Sabbath in Puritan New England Part 16

Then follows a minute account of how the fowls persisted in flying in and roosting over the table, scattering feathers and hay on the parsons beneath.

"Mr. Shepard's face did turn very red and he catched up an apple and hurled it at ye birds. But he thereby made a bad matter worse for ye fruit being well aimed it hit ye legs of a fowl and brought him floundering and flopping down on ye table, scattering gravy, sauce and divers things upon our garments and in our faces. But this did not well please some, yet with most it was a happening that made great merryment. Dainty meats were on ye table in great plenty, bear-stake, deer-meat, rabbit, and fowle, both wild and from ye barnyard. Luscious puddings we likewise had in abundance, mostly apple and berry, but some of corn meal with small bits of sewet baked therein; also pyes and tarts. We had some pleasant fruits, as apples, nuts and wild grapes, and to crown all, we had plenty of good cider and ye inspiring Barbadoes drink. Mr. Shepard and most of ye ministers were grave and prudent at table, discoursing much upon ye great points of ye deddication sermon and in silence laboring upon ye food before them. But I will not risque to say on which they dwelt with most relish, ye discourse or ye dinner. Most of ye young members of ye Council would fain make a jolly time of it. Mr. Gerrish, ye Wenham minister, tho prudent in his meat and drinks, was yet in right merry mood. And he did once grievously scandalize Mr. Shepard, who on suddenly looking up from his dish did spy him, as he thot, winking in an unbecoming way to one of ye pretty damsels on ye scaffold. And thereupon bidding ye G.o.dly Mr. Rogers to labor with him aside for his misbehavior, it turned out that ye winking was occasioned by some of ye hay seeds that were blowing about, lodging in his eye; whereat Mr. Shepard felt greatly releaved.

"Ye new Meeting house was much discoursed upon at ye table. And most thot it as comely a house of wors.h.i.+p as can be found in the whole Collony save only three or four. Mr. Gerrish was in such merry mood that he kept ye end of ye table whereby he sat in right jovial humour. Some did loudly laugh and clap their hands. But in ye middest of ye merryment a strange disaster did happen unto him. Not having his thots about him he endeavored ye dangerous performance of gaping and laughing at the same time which he must now feel is not so easy or safe a thing. In doing this he set his jaws open in such wise that it was beyond all his power to bring them together again.

His agonie was very great, and his joyful laugh soon turned to grievous gioaning. Ye women in ye scaffolds became much distressed for him. We did our utmost to stay ye anguish of Mr. Gerrish, but could make out little till Mr. Rogers who knoweth somewhat of anatomy did bid ye sufferer to sit down on ye floor, which being done Mr. Rogers took ye head atween his legs, turning ye face as much upward as possible and then gave a powerful blow and then sudden press which brot ye jaws into working order. But Mr.

Geirish did not gape or laugh much more on that occasion, neither did he talk much for that matter.

"No other weighty mishap occurred save that one of ye Salem delegates, in boastfully essaying to crack a walnut atween his teeth did crack, instead of ye nut, a most usefull double tooth and was thereby forced to appear at ye evening with a bandaged face."

This ended this most amusing chapter of disasters to the ministers, though the banquet was diversified by interrupting crows from invading roosters, fierce and undignified counter-attacks with nuts and apples by the clergymen, a few mortifyingly "mawdlin songs and much roistering laughter,"

and the account ends, "so n.o.ble and savoury a banquet was never before spread in this n.o.ble town, G.o.d be praised." What a picture of the good old times! Different times make different manners; the early Puritan ministers did not, as a rule, drink to excess, any more than do our modern clergymen; but it is not strange that though they were of Puritan blood and belief, they should have fallen into the universal custom of the day, and should have "gone to their graves full of years, honor, simplicity, and rum." The only wonder is, when the ministers had the best places at every table, at every feast, at every merry-making in New England, that stories of their roistering excesses should not have come down to us as there have of the intemperate clergy of Virginia.

