I. Fast Days, Synchronous Prayer, and Apocalyptic Battles: Colonial Responses to Huguenot Suffering

In order to understand Carré’s contribution within a social history of theology rather than in the abstract, it will be helpful first to know what puritans were saying and doing about the Huguenot refugee crisis, and second to discover what Huguenot experiences in New England were like, especially those of Carré’s congregations. News of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and state-sponsored violence toward French Protestants rattled colonial puritan churches. Ministers and laypeople launched an ambitious campaign to raise awareness of and support for refugees. Prominent spokespersons such as Increase Mather and Samuel Willard drew attention to Huguenot stories, and men and women prayed and fasted on behalf of European Protestants. When groups of beleaguered Huguenots began arriving in New England ports, local congregations took up collections, merchants gathered and distributed funds, and laypeople opened their homes. Fast day sermons, letters, and prayers from the 1680s reveal a shared concern for the fate of international Protestantism, as well as a turn to apocalyptic language in efforts to rouse New Englanders to prayerful generosity toward refugees.

Puritans expressed concern for international churches primarily by organizing fast days. Massachusetts Bay called public, colony-wide fasts for the sufferings of European Protestants (as well as those in England and New England) at least ten times between 1681 and 1691.Footnote ² Plymouth colony also called fasts for the sufferings of global Protestants in 1681 and 1683.Footnote ³ These public fasts usually took place on a week day and meant taking off a day of work. For example, the July 7, 1681 fast day fell on a Thursday and in Boston included a morning session and an afternoon session, both beginning with prayer and including full sermons. Most participants would have abstained from food until after the afternoon session. Voluntary hunger was a form of spiritual attention as well as a bodily connection to others’ deprivations. The General Court sent an announcement of the fast day, declaring the divine call for “greater fervency & frequency in the most solemn seekings of God in the face of Jesus Christ” because of “the deep Consultacions of the Antichristian party, who have been complotting the subversion of the true Christian Protestant religion.”Footnote ⁴ Increase Mather, who preached the second sermon, described the event as “A good day. The Lord Answers graciously from heaven his dwelling place.”Footnote ⁵ Mather was both saddened and fascinated by the most recent violent suppressions of Protestants in France. His sermon, later printed as A sermon wherein is shewed that the church of God is sometimes a subject of great persecution, argues that colonists should pay diligent attention to suffering across the ocean, a work of Antichrist that might reach New England next.

In turning hearts and minds toward international Protestant suffering Increase Mather was responding in part to encouragement from friends and family in England, who were also closely following the situation of the French Protestants. Ichabod Chauncy, son of the late Harvard President Charles Chauncy, wrote from Bristol, England in February of 1681/82: “I doubt not but common fame hath acquainted you how great a cloud the protestant Interest is under in all Christendome, & more especially in this land: how farre Popish counsells have prevailed, & doe daily prevaile among us.” Chauncy then elaborated on a commonly-held theory that the Louis XIV was “the great Engine of the Jesuites at this day.” He worried that the French king's power was growing, so that he was “like to be fflagella Europae, influencing all the Counsels & Courts of Europe.” Chauncy reported that Louis XIV was persecuting Huguenots “to the greatest extremityes,” many of whom had fled to England, where, with irony, they were given “great immunityes” while English nonconformists were themselves persecuted “to the greatest extremity” under Charles II. Antichrist was wily, indeed. The Duke of York (James, the King's Catholic brother and heir), as Chauncy ominously understood it, was “one in counsels & interest with the Ffrench King.”Footnote ⁶ Letters from Chauncy and others in Increase Mather's network of correspondents record an assumption increasing among Reformed leaders in the early 1680s: the persecution of Protestants on the Continent was linked to the suppression of nonconformists in England and Scotland as part of a broad Antichristian plot.

In his sermon for the July 1681 fast day, Increase Mather responded to these transatlantic pleas for prayer by calling New Englanders to have sympathy for Huguenots. Though dwelling “alone” in the “wilderness,” puritans who heard about “the afflictions of the Churches of Christ, though at a remote distance from us,” should “sympathize” with them “in all their sorrows” and pray for them earnestly.Footnote ⁷ He went on to argue for mutual compassion among Protestants based on a common expectation of holy suffering. The unity of the “Protestant Cause” or “Protestant Interest” rested on narratives that bonded disparate communities together as patient sufferers under Antichristian attack. “When floods of persecution arise,” he believed, “they come out of the Dragons Mouth.” “Persecuted ones are passive ones. They suffer some Evil or other from the world.” Like David pursued by Saul, they pray for deliverance, but do not retaliate. Their constancy and patience constitute a powerful witness which can “convert many thousands to the wayes of God.” Mather did not literally wish for persecution, but there were moments in the sermon when he came close to valorizing suffering itself: “A man by Suffering, may possibly bring more glory to God in one hour; than by Doing never so much for Him all his life-time before.”Footnote ⁸ New Englanders should care about Huguenots because they were co-militants in a saintly battle against Antichrist in which a primary weapon was patient suffering. And the battle might soon cross the ocean.

An apocalyptic understanding of the power of endurance had been circulating for more than a century in English Protestant culture. On a popular level, it drew strongly on the stories and letters in John Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Martyrs’ letters, filled with examples of holy suffering, were common reading in colonial New England. Some were even printed locally: Divine Consolation for Mourners of Zion, a collection of letters culled from Foxe, emerged from the Cambridge press in 1664. In this collection, the imprisoned John Careles considered himself fighting “against that Bloody Beast of Babylon” as he resisted corrupt English church officials (41). While millennialism and precise chronologies of the end times came and went, most puritans understood themselves to be fighting on the side of Christ against Antichrist in a cosmic battle.Footnote ⁹ It makes sense, then, that some ministers turned to apocalyptic language to encourage solidarity with the suffering French.

A Boston colleague and occasional rival to Increase Mather, Samuel Willard portrayed European Protestants in a way that bypassed apocalyptic language, yet still rooted charity in the identity and sanctity of the sufferer. Additionally, Willard called attention to the sins of the European churches. In a February 1681/82 fast day sermon, he characterized the suffering of the Reformed church as a divine purging for “manifold enormities and scandals,” especially regarding their “prophanation of Gods holy Sabbaths.”Footnote ¹⁰ Willard was very concerned about the “many thousands in France that are daily renouncing the Protestant cause, and coming over to Popery, through fear and cowardize.”Footnote ¹¹ In another fast day sermon the following January, Willard praised those Europeans who suffered well for their orthodox Protestant faith. Speaking of Protestants in France and Hungary, and probably also thinking of nonconformists in England, Willard preached: God is “honoured by them, when they with an holy resolution, suffer quietly and chearfully in defence of the truth, and for the sincere profession of the Gospel.”Footnote ¹² In Willard's framework, a colonist’s compassion for Huguenots would emerge from their love for pure doctrine, upheld through cheerful, quiet suffering. Though Mather veered toward the apocalyptic and Willard toward the moralistic, together their theologies of charity grounded Christian compassion in the identity and performance of the sufferer.

