CHAPTER XI

THE ABROGATION OF THE SAYBROOK PLATFORM

That house cannot stand.--Mark iii, 25.

The times change and we change with them.--Proverb.

The omission of all persecuting acts from the revision of the laws in

1750 was evidence that the worst features of the great schism were

passing, that public opinion as a whole had grown averse to any great

severity toward the Separatists as dissenters. But the continuance in

the revised statutes of the Saybrook Platform as the legalized

constitution of the "Presbyterian, Congregational or Consociated

Church," and the almost total absence of any provision for exempting

Congregational Separatists from the taxes levied in its behalf,

operated, notwithstanding the many acts of conciliation between these

two types of churches, to revive at times the milder forms of

persecution. And such injustice would continue until the Separatists

as a body were legally exempted from ecclesiastical rates, and until

the Saybrook Platform was either formally annulled or, in its turn,

quietly dropped from the statute book. But henceforth, the measure of

intolerance would be determined more by local sentiment and less by

the text of the law, more by the proportion of Old Lights to New in a

given community. And the measure of toleration must eventually take

the form of legalized rights rather than of special privileges, and

this through a growing appreciation of the value of the Separatists as

citizens. The abrogation of the Saybrook Platform might follow upon a

reaffiliation of all Presbyterians and all Congregationalists in a new

spirit of mutual tolerance and helpfulness. Whatever the events or

influences that should bring about this reaffiliation, the new bonds

of church life would necessarily lack the stringency of the palmy days

of Saybrook autocratic rule. Consequently when such a time arrived,

the Platform, at least in its letter, could be dropped from the

law-book. The old colonial laws for the support of religion would

still suffice to protect and exalt the Establishment, and to preserve

it as the spiritual arm of the State. It so happened that toleration

was granted to the Separatists at the beginning of the Revolutionary

struggle, and that the abrogation of the Saybrook Platform followed

close upon its victorious end. Many influences, both religious and

secular, had their part in bringing about these progressive steps

toward religious freedom, toward full and free liberty of conscience.

The revision of the laws completed in 1750 had been under

consideration since 1742. At the beginning of the great schism, the

important task had been placed in the hands of a committee consisting

of Roger Wolcott, Thomas Fitch, Jonathan Trumbull, and John Bulkley,

Judge of the Superior Court. The first three names are at once

recognized as Connecticut's chief magistrates in 1750-54, 1754-66,

1769-1783, respectively. During the eight years that the revision was

in the hands of this committee, the church quarrel had passed its

crisis; the Old Lights had slowly yielded their political, as well as

their ecclesiastical power; and their controlling influence was

rapidly passing from them. The Old French War, with its pressing

affairs, had so affected the life of the colony as to lessen religious

fervor, weaken ecclesiastical animosities, and, at the same time, to

develop a broader conception of citizenship.

English influence, moreover, had modified the ecclesiastical laws in

the revision of 1750. The Connecticut authorities, when imbued with

the persecuting spirit, did not always stop to distinguish between the

legally exempt Baptist dissenters and the unexempted Separatists. This

was due in part to the fact that many of the latter, like the church

of which Isaac Backus was the leader, went over to the Baptist

denomination. The two sects held similar opinions upon all subjects,

except that of baptism. It was much easier to obtain exemption from

ecclesiastical taxes by showing Baptist certificates than to run the

risk of being denied exemption when appeal was made to the Assembly,

either individually or as a church body, the form of petition demanded

of these Separatists. The persecuted Baptists at once turned to

England for assistance, and to the Committee of English Dissenters, of

which Dr. Avery was chairman.

This committee had been appointed to look after the interests of all

dissenters, both in England and in her colonies, for the English

dissenting bodies were growing in numbers and in political

importance. To this committee the Connecticut Baptists reported such

cases of persecution as that of the Saybrook Separatist church, which

in 1744 suffered through the arrest of fourteen of its members for

"holding a meeting contrary to law on God's holy Sabbath day." These

fourteen people were arraigned, fined, and driven on foot through deep

mud twenty-five miles to New London, where they were thrust into

prison for refusing to pay their fines, and left there without fire,

food, or beds. There they were kept for several weeks, dependent for

the necessaries of life upon the good will of neighboring

Baptists.[130] The Separatists could report the trials of the Separate

church of Canterbury, of that of Enfield, of the First Separate church

of Milford, hindered in the exercise of its legal rights for over

twenty years, and they could also recount the persecution of churches

and of individuals in Wethersfield, Windsor, Middletown, Norwich, and

elsewhere. Upon receiving such reports, Dr. Avery had written, "I am

very sorry to hear of the persecuting spirit which prevails in

Connecticut.... If any gentleman that suffers by these coercive laws

will apply to me, I will use my influence that justice be done them."

The letter was read in the Assembly, and is said to have influenced

the committee of revision, causing them to omit the persecuting laws

of 1742-44, in order that they might no longer be quoted against the

colony. Governor Law replied to Dr. Avery that the disorders and

excesses of the dissenters had compelled the very legislation of which

they complained. To which Dr. Avery returned answer that, while

disorders were to be regretted, civil penalties were not their proper

remedy. This was a sentiment that was gaining adherents in the colony

as well as in England. Among other instances of persecution among the

Baptists was that of Samuel, brother of Isaac Backus, who in 1752,

with his mother and two members of the Baptist society, was imprisoned

for thirteen days on account of refusal to pay the ecclesiastical

taxes.[131] Another was that of Deacon Nathaniel Drake, Jr.,[132] of

Windsor, who, in 1761, refused to pay the assessment for the Second

Society's new meeting-house. For six years the magistrates wrestled

with the Deacon, striving to collect the assessment. But the Deacon

was obstinate, and rather than pay a tax of which his conscience

disapproved, he preferred to be branded in the hand. Outside of

Baptist or Separatist, there were other afflicted churches, such as

that of Wallingford,[133] where the New Lights could complain that, in

1758, the Consociation of New Haven county had refused to install the

candidate of the majority, Mr. Dana; and had attempted to discipline

the twelve ministers who had united in ordaining him; and that as a

result the twelve were forced to meet in an Association by themselves

for fourteen years, or until 1772.

The Separatists attempted to obtain exemption through petitions to the

Assembly, trusting that, as each new election sent more and more New

Lights to that body, each prayer for relief would be more favorably

received. One of the most important of these petitions was that of

1753, when more than twenty Separatist churches, representing about a

thousand members, united in an appeal wherein they complained of the

distraining of their goods to meet assessments and taxes for the

benefit of the Established churches; of imprisonments, with consequent

deprivation of comforts for their families; and of the danger to the

civil peace threatened by these evils. The Assembly refused

redress. Whereupon the petition was at once reconstructed,[a] and,

with authentic records and testimonies, to which Governor Fitch set

the seal of Connecticut, was sent, in 1756, [134] to London. The

Committee in behalf of Dissenters were to see that it was presented to

the King in Council. The petition charged violation of the colony's

charter, excessive favoritism, and legislation in favor of one

Christian sect to the exclusion of all others and to the oppression,

even, of some. The English Committee thought that these charges might

anger the King and endanger the Connecticut charter. Accordingly, they

again wrote to the Connecticut authorities, remonstrating with them

because of their treatment of dissenters. At the same time, they sent

a letter advising the petitioners to show their loyalty to the best

interests of the colony by withdrawing their complaint. These

dissenters were further advised to begin at once a suit in the

Connecticut courts for their rights, and with the intent of carrying

their case to England, should the colony fail to do them

justice. Legal proceedings were immediately begun, but were allowed to

lapse, partly because of the press of secular interests, for the

colonial wars, the West India expedition, and other affairs of great

moment claimed attention, and partly because there were indications

that the government would regard the Separatists more favorably.

In the colony itself a change was taking place through which the

college was to go over to the side of the New Lights. In 1755,

President Clap had established the College Church in order to remove

the students from the party strife that was still distracting the

churches. In order to avoid a conflict over the matter, he refused to

ask the consent of the Assembly, claiming the right of an incorporated

college and the precedent of the English universities, since, in 1745,

the Assembly had formally incorporated "The President and Fellows of

Yale College," vesting in them all the usual powers appertaining to

colleges. In the same year, also, the initial step toward establishing

a chair of divinity had been taken, and it became the first toward the

founding of the separate College Church. President Clap always

maintained that "the great design of founding Yale was to educate

ministers in our way,"[135] and the chair of divinity had been

established in answer to the suggestion of the Court that the college

take measures to protect its students from the New Light

movement. President Clap was hurried on in his policy of establishing

the College Church both by his desire to separate the students from

the New Light controversy in Mr. Noyes's church, where they were wont

to attend, and by an appeal to him, in 1753, of Rector Punderson, the

priest recently placed in charge of the Church-of-England mission in

New Haven. The rector had two sons in college, and he asked that they

and such other collegians as were Episcopalians might be permitted to

attend the Church-of-England services. President Clap refused to give

the desired permission, except for communion and some special

services, and he at once proceeded to organize a church within the

college. The trustees and faculty upheld him, but the Old Lights, then

about two-thirds of the deputies to the Assembly, opposed his course

of action, and succeeded in taking away the annual grant that, at the

incorporation of the college, had been given to Yale. After this, they

regarded President Clap as a "political New Light," but as the latter

party increased in the Assembly, and became friendly to Yale, the

college gradually reinstated itself in the favor of the legislature.

