SOURCE: Maclear, J. F. “Isaac Watts and the Idea of Public Religion.” Journal of the History of Ideas 53, no. 1 (January-March 1992): 25-45.

[In the following essay, Maclear examines Watts's ideas about religion and its importance and impact on society and civil matters.]

Over the past two decades scholarly interest in “civil religion,” “public religion,” or “national religion” has created a large and growing literature in such diverse fields as sociology, history, and religion.¹ While these studies have succeeded in disclosing religious assumptions in the consciousness of contemporary American and some foreign societies, investigations have been far less enterprising in exploring the historical context in which the phenomenon itself developed, Generally, it has been assumed that concepts of civil religion became prominent with the subsidence of Christianity in the Enlightenment and received their primary stimulus from the nascent modern nationalisms of the American and French Revolutions. In consequence, their relation to classic Christian patterns in the era before the Enlightenment has remained largely unexplored.

It may be surprising to learn that one intriguing and neglected figure in this earlier development who speculated about a public religion distinct from traditional confessions is the eighteenth-century English evangelical pastor, poet, and hymnist, Isaac Watts (1674-1748). Long recognized as the most prominent representative of Georgian Nonconformity and honored for his revolutionary transformation of congregational song, Watts has seldom been marked as a significant contributor to church-state problems.² It is true that Watts abhorred controversy, often stood aloof from Dissent's political endeavors, and centered his interests primarily on theological, pastoral, and liturgical themes. But paradoxically, Watts also developed the most comprehensive and detailed formulation of what a “secularized” national cult might entail and explored its uses and limitations over two decades before Jean-Jacques Rousseau devoted a famous chapter to the same concept in his Social Contract.

Indeed, Watts seems to be of special importance in the emergence of a deliberate modern concept of civil religion for several reasons. First, his revered position in both English and American religion in the eighteenth century was virtually without peer. Evangelicals and rationalists alike admired his achievements, Whitefield sought his counsel before coming to America, and Franklin died with his poetry on his lips. Moreover, Watts is interesting because his speculation, unlike that of the philosophes, was prompted not by any devitalization of traditional Christianity but by tensions between the confessional Anglican state and the unprecedented religious pluralism which agitated post-Restoration England. Consequently, his concern was not to glorify the state with religious sanctions but to free evangelical religion from the stultifying embrace of an Establishment. Finally, Watts makes manifest an anxiety frequently present in religious voluntaryism, the concern with securing for the state the services of religion considered indispensable for a wholesome society, while at the same time vindicating the “gathered church” as a dedicated community of saints.³ Watts stands at the fruition of an unobtrusive but not uncommon early Independent tradition which assumed that, apart from “gospel churches,” a national “religion of England” ought to be maintained by the civil power and honored even by those who rejected the Anglican Establishment. Accordingly, “public religion,” at least in Anglo-American culture, may owe its inception in part to the progress of thought in Congregational Dissent.

Watts objectified and remodeled this tradition in his scheme for a national cult which appeared in his New Essay on Civil Power in Things Sacred in 1739. But before examining his Essay, it is necessary to sketch the Congregational background—the place of public religion in earlier English Independency. Then the specific political and intellectual environment which prompted Watts to compose his treatise at the end of the 1730s will supply further background. Finally, it will be possible to analyze Watts's thought and assess its place in the evolution of the idea of civil religion.

It is true that public religion as such was never a major concern of Dissenters, who, early in their history (the persecution decades after 1660), spent their energies on arguments for toleration and expected that the Anglican Establishment would remain a permanent fixture of the constitution. Much later, after the mid-point of the eighteenth century, radical Dissenters gained support for their view that all Establishments were evil and sought the state's withdrawal from any religious role. But beside these public testimonies of Dissent was another view, more obscurely and more occasionally present, the belief that the English state was obliged to support and express comprehensive religious convictions which, while not scriptural or salvific in a Christian sense, would nonetheless testify to the nation's submission to the Creator, emphasize its mission for “true religion” and civil freedom, and assure moral decency and social cohesion.

Among early Dissenters these explorations were most clearly the province of Congregationalists. Baptists were committed to the radical separation of magistrates from the religious realm, while their social distance from political authority and responsibility made their contemplation of any “national religion” more difficult. Restoration Presbyterians, by contrast, were conservatively oriented toward the traditional confessional state and looked for eventual incorporation in the established Church of England. Congregationalists were more ambiguous. On the one hand they recognized the impossibility of their “comprehension” in a reconstituted Anglican order, elaborated the scriptural perfection of Independent polity, and stressed the freedom of religion from the magistrate's manipulation. On the other hand they continued to retain a strong sense of the corporate nation dedicated to God's service.

The issue had been present since the beginnings of Independency, most dramatically in the classic debates over religious freedom among the troopers in Cromwell's army. When confronted with the demand for total separation of the magistracy from religion, Henry Ireton and Philip Nye cautioned that there must be some allowance for the state's religious management. In providing for toleration, explained Ireton, it must not be done “in such a way as shall give to all men, their latitude, without any power to restrain them, [though they were] to practise idolatry, to practise atheism, and anything that is against the Light of God.” “There are some things of perpetual and natural right …,” he added later, “wherein [the Old Testament] does bear a clear witness to that light that every man hath left in him by nature, if he were not depraved by lust. … And unless you can show us that those things are not a perpetual right, … you must give us leave to think that the magistrate ought according to the old institution to follow that right.” At a practical level, Cromwell's regime of toleration but also of endowments, livings, and Triers sought to give expression to an English church underlying the particular denominations. Robert Baylie, an unfriendly Scottish observer, shrewdly perceived the Independents' religious role for the state, noting that while their church would not persecute, their state would fall heavily on transgressors of God's law.⁴

After 1660 Puritans were driven from power, and toleration became a necessity of survival. But Independents generally shunned the Baptist argument for segregation of the two realms, instead insisting that rulers had distinct though limited religious duties and pleading for a government policy of indulgence. John Owen was their most responsible spokesman. In 1659, on the eve of the Restoration, he had provided a succinct assessment of “the power of the supream magistrate about religion.” While the ruler must not compel submission to a particular confession or worship, he nonetheless had duties, “legislative and executive,” to further piety. That there is a God, that He ought to be worshipped, that revilers should be punished were “all dictates of the law of nature, principles inseparable from that light which is natural and necessary unto rational creatures.” Twenty years later in controversy with the Anglican, Stillingfleet, Owen specifically reaffirmed this earlier statement. The prince, he taught, had religious duties “as much as ever was in the godly Kings of Judah of old, or was at first claimed by the first Christian Emperors,” though these were “things not easily to be numbred.” His emphasis now fell on toleration, of course, but he also stressed the need for a new perception of the national church. Opposed to any “church-state”—Anglican, Catholic, or Presbyterian—he contended that the true Church of England embraced the entire Protestant interest of the realm. Magistrates, therefore, should bestow aid to Protestants generally, command no greater uniformity than adherence to a broad Protestant confession “established by law,” and provide for “sedulous preaching” in all parish churches.⁵ Other Independents elaborated the same argument, Stephen Lobb even insisting that Dissent should be legally recognized as part of such a “Church of England” by parliamentary statute.⁶