Colonial laypeople also expressed concern for Huguenots. Samuel Sewall corresponded about the fate of French Protestants with Thomas Glover and Edward Taylor, writing that he was “grieved for the afflictions of France.”Footnote ¹³ Starting in October of 1681, “many devout People” in New England committed to praying on Mondays at eleven in the morning “purely on the behalf of the Church abroad weltring under grievous Persecution” as well as their own land's dangers. This coordinated, synchronous prayer movement was motivated specifically by Louis XIV's June 1681 edict that Protestant children as young as seven could be removed from their households and raised as Catholics. The idea of synchronous prayer had originated with nonconformists in England and Ireland who were organizing in a similar way on behalf of European sufferers. There was controversy about the practice locally, with “many good Men” seeing it “as having somewhat of Superstition in it.” Yet these objections seem to have been overcome, and the prayer campaign further raised awareness of Huguenot sufferings.Footnote ¹⁴

Individual New England churches also held their own days of fasting, or humiliation, for the Protestant church in France, often on lecture-days. For example on July 31, 1687 in Dorchester “the Elder proposed to the Congregation that ther might be a day of fast keept on our lectuer day being the therd of August 87 on the behalf of the people of god under sad persecution abroad in the world as in france & Scotland and other parts of the world & also in England.” The congregation heard the proposal and assented “by a silent Vote.”Footnote ¹⁵ Usually collections for the poor were taken up as a part of these fast days, though it is not clear that any money from Dorchester was sent abroad. Others held their own vigils. For example, on December 25, 1681 Milton's new young minister, Peter Thacher, spent part of his Sabbath “in extraordinary prayer for the persecuted people of God in France &c.”Footnote ¹⁶

Why did New Englanders pray for France? On a political level, a focus on the “Protestant Cause” shielded Congregationalists from the accusation of “sectarianism” by linking them with larger Reformed networks, and drew attention to New England's role in a cosmic Christian drama.Footnote ¹⁷ On a devotional level, prayer could enkindle the compassion or affection that was necessary for effective charity. In puritan psychology, “Christians could bear others’ burdens only if they first exercised ‘holy sympathie.’”Footnote ¹⁸ Heartfelt sympathy came before fruitful action, and prayer could arouse the heart. Further, in events where they had little hope of direct political influence, or even where they did, puritans considered prayer efficacious, a gift of time and energy that could have tangible, immediate benefits. Receiving dire news about Protestants in Europe and the British Isles, Norwalk, Connecticut minister Thomas Hanford wrote:

In short, puritans believed that prayer for European Protestants could help them. Belief in the efficacy of prayer was a staple of Calvinist religious culture—whether chasing away locusts from crops or bringing about a regime change, prayer was powerful. God might work through secondary causes, or in delayed or unexpected ways, but he answered prayers.Footnote ²⁰ Intercessory prayer was much more central to colonial religion than appears in the printed record because many of the ordinary Sabbath sermons on topics like prayer never made their way into print. The sermon notes Edmund Quincy took in his later seventeenth-century commonplace book give a sense of an everyday understanding of prayer: “We are to pray for others & not only for our selves,” Quincy recorded. “Prayer must be in faith & confidence as to [a] father that is willing; & in hearing able Jam 1.6.”Footnote ²¹ Devotional manuals such as John Downame's classic Guide to Godlyness elaborated in more specific terms: prayer was most powerful when it was spirit-led, biblical, focused, fervent, and grounded in faith. Thomas Shepard reasoned further: if prayers were not answered, it might be because not enough people were praying. “Prayers sometime that speed well, return not presently, for want of company enough to fetch away that abundance of mercy which God hath to give.”Footnote ²² The logic behind fast days is revealed here: prayer was efficacious, and a group's fervent, focused prayers were the most efficacious of all. Prayer, in effect, could be a form of charity, a gift to the sufferer.

Prayer was so powerful it could form part of the apocalyptic battles themselves. In Samuel Sewall's view, “There is no doubt but the Prayers and Tears of the Massachusets being skilfully directed will in the manner of a Warlike Ram have a very considerable Efficacy in shaking and shattering Antichristian Walls at the greatest distance.”Footnote ²³ Some in England even admitted jealousy for the prayers of New Englanders. Hearing of the fasting for Huguenots in Boston, Samuel Cradock in Wickambrook tartly reminded Increase Mather of the suffering of nonconformists in England, writing, “Sir, I am glad to understand that you there have kept a solemn Fast for the poor distressed Protestants in France. I hope you do not forget some other nations, that need your prayers also.”Footnote ²⁴ Prayer formed part of a transatlantic spiritual economy.

Some New Englanders were hesitant about directing resources toward French Protestants. Ipswich minister Thomas Cobbett responded to news of a fast day for Huguenots by pointing out that the people of Ipswich were less worried about the cause of international Protestantism than about their own “liberties, civil & sacred, which, by the good hand of God, & by virtue of our precious charter & patent, we have had this 50 years & upward.” Reading Increase Mather's fast day sermon (probably sent to him by Mather as a gift), Cobbett agreed that “too many professors to the same interest in New England are too litle affected” with the suffering of Europeans, but nonetheless he concluded, “I doubt not only that we at Ipswich, but too many others in other churches will bee too backward to follow your good example.”Footnote ²⁵ Cobbett was reminding Mather that not many would be moved to sympathy for the French plight in the face of their own economic and political worries. For the past five years, many churches in Massachusetts had been fasting periodically not for suffering Europeans, but for their representatives in England lobbying for the continuance of the Massachusetts charter (the ranks of whom Increase Mather would join in 1688). In Ipswich the community was gathering in “a solemne day of fasting & prayer, & pleading for our Generall Courts speciall guidance.”Footnote ²⁶ Cobbett knew that the General Court needed divine wisdom to defend the charter, and it was that situation, not the plight of the French, that concerned his church.

