Radio Script #379

Little Talks on Common Things

April 27, 1958

Through the kindness of Mrs. A. F. Drummond I have had the opportunity to examine a very interesting old book. It is a book purporting to give a thumbnail sketch of such of the religious denominations or sects that had been known in the world through the first 18 centuries of the Christian era.

The full title of this old volume is “An Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects Which Have Appeared in the World from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Present Day, with an appendix containing a brief account of the different schemes of religion now embraced among mankind.” The author is Hannah Adams, and the book was printed by B. Edes and Sons, No. 42 Comhill, Boston in 1784.

The first thing that struck me about this book was the name of the printer, B. Edes and Sons. That was Benjamin Edes, printer of the famous Boston Gazette, in whose printshop, legend has it, the Boston Tea Party was organized. And the oldest son, associated with the father in the Comhill shop in 1784, was Peter Edes, who came to Maine early in the 19th century and was the first printer at Augusta, and later also the first printer at Bangor. In fact, the mother of Peter Edes and the wife of Benjamin Edes, who printed this compendium, is buried in one of the old cemeteries in Augusta.

The compiler of this interesting volume of 1784 was a woman, and that was so unusual that Rev. Thomas Prentiss of Hannah Adams’ home town of Medfield, agreed to write an introduction to the book, giving his sanction to a woman’s doing such work. Prentiss wrote: “The world has been absurdly accustomed to entertain but a moderate opinion of female abilities and to describe their announced literary productions to the craft of designing men who use a female pseudonym for notoriety. But unbiased reason must allow that any distinction in sex cannot be grounded on defect of natural ability, but upon the different and perhaps faulty mode of female education. The writer of this compendium, Hannah Adams, has made herself acquainted with the Greek and Latin tongues, which may sufficiently account for her frequent use of terms in those languages. Her diligent study has revealed an astonishing variety of religious beliefs.”

In that last sentence the Rev. Prentiss didn’t exaggerate a bit. The list of sects is indeed astonishing, and only the most erudite theological scholar has even heard of more than half of the some 200 denominations that Hannah dug up. There were the Adamites, who proclaimed that they were as innocent as Adam before Eve ate the apple; the Aginians, who denounced both marriage and the eating of meat; the Aquarians, who used water instead of wine at communion; the Artotyrites, who celebrated communion with bread and cheese; a sect which insisted that good works were actually detrimental to salvation; and another which believed that God was in exact human form, seated like an earthly monarch on a throne of gold. Those are just a few of Hannah Adams’ collected sects whose names began with the same letter as her own, the letter A.

But what about the Christian sects which we know today? Did Hannah Adams include them? She certainly did, so far as they had come into existence in her time, or at least so far as she was able to learn anything about them. She says nothing about the Adventist groups, because they were almost unknown in 1784. She knew naught about the Disciples of Christ. She is wholly silent about the Evangelical and Reformed, and of course she was years ahead of the Mormons or Latter Day Saints. She had never heard of the Pentacostals nor the Spiritualists, nor the Christian Scientists. But she did describe several denominations we still have with us today.

Of the Congregationalists she wrote: “A denomination of Protestants who maintain that each particular church has authority for exercising government within itself. This denomination differs from the Independents by inviting councils which are advisory, while the Independents settle everything in the individual church without any advice from others.”

Since we know that the Baptists have always exercised this same policy of resting complete authority in the local church, Hannah Adams had to find some other criticism to distinguish Baptists from Congregationalists. Of course she hit upon what are still pertinent distinctions: baptism by immersion, rather than by sprinkling, and baptism only of persons old enough to know the meaning of the ordinance. The way Hannah Adams put it was: “Those who actually profess repentance toward God, faith in and obedience to our Lord Jesus, are the only proper subjects of baptism, and that children are not proper subjects for that ordinance.”

But other things that Hannah wrote about the Baptists are happily out of date today. She said: “The Baptists refuse to communicate with other denominations.” By “communicate” she meant “observe communion”. In other words, she said the Baptists practiced closed communion. And so indeed they did right here in Waterville when Jeremiah Chaplin founded their church here and even fifty years later when shirt-maker Charles Hathaway was having his public quarrel with Pastor Burrage. But that practice is no longer true. Baptists, like all the larger Protestant denominations, practice open communion, inviting all believers of whatever sect to the Lord’s table.

