e
known as Old Side and New Side. The Synod of Philadelphia was Old Side;
the Presbyteries of New Castle, New Brunswick, and New York, New Side.
The preachers of the New Side were often styled "New Lights." A hundred
years before, the Presbyterians of Ireland denounced the sectarian (or
Cromwell) party of England, as those who "vilify public ordinances,
speak evil of church government, and invent damnable errors, under the
specious pretence of a gospel-way and new light."[439:A]

Between the years 1740 and 1743 a few families of Hanover County, in
Lower Virginia, withdrawing themselves from attendance at the services
of the established church, were accustomed to meet for worship at the
house of Samuel Morris, the zealous leader of this little company of
dissenters. One of these, a planter, had been first aroused by a few
leaves of "Boston's Fourfold State," that fell into his hands. Morris,
an obscure man, a bricklayer, of singular simplicity of character,
sincere, devout, earnest, was in the habit of reading to his neighbors
from a few favorite religious works, particularly "Luther on the
Galatians," and his "Table-Talk," with the view of communicating to
others impressions that had been made on himself. Having (1743) come
into possession of a volume of Whitefield's Sermons, preached at
Glasgow, he commenced reading them to his audience, who met to hear them
on Sunday and on other days. The concern of some of the hearers on these
occasions was such that they cried out and wept bitterly. Morris's
dwelling-house being too small to contain his increasing congregation,
it was determined to build a meeting-house merely for reading, and it
came to be called "Morris's Reading-Room." None of them being in the
habit of extemporaneous prayer no one dared to undertake it. Morris was
soon invited to read these sermons in other parts of the country, and
thus other reading-houses were established. Those who frequented them
were fined for absenting themselves from church, and Morris himself
often incurred this penalty. When called on by the general court to
declare to what denomination they belonged, these unsophisticated
dissenters, knowing little of any such except the Quakers, and not
knowing what else to call themselves, assumed for the present the name
of Lutherans, (unaware that this appellation had been appropriated by
any others,) but shortly afterwards they relinquished that name.[439:B]

Partaking in the religious exciteme