At the same time, Cobbett, like most New Englanders, feared universal Catholic aggression. A “portentious sight” one night in 1682 led Cobbett to fear “popery” in English dominions. Looking at the sky on December 25, he saw “a perfect crosse through the moone, with a pretty long, & broad, & pale couloured streame like the coulour of the late Comet . . . from east to west, & from the north to the south.” He mused fearfully, “when I considered that the papacy of Rome had a cheife hand both in the signe of the cross, & in the superstitious setting up of Christmas,” the cross might “portend a vigorous prosecution & spreading of popery, east, west, north, & south.”Footnote ²⁷ With the accession of the Catholic James II in 1685, English men and women experienced a resurgence of fears of global Catholic conspiracy. These fears were not only English, but a part of an international paranoia that “that Louis XIV intended to build a Catholic ‘universal monarchy.’” Newspapers and pamphlets reminded the Atlantic world of episodes of Catholic aggression from the Marian persecutions to the near-takeover of the Netherlands by Louis XIV in 1672 to the alleged “Popish Plot” of 1678. Many feared that “Louis XIV might assist his relative and protégé” James to return England forcibly to Rome.Footnote ²⁸ In New England, with Catholic French and allied Natives attacking frontier towns, this kind of fear would escalate in the next few years and would make life difficult for Huguenot emigrants.

As fast day sermons, letters, and prayers from the 1680s reveal, a shared sense of Antichristian attack formed one biblical foundation for compassion and charity directed toward suffering European Protestants. Shoring up other Christians with prayer and support, even if they were not part of one's own extended community, could mean participating in the apocalyptic cause of Christ. In general, New Englanders’ writings on charity and works of mercy focus not on European Protestants or apocalypticism, but on mutual affection within the local church. John Winthrop's “A Modell of Christian Charity” begins with a nod towards the moral law that applies to all human beings, but most of his treatise focuses on affectionate responsibility to our “Christian brother.”Footnote ²⁹ Though occasionally Winthrop uses examples of loving dissimilar groups, such as Paul's desire to sacrifice himself for the conversion of the Jews, he most often resorts to language of the “brethren.” Why should human beings show charity, according to Winthrop? “Simile simili gaudet or like will to like”—we are drawn to the “Spirit of Christ” in our brother.Footnote ³⁰ Charity was grounded in recognition of the Spirit, and most often directed toward the local church community. Following Winthrop, most colonial puritan understandings of charity centered on the metaphor of the body of Christ—one part of the body feeling and responding to the needs of others. In Abram Van Engen's estimation, “fellow feeling was meant primarily for the fellow godly, and as such, it could be both rapturous and narrow.”Footnote ³¹ In this regard, they were true primitivists—charity among early Christians was also “effectively limited to fellow Christians” with “little or no outreach to the pagan poor.”Footnote ³² Though colonists never fully realized the expectation of affectionate generosity originally outlined by Winthrop and repeated often in sermons, towns regularly took up rates for the poor and either distributed funds directly, or boarded orphans or the elderly with families who were paid for their support. Though perennial labor scarcity meant that jobs were generally available through most of the seventeenth century, selectmen might also help to connect the unemployed with work at the ferry or public inn, or organize an apprenticeship for an able-bodied man. While towns took primary responsibility for poor relief, churches also regularly collected contributions to supplement the towns’ provision for struggling families or individuals in their congregations.Footnote ³³ Families who had extra were expected to be generous, and to do it with love, and works of mercy, especially for the elderly or ill within the congregation, formed a regular part of Sabbath observance. Private charity or generosity was most often framed as mutual obligation within the body of Christ, or the People of God. The obligation to give to the needy was not optional; puritan theologians regularly linked it to assurance of salvation. Sermons and devotional manuals often listed care for the poor and mutual aid as signs of a heart filled with God's love, marks of a true Christian. Love for the brethren, near or far, could also be an evidence of salvation. For example, in Samuel Newman's self-examination ritual, “A Love to such Christians I never saw or received any good from” served as a mark of grace.Footnote ³⁴

Sermons later in the century for the most part continue the theme of love for the brethren, usually understood to be the puritan community. They tend to add a chastening look back to the stalwart, burning piety of the first generation. Reform in the 1670s meant not only a campaign against drunkenness, swearing, profanation of the Sabbath, contention, and so on, but also purging the idolatry behind the rampant acquisition of land and luxury goods and the resulting “private Selfish spirit; that works of Charity and Beneficence, and of Publick concernment are neglected to the damage of the publick and disgrace of Religion.”Footnote ³⁵ Urian Oakes and dozens of other preachers castigated covetousness, greed, and oppression of the poor as devastating and contagious forms of idolatry in the church. True Christians prioritized charity within their churches and towns. Huguenots shared each of these understandings. However, Ezechiel Carré also emphasized an older, more universal way of thinking about charity when Huguenots found themselves in the midst of a volatile political situation in New England.

II. Huguenot Experiences: Charity and Politics

Hundreds of thousands of French fled before and after Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Most headed to the Protestant cities of Geneva, Berlin, Amsterdam, and London.Footnote ³⁶ Here, enormous Huguenot refugee communities strained urban charity networks and the bonds of Protestant identity. In London, Anglicans ordained Huguenot ministers and raised significant sums for refugee communities. However, London became less appealing when mass protests targeted French artisans who were willing to work for lower wages. At least 1,500 Huguenots made their way to New York, South Carolina, Virginia, and New England, where they were often settled on the frontier, as host communities saw their potential to serve local interests.Footnote ³⁷ New England may have held some attraction because of its majority Calvinist population, and because several Huguenot families were already living in Salem.Footnote ³⁸

Permission for Huguenots to settle, as for other newcomers, was carefully guarded in New England because once a person was accepted into a jurisdiction, the town would take responsibility for them, including poor relief if needed. However, most Huguenot petitions were granted, and when refugees did come, the stories of their sufferings seem to have been met with compassion. They were for the most part welcomed into local churches, though, tellingly, some French families chose to anglicize their names.Footnote ³⁹ In June of 1682, a group of twelve beleaguered Huguenot refugees—four men, three women, and five children—arrived in Massachusetts Bay. They brought with them recommendations from godly friends in London. The General Court gave them refuge, reflecting “how much it may be for the credit of Religion” to do so. They also requested that local ministers include the concerns of French Protestants in the prayers at the next public fast day, and publicize in the morning church meetings that collections would be taken up in the afternoon meetings for “these Christian sufferers.”Footnote ⁴⁰

In addition to the presence of local refugees, letters of enquiry sent from France reporting fines, confiscation of goods, churches torn down, and ministers banished, continued to raise awareness of the plight of the French Protestants.Footnote ⁴¹ By the time most of the larger groups of Huguenots made their way to Boston, the dreaded revocation of the Massachusetts charter had occurred, and the Massachusetts Bay colony had been demoted to a royal colony under the new Dominion of New England. The royal governor, Edmund Andros, however, had not yet arrived, and the colony was essentially being run by the former government, set up as a provisional council. In July of 1686, a group of “fifteen French Familyes with a Religious Protestant Minister, who are in great distress” arrived in Massachusetts Bay and applied for admission to the colony. The council continued the colony's earlier policy of welcoming them. A few weeks later it also ordered a fast day and a fundraising “brief” to be read in every church, stating that these French families “are such as fled from France for Religions sake . . . [they] are reduced to great sickness and poverty & therefore objects of a true Christian Charity.” The fundraising effort was not only for this group, but also another fifty who arrived “naked and in great distress” due to “the cruelty of the Spaniards” when they tried to settle in Eleuthera (an island in the Bahamas) and “also many other poor French Protestants” who “are dayly expected (as letters inform).”Footnote ⁴² The court's language resembled Samuel Willard's in that it associated the “objects of true Christian Charity” with suffering for the cause of orthodoxy, and with helplessness.

