_Philip Doddridge_ (1702-51), the hymn writer, were affording room at
least for ample discussion among the students, and moderate as his own
opinions were he is credited with having made so-called 'orthodoxy' a
byword. The Independents, Caleb Fleming and _Nathaniel Lardner_
(1684-1768), led the way to 'Humanitarian' views, the latter being a
learned writer of much influence. It is said that another great hymn
writer, Isaac Watts, finally shared the Humanitarian view. On the whole,
with some notable exceptions, the Dissenting preachers seem to have been
decorously dull, and uninspiringly ethical. Without the zeal of the
'enthusiast,' whom they severely scanned from afar, and seeking in all
things to prove that Christianity was so 'reasonable' as to be identical
with 'rational philosophy,' it is little wonder that when the popular
mind began to be stirred by a religious 'Revival' they were not its
apostles, but mostly its critics. This is precisely the point where we
may fitly turn to consider the growth of Unitarianism in New England.





NEW ENGLAND


I. BEFORE THE 'GREAT AWAKENING'

As in the Old Country, so in the colonies of North America, a great
evangelical revival took place towards the middle of the eighteenth
century. John Wesley the Arminian, and George Whitefield the Calvinist,
were the great apostles of this movement, and the latter especially was
very influential in America. The English revivalists were not alone,