Laudator Temporis Acti

Page Smith, John Adams, Vol. II: 1784-1826 (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1962), pp. 772-773:

Finding a congenial church turned out to be a problem. The sermons in the Congregational churches of New York were not to John's or Abigail's liking. Most of them were delivered without notes (and showed the effects) by preachers who were old-fashioned predestinarians "whose noise and vehemence is to compensate for every other deficiency," illiberal, rigid men, priestly despots with "that solemn phiz and gait which looks so like mummery that instead of reverence they create disgust." Listening to sermons "that I cannot possibly believe," Abigail wrote Mary Cranch, "is really doing penance." The ministers' idea of eloquence consisted, Abigail noted caustically, "in foaming, loud speaking, working themselves up in such an enthusiasm as to cry, but which has no other effect upon me than to raise my pity." She longed to bear "liberal good sense ... true piety without enthusiasm, devotion without grimace, and religion upon a rational system."