If in his petitions the Separatist demanded only exemption, only that

much toleration, in his controversial writings he ably argued the

right of all men to full liberty of conscience. Unfortunately, the

ignorance and follies of many of the Separatists, when battling in

advance of their age for religious liberty, militated against the

logic of their position. Harmony among themselves would have commended

and strengthened their cause, and given it a forceful dignity. They

blundered, as did their English predecessors of a much earlier date,

by laying too much stress upon the individual, upon his

interpretations of Scripture, and upon his right of criticism. Much of

their work in behalf of religious liberty took the form of

pamphleteering. Again, it was their misfortune that the Establishment

could boast of writers of more ability and of greater training. Yet

the Separatists had some bold thinkers, some able advocates, and, as

time wore on, and their numbers were increased and disciplined, the

strength and quality of their petitions and published writings

improved greatly. Sometimes these dissenters were helped by the

theories of their opponents, which, when pushed to logical conclusions

and practical application, often became strong reasons for granting

the very liberty the Separatists sought. Sometimes an indignant member

of the Establishment, smarting under its interference, was roused to

forceful expression of the broader notions of personal and church

liberty that were slowly spreading through the community. A few

extracts from typical pamphlets of the time will give an idea of the

atmosphere surrounding the disputants.

In 1749, a tract was issued from the New London press by one

E. H. M. A. entitled, "The present way of the Country in maintaining

the Gospel ministry by a Public Rate or Tax is Lawful, Equitable, and

agreable to the Gospel; As the same is argued and proved in way of

Dialogue between John Queristicus and Thomas Casuisticus, near

Neighbors in the County." In answer to this, and for the purpose of

vindicating the religious practices and opinions of the Separatists,

Ebenezer Frothingham, a Separatist minister, took the field in 1750 as

the champion of religious liberty. His book of four hundred and fifty

pages had for its title "The Articles of Faith and Practice with the

Covenant that is confessed by the Separate Churches of Christ in this

land. Also a discourse." So influential and so characteristic was this

work, that rather long extracts from it are permissible, and, with a

few arguments from other writers, will serve to reflect the thought

and feeling of the day, and will best give the point of view of both

dissenter and member of the Establishment, of liberal and

conservative; for the pamphlet of the period was apt to be religious

or political, or more likely both.

Frothingham, speaking of the injustice done the Separatists, writes:--

That religion that hath not authority and power enough within

itself to influence its professors to support the same, without

Bargains, Taxes or Rates, and the Civil Power, and Prisons, &c. is

a false Religion. ... Now, if the Religion generally professed

and practiced in this land, be the Religion of Jesus Christ, why

do they strain away the Goods of the Professors of it, and waste

their substance to support it? which has frequently been done. And

which is worse, why do they take their Neighbors (that don't

worship with them, but have solemnly covenanted to worship God in

another place) by the throat, and cast them into Prison? or else

for a Rate of Twenty Shillings, Three or Six Pounds, send away

Ten, Twenty, or Thirty Pounds worth of Goods, and set them up at

Vendue; where they will generally assemble the poor, miserable

Drunkard, and the awful foul-mouthed Swearer, and the bold,

covetous, Blasphemous Scoffer at things Sacred and Divine, and the

Scum of Society for the most part will be together, to count and

make their Games about the Goods upon Sale, and at the owners of

them too, and at the Holy Religion that the Owners thereof

profess; and at such Vendues there are rarely any solid, thinking

men to be found there; or if there are any such present, they do

not care to act in that oppressive way of supporting the

Gospel. Such men find something is the matter. God's Vice-regent

in their Breasts, tells them it is not equal to make such Havock

of men's Estates, to support a Worship they have nothing to do

with; yes, the Consciences of these persons will trouble them so

that they had rather pay twice their part of the Rates, and so let

the oppressed Party go free.

Upon the difficulty of securing collectors, Frothingham remarks: "If

it be such a good Cause, and no good men in the Society, to undertake

that good Work, surely then such a Society is awfully declined, if

that is the case." Frothingham quotes the Suttler of the "Dialogue" as

saying, "We have good reason to believe, that if this Hedge of human

Laws, and Enclosure of Order round the Church, were wholly broken

down, and taken away, there would not be, ('t is probable) one regular

visible Church left subsisting in this land, fifty years hence, or, at

most, not many. "To this, Frothingham replied that if by the "visible

church, here spoken of," is meant "Anti-Christ's Church, we should be

apt to believe it," for "it needs Civil Power, Rates and Prisons to

support it. But if the Gospel Church, set up at first without the aid

of civil power could continue and spread, why can't it subsist without

the Civil Power now as well as then?" "To this day," this author adds,

"the true Church of Christ is in bondage, by usurping Laws that

unrighteously intrude upon her ecclesiastical Rights and civil

Enjoyments; .... And Wo! Wo! to New England! for the God-provoking

Evil, which is too much indulged by the great and mighty in the

Land. The cry of oppression is gone up into the ears of the Lord God

of Sabbaoth."

Frothingham thrusts at the payment or support of the ministry by

taxation in his assertion that "there is no instance of Paul's

entering into any civil Contract or Bargain, to get his wages or Hire,

in all his Epistles; but we have frequent accounts of his receiving

free contributions."[136] (Here, he but repeats a part of the Baptist

protest in the Wightman-Bulkley debate of 1707.) Frothingham states

that "the scope and burden of it [his book] were to shew ... both

from scripture and reason that the standing ministers and Churches in

this Colony [Connecticut] are not practising in the rule of God's

word."

The book at once commanded the attention desired by its author. It

drew upon Frothingham the concentrated odium of the Rev. Moses

Bartlett, pastor of the Portland church, in a fifty-four-paged

pamphlet entitled "False and Seducing Teachers." Among such Bartlett

includes and roundly denounces Frothingham and the two Paines, Solomon

and his brother Elisha. Elisha Paine had removed to Long

Island. Returning to Canterbury for some of his household goods, he

was seized by the sheriff for rates overdue, and thrown into Windham

jail.[137] After waiting some weeks for his release, he sent the

following bold and spicy letter to the Canterbury assessors:--

To you gentlemen, practioners of the law from your prisoner in

Windham gaol, because his conscience will not let him pay a

minister that is set up by the laws of Connecticut, contrary to

his conscience and consent.

The Roman Emperor was called Pontifex Maximus, because he presided

over civil and ecclesiastical affairs; which, is the first beast

that persecuted the Christians that separated from the Established

religion, which they call the holy religion of their forefathers;

and by their law, fined, whipped, imprisoned and killed such as

refused obedience thereto. We all own that the Pope or Papal

throne is the second beast, because he is the head of the

ecclesiastical, and also meddles in civil affairs.... He also

compels all under him to submit to his worship, decrees and laws,

by whips, fines, prisons, fire and fagots. Now what your prisoner

requests of you is a clear distinction between the Ecclesiastical

Constitution of Connecticut, by which I am now held in prison, and

the aforesaid two thrones or beasts in the foundation,

constitution and support thereof. For if by Scripture and reason

you can show they do not all stand on the throne mentioned in

Psalm xciv: 20, [b] but that the latter is founded on the Rock

Christ Jesus, I will confess my fault and soon clear myself of the

prison. But if this Constitution hath its rise from _that

throne_ ... better is it to die for Christ, than to live

against him.

From an old friend to this civil constitution, and long your

prisoner.

ELISHA PAINE.

WINDHAM JAIL, Dec. 11, 1752.

In 1744, in addition to his memorials and letters, Solomon Paine had

published "A Short View of the Constitution of the Church of Christ,

and the Difference between it and the Church Established in

Connecticut." Frothingham, when alluding to Moses Bartlett's

denunciation of himself and Paine, refers to this book in his remark,

"Elder Paine and myself have labored to prove, and I think it evident,

that the religious Constitution of this Colony is not founded upon the

Scriptures of truth, but upon men's inventions."

