In this connection, two interesting questions arise--how Peter Faneuil came to be a churchman--and if his life was a well-spent life, affording him reasonable assurance of admission into Paradise.
The old Huguenots styled themselves "THE REFORMERS," and embraced the doctrines of Calvin, in full. Oppression commonly teaches even intolerant men the value of toleration. Our Puritan fathers, it is true, who fled from Episcopal, as the Huguenots from Roman Catholic tyranny, profited very little, by the lesson they had learned; and turned upon the Catholics and Quakers, in the spirit of preposterous cruelty. The government of Massachusetts, according to Hazard, received a profitable lesson of moderation, from that of Rhode Island.
The Huguenots soon began to abate somewhat of that exorbitant severity and punctiliousness, in their religion, which, in no slight degree, had brought upon them that persecution, which was gathering, and impending over them, in 1684, a twelvemonth before the revocation of the edict of Nantes; compelling many of them, thus early, to fly from their homes, into other lands. The teachings of James Saurin, the great Huguenot preacher of the refugees, at the Hague, in 1705, and in subsequent years, were of a milder type. He was "_a moderate Calvinist_." Such, also, were Daillé and Le Mercier, the ministers of the French Church, in Boston.
Peter Faneuil, undoubtedly, worshipped in this church, during a certain period. We have seen the liberal arrangement of his uncle, in 1734, for the support of its minister, and the testator's provision for its poor. Even then, he evidently anticipated, that it might cease to be; and shaped his testamentary provisions accordingly. Natural causes were in operation; I have referred to them--intermarriage, with our English people--merging the language of the few, in that of the many--juxtaposition--all tending to diminish the necessity for maintaining a separate church.
There was no dissolution of the society, at first, by any formal vote. The attendance became irregular and scanty--the members went elsewhere--Le Mercier, "a worthy character," says the Rev. Dr. Holmes, ceased to officiate, and the church broke up. For years, there were no services, within the little temple; and, in 1748, it was sold, as I have stated, to the members of another denomination.