Surely this
selfish Taunton sybarite was the prosaic ideal of Hamlet's words:--
"Some ungracious pastors do
Show me the steep and thorny way to Heaven,
Whilst like a puff'd and reckless libertine
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede."
But lazy and slothful ministers were fortunately rare in New England. No
primrose path of dalliance was theirs; industrious and hard-working were
nearly all the early parsons, preaching and praying twice on the Sabbath,
and preaching again on Lecture days; visiting the sick and often giving
medical and "chyrurgycal" advice; called upon for legal counsel and
adjudication; occupied in spare moments in teaching and preparing young
men for college; working on their farms; hearing the children say their
catechism; fasting and praying long, weary hours in their own study,--truly
they were "pious and painful preachers," as Colonel Higginson saw recorded
on a gravestone in Watertown. Though I suspect "painful" in the Puritan
vocabulary meant "painstaking," did it not? Cotton Mather called John
Fiske, of Chelmsford, a "plaine but able painful and useful preacher,"
while President Dunster, of Harvard College, was described by a
contemporary divine as "pious painful and fit to teach." Other curious
epithets and descriptions were applied to the parsons; they were called
"holy-heavenly," "sweet-affecting," "soul-ravishing," "heaven-piercing,"
"angel-rivalling," "subtil," "irrefragable," "angelical," "septemfluous,"
"holy-savoured," "princely," "soul-appetizing," "full of antic tastes"
(meaning having the tastes of an antiquary), "God-bearing.
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