In the year 1755, the same in which he established the college church,

President Clap issued his "History and Vindication of the doctrines

received and established in the Churches of New England," [c] to which

Thomas Darling's "Some Remarks on President Clap's History" was a

scathing rejoinder. Darling asserted that for the President to uphold

the Saybrook System of Consociated Churches was to set up the

standards of men, a thing the forefathers never did;[138] that the

picture of the Separatists' "New Scheme," which the President drew,

was a scandalous _spiritual_ libel;[139] and then, falling into

the personal attacks permitted in those days, Darling adds that

President Clap was an overzealous sycophant of the General Assembly, a

servant of politics rather than of religion, and that it would be

better for him to trust to the real virtues of the Consociated Church

to uphold it than to strive for legal props and legislative favors for

his "ministry-factory,"[140] the college. To raise the cry of heresy,

Darling declared, was the President's political powder, and "The

Church, the Church is in danger!" his rallying cry. He concluded his

arraignment with:--

But would a man be tried, judged and excommunicated by such a

standard as this? No! Not so long as they had one atom of

_common_ sense left. These things will never go down in a

free State, where people are bred in, and breathe the free air,

and are formed upon principles of liberty; they might answer in a

popish country, or in _Turkey_, where the common people are

sank and degraded almost to the state of brutes.... But in a free

state they will be eternally ridiculed and abhorred.... 'T is too

late in the Day for these things, these gentlemen should have

lived twelve or thirteen hundred years ago.

Among the champions of religious liberty was the Seventh-day Baptist,

John Bolles. He wrote "To worship God in Spirit and in Truth, is to

worship him in true Liberty of Conscience," and also "Concerning the

Christian Sabbath, which that Sabbath commanded to Israel, after they

came out of Egypt, was a Sign of. Also Some Remarks upon a Book

written by Ebenezer Frothingham." These works were published in 1757,

and, five years later, called out in defense of the Establishment

Eobert Ross's "Plain Address to the Quakers, Moravians, Separates,

Separatist-Baptists, Rogerines, and other Enthusiasts on immediate

impulses, and Revelation, &c," wherein the author considers all those

whom he addresses as on a level with Frothingham, whom he names and

scores for "trampling on all Churches and their Determinasions, but

your own, with the greatest disdain."[141]

In the same year, 1762, the Separatist Israel Holly published a

defense of his opinions, quoting freely from Dr. Watts and from his

own earlier work, "A Seasonable Plea for Liberty of Conscience, and

the Eight of private Judgment in matters of Religion, without any

control from Human Authority." This "A Word in Zion's Behalf" [d]

boldly ranges itself with Frothingham and Bolles, arguing against, and

emphatically opposing, the state control of religion. Holly also

engaged in a printed controversy, publishing in connection with it

"The Power of the Congregational Church to ordain its officers and

govern itself."

In 1767, while the Separatists still outnumbered the Baptists in

Connecticut, Ebenezer Frothingham put forth another powerful and

closely argued tract, "A Key to unlock the Door, that leads in, to

take a fair view of the Religious Constitution Established by Law in

the Colony of Connecticut," [e] etc. In his preface he states:--

The main Thing I have in View thro' the whole of this Book is free

Liberty of Conscience... the Right of thinking and choosing and

acting for one's self in matters of Religion, which respects God

and Conscience ... for my Readers may see Liberty of Conscience,

was the main and leading Point in View in planting this Land and

Colony.

Frothingham defines the Religious Constitution as "certain Laws in the

Colony Law Book, called ecclesiastical, with the Confession of Faith,

agreed upon by the Elders and Messengers of the Churches, met at

Saybrook, especially the Articles of Administration of Church

Discipline." This Constitution Plan "gives the General Assembly (which

is, and always should so remain, a civil body to transact in civil and

moral things) power to constitute or make a spiritual or

ecclesiastical body."[142]

Such power, Frothingham maintains, is contrary to reason. Citing from

the Colony Law Book the statute, "Concerning who shall vote in town or

Society meeting" Frothingham comments thus:--

This supposes no person to have a right to form themselves into a

religious society without their [the Assembly's] leave. No,--not

King George the Third himself would have liberty to worship God

according to his conscience. [Yet] any Atheist, Deist, Arian,

Socinian, a Prophane Drunkard, a Sorcerer, a Thief, if they have

such a freehold (as the law demands), can vote to keep out a

minister. [Such a] plan challenges the sole right of making

religious societies and the government of conscience. Yea, I think

it assumes the prerogative that belongs to the Son of God

alone.[143]

The fines for the neglect of the established worship and for

assembling for worship approved by conscience [leave] no gap for

one breath of gospel liberty. For if we exercise our gifts and

graces in the lawful assemblies, we are had up, and carried to

prison, for making disturbance on the Sabbath. I myself have been

confined in Hartford prison near five months, for nothing but

exhorting and warning the people, after the public worship was

done and the assembly dismissed. And while I was there confined,

three more persons were sent to prison; one for exhorting, and two

for worshipping God in a private house in a separate meeting. And

quick after I was released, by the laws being answered by natural

relations unbeknown to me, then two brethren more was committed

for exhorting and preaching, and several afterward, for attending

the same duties and I myself was twice more sent to prison for the

ministers rates.[144]

I have no Man or Men's persons as such, in View in my Writings,

But would as much as is proper, separate Ministers, Civil Rulers,

and Churches, from the Constitution, and consider this Religious

Constitution as it is compiled or written, as though it was not

established in this Colony; but presented here from some remote

part of Christendom, for Examination, to see if it was according

to the Word of God, and the sacred Right of Conscience.[145]

In scathing terms, Frothingham attacks the "Anti-Christian" character

of the Establishment and its fear that, by granting liberty of

conscience, an open door for church separation would result, and

thereby its speedy downfall, because of the multiplication of churches

and the loss of taxes enforced for its support. Experience had taught

the authorities that, even when all the people favored one form of

religion, compulsory support had to be resorted to as a spur to

individual contributious. Moreover, the best governments of which they

knew had recourse to a similar system in order to maintain purity of

religion and the moral welfare of the state. The authorities could not

see, as did the champion of religious liberty, the opportunities of

oppression that such a system afforded; nor could they feel with him

the harshness of its taxation, nor the injustice of distraining

dissenters' goods,--or, as he phrased it, "their lack of faith in God

and in God's people to uphold religion." They certainly would not

acknowledge Frothingham's charge that they seriously feared the loss

of political power through the granting of soul liberty, and as a

consequence the probable disintegration of the Establishment.

Frothingham argues that to suffer the existence of different sects

would really strengthen the authority of the colony; since,--

when persons know that the Most High is alone the absolute Lord of

Conscience; that no mortal breathing has any right to hinder them

from thinking and acting for themselves, in religious

affairs... the law of nature, reason and grace will lay subjects

under strong obligations to their rulers, when equal justice is

ministered to them of different principles, in the practice of

religion. [l46]

Frothingham confutes the declaration that there was liberty of

conscience in the colony, "for the separates have gone to the General

Assembly with their prayers, from year to year, asking nothing but

their just rights, full and free liberty of conscience, and have been,

and still are, denied their request."

Furthermore, the colony law supported criminals in prison and gave the

poor man's oath to debtors, but nothing to the man who was in prison

for conscience's sake. Such a one was dependent upon the charity of

his friends for the very necessities of life. Such laws and the

ecclesiastical constitution which they support become--

a forfeiture of the charter grant because they exercise that

oppression and persecution contrary to its first intent, and are

the direct cause of contention and disunion, which is repugnant to

the principal design of constituting the colony; viz. that it "May

be so religiously, peaceably and civilly governed as may win and

invite the natives to the Christian faith." [l47]

This "Key to unlock the Door" was probably the strongest work put

forth from the dissenter's standpoint, and within three years it was

followed by a legislative act granting a measure of toleration. But

there were other important books of similar character. Two among these

were Robert Bragge's "Church Discipline,"[f] reprinted in 1768, and

Joseph Brown's (Baptist) "Letter to the Infant Baptizers of North

Parish in New London." Brown closes his book with a mild and

reasonable appeal to every one to try to put himself in the place of

the oppressed dissenter.[g] In Brown's argument, as in that of the

majority of the dissenters, the plea is for toleration in the choice

of the form of religion to be supported, and not for liberty to

support or neglect religion itself. Those who believed in the

voluntary support of religion were not seeking exemption as

individuals, but as organized societies or churches, whose highest

privilege it was to support Christ's teachings. Considered from this

point of view, they were only seeking those privileges which had been

granted the Episcopalians, the Quakers, and Baptists in

1727-29. Looked at from the point of view of the government, however,

these Separatists varied so slightly from the legalized polity and

worship, and yet withal so dangerously, that they did not deserve to

be classed as "sober dissenters." To recognize them as such would be

to set the seal of approval upon all who chose to question the

authority, or the righteousness, of the Saybrook system. With the fear

of such an undermining of authority, and realizing the increasing

tendency of churches throughout the colony to renounce the Saybrook

Platform, the very conservative people felt that to grant toleration

to the Separatists might prove disastrous both to Church and civil

order.

While the Baptists and the Separatists were waging the battle for

toleration and for religious liberty with the great weapon of their

time,--the pamphlet,--the Consociated Churches were also making

valiant use of it, not only in defense of the Establishment, but in

controversial warfare among themselves, for in the New England of the

second half of the eighteenth century, two schools of religious

thought were slowly developing. They gained converts more rapidly as

the means of communication, of publication, and of exchange of opinion

increased. The improvement of roads, the introduction of carriages and

coaches, the establishment of printing-presses, and the founding of

newspapers, were important agents in developing and moulding public

opinion. Of these, the printing-press was foremost, for with its

pamphlet and its newspaper it gained a hearing not only in the cities,

but in the isolated farmhouses of New England, carrying on its weekly

visit the gist of the secular and religious news.