Owen's views were common among Congregationalists, but a more focused and specific approach to the concept of public religion was undertaken by Philip Nye.⁷ Nye was reported to be the most subtle and original thinker among the Independent ministers, and in three posthumously published tracts he vindicated this judgment. Nye accepted the finality of the Anglican Establishment at the Restoration and sought to address the problem of Dissenters' proper relation to it. His thought rested on the complementary roles of “gospel churches” and national church. Only the former were agreeable to the mind of Christ, but the latter was not for that reason to be neglected. God instituted both. “The one is Cultus Naturalis from the first Commandment, directed by the Light of Nature and the other is Cultus Institutus, and a duty of the second Commandment and our direction herein is only from Gospel-Light.” National preaching, he reasoned, was for conversions, church-preaching for believers; the first required “gifts only,” the second, grace. But Nye was insistent that Independents must faithfully attend the parish churches and hear the “Publicke Ministers,” for it was monstrous to suppose that England's corporate worship was cancelled by grace or that citizens should not join in thanking God for the means of instruction which He had placed in the national ministry. To spurn the National Church would show contempt for God's gift and “imply it were better for the Nation there were no preaching but in particular Churches.”⁸

In his later tracts Nye analyzed what was meant by the king's supremacy. The king was the corporate head of the nation before God and as such had the power in religion to oversee, inspect, and legislate in accordance with the light of nature. For Nye this meant that the king legitimately ordained the national cultus, but that there was little relation between the gospel and civil government. For this reason the king, without injury to the national church, could lawfully dispense from statutes which oppressed the consciences of his subjects, regardless of the wishes of parliament. Nye's analysis was unkind to Anglicanism, reducing it to a Cultus Naturalis; but his entire theoretical framework strongly affirmed the necessity of a civil religion, distinct from a true Christian order, to which all citizens had obligations. “Although some of us do enjoy the Instruction of our Pastors being in a Church Relation, yet it is a Duty that we and our Families frequent also (as we have Liberty and Opportunity) the more Publick and National Ministry.”⁹

To some extent Congregational theory of this kind was supported by the unfolding of English historical events. The Toleration Act (1689) was regarded by Dissenters as recognizing the legitimate coexistence of “gospel churches” and national church, while the common practice of occasional conformity was a practical confirmation of Nye's counsel to join in the corporate worship of the land. Moreover, the Regium Donum (1723), the king's annual gift to Nonconformist ministers, conferred quasi-public status on dissenting churches and implied a “Church of England” such as Owen had favored. Indeed, support for a national Establishment was general among Dissenters of the early eighteenth century, although they coupled this support with insistence on the right of conscientious dissent. In his theological lectures the famed Philip Doddridge explained the proper religious role of government to his academy students. “The honour of God and the good of society,” he taught, obliged rulers to provide for true instruction, punish wicked men and subverters of government, and support religion with public funds. He even agreed that in these functions the ruler might lawfully favor “those who are of his own sentiments” and that others nonetheless must pay religious taxes and obey all commands not contrary to scripture. However, Doddridge modified these concessions with other emphases. He taught that Establishments should be as wide as possible, no penalties should be inflicted on dissenters (“even obvious errors displeasing to God should be correctable by rational debate”), and rulers could not abridge subjects' liberties or their capacity to serve in places of trust because of religious differences.¹⁰

Doddridge's outlook was unusually conservative, and other Nonconformists were becoming more assertive and less indulgent to Anglican exclusiveness, but few early eighteenth-century Dissenters failed to regard a tolerant Establishment as the desirable norm. It was in the context of this tradition that in 1739 Watts published his radical proposal for a religious Establishment so restricted that it would rest on natural law alone. Doubtless at the time it was generally viewed as impractical, fanciful, and irrelevant. But what precipitated this departure from a man notoriously irenic, conservative, and cautious?

The background to Watts's publication must be sought in the decade of the 1730s which marked a shift in the evolution of Dissent's approach to church-state questions. Politically, Dissenters developed new militancy in urging ministry and parliament to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts. In 1732 the Three Denominations set up the Dissenting Deputies, a political nerve-center to watch over common interests and manage the drive for legislative reform.¹¹ Inevitably, the campaign also gave rise to a spirited pamphlet war. Much of this Dissenter literature was in the form of political tracts, but the decade produced scholarly contributions as well. Samuel Chandler published his History of Persecution in 1736, and Daniel Neal completed his four-volume History of the Puritans in 1738, both works adverting to the injustice of political disabilities for religious differences in their prefaces.¹² Watts too, in introducing the 1739 Essay, testified to being moved by “the many late contests in our nation concerning penal laws and tests in civil and religious affairs.”¹³ In the end the campaign failed, the Walpole government dreading the prospect of renewed religious strife, yet Dissent emerged from the decade in a more aggressive mood. The cry for abandoning religious tests implied, in a way not yet fully recognized, an ultimate dismantling of Anglican monopoly and a state which would observe a practical dogmatic neutrality.

