Puritan Rhetoric: The Issue of Emotion in Religion

5. Natural Religion

READING NUMBER F I V E Natural Religion Ebenezer Gay Disliking the inscrutability and the unpredictability of Calvin's God. Ebenezer Gay sought to find order and harmony in the universe. From the earliest days of his minisby. he emphasized the rational, multi· dimensional search for answers to mligious questions, and when the emotionalism of the revival swept over his community of Hingham. he denounced the extravagances. If he cannot rightly be called the father of American Unital'ianism, Gay should be famed for epitomizing New England Liberalism in his "Natural Religion." ~ Presented at Hal'Vard College more than a decade after the Awakening had subsided, "Natural Religion" was one of the lectures in the Dudleian series on natural religion. Antithetic to Edwards's view that "Our people do not so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched," Gay's lecture carried the implications of rational religion much further than did Chauncy'S "Enthusiasm Desclibed." In addressing his elite audience upon a distinguished occasion, Gay introduced new dimensions to the issue of emotion in religion. Attempting to keep within the acceptable boundaries of Calvinist thought, Gay nevertheless greatly expanded the role of reason in man, in God, and in the relationship between God and man; also, he suggested that man may be the steersman of his spiritual destiny. Too, whereas Chauncy accepted a useful, though limited, role for the emotions under the strict supervision of an informed Understanding, Gay-except for a fleeting genufIectionignored the emotions. In contradistinction to Edwards's unitive psychology, Gay considered that the cognitive faculties were separated from the emotions and were restrictive masters controlling spontaneous affective responses, Conforming to his de-emphasis of both the emotions and the faculty of Imagination which gives rise to emotionalism, Gay spoke ~ The texl: of our lecture comes from Ebenezer Cay, Natural Religion, tIfJ DistingUished from Revealed (Boston, 1759). See Part One: The Developing Exigence. Natural Religion 159 directly and clearly to the intellect in an uncompromisingly dull and bloodless style. ROMANS 2: 14, 15 Fot' when the Gentiles, whioh have not the Law, do by Natut 'e the Things contained in the Law; these having not the Law, are a Law unto themselves: Which shew the Work of the Law written in their Hearts, their Conscience also bearing witness, and their Thoughts the mean while accusing, or else excusing one another.~ The Belief of GOD's Existence is most essentially fundamental to all Religion, and haVing been at the first of the Dudleian Lectures established; 2 the moral Obligation which it induceth upon the Nature of Man, may be the Subject of our present Inquiry. . A DEVOUT Hermit being asked,s How he could profit in Knowledge, living in a Desalt, without Men and Books? answered, "I have one Book which I am always studying, and turning over Day and Night: The Heavens, the Earth and the Waters, are the Leaves of which it consists." The Characters of the Deity are plainly legible in the whole Creation around us: And if we open the Volume of our own Nature, and look within, we find there a Law written;-a Rille of virtuous Practice prescribed. RELIGION and Law (divine) are Words of promiscuous Use; denoting in the general Signification thereof, An Obligation lying upon Men to do those Things which the Perfectiom of God, relative unto them, do requi1'e to them. In this Definition (whether exact and full, or not,) I mean to imply all Things incumbent on such reasonable Creatures as Men are, toward all Beings with which they are concemed, GOD, the supreme, one another, and themselves; and which are incumbent on them, by vertue of the Perfections of God, in the Relation there is betwixt Him and them: other Obligation which can be supposed to any of the same Things, not being of the religiOUS Kind. And in the doing those Things to which Religion is the Obligation, are 160 READINGS included, besides the actual Performance, the Principles, Motives 'and Ends thereof; all that is necessary to render any Acts of Men, whether internal or external, such as the Perfections of the Deity require. RELIGION is divided into natural and revealed: -Re~ vealed Religion, is that which GOD hath made known to Man by the immediate Inspiration of his Spirit, the Declarations of his Mouth, and Instructions of his Prophets: Natural, that which bare Reason discovers and...