The Huguenot crisis was not the first time New Englanders had collected funds to help far-flung Protestants. A major relief effort had been undertaken by both the Massachusetts General Court and “several Churches” for refugees from “Christophers Island” (Saint Kitts) when it was captured by the French in 1666. Victims of shipwrecks and captives held for ransom by Native Americans and Turks had also received funds.Footnote ⁴³ Significantly, relief was a two-way stream. Boston had received money in 1676 when “the Christian brethren in Dublin in Ireland sent a gracious gift of charity to reli[e]ve such as suffered in our late warr.” The gift was seen as extraordinarily timely as it arrived just before a major fire at Boston, and “a crowne of beauty was set upon the head of their charity thereby.”Footnote ⁴⁴ While fundraising for strangers was not a new concept, the 1680s were the first time New Englanders faced a major refugee crisis.

By December of 1686, churches in Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Rhode Island were sending in contributions for Huguenots who were living as guests in Rehoboth homes, as well as for more recent arrivals whose ship had been “Cast away at Seconett” (referring to Sakonnet Point near Little Compton, at the time claimed by Plymouth). During the shipwreck “they had great Damage out of that little they had” including a library of “above a thousand book[s].”Footnote ⁴⁵ It seems that laypeople gave generously to the cause; Salem alone raised twenty-six pounds.Footnote ⁴⁶ The Rehoboth community was especially charitable. Elisha Hutchinson and John Saffin, Boston merchants who had been assigned to collect and distribute the funds, followed up with the governor of Plymouth concerning those towns which had not yet contributed, asking that the funds be sent directly to Rehoboth “that Town haveing been very Charitable towards them, and will Suffer if there be not some help.” Though it was probably the churches that were doing the collecting, the governor was expected to promote the effort. Hutchinson and Saffin added an afterthought to the side of their letter, saying that the towns could send the money directly to them in Boston if it was more convenient, “to that Ende that yor Colony may have the Benifitt of their owne Charity”—perhaps expecting that some of the Sakonnet castaways would end up in the Plymouth colony.Footnote ⁴⁷ Saffin had a particular interest in the people of France, taking notes on French kings’ lavish spending, abuse of the poor, and “Inhumane Bucherys” in his commonplace book.Footnote ⁴⁸

The larger groups of Huguenot refugees quickly set up their own communities in Boston and Oxford, Massachusetts, and in Narragansett, on the border between Connecticut and Rhode Island. The smaller Huguenot community in Oxford was unstable almost from the beginning as the land became a “war zone” in ongoing skirmishes with New France and allied Natives.Footnote ⁴⁹ The community in Boston initially faced turmoil because their minister, Laurentius Van der Bosch, seems to have been a troublemaker.Footnote ⁵⁰ Pierre Daille, a distinguished Huguenot minister recently arrived in New York, pleaded with Increase Mather that “the annoyance occasioned by Mr. Vanderbosch may not be the occasion of your favoring less the French who are now in your city, and who shall betake themselves thither. The fault of a single person ought neither to be imputed to others, nor to do them harm.”Footnote ⁵¹ Some of Van der Bosch's offenses were recorded in an oblique way by Increase Mather: “Persons indeed that will Drink, Sweare, Fornicate, practice and preach up (the honest games of) Cards, Dice &c, have never found New-England a good Fishing ground.”Footnote ⁵² The worst problem, however, seems to have been that he was marrying people without “publication of banes.” The problems were not unique to Boston. When Van der Bosch later went down to New York, leaders of the Dutch Reformed Church wrote “to our very great grief, we must say that he has, by his bad behavior, caused more wickedness than edification.”Footnote ⁵³ Daille pled with Mather to keep raising support for Huguenots, who were both faithful and truly needy. He asked Mather to continue to give “proofs of your charity to those faithful refugees, who have suffered the most severe persecution.” If Mather would help in restoring the Boston French Church, “May merited gladness arise for you and your learned colleagues, in place of undeserved sadness. We are brethren: therefore fraternal friendship ought to be cultivated! It is my intention to effect this according to my strength.”Footnote ⁵⁴ Daille combined a rhetoric of charity for persecuted refugees with the language of love for the brethren and “fraternal friendship.” He even hinted that helping the Huguenots would redound to the benefit, or “merited gladness” of the Boston ministers. Daille himself would come to serve the Boston Huguenot church in 1696.

The Narragansett Huguenot group, thirty to forty families led by the distinguished minister Ezechiel Carré, was initially the most stable of the three. They had fled first to London, where they purchased land from the Atherton Company, a group of prominent men mostly from Massachusetts and Connecticut, including John Winthrop Jr. (Governor of Connecticut), Richard Smith Jr., Simon Bradstreet, John Saffin, and Edward Hutchinson. Parts of the Atherton claim were more legitimate than others. A portion was based on a mortgage issued to a Narragansett sachem in order to help him pay a fine from the United Colonies Commissioners in 1660; another chunk (the “King's Province”) was claimed by the King.Footnote ⁵⁵ The Atherton Company had been actively recruiting settlers for the Narragansett lands, which were vastly depopulated by the defeat of the Narragansett tribes in King Philip's War (1675–1676).Footnote ⁵⁶ The Atherton proprietors had declared the land part of Connecticut in a recruitment pamphlet printed in 1678, for which Rhode Island issued a warrant to John Saffin for “subvercion of Goverment.” Richard Smith Jr. joked as he reported this warrant to Winthrop Jr., “I sopose they take all att Coneticott to be French men.”Footnote ⁵⁷ This jest gives a sense of a common view of the competency of Rhode Island magistrates, as well as the prevalent association of the French with plots against English governments. The Atherton men initially offered Carré and the other Huguenots a tract called “Newberry,” but a few weeks later (November 4, 1686) the Huguenots decided it was too far from the water, and so renegotiated for more valuable (and more contested) land closer to the coast.Footnote ⁵⁸ One refugee who came to Boston in the fall of 1687 wrote that Carré’s community was delaying payment (twenty pounds for 100 acres) on land in the Narragansett Country until the King affirmed the Atherton Company's claim. This person believed, optimistically, that “if the King holds the Land, the Price will be Nothing, or at least very little, the Crown contenting itself with a small seignorial Reservation, so that one can sell and let, the Property being one's own.”Footnote ⁵⁹ The land in Narragansett was on the edge of the New England settlements. While the Atherton proprietors used the Huguenots to shore up a contested real estate investment, Carré may have been influenced in his choice of land by southwestern French Protestants’ tradition of “congregating with other refugees on the rustic periphery,” a survival strategy after the destruction of La Rochelle in 1628.Footnote ⁶⁰ No doubt he appreciated the Congregationalists’ relief money, amounting to at least thirty pounds for his community, but he decided to carve out his own French town in relative isolation.Footnote ⁶¹

