London Quarterly Review, Sir Charles Lyell's second visit to America, and the demise of old school Calvinism

In 1849, The London Quarterly Review published a synopsis of Sir Charles Lyell's two volume set entitled A Second Visit to the United States, in the Years 1845-6. In it Lyell noted churches "of every religious denomination: Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, Free-Will Baptists, Universalists, Unitarians, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and Quakers, all living harmoniously together. The late Governor or the State was a Unitarian: and as if to prove the perfect toleration of churches the most opposed to each other, they have recently had a Roman Catholic Governor.' —vol. i. p. 48."¹

Why the change of the old school puritans into what Lyell described as "perfect religious cosmopolitans"? According to Lyell, it was in "reaction against the extreme Calvinism of the church first established in this part of America, a movement which has had a powerful tendency to subdue and mitigate sectarian bitterness.'" One memory Lyell recalled was a Calvinistic clergyman of a century back who recorded the following words in his diary:

"'Enjoyed some hours' comfortable meditation on the infinite mercy of God in damning little babes!'"

Lyell quoted this line in conjunction with a very popular poem by Michael Wigglesworth, teacher of the town of Maldon, New England. Entitled "Day of Doom" the poem proceeded to speak of the final day of judgment at the moment when infants who had died in infancy approached the judgment bar of God. Below are lines from the poem with Lyell's interpretative comments interspersed (Lyell's comments are embolden):

'Then to the bar all they drew near who died in infancy,

And never had, or good or bad, effected personally '—

alleging that it was hard for them to suffer for the guilt of Adam :—

'Not we, but he, ate of the tree whose fruit was interdicted,

Yet on us all, of his sad fall the punishment's inflicted.'

To which the Judge replies that none can suffer 'for what they never did.'

'But what you call old Adam's fall, and only his trespass,

You call amiss to call it his; both his and yours it was.

He was designed of all mankind to be a public head,

A common root whence all should shoot; and stood in all their stead.'

With more to the like effect—when

'The glorious King thus answering, they cease and plead no longer,

Their consciences must needs confess his reasons are the stronger.'

We are then instructed that the elect mothers admitted to heaven are not permitted to be disturbed by any compassion for their babes consigned to the place where

'God's vengeance feeds the flame 

With piles of wood and brimstone flood, that none can quench the same.'

After which it cannot startle us to hear that

'The godly wife conceives no grief, nor can she shed a tear,

For the sad fate of her dear mate, when she his doom doth hear."

 

¹The London Quarterly Review, LXXXIV, December 1848-March 1849, pp.104-105