THE UNIFORM OPERATIONS OF GRACE: NATURE, MIND, AND GOSPEL INEARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY EVANGELICALISM

Joel L. From, Ph.D.

© 2004

Introduction

In the period following the Revolutionary War, British and American evangelicals wedded an

account of God’s operations in the natural and moral worlds with recent theories of the gospel and the

human mind. Organizational evangelicals, as we will call those who formally supported the activism of

the period, relied heavily on inferences drawn from this synthesis. Their belief in the law-like

uniformity of God’s operations underpinned their tireless proclamation of the gospel’s propositions to

unconverted minds. And since God’s salvific operations were analogous to his operations in the

natural world, the gospel would be universally propagated if the proper relations between means and

ends were maintained.1

Though much of the literature on this period focuses on what Mark Noll calls the “highly

visible revival meetings,” this essay elaborates the theory and trajectory of evangelicalism as it

developed in and through the burgeoning voluntary societies of the period.2 The material in this essay

is largely drawn from the annual sermons delivered before scores of Bible and missionary societies in

New England and the Mid-Atlantic States between 1795 and 1820. These sermons work out a theory

of evangelicalism that is clearly indebted to European intellectual sources, responsive to the results of

their organized activism, and, for the most part, independent of the highly visible revival meetings.

By 1820, however, organizational evangelicals had reasons to doubt the adequacy of their

synthesis. By that time their ministry experiences had softened and complicated their Newtonian

certainties. Their synthesis was not challenged in the first instance by the influx of an elite German

1The author wishes to thank those who assisted him in this research. He is grateful for the sabbatical leave granted him in 2002-03 by Briercrest College as well as the private donors who underwrote the expenses of his research trips. He is also grateful for the expert assistance provided by the librarians and staffs of the Firestone Library (Princeton University), the Luce Library Archives (Princeton Theological Seminary), the Billy Graham Center Archives (Wheaton College), and the Beinecke Rare Book Library (Yale University).2Mark Noll suggests that historians have probably paid too much attention to these highly visible revival meetings. See America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 181.

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historiography or the vacillating fortunes of the revivals, but by difficulties internal to their own theory

and experience. This is not to deny that organizational evangelicalism would not be battered by the

historical turn of German theology, the emergence of secular human sciences, or the exegetical

crises occasioned by slavery and evolutionary naturalism. All of these important challenges are well

documented and indisputable. This essay suggests, however, that evangelicals faced these later

challenges without the full assurance that their Newtonian synthesis could adequately account for

their own field experiences.

The Divine Operations

The century preceding the rise of organizational evangelicalism witnessed the rapid

adjustment of western thought to the cultural triumph of Newtonianism; virtually every field sought to

appropriate its conceptual models and analogies.3 Theologians were quick to transfer the uniformity,

timelessness, and generality of Newtonianism to God’s relation to the moral world. In the early

eighteenth century, Nicholas Malebranche, the French philosopher and theologian, argued that God

had established “general laws of nature and grace” in order to “fix a constant order between natural

causes and their effects.” These general laws were not only observable in the physical universe but in

the “continual variety of thoughts and movements which modify the soul.”4 Bishop Butler, in his

influential apology, argued that there is a strict analogy between God’s governance of the natural and

the moral worlds: he governs both by “general fixed laws.”5 And George Turnbull, Thomas Reid’s

tutor, argued that the investigation of the natural and the moral worlds “must set out from the same

first principles, and be carried on in the same method of investigation, induction, and reasoning."6

It is not surprising, therefore, that when Anglo-American evangelicals organized their

interdenominational voluntary societies in the last decade of the eighteenth century, they too invoked

well-worn analogies between the natural and moral worlds to justify their methods of propagating the

3See Joel L. From, “Antebellum Evangelicalism and the Diffusion of Providential Functionalism,” Christian Scholar’s Review 32:2 (Winter 2003): 181-183.4Nicholas Malebranche, 1638-1715, Reflexions sur la premotion physique, in Oeuvres completes de Malebranche, ed. Andre Robinet (Paris: Vrin, 1966), 16:48-49. I am grateful to Patrick Riley for this citation. See his The General Will Before Rousseau: The Transformation of the Divine into the Civic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 158.5Bishop Joseph Butler, 1692-1752, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature [1736] (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1906), 37.6George Turnbull, 1698-1748, The Principles of Moral Philosophy: An Enquiry into the Wise and Good Government of the Moral World, 2 vols (London: John Noon, 1740), 1:2.

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gospel and their certainty that these methods would be efficacious. David Bogue, a minister from

Gosport on the southern coast of England, in a sermon marking the founding of the London

Missionary Society in 1795, reasoned that their interdenominational cooperation recapitulated that of

the early church. And given God’s uniform principles of governance, this cooperation heralded a new

age of gospel propagation identical to that of the early church.7 Within a year, Robert Balfour rose to

address the Glasgow Missionary Society at its founding. He also appealed to the principle that God’s

design is uniform across all similar cases. We should expect, therefore, that what was true of any

single conversion “is applicable to all instances of conversion.”8 And when James Peddie addressed

the fledgling Edinburgh Missionary Society in 1796, he also appealed to the uniformity of God’s

operations to suggest that new measures for “perpetuating and diffusing the Christian faith” were

unnecessary; it was only necessary to recover the successful methods used heretofore.9

Similar inferences drawn from the analogies between God’s operations in the natural and

moral worlds appear repeatedly in the literature produced by evangelical organizations in the late-

eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. The presumed uniformity of God’s operations across all

domains encouraged evangelicals to search for the timeless means by which the gospel is diffused.