Carré and the Narragansett Huguenots worked very hard to set up networks of charity in the earliest years of the settlement. The records for this church are the most complete of any of the Huguenot settlements in these years, providing a remarkable glimpse into charity among Huguenots. The church met for the first three months in the home of Congregationalist Richard Smith Jr. who ran a trading post nearby. The consistory opened their record book in 1687 with a statement of Louis XIV's “horrible persecution” and the community's identity: “we have come here to seek freedom for our Religion, that is the only reason that has brought us to this place, and the only condition under which we have accepted this new settlement.”Footnote ⁶² In the church's vision, this religious mission involved active charity even in the midst of the difficult tasks of clearing land and building homes. The church records report that the community took up a collection for the poor as early as June of 1687.Footnote ⁶³ Carré also kept the group aware of “the sad state of the Church of God in these days,” in September of 1687 planning a “solemn fast to try to turn away from us the judgements of God by our repentance.” Huguenots shared the puritan understanding of the efficacy of prayer. The consistory and “heads of families” decided on the date of October 12 for the fast, the anniversary of “the fatal declaration that extinguished the public exercise of our religion in france.” They made this an annual fast, “a day of mourning and of tears . . . until it shall have pleased God to relight his torch in france.”Footnote ⁶⁴ Carré expected that his church would give alms, and would pray and fast for others, regardless of their beleaguered state. Regular charity, expressed in the context of prayer, fasting, and tears, was central to the church's life.

Church leaders resisted slippage into local mores on the issue of godparents and carefully promoted observance of the Sabbath. Evidently the Narragansett Huguenots joined Willard in seeing their people's own sin on the Sabbath, or “irreverence in the temples,” as “one of the principle causes of the judgments that God visited upon us in France.” Therefore, they emphasized keeping their “heads uncovered” during the reading of scripture and kneeling during prayer, with a warning that those who were disobedient would be suspended from the sacrament. Declaring the Sabbath “one of the most striking features of our Devotion” the consistory also prohibited Sunday participation “in the chase, in promenades, at drinking houses, or in games.” In the later 1680s, the church had to deal with other typical local temptations, such as card playing (which could lead to “loss of time . . . divisions and disputes,” “blasphemies” and “trickeries”) and sexual impropriety. They also prohibited begging in Seekonk or Providence, as one Huguenot attempted to do. Carré repeatedly had to address the community's negligence in fulfilling their promises to build his house and pay his salary.Footnote ⁶⁵ This was a difficult issue, because it was hard to know if the families did not tithe because of “ingratitute and obstinacy” or because they were truly “unable to pay.” The community did not want to be known as unjust or lacking in charity, and so they were careful only to discipline those members who withheld contributions out of “ill will and rebellion.” Yet excommunicating those who could pay but neglected to do so seemed necessary for ensuring the “pious security of the ancient church.” They also found another solution for the church's financial problems: pew rents for those wealthier families who wanted to have their own bench.Footnote ⁶⁶

To their great surprise, the Narragansett French experienced severe harassment from local Rhode Islanders, who took their hay and claimed their land based on a 1677 grant to veterans (contested by the other colonies).Footnote ⁶⁷ Their aggression may have been partially motivated by a distrust that the French were true Protestants. With tensions between England and France mounting, rumors flew that French Catholic spies were living among the Huguenot communities. There were probably not any spies or Catholics living at Narragansett, a close-knit community under the supervision of the church consistory. However, according to one Huguenot report, there were sometimes Catholics worshipping with the Boston French church.Footnote ⁶⁸ It is not surprising that Catholics would have found the Huguenot congregation. Though they preferred to socialize and do business with Protestants, most Huguenots had family members who were Catholic, or nominally Catholic, in France or the French colonies.Footnote ⁶⁹ Acting on these suspicions, the leaders of Rhode Island took steps to ensure Huguenot loyalty, calling the Frenchmen of Narragansett to Warwick to take a second loyalty oath.Footnote ⁷⁰

The financially strapped Carré had already been planning to go to England for a business trip. After the damage caused by the Rhode Islanders that spring, the village's economic situation was desperate. In May of 1689, the Narragansett church agreed to share Carré with the French church at Boston, which was eager to benefit from his pastoral and preaching gifts. No doubt all of these experiences—the Rhode Islanders’ unexpected harassment, news of the escalating European war, grief for his friends and family still in France, challenges in developing regular habits of charity within his congregation, economic scarcity—led Carré to meditate anew on the theology of charity.

III. The Charitable Samaritan

While in Boston, Carré took the opportunity to call attention to the Huguenot plight. He seems to have enjoyed the friendship of Congregationalist ministers, especially Increase and Cotton Mather, who sought his company as a learned divine. Not yet forty years old, Carré had trained in philosophy and theology at Calvin's Geneva Academy and had already pastored two congregations in France. Unofficially, he was the leader of all the French Protestants in New England, having organized a synod of the three congregations.Footnote ⁷¹ As in Narragansett, regular alms-giving was one of his first priorities in his Boston ministry. The Huguenot congregation in Boston had been omitting the traditional collection for the poor at the end of the Sabbath service. Also, Carré was fearful that harassment of the kind the Narragansett community had experienced would become the norm. And so he took it upon himself to convince New Englanders of the Huguenots’ sincerity as Protestants and of the unequivocal Biblical responsibility to reach above religious and political boundaries to show charity to strangers. This remarkable attempt to forestall suspicions and reflect on the meaning of charity was printed in Boston as The Charitable Samaritan (1689).