The newspaper made its first appearance in Connecticut in 1755, when

the "Connecticut Gazette" [h] issued from the recently established New

Haven press. The newspaper arrived later in the distant colony of

Connecticut than in those on the seaboard that were in closer touch

with European thought by reason of their more direct and frequent

sailing vessels. Among American newspapers, the year 1704 saw the

birth of the "Boston News Letter"; the year 1719, of the "Boston

Gazette" and of the "American Weekly Mercury" of Philadelphia. Boston

added a third paper, the "New England Courant," in 1721, while New

York issued its first sheet in 1725. Benjamin Franklin founded the

"Pennsylvania Gazette" in 1729, and, in 1741, began the publication of

the "General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for, all the British

Plantations in America." In 1743, Boston sent out the "American

Magazine and Historical Chronicle," containing, along with European

news, not only lists of new books and excerpts therefrom, but full

reprints of the best essays from the English magazines. New York, in

1752, issued the "Independent Reflector," a magazine of similar

character. Thus, through papers and magazines, as well as through a

limited importation of books, and through personal correspondence, the

life of Europe, and preeminently of England, was brought home to the

colonists.

In the religious non-prelatical world of England, the Presbyterian

churches were undergoing a transformation, and were, by 1750,

prevailingly Arian. The English Congregationalists resisted Arianism,

but they, also, felt its influence, as well as that of Arminianism,

and they began to attach less importance to creeds, and to develop a

broader tolerance of many shades of religious belief. New England

sympathized more with the Congregational movement, but, as interest in

both was awakened, English thought came to have great influence in the

religious development of New England during the next half-century.

Broadly speaking of these progressive changes, Connecticut, and

Connecticut-trained men in western Massachusetts, developed the

so-called New Divinity, while Massachusetts clergy, especially those

of her eastern section, favored that liberal theology which, after the

Revolutionary period, gave rise to the Unitarian conflict.

The older religious controversies had concerned themselves with church

polity, or, popularly speaking, with what men thought concerning their

relation to God through his church, in distinction from doctrine, or

what men felt should be their attitude towards God and their

fellow-men. Pushing aside polity and doctrine, the twentieth century

emphasizes action, or man's reflection of the life of Christ. Doctrine

came to the front with Jonathan Edwards. In his opposition to the

Arminian teaching of the value of a sincere obedience to God's laws

and "the efficacy of means of grace," Jonathan Edwards asserted the

Calvinistic idea of the sovereignty of God, and maintained that

justification was by faith alone; but his idea of justification held

within it the duty of personal responsibility in loving and obeying

God. Edwards, though defining love as general benevolence, a delight

in God's holiness, and the essence of all true virtue, did introduce,

as factors in personal religion, the will and the emotions. These

characteristics of true, personal religion, as his mind, influenced by

the Great Awakening, conceived and elaborated them, he set forth in

his "Religious Affections," published in 1746. In his "Qualifications

for Full Communion," 1749, he again dwelt upon the same theme; but his

main purpose was to uproot the Half-Way Covenant practice and the

Stoddardean view of the Lord's supper. He attempted to do this by

exposing the inefficiency of "means," and at English Arminianism in

particular Edwards leveled his "Freedom of the Will," [i] published in

1754. His friend and disciple, Joseph Bellamy, put forth in 1750 "True

Religion Delineated," wherein he advances from Edwards's limited

atonement theory to that of a general one. [j] In 1758, Bellamy, in

brilliant dialogue, replied to "A Winter's Evening Conversation Upon

the Doctrine of Original Sin in which the Notion of our having sinned

in Adam and being on that Account only liable to eternal Damnation, is

proved to be unscriptural," a book by Rev. Samuel Webster of

Salisbury, Massachusetts, and of which a reprint had appeared from the

New Haven Press in 1757, the year of its publication. Bellamy took

sides with the Rev. Peter Clark of Danvers, Massachusetts, who replied

in "A Summer Morning's Conversation." Both men summoned as their

authority a work of Edwards, "Original Sin Defended," which was about

to appear from the press, and to which Edwards's followers were

looking forward as the last work of their master, he having died while

its pages were still in press. Edwards had destined the book to be a

refutation of English Arianism of the Taylor school, of which Webster

was a follower. This same year, 1758, Bellamy discoursed upon "The

Wisdom of God in the Permission of Sin," and gave a series of sermons

on "The Divinity of Jesus Christ," a defense of the Trinity, which

Jonathan Mayhew of Boston had attacked. Bellamy may have felt that

this defense was due from a Connecticut man because the colony,

strenuously orthodox, had in the revision of the laws in 1750 added

the requirement of a belief in the Trinity, and caused the denial

thereof to be ranked as felony. Denial of the Trinity, or of the

divine inspiration of the Scriptures, was punishable, for the first

offense, by ineligibility to office, whether ecclesiastical, civil, or

military, and, upon a second conviction, by disability to sue, to act

as guardian or as administrator. [148] Though there was never a

conviction under the statute, the presence of such a law in the colony

code indicates the religious temper of her people at a time when

radical changes were creeping into man's conception of religion.

Joseph Bellamy's influence, great as it was as writer and preacher,

was even greater as a teacher. His home in Bethlehem from 1738 to

1790 was virtually a divinity school, and it is estimated that at

least sixty students, trained in his system of theology and in his

antagonism to the Half-Way Covenant, [k] spread through New England

an influence counter to that of the Mayhews, Briant, [l] Webster, and

other disciples of the Liberal Theology. Upon Bellamy, as a leader,

fell Edwards's mantle.

While Bellamy was the great exponent of Jonathan Edwards's teachings

in Connecticut, another friend and famous pupil of the great divine's,

Samuel Hopkins, taught at Great Barrington, Massachusetts, 1743-69,

and in Newport, Ehode Island, 1770-1803, urging an extension of his

master's principles--especially of that of "benevolence." Hopkins,

however, attributed a certain value to "means of grace," while

teaching that sin and virtue consist in exercise of the will, or in

definite acts. [m] Consequently, he included in his theology a denial

of man's responsibility for Adam's sin, which Edwards had

maintained. Hopkins advocated also a willing and disinterested

submission to'God's will, the Hopkinsian "to be saved or damned,"

since God, in his wisdom, will do that which is best for his

universe. These characteristic doctrines, both of Bellamy and Hopkins,

were modified by the younger generation of students, notably by

Stephen West, John Smalley, Jonathan Edwards, Jr., and--greatest of

all--Nathaniel Emmons, who, together with the first Timothy Dwight,

were to introduce two sub-schools of the New Divinity. [n] Emmons,

following Hopkins, developed extreme views of sin, even in little

children; held the theories of reprobation and election; and was most

intensely Calvinistic. Dwight developed a more conciliatory and benign

system of theology, but his influence, as founder of a school of

religious thought, belongs to the post-Revolutionary era. Emmons held

one long pastorate at Franklin, Massachusetts, 1773-1827, [o] where,

as a trainer of youth for the ministry, his influence was greatest,

and his powers at their best. Nearly a hundred ministers passed to

their pulpits from his tutelage.

Such were the teachings that fashioned a generation of preachers, of

ministers, wielding a tremendous influence over the men and measures

of pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary days. The clergy were then the

close friends of their parishioners; their counselors in all matters,

spiritual or worldly; and frequently their arbitrators in disputed

rights, for the legal class was still small, and its services

costly. The pastor knew intimately every soul in his parish. He was

the State's moral guardian. He was the intellectual leader and more,

for, in the scarcity of books and newspapers, not alone in his Sunday

sermon but in those on fast days and thanksgivings, and on all public

and semi-public occasions, he talked to his people upon current

events. The story is told of a clergyman who in his Sunday prayer

recounted the life of his parish during the preceding week, making

personal mention of its actors; who then passed, still praying, from

local history to the welfare of the nation, including a tribute to

Washington and a description of a battle; and who did not end his

hour-long prayer until he had anathematized the enemy, and circled the

globe for recent examples of divine wrath and benevolence. Such a

clergyman is by no means a myth. Each pastor made his own

contribution, inconspicuous or notable as it might be, to the

broadening of thought, and contributed his part to the development

among his people of ideas of personal liberty, even as the colonial

wars were developing confidence in the ability to defend that liberty

should it be endangered. A voluntary theocracy may uphold a faith

which teaches that only a very limited number are of the "elect," but,

under the ordinary conditions of life, such a belief is discouraging,

deadening, and as men threw off this idea of spiritual bondage, they

advanced to a larger conception of personal responsibility, dignity,

and freedom. Such enlargement of ideas necessitated a mutual tolerance

of diverse opinions. It also tended to create revolt against

infractions of civil liberty or violations of political justice. The

colonists were not so badly taxed--as colonial policy went--when they

made their stand for "no taxation without representation," when they

exhausted their resources in a long war because of acts of Parliament

that, had they submitted to them, would have offered a precedent for

still more repressive measures and for the overthrow of the

Englishman's right to determine, through the representatives of the

people, how the people's money should be spent.