Many of the sermons delivered before evangelical organizations sought to induce these general

principles from a wide-ranging survey of God’s dealings with men.10 William Nicol, who delivered the

7David Bogue, 1750-1825, Objections Against a Mission to the Heathen, Stated and Considered: A Sermon, Preached at Tottenham Court Chapel, Before the Founders of the [London] Missionary Society, 24 Sep. 1795, 1st American ed. (Cambridge, MA: Hilliard and Metcalf, 1811), 9. 8Robert Balfour, 1748-1818, The Salvation of the Heathen Necessary and Certain, Illustrated by the History of Israel in Babylon, and Their Restoration to their own Land: A Sermon, Preached Before the Glasgow Missionary Society, April 14th, 1796 (Glasgow: Printed in the Courier Office, 1796), 57.9James Peddie, 1758-1845, The Perpetuity, Advantages, and Universality of the Christian Religion: A Sermon, Preached Before the Edinburgh Missionary Society, in Bristo-Street Meeting-House, On Thursday, Nov. 10. 1796 (Edinburgh: J. Ritchie, 1796), 17. Samuel Miller, 1769-1850, a rising Presbyterian minister, argued in sermon delivered before the New-York Missionary Society in 1802 that “no unexpected exigences [sic] can occur to make new measures necessary; no obstructions can arise to retard, to suspend, or to modify his [God’s] proceedings.” See A Sermon, Delivered Before the New-York Missionary Society, at their Annual Meeting, April 6th, 1802 (New-York: T. & J. Swords, 1802), 29.10Gordon Wood argues that the founding fathers of the American union had similarly ransacked the historical record in order to verify “those constant and universal principles of human nature. . . . In all of their apparently offhand and random citations from the whole of Western culture, the Americans were seeking to uncover the scientific principles that would explain man's political and social actions.” Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 8.

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charge to two missionaries departing under the auspices of the London Missionary Society in 1799, is

typical. He encouraged them to “attend to the means which [the apostle] Paul employed” since they

are the only means which God will bless.11

Many leading organizational evangelicals were thus led to believe that the gospel had always

advanced by universal and thus, identical, means.12 Calvinist denials of the efficacy of means in

conversion were countered by the evangelical claim that God had always used means to diffuse the

gospel. The immutability of God’s providential plan, understood as a perfect, timeless uniformity of

operation, implied that if a mean had once been efficacious, it would always be so.13 William Linn, in a

sermon before the New-York Missionary Society in 1800, argued that the attempt to send the gospel

to the heathen would bear fruit only when “constant and unwearied exertions” were applied in a way

that properly connected means to their prescribed ends. And since the timeless relation of a mean to

its end was part of God’s immutable plan, the faithful application of proper means would ineluctably

convert the lost.14

Evangelicals were able to diffuse criticisms of God’s inconsistency as well as their wariness

of old Calvinism by holding that just as we do not expect God to miraculously intervene in nature so

we should not expect miraculous interpositions in the conversion of the lost.15 Even the miracles of

11William Nicol, 1777-1857, The Leading Instructions of the Macedonian Mission Considered: A Sermon, Preached at the Designation of Messrs. Russell and Cappe, Two Missionaries from the London Missionary Society . . . (London: T. Chapman, 1797), 5.12Many evangelicals recognized that the effect could not be strictly deduced from the means since God had voluntarily instituted the relation between means and ends. All relations in the moral world can only be uncovered through observing the usual procedures used by God in similar cases. See John Henry Livingston, 1746-1825, A Sermon, Delivered Before the New-York Missionary Society, at their Annual Meeting, April 3, 1804 (New-York: T. & J. Swords, 1804), 18.13Many evangelicals believed that the system of means, which flourished briefly in the period after Christ, was still in effect. However, due to the slumber of the church, this illustrious machinery was currently inactive. Enoch Burt argued that there was nothing new in evangelical operations; they simply re-activated the “grand system of operation” which God “hath wrought from the beginning.” See Enoch Burt, 1779-1856, Co-operation in Evangelizing the World, an Indispensable Act of Obedience to God: A Sermon, Delivered at Monson, Before the Union Charitable Society; at Their Annual Meeting, September 23, 1823 (Hartford: George Goodwin, 1823), 13, 16. 14William Linn, 1752-1808, The Christian's Zeal for the Church: A Discourse, Delivered April 1st, 1800, in the Brick Presbyterian Church, Before the New-York Missionary Society, at their Annual Meeting (New-York: Isaac Collins, 1800), 13-4.15Edward Griffin argued that we should not expect God to deviate from his appointed means of salvation: “he will not work miracles to discredit what he himself has instituted.” See Edward Dorr Griffin,1770-1837, Foreign Missions: A Sermon, Preached May 9, 1819, at the Anniversary of the United Foreign Missionary Society, in the Garden-Street Church, New-York (New-York: J. Seymour, 1819), 5.

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the apostolic age had merely an ornamental relation to the ministry of the apostles. And although God

technically could communicate gospel truths directly to the heathen, he did not.16 The only reason the

heathen are not converted is that the means of their conversion are not executed. And since the

machinery of divine providence eternally connects means to their ends, it is only the failure of

Christian exertion that forestalls the promised age of blessing.