Carré’s sermon found a willing translator in the young Roxbury pastor Nehemiah Walter, who had learned French in Nova Scotia and volunteered as a guest preacher at the Boston Huguenot church.Footnote ⁷² A prefatory notice, or “Advertisement,” in the book claims that it would have been printed in French if the type was sufficient: “if it appear in English, it is not because we have a mind to trespass on the Rights of others.” The next year, however, the printer Samuel Green would manage a rough French typeface for Carré’s Enchantillon, an anti-Jesuit tract also introduced by Cotton Mather.Footnote ⁷³ Knowing that the publication of a Frenchman's sermon on charity in the English language might rankle, those involved in the book's printing were bold to add Carré’s voice to the chorus of religious authorities in New England. The notice went so far as to defend “our innocent Designs” in the printing of the treatise. While insisting Carré’s sermon was intended for Huguenots, it acknowledged the indirect “effect” that puritans would learn of the “Uniformity of the Doctrine of Protestants” and “that in the main” puritans and Huguenots “have the same Sentiments.”Footnote ⁷⁴

Yet in his own letter to the book's primary funder, the merchant John Pastre, Carré wrote that the work was actually intended for an English audience. It was meant to serve “Our little Colony” (Narragansett) by countering “those Calumnies, whereby some would render our Retirement into this new World suspected.” Carré meant to prove his own doctrine as thoroughly Protestant, and to highlight the fact that those who have “exposed themselves to so many dangers and miseries” for Protestantism “cannot reasonably pass for Papists.” In fact, these kinds of accusations were both “uncharitable and uncompassionate.” In the sermon itself, Carré insisted on the right of any Protestant minister to “instruct his Faithful Ones in all places and in all times.”Footnote ⁷⁵ He was less concerned about offending the English than instructing them in true Christian charity.

In his preface to the sermon, Cotton Mather also wrote with an English audience in mind. First declaring that its content “sufficiently discovers the Worthy Author to be a Christian, and a Protestant, that may challenge a Room in our best affections,” he asked readers to give the work the “Courtesy” it deserved. Keeping some distance, he did not claim to agree with “every particular Notion” of Carré’s. The sermon, however, should provoke New Englanders “with the Bowels of a compassionate Samaritan . . . to reflect upon the dismal Persecution” of Protestants in France, which he proceeded to narrate.Footnote ⁷⁶ He may have committed this narration to print at some risk—James II was actively suppressing works about Huguenot suffering, publically burning the Account of the Persecutions and Oppressions of the Protestants in France and prosecuting its translator.Footnote ⁷⁷ Yet for Cotton Mather, it was worth the risk. Like his father, he embraced an apocalyptic view of history. His thoughts on the French Protestants were bound up with his assumption that Antichristian forces were at work both in Louis XIV's persecution of the French and Governor Edmund Andros's dismantling of local political institutions. Mather was especially furious that Andros had taken away the ability of the General Court (and local ministers) to call public fast days.Footnote ⁷⁸ These issues were personal for Cotton Mather, who had watched his father go into hiding for his resistance to Andros, before he traveled to England to negotiate for a new charter. In the preface, he argued that New Englanders should respect Huguenots because of the persecution and torture they had endured for their faith. Martyred French Protestant pastors may even be the “slain Witnesses” prophesied in Revelation 11. On this specific point, Cotton Mather was agreeing with the theory of Pierre Jurieu, a Huguenot theologian widely read in England.Footnote ⁷⁹ Several of Increase Mather's English correspondents had countered Jurieu's identification of Huguenots as the slain Witnesses, so this was a bold pro-French statement.Footnote ⁸⁰ Cotton Mather's portrait of the events in France included the Huguenots as a group saying “they would gladly sacrifice their Lives and Estates in the Service of the King, but their Consciences were to be disposed of, by none but God alone,” after which “dragons” (for dragoons or draggonades) came “like Locusts devouring all before them” (an allusion to Revelation 9). “We have cause to think,” he wrote, “that the Resurrection of the slain Witnesses in France, is now very near; and if any of us have been Compassionate Samaritans towards this afflicted people, we shall Rejoyce with them, in the Redemption which draweth nigh.”Footnote ⁸¹ Like his father, Cotton Mather hoped New Englanders would act with charity towards Huguenots as a contribution to apocalyptic history, with apocalyptic rewards.

Carré avoided directly contradicting Cotton Mather or the recent fast day sermons. He did, however, insist that charity was due to all men, not just those who looked or believed like us. Along with Cotton Mather, he may have been influenced by the apocalyptic-minded Jurieu. However, his ethical emphasis and his unwillingness to put human beings on one side or the other of a cosmic battle also resonated with the moderate Huguenot theologian Pierre Bayle.Footnote ⁸² Carré was also drawing on Calvin himself. In his commentary on Luke 10, Calvin had written that “the chief design” of the story “is to show that the neighbourhood, which lays us under obligation to mutual offices of kindness, is not confined to friends or relatives, but extends to the whole human race.”Footnote ⁸³ Carré probably did not think that New Englanders’ compassion for Huguenot sufferings in France, or co-participation in an apocalyptic battle, would be a strong enough deterrent of local anti-French harassment. Therefore he drew out a more all-encompassing framework.

The important qualification for charity in Carré’s view was not whether the victims upheld a certain standard of holiness or were a part of the brethren. In his reading of the Good Samaritan story, the victim of robbery “endeavours to repel violence by violence; he makes use of his utmost resistance to hinder the taking away his Goods.”Footnote ⁸⁴ He may in fact have fallen into error by wearing “magnificent Garbs,” which made the robbers “presume” that he was rich. The Samaritan helps the wounded man not because he is a holy, passive sufferer, but because the true Christian responds to misery wherever, and among whomever, he or she sees it. And if the wounded man is not necessarily holy in Carré’s account, neither are the violent men necessarily devoid of moral feeling. Because the man resisted, they fought him, but then recoiled in horror at their crime. They fled the scene in part because of “disquietments and perplexities” at their own actions. The perpetrators, too, are “wretches” and “sinners,” not outside the bounds of human sympathy. Conversely, the priest and Levite who ignore their wounded brother (a “man, of the same Nation, of the same Religion”) commit a kind of violence, too—they are “Wretches” who suffer from narrowness of moral vision in their nonaction. “Ah my Brethren!” Carré writes, “It appears from hence, that there is a great difference between the Preaching Charity, and the practising of it.” Further, the magistrates of the land encompassing Jerusalem and Jericho are also partly to blame. How could they have let the roads become so dangerous? In Carré’s assessment, “These people could not be so holy as they boasted themselves to be, since it is evident, the High-ways were full of Murthers and Violencies.”Footnote ⁸⁵ Surely the actions of nearby farmers against Carré’s Narragansett community would come to mind.

True piety, Carré preached, begins with a heart that, “instructed in the Law of Charity,” is “toucht with Compassion” and then acts by “drawing near” to the wretches of the world. The opposite of true piety is not theological error, but suspicion, slander, and inaction. Rather than saying “I may give that which I may one day find the want of,” the charitable heart “adores Providence,” trusting that “God will make good” on money given to the poor. The Samaritan “did not as those do, who come to the poor with useless Promises, and store of wishes, but give them nothing. Oh great abuse!” Though there may be “hatred” among “Nations,” the heart that is touched by charity puts its reputation at risk.Footnote ⁸⁶ Carré’s sermon sent a clear message to New Englanders who stood by while his Narragansett community's crops were seized, or while rumors flew that Huguenots were Catholic spies.