If the town-meeting, the sermon, the religious or political pamphlet,

and the newspaper did each its part in developing a people, there was

also another factor that, starting as part of a discussion of

ecclesiastical polity, brought before all men important questions of

civil, political, and personal liberty, and of constitutional rights.

However unnecessary the severe anguish of Jonathan Mayhew's spirit,

due to his exaggerated fear of the American episcopate, he did but

express "the sincere thought of a multitude of his most rational

contemporaries." [l49] A review of events will show some reason for

the antagonism and horror that filled New England when the project of

the episcopate was revived. After the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the

Crown took no interest in the project of an American episcopate until

Thomas Sherlock became Bishop of London in 1748. The Connecticut

clergy of the Church of England, together with others of New England

and the Middle colonies, had, however, never ceased their efforts to

secure an American bishop; and now, in Bishop Sherlock, their

Metropolitan in London, they had one who firmly believed in the

necessity of colonial bishops, who deliberately refused to exercise

the traditional powers of his office, or to obtain a legal renewal of

them (in so far as they applied to the colonies), because he had

determined that by such a policy he would force the English government

to appoint one--or preferably several--American bishops. He defined

his scheme for the episcopate as one in which the Bishop was: (1) to

have no coercive power over the laity, only regulative over the

clergy; (2) to have no share in the temporal government; (3) to be of

no expense to the colonists; (4) and to have no authority, except to

ordain the clergy, in any of the colonies where the government was in

the hands of dissenters from the Church of England. This plan was

essentially the same as that advocated later by Bishops Secker and

Butler, and by succeeding bishops to the time of the

Revolution. Bishop Sherlock obtained the King's permission to submit

his plan to the English ministers of state. So great was the dread

inspired in America by the rumors of a revival of active measures for

a colonial episcopate, that a deputation, sent to England in 1749,

appointed a committee of two to wait upon those nearest to the King

and to advise them that the appointment would be "highly Prejudicial

to the Interests of Several of the Colonies." [150] This committee

redoubled its energies in 1750, and it was due to its watchfulness as

well as to the clearer foresight of the King's ministers that Bishop

Sherlock's plan was frustrated. The chief advisers of the government

objected to it on the ground that it would be repugnant to the

dissenting colonies, to the dissenters of all sorts in England, and

would also rouse in the home-land party-differences that had slumbered

since the overthrow of the Pretender in 1745.

Despite the English opposition to Bishop Sherlock's scheme, its

discussion in England and the journey of the bishop's agent through

the several American colonies to sound their sentiment had created so

much apprehension that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel

enjoined its missionaries, in 1753, "that they take special care to

give no offence to the civil government by intermeddling with affairt,

not relating to their calling or function." Even Bishop Seeker of

Oxford, a strong adherent of Bishop Sherlock, saw fit, in 1754, to

suppress Dr. Johnson of Stratford, Connecticut, bidding his enthusiasm

wait until a more propitious season, and advising him, and the rest of

his clergy, to conciliate the dissenters. Bishop Sherlock, himself, in

1752, withdrew sufficiently from his first position to assume the

ecclesiastical oversight of the colonies, although he would not take

out a commission to renew that which had expired by the death of

Bishop Gibson. Meanwhile, Sherlock's demonstration that the Bishop of

London had little authority in law, or in fact, over the American

colonies created two parties. One [p] held that the colonies were a

part of the English nation and consequently were subject to the civil

and religious laws existing in the home country, and that the

authority of the Church of England extending to the colonies had been

reinforced by the Gibson patent of 1727-28. The other party

maintained that the colonists were not members of the Church of

England, nor subject to its rules. They quoted the Lord Chief Justice,

who declared to Governor Dummer, in 1725, that "there was no regular

establishment of any national or provincial church in these

plantations" (of New England), and that Bishop Gilman, in his letter

of May 24, 1735, to Dr. Colman had written, "My opinion has always

been that the religious state of New England is founded on an equal

liberty to all Protestants, none of which can claim the name of a

national establishment, or of any kind of superiority over the rest."

This party further maintained that no acts of Parliament, passed after

the founding of the colonies, were binding upon them, unless such acts

were specially extended to the colonies. Here again was the old

contention that had appeared in the earlier controversy over the

Connecticut Intestacy Act.

An American controversy, parallel in time with the attempt to

establish the episcopate, roused the always latent New England

hostility to the Episcopal church as one contrary to gospel

teaching. This controversy of 1747-51 [q] broke out over the validity

of Presbyterian ordination versus Episcopal. The battle surged about

the contingent questions of (1) whether the Church of England extended

to the colonies; (2) whether it was prudent for the long established

New England churches to go over to the English communion; and (3)

whether it would be lawful. In debating the last two, incidental

matters of expense, of unwise ecclesiastical dependence, and of the

consequent decay of practical godliness in the land, were discussed by

the Rev. Noah Hobart of Stratford, Conn., who represented the

Consociated churches, while Episcopacy was defended by Rev. James

Wetmore of Rye, N. Y., Dr. Johnson of Stratford, Conn., Rev. John

Beach of Reading, Conn., and by the Rev. Henry Caner of Boston.

This discussion at once suggested to a few far-sighted men that the

bishops recently proposed, and which at the end of the Seven Years'

War, in 1763, were again earnestly advocated by Bishop Seeker (who had

become Archbishop of Canterbury) should not acquire any powers in

addition to those suggested by Bishop Sherlock. The growing fear of

such increased authority flamed out again in the Mayhew controversy of

1763-65, when all the inherited Puritan dislike to the Church of

England as a religious body, and all the terror of such a hierarchy,

as a part of the English state, hurled itself into argument, and threw

to the front the discussion of the American episcopate as a measure of

English policy,--an attempt to transplant the Church as an arm of the

State; an attempt to "episcopize," to proselyte the colonies, and

eventually to overturn the New England ecclesiastical and civil

governments.[r] "It was known," wrote John Adams fifty years later,

"that neither the king nor ministry nor archbishop could appoint

bishops in America without Act of Parliament, and if Parliament could

tax us, it could establish the Church of England with all its creeds,

articles, ceremonies, and prohibit all other churches as conventicles

and schism-shops." [s] Therefore, when England declared her right to

tax the colonies, and followed it by Sugar Act and Stamp Act, the

political situation threw a lurid light about the Chandler-Chauncy

controversy [t] of 1767-71 as it rehearsed the _pros_ and

_cons_ of the proposed episcopate. The New England colonies were

greatly excited, and others shared the unrest, for, even where the

Church of England was strongest, the laity as a body preferred the

greater freedom accorded them under commissaries as sub-officers of

the Bishop of London. The indifference of the American laity as a

whole to the project of the episcopate; the impotence of the English

bishop to attain it, thwarted as he was by the threefold opposition of

the ministry, the colonial agents, and the great body of English

dissenters, did not lessen the prevailing suspicion and fear among the

colonists, especially among those of New England. They felt no

confidence in the profession [u] that authority purely ecclesiastical

would alone be accorded to the bishop, or that American churchmen

themselves would long be satisfied with a bishopric so shorn of

power. And already, on November 1, 1766, the Episcopalians of New

York, New Jersey, and Connecticut had met together in their first

annual convention at Elizabethtown. [v] The avowed object of their

conference was the defense of the liberties of the Church of England,

and "to diffuse union and harmony, and to keep up a correspondence

throughout the united body and with their friends abroad." [151]

It was a time of drawing together, whether of the colonies as

political bodies, or of their people as groups of individuals

affiliating with similar groups beyond the local boundaries. Upon

November 5, 1766, also at Elizabethtown, the Consociated Churches of

Connecticut had united with the Presbyterian Synod of New York and

Philadelphia in their first annual convention, which was composed of

Presbyterian delegates to the Synod and of representatives from the

Associations in Connecticut. While the general object was the

promotion of Christian friendship between the two religious bodies,

the spread of the gospel, and the preservation of the liberties of

their respective churches, the conventions of 1769-75 determined to

prosecute measures for preserving these same liberties, threatened "by

the attempt made by the friends of Episcopacy in the Colonies and

Great Britain, for the establishment of Diocesan Bishops in America."

[152] Accordingly this representative body at once entered into

correspondence with the Committee of Dissenters in England. In

recalling these movements towards combination, one remembers that,

among the dissenters, the Quakers had long held to their system of

Monthly, Quarterly, and Annual Meetings, to their correspondence with

the London Annual Meeting, and to the frequent interchange of

traveling preachers. In the years 1767-69, the scattered Baptists of

New England had united in the Warren (Rhode Island) Association. It

was a council for advice only, yet its approval lent multiple weight

to the influence of any Baptist preacher. It urged the collection of

all authentic reports of oppression or persecution, and a firm, united

resistance on the part of the weaker churches. [w] The founding of

Brown University, Rhode Island, as a Baptist College in 1764, gave the

sect prestige by marking their approval of education and of a "learned

ministry."