The ordination services within the meeting-houses were not always decorous and quiet scenes. In spite of the reverence which our forefathers had for their church and their ministers, it did not prevent them from bitterly opposing the settlement of an unwished-for clergyman over them, and many towns were racked and divided, then as now, over the important question.

As years pa.s.sed on the church members grew bold enough to dare to offer personal and bodily opposition. At the ordination of the Rev. Peter Thatcher in the New North Church in Boston, in 1720, there were two parties. The members who did not wish him to be settled over the church went into the meeting-house and made a great disorder and clamor. They forbade the proceedings, and went into the gallery, and threw from thence water and missiles on the friends of the clergymen who were gathered around him at the altar. Perhaps they obtained courage for these sacrilegious acts from the barrels of rum and the bowls of strong punch. And this was in Puritanical Boston, in the year of the hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower. Thus had one century changed the absolute reverence and affectionate regard of the Pilgrims for their church, their ministers, and their meeting-houses, to irreverent and obstinate desire for personal satisfaction. No wonder that the ministers at that date preached and believed that Satan was making fresh and increasing efforts to destroy the Puritan church. The hour was ready for Whitefield, for Edwards, for any new awakening; and was above all fast approaching for the sadly needed temperance reform.

In the seventeenth century a minister was ordained and re-ordained at each church over which he had charge; but after some years the name of installation was given to each appointment after the first ordination, and the ceremony was correspondingly changed.

XX.

The Ministers.

The picture which Colonel Higginson has drawn of the Puritan minister is so well known and so graphic that any attempt to add to it would be futile.

All the succeeding New England parsons, as years rolled by, were not, however, like the black-gowned, black-gloved, stately, and solemn man whom he has so clearly shown us. Men of rigid decorum, and grave ceremony there were, such as Dr. Emmons and Jonathan Edwards; but there were parsons also of another type,--eccentric, unconventional, and undignified in demeanor and dress. Parson Robinson, of Duxbury, persisted in wearing in the pulpit, as part of his clerical attire, a round jacket instead of the suitable gown or Geneva cloak, and he was known thereby as "Master Jack." With astonis.h.i.+ng inconsistency this Master Jack objected to the village blacksmith's wearing his leathern ap.r.o.n into the church, and he a.s.sailed the offender again and again with words and hints from his pulpit. He was at last worsted by the grimaces of the victorious smith (where was the Duxbury t.i.thingman?), and indignantly left the pulpit, ejaculating, "I'll not preach while that man sits before me." A remonstrating paris.h.i.+oner said afterward to Master Jack, "I'd not have left if the Devil sat there."

"Neither would I", was the quick answer.

Another singular article of attire was worn in the pulpit by Father Mills, of Torrington, though neither in irreverence nor indifference. When his dearly loved wife died he pondered how he, who always wore black, could express to the world that he was wearing mourning; and his simple heart hit upon this grotesque device: he left off his full-flowing wig, and tied up his head in a black silk handkerchief, which he wore thereafter as a trapping of woe.

Parson Judson, of Taunton, was so lazy that he used to preach while sitting down in the pulpit; and was so contemptibly fond of comfort that he would on summer Sundays give out to the sweltering members of his congregation the longest psalm in the psalm-book, and then desert them--piously perspiring and fuguing--and lie under a tree enjoying the cool outdoor breezes until the long psalm was ended, escaping thus not only the heat but the singing; and when we consider the quant.i.ty and quality of both, and that he condemned his good people to an extra amount of each, it seems a piece of clerical inhumanity that would be hard to equal. Surely this selfish Taunton sybarite was the prosaic ideal of Hamlet's words:--

"Some ungracious pastors do Show me the steep and th.o.r.n.y way to Heaven, Whilst like a puff'd and reckless libertine Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not his own rede."

