given also to college graduates, on Commencement programmes, down to the
time of the Revolution. And so strong was the Puritan dislike to the
idolatry of saints' names, that the Christian Apostles were sometimes
designated as Sir Paul, Sir Peter, and Sir James.

In coming to the private affairs of the Puritan divines, it is
humiliating to find that anxieties about salary are of no modern origin.
The highest compensation I can find recorded is that of John Higginson
in 1671, who had £160 voted him "in country produce," which he was glad,
however, to exchange for £120 in solid cash. Solid cash included
beaver-skins, black and white wampum, beads, and musket-balls, value one
farthing. Mr. Woodbridge in Newbury at this same time had £60, and Mr.
Epes preached in Salem for twenty shillings a Sunday, half in money and
half in provisions. Holy Mr. Cotton used to say that nothing was cheap
in New England but milk and ministers. Down to 1700, Increase Mather
says, most salaries were less than £100, which he thinks "might account
for the scanty harvests enjoyed by our farmers." He and his son Cotton
both tell the story of a town where "two very eminent ministers were
only allowed £30 per annum" and "the God who will not be mocked made
them lose £300 worth of cattle that year." The latter also complains
that the people were very willing to consider the ministers the stars,
rather than the mere lamps, of the churches, provided they, like the
stars, would shine without earthly contributions.

He also calls the terms of payment, in one of his long words,
"Synecdotical Pay,"--in allusion to that rhetorical figure by which a
part is used for the whole. And apparently various causes might produce
this Synecdoche. For I have seen an anonymous "Plea for Ministers of the
Gospel," in 1706, which complains that "young ministers have often
occasion in their preaching to speak things offensive to some of the