To return to the subject of the episcopate, the Chandler controversy

had been precipitated by Dr. Johnson of Connecticut, who, at the

Elizabeth convention, urged that the opposition to the American

bishops was largely caused by ignorance concerning their proposed

powers and office, and that if some one would put the scheme more

fully before the people, they might be won over. The task was assigned

to Thomas Bradbury Chandler, who published his "An Appeal to the

Public," 1767. Dr. Charles Chauncy of Boston replied to Chandler,

giving the New England view of bishops in "The Appeal Answered."

Chandler, as has been said, retorted with his "The Appeal Defended,"

and the newspapers took up the controversy. The discussion turned

immediately and almost entirely from the ecclesiastical aspect, with

its dangers to New England church-life, to the political and

constitutional phases of this proposed extension of the Church of

England. The New York and Philadelphia press agitated the subject in

1768-69, while all New England echoed Mayhew's earlier denunciations

of the evils to be anticipated. In the pulpit, by the study fire, and

at the tavern-bar, leaders, scholars, people discussed the possible

loss of civil and personal liberty. Let the bishops once be seated;

and would they not introduce ecclesiastical courts, demand uniformity,

and impose a general tax for their church which might be perverted to

any use that the whim of the King and of his subservient bishops might

propose? There is no question that this subject of the episcopate,

with its political and constitutional phases, and with the

considerations of personal and civil liberty involved, did much to

familiarize the people with those principles upon which they made

their final break with England, and helped to prepare their minds for

the separation from the mother country.

In considering the various elements that contributed to the

development of the national spirit, to the destruction of that

provincialism so marked in the colonies before 1750, and to the

creation in each of breadth of thought and clearness of vision, trade

and commerce had their part. Because of them, came increasing

knowledge of the widely different habits of life in the thirteen

colonies. It came also from the association of the people of the

different sections when as soldiers of their King they were summoned

to the various wars. Still another impetus was given to the national

idea by the fashion of long, elaborate correspondence. Especially was

this true after the Albany convention of 1754, called to discuss

Franklin's Plan of Union, had introduced men of like minds, abilities,

and purpose, and also the needs of their respective sections, and had

interested them in the common welfare of all. Moreover, Franklin was

the highest representative of still another movement that roused the

slumbering intelligence of men by opening their minds to impressions

from the vast and unexplored world of natural science. He founded, in

1743, the University of Pennsylvania and the American Philosophical

Society. The recognition, in 1753, [x] of his work by European

scholars was an honor in which every American took pride as marking

the entrance of the colonies into the world of scientific

investigation. Such honorable recognition produced a widespread

interest in the stuiy of the physical world and its forces. Following

this awakening and broadening of the intellectual life, there came, at

the very dawn of the Revolution, the first out-cropping of genuine

American literature in the satires and poems of Philip Freneau of New

York, a graduate of Princeton, and in those of John Trumbull and Joel

Barlow [y] of Yale. New Haven became a centre of literary life, and

the cultivation of literature took its place beside that of the

classics, broadening the preeminently ministerial groove of the Yale

curriculum.

In considering some of the individual acts leading up to Connecticut's

part in the Revolution, we find that the colony had disapproved

Franklin's Plan of Union of 1754. She thought it lacking in efficiency

and in dispatch in emergencies, and possibly dangerous to the

liberties of the colonies. She also believed it liable to plunge the

colonies into heavy expense, when many of them were already

floundering in debt. Yet Connecticut had, with Massachusetts,

willingly borne the brunt of expense and loss necessary to protect the

colonies in the wars arising from French and English claims. She,

accordingly, greatly rejoiced at the Peace of Ryswick, 1763, for it

gave security to her borders by the cession of Canada to England,

brought safety to commerce and the fisheries, and promised a new era

of prosperity. The attempt of England to recoup herself for the

expenses of the war by a rigid enforcement of the Navigation Laws--an

enforcement that paralyzed commerce, and turned the open evasion of

honorable merchantmen into the treasonable acts of smugglers--grieved

Connecticut; the Sugar Act provoked her, and the proposed Stamp Act

drove her to remonstrance. Her magistrates issued the dignified and

spirited address, "Reasons why the British Colonies in America should

not be charged with Internal Taxes by Authority of Parliament." [z] It

was firmly believed in the colony that when the severity of the

English acts should be demonstrated, they would at once be removed and

some substitute, such as the proposed tax on slaves or on the fur

trade, would be adopted. Jared Ingersoll, the future stamp-officer,

carried the address to England. There it received praise as an able

and temperate state-paper. Ingersoll is credited with having succeeded

in slightly modifying the Stamp Act and in postponing somewhat the

date for its going into effect. Having done what he could to modify

the measure, and not appreciating the growth of opposition to it

during his absence, he accepted the office of Stamp-Distributer, and

returned to America, where he was straightway undeceived as to the

desirability of his office, but made his way from Boston to

Connecticut, hoping for better things. On reaching New Haven, he was

remonstrated with for accepting his office and urged to give it

up. But learning that Governor Fitch, after mature deliberation, had

resolved to take the oath to support the Stamp Act, and had done so,

though seven of his eleven Councilors, summoned for the ceremony, had

refused to witness the oath, Ingersoll decided to push on to

Hartford. Starting alone and on horseback, he rode unmolested through

the woods; but as he journeyed through the villages, group after group

of stern-looking men, bearing in their hands sticks peeled bare of

bark so as to resemble the staves carried by constables, silently

joined him, and, later, soldiers and a troop of horse. Thus he was

escorted into Wethersfield, where, virtually a prisoner, he was made

to resign his commission. The cavalcade, ever increasing, proceeded

with him to Hartford, [aa] where he publicly proclaimed his

resignation and signed a paper to that effect. Everywhere the towns

burned him in effigy. Everywhere the spirit of indignation and of

opposition spread. The "Norwich Packet" discussed the favored East

Indian monopolies and the Declaratory and Revenue Acts of

Parliament. The "Connecticut Courant" (founded in Hartford in 1764),

the "Connecticut Gazette," the "Connecticut Journal and New Haven

Post-Boy," [ab] and the "New London Gazette" encouraged the spirit of

resistance. A Norwich minister[153] preached from the text "Touch not

mine anointed," referring to the people as the "anointed" and arguing

that kings, through Acts of Parliament which take away, infringe, or

violate civil rights, touch the "anointed" people in a way forbidden

by God. This Norwich minister was not alone among the clergy, for the

sermons of the three sects, Baptist, Separatist, and Congregational,

"connected with one indissoluble bond the principles of civil

Government and the principles of Christianity." The laity of the

Episcopal church were, as a body, patriots, and so, also, were many of

their clergy; but party spirit, roused by the discussion of the

episcopate and of their relation to the King, as head of their church

as well as head of the State, tended to Toryism. From their pulpits

was more frequently heard the doctrine of passive obedience. But in

all the opposition to the Stamp Act, in all the preparations for

resistance, in the carrying out of non-importation agreements, in the

movement that created small factories and home industries to supply

the lack of English imports, and later during the struggle for

independence, the Connecticut colonists, whether Congregationalists,

patriotic Episcopalians, Baptists, or Separatists, worked as one.

Toward the Separatists, oppressed dissenters yet loyal patriots, there

began to be the feeling that some legislative favor should be

shown. Accordingly the Assembly, having them in mind, in 1770 passed

the law that--

no person in this Colony, professing the Christian protestant

religion, who soberly and conscientiously dissent from the worship

and ministry established or approved by the laws of this Colony

and attend public worship by themselves, shall incur any of the

penalties ... for not attending the worship and ministry so

established on the Lord's day or on account of their meeting

together by themselves on said day for the public worship of God

in a way agreeable to their consciences.

And in October of the same year, it was further decreed that--

all ministers of the gospel that now are or hereafter shall be

settled in this Colony, during their continuance in the ministry,

shall have all their estates lying in the same society as well as

in the same town wherein they dwell exempted out of the lists of

polls and rateable estates. [154]

But for the Separatists to obtain exemption from ecclesiastical taxes

for the benefit of the Establishment required seven more years of

argument and appeal. During the time, they and the Baptists continued

to increase in favor. The Separatist, Isaac Holly, preached and

printed a sermon upholding the Boston tea-party. The Baptists were so

patriotic as to later win from Washington his "I recollect with

satisfaction that the religious society of which you are members have

been throughout America uniformly and almost unanimously the firm

friends of civil liberty, and the persevering promoters of our

glorious revolution." [155] In 1774, good-will was shown to the

Suffield Baptists by a favorable answer to their memorial to be

relieved from illegal fines. In behalf of these Baptists, Governor

Trumbull frequently exerted his influence. He also wrote to those of

New Roxbury, who were in distress as to whether they had complied with

the law, assuring them that the act of 1770 had done away with the

older requirement of a special application to the General Assembly for

permission to unite in church estate. [156] Notwithstanding such

favor, there was still so much injustice that the Baptists of Stamford

wrote, during the rapid increase of the sect through the local

revivals of 1771-74, that the emigration from Connecticut of Baptists

was because "the maxims of the land do not well suit the genius of our

Order, and beside, the country is so fully settled, as population

increases, the surplusage must go abroad for settlements."