In addition to this political campaign Dissenters were affected by the changing perspectives on the Establishment which made their appearance in the 1730s. On the Anglican side, eighteenth-century apologetics had turned decidedly low-church. Taking cues from Locke, Anglican theorists now stressed scripture less than the “civil interests of society.” Benjamin Hoadly had earlier eroded the church's doctrinal authority, but the most notable redefinition of the Establishment arrived in 1736 with William Warburton's Alliance between Church and State. Warburton acknowledged the necessity of toleration, but argued that established religions belonged to the natural order; social stability required a public church which would aid the state in controlling society through religious sanctions, while the state would reciprocate by conferring prestige on and enforcing the decisions of the hierarchy. In this entirely utilitarian arrangement the tests against Dissenters were reasonable safeguards for the security of the system, while even tithes were viewed as support, not for religious doctrines, but for social equilibrium. Here was an Establishment not based on a perception of true faith but on convenience and expediency. Although Watts did not allude to Warburton in his Essay, he was certainly aware of the work when he composed his own alliance between church and state on even more drastically utilitarian and natural foundations.¹⁴

Concurrently, the struggle for freedom among Dissenters began to inspire questions about the legitimacy of any confessional regime. In 1738-39 The Old Whig, a principal organ for Dissenter opinion, commented insistently on the spiritual superiority of free pre-Constantinian Christianity over state-supported religion.¹⁵ After midcentury radical Dissenters like Caleb Fleming or Baptist liberals like Michaiah Towgood would launch a literature of militant hostility to all Establishments.¹⁶ Some who did not yet go so far argued that the legitimate national church was one stripped of “judicial processes and civil jurisdiction” or confined to the imperatives of natural law. In the preface to his History of Persecution Chandler endorsed this latter view, but it was left to Watts to attempt to describe particulars of such a regime in the New Essay.¹⁷

Watts, in fact, played a part in heightening these tensions at the opening of the 1730s. In 1731 his An Humble Attempt towards the Revival of Practical Religion among Christians stressed Nonconformist opportunities for a pure and free Christianity in contrast to the compromises and constraints of Anglicanism. Watts's aim was hortatory rather than polemical—he wished to reawaken Dissenters to their spiritual vocation—but he clearly regarded the Anglican Establishment as corrupt and unscriptural.¹⁸ Watts took no further part in the ensuing controversy, but after 1731 he was committed to the principle that Christianity could not be safely entrusted to any system of civil support. The further implication that a defensible Establishment could be nothing more than a Cultus Naturalis was to be worked out in the discourse published eight years later.

Presumably, the New Essay on Civil Power in Things Sacred was written “some time earlier,” then revised and anonymously issued at the crisis of the political campaign; the preface was dated March 20, 1738/9. Watts claimed to write “without consulting other authors,” but this independence was somewhat exaggerated.¹⁹ He recommended Bayle, testified to his liking for Pufendorf's handling of church and state (“the best book that ever I met with on this subject”), and revealed that he had been studying the religious constitution of the Chinese Empire. From Boston he may have just received John Callender's Historical Discourse on the Civil and Religious Affairs of … Rhode Island, causing him to conclude that the colony was “the only place wherein I know perfect toleration exemplify'd.” He admitted that he was impressed by Locke's provisions for a broadly Protestant settlement of religion in the Carolina Charter of 1669.²⁰ Yet these works dealt inadequately or tangentially with the subject, and Watts's claim to unassisted originality was not without justice. His object, he said, was to try “how far his reason could establish a national religion and adjust and limit the common rights of mankind, both sacred and civil, under this establishment, in any country whatsoever, wherein religion may be profess'd in various forms.”²¹

Watts's argument began in a Lockean vein, refuting state-church apologetic, Anglican and Calvinist, on the basis of the narrow limits of legitimate political power. Since the original compact was created only for temporal benefit, human government could reach no further than the “civil welfare, rights, and properties of mankind, with regard to this world” and had “nothing to do with religion further than this requires.”²² These strictures limited magistrates primarily to preserving liberty and property, though Watts's real concern lay in vindicating the entirely spiritual nature of the church. But Watts was not satisfied with securing religious freedom by a consistent “privatization” of belief, for he was also convinced that religion was not merely private in its consequences. It was a necessary foundation to the well-being of any state.

An atheist kingdom, he warned, was subject to “huge and dreadful inconveniences.” Eight years earlier, in his 1731 Easter sermon, Watts had approved of the view that rulers might “justly punish” or at least banish atheists since they could give no security by oath for their loyalty.²³ Even governments limited by the original compact had to protect men's security and property, guard against treasonable subversion, and restrain crimes against natural law. Watts argued that these functions were scarcely possible without a general belief in a “superior invisible power” that would punish “secret wickedness.” He specified four areas of government where religious sanctions were absolutely indispensable: civil proceedings, criminal accusations, avowing allegiance, and binding rulers to act justly. Such sanctions would be invoked by the oath “or appeal to God concerning truth” which to be especially effective Watts would have tendered in double form as a “curse upon falsehood” as well as a “blessing upon truth.”²⁴ Here Watts's justification of religion seemed wholly utilitarian; it was valued as an indispensable mechanism of social discipline. Thus while swearing by the true God was “by far the best and surest bond of government,” it was also apparent from antiquity that swearing even by false gods and idols could make a “nation tolerably peaceful and flourishing for years or ages.”²⁵

On this pragmatic basis Watts proposed a national religious Establishment. Admission to political rights began with a civil ritual remotely parallel to the Congregational church covenant: at age twenty-one every male citizen would appear in a court of justice and testify to his “veneration of a God” and willingness to observe all moral and civil laws.²⁶ In similar fashion magistrates upon entering office were to acknowledge the divine judge and be examined concerning their moral probity. Any subsequent infraction—profane cursing, drunkenness, lewdness, lying, cheating, violence, or other “scandalous crime”—would result in their receiving a double, tenfold, or even greater punishment.²⁷ The Establishment's central institution was the cadre of religious teachers, “paid out of the civil list.” They were to be well instructed in the knowledge of God and personally pious, virtuous, and loyal. Their chief function was to preach “the existence and perfections, the providence and natural and moral government of the one true God.” The sins they were to indict were offenses against the law of nature, but the list was comprehensive and betrayed a contemporary flavor; it included gluttony, drunkenness, riotous living, “idleness or neglect of labour among the poor,” fornication, and other evils.²⁸ In a curious footnote Watts revealed that he had been reading the recently published General History of China by the Jesuit orientalist, Jean-Baptiste Du Halde. In that empire, he reported, a similar system was successfully conducted by the mandarins who preached to the people on the first and fifteenth days of every month on some sixteen texts supplied by the emperor. Most of the texts dealt with personal temperance, obedience to law, and social harmony, although Watts was displeased that their “sermons” did not specifically invoke the gods or religion. Neither could he approve of the mandarin recommendation to the people that they “stifle sects and errors in their birth.”²⁹

When Watts progressed from this simple scheme to consider its relation to “particular religions supposed to be revealed,” he encountered three major difficulties. First, he was determined to safeguard religious freedom, but in doing so the public religion was necessarily devitalized. Second, he was aware that particular religions could compete with and destabilize the national cult. And third, he feared disruption and conflict; religions could seduce citizens from the common good and divide the commonwealth. In response to these dangers he was willing to call on some techniques of political surveillance and coercion. The result was a repudiation of dogmatic intolerance but an acceptance of that limited pragmatic intolerance deemed necessary for the political health of the state.

