Rev. Jonathan Mayhew

JONATHAN MAYHEW , (Experience,8 John,7 Thomas,6-5 Matthew4), b. 8 Oct. 1720; res. C.; rem. to Boston, clergyman. This celebrated divine was without question the most brilliant man of Vineyard origin, who left his native Island to become, in the metropolis of N. E., one of the foremost figures in the social, religious and political circles of pre­Revolutionary times. He was not only this, but no less a personage than President John Adams called him "the transcendent genius" of his day and his fame will endure and become more permanent as time goes on.

Of his early life on the Vineyard, in his native town of Chilmark, little is known, but it is said that his father intended him for a business career, having in view his own lean income after a long life spent in the ministry. This plan, however, did not materialize for the young man, showing studious habits early, with marked intellectual traits, and developing a religious temperament as he grew older, his father determined to send him to H. C. to follow in the footsteps of his older brother Nathan, who had been trained for the ministry, but had died only two years after graduation. [*It is said that the Rev. Experience sold some of his real estate to raise the money to furnish this collegiate course to the youngest son. It is prob. that Jonathan taught school between times to help defray his expenses.] While in college, according to one of this leters to his father when he was visiting in York, Me., during a religious revival, he expressed in decided language his disapproval of the extravagancies and fanaticism of the affair, an early indication of the independent tendencies of his mind. Indeed he had inherited the germs of liberality from his father, who had frequently engaged in theological controversies with the great preachers of his generation. After graduation in 1744, it is probable that he was engaged in tutoring at college until June 1747, when he accepted a call to become pastor of the West Church in Boston. His preaching and public speaking before this had been so broad in spirit, and so unconventional that he wrote to his father: "the clergy of the town stand aloof from me and I have to study hard." When he was ordained every clergyman in the city either refused to attend or found excuses to be absent from this important church function and only pastors from the country churches took part in the ceremony. His aged father gave the "charge" to the newly made minister. This treatment, due solely to his alleged unsoundness in theological dogmas even extended to personal relations, such was the bigotry of the day, and many of his city colleagues tried to ostracise him socially. He was also without membership in the Boston Association of Congregational Ministers because of his heterodoxy, but all this had no effect upon his standing in the community nor with the people of his parish who saw in the brilliant young preacher one of the notable intellects of the Boston pulpit. He was indeed pre­eminently the pioneer of liberal religious thought in New England and the founder of that division of the old Puritan church now classed as Unitarian and Universalists and which found early expression in the pulpit of the West Church through him and his several successors. [*He was the first clergyman in New England to openly and definitely oppose the scholastic dogma of the Trinity as well as to deny the "five points" of Calvinism. This not only took great moral courage but it required great forensic and disputative knowledge to maintain his position as he had pitted against him the brightest intellects of that period which had been called the golden era of ministerial influence in New England.] Nor did he limit the activities of his mind to religious teachings alone, but he entered into the public discussions of the problems of the day with even more zeal and directness than would be tolerated in the pulpit. The Colonies were then beginning to show their teeth to the British ministry and preparing to resist peacefully every continuance of tyrannical government, and to continue resistance by force if necessary. As early as 1750 he published a remarkable "Discourse on Charles the First and the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and Non Resistance". This sermon or essay was received in England with general approval by the clergy and people not connected with the established church or the Court and its doctrines laid the foundation for further resistance of our people to ministerial oppression in the Colonies. President Adams said of him: "Dr. Mayhew seemed to be raised up to revive all the animosity of the people against tyranny within Church and State and at the same time to destroy their bigotry, fanaticism and inconsistencies. This transcendent genius," he continues, "threw all the weight of his great fame into the scale of his country." Other public discourses were published in succeeding years, but his sermons regularly delivered at the weekly services were full of his reflections on the social and political tendencies of the times and kept alive the revolutionary spirit of the people. In 1763 he published his "Observations on the Conduct of the Society for Propagating the Gospel", a savage attack on the managers for what he believed to be their plan to divert the revenues of the Society from its original object to that of establishing bishoprics and a State Church in New England. Like its predecessor it created a profound impression and provoked bitter rejoinders. His published sermons had attracted such favorable notice in England among the clergy that he was given the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity by the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, when he was but thirty years old, while his political addresses and published discourses gained the applause of the liberal statesmen of the Whig party of Great Britain and he kept up until his death a continued correspondence with both the leading clergymen and notable politicians of the mother country. Among the latter was Thomas Hollis, the wealthy and munificent merchant of London. In 1766, he published his "Discourse on the Repeal of the Stamp Act", which gained the approval of the great Whig minister, William Pitt, to whom it was dedicated, and this proved to be his last contribution to the burning questions of the times. Although tradition has brought down to us, and it is confirmed by the pencil of the artist, that he was a man of handsome and distinguished appearance, yet it appears he was either inherently not vigorous of body or that his activities in parish work and public speaking had undermined his constitution. After a journey to Vermont in June 1766 to attend a parish council, he returned to Boston exhausted and took to his bed, never again to rise. At the early age of 45 years and 9 months he died on July 8, 1766 "of a nervous fever, overplied by public energies", as stated in the legend beneath his portrait. The loss to his parish and to the community was marked by profound sorrow. Numerous "elegies" remain in print to mark the esteem of private and public friends in all walks of life both at home and abroad. He will be remembered as the great pulpit orator and patriot of his time who but a month before his death proposed a "communion of the Colonies" along the same line as that of "communion of the churches", (Letter to Hollis.). Robert Treat Paine, signer of the Declaration of Independence, said "he was the father of civil and religious liberty in Massachusetts and New England."