But lazy and slothful ministers were fortunately rare in New England. No primrose path of dalliance was theirs; industrious and hard-working were nearly all the early parsons, preaching and praying twice on the Sabbath, and preaching again on Lecture days; visiting the sick and often giving medical and "chyrurgycal" advice; called upon for legal counsel and adjudication; occupied in spare moments in teaching and preparing young men for college; working on their farms; hearing the children say their catechism; fasting and praying long, weary hours in their own study,--truly they were "pious and painful preachers," as Colonel Higginson saw recorded on a gravestone in Watertown. Though I suspect "painful" in the Puritan vocabulary meant "painstaking," did it not? Cotton Mather called John Fiske, of Chelmsford, a "plaine but able painful and useful preacher,"

while President Dunster, of Harvard College, was described by a contemporary divine as "pious painful and fit to teach." Other curious epithets and descriptions were applied to the parsons; they were called "holy-heavenly," "sweet-affecting," "soul-ravis.h.i.+ng," "heaven-piercing,"

"angel-rivalling," "subtil," "irrefragable," "angelical," "septemfluous,"

"holy-savoured," "princely," "soul-appetizing," "full of antic tastes"

(meaning having the tastes of an antiquary), "G.o.d-bearing." Of two of the New England saints it was written:--

"Thier Temper far from Injucundity, Thier tongues and pens from Infecundity."

Many other fulsome, turgid, and even whimsical expressious of praise might be named, for the Puritans were rich in cla.s.sic sesquipedalian adjectives, and their active linguistic consciences made them equally fertile in producing new ones.

Ready and unexpected were the solemn Puritans in repartee. A party of gay young sparks, meeting austere old John Cotton, determined to guy him. One of the young reprobates sent up to him and whispered in his ear, "Cotton, thou art an old fool." "I am, I am," was the unexpected answer; "the Lord make both thee and me wiser than we are." Two young men of like intent met Mr. Haynes, of Vermont, and said with mock sad faces, "Have you heard the news? the Devil is dead." Quick came the answer, "Oh, poor, fatherless children! what will become of you?"

Gloomy and depressed of spirits they were often. The good Warham, who could take faithful and brave charge of his flock in the uncivilized wilds of Connecticut among ferocious savages, was tortured by doubts and "blasphemous suggestions," and overwhelmed by unbelief, enduring specially agonizing scruples about administering and partaking of the Lord's Supper, and was thus perplexed and buffeted until the hour of his sad death. The ministers went through various stages of uncertainty and gloom, from the physical terror of Dr. Cogswell in a thunderstorm, through vacillating and hara.s.sing convictions about the Half Way Covenant, through doubt of G.o.d, of salvation, of heaven, of eternite, particularly distressing suspicions about the reality of h.e.l.l and the personality of the Devil, to the stage of deep melancholy which was shown in its highest type in "Handkerchief Moody," who preached and prayed and always appeared in public with a handkerchief over his face, and gave to Hawthorne the inspiration for his story of "The Black Veil." Rev. Mr. Bradstreet, of the First Church of Charlestown, was so hypochondriacal that he was afraid to preach in the pulpit, feeling sure that he would die if he entered therein; so he always delivered his sermons to his patient congregation from the deacons' pew.

Mr. Bradstreet was unconventional in many other respects, and was far from being a typical Puritan minister. He seldom wore a coat, but generally appeared in a plaid gown, and was always seen with a pipe in his mouth,--a most disreputable addition to the clerical toilet at that date, or, in truth, at any date. He was a learned and pious man, however, and was thus introduced to a fellow clergyman, "Here is a man who can whistle Greek."

Scarcely one of the early Puritan ministers was free from the sad shadow of doubt and fear. No "rose-pink or dirty-drab views of humanity" were theirs; all was inky-black. And it is impossible to express the gloom and the depression of spirit which fall on one now, after these centuries of prosperous and cheerful years, when one considers thoughtfully the deep and despairing agony of mind endured by these good, brave, steadfast, G.o.dly Puritan ministers. Read, for instance, the sentences from the diary of the Rev. John Baily, or of Nathaniel Mather, as given by Cotton Mather in his "Magnalia." Mather says that poor, sad, heart-sick Baily was filled with "desponding jealousies," "disconsolate uneasinesses," gloomy fears, and thinks the words from his diary "may be profitable to some discouraged minds." Profitable! Ah, no; far from it! The overwhelming blackness of despair, the woful doubts and fears about destruction and utter annihilation which he felt so deeply and so continually, fall in a heavy, impenetrable cloud upon us as we read, until we feel that we too are in the "Suburbs of h.e.l.l" and are "eternally d.a.m.ned."