An immediate problem which confronted Watts was the legitimacy of a common public worship. Could the religious teachers in their meetings go beyond edifying lectures to actual devotions in the idiom of natural religion? Watts noted that Locke had required worship for citizenship in Carolina and had suggested a simple service of praise, prayer, and thanksgiving. Watts found the prospect of the nation's attendance at public prayers attractive, and even suggested that conscientious Christians could “in their own mental meditations join the name of Christ … to all these publick and national invocations and adoration of God perform'd according to the light of nature.” Such a plan constituted “a sort of natural religion … which might be taught universally to all the people, which might be practised and established thro' the nation, and perhaps be supported by the state.” Yet ultimately Watts was unable to reconcile a national worship with the rights of conscience. Some would inevitably object to particulars; they would censure ministers conducting the worship, decry the form of words, or denounce the promiscuous mingling of religions in a single congregation. Therefore, Watts reluctantly concluded that religious freedom demanded that the national religion be restricted to educational rather than devotional or liturgical functions.³⁰

A second problem Watts discerned in the likelihood that the public cult would command less absolute authority than particular religions. Accordingly, those in political control might seek to transform the state's religion into their personal faith. To guard against this danger no ruler, he taught, might divert public funds to the support of any “special sect,” since such bodies bore no relation to the state's preservation. Nor might the ruler choose officials only from his own religion. To exclude capable men from civil posts merely because conscience led them “to worship God in another manner than the Prince” was folly. Yet Watts compromised his own principles here in important concessions: in public assemblies magistrates might begin worship of their own preference after the general instruction was concluded and the people were assured that they might leave. And he granted that it was understandable that princes might wish to be served by men of their own religion and spend their own resources to promote their religious convictions. To withhold these privileges would be to deny rulers the freedom of conscience that was granted to others. Watts further acknowledged that such an erosion of religious neutrality was likely when the bulk of the people shared the ruler's religion.³¹

In view of this instability of the national cult Watts was ready to sanction significant interventions by the state. Here lies the paradox of the Essay. Deeply committed to the rights of conscience and to excluding the state from the spiritual realm, Watts yet respected the unifying power of an official religion and was aware of the centrifugal tendencies of religious pluralism. As a result he was ready to provide political authority with expansive police powers over religious bodies. On the one hand, all sects were to be free, equal, and self-sustaining, none receiving public monies. On the other hand, they were subject to a strict control. Every religious body of ten or more persons had to register with the magistrate and indicate its place of worship. Its freedom was granted “with this proviso … that none of these pretences to divine revelation, none of these peculiar forms or practices … be inconsistent with the peace of the state … and the support of the civil government.” Religious leaders were required to lead prayers for the state, preach up the people's duties to their rulers, and warn against vices, including sedition, rebellion, and faction. In any national crisis the state might command special religious services to implore God's aid and justly punish any citizen's noncompliance. Any intolerant cult was to be proscribed, not for false doctrine, but because it threatened public peace. Officials might investigate religions for sedition or immorality “where there was just and evident reason for suspicion.” In such cases officers might be placed in “such assemblies, to take care that the state received no damage, and that morality and peace [were] preserved.” Finally, the magistrate might suppress such congregations. By these means Watts evidently meant to disfranchise Catholics and fanatics, but a substantial level of political control was nonetheless legitimized.³²

Furthermore, Watts was resolved to uphold the official position of the national religion. Attendance was required at its religious lectures which might be every seventh, ninth, or twelfth day as determined by government. At the same time a civil sabbath would similarly “give rest to the labouring part of a nation, both man and beast.” Penalties would be imposed for “recusancy,” and the plea of conscience need not be valid, even when such meetings fell upon the Christian or Jewish Sabbaths. “God will not account it criminal to comply with the necessities of the state on his own sacred day.” Accordingly, sects must be “content to take other hours” for their “instituted forms or peculiar modes of worship.”³³ Paradoxically, Watts appears compelled to resurrect the Elizabethan penal laws to assure national uniformity for a cult that could not prevail without some measure of coercion.

How serious was Watts in these proposals for a civic faith? In his preface he disarmed criticism by alleging that he had no wish to unsettle “our happy constitution” with “any new schemes and models, which may be form'd by the warm imaginations or doubtful reasonings of men.”³⁴ Yet his effort was certainly not merely an intellectual diversion. Not only did it grow out of the political commotions of the 1730s but it was expected to make some contribution to that campaign. He pretended to construct a system for “any country whatsoever,” but his references to “tithes,” “Quakers,” “Catholics,” “civil list,” etc. make clear that England was to be the locus of the experiment. In private correspondence he defended his position as becoming “generally the sense of our Dissenters in England.” Yet the Essay did not draw a reply. Watts had refused to attach his name to the piece, and his proposal was probably considered to be too visionary to be relevant to the contemporary political debate. Even private communication within the Dissenting community yielded only sparse comment, Doddridge vouchsafing the noncommittal observation that the Essay contained “some very remarkable passages.”³⁵

Yet one important exchange concerning Watts's proposal did take place. In June 1739 Watts (without admitting authorship) sent copies of his book to New England, and before summer's end he received a critical reply from Benjamin Colman of Boston's Brattle Street church. Colman could not accept the de-Christianization of the state. “I cannot think there may be heathens, serving several gods, and yet useful members of a state,” he wrote. “They must be dreadful snares and pests to places where they dwell, and fatal to them, as God warned Israel of old.” He also complained of compulsory attendance at national religious observances on the Sabbath: “The honour of the Lord's day, and means of grace, forbid the intrusion of other authorised, civil, and moral public teachers.” But his major objection was that Watts's plan left “things too loose” and gave “room to unsettle what God hath settled”:

The rights of government itself, and so the liberties of the people, must be judged by the word of God, and submitted to it. There is no light in us but by this law; … the rights of conscience are best judged of by it; the magistrate is to govern, and the subject to obey by scripture light, which is for conscience sake toward God. We are as much the people of God by our profession of the gospel, rulers and ruled, as the Jews were. We are a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a peculiar people. …³⁶

To this vindication of the traditional confessional state Watts sent an unrepentant reply. “The design of that treatise,” he informed Colman (still refusing to admit authorship), “seems to be an endeavor to try how far it is possible to bring in a national or establish'd religion, and the author seems to think it can hardly go further than he has brought it.” He agreed that the implications of a public religion were “so unhappy, and yet so reasonable, & so likely to come to pass that I own with you I am affraid to admitt them.” Nevertheless, he “did not well know how to avoid them with a perfect security to the liberties of mankind.” And then came the firm rejection of Colman's belief that Christian governments represented a new Israel:

I beg leave to differ widely from you in this point that we are in a national sence the people or church of God as much as the Jews were, for He was the King of Israel, their peculiar, political head, and all y^e judges, magistrates, and kings were but his deputys, & he never assumed such a political government over any other nation besides Israel, & therefore the glorious titles that are given to y^e Jews as a holy nation belong to no other people or nation upon earth, but to such persons only as make credible profession of true Christianity.