The Operations of the Human Mind

The intellectual developments that culminated in the evangelical theory of the mind can be

traced to the spirited rejection of Thomas Hobbes’s view that all actions are motivated solely by self-

interest. The response to Hobbes came from three distinct quarters. First, there were a few thinkers,

such as Bernard Mandeville, who were quite pleased to live with the radical implications of this

theory. There were many others, such as Samuel Clarke, however, who, although willing to concede

the importance of self-interest, nevertheless argued that there is an “eternal difference” between right

and wrong that is immediately apparent to the rational understanding.17

The third response can be found in the work of Lord Shaftesbury who rejected both Hobbes’s

monolithic egoism and Clarke’s rational intuitionism. Shaftesbury revolutionized British moral thinking

by focusing on the “inward anatomy” of everyday experience.18 This inward turn can be traced directly

to his tutor, John Locke. Locke had famously argued that all knowledge, whether of the physical

world, morality, or theology is limited to what can be derived from the sensations presented to the

mind or the manifest operations of the mind itself. In other words, the mind’s operations circumscribe

16This was a recurring theme among organizational evangelicals. For instance, Elihu Thayer, 1770-1812, argued at the formation of the Hampshire Missionary Society in 1801 that God could easily “bring the most ignorant and stupid sinners to repentance, by an immediate communication of knowledge and grace; but such an event would be a manifest deviation from the usual and stated course of divine operation, and therefore a miraculous interposition, which is not to be expected.” See A Sermon, Preached at Hopkinton, at the Formation of the New-Hampshire Missionary Society, September 2d, 1801 (Concord, MA: George Hough, 1801), 9. Six years later, Samuel Taggart, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Colrain, stood before the same body and declared that if he had been willing, God could have spread knowledge about himself by an “immediate divine revelation.” See Samuel Taggart, 1754-1825, Knowledge Increased by Travelling To and Fro, to Preach the Gospel: A Sermon, Preached at Northampton, Before the Hampshire Missionary Society, at their Annual Meeting, August 27th, 1807 (Northampton, MA: William Butler, 1807), 18-9.17Samuel Clarke, 1659-1729, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligation of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation [1706, 7th ed., 1728]. Reprinted in British Moralists 1650-1750, 2 vols, ed. D. D. Raphael (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 1:202.18Lord Shaftesbury, 1671-1713, An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit [1711; first ed.,1699], Book II, Part I, Sect. 2. In Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Lawrence E. Klein, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 194.

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the limits of knowledge.19 For his part, Shaftesbury argued that the mind manifests several operational

capacities: those that reflect on the sensations presented to the mind (so-called first-order

reflections); and those that reflect on the mental operations revealed in first-order reflections (so-

called second-order reflections).

In the moral realm the mind finds itself with approving or disapproving affections. It also finds

itself with second-order affections, that is, those that arise when it contemplates its first-order

affections.20 For instance, a person may find that an object arouses generous affections within her. If

she reflects on this mental state, she will not only detect a first-order generosity towards the object

but a second-order pleasure occasioned by her first-order generosity. According to Shaftesbury, this

second-order affection is a feeling of moral worthiness or virtue.21

The mind’s affective responses, its likings or dislikings, are the touchstones of the moral life

for Shaftesbury. By directing his attention to the mind’s internal processes and self-evaluations,

Shaftesbury not only rehabilitated the moral consciousness from the pessimism of Augustine,

Hobbes, and Calvin, he effectively subordinated all external moral authorities, (e.g., natural law,

custom, or divine revelation), to the approving and disapproving operations of the mind. In

Shaftesbury, the mind’s “united structure and fabric” is pressed forward as the centre of moral

authority.22 What “passes within ourselves” is morally and epistemically fundamental.23

Francis Hutcheson did much to systematize and propagate Shaftesbury’s moral theory in

both Scotland and America. As Shaftesbury and Locke before him, Hutcheson investigated the way in

which the moral consciousness revealed itself in its operations. Hutcheson concluded that if ideas or

simple impressions are registered within our moral consciousness, then there must be a

corresponding power of reception to receive these simple impressions of approval or condemnation.24

19This fundamental aspect of Locke’s epistemology is summarized in Book II, Chapter I of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The standard edition of this work is edited by Peter H. Nidditch and published by Clarendon Press.20Shaftesbury, An Inquiry, Book I, Part II, Sect. 3, 172-3.21Shaftesbury argues that this second-order “sentiment” is directly analogous to our affectional responses to aesthetic beauty and musical harmony. When we encounter certain proportions or sounds we cannot withhold our admiration and ecstasy any more than we can withhold positive feelings when we encounter generosity, kindness, constancy, and compassion.22Shaftesbury, An Inquiry, Conclusion, 230.23Shaftesbury, An Inquiry, Conclusion, 229.24Francis Hutcheson, 1694-1746, An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections. With Illustrations on the Moral Sense [1st ed,, 1728; 3d ed., 1742]. Reprinted in British

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This power of reception, or moral sense, is “excited” to the pleasures of approval or the pains of

condemnation by the invisible moral qualities of its object.

David Hume was one of the first moralists to apply Newton’s scientific methods to the study of

the mind.25 For him, relations between simple impressions could not be experienced directly and are

therefore, for all the mind can know, simply outputs of its own conjoining or associative processes.

For instance, there is no direct empirical evidence that “causation” is an actual relation or power in the

world. The best we can do is chronicle how our mental operations associate and conjoin individual

experiences. Hume’s radical empiricism not only puts the ultimate nature of the world beyond the pale

of what can be known, it completely dissolves the mind into its perceiving, associating, willing, and

remembering operations. The mind, whatever its essence might be, is unknowable except in its

operational manifestations.26

Thomas Reid, whose views would be immensely influential among Anglo-American

evangelicals, held that the principles of mind correspond precisely with Isaac Newton’s principles of

natural philosophy. “[T]here is but one way to the knowledge of nature’s works; the way of

observation and experiment. . . . he who philosophizes by other rules, either concerning the material

system, or concerning the mind, mistakes his aim.”27 The successes of Newtonianism held out the

prospect of similar successes in the sciences of the mind. For Reid, Newton’s methodology provided

fundamental principles for our enquiries “into the structure of the mind, and its operations.”28

