ABSTRACT
One measure of Anglican vigour in the eighteenth-century colonies was the evident anxiety of opponents of the Church of England about the intentions and efficiency of the S. P. G. A sharp critic was Jonathan Mayhew (1720-1766), minister of the West Church in Boston and ready polemical pamph leteer. While hostile to the evangelical Calvinism of Whitefield and his followers, he was equally stern about Anglicanism and the dangers of establishing a bishopric in the colonies. He engaged in a long controversy with East Apthorp (see Chapter 42) over the intent and meaning of the S. P. G.'s practice of sending missionaries to well settled parts of New England, a policy he charged as not in conformity with its charter. Whether the Anglican missionaries were quite as effective as Mayhew feared is questionable.