In this exchange the distance which Dissent had travelled from earlier Puritanism and from contemporary New England was made apparent.³⁷

After publishing the Essay Watts did not pursue the subject further, nor did he again become significantly involved in church-state issues. The trend of Dissent in the second half of the century was to condemn any political intrusion into religious life, and testimony to this new voluntaryism became increasingly canonical. Not surprisingly, then, Watts's apology for a civil religious Establishment was accorded slight regard. A century after its publication, Watts's reverential biographer, Thomas Milner, dismissed it as “a harmless but not very feasible speculation,” adding the more severe censure that it was “at variance with the first principles of civil and religious freedom.” Later Nonconformist historians ignored it or commented in the same vein, treating the Essay with mixed embarrassment and regret.³⁸ Yet Watts's performance may not have been as futile or eccentric as portrayed. Three observations seem to be in order.

First, the Nonconformist interest in public religion which Watts represented was not entirely silenced. Later Dissenting statesmen occasionally spoke well of comprehensive religious formularies to which the state might give its blessing, and even such liberals as Richard Price and Joseph Priestley sometimes endorsed a “benevolent Establishment.”³⁹ Even in the nineteenth century important Congregationalists resisted the extremism of the anti-Establishment crusade and the prospect of a religiously indifferent state. Especially notable among them was John Pye Smith, a staunch defender of the Regium Donum and a controversialist whose Necessity of Religion to the Well-Being of a Nation (1834) sought to make a distinction between a “State Establishment” and a “National Religion.” A decisive defeat of this theme among Congregationalists was probably delayed until their renunciation of the Regium Donum in 1851.⁴⁰

Its eclipse was probably assisted by the appropriation of public religion by advocates of the Enlightenment in the later eighteenth century. In that intoxicating reform climate radical Dissenters experimented with a common worship for all mankind. The London Society of Thirteen (of which Benjamin Franklin was a member) proposed a universal liturgy from which “all disputatious opinions” would be excluded. The dissenting minister, David Williams, conducted worship in this form and in 1773 published a model for such devotions, of which Franklin bought multiple copies for general distribution. No government support might be expected, of course, but Watts would have understood the simple service according to the light of nature as one which he had considered for his proposed Establishment of 1739. In America too, where religious pluralism was even more pervasive, interest in a common religion occasionally surfaced. Franklin was a natural center for such speculations; and when in 1749 he drew up his “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania,” he spoke of “the Necessity of a Publick Religion, from its Usefulness to the Publick; the Advantage of a Religious Character among private Persons; the Mischiefs of Superstition & c.”⁴¹ Generally in America, as in England, the advocacy of universal religion by proponents of Deism confirmed evangelicals in their hostility to the idea.

But in Congregational New England Watts's proposal of a civil Establishment made a final appearance as a genuine political alternative. In the furious assault on Massachusetts's new constitution in 1780, opponents oddly neglected such theorists as Roger Williams and instead exploited English Dissenters, notably Philip Furneaux and Michaiah Towgood.⁴² Into this debate William Gordon, late Independent minister of Gravel Lane, Southwark and soon to be the first historian of the American Revolution, introduced a suggestion for compromise. Writing in the Boston Independent Chronicle, he urged the state to adopt the solution put forward in 1739 by “the pious Dr. Watts.” Since religion was the foundation of all civil order, let Massachusetts fund religious teachers in every community to instruct all citizens in moral duties and natural theology. Gordon even improved on Watts by proposing that parishes annually elect their religious teachers, support them by a general tax, and provide them with a public building for their lectures. Rejected by Baptists, the proposal may have commanded some New Light support, though in the end Massachusetts reaffirmed its expanded Establishment for another half-century.⁴³

Secondly, while Watts proposed a legal and constitutional Establishment, modern civil religion has generally assumed the shape of shared presuppositions and common national values without taking the form of a statutory church. What is the relation of Watts's “public religion” and the tradition which it represented to the phenomenon of modern “civil religion”?

The relation is complex. On the one hand, by confining the religious vocation of the state to the stringent limits of natural law, Watts appeared to deprive the nation of the rich imagery of a “chosen people.” Even before he rebuked Colman in 1739, he had long preached that no nation (since the Jewish kingdom) had God as their king and that political communities existed only to serve the natural and limited needs of social beings. In this respect he differed from earlier Independents who had often conceived of national religion in broadly Christian terms. Thus Interregnum Independents had sometimes cited a “Christianized natural law” where governments were to act not only “according to the Principles and light of Nature, where they run lowest, as among the Heathen, but as they are improved and raised by the Gospel through the common irradiation thereof: For Consuetudo est altera natura: Custome or Education is another nature.”⁴⁴ In the Restoration Owen had taught that the religion of England was a comprehensive Protestantism and the magistrate exercised powers derived not only from nature but from scripture as well. By denying any place to the gospel in public religion, Watts seemed to exclude the nation's self-portrayal as a “New Israel” with special mission and destiny in God's providence.

But on the other hand, Watts's scheme of church-state relations intrinsically provided some encouragement to the development of forms of national religion. The purpose of Watts's Essay was to deny the state's right to protect “true religion” but at the same time to require it to continue in a religious role. By defining an area of public religion from which Christianity and all other “particular religions supposed to be revealed” were excluded Watts left political leaders free to interpret a nation's purpose and values without obligation to Christian influences. In Watts's scheme, of course, the vacuum was to be filled by simple truths of natural religion and ethics. But history was soon to reveal that these norms were to have little competitive success against other values which could command far stronger emotional responses.