Among the Baptists, the most vigorous champion for mutual toleration

and for liberty of conscience was Isaac Backus, "the father of

American Baptists," and their first historian. In _An Appeal to the

Public for Religious Liberty_, Boston, 1773, after calling

attention to the lack of state provision in Massachusetts as well as

in Connecticut for ecclesiastical prisoners,[157] he thus defines the

limits of spiritual and temporal power:--

And it appears to us that the true difference and exact limits

between ecclesiastical and civil government is this. That the

church is armed with _light and truth_, to pull down the

strongholds of iniquity and to gain souls to Christ and into his

church to be governed by his rules therein; and again to exclude

such from their communion who will not be so governed; while the

state is armed with _the sword to guard the peace and to punish

those who violate the same_. Where they have been confounded

together no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that

have ensued.

He proceeds to argue that every one has an equal right to choose his

religion, since each one must answer at God's judgment seat for his

own choice and his life's acts. Consequently, there is no warrant for

the making of religious laws and the laying of ecclesiastical

taxes. With this premise, it followed that the Baptist exemption act

of 1729 was defective and unjust, in that it demanded certificates;

and from this time there began a steadily increasing opposition to the

giving of these papers. Backus objected to the certificates upon

several grounds, chief of which were:--

(1) Because the very nature of such a practice implies an

acknowledgement that the civil power has right to set one

religious sect up above another.... It is a tacit allowance that

they have the right to make laws about such things which we

believe in our own conscience they have not.

(2) The scheme we oppose tends to destroy the purity and life of

religion.

(3) The custom which they want us to countenance is very hurtful

to civil society.... What a temptation then does it not lay for

men to contract guilt when temporal advantages are annexed to one

persuasion and disadvantages laid upon another? _i.e._, in

plain terms, how does it tend to lying hypocrisy and lying? [159]

In all his writings this man pleads the cause of religious liberty,

and, whenever possible, he emphasizes the likeness of the struggle of

the dissenters for freedom of conscience to that of the colonists for

civil liberty, and argues the injustice of wresting thousands of

dollars from the Baptists for the support of a religion to them

distasteful, while they exert themselves to the utmost to win

political freedom for all; "with what heart can we support the

struggle?"

Two remarkable little books of some eighty or ninety pages that were

issued from the Boston press in 1772 require a word of notice because

of their hearty welcome. Two editions were called for within the year,

and more than a thousand copies of the second were bespoken before it

went to press. They had originally been put forth, the first in 1707,

"The Churches Quarrel Espoused: or a Reply In Satyre to certain

Proposals made, etc." (the Massachusetts "Proposals of 1705"), and the

second in 1717, "A Vindication of the Government of the New England

Churches, Drawn from Antiquity; Light of Nature; Holy Scripture; the

Noble Nature; and from the Dignity Divine Providence has put upon it."

In 1772 their author, the Rev. John Wise, a former pastor of the

church in Ipswich, Massachusetts, had been dead for over forty

years. In his day, he had regarded the "Proposals" as treasonable to

the ancient polity of Congregationalism, and had attacked what he

considered their assumptions, absurdities, and inherent tyranny. His

books were forceful in their own day, serving the churches, persuading

those of Massachusetts to hold to the more democratic system of the

Cambridge Platform, and largely affecting the character of the later

polity of the New England churches. The suffering colonist of 1772,

smarting under English misrule, turned to the vigorous, clear, and

convincing pages wherein John Wise set forth the natural rights of

men, the quality of political obligation, the relative merits of

government, whether monarchies, aristocracies, or democracies, and the

well developed concept that civil government should be founded upon a

belief in human equality. In his second attempt to defend the

Cambridge Platform, Wise had advanced to the proposition that

"Democracy is Christ's government in Church and State." [160]

Such expositions as these, and those in Isaac Backus's "The Exact

Limits between Civil and Ecclesiastical Government," published in

1777, and in his "Government and Liberty described," of 1778, together

with the discussion prevalent at the time, and with the logic of the

Revolutionary events, opened the mind of the people to a clearer

conception of liberty of conscience, though their practical

application of the notion was deferred. For many years longer, persons

had to be content with a toleration that was of itself a contradiction

to religious liberty. Yet in May, 1777, such toleration was broadened

by the "Act for exempting those Persons in this State, commonly styled

Separates from Taxes for the Support of the established Ministry and

building and repairing Meeting Houses," on condition that they should

annually lodge with the clerk of the Established Society, wherein they

lived, a certificate, vouching for their attendance upon and support

of their own form of worship. Said certificate was to be signed by the

minister, elder, or deacon of the church which "they ordinarily did

attend." [161]

Israel Holly's "An Appeal to the Impartial, or the Censured Memorial

made Public, that it may speak for itself. To which is added a few

Brief Remarks upon a Late Act of the General Assembly of the State of

Connecticut, entitled an 'Act for Exempting those Persons in this

State Commonly styled Separates, from Taxes for the Support of the

Established Ministry &c.'" gave in full an "Appeal" of eleven

Separatist churches to the General Assembly in May, 1770. That body

would not suffer the petition to be read through, stopping the reader

in the midst, while some of its members went so far as to declare that

"all, who had signed it, ought to be sent for to make answer to the

Court for their action." But the majority of the legislature were not

so intolerant, so that during the session the act above mentioned was

passed. Holly, in his book, includes with the "Appeal" a severe

criticism of the new law, and, in quoting the petition, he gives a

full explanation of its text as well as the comments of the Assembly

upon it and their objections to parts of it. When recounting the long

struggle for toleration and in detail the persecutions of the Suffield

Separatists, Holly dwells upon the fact that before the recent

legislation of the Assembly, the spirit of fair dealing had in some

communities influenced the members of the Establishment in their

treatment of the Separatists. Holly also enlarges upon the

inconsistency between demanding freedom in temporal affairs from Great

Britain and refusing it in spiritual ones to fellow-citizens. The

"Censured Memorial" closes [162] with an expressed determination on

the part of the Separatists to appeal to tte Continental Congress if

the state continue to refuse to do them justice. Holly, remarking upon

the act of 1777, expresses great dissatisfaction with it as falling

short of the liberty desired, and, particularly, with its retention of

the certificate clause.

Such continued agitation of the rights of individuals and of churches

eventually created a broader public opinion, one that, permeating the

Establishment itself, tended to make its ministers resent any great

exercise of authority on the part of those among them who clung to the

strong Presbyterian construction of the Saybrook

Articles. Communications upon the subject of religious liberty were to

be found in many of the newspapers. Two governors of Connecticut wrote

pamphlets that tended to weaken the hold of the Saybrook Platform over

the people. Governor Wolcott in 1761 wrote against it, and in 1765

Governor Fitch (anonymously) explained away its authoritative

interpretation. The term "Presbyterian" came to be applied more

frequently to the conservative churches of the Establishment, and

"Congregational" to those wherein the New Light ideas prevailed. Some

years later, while the two terms were still used interchangeably, the

term "Congregational" rose in favor, and, after the Revolution,

included even the few Separatist churches. As for the latter, they had

by 1770 concluded that with reference "to our Baptist brethren we are

free to hold occasional communion with such as are regular churches

and ... make the Christian profession and acknowledge us to be

baptized." [163] For some years these two religious parties attempted

to unite in associations, but finding that they disagreed too much on

the question of baptism, they mutually decided to give up the attempt,

and separated with the greatest respect and good will toward each

other. In 1783, the Presbyterians refused to meet the Separatists in

the attempt to devise some plan of union between them, but did advance

to the concession "to admit Separatists to Ordination with the

greatest care." [164] The Presbyterians were beginning to realize that

if the Saybrook Platform was to govern the churches of the

Establishment, its old judicial interpretation must give way. An

example of the revolt to be anticipated, if such interpretation were

insisted upon, followed the attempt by the Consociation of Windham in

1780 to discipline Isaac Foster, a Presbyterian minister, for "sundry

doctrines looked upon as dangerous and contrary to the gospel;" [ac]

and a similar attempt to reprove Mr. Sage of West Simsbury drew forth

such stirring retorts from Isaac Foster and from Dan Foster, minister

of Windsor (who defended Mr. Sage), that church after church promptly

renounced the Saybrook Platform. These churches agreed with Isaac

Foster in his declaration of the absolute independence of each church

and that--

no clergyman or number of clergymen or ecclesiastical council of

whatever denomination have right to make religious creeds, canons

or articles of faith and impose them upon any man or church on

earth requiring subscription to them.... A church should be the

sole judge of its pastor's teachings so long as he teaches nothing

_expressly_ contrary to the Bible. ... The Consociation has

no right to pretend that it is a divinely instituted assembly with

the Saybrook Platform for its charter, imposing a tyranny more

intolerable on the people than that from which they are trying to

free themselves. [165]