For Reid, ‘mind’ refers to the hidden subject of our mental operations: “[b]y the mind of a

man, we understand that in him which thinks, remembers, reasons, wills.”29 For most purposes,

however, the mind could be identified with its set of mental operations, even though, as Reid

Moralists 1650-1750, vol. 1, ed. D. D. Raphael (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 261.25The subtitle of Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature [1739] makes this apparent. It reads: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects.26Hume praises Isaac Newton for acknowledging that the “ultimate secrets” of the universe are in a state of perpetual obscurity. See David Hume, 1711-76, The History of England: From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, 8 vols. (London, 1782), 8:332-4. I am grateful to James Force for this citation. See his "Newton, the 'Ancients' and the 'Moderns'," in Newton and Religion: Context, Nature, and Influence, ed. James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999), 240. 27Thomas Reid, 1710-96, An Inquiry into the Human Mind [1764], ed. Timothy Duggan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 4.28Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (Edinburgh: John Bell, 1785), I.3, 51.29Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers, I.1.1, 13.

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repeatedly emphasized, we are unable to penetrate beneath these operations to the essence of the

mind.30 He defended his position that the mind is ultimately mysterious by appealing in good

Newtonian fashion to the fundamental inscrutability of all natural processes: “[w]e are very much in

the dark with regard to the real agents or causes which produce the phenomena of nature.”31 The

mysteriousness of the bond between events of all sorts thwarts accounts of their ultimate natures.

Fortunately, however, mental operations display law-like patterns and are thus candidates for

empirical investigation even though they are metaphysically hidden.32

. . . in the operations of the mind, as well as in those of bodies, we must often be satisfied with knowing, that certain things are connected, and invariably follow one another without being able to discover the chain that goes between them. It is to such connections that we give the name of laws of nature . . . .33

The laws of nature by which the operations of the mind are regulated are the “ultimate conclusions we

can reach in the philosophy of minds.”34

Reid’s investigation of the operations of mind led to several important discoveries. First, all

mental operations rely on implicit first principles. Second, all mental operations assume one or more

of these first principles prior to and apart from the operations of reason or will. For instance, sensation

—the capacity to receive sense impressions—shows that our constitution is so ordered that whenever

we experience a sensation we simultaneously find ourselves with a belief that the object of our

sensation exists at the present time.35 Reid argues that similar spontaneous beliefs or first principles

accompany the deliverances of memory and science: memory assumes the past existence of what is

recalled and science, the continuance of nature’s laws.36 Every other mental operation relies on

corresponding first principles without which it could not proceed.37 In the end, no reasons can be

30Although Reid is very cautious about the metaphysical implications he draws from the mental operations, he does suggest that the existence of “mind” can be inferred from them. See Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers, VI.2, 518.31Thomas Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind [1788], ed. Baruch A. Brody (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969), 43.32Reid was attempting to follow Newton’s lead here. Newton famously refused to speculate on gravity’s ultimate nature. For the purposes of scientific investigation, law-like regularity was all that he needed. The metaphysical inaccessibility of mind, like that of gravity, was not a scientific impediment.33Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind, 146.34Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind, 147.35Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind, 30.36Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind, 30, 245-6.37Reid argues that every act of perception not only involves an awareness of sensory data, or what he calls, simple apprehension, but a belief in the present existence of the object of this sensation. This much we have noted in the text above. He holds, furthermore, that the beliefs accompanying

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given to account for the irresistible force of these first principles other than the will of the creator who

constituted humans to irresistibly concur with them.

Reid’s theory of the mind also asserted that “[t]ruth has an affinity with the human

understanding, which error has not.” And similarly, “right principles of conduct have an affinity with a

candid mind, which wrong principles have not.” Therefore, when true or morally proper propositions

are set before a “well-disposed” mind we can expect it to recognize their authority.38 The fact that we

are constituted to recognize certain truths by virtue of an accompanying judgment that certifies their

truthfulness justifies our reliance on first principles even though they are not determined by prior

rational operations. Thus Reid’s epistemology provides a way for truths to be adjudicated apart from

their connection with other truths or any external authority. The judgment-generating mechanism

within the human constitution is able to immediately adjudicate specific truth claims.

The Operations of the Gospel on the Human Mind

The evangelical conception of the gospel perpetuated the rationalizing processes brought to

the fore in the Reformation and early Enlightenment. The clashes within and between Protestant

communions and with the Roman church focused post-Reformational churches on their distinguishing

doctrines. The deist and Unitarian controversies reinforced the central place given to these doctrinal

differences. By the early nineteenth century, these developments had led to a widespread

identification of religio with specific, contestable propositions rather than with a life of pious

responsiveness to God.39 Organizational evangelicals followed a similar trajectory as they

strategically reduced the gospel to selected propositions around which they could cooperate across

denominational lines. The good news, or gospel, was not Emmanuel, God with us, and all that that

entails, but a set of propositions describing what one must believe in order to be converted.

perception invoke a conception or notion of the object, that is, the mind finds itself not only with a belief about the object’s present existence but with a conceptualization of the object. And to further complicate matters, Reid suggests that there is an additional belief implicit in every act of perceiving, namely, a second-order belief that the belief in the object’s present existence as well as the conceptualization of the object are immediate and not the outcome of discursive reasoning. See Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, 105-6, 270.38Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind, 249-50.39A classic discussion of the transformation of religion from piety to proposition can be found in Wilfred C. Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), esp. 38-43. See also James C. Turner, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).