Rather unwittingly Watts may have foreshadowed the evolution of modern civil religions in one other respect. In the nineteenth century the most common ingredient of civil religions was nationalism, a force to which Watts appeared indifferent in his Essay. But Watts was not unaware of the relation between religion and national feeling. In his scheme religious leaders were to conduct special services in time of crisis and lead prayers for rulers. With James II in mind, Watts further suggested that worshippers' true loyalty was to the nation: “the commands of a king will not lay any obligation on conscience … where it is dubious on which side the true welfare of the nation stands.”⁴⁵ But the strongest evidence of Watts's capacity for linking religion and the nation lies elsewhere—in his collection of poems, hymns, and psalms.

Watts's sensitivity to national myths and images which held potential to serve a civil religion has long been noted. Many of his hymns testify to Britain's special relation with God, evoking His protective care:

This Northern-Isle, our Native Land,
Lies safe in God th'Almighty's Hand,
Our Foes of Victr'y dream in vain,
And wear the captivating Chain.
He builds and guards the British Throne,
And makes it gracious, like his own.

More specifically, in some hymns the nation's purpose suggested Whig constitutionalism “where Laws and Liberties combine / to make the Nation blest.”⁴⁶ Watts was also peculiarly sensitive to historic rituals. An early hymn, “compos'd Nov. 5 1695,” bore the title “An Hymn of Praise to The God of England for Three Great Salvations (viz.) I. From the Spanish Invasion, 1588 II. From the Gunpowder-Plot, Nov. 5 III. From Popery and Slavery by King William of Glorious Memory, who landed Nov. 5. 1688.”⁴⁷

Watts's focus on national images in his psalms was even more daring not only because he modified a sacred text but also because his greater freedom in paraphrase could scarcely be justified by his usual explanation that he served an evangelical purpose. Several of the psalms (115, 124) were Fifth of November anthems, rejoicing in the frustration of Gunpowder Plot, while another (75) celebrated the victory of religion and liberty in the Glorious Revolution. Watts seldom hesitated, moreover, to replace Israel with Britain as the object of divine favor. Watts's rendering of Psalm 67 ran:

Shine, mighty God, on Britain shine,
With beams of heav'nly grace,
Reveal thy pow'r thro' all our coasts,
And shew thy smiling face,
Amidst our isle, exalted high,
Do thou our glory stand,
And like a wall of guardian-fire,
Surround the fav'rite land.(48)

It may be no accident that Watts's most famous hymn, “Our God, our help in ages past” (Psalm 90), has become a kind of second national anthem, suitable for all times of national danger.

Lastly, the phenomenon of Watts's interest in public religion obliges us to look once more at the development of the concept in the eighteenth century. Philosophical predecessors like Spinoza and Hobbes had underscored the state's authority in ordering religion, and later Enlightenment thinkers attempted to define a civil religion which would transcend the particularities of historical confessions. Between them stood Watts, an evangelical Dissenter who sketched in detail a regime which, while protecting the various religious bodies, would separately rest on the common religious impulses known to all men. In some respects Watts's Essay and Chapter VIII of Rousseau's later Social Contract displayed similarities. Like Watts's subjects, Rousseau's citizens did not render account to the sovereign for religious opinions, for the state had no competence or right in the religious realm. So also thought Locke, but Watts and Rousseau parted company with Locke in joining this “privatization” of religious faith to a major positive role for a separate public religion in the functioning of the state. For both the public cult existed not to champion religious truth but to inculcate those beliefs and behavior which secured social harmony. For this reason, both men rejected religious intolerance but endorsed a limited political toleration: atheists and followers of intolerant religions were to be banished “not on grounds of impiety, but as lacking in social sense.” Where Rousseau would impose the death penalty on any who after acknowledging the articles of faith acted as though he did not believe them, the milder Watts would punish with a double or tenfold fine. Rousseau was more specific in stating necessary dogmas—God's existence, the afterlife with rewards and punishments, and the sanctity of the social contract—though unlike Watts he made no attempt to describe the institutional mechanism by which the civil religion was propagated.

Yet there were fundamental differences as well. For Rousseau the collectivity of the community was supreme, and the civil religion was introduced to explain the founding of the state, subordinate the rebellious ego to the general good, and make men love their duties. While particular religions were not to be molested, they were potentially disruptive, especially in institutional form. Christianity, in particular, was suspect since its natural tendency was to preach self-abasement, detach citizens from their political duties, and strengthen resistance to social control.⁴⁹

Watts's approach to a state religion was different. Certainly he could not have accepted Rousseau's belief in the supreme worth of the state nor his denigration of Christianity as socially negative. Although he conceded that any belief in a “superior invisible power” could be beneficial to society's peace, he yet retained a primary commitment to the truth of orthodox religion. Most importantly, Watts was led to his experiment by a tradition which was shaped by revolutionary Puritanism and in its origins primarily concerned with the sanctity of conscience. Independent Puritan forbears had made a first principle of the conviction that the magistrate had nothing to do with the restraint of religious faith. To Watts this was still uppermost, and freedom for all religious communities (which did not undermine society) was his principal goal. But some in that tradition had also warned that public acknowledgment of religion was necessary to society and rulers retained limited residual powers to seek that social benefit. Watts stood in an inherited culture which extended back before the Enlightenment and attempted through several generations to join a perfect religious freedom with some salvage of the ancient ideal of the “godly magistrate.”

Notes

1. Especially since the influential article by Robert Bellah, “Civil Religion in America.” Daedolus, 96 (1967), 1-21. For a summary of the subject in the United States, see John F. Wilson, Public Religion in American Culture (Philadelphia, 1979). The subject has suffered from lack of common definitions. Bellah apparently borrowed “civil religion” from Rousseau, though he did not use it in Rousseau's sense. For Bellah civil religion is a set of largely unconscious and unexamined convictions by which a community understands its own meaning and finds guidance for its most fundamental decisions in history. Bellah later distinguished between special (definite principles expressed in historic texts) and general civil religion (regard for “religion in general” as support to social stability). In this essay I use “public religion” to mean concepts of official religion, distinct from particular denominations, which are openly designed and supported by the state and institutionalized in some form of Establishment to supply basic religious consensus to an otherwise pluralistic religious environment.

2. For early biographies of Watts, see Thomas Gibbons, Memoirs of the Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D. (London, 1780); Thomas Milner, The Life, Times and Correspondence of Isaac Watts (London, 1834); E. Paxton Hood, Isaac Watts: His Life and Writings (London, 1875). All are superseded by A. P. Davis, Isaac Watts: His Life and Works (New York, 1943). Gibbons and Hood have nothing to say about Watts's views on religion and the state; Milner treats the subject but is distressed by Watts's deviance from voluntarist orthodoxy. Davis briefly sketches contents of Watts's Essay, 144ff. The Dictionary of National Biography, XX, 978-81, contains no mention of the Essay and fails to include it in Watts's bibliography.