The result of all this agitation for liberty of conscience, emphasized

by its counterpart in the political life of the state and nation, was

that in the first edition of the "Laws and Acts of the State of

Connecticut in America," [ad] appearing in 1784, all reference to the

Saybrook Platform was omitted, and all ecclesiastical laws were

grouped under the three heads entitled Eights of Conscience,

Regulations of Societies, and the Observation of the Sabbath. [166]

Under the Sunday laws, together with numerous negative commands, was

the positive one that every one, who, for any trivial reason, absented

himself from public worship on the Lord's day should pay a fine of

three shillings, or fifty cents. The society regulations remained much

the same, with the added privilege that to all religious bodies

recognized by law permission was given to manage their, temporal

affairs as freely as did the churches of the Establishment. Dissenters

were even permitted to join themselves to religious societies in

adjoining states, [ae] provided the place of worship was not too far

distant for the Connecticut members to regularly attend services. To

these terms of toleration was affixed the sole condition of presenting

a certificate of membership signed by an officer of the church of

which the dissenter was a member, and that the certificate should be

lodged with the clerk of the Established society wherein the dissenter

dwelt. While legislation still favored the Establishment, toleration

was extended with more honesty and with better grace. All strangers

coming into the state were allowed, a choice of religious

denominations, but while undecided were to pay taxes to the society

lowest on the list. Choice was also given for twelve months to

resident minors upon their coming of age, and also to widows. In any

question, or doubt, the society to which the father, husband, or head

of the household belonged, or had belonged, determined the church home

of members of the household unless the certificates of all dissenting

members were on file. If persons were undecided when the time of

choice had elapsed, and they hadjiot presented certificates, they were

counted members of the Establishment. Thus the Saybrook Platform, no

longer appearing upon the law-book, was quietly relegated to the

status of a voluntarily accepted ecclesiastical constitution which the

different churches might accept, interpreting it with only such

degrees of strictness as they chose. Consequently, all Congregational

and Presbyterian churches drew together and remained intimately

associated with the government as setting forth the form of religion

it approved.

As toleration was more freely extended, oppression quickly ceased. The

smaller and weaker sects [af] that appeared in Connecticut after 1770

received no such persecution as their predecessors. Among them the

Sandemanians [ag] appeared about 1766, and from the first created

considerable interest. The Shakers were permitted to form a settlement

at Enfield in 1780. The Universalists began making converts among the

Separatist churches of Norwich as early as 1772. The year 1784 saw

the organization of the New London Seventh-day Baptist church, the

first of its kind in Connecticut.

The abrogation of the Saybrook Platform was implied, not expressed, by

dropping it out of the revised laws of 1784. The force of custom, not

the repeal of the act of establishment, annulled it. As in the

revision of 1750, certain outgrown statutes were quietly sloughed off.

After the abrogation of the Saybrook system, the orthodox dissenters

felt most keenly the humiliation of giving the required certificates,

and the favoritism shown by the government towards Presbyterian or

Congregational churches. This favoritism did not confine itself to

ecclesiastical affairs, but showed itself by the government's

preference for members of the Establishment in all civil, judicial,

and military offices. If immediately after the Revolution this

favoritism was not so marked, it quickly developed out of all

proportion to justice among fellow-citizens.

FOOTNOTES:

[a] As a petition "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty in Council."

[b] "Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which

frameth mischief by law?"

[c] The "History" is brief, and the "Vindication" is largely of

President Clap's own reasons for establishing the college church. See

F. B. Dexter, "President Clap and his Writings," in _New Haven

Hist. Soc. Papers_, vol. v, pp. 256-257.

[d] "Let no man, orders of man, Civil or Ecclesiastical Rulers,

majority, or any whoever pretend they have a right to enjoyn upon me

what I shall believe and practice in matters of Religion, and I bound

to subject to their Injunctions, unless they can convince me, that in

case there should happen to be a mistake, that they will suffer the

consequences, and not I; that they will bear the wrath of God, and

suffer Damnation, in my room and stead. But if they can't do this,

don't let them pretend to a right to determine for me what religion I

shall have. For if I must stand or fall for myself, then, pray let me

judge, and act and choose (in Matters of Religion) for myself

now. Yea, when I view these things in the Light of the Day of Judgment

approaching, I am ready to cry out Hands off! Hands off! Let none

pretend a right to my subjection in matters of Religion, but my Judge

only; or, if any do require it, God strengthen me to refuse to grant

it." _A Word in Zion's Behalf._ Quoted by E. H. Gillett in

_Hist. Magazine,_ 2d series, vol. iv, p. 16.

[e] _A Key to unlock the Door, that leads in, to take a fair view of

the Religious Constitution Established by Law in the Colony of

Connecticut; With a Short Observation upon the Explanation of the

Say-Brook-Plan; and Mr. Hobart's Attempt to establish the same

Plan,_ by Ebenezer Frothingham.

[f] Robert Bragge, _Church Discipline_, London, 1738. The author

takes for his text 1 Peter ii, 45, and under ten heads considers the

Congregational church as the true Scriptural church, its rights,

privileges, etc. Under topic four, "The Charter of this House," he

says: "The charter of this house exempts all its inhabitants from

obeying the whole ceremonial law:... from the doctrines of men in

matters of faith,... from man's commands in the worship of God. Man

can no more prescribe how God shall be worshipped, under the new

testament than he could under the old.... He alone who is in the bosom

of the Father hath declared this. To worship God according to the will

and pleasure of men is, in a sense to attempt to dethrone him: for it

is not only to place man's will on a level with God's, but above

it."--_Church Discipline_, p. 39.

[g] "Now suffer me to say something respecting the unreasonableness of

compelling the people of our persuasion to hear or support the

minister of another. Can a person who has been redeemed, be so

ungrateful as to hire a minister to preach up a doctrine which in his

heart he believes to be directly contrary to the institutions of his

redeemer? How if one of you should happen to be in the company with a

number of Roman Catholicks, who should tell you that if you would not

hire a minister to preach transubstantiation and the worshipping of

images to your children and to an unlearned people, they would cut off

your head; would you do it? Can you any better submit to hire a

minister to preach up a doctrine which you in your heart believe

contrary to the institution of Christ? I do not doubt but that many of

you, and I do not know but that all of you know what it is to

experience redeeming love; and if so, now can you take a person of

another persuasion, and put him in gaol for a trifling sum, destroy

his estate and ruin his family (as you signify the law will bear you

out) and when he is careful to support the religion which he in his

conscience looks upon to be right, who honestly tells you it is

wronging his conscience to pay your minister, and that he may not do

so though he suffer?... Is it not shame? Are we sharers in redemption,

and do we grudge to support religion? No: let us seek for the truth of

the gospel. If we can't think alike, let us not be cruel one to

another."

[h] _Connecticut Gazette_ (New Haven) April 1755-Apr. 14, 1764;

suspended; revived July 5, 1765-Feb. 19, 1768. The _New London

Gazette_, founded in 1763, was after 1768 known as the _

Connecticut Gazette _, except from Dee. 10, 1773, to May 11, 1787,

when it was called _The Connecticut Gazette and Universal

Intelligencer_.

Maryland published her first newspaper in 1727, Khode Island and Sonth

Carolina in 1732, Virginia in 1736, North Carolina in 1755, New

Hampshire in 1756, while Georgia fell into line in 1763.

[i] Edwards's _Nature of True Virtue_, written about 1755, was

not published until 1765.

[j] This book, otherwise essentially Edwardean, was second only to

Edwards's _Religious Affections_ in popularity and in its success

in spreading the influence of this school of theology, and it did

much, in Connecticut, to break down the opposition to the New

Divinity. Edwards himself approved its manuscript, and in his writings

recommended it highly.

[k] In 1769-70, Bellamy wrote a series of tracts and dialogues

against this practice. They were very effective in causing its

abandonment by those conservative churches that had so long clung to

its use.

[l] Experience Mayhew in his _Grace Defended_, of 1744.

Lemuel Briant's _The Absurdity and Blasphemy of Depreciating Moral

Virtue_, 1749. This was replied to in Massachusetts, by Rev. John

Porter of North Bridgewater in _The Absurdity and Blasphemy of

Substituting the Personal Righteousness of Men_, etc.; also by a

sermon of Rev. Thomas Foxcroft, Dr. Charles Chauncy's colleague; and

by Rev. Samuel Niles's _Vindication of Divers Important Gospel

Doctrines_. Jonathan Mayhew, son of Experience, wrote his

_Sermons_ (pronouncedly Arian) in 1755, and in 1761 two sermons,

_Striving to Enter at the Strait Gate_.

