dry of Tom
Paine, had wrought, together with other untoward influences, to bring
about a condition of things which to the eye of little faith seemed
almost desperate.

From the beginning of the reaction from the stormy excitements of the
Great Awakening, nothing had seemed to arouse the New England churches
from a lethargic dullness; so, at least, it seemed to those who recalled
those wonderful days of old, either in memory or by tradition. We have a
gauge of the general decline of the public morals, in the condition of
Yale College at the accession of President Dwight in 1795, as described
in the reminiscences of Lyman Beecher, then a sophomore.

"Before he came, college was in a most ungodly state. The
college church was almost extinct. Most of the students were
skeptical, and rowdies were plenty. Wine and liquors were
kept in many rooms; intemperance, profanity, gambling, and
licentiousness were common. I hardly know how I escaped....
That was the day of the infidelity of the Tom Paine school.
Boys that dressed flax in the barn, as I used to, read Tom
Paine and believed him; I read and fought him all the way.
Never had any propensity to infidelity. But most of the class
before me were infidels, and called each other Voltaire,
Rousseau, D'Alembert, etc."[231:1]

In the Middle States the aspect was not more promising. Princeton
College had been closed for three years of the Revolutionary War. In
1782 there were only two among the students who professed themselves
Christians. The Presbyterian General Assembly, representing the
strongest religious force in that region, in 1798 described the then
existing condition of the country in these terms:

"Formidable innovations and convulsions in Europe threaten
destruction to morals and religion. Scenes of devastation and
bloodshed unexampled in the history of modern nations have
convulsed the world, and our country is threatened with
similar calamities. We perceive with pain and fearful
apprehension a general dereliction of religious principles and
practice among our fellow-citizens, a visible and prevailing
impiety and contempt for the laws and institutions of
religion, and an abounding infidelity, which in many instances
tends to atheism itself. The profligacy and corruption of the
public morals have advanced with a progress proportionate to
our declension