Williston Walker

“ He criticized prevailing conceptions of the Trinity, the atonement, conversion, and the relations of the natural and the supernatural. Above all, he broke with the prevalent view which regarded theology as essentially intellectual in its appeal and demonstrable by processes of exact logical deduction. ”

“ His distinctive theological tenets are to be found in his important work, A System of Doctrines Contained in Divine Revelation, Explained and Defended (1793) , which has had an influence hardly inferior to that exercised by the writings of Edwards himself. They may be summed up as follows: God so rules the universe as to produce its highest happiness, considered as a whole. Since God’s sovereignty is absolute, sin must be, by divine permission, a means by which this happiness of the whole is secured, though that this is its consequence, renders it no less heinous in the sinner. ”

“ For the general student of the religious conditions of the period no documents are more suggestive than the elaborate surveys of the ministry of a considerable portion of England prepared by Puritans in 1586, and giving names of clergymen, parishes, sometimes stipends, and indicating whether pluralists, residents, and preachers or "dumbe". Even more significant is the estimate of moral worth or worthlessness given, with definite charges in the case of a large portion of the clergy here enumerated. ”

“ To his critics Bushnell formally replied by writing Christ in Theology (1851) , in which he employs the important argument that spiritual facts can be expressed only in approximate and poetical language, and concludes that an adequate dogmatic theology cannot exist. That he did not deny the divinity of Christ he proved in The Character of Jesus, forbidding his possible Classification with Men (1861) . He also published Sermons for the New Life (1858) ; Christ and his Salvation (1864) ; Work and Play (1864) ; Moral Uses of Dark Things (1868) ; Women’s Suffrage, the Reform against Nature (1869) ”

“ The realization of the difficulties in the way of a non-conforming clergyman in England undoubtedly determined Eliot to emigrate to America in the autumn of 1631, where he settled first at Boston, assisting for a time at the First Church. ”

“ Virtue consists in preference for the good of the whole to any private advantage; hence the really virtuous man must willingly accept any disposition of himself that God may deem wise—a doctrine often called “willingness to be damned.” All have natural power to choose the right, and are therefore responsible for their acts ”

“ BUSHNELL, HORACE (1802–1876) , American theologian, was born in the village of Bantam, township of Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 14th of April 1802. He graduated at Yale in 1827, was associate editor of the New York Journal of Commerce in 1828–1829, and in 1829 became a tutor at Yale. Here he at first took up the study of law, but in 1831 he entered the theological department of Yale College, and in 1833 was ordained pastor of the North Congregational church in Hartford, Conn., where he remained until 1859, when on account of long-continued ill-health he resigned his pastorate. ”

“ About 1593 there was printed without name of publisher or place, but probably from the press of Robert Waldegrave in Edinburgh, or by that of Richard Schilders, possibly in London, a now rare volume, long known to students of English Puritanism, entitled A Parte of a Register; contayninge sundrie memorable Matters, written by divers godly and learned in our Time, which stande for and desire the Reformation of our Church, in Discipline and Ceremonies, accordinge to the pure Worde of God and the Lawe of our Lande. ”

“ At the third meeting several Indians declared themselves converted, and were soon followed by many others. Eliot induced the Massachusetts General Court to set aside land for their residence, the same body also voting him £10 to prosecute the work, and directing that two clergymen be annually elected by the clergy as preachers to the Indians. As soon as the success of Eliot’s endeavours became known, the necessary funds flowed in upon him from private sources in both Old and New England. ”

“ He was not exact, but he put God and man and the world into a relation that thought can accept while it goes on to state it more fully with ever growing knowledge. Other thinkers were moving in the same direction ”

“ WINTHROP, JOHN (1588–1649) , a Puritan leader and governor of Massachusetts, was born in Edwardston, Suffolk, on the 12th of January (O.S.) 1588, the son of Adam Winthrop of Groton Manor, and Anne (Browne) Winthrop. In December 1602 he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, but he did not graduate. The years after his brief course at the university were devoted to the practice of law, in which he achieved considerable success, being appointed, about 1623, an attorney in the Court of Wards and Liveries, and also being engaged in the drafting of parliamentary bills. ”

“ Naturally such a collection is of a very miscellaneous character, but there is abundant evidence of the aims of the Puritans, of the attempts made to realize those wishes in practice, and of the resistance encountered from the ecclesiastical authorities. Much light is thrown on the extent and localities of the Puritan movement among the clergy, and on the relatively scanty participation of the laity in it, in contrast to the seventeenth century. ”

“ He was the first president of the Commissioners of the United Colonies of New England, organized in 1643. He defended Massachusetts against threatened parliamentary interference once more in 1645-1646. That the colony successfully weathered its early perils was due more to Winthrop's skill and wisdom than to the services of any other of its citizens. ”

“ In 1660 he published a curious treatise on government entitled The Christian Commonwealth, in which he found the ideal of government in the ancient Jewish state, and proposed the reorganization of the English government on the basis of a numerical subdivision of the inhabitants. ”

“ To his thinking its proper basis is to be found in the feelings and intuitions of man’s spiritual nature. He had a vast influence upon theology in America, an influence not so much, possibly, in the direction of the modification of specific doctrines as in “the impulse and tendency and general spirit which he imparted to theological thought.” Dr Munger’s estimate may be accepted, with reservations, as the true one: “He was a theologian as Copernicus was an astronomer ”