress of the
people. But the value of play, even for children, and the need of whole-
some diversion were not properly recognized by those stem seekers after
the favor of God.^

' The Separates of Connecticut, after the suppression of the Shepherd's Tent at
London, decried human learning as related to religious truth. They professed to
rely solely on the enlightenment of the Holy Ghost. Blake, The Separates of New Eng-
land, pp. 204-8. The Separate Baptists inherited this view, but the influence of the
regular Baptists was strong for education. Ramsay said in 1808 of the South Caro-
lina Baptists, "Among the different sects of christians in South Carolina, none have
made earlier or greater exertions for promoting religious knowledge than the baptists"
(Ramsay, South Carolina, II, 365).

' Boston Evening Post, January 4, 1742.

J Franklin, Autobiography, pp. 97-99.

< Webster, A History of the Presbyterian Church, p. 178.

s Gilbert Tennent, Some Account, p. 43. ^ John Cross, for example.

' The hours of labor and study of the orphans at Bethesda were regulated. The
only recreation apparently was a walk once a day with master or mistress "to bless
and admire their great Benefactor" (Creator). New England Weekly Journal,
September 23, 1740.

148 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

While the Great Awakening revived a Puritan rigor, helpful in general
but harmful in particulars, a new outlet for the chastened pursuit of
happiness was found in the new psalmody. It was the evangelical revival
that gave to the world the songs and melodies of the Moravians, as
sensuous and elusive as the Song of Solomon, the "Gospel Sonnets"
of the Erskines, the immortal hymns of the Wesleys, and the psalms that
made Watts the EngHsh David. The conservatives stormed against the
new outburst of song as a profanation. They even resisted the intro-
duction of improved translations of the Psalms, preferring to wail out
the hmping lines made sacred by use."

Near to the heart of song is action — friendly, helpful action.
Nineteenth-century missions, the glory of the church, had their roots
in the new missionary impulse which, like so many other movements,
resulted from the Great Awakening. Christian Rauch and George Post,
David Brainerd and John, his brother, Jonathan Edwards, Eleazar
Wheelock, and Sampson Occum are but a few names in the list of mis-
sionary heroes whom the revival sent to their work. Missions to the
Indians were not born in the Great Awakening, but they were born again
and were prosecuted with a whole-hear tedness which they had not known
since the days of Ehot and the Mayhews.

Humanitarian enterprises of many kinds, besides missionary en-
deavor, owe their inception to the new social consciousness that came
with the Great Awakening. Sympathies were profoundly stirred.
The people were awakened to a new interest in the orphan, the negro,
the Indian, and the unfortunate whfether at their doors or in the most
distant provinces. The first word against slavery was spoken by men
straight from the home of Pietism in Germany.^ The antislavery move-
ment in New England was originated by Hopkins, one of the great
evangehcal leaders.^ In the South the New Side Presbyterians and the
Baptists at an early day opposed slavery .^ The Methodist discipline
took strong ground against the system. Much has been said of White-
field's owning slaves as an endowment for the orphan house, but not

^ Miller, Memoirs of the Rev. John Rodgers, D.D., pp. 149-53.
^ Fisher, The Making of Pennsylvania, p. 73.

3 Allen, Jonathan Edwards, p. 250.

4 In 1784 the Christian Conference of Methodists required gradual emancipation
by slaveholding members. In 1787 the synod of New York and Philadelphia adopted
a declaration for prudent measures leading to the final abolition of slavery in America.
In 1789 the Baptist General Committee of the state of Virginia adopted a strong resolu-
tion against slavery. Tigert, Constitutional History, p. 216; Gillett, History of the
Presbyterian Church, I, 201, 202; Semple, op. cit., p. 105.

CONCLUSION 149

enough of his clarion call, heard the whole length of the colonies, demand-
ing for the slave humane treatment and Christian training. The mission
to the African in America grew out of the Great Awakening and meas-
urably prepared the negro for the enjoyment of liberty.

The return to the emotional experience of Paul, the doctrine of
Luther, and the rigor of John Cotton, with the attendant burst of song
and the practical demonstration of the inherent kindliness of the move-
ment, gradually won over nearly every important branch of the Protes-
tant church in America, with one significant exception. The Anglican
church in the colonies spurned the aid of Whitefield and impotently pro-
nounced suspension upon him. Wesley's preachers were equally dis-
owned. This church became the last refuge of the conservatives. The
Great Awakening built up popular denominations, each with a numerous
following of earnest, enthusiastic members. These denominations com-
manded the respect of the whole American people, even of the irrehgious.
But the ancient national church of the Enghsh people fell into contempt.
The Presbyterians and the Congregationalists united in an annual con-
vention to combat what were regarded as the encroachments of the Angli-
can church, and particularly to prevent the appointment of an American
bishop.' This was one of the earliest examples of an intercolonial com-
bination to bring pressure to bear upon the English ministry. The Great
Awakening was a democratic religious movement, but the AngUcan
church became more and more a small aristocratic body, centering in
an official class. The clergy therefore sought the advancement of their
interests by intrigue with the authorities in England. They were sus-
pected by the people of being the emissaries of a foreign government.
They shared its fortunes. Thus the revival united with other influences
to subvert the Church of England in the colonies.

