CHAUNCY, CHARLES

(baptized Nov. 5, 1592, Yardley-Bury, Hertfordshire, Eng.d. Feb. 19, 1672, Cambridge, Mass. ), American clergyman and second president of Harvard College, described by Cotton Mather as a most incomparable scholar. Chauncy attended Trinity College, Cambridge, and was in turn vicar at Ware and at Marston St. Lawrence, but he twice incurred censure from the authorities for nonconformity. His formal recantation in February 1637 caused him lasting self-reproach. In the same year, he emigrated to America, where he was an associate pastor at Plymouth, then pastor at Scituate, Mass., and, from 1654 until his death, president of Harvard College. His writings include The Plain Doctrine of the Justification of a Sinner in the Sight of God (1659) and Antisynodalia scripta Americana (1664). born Jan. 1, 1705, Boston died Feb. 10, 1787, Boston great-grandson of the elder Charles Chauncy, Congregationalist minister and one of the leading critics of the Great Awakening (q.v.) revivalist movement in the British American colonies in the mid-18th century. A graduate of Harvard in 1721, Chauncy served the First Church of Boston from 1727 until his death. His Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England (1743) was the nascent Unitarian reply to Jonathan Edwards' Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England (1742), which represented the neo-Calvinist wing of Congregationalism.