Another point on which Hannah’s description is happily obsolete today, though true when she wrote it, is her statement that “New England Baptists are Calvinists with regard to the doctrines”. That indeed was just what Jeremiah Chaplin and Samuel Francis Smith were, to speak only of the two most famous of early Baptist ministers in Waterville. They believed in the doctrine of predestination. Let us see how Hannah Adams explained that doctrine:

“Calvin taught”, she wrote, “that God has chosen, before the foundation of the world, certain persons to be saved in everlasting glory, of his own free grace, without the least action of faith or good works on the part of the person thus favored and that the rest of mankind God was pleased to pass by and did ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sins, to the praise of his vindictive justice. Therefore, Jesus Christ, by his suffering and death, made atonement only for the sins of the select.”

Hannah Adams in fact devoted six pages of her book to the Baptists and had a lot more to say about them. But we have said enough. No wonder that here in Waterville, as in all the rest of New England, the stern predestined Baptists were called hard shelled.

Of the Methodists Hannah wrote: “This name first distinguished a number of students at Oxford who, in the year 1729, formed a religious society and agreed upon certain methods and rules, for the regularity and strictness of which they were called Methodists. This sect opposes the Calvinist doctrine of predestination.”

When Hannah Adams wrote her book the Universalists were being heard from, but the Unitarian movement which swept over New England in the mid-nineteenth century had not begun. Hannah devotes only five lines to the Unitarians of which sect she says: “The term is very comprehensive and applies to a great variety of persons who agree only on one common principle, that there is no distinction in the divine nature, no trinity, only unity.”

But to the Universalists Hannah gave nine pages, three more than she gave to the Baptists. “This sect teaches”, said Hannah, “that Christ died not for a select few only, but for all mankind universally without exception or limitation, and that in consequence of Christ’s sacrifice all men will certainly and finally be saved.”

It is clear that this woman writer of 175 years ago had studied carefully the distinctions between the Protestant sects, especially as they existed in the New England of her time. But when she came to fulfill the second part of her long title, namely, “a brief account of the different schemes of religion now embraced among mankind”, she was woefully ignorant. She says not a word about Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, or Taoism, nor does she mention several other religions prominent over the earth in 1784. Apart from Christianity, Hannah divided all religions into four groups: Pagans, Mohammedans, Jews and Deists. But she describes just one kind of pagan religion, Lamaism of Tibet, which she assumed to be the religion of all Asia except its southwestern fringe, where originated Mohammedanism, “whose converts”, she wrote, “have spread this religion over large areas of Asia, Africa and Europe”.

Then followed eight pages describing Jewish faith and practice. She is fair and complimentary to these great people, but one thing she says about them is no more true today than is her statement about belief in predestination by certain other sects. She says, “Almost all modern Jews are Pharisees, but they are less strict with regard to the austerities of the law. However, their men still do not mar the corners of the beard.”

Today we don’t think much about Deists. But in Hannah Adams time they loomed so important in America that Hannah classified them as one of the five great religions of the world. “They profess a belief in God”, she wrote, “but show no regard to Jesus Christ, and consider the doctrine of the evangelists and the apostles as fables and dreams. Deists”, she continued, flare divided concerning the immortality of the soul. Some of them acknowledge a future state, others deny it.”

When Hannah Adams wrote this book, there was still living a great American who was a Deist, as were indeed many of the founding fathers. I refer to Benjamin Franklin. In his autobiography Franklin recorded: “Some books against Deism came into my hands. The arguments stated to be refuted were so much stronger than the refutation that I ever after became a pronounced Deist.”

The rest of Hannah Adams’ book is devoted to geographical classifications, in which she tells us what was in 1784 the prevailing religion under each of her numerous geographical headings. Remember that in Hannah’s day New England consisted of only four distinct areas: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Maine was then a part of Massachusetts, and Vermont was divided between New Hampshire and New York.

“There are various denominations in Massachusetts”, said Hannah, “but the Congregationalists predominate. New Hampshire is the same, except that it harbors a large number of Quakers. Because Rhode Island was settled on a plan of complete religious liberty, many Quakers and Baptists sought refuge there. Congregationalism prevails in Connecticut, but a number of churches there have been formed on the Presbyterian model according to Scotland.”

Altogether Hannah Adams’ book is an interesting commentary on religion, especially in what was in 1784 that brand new country, the United States of America.

Year: 1958