He married one of the most beautiful belles of her time. ELIZABETH CLARKE, dau. of Dr. John and Elizabeth (Breame) Clarke of Boston, a wealthy physician who lived in a famous mansion at the north end of Boston known as the Mayo­Clarke house. She was b. in 1733 and their marriage took place 2 Sept. 1756. She is described as not only beautiful in person but possessed of a character as attractive with all the desirable and lovable womanly attributes, and as the wife of the most popular clergyman of his time, she rivalled him in the admiration of his parishioners and other friends. Their portraits painted by the celebrated artist Copley, which were unfortunately destroyed in the great fire of Boston in 1872, bore out the contemporaneous opinions of the times as to the great beauty of the wife and the handsome features of the husband. The engraved portrait of Rev. Jonathan Mayhew which is the frontispiece of Vol. II of this work bears testimony to this general tradition of his clear­cut classic face. It was engraved in 1767, after his death, from the Copley portrait by the Italian artist Cipriani in folio size 10 x 13 inches at the request and expense of Thomas Hollis, Esq. of London, the well­known benefactor of Harvard College. Although in his life he had preached powerful sermons against the establishment of bishops, it is one of the strange evolutions in family history that his grandson became one of the noted bishops of the American Church, the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright of the diocese of New York. Through this line have been descended a posterity distinguished alike in the military, naval, political and social life of the nation.

After the death of Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, the beautiful young widow remained unmarried for eight years although the recipient of constant and importunate tenders of proposal of marriage from numerous admirers. She finally accepted and married 3 Dec. 1771 the Rev. SIMEON HOWARD of Boston, Mayhew's successor in the pastorate of the West Church, who is described as the personal and temperamental antithesis of the famous pulpit orator who preceded him. She did not long survive, however, and d. in April 1777 at the early age of 44 years. The Rev. Jonathan Mayhew left two surviving children, both daughters, one of them dying in infancy shortly after her father and the line ceased for want of male issue. Inventory of his estate returned 27 July 1769 shows property valued at £323­17­5.

From Wikipedia:

"(Reverend Jonathan) Mayhew was born at Martha's Vineyard, being fifth in descent from Thomas Mayhew (1592–1682), an early settler and the grantee (1641) of Martha's Vineyard and adjacent islands. Thomas Mayhew, Jr. (1622–1657), his son John (d. 1689) and John's son, Experience Mayhew (1673–1758), were active missionaries among the Indians of Marthas Vineyard and the vicinity.

Mayhew graduated from Harvard College in 1744 and in 1749 received the degree of D.D. from the University of Aberdeen. So liberal were his theological views that when he was to be ordained minister of the West Church in Boston in 1747, only two ministers attended the first council called for the ordination, and it was necessary to summon a second council. Mayhew's preaching made his church practically the first Unitarian Congregational church in New England, though it was never officially Unitarian. He preached the strict unity of God, the subordinate nature of Christ, and salvation by character."

Reverend Jonathan Mayhew's 1750 publication, A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non Resistance to the Higher Powers, is considered the first spark of the American Revolution, and he is known for having coined the phrase "No Taxation Without Representation"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Mayhew