causes of this baneful condition of affairs, the clergy believed they were to be found mainly in the dissemination of revolutionary opinions issuing from France, but in part also in native tendencies to exalt reason and throw off the restraints of government in church and state.
Before taking leave of the subject, a few final illustrations may be considered by way of fixing upon the mind the strength of this general impression which the New England clergy entertained.
On the occasion of the general fast, May 4, 1 797, at West Springfield, Massachusetts, the Reverend Joseph Lathrop preached a sermon to which he gave the expressive title, God's Challenge to Infidels to Defend Their Cause. 1 The inspiration of the discourse was drawn from the conviction that " this is a day when infidelity appears with unusual boldness, and advances with threatening progress, to the hazard of our national freedom and happiness, as well as to the danger of our future salvation." 2 According to this interpreter of the signs of the times, the dissemination of infidelity was to be regarded as the outstanding fact in the life of America, as well as in the life of the world.
An unusually lugubrious view of the situation was that taken by the Reverend Nathan Strong, in the sermon which he preached, April 6, 1798, on the occasion of the Connecticut state fast. In the eyes of this modern Jeremiah, the situation was desperate almost beyond remedy:
There are dark and ominous appearances. I do not mean the wrath and threatening of any foreign nations whatever, for if we please God and procure him on our side, we may bless
- 1 God's Challenge to Infidels to Defend Their Cause, Illustrated and Applied in a Sermon, delivered in West Springfield, May 4, 1797, being the day of the General Fast. By Joseph Lathrop, minister . . . Second Ed., Cambridge, 1803.
- 2 Ibid., p. 4.
