Clergyman, was a great grandson of Charles Chauncy, second President of Harvard College, and the son of Charles Chauncy, a Boston merchant, and of Sarah (Walley) Chauncy, daughter of Judge Walley of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. He was prepared for college, probably, at the Boston Latin School, graduated from Harvard in the Class of 1721, and received its M.A. Degree in 1724. He was thrice married: on Feb. 14, 1727 to Elizabeth Hirst; on Jan. 8, 1738 to ELizabeth Townsend; on Jan. 15, 1760, to Mary Stoddard. Ordained minister of the First Church in Boston on Oct. 25, 1727, as colleague of Thomas Foxcroft who died in 1769, he spent in all sixty years in the service of this church. John Clarke was ordained as his colleague in 1778. Dr. Howard of Springfield, an intimate friend, says of him: "He was, like Zaccheus, little of stature . . . God gave him a slender, feeble body, a very powerful and vigorous mind, and strong passions, and he managed them all exceedingly well" (William B. SPrague, "Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit" p. 12).
He was undoubtedly the most influential clergyman of his time in Boston, and, with the exception of Jonathan Edwards, in all New England, becoming the acknowledged leader of the liberals of his generation. His literary activity may be grouped around the three controversies in which he was engaged: Revivalism, Episcopacy, and the Benevolence of God. The first arose out of the Great Awakening, of which Edwards was the theological defender as Whitfield was its popular preacher. Chauncy was thoroughly prosaic, wishing that someone would translate "Paradise Lost" into prose that he might understand it; despising rhetoric to the point of praying that he might never be an orator (which prayer as one of his friends remarked was unequivocally answered); a man of the intellect utterly distrusting the emotions as calculated to being and prevert the mind; plainly, he could have no sympathy with either Edwards or Whitfield. Undoubtedly the Revival was open to all his criticisms, but Jonathan Edwards was more judicial than he and, while acknowledging the faults which Chauncy condemned, believed in the Revival, nevertheless, as a manifestation of divine grace and power. In this controversy, Chauncy published "Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England" (1743), besides a "Sermon on Enthusiasm" (1742), a "Letter to a Friend on the French Prophets" (1742), and two "Letters to Whitfield" (1744, 1745).
The second controversy had to do with Episcopacy as the only divinely instituted form of church polity. After the original charter of Massachusetts had been revoked and the colony had become a province, Episcopacy, favored by the royal governors, gained headway, and the argument was advanced that the established religion of England was that of its dependencies also. English bishops wrote as if Congregationalism were no religion at all and there was demand for an American bishop, and even for a college in which young men might prepare for the Episcopal ministry. All this alarmed the sons of the Puritans, and Chauncy devoted nine years to contending against Episcopal claims, beginning with his "Dudleian Lecture" of 1762 and ending with his "Complete View of Episcopacy" in 1771. The last mentioned book is the work of a diligent and intelligent scholar who had covered the field so far as one could do at the time and whose conclusions command respect even when they do not carry conviction. Besides these works, Chauncy contributed to this controversy "A Letter to a Friend" (1767), "A Reply to Dr. Chandler" (1768) and a "Reply to Dr. Chandler's Rejoinder" (1770).
The third controversy was more theological in character. Before the Great Awakening, nearly all the New England ministers had been preaching drowsily an attenuated Calvinism. Edwards started a theological movement designed to support the Revival by restoring the Calvinistic doctrine of grace but his teachings concerning God, man, and their mutual relations were presented in forms which many deemed dishonoring to both God and man. This led to the publication by Dr. Chauncy in 1782 of an anonymous tract entitled "Salvation for All Men Illustrated and Vindicated as a Scripture Doctrine" and, in 1784, "The Benevolence of the Deity" and also (anonyously) "The Mystery Hid from Ages . . .or the Salvation of All Men." Chauncy also published, in 1785, "Five Dissertations on the Fall and its Consequences," dealing with the doctrine of depravity (Dictionary of American biography, NY : Scribner's, 1958).