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In its earliest stage, organizational evangelicalism perpetuated the tendency within

Protestantism to disassociate the gospel from the manifold manifestations of divine grace. John

Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, argued that “in a large sense, [the gospel]

comprehends the evidence of mercy and paternal favour which God bestowed on the Patriarchs” and

includes “all the promises by which God reconciles men to himself, and which occur throughout the

Law.” The gospel, in this comprehensive sense, encompasses the entire history of God’s gracious

dealings with mankind. After acknowledging this broader conception, however, Calvin focused on a

narrower gospel of the “the grace manifested in Christ.”40 Calvin’s less comprehensive gospel is

further restricted in organizational evangelicalism to the beliefs pertaining to conversion.

Nevertheless, for Calvin and his reformed followers, the gospel had comprehensive social

and political features. The reformed “gospel order” which figured so prominently in American colonial

life was covenantal, hierarchically controlled, and fiercely localistic. These characteristics were

ultimately grounded in the reformed theology of sin and were vigorously supported by the interlocking

institutions of the gospel order. “Watchful” political and social institutions were essential if the saints

were to make progress towards godliness. Political and social controls imposed on the community

from non-local centres must be resisted since they emanate from those who are not subject to this

watchful care and are thereby prey to their own lusts.

By the mid-eighteenth century, the gospel order and its parish system were severely

attenuated by fluid population migrations, expansive economic prospects, and new information

onslaughts. The itinerant ministry of George Whitefield, one of the first orthodox Calvinists to

unabashedly oppose the strictures of the reformed parish, exploited these stresses. In his view, not

only could the “truths of the gospel” be articulated apart from the church’s institutional or local life, but

the Holy Spirit directly and immediately offered salvation and assurance to every repentant

40John Calvin, 1509-1564, Institutes of the Christian Religion [6th ed., 1559], trans. Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), II.9.2, 364-65. The Oxford NIV Scofield Study Bible suggests that the New Testament contains three distinct accounts of the gospel, including the gospel of the grace of God in Christ, the gospel of the kingdom of God, and the eternal gospel which announces the coming punishment of the wicked. These gospels are harmonized, however, in that they all originate in the grace of God. See the footnote attached to Revelation 14:6 in Oxford NIV Scofield Study Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 1328.

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individual.41 Much of the criticism directed at Whitefield on behalf of the attenuated parish system was

couched in terms of the “gospel order.”42 By the late eighteenth century, Whitefield’s truths of the

gospel were detached from any particular social, political, or ecclesiastical context.43 Many

evangelical clergymen in both Scotland and New England understood the gospel not as the

comprehensive manifestation of God’s grace but as a set of true propositions efficaciously linked to

receptive faculties in the human mind. The proclamation of this gospel had little to do with the divine

life within the confessing community; it had to do, rather, with addressing gospel-laden propositions to

mental faculties providentially constituted for their reception.

For many evangelical Presbyterians in the post-revolutionary period, the propositions of the

gospel penetrated the mind as a systematic and interconnected whole.44 In this view, if the gospel

doctrines were not proclaimed conjointly, they lost their forcefulness.45 Samuel Miller, a professor at

Princeton Theological Seminary, argued that if the truth was to have its most complete impact on the

mind, it must be presented in its full, systematic interrelatedness. Drawing on a Reidian tenet, Miller

argued that the human mind had a God-given affinity for truth “IN ITS PROPER CONNECTION AND ORDER.”

In the world of grace, as in nature, “one thing is connected with another . . . the genuine Gospel of

Christ is a connected, proportionate, consistent, orderly system.”46

41George Whitefield, 1714-70, George Whitefield's Journals: A New Edition Containing Fuller Material Than Any Hitherto Published, ed. William Wale et al. (London: Billing and Sons, 1960), 374.42See Timothy D. Hall, Contested Boundaries: Itinerancy and the Reshaping of the Colonial American Religious World (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 61-2.43George Whitefield, The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, [1771], vol. 1, Letters of George Whitefield for the period 1734-1742 (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1976), 438.44Henry Strong argued that the gospel exhibits its doctrines in an entire chain. “One truth cannot be separated from the rest.” If the preacher does not show the connections between the doctrines of the gospel, he is “guilty of the charge of unfaithfulness.” See Henry P. Strong, 1785-1835, A Sermon, Preached September 8, 1811, at the Presbyterian Church in Elizabeth-Street, New-York; Being the Sabbath after the Author's Ordination and Installation as Pastor of the Church in that Place (New-York: Largin & Thompson, 1811), 8-9.45See, for instance, John Kemp, 1745-1805, The Gospel Adapted to the State and Circumstances of Man: A Sermon Preached Before the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge; at Their Anniversary Meeting in the High Church of Edinburgh, Thursday, June 5, 1788 (Edinburgh: Martin and McDowall, 1788), 79-80.46Samuel Miller, Holding Fast the Faithful Word: A Sermon, Delivered in the Second Presbyterian Church, in the City of Albany, August 26, 1829; at the Installation of the Reverend William B. Sprague, D.D. as Pastor of Said Church (Albany: Packard and Van Benthuysen, 1829), 35. Miller used this view of truth to critique the abuses of the evangelical movement. The systematicity of truth implied that there was a persistent danger in consensual evangelicalism and its dedication to a select set of essential doctrines. The systematic nature of truth does not permit selective doctrinal systems. Charles McIlvaine, Episcopal Bishop of Ohio, also argued against what Samuel Porter had called the

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Similarly, for many organizational evangelicals the efficacy of the gospel issued from the

relation between the truthfulness of its doctrines and the truth-receptive faculties of the Reidian mind.

The efficacy of gospel doctrines was assured since the faculties of understanding and conscience

were divinely constituted to respond in belief whenever they confronted true propositions of this sort.

