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Jonathan Scott's “Brief View”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2011
Extract
“To enter upon a Controversy in Things of Religion, without due Consideration and weighty Cause for it, is doubtless sinful. … How much Cause there is at this Time to attempt a Vindication of the Doctrines and Practices of our holy Religion, and oppose Error and Disorder, may be manifest by duly attending to the following Treatise: and as to my entering upon this Attempt, I think I may say, it was not hasty and without Consideration. I had early Knowledge of the rising of the Cloud which has covered our Heavens and darkened our Air.” So, in the year 1784, the Reverend Jonathan Scott of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, stated the motives which led him to write, A Brief View of the Religious Tenets and Sentiments Lately Published and Spread in the Province of Nova Scotia, which are contained in a Book, entitled, “Two Mites on Some of the most important and much disputed Points of Divinity, etc.,” and in a “Sermon Preached at Liverpool, Nov. 19, 1782,” and in a Pamphlet, entitled, “The Antitraditionist,” All being Publications of Mr. Henry Alline, with some Brief Reflections and Observations, also a View of the Ordination of the Author of these Books, together with a Discourse on External Order. Such a formidable title in itself offers an outline of an almost forgotten chapter in the history of Canadian thought and literature.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1947
References
1 Jonathan Scott, A Brief View (Halifax, Printed by John Howe, in Barrington Street, 1784, pp. viii, 334, 21 cm.), v. Copies of this rare work may be found in the Congregational Library, Boston, and in the Library of Acadia University, Wolfville, N. S.
2 Moorsom, Captain W., of the 52nd. Infantry, Letters from Nova Scotia (London, 1830), 81Google Scholar.
3 John Seccomb, A Sermon preached at Halifax. July 3, 1770, at the Ordination of Rev. Bruin Romcas Comingoe, etc. (Halifax, A. Henry, 1770).
4 Records of Church of Jebogue, 14ff. MS in the Public Archives of Nova Scotia. The first 263 pages of this valuable document were written by Rev. J. Scott.
5 Ibid., 33ff. Jonathan Scott was born at Lunenberg, Mass., Oct. 12, 1744, and moved to Yarmouth in 1764. See, “Rev. Jonathan Scott's Family Bible,” The Mayflower Descendant (1906).
6 Scott, A Brief View, 227.
7 All these books and some twenty others are quoted in A Brief View. A few years before his ordination, however, Scott had never even seen a copy of the Westminster Confession. Ibid., 286.
8 Ibid., 219.
9 Ibid., 219. For the other side of the story one should read, The Life and Journal of the Rev. Mr. Henry Alline (Boston, Gilbert & Dean, 1806)Google Scholar.
10 Scott, A Brief View, 220.
11 This book was reprinted under the auspices of the Freee will Baptists at Dover, N. H., 1804, under the title, Two Mites Cast into the Offering of God for the Benefit of Mankind.
12 Scott, A Brief View, 162.
13 Ibid., 227. Alline says that Scott's “religion would very easily suffer him to get in a passion, and call me an impudent fellow: which caused me to tell him, that he shewed what kingdom he belonged to by his rage and malice.” Life and Journal, 151.
14 Scott, A Brief View, 239ff., outlines the case against Mr. Cornelius Rogers. Cf., Records of Church of Jebogue, 201 ff.
15 Scott, A Brief View, 6.
16 Ibid., 9.
17 Quoted ibid., 193. This passage is from The Anti-Traditionist, 22. Alline borrowed both the language and the ideas of this passage from the English mystic William Law. Cf. Law's Works (London, 1762)Google Scholar, VII, Part ii, 55ff.
18 Quoted, Scott, A Brief View, 194.
19 Ibid., 59.
20 Ibid., 26ff.
21 Ibid., 46.
22 Ibid., 52.
23 Ibid., 66.
24 Ibid., 84.
25 Alline, Two Mites, 134ff.
26 Bangs, Nathan, The Life of the Rev. Freeborn Garrettson (New York, 1834), 165Google Scholar.
27 Scott, A Brief View, 95.
28 Alline, Two Mites, 159.
29 Scott, A Brief View, 113.
30 Ibid., 171ff.
31 Ibid., 284.
32 Ibid., 330.
33 Alline felt that water-baptism was a non-essential, “of no more importance than it does good.” Two Mites, 258ff.
34 There is no place or date of publication indicated in this pamphlet, it is printed in very close and poor type and probably appeared at Halifax, early in the year 1783.
35 Scott, A Brief View, 183.
36 Ibid., 204.
37 Ibid., 206–207.
38 Ibid., 255.
39 Ibid., 256.
40 Ibid., 216ff.
41 Ibid., 168.
42 Jones, Rufus M., Mysticism and Democracy in the English Commonwealth (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), 147CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 Scott, A Brief View, 167.
44 Alline died at North Hampton, N. H., Feb. 2, 1784. Scott continued to fight a losing battle against the forces of enthusiasm in Yarmouth until 1792, when he removed to Minot, Maine, where he continued in the active ministry until his death. American church historians speak of him as “one of whom any body might be proud than whom no minister in Maine has left a deeper mark of piety and zeal in his Master's work.” — J. Weston, “History of the Association of Ministers of Cumberland County, Maine,” The Congregational Quarterly (Oct. 1867), 342. They also state that he published twelve sermons after he moved to Maine, but there is no mention whatever of A Brief View. Cf., Emerson Davis, Biographical Sketches of the Congregational Pastors of New England. (MS. in Congregational Library, Boston), III, 310–311.