But in succeeding years they were not always gloomy and not always staid, as we know from the stories of the cheerful parties at ordination-times; and I doubt not the reverend a.s.sembly of Elders at Cambridge enjoyed to the full degree the twelve gallons of sack and six gallons of white wine sent to them by the Court as a testimony of deep respect. And the group of clergymen who were painted over the mantelpiece of Parson Lowell, of Newbury, must have been far from gloom, as the punch-bowl and drinking-cups and tobacco and pipes would testify, and their cheerful motto likewise: "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity." And the Rev. Mr. ---- no, I will not tell his name--kept an account with one Jerome Ripley, a storekeeper, and on one page of this account-book, containing thirty-nine entries, twenty-one were for New England rum.

It somewhat lessens in our notions the personal responsibility, or the personal potatory capability of the parson, to discover that there was an ordination in town during that rum-paged week, and that the visiting ministers probably drank the greater portion of Jerome Ripley's liquor.

But I wish the store-keeper had--to save this parson's reputation among succeeding generations--called and entered the rum as hay, or tea, or nails, or anything innocent and virtuous and clerical. When we read of all these doings and drinkings of the old New England ministers,--"if ancient tales say true, nor wrong these ancient men"--we feel that we cannot so fiercely resent nor wonder at the degrading coupling in Byron's sneering lines:--

"There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms, As rum and true religion."

All the cider made by the New England elders did not tend to gloom, and they were celebrated for their fine cider. The best cider in Ma.s.sachusetts--that which brought the highest price--was known as the Arminian cider, because the minister who furnished it to the market was suspected of having Arminian tendencies. A very telling compliment to the cider of one of the first New England ministers is thus recorded: "Mr.

Whiting had a score of appill-trees from which he made delicious cyder.

And it hath been said yt an Indyan once coming to hys house and Mistress Whiting giving him a drink of ye cyder, he did sett down ye pot and smaking his lips say yt Adam and Eve were rightlie d.a.m.ned for eating ye appills in ye garden of Eden, they should have made them into cyder." This perverse application of good John Eliot's teaching would have vexed the apostle sorely. Of so much account were the barrels of cider, and so highly were they prized by the ministers, that one honest soul did not hesitate to thank the Lord in the pulpit for the "many barrels of cider vouchsafed to us this year."

Stronger liquors than cider were also manufactured by the ministers,--and by G.o.d-fearing, pious ministers also. They did not hesitate to own and operate distilleries. Rev. Nathan Strong, pastor of the First Church of Hartford and author of the hymn "Swell the anthem, raise the song," was engaged in the distilling business and did not make a success of it either.

Having become bankrupt, he did not dare show his head anywhere in public for some time, except on Sunday, for fear of arrest. This disreputable and most unclerical affair did not operate against him in the minds of the contemporaneous public, for ten years later he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Princeton College; and he did not hesitate to joke about his liquor manufacturing, saying to two of his brother-clergymen, "Oh, we are all three in the same boat together,--Brother Prime raises the grain, I distil it, and Brother Flint drinks it."

Impostors there were--false parsons--in the early struggling days of New England (since "the devil was never weary and never ceasing in disturbing the peace of the new English church"), and they plagued the colonists sorely. The very first shepherd of the wandering flock--Mr. Lyford, who preached to the planters in 1624--was, as Bradford says, "most unsavory salt," a most agonizing and unbearable thorn in the flesh and spirit of the poor homesick Pilgrims; and he was finally banished to Virginia, where it was supposed that he would find congenial and un-Puritanlike companions.

Another bold-faced cheat preached to the colonists a most impressive sermon on the text, "Let him that stole steal no more," while his own pockets were stuffed out with stolen money. "Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh."

d.i.c.ky Swayn, "after a thousand rogueries," set up as a parson in Boston.

