Loading...
Larger font
Smaller font
Copy
Print
Contents
The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3 - Contents
  • Results
  • Related
  • Featured
No results found for: "".
  • Weighted Relevancy
  • Content Sequence
  • Relevancy
  • Earliest First
  • Latest First
    Larger font
    Smaller font
    Copy
    Print
    Contents

    III. Chauncy-Lisbon Earthquake Harbinger of Coming Dissolution

    CHARLES CHAUNCY (1705-1787), Congregational minister, and grandson of the second president of Harvard, was born in Boston. Prepared for college at the Boston Latin School, he graduated from Harvard with an M.A. in 1724, was ordained in 1727, and became minister of the First Church at Boston- first as the associate pastor of Thomas Foxcraft, and then continuing there as pastor for sixty years. He was considered the most influential clergyman in New England, with the exception of Jonathan Edwards, and was the acknowledged leader of the liberals of his generation. He received an S.T.D. from Edinburgh in 1742. He was author of numerous works. Coldly intellectual and despising all emotionalism, he was noted for his opposition to the popular revivalism of Whitefield and others, which grew out of the Great Awakening, of which Edwards was the defender and Whitefield the leading preacher. 15Charles Chauncy, The Late Religious Commotions in New-England Considered. (40pp.) He stood for that intellectualism that later culminated in Unitarianism. 16Moses C. Tyler. A History of American Literature During the Colonial Period, vol. 2, p. 200. He had profound faith in the divine management of the universe. (Portrait appears on page 144.)PFF3 190.4

    On the border line between the colonial age and that of the Revolution, Chauncy belonged to both. He represented the vast influence which the clergy still exerted in this period. His words and his writings molded deeply the thought of his time. His intellectual genuineness and his utter scorn of hypocrisy drove him to endless study to understand the current problems. He was unwilling to take anything secondhand. On the Episcopacy he bestowed four years of hard study, and did like wise with other themes.” 17Ibid.PFF3 191.1

    Chauncy engaged in a bitter controversy over Episcopalian-ism, protesting against the proposed introduction of Anglican bishops into America. He was among the pulpit champions of the American Revolution. 18Moses C. Tyler. The Literary History of the American Revolution, p. 280; William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, vol. 8, pp. 9, 10.PFF3 191.2

    1. WARNING OF PROPHESIED RUIN

    Following the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, Chauncy preached A Sermon Occasioned by the late Earthquakes in Spain and Portugal (1756), in which he asserted the earth’s destiny to be dissolution, reconstruction, and regeneration, with a new earth springing from its ashes. Many ministers preached similarly on that anniversary occasion. Con tending that such earthquakes are “instruments of Providence,” he details the ruin at Cadiz, with the inundation of the sea, and destruction at Lisbon, where the city was “intirely ruined in one fatal minute.” He compares the loss of European and American trade to the condition prophesied in Revelation 18, and cites it as a warning to repent, or experience similar judgments in the future. 19Charles Chauncy, A Sermon Occasioned by the late Earthquakes in Spain and Portugal, pp. 21, 22. (Title page appears on page 186.)PFF3 191.3

    2. OPPOSES WHITBY’S POSTMILLENNIAL POSITIONS

    His Mystery Hid from Ages (1784) 20Anonymous, identified by Joseph H. Allen and Richard Eddy, Universalism in America, pp. 382, 383. stressed the literal first resurrection, and the eternal kingdom of Christ with the redeemed to follow. But the earth will be filled with wickedness prior to the advent. 21Charles Chauncy, The Mystery Hid from Ages, Appendix, pp. 381-384. He takes decided issue with the Whitby and Lowman theory of a figurative resurrection. 22Ibid., pp. 381, 383.PFF3 191.4

    Larger font
    Smaller font
    Copy
    Print
    Contents