There is an intimate connection between the American Revolution
and the intercolonial religious ferment which preceded it. The policy
of the conservatives was divisive and isolating, but the evangelicals
almost always advocated union and friendly co-operation.^ The revival

■ Miller, op. cil., pp. 186-92; Records of tlie Presbyterian Church, p. 373.

^ When Gilbert Tennent was in London raising money for Princeton College, and
Provost Smith was there in the interest of the Philadelphia academy, the former
expressed the hope that the college would unite the Presbyterians and German Re-
formed, but Smith, an Anglican, replied that the union was undesirable. Tennent
said, " Union in a good thing is always desirable." Webster, op. cil., p. 394. Though
the Great Awakening brought schism to most denominations, the cause was not the
divisive measures of the evangelicals but the hostility of the conservatives, who
expelled the evangelicals, or forced their withdrawal, or themselves withdrew. Re-
union, when effected, was due to the efforts of the evangelicals.

I50 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

spirit was always the foe of denominational and racial prejudices. The
Great Awakening widened the horizon of the people, for it was the first
intellectual movement in which all the colonies participated. Denomina-
tions that were aggressively evangelistic ignored provincial boundaries
and built up constituencies which were intercolonial in character. The
revival led to a very considerable movement of population.^ This helped
create a common American spirit. The Anglican church was one of the
ties uniting the colonies with the mother country. The combination
against that church and the winning of a large part of its nominal mem-
bership weakened that tie. The community of feeling which the revival
cultivated in the several Calvinistic bodies, the actual combination of
some of them against the English church, and the fear of invasion by the
English government of their religious liberties were evidences of a spirit-
ual union of the colonies which was prophetic of a national union. In
just the same way a century later the disruption of the great popular
denominations upon a sectional question was prophetic of the Civil
War. The Great Awakening prepared the way for the Revolutionary
War. The denominations, Uke the Presbyterian and the Baptist,-which
were built up by the revival took almost unanimously the patriot side.
It was their meeting-houses that were burned as nests of rebellion and
their pastors that were hunted as instigators of treason.^

The separation of church and state was an application of the prin-
ciples of the Great Awakening and the Revolution. The democratic
principles of both were contrary to the special privileges of estabUshed
churches. The growth of great bodies which did not possess these privi-
leges, like the Presbyterian and Baptist denominations, raised up powerful
organizations which did not rest until every vestige of an establishment
was erased from the statute books. This was the course in Virginia'*
and other southern provinces. It was so in New York, where a law,
passed by dissenters in their own interest, had been interpreted as the
establishment of the Church of England in parts of the province. The
same fate befell the churches of the standing order in Massachusetts and
Connecticut.

While the quickening of the religious life was so far arrested by the
social and political disturbances accompanying the Revolution that the

' Particularly that of Separates and Baptists from Connecticut and other eastern
states to Vermont and New York. In its results the little colony of Separate Baptists
which moved to Virginia and North Carolina was of prime importance.

'Breed, Presbyterians and the Revolution; Gillett, op. cit., I, 173-98.

3Eckenrode, Separation of Church and State in Virginia, pp. 37, 129, 147.

CONCLUSION 151

Great Awakening may be said then to have come to an end, yet as a force
in America the evangelical revival has never had an end. It burst into
flame again in the revivals at the close of the eighteenth century and
was dominant in American religious life for a hundred years after the
Revolutionary War.'

A final word as to the Middle Colonies, with which this study has
been primarily concerned. The Great Awakening found them in a state
of confusion, in a tangle of warring sects and hostile nationalities. Its
partisans slowly gained the control of nearly all these denominations
and brought them into united effort for common religious and poHtical
ends. Its leaders were in hearty accord with Edwards, Bellamy, and
their sympathizers in the Connecticut Valley and with the evangelical
pastors of Boston. They also conducted religious campaigns in the
South. The more democratic promoters of revivalism, likewise from the
Middle Colonies, reached out to the South to make converts and to New
England to effect union with their coreligionists. Thus the Middle
Colonies were the center of a movement which bound together the whole
line of colonies, at first religiously and socially, and then politically.^
All the features of this intercolonial and world-wide movement enumer-
ated in this chapter are therefore illustrated by the history of the Great
Awakening in the Middle Colonies.

" Hoskins, "German Influence on Religious Life and Thought in America in
the Colonial Period," Princeton Theological Review, V (1907).

^ Of course the Great Awakening was not the only force in the process of nation-
making, but its contribution was highly significant, especially in determining what is
typically American in the sphere of religion.

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158 THE GREAT AWAKENING IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

Whitefield, George. A Continuation (No. 4). London, 1739.
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MS Journal for 1744.

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Note. — The dates of publications given are of the editions used in the preparation
of this study. Many books and manuscripts have been consulted in addition to those
given in the preceding list.

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