Carré then proceeded to delve into a mysterious, symbolic layer of the story. These verses from Luke 10 became a high Calvinist portrait of the interior life, in which all human beings are stripped of innocence by the Devil (the robbers) and restored to health by Christ (the Samaritan). In this allegorical reading, Carré was drawing on a popular Reformed exegetical tradition of which Calvin himself disapproved, and elaborating it in a way that contributed directly to the conversation about charity in early New England.Footnote ⁸⁷ Most powerfully, in this final section Carré contested a framework for charity that privileged holy, passive, apocalyptic sufferers, instead valorizing active agents of divine healing and justice for all of life's travelers.

A thorough-going Calvinist, Carré began by saying human beings cannot become charitable by wanting to be charitable. Their own will and reason are darkened through soul-wounds of unbridled passions (in league with the robber-Devil). As the wounded man in the story was left half-dead, so human beings have no “ability for Grace”—they cannot heal themselves, either by sacrifice (the priest) or obedience (the Levite). Consciously taking on both Pelagians and Jesuits, Carré argued, “Free-will is but a Chimera that cheats almost none but the followers of Antichrist, to discover the vanity of these pretentions, you need only consult your own experience. How many times have you undertook the overcoming your passions without ever prevailing?”Footnote ⁸⁸ Earlier commentaries advocating a stronger role of human will in salvation had used an allegorical reading of Luke 10 to say that human will, after the fall, is only half-dead (like the wounded man) rather than fully dead, and so could cooperate with the divine action. Calvin had called this theory “too absurd to deserve refutation,” but for Carré, who wanted to preserve the allegorical mode, refuting it was an important point.Footnote ⁸⁹

The Samaritan then becomes a Christ-figure, “so toucht with Compassion, that he came down to help them.” Christ's compassion is not rooted in likeness or similarity, but the sight of misery. The church, like the inn in the story, is a place of healing, a “refuge of Sinners . . . where all are free to enter, whether Jew or Greek” and obtain from Jesus the “necessary remedies for their Spiritual Maladies.”Footnote ⁹⁰ Pastors, then, continue the work of Christ in binding up wounds, though not adding “to the sufferings of the Saviour” (another shot at Catholic theology). Christ-like charity to all turns out to be a mark of the true church: “This I know of a surety, that liberality is one of the principle points on which Jesus Christ will examine Men at the last day, and that hard heartedness towards the Distressed will be motive sufficient for Damnation.” And the rewards would be plentiful, because “the poor are the Treasurers of Jesus Christ.”Footnote ⁹¹ The notion of “treasure in heaven” was one that “late antique and medieval Christians took for granted,” but that seems “very alien” to many modern Protestants and Catholics. Many early modern Calvinists still saw charitable giving in a Christocentric way. The extreme view that for Calvinists “giving alms to a strange beggar might well be a sin” has been discredited. It is true that Calvinists reacted strongly against the Catholic theology of alms-giving, which included a “deeply sacramental understanding of the poor person as mediator of the Godhead.” Even while extracting alms from sacramental theology, however, many Calvinists maintained that charity to the poor was a gift directly to Christ. Carré explained the implications of this striking concept: “If you advance some part of your Goods to the poor, he will Restore you an hundred fold in the world to come.”Footnote ⁹² Hoping to disarm critics who thought the French might be papists in disguise and to preserve liberty for French emigrants, Carré understood the meaning of charity in a way that privileged not passive innocence, ecclesial commonality, or apocalyptic battles, but active liberality to all who were distressed.

For Carré, the true Protestant is the one who has received the gift of sanctified passions, and out of gratitude, imitation of Christ, and hope of heavenly reward, gives freely to anyone in need. Carré did not move towards the Enlightenment idea that “human beings were by nature irresistibly moved to relieve suffering” and its corollary that the indifferent were somehow subhuman.Footnote ⁹³ Rather, as a Calvinist, Carré saw all human beings as flawed in passions, reason, and will, and in need of divine rescue. Yet he did expect that Christians, informed by good teaching and Christ's example, and transformed through regeneration, would be moved at the sight of suffering—all people's suffering—and moved not just to words, but to acts of charity.

In this way, Carré revitalized an older Calvinist model of charity. Calvin had repeatedly preached that, while under the law of Moses it was acceptable to apply a different social ethic to Jew and non-Jew, “nowe that Gods grace is shed forth every where, we must not make any more difference between Jew and Gentile . . . and everie of us acknowledge his neighbour to bee as his brother.”Footnote ⁹⁴ Winthrop, on the other hand, taught that the law of grace “teacheth us to put a difference betweene Christian and others.”Footnote ⁹⁵ It is a subtle difference, as both Huguenots and puritans understood sacrificial giving as central to the Christian life. While puritans tended to urge charity for the brethren or theologically orthodox, denounce sins of greed and covetousness, or rely on apocalyptic solidarity, Carré insisted on active compassion for the distressed across the entire human race. He also went in the innovative direction of preaching that Christian charity included keeping the roads safe—preventative measures that would benefit all travelers.

IV. Conclusion: Huguenot Diaspora, Shared Fasts, and the Biblia Americana

Despite powerful rhetoric, neither Cotton Mather, nor Ezechiel Carré was able to protect the Narragansett Huguenots from local aggression.Footnote ⁹⁶ The Rhode Island courts were not, at this point, functioning well enough to intervene. (King Philip's War had left the Rhode Island government in a shattered state from which it was still recovering.Footnote ⁹⁷ ) Then Governor Andros's policies in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island all but paralyzed local institutions, which were not easily reinstated, even after his imprisonment.Footnote ⁹⁸ At Carré’s direct request, Andros tried to step in, and a legal agreement between the Atherton group and the local East Greenwich and Kingston men (whose claims were either based on a 1677 land grant from Rhode Island or old contested purchases from the Atherton group) was eventually reached.Footnote ⁹⁹ However, the harassment, including seizing Huguenots’ hay, land, and guns, and “destroying their meadows,” along with verbal insults, seems to have continued unabated. Massachusetts's council sent strongly-worded warnings to East Greenwich to cease molesting the Narragansett French, who were “accounted good Protestants.”Footnote ¹⁰⁰ However skirmishes with French-allied Natives were already underway, and Massachusetts's priorities were elsewhere.