3. Recent English Reformation scholarship has argued that tension between the image of the church as a saintly and persecuted minority and as the covenanted nation was a continuing ambivalence in English Protestant history. For the problem under Edward VI, see Catherine Davies, “‘Poor Persecuted Little Flock’ or ‘Commonwealth of the Church,’” Peter Lake and Maria Dowling (eds.), Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England (London, 1987), 78-102. The same issue in Foxe's historiography and in Tudor Puritanism is analyzed by Jane Facey, “John Foxe and the Defence of the English Church,” and Peter Lake, “Presbyterianism, the Idea of a National Church, and the Argument from Divine Right,” in ibid., 162-92 and 193-224 respectively; also Patrick Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York, 1988), 1-27.

4. A. S. P. Woodhouse (ed.), Puritanism and Liberty (Chicago, 1951), 143-46. For Baylie's analysis of Independency, see Robert Baylie, A Dissuasive from the Errours of the Time (London, 1645), 31-32.

5. On Owen, see Peter Toon, God's Statesman: The Life and Work of John Owen (Exeter, 1971). John Owen, Unto the Questions sent me last night, I pray accept of the ensuing Answer, under the Title of Two Questions Concerning the Power of the Supream Magistrate about Religion, and the Worship of God (London, 1659), 1-2. This work was reprinted in 1833 by the Glasgow Association for Promoting the Interest of the Church of Scotland to embarrass Congregational voluntaries. Owen's answer to Stillingfleet was A Brief Vindication of the Non-Conformists from the Charge of Schisme (London, 1680), 14-15. John Owen, The Indulgence and Toleration Considered (London, 1667), 17-20. See also Truth and Innocence Vindicated (1669) in William H. Goold (ed.), The Works of John Owen, D.D., (16 vols.; London, 1850-53), XIII, 369-462. Some Considerations about Union among Protestants (1680), in ibid., XIV, 519-27. Locke was a student at Christ Church, Oxford during Owen's mastership.

6. Stephen Lobb, The True Dissenter (1685), 131-42.

7. No biography of Nye exists, but see sketch in DNB, XIV, 725-27. Nye's political thought has been studied by D. Nobb, “Philip Nye on Church and State,” Cambridge Historical Journal, 5 (1935), 41-59. Nye's works on Dissent's relationship with the Church of England were A Case of great and present Use, whether we may lawfully hear the now Conforming Ministers (London, 1677), reprinted as The Lawfulness of Hearing the Publike Ministers (London, 1683); The Lawfulnes of the Oath of Supremacy and the Power of the King in Ecclesiastical Affairs (London, 1683); The King's Authority in Dispensing with Ecclesiastical Laws (London, 1687).

8. Nye, A Case of great and present Use, 1-4.

9. Nye, Lawfulnes of the Oath, 2-8. Nye, King's Authority, 6: “To make Laws in Spiritual Matters, that are such by the Light of Nature, that men may be moved to Duty, and act according to their Light we yield to the Civil Magistrate as he is Custos utriusque Tabulae.” Note also 8: “In Matters of Religion, what is not Jure Divino, external Formes and Rites tending to a more orderly and decent administration in the Worship and Service of God, our Law judgeth the Magistrate hath the ordering hereof, in each Nation according to the Manners and Tempers of the People, which is Various.”

10. Controversy over occasional conformity peaked in the opening years of the eighteenth century and enlisted various writers, including Daniel Defoe. Presbyterians were more likely to become involved than Independents. On the Regium Donum, see R. W. Dale, History of English Congregationalism (London, 1907), 524-27; Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church (London, 1966), I, 409-12. The Works of the Rev. Philip Doddridge, D. D. (Leeds, 1803-4), IV, 474-504.

11. For this campaign, see Richard Burgess Barlow, Citizenship and Conscience (Philadelphia, 1962), 57-97. Barlow also briefly treats Watts's Essay, 102-3. Ursula Henriques, Religious Toleration in England 1787-1833 (Toronto, 1961) has a chapter on the development of the Nonconformist argument against the Test and Corporation acts, 18-53.

12. Samuel Chandler, The History of Persecution (London, 1736). Chandler also wrote popular pamphlets on the discriminatory statutes in the campaign. Daniel Neal, The History of the Puritans (London, 1837), refers to political discrimination in all of his introductions to the various volumes, I, iii-xxix.

13. A New Essay on Civil Power in Things Sacred; or an Enquiry after an Establish'd Religion consistent with the just Liberties of Mankind, and Practicable under every form of Civil Government (London, 1739), vi. (In passages quoted I have not followed the practice of capitalizing every noun as in the original.)

14. William Warburton, The Alliance between Church and State (London, 1736). Caleb Fleming appears to be the only Dissenter to write a reply directly to Warburton and that a dozen years later: A Comment on the Rev'd. Mr. Warburton's Alliance between Church and State (London, 1748).

15. The Old Whig, I, 280-90; II, 15-23, 84-96, 108-13.

16. On Fleming and Towgood, see DNB, VII, 273-75, and XIX, 1021-22 respectively. Towgood's chief contributions to the controversy were The Dissenter's Apology (London, 1739), The Dissenting Gentleman's Answer (London, 1746), A Dissent from the Church of England fully justified (London, 1753). Fleming wrote Civil Establishments in Religion a Ground of Infidelity (London, 1767) and Religion not the Magistrate's Province (London, 1773). For a survey of the Dissenting culture of the later eighteenth century, see Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 221-70.

17. Neal, History of the Puritans, I, xxv-xxix, reprinting the preface to vol. IV, dated 1 March 1737/8. Chandler, History of Persecution, xxix, stated that any religion based on natural law would serve society: “And the Truth is, that 'tis not this, or the other different external Form of Religion, as such, that gives any Effect and Influence to the civil Laws of a Community so much as that one Principle, which is more or less imprinted by Nature on the Hearts of all Men viz. that God, some invisible Being so called, is the Avenger of Falsehood, Perjury, and Vice.” All religions that inculcate this principle ought to be protected by the civil magistrate (xxxi). “Any Arguments drawn from Religion, Truth, and Righteousness for the Defence of religious Establishments I shall never oppose.” He wanted the Church of England to be more generous “… so that all sincere Christians could subscribe” to its principles (lxxxvi).

18. Watts, An Humble Attempt towards the Revival of Practical Religion among Christians (London, 1735), especially 138-86.

