Variety of Practices.

With the disappearance of a Puritan orthodoxy at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Congregational churches began to follow a variety of practices that church fathers tried to homogenize into some sort of uniformity. They had little success in Massachusetts, where coastal merchants gravitated toward churches which followed a "broad and catholic path," stressing a moral life over community piety and admitting to full church membership all who professed a Christian belief. Solomon Stoddard in western Massachusetts also abandoned church covenants, dispensed the Lord's Supper to all as a means of conversion, and advocated a presbyterial organization to prevent doctrinal errors in local congregations. His sermons were more emotional, however, and were designed to effect individual conversions rather than to create a community consensus. Other congregations continued to uphold the old traditions and would not even accept the Half-Way Covenant that...