By 1690, the Narragansett Huguenot community was ready to disperse. Carré tried to prevent an exodus, arguing “that it was necessary to consider if this thing would be just under the present circumstances, the interests of the church being absolutely mixed with those of this Colony.” Everyone realized, however, that they could not keep “private persons from leaving.” The church members compromised, deciding that those who left permanently would clear their lands or give them to their neighbors “for the profit of the church, to be for the amelioration of those who remain and who contribute to the minister.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ Carré’s daughter had recently died after the birth of a son who only lived for a day. Over the winter he made the difficult decision to commit fully to the Boston church. In a poignant entry in the church records, the congregation “having heard the strong and pressing reasons” behind Carré’s decision, “all unanimously approved of his proceeding . . . feeling however, a profound sorrow not to be able to support him among us.” Carré’s relationship with the church seems to have been strong despite its financial troubles. The elders asked for Carré to return six times a year. He responded with an example of the “liberality” he had preached, promising not only that he would return but would “give them his services gratuitously, if they will only pay his travelling expenses”—even if only three French families remained in Narragansett. When, in November of 1690, the community released Carré from this obligation to come, they followed his example of generosity the best they could, presenting him with some “back payments.” The church record ends with what must have been Carré’s parting gift to his community, lists of “psalms that ought to be sung on fast days” and “books that ought to be read on fast days.”Footnote ¹⁰² Most chose to leave by 1691, some moving to Boston and others scattering across the colonies. Carré ministered for a short time in Boston and then moved to England.Footnote ¹⁰³

New Englanders' fears about Huguenot loyalties persisted. In December of 1691, the Massachusetts General Court noted that “frequent complaints have been made” about non-Huguenot French who “have Obtruded themselves” in the colony “and the Publick Safety endangered by having such a Mixt Company among us.” The Court therefore ordered that no French person could reside in a port or frontier town without a license, or trade there without the selectmen’s approval.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Then, in October of 1692, the Court, “considereing that amongst the many French Gentl[emen] & others that reside amongst us. Who pretend to bee protistants, there may be sundry of them that are papist & Enemies to theire Majesties and the Weall of this province,” decided to require a loyalty oath, as well as search French homes for powder and shot. In this surveillance, if they found either French or Natives who could not “give a satisfactory accompt,” they were to be brought to Boston for further investigation. Huguenot families wasted no time in giving satisfactory account, though Catholics were not so fortunate. These fears were not unique to New England; concerns about Huguenots being true Protestants also circulated in England.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ The fears did not affect the overall policies of the General Court once satisfied (most likely by the French ministers) that a person was a member of the Huguenot community. Under the protection of the Massachusetts General Court, French Protestants continued to enjoy full civil rights and freedom of worship. In 1693, the General Court allowed the Huguenot settlement of Oxford its own representative in the General Court (Huguenots also sat in Parliament in England).Footnote ¹⁰⁶

A few French emigrants experienced discrimination in transactions over land and cargo, and families who stayed in Rhode Island continued to face violence, though the Rhode Island courts eventually made stronger efforts to intervene. In Boston, life for French Protestants stabilized, especially after the distinguished theologian Pierre Daille arrived to lead their congregation in 1696.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Congregationalists learned from Huguenot practices of confession, though some continued to criticize their celebration of Christmas (considered superstitious among puritans).Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Daille served until his death in 1715, enjoyed the friendship of Congregationalist ministers, and had a strong relationship with his congregation in spite of tight finances.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Even through the wars with France, these refugees were largely accepted within Congregationalist social networks. The second generation of Huguenots in Boston increasingly chose to join Congregationalist churches and intermarry with English families.Footnote ¹¹⁰

Fasting remained an important practice for nurturing charity among both Congregationalists and Huguenots. The Boston News-Letter kept New Englanders well informed of the tragic Camisard revolt against the French government in 1695 and the ongoing Huguenot plight.Footnote ¹¹¹ In the early 1730s, Daille's successor, André Le Mercier, thanked God for Congregationalists’ acceptance and generosity. He also noted that Congregationalist “Ministers have readily joined with us on our Fast Days, to implore for and with us, GOD's Forgiveness and Peace for the remainders of the faithful in France.”Footnote ¹¹² During these occasions, Congregationalists adopted Huguenot forms of prayer and language of compassion. Cotton Mather continued as a firm advocate, even trying his hand at “a Discourse in the French Tongue.”Footnote ¹¹³

New Englanders’ understanding of charity, and who had a claim on their charity, was also shaped by Huguenot traditions. When Cotton Mather wrote his monumental commentary, Biblia Americana, he chose to incorporate Carré’s sermon into the section on the Good Samaritan (Luke 10). Though he was also reading Calvin's commentaries, Mather preferred Carré’s “mystical sense,” in which the Devil is the head thief, and the Samaritan is Christ. He did not carry over Carré’s intimation that the people of Jerusalem and Jericho were responsible for the safety of the road. He did, however, argue that the obligation of charity was rooted not in ethnicity, purity, or apocalyptic suffering, but in the “Natural & perpetual Relation that all men have to one another.”Footnote ¹¹⁴ Though their frameworks for motivating care for refugees sometimes diverged, it is important to note that both Cotton Mather and Ezechiel Carré saw private charity as an essential part of the Christian life for everyone, not just the rich, an assumption that would circulate in the next century.Footnote ¹¹⁵

Mather's appropriation of Carré’s Charitable Samaritan and its universal, rather than sect-based model of charity is especially significant in light of the previous uses of Luke 10 during the Interregnum and early Restoration. In short, the Samaritan story had become highly politicized. First, in the 1640s and 1650s, the story of the “Compassionate Samaritan” had become a hammer swung back and forth in polemical debates about toleration of separatists.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Then, in a very influential early 1660 tract, The Samaritan Revived, royalist Matthew Griffith declared puritans to be the thieves, England the wounded man, and the Samaritan's wine and oil the full Restoration of the monarchy. No less than John Milton snapped back that Griffith's was a “malignant narrative” containing “so foul a libel against all the well-affected of this land” and “against the whole reformed church, not only in England and Scotland, but all over Europ[e] . . . with no more Scripture or solid reason in your Samaritane wine and oyle, then hath already bin found sophisticated and adulterate.”Footnote ¹¹⁷ In this transatlantic literary context, recovering the Samaritan for purposes of broad-minded charity was no small achievement. Carré’s Calvinist vision of global Christian fellowship marked by active compassion toward human suffering, regardless of nationality, sect, or status, would survive and compete with anti-Calvinist versions of rational benevolence, as well as apocalyptic or covenant-based theologies of charity. The urgent needs of refugees provoked both Huguenots and puritans to think carefully about biblical motivations for compassion, leading to a more expansive conversation about the meaning of charity in early New England.