History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts - citizen hylbom blog

306 HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
equitable tax on his property, had that property
been legally taxable.
Mr. Whitney was a classmate and particular
friend of Rev. Zabdiel Adams, of Lunenburg, and
preached the funeral sermon at the burial of that
distinguished divine. In his doctrinal views Mr.
Whitney assented to many of the tenets that were
imported in the Mayflower, yet maintained a becoming
liberality towards fellow-Christians of other
names. He seemed rooted and grounded in the
noble principles of Arminian Congregationalism,
and believed that on these principles the church
militant could be most securely established.
Mr. Whitney was born in Weston, Massachu-
setts, April 23, 1740, graduated at Harvard College
in 1759, and died in 1819, after having entered
the fifty-seventh year of his ministry. For several
of the later years of his life he was deprived, by
paralysis, of ability to perform his pulpit labors,
and had the assistance of a colleague from 1815
until within a few months of his death. From
1819 until 1834 the society was without a settled
minister, when the present incumbent, Eev. Seth
Chandler, was chosen for the work.
The first important secession from the old Con-
gregational Church was made by Universalists in
1812. On the 21st of September of that year a
religious organization was effected, of these se-
ceders, who called themselves the First Universal
Christian Society in Shirley. This movement was
not more the result of sectarian than of local in-
fluences.
The south village, through its manufacturing
interests, had begun tn a.— iiiiic ;iii iin|)