greatly prophaned by this inadvertency." "The support of the evangelical ministry is ... discouraged." He thought the character of the pulpit was not sufficient explanation of this phenomenon, and adds, in his supernatural way, "Satan is the external cause of this evil;" "he had rather have men wakeful at any time than at sermon time." The good man mentions, by way of example, a man who "had not slept a wink at a sermon for more than twenty years together," and also, but by way of warning, the unlucky youth in the Acts who slept at Paul's long sermon, and fell out of the window, and "was taken up dead." Sleeping was "adding something of our own to the worship of God;" "when Nadab and Abihu did so, there went out fire from the Lord and consumed them to death." "The holy God hath not been a little displeased for this sin." "It is not punished by men, but therefore the Lord himself will visit for it." "Tears of blood will trickle down thy dry and damned cheeks forever and ever, because thou mayest not be so happy as to hear one sermon, or to have one offer of grace more throughout the never-ending dayes of eternity." Other men denounced their "Wo to sleepy sinners," and issued their "Proposals for the revival of dying religion."

Dr. Mather thought there was "A deluge of prophaneness," and bid men "be much in mourning and humiliation that God's bottle may be filled with tears." He thought piety was going out because surplices were coming in; it was wicked to "consecrate a church;" keeping Christmas was "like the idolatry of the calf." The common-prayer, an organ, a musical instrument in a church, was "not of God." Such things were to our worthy fathers in the ministry what temperance and anti-slavery societies are to many of their sons—an "abomination," "unchristian and atheistic!" The introduction of "regular singing" was an indication to some that "all religion is to cease;" "we might as well go over to Popery at once." Inoculation for the smallpox was as vehemently and ably opposed as the modern attempt to abolish the gallows; it was "a trusting more to the machinations of men than to the all-wise providence of God."

"When the enchantments of this world," says the ecclesiastical historian, "caused the rising generation more sensibly to neglect the primitive designs and interests of religion propounded by their fathers; a change in the tenor of the divine dispensation towards this country was quickly the matter of every one's observation." "Our wheat and our pease fell under an unaccountable blast." "We were visited with multiplied shipwrecks;" "pestilential sicknesses did sometimes become epidemic among us." "Indians cruelly butchered many hundreds of our inhabitants, and scattered whole towns with miserable ruins." "The serious people throughout the land were awakened by these intimations of divine displeasure to inquire into the causes and matters of the controversie." Accordingly, 1679, a synod was convened at Boston, to "inquire into the causes of the Lord's controversie with his New England people," who determined the matter.[1]

A little later, in 1690, the General Court considered the subject anew, and declared, that "A corruption of manners, attended with inexcusable degeneracies and apostacies ... is the cause of the controversie." We "are now arriving at such an extremity, that the axe is laid to the root of the trees, and we are in eminent danger of perishing, if a speedy reformation of our provoking evils prevent it not." In 1702, Cotton Mather complains that "Our manifold indispositions to recover the dying power of Godliness, were successive calamities, under all of which, our apostacies from that Godliness, have rather proceeded than abated." "The old spirit of New England has been sensibly going out of the world, as the old saints in whom it was have gone; and, instead thereof, the spirit of the world, with a lamentable neglect of strict piety, has crept in upon the rising generation."

You go back to the time of the founders and fathers of the colony, and it is no better. In 1667, Mr. Wilson, who had "A singular gift in the practice of discipline," on his death-bed declared, that "God would judge the people for their rebellion and self-willed spirit, for their contempt of civil and ecclesiastical rulers, and for their luxury and sloth," and before that he said, "People rise up as Corah, against their ministers." "And for our neglect of baptizing the children of the church,... I think God is provoked by it. Another sin I take to be the making light ... of the authority of the Synods." John Norton, whose piety was said to be "Grace, grafted on a crab-stock," in 1660, growled, after his wont, on account of the "Heart of New England, rent with the blasphemies of this generation." John Cotton, the ablest man in New England, who "Liked to sweeten his mouth with a piece of Calvin, before he went to sleep," and was so pious that another could not swear while he was under the roof, mourned at "The condition of the churches;" and, in 1652, on his death-bed, after bestowing his blessing on the President of Harvard College, who had begged it of him, exhorted the elders to "Increase their watch against those declensions, which he saw the professors of religion falling into."[2] In 1641, such was the condition of piety in Boston, that it was thought necessary to banish a man, because he did not believe in original sin. In 1639, a fast was appointed, "To deplore the prevalence of the small-pox, the want of zeal in the professors of religion, and the general decay of piety." "The church of God had not been long in this wilderness," thus complains a minister, one hundred and fifty years ago, "before the dragon cast forth several floods to devour it; but not the least of these floods was one of the Antinomian and familistical heresies." "It is incredible what alienations of mind, and what a very calenture the devil raised in the country upon this odd occasion." "The sectaries" "began usually to seduce women into their notions, and by these women, like their first mother, they soon hooked in the husbands also." So, in 1637, the Synod of Cambridge was convened, to despatch "The apostate serpent:" one woman was duly convicted of holding "About thirty monstrous opinions," and subsequently, by the civil authorities, banished from the colony. The synod, after much time was "spent in ventilation and emptying of private passions," condemned eighty-two opinions, then prevalent in the colony, as erroneous, and decided to "Refer doubts to be resolved by the great God." Even in 1636, John Wilson lamented "The dark and distracted condition of the churches of New England."

"The good old times," when piety was in a thriving state, and the churches successful and contented, lay as far behind the "Famous Johns," as it now does behind their successors in office and lamentation. Then, as now, the complaint had the same foundation: ministers and other good men could not see that new piety will not be put into the old forms, neither the old forms of thought, nor the old forms of action. In the days of Wilson, Cotton, and Norton, there was a gradual growth of piety; in the days of the Mathers, of Colman, and Willard, and from that time to this, there has been a steady improvement of