John Matthews, a Presbyterian professor of theology, declared “there is a powerful tendency in truth,

when plainly and faithfully stated, to reach and control the conscience of men; and to extort from

them, secretly at least, their approbation.” Truth has “an intrinsic energy to enlighten the mind and

control the conscience.”47 Archibald Alexander, who would shortly become the first professor at

Princeton Theological Seminary, preached a paean to efficacious truth in a sermon delivered before

the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1808. In it, he argued that truth was the object of

faith and the motive for all pious and benevolent affections. He explicitly invoked Reid’s epistemology,

arguing that there are self-evident moral truths that prepare the mind for the reception of gospel

truths. Although the truths of revelation are not self-evident, their relation to self-evident moral truths

already operative within the mind guarantees their efficacy.48

In contrast to those Presbyterian evangelicals who stressed the systematic interrelations

between gospel propositions, there were many organizational evangelicals who held that gospel

truths, taken as singular propositions, resonance immediately and persuasively within human

consciousness. This view was more in keeping with Thomas Reid’s epistemology than those

Presbyterian accounts that argued that only interconnected wholes properly impact the mind. As

suggested earlier, Reid’s epistemology clearly supported the view that the mind is responsive to

“lawless catholicism” of organizational evangelicals by drawing attention to the interconnectedness of true propositions. McIlvaine and other Episcopal leaders were concerned that the rush to cooperate had run roughshod over the doctrines of the church and its liturgy. See Charles Pettit McIlvaine, 1799-1873, The Origin and Design of the Christian Ministry: A Sermon Preached at an Ordination, Held in the Chapel of the Theological Seminary of the Diocese of Ohio, at Gambier, on Sunday, October 26, 1839 (Gambier, OH: Western Church Press, 1839), 9. 47John Matthews, 1772-1848, "The Union of Truth and Love in the Ministry," in The Presbyterian Preacher, or Original Sermons by Living Ministers in the Presbyterian Church, on the Important Doctrines of Christianity, Presented in a Clear and Comprehensive Manner, for the Instruction of the Present Age, and in Defence of the Truth, ed. S. C. Jennings, vol. 1 (Pittsburgh: D. and M. Maclean, 1833), 36-7, 47.48Archibald Alexander, 1772-1851, A Sermon Delivered at the Opening of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, May 1808 (Philadelphia, 1808), 7-10. I am grateful to Lefferts Loetscher for this reference. See Facing the Enlightenment and Pietism: Archibald Alexander and the Founding of Princeton Theological Seminary (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), 94-5.

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individual truths. First principles and other truths are not presented to, and confirmed by, the mind as

systematic wholes but as individual propositions. For Reid and many organizational evangelicals, the

efficacy of these truths does not lie in their systematic interrelatedness but in the fact that they elicit

belief and positive affective states when they are severally presented to the mind.

Whether in the form of an interconnected system of truths or individual truths, organizational

evangelicals held that the true propositions of the gospel uniquely commend themselves to the

operations and approbations of the human mind. They also generally concurred with the view that

“the mind of man is naturally conscious of its own actings. So, from the nature of the things, it is

evident that grace is perceptible.”49 Conversion was no longer a baffling mystery or an unexpected

divine visitation; it manifested a uniform course of grace in which the propositions of the gospel

operated efficaciously on truth-receptive minds.

The Unexpected Operations of Context

Try as they might, organizational evangelicals could not give a fully transparent account of

the uniform course of grace through the soul. They believed that gospel truths resonated with the

natural capacities of the mind but, if pressed for reasons why this did not happen in every case, they

typically deferred to the mysterious operations of the Holy Spirit. For instance, James Peddie could

be no more specific than that the Spirit follows “the gospel in its progress through the world.”50 Elihu

Thayer could offer little more by way of explanation. He simply announced that the Spirit

accompanies “the dispensation of the Gospel.”51 The sermons delivered before the voluntary societies

are replete with similarly nebulous references to the Spirit who mysteriously works to enlighten the

understanding and cooperate with the appointed means of salvation.

Negative responses to the preached gospel were puzzling to early organizational

evangelicals.52 According to their synthesis of God’s universal operations and Reid’s truth-receptive 49Joseph Bellamy, 1719-1790, True Religion Delineated, or, Experimental Religion, Distinguished from Formality and Enthusiasm, in Two Discourses. In Which Some of the Principal Errors, Both of the Antinomians and Arminians are Confuted. And the Truth as it is in Jesus Explained and Proved, 3d ed. (London: R. Edwards, 1809), I.5, 195.50Peddie, The Perpetuity, Advantages, and Universality of the Christian Religion, 32.51Thayer, A Sermon, Preached at Hopkinton, 7-8.52Joseph Lathrop, 1731-1820, affirmed that the rationality and benevolence of the gospel scheme should lead to a cordial reception “wherever it was proposed.” He lamented that its reception “has often been the reverse. By many it is treated with indifference—by some, with enmity.” See A Sermon Preached to the Hampshire Missionary Society, at Their Annual Meeting, the Fourth Tuesday in

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minds, the preaching of the gospel should prompt uniformly positive responses. But clearly this was

not the case. So, in order to salvage their Newtonianism, evangelicals needed an explanation that

would rationalize the recalcitrance of the unrepentant. It is here that the classic reformed doctrine of

the mysterious agency of the Spirit was pressed into service. However, the identification of the work

of the Spirit with unexplained contingencies in the uniform operations of grace masked what may

have been a critical analytic failure. Since the Spirit was invoked at the exact point where evangelical

Newtonianism floundered, it was impossible to appraise the overall theory since this critical test of its

adequacy was neutralized by the inscrutable agency of the Spirit.53

However, after years of arduous exertions organizational evangelicals were compelled to pay

more attention to the peculiarities of the local situation within which the gospel was preached since

even the “natural means” of promulgating it were “often found to be utterly ineffectual.”54 Ministry

frustrations thrust forward the view that the variegated responses to the gospel were not due simply

to the mysterious operations of the Spirit but to observable factors in the local setting. Towards the

end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the annual sermons delivered before the societies

contain fewer claims that the doctrines of the gospel inevitably enlighten, quicken, and exalt the

conscience or that the various responses to its preaching could simply be attributed to the Spirit’s

mysterious operations.