But, unfortunately for him, he prayed too loud and too long on one occasion, and his prayer attracted the attention of a woman whose servant he had formerly been. She promptly exposed his false pretensions and past villanies, and he left Boston and an army of cheated creditors. In 1699 two other attractive and plausible scamps--Kingsbury and May--garbed and curried themselves as ministers, and went through a course of unchecked villany, building only on their agreeable presence. Cotton Mather wrote pertinently of one of these charmers, "Fascination is a thing whereof mankind has more Experience than Comprehension;" and he also wrote very despitefully of the adventurer's scholarly attainments saying there were "eighteen horrid false spells and not one point in one very short note I received from him." As the population increased, so also did the list of dishonest impostors, who made a cloak of religion most effectively to aid them in deceiving the religious community; and sometimes, alas! the ordained clergymen became sad backsliders.

Nor were the pious and G.o.dly Puritan divines above the follies and frailties of other men in other places and in other times. It can be said of them, as of the Jew, had they not "eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, pa.s.sions?"--were they not as other men? It is recorded of Rev. Samuel Whiting, of Lynn, that "once coming among a gay partie of yong people he kist all ye maides and said yt he felt all ye better for it." And who can doubt it? Even that extreme type, that highest pinnacle of American Puritanical bigotry,--solemn and learned Cotton Mather,--had, when he was a mourning widower, a most amusing amorous episode with a rather doubtful, a decidedly shady, young Boston woman, whom he styled an "Ingenious Child," but who was far from being an ingenuous child. "She," as he proudly stated, "became charmed with my person to such a degree that she could not but break in upon me with her most importunate requests." And a very handsome and thoroughly attractive person does his portrait show even to modern eyes. Poor Cotton resisted the wiles of the devil in this alluring form, though he had to fast and pray three consecutive nights ere the strong Puritan spirit conquered the weak flesh, and he could consent and resolve to give up the thought of marrying the siren. His self-denial and firmness deserved a better reward than the very trying matrimonial "venture" that he afterwards made.

Many another Puritan parson has left record of his wooings that are warm to read. And well did the parsons' wives deserve their ardent wooings and their tender love-letters. Hard as was the minister's life, over-filled as was his time, highly taxed as were his resources, all these hards.h.i.+ps were felt in double proportion by the minister's wife. The old Hebrew standard of praise quoted by Cotton Mather, "A woman worthy to be the wife of a priest," was keenly epigrammatic; and ample proof of the wise insight of the standard of comparison may be found in the lives of "the pious, prudent, and prayerful" wives of New England ministers. What wonder that their praises were sung in many loving though halting threnodies, in long-winded but tender eulogies, in labored anagrams, in quaintly spelled epitaphs?--for the ministers' wives were the saints of the Puritan calendar.

XXI.

The Ministers' Pay.

The salaries of New England clergymen were not large in early days, but the 60 or 70 which they each were yearly voted was quite enough to suitably support them in that new country of plain ways and plain living, if they only received it, which was, alas! not always the case. The First Court of Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1630, set the amount of the minister's annual stipend to be 20 or 30 according to the wealth of the community, and made it a public charge. In 1659 the highest salary paid in Suffolk County was 100 to Mr. Thatcher, and the lowest was 40 to the clergyman at Hull. The minister of the Andover church was voted a salary of 60, and "when he shall have occacion to marry, 10 more." He was very glad, however, to take 42 in hard cash instead of 60 in corn and labor, which were at that time the most popular forms of ministerial remuneration; even though the "hard cash" were in the form of wampum, beaver-skins, or leaden bullets.

Many congregations, though the members were so pious and G.o.dly, were pretty sharp in bargaining with their preachers; for instance, the church in New London made its new parson sign a contract that "in case he remove before the year is out, he returneth the 80 paid him." Often clergymen would "supply" (or "Sipploye," or "syploy" or "sipply," or "sciploy," as various records have it) from month to mouth without "settling." As they got the "keepe of a hors," and their own board for Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, and on Monday morning a cash payment for preaching (though often the amount was only twelve s.h.i.+llings), they were richer than with a small yearly salary that was irregularly and inconveniently paid. Often too they entered by preference into a yearly contract with a church, without any wish for regular settlement or ordination.

A large portion of the stipends in early parishes being paid in corn and labor, the amounts were established by fixed rate upon the inhabitants; and the amount of land owned and cultivated by each church-member was considered in reckoning his a.s.sessment. These amounts were called voluntary contributions. If, however, any citizen refused to "contribute," he was taxed; and if he refused to pay his church-tax he could be fined, imprisoned, or pilloried. For one hundred years the ministers' salaries in Boston were paid by these so-called "voluntary contributions." In one church it was voted that "the Deacons have liberty for a quarter of a yeare to git in every mans sume either in a Church way or in a Christian way."

I would the process employed in the "Church way" were recorded, since it differed so from the Christian way.

It is one of the Puritan paradoxes that abounded in New England, that the community of New Haven, a "State whose Desire was Religion," and religion alone, was particularly backward in paying the minister who had spiritual charge there. After much trouble in deciding about the form and quality of the currency which should be used in pay, since so much bad wampum was thrust upon the deacons at the public contributions, it was in 1651 enacted that "whereas it is taken notice of that Divers give not into the Treasury at all on the Lords Day, it is decreed that all such if they give not freely, of themselves be rated according to the Jurisdiction order for the Ministers Maintaynance." The delinquents were ordered to bring their "rate"

to the Deacon's house at once. A presuming young man ventured to suggest that the recreant members who would not pay in the face of the whole congregation would hardly rush to the Deacon's door to give in their "rate." He was severely ordered to keep silence in the company of wiser and elder people; but time proved his simply wise supposition to be correct; and many and various were the devices and forces which the deacons were obliged to use to obtain the minister's rate in New Haven.

Some few bold Puritan souls dared to protest against being forced to pay the church rate whether they wished to or not. Lieutenant Fuller, of Barnstable, was fined fifty s.h.i.+llings for "prophanely" saying "that the law enacted about the ministers maintenance was a wicked and devilish one, and that the devil sat at the helm when the law was made." Such courageous though profane expressions of revolt but little availed; for not only were members and attendants of the Puritan churches taxed, but Quakers, Baptists, and Church-of-England men were also "rated," and if they refused to pay to help support the church that they abhorred, they were fined and imprisoned. One man, of Watertown, named Briscoe, dared to write a book against the violent enforcement of "voluntary" subscriptions. He was fined 10 for his wickedness; and the printer of the book was also punished. A virago in New London, more openly courageous, threw scalding water on the head of the t.i.thingman who came to collect the minister's rate. Old John Cotton preached long and earnestly upon the necessity and propriety of raising the money for the minister's salary, and for other expenses of the church, wholly by voluntary and eagerly given contributions,--the "Lord having directed him to make it clear by Scripture." He believed that t.i.thes and church-taxes were productive of "pride, contention and sloth," and indicated a declining spiritual condition of the church. But it was a strange voluntary gift he wished, that was forced by dread of the pillory and cage!

Since, as Higginson said, "New England was a plantation of Religion, not a plantation of Trade," the church and its support were of course the first thought in laying out a new town-settlement, and some of the best town-lots were always set aside for the "yuse of the minister." Sometimes these lots were a gift outright to the first settled preacher, in other towns.h.i.+ps they were set aside as glebes, or "ministry land" as it was called. It was a universal custom to build at once a house for the minister, and some very queer contracts and stipulations for the size, shape, and quality of the parson's home-edifice may be read in church-records. To the construction of this house all the town contributed, as also to the building of the meeting-house; some gave work; some, the use of a horse or ox-team; some, boards; some, stones or brick; some, logs; others, nails; and a few, a very few, money. At the house-raising a good dinner was provided, and of course, plenty of liquor. Some malcontents rebelled against being forced to work on the minister's house. Entries of fines are common enough for "refusing to dig on the Minister's Selor," for neglecting to send "the Minister's Nayles," for refusing to "contribute clay-boards," etc. As with the town-lot, the house sometimes was a gift outright to the clergyman, and ofttimes the owners.h.i.+p was retained by the church, and the free use only was given to each minister.