Page:New England and the Bavarian Illuminati.djvu/21

 CHAPTER I

THE UNDERMINING OF PURITAN STANDARDS AND INSTITUTIONS

I. RAPID DISINTEGRATION OF PURITANISM AFTER THE REVOLUTION

BACK of the War of Independence was the less absorbing but scarcely less harrowing contest of the French and Indian War. Thus for a period of fully thirty years the people of New England had been subjected to the rough and unsettling experiences of military life. This consideration, taken in connection with the fact that a growing declension from the standards of the Puritan fathers had been the occasion of increasing comment and concern from the middle of the seventeenth century on, 1 will make explicable


 * 1 An early and yet typical example of this unfavorable view of the moral and religious life of the people after the first generation of the Puritans was gone, may be found in The Result of 1679, a document prepared by the Synod in response to directions from the Massachusetts General Court, calling for answers to the following questions: "What are the euills that haue provoked the Lord to bring his judgments on New England? What is to be donn that so those euills may be reformed?" The following brief excerpt from The Result supplies the point of view: "Our Fathers neither sought for, nor thought of great things for themselves, but did seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things were added to them. They came not into the wilderness to see a man cloathed in soft raiment. But that we have in too many respects, been forgetting the Errand upon which the Lord sent us hither; all the world is witness: And therefore we may not wonder that God hath changed the tenour of his Dispensations towards us, turning to doe us hurt, and consuming us after that he hath done us good. If we had continued to be as once we were, the Lord would have continued to doe for us, as once he did." The entire document, together with much valuable explanatory comment, may be found in Walker, Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism, pp. 421-437. Backus, History of New England, vol. i, pp. 457-461, contains a group of similar laments.