Reports from the field increasingly noted that missionaries often had to overcome the

unsavory behaviours, reputations, and “distorted exhibition[s]” of the “Christians” who had preceded

them.55 In the words of Stephen Stebbins, “[h]eathen nations form their opinion of religion, very much

August—1802, in Northampton (Northampton, MA: William Butler, 1802), 6.53As good analogical Newtonians, evangelicals were entitled to appeal to the ultimate inscrutability of fundamental processes as Newton did with gravity. Their appeal to the work of the Holy Spirit at the point where their theory flounders not only severely narrowed the role of the Spirit in conversion but it also prevented evangelicals from noticing more mundane factors which predispose a person to respond to or reject the gospel. In other words, the appeal to the Spirit at the very point at which the analysis breaks down, masked all pertinent contextual effects.54Henry Moncreiff-Wellwood, 1750-1827, A Sermon, Preached Before the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, at their Meetings on Tuesday, June 6, 1809, Being the Centenary Anniversary from the Date of Their Charter in 1709 (Edinburgh: Walker and Greig, 1810), 26-7.55John Blair Smith, 1756-1799, The Enlargement of Christ's Kingdom, the Object of a Christian's Prayers and Exertions: A Discourse, Delivered in the Dutch Church, in Albany; Before the Northern Missionary Society in the State of New-York, at their Organization, Feb. 14, 1797 (Schenectady: C. P. Wyckoff, 1797), 17.

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from the conduct of its professors. Alas, that this should exhibit so melancholy a picture!”56 A few

years previous, John Williams lamented that “[t]here is no greater stumbling-block in the way of

unbelievers at home, or to the heathen abroad, than the bad lives of professing Christians.” And,

reaffirming a remark made by an Indian before the New-York Missionary Society, Williams declared,

“Let the white people leave their bad practices, and we will receive the gospel.”57

The claim that the gospel is efficacious whenever the Spirit mysteriously applied its truths to

human minds slowly gave way to formal acknowledgements of the relevance of the behaviour of

professing Christians and the preacher himself. George Lawson, speaking before the Edinburgh

Missionary Society in 1808, warned that even the “most salutary truths” could be “exceedingly

harmful . . . if our conduct is not answerable to our profession.”58 In 1817, Alexander McClelland,

pastor of a Presbyterian Church in New York, suggested to the Young Men’s Missionary Association

that the pure morality of the early church “was the true . . . cause of the progress of the Gospel in the

apostolic age.”59 And Samuel Spring insisted that even the Bible itself was not sufficient to guide the

ignorant unless they “have teachers to guide them.” Tellingly, these teachers must not simply

proclaim doctrine; they must exhibit devout and godly lives. Spring concludes that unless the ignorant

“behold the example of real Christians” they will remain destitute.60

Evangelicals by no means universally acknowledged these and other contextual factors.

Throughout the early nineteenth century and beyond, many continued to believe that gospel

propositions were naturally conversant with the operations of the mind and inevitably accomplish their

56Stephen W. Stebbins, 1758-1843, God's Government of the Church and World, the Source of Great Consolation and Joy: Illustrated in a Sermon Preached at Hartford, May 9, 1811, Before the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut, at the Anniversary Election (Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1811), 16.57John Williams, 1767-1825, A Discourse, Delivered April 5, 1803, in the Baptist Church, in Gold-Street, Before the New-York Missionary Society, at their Annual Meeting (New-York: Isaac Collins, 1803), 16.58George Lawson, 1749-1820, A Sermon, Preached Before the Edinburgh Missionary Society, at their Anniversary Meeting, Tuesday, April 19, 1808 (Edinburgh: Walker and Greig, 1808), 11.59Alexander McClelland, 1794-1864, A Plea for a Standing Ministry: A Sermon, Delivered at the Anniversary of the Young Men's Missionary Society of New-York, on the 28th of December, 1817 (New-York: J. Seymour, 1818), 29.60Samuel Spring, 1746-1819, A Sermon, Preached at New Haven, Con. Before the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, at their Nineth Annual Meeting, Sept. 10, 1818 (Boston: Samuel T. Armstrong, 1818), 13.

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work. For instance, John Romeyn relates the following anecdote which illustrates the enduring

inability of some evangelicals to reckon with the contextual factors impinging on conversion.

After two abortive visits from missionaries who told him things he already knew about the

existence of God and his sinfulness, a third missionary, Henry Rauch, happened upon the hut of an

Indian leader. Rauch spoke of God’s desire to make him happy and how Christ shed his blood to

ransom him from his misery. After delivering his discourse Rauch lay down exhausted from his

journey. The Indian continues the narrative.

