The Benevolent Deity : : Ebenezer Gay and the Rise of Rational Religion in New England, 1696-1787 / / Robert J. Wilson III.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn eBook Package Archive 1898-1999 (pre Pub)
• VerfasserIn: Wilson III, Robert J.,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2015]; ©1984
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (328 p.) :; 8 illus.

The years following the Great Awakening in New England saw a great theological struggle between proponents of Calvinism and the champions of Christian liberty, setting the stage for American Unitarianism. The adherents of Christian liberty, who were branded Arminians by their opponents, were contending for the liberty of the mind and the soul to pursue truth and salvation free from prior restraint.The Arminian movement took shape as a major, quasi-denominational force in New England under the guidance of particular clergymen, most notably Ebenezer Gay, minister of the First Parish in Hingham, Massachusetts, from 1718 to 1787. Despite his ubiquitous presence in the history of Arminianism, however, Gay has been a historical enigma. Robert J. Wilson's purpose in this biography is to trace Gay's long and fascinating intellectual odyssey against the evolving social, political, and economic life of eighteenth-century Hingham as well as the religious history of the coastal region between Boston and Plymouth.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Prologue -- CHAPTER I. Dedham -- CHAPTER II. Harvard -- CHAPTER III. Hingham: The Early Years -- CHAPTER IV. The Great Noise About Arminianism -- CHAPTER V. The Great Awakening: The Noisy Passions A-Float -- CHAPTER VI. The Great Awakening: The Captain Kept His Place -- CHAPTER VII. Pure and Undefiled Religion -- CHAPTER VIII. A Benevolent Planet with His Satellites -- CHAPTER IX The Father of Lights -- CHAPTER X. Family and Community: The Arminian Patriarch in Changing Times -- CHAPTER XI. A Rank Tory -- CHAPTER XII. The Old Man's Calendar -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- APPENDIX I. Admissions to Full Communion in Hingham from 1718-1787 -- APPENDIX II. South Shore Maps -- APPENDIX III. South Shore Clergymen -- APPENDIX IV. A Partial Genealogy of the Gay Family -- Index