He claimed that there
is no antagonism between natural and revealed religion, and that, while
revealed religion is an addition to the natural, it is not built on the
ruins, but on the everlasting foundations of it. Revelation can teach
nothing contrary to natural religion or to the dictates of reason. "No
doctrine or scheme of religion," he said, "should be advanced or received
as Scriptural and divine which is plainly and absolutely inconsistent with
the perfections of God, and the possibility of things. Absurdities and
contradictions, are not to be obtruded upon our faith. No pretence of
revelation can be sufficient for the admission of them. The manifest
absurdity of any doctrine is a stronger argument that it is not of God than
any other evidence can be that it is."
Jonathan Mayhew, the son of Experience Mayhew, of Martha's Vineyard, was
settled over the West Church of Boston in 1747. He was even then known as a
heretic, who had read the most liberal books of the English philosophers
and theologians, and who had boldly accepted their opinions as his own. On
the occasion of his ordination not one of the Boston ministers was present,
although a number of them were well known for their liberal opinions. The
ordination was postponed, and later several men of remoter parishes joined
in inducting this young independent into his pulpit.
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