I then thought, What kind of man is this? There he lies and sleeps. I might kill him, and throw him out into the wood, and who would regard it? But this gave him no concern. However, I could not forget his words. They constantly recurred to my mind. Even when I was asleep, I dreamt of that blood which Christ has shed for us. I found this to be something different from what I had ever heard, and I interpreted Christian Henry's words to the other Indians. Thus, through the grace of God, an awakening took place amongst us. I say, therefore, brethren, preach Christ our Saviour, and his sufferings and death, if you would have your words to gain entrance amongst the heathen.61

The Indian narrator attributes the success of Rauch’s mission to the content (propositions) of

his gospel. No explanatory weight is given to Rauch’s selfless embodiment of the gospel. Ironically,

earlier in the same anecdote it was reported that the Indians drove off the previous missionaries

because their own (white) people were thieves, liars, and drunkards. The Indians’ rejection of their

propositions was clearly more than a simple rejection of propositions. Similarly, their reception of

Rauch’s gospel was clearly more than a simple reception of his propositions. The advice to simply

preach Christ is not supported by the account as a whole. Something critical has suddenly, but

perhaps predictably, dropped out of the analysis.

By 1820 it was increasingly common for organizational evangelicals to publicly acknowledge

the importance of contextual factors in conversion. Jedidiah Morse, who was near the end of an

acrimonious career, in a sermon delivered before the American Board of Commissions for Foreign

Missions in 1821, warned that many had lost sight of the way in which the gospel is successfully

propagated, namely, by “personal godliness in its professors.” To attempt to propagate Christianity

“except in its embodied, living state, is an undertaking in itself irrational, and can never succeed. The

power of godliness, felt and exhibited by professing Christians, enters into the true means of bringing

61George Henry Loskiel, 1740-1814, History of the Mission of the United Brethren Among the Indians in North America, trans. Christian LaTrobe (London: Brethren’s Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel, 1794), Part II, 14-5.

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those who are ‘strangers and foreigners,’ to be ‘fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of

God’.”62 After surveying the relevant history, Morse concluded that the most important reason why the

world was converted to Christ in the first age of the church was not because of miracles, singular

endowments, zeal, labour, or sufferings but because of the holy lives of its professors. “What

Christians were, operated more powerfully to persuade men to the belief of the truth and divinity of

their religion, than all that they said or did.”63 Morse is not overtly abandoning the evangelical

understanding of the uniform operations of grace and their relation to the truth-receptivity of the mind;

he is aware, however, of other, non-propositional means by which grace is typically communicated.

In the same year, Joseph Tuckerman, pastor of the Church of Christ in Chelsea,

Massachusetts, addressed the Society for the Propagating the Gospel Among the Indians and Others

in North America. In his sermon he argued, in typical evangelical fashion, that miracles had very little

to do with the success of early Christianity. He did not, however, simply call for the preaching of the

gospel. Rather, he attributes the success of the early Christians to the “spirit of our religion” which

enabled them to overcome crushing adversity through “the strongest bonds of sympathy and

affection.”64

The increasing evangelical sensitivity to context and history did not require an abandonment

of their theory of gospel propagation. It is still possible that an inductive survey of the newly

uncovered conditions under which the gospel is successfully propagated will yield uniform and

universal means of grace. Even if the means of salvation are more complex than originally thought,

they are not for that reason any less universal. Gospel proclamation can still be a technical matter of

matching uniform and universal means with ends. Morse’s and Tuckerman’s inductive investigation of

the New Testament, which was prompted by ministry experience and the failure of the evangelical

synthesis, has turned up new factors which figure in the successful propagation of the gospel.

62Jedidiah Morse, 1761-1826, A Sermon, Delivered Before the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, at their Annual Meeting in Springfield, Massachusetts, September 19, 1821, 2d ed. (Washington, DC: Davis and Force, 1822), 26-7.63Morse, A Sermon, Delivered Before the American Board, 17-8, 21.64Joseph Tuckerman, 1778-1840, A Discourse, Preached Before the Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Indians and Others in North America, November 1, 1821 (Cambridge, MA: Hilliard and Metcalf, 1821), 20-1.

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By 1820 few organizational evangelicals were willing to declare before their well-informed

brethren that conversion can be brought about by the straightforward application of gospel truths to

receptive minds. Their annual sermons increasing concede that non-doctrinal factors are relevant if

not determinant in conversion.65 The primary pressure to modify evangelical Newtonianism arose

from the widely publicized experiences of evangelical missionaries and pastors. Increasingly,

complications of context, reputation, and previous relations with other “Christians” impose themselves

on evangelical organizers and activists. The simple, straightforward, means-ends procedures

associated with the Newtonian-Reidian synthesis are slowly being replaced by analyses that at least

acknowledge the historical and relational dynamics of the evangelistic context. These complications

do not decisively overturn the universalism of evangelical Newtonianism, but they do add complexity

and make it much less serviceable as a rationale for aggressive activism.

Conclusion

Well before organizational evangelicals faced the challenges of historical-critical scholarship,

evolutionary naturalism, or the exegetical crisis surrounding slavery, their Newtonian synthesis faced

mounting internal pressures. The uniform operations of grace, even when energetically applied, did

not seem to replicate the mass conversions of the first century of the Christian era nor did they

obviously usher in the millennium as many had anticipated. Further, it was increasingly unclear that

human minds had a natural affinity for true propositions of any kind, let alone those leading to

conversion. For many organizational evangelicals the emerging national popular culture offered little

reassurance that truth alone would transform human minds. If anything, minds seemed susceptible to

a widening range of both true and false beliefs.

65Few evangelicals would have been prepared at this time, or any other time, to go as far as Alexander Campbell who argued that the Christian religion is only truly exhibited when it confronts the world in its full social character. “An individual or two, in a pagan land, may talk about the Christian religion, and exhibit its morality . . . but it is impossible to give a clear, a satisfactory, a convincing exhibition of it, in any other way than by exhibiting a church, not on paper, but in actual existence and operation, as Divinely appointed.” Alexander Campbell, 1788-1866, “The capital mistake of modern missionary schemes: How, then, is the gospel to spread through the world?” Christian Baptist 1:2 (September 1823): 55.

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