Early Life
Mayhew was born at Martha's Vineyard, being fifth in descent from Thomas Mayhew (1592–1682), an early settler and the grantee (1641) of Martha's Vineyard. Thomas Mayhew, Jr. (1622–1657), his son John (d. 1689) and John's son, Experience Mayhew (1673–1758), were active missionaries among the Indians of Marthas Vineyard and the vicinity.
Mayhew graduated from Harvard College in 1744 and in 1749 received the degree of D.D. from the University of Aberdeen. So liberal were his theological views that when he was to be ordained minister of the West Church in Boston in 1747, only two ministers attended the first council called for the ordination, and it was necessary to summon a second council. Mayhew's preaching made his church practically the first Unitarian Congregational church in New England, though it was never officially Unitarian. He preached the strict unity of God, the subordinate nature of Christ, and salvation by character.
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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