19. Watts, Civil Power, iv. The Essay was included in the Register of Books for March in the Gentleman's Magazine at a price of 1s. 6d.

20. Ibid., 28 n., 52. The references to Bayle and Pufendorf do not occur in the original edition, but in the revised text in The Works of the Rev. Isaac Watts (9 vols.; Leeds, 1812-13), IV, 214, 211-12. For comment on Callender, see Watts to Colman, June 6, 1739, in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Second Series, IX (1894-95) (Boston, 1895), 364. For the Carolina Charter, see M. M. E. Parker (ed.), North Carolina Charters and Constitutions 1578-1698 (Raleigh, N.C., 1963), 148-50. Locke's contribution to the Charter is a speculative question.

21. Watts, Civil Power, vi-vii.

22. Ibid., 91. The quotation is from Watts's conclusion. Also see “A Sermon preached on Easter-day, 1731, in opposition to all the Deists …,” in Watts, Works, II, 185.

23. Watts, Civil Power, 14. Watts, Works, II, 185.

24. Watts, Civil Power, 10-19.

25. Ibid., 19.

26. Ibid., 38.

27. Ibid., 39-40.

28. Ibid., 20-29.

29. Ibid., 28 n. Du Halde's Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique et physique de l'empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise (4 vols.; Paris, 1735) was translated and published as P[ère?] Du Halde, The General History of China (London, 1736). The relevant passage was II, 53-60.

30. Watts, Civil Power, 40-46.

31. Ibid., 57-81.

32. Ibid., 81-90, 49-57.

33. Ibid., 29-37. Watts's prime examples of state necessities were flood, fire, and invasion. But he also adds, “I can hardly believe the great God would account it a violation of some part of his appointed sabbath … to hear such lessons of morality and virtue, or lessons of the knowledge of God, and duty to him and to civil governors, which should be the chief substance of these lectures.” But Watts always urged restraint and indulgence in rulers.

34. Ibid., vi.

35. M.H.S., Proceedings, IX (1894-95), 364. John Doddridge Humphreys (ed.), The Correspondence and Diary of Philip Doddridge, D.D., III (London, 1830), 403-4.

36. Watts customarily sent copies of his writings to various New England leaders. Watts reported his gift to Colman in a letter of June 6, 1739. M.H.S., Proceedings, IX (1894-95), 364. On the following day Watts sent a book, probably another copy, to Edward Holyoke, president of Harvard College. Four Letters of Dr. Isaac Watts (Boston, 1898), 2. Colman and Watts maintained a lengthy correspondence. On Colman's English connections, see Ebenezer Turrell, The Life and Character of the Rev. Benjamin Colman. D.D. (Boston, 1749). Colman to Watts, Aug. 20, 1739 in Milner, Watts, 642-43.

37. Watts to Colman, Nov. 13, 1739 in M.H.S., Proceedings, IX (1894-95), 371-72.

38. Milner, Watts, 611-12. For another Nonconformist appraisal, see Herbert S. Skeats and Charles S. Miall, History of the Free Churches of England 1688-1891 (London, 1891); 331ff. John Waddington, Congregational History, 1700-1800 (London, 1876); Dale, History, and Henry W. Clark, History of English Nonconformity (2 vols.; London, 1913) do not mention Watts's concern with church-state issues.

39. Waddington, Congregational History, 641-43. Priestley thought Dissenters would “chearfully contribute to the support” of an Establishment, provided it were on “a broad bottom” and favored toleration and liberty. See his A View of the Principles and Conduct of the Protestant Dissenters with Respect to the Civil and Ecclesiastical Constitution of England (London, 1769), 54-55, and Essay on the First Principles of Government and on the Nature of Political, Civil, and Religious Liberty (London, 1771), 181-207.

40. For controversies about disestablishment in nineteenth-century Dissent, see Elie Halévy, A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1924-47), III, 145-59; Chadwick, Victorian Church, I, 142-58; and in greater detail in F. R. Salter, “Political Nonconformity in the Eighteen-Thirties,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, III, 101-24 and G. I. T. Machin, “The Maynooth Grant, the Dissenters, and Disestablishment 1845-1847,” English Historical Review, LXXXII (1967), 61-85.

41. But Franklin also expected a public religion to show “the Excellency of the Christian Religion above all others.” On Franklin's ties with Williams and other English liberals, see Colin Bonwick, English Radicals and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1977), especially 29-30. Williams's liturgical revision appeared in Essays on Public Worship, Patriotism, and Reformation (London, 1773) and A Liturgy on the Universal Principles of Religion (London, 1776). Leonard W. Labaree (ed.), The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, Conn., 1961), III, 413. On Franklin and religion, see Alfred Owen Aldridge, Benjamin Franklin and Nature's God (Durham, N.C., 1967), especially 212-16, where Franklin's collaboration with Williams in a universal liturgy is narrated in detail.

42. William McLoughlin, New England Dissent 1630-1833: the Baptists and the Separation of Church and State (2 vols.; Cambridge, Mass., 1971), I, 617ff. The leading proponent of a Massachusetts Establishment similar to the Watts scheme of 1739 was “Philanthropos” in a series of twelve letters to the Independent Chronicle, March 2-Aug. 21, 1780. On the possible identity of “Philanthropos,” consult McLoughlin, I, 608-9.

43. Independent Chronicle, 18 May 1780. No published life of Gordon exists; a useful sketch appears in Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone (eds.), Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1931-), iv, 426.

44. Watts, Works, II, 185. The Ancient Bounds or Liberty of Conscience, Tenderly Stated (London, 1645), 8.

45. Watts, Civil Power, 31-90.

46. Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, ed. Selma L. Bishop (London, 1962), Book II, Hymns I, CXLIX.

47. Watts, Horae Lyricae. Poems chiefly of the Lyric kind (London, 1706), 10-15. On the nationalism of Watts's psalms and hymns, see Harry Escott, Isaac Watts Hymnographer (London, 1962), 19-20, 262, n. 21.

48. Watts, The Psalms of David, Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (London, 1809), Psalm 67. Watts, Works, IX. Note also Psalms 18, 19, 20, 21, 47, 48, 58, 60, 82, 100, 147.

49. J.-J. Rousseau, Contrat Social; ou Principes du Droit Politique (Geneva, 1766), 257ff., 264-69. The literature on Rousseau is extensive; for analysis of the significance of the chapter on civil religion, consult Ronald Grimsley, Rousseau and the Religious Quest (Oxford, 1968), 68-86; and Lester G. Crocker, Rousseau's Social Contract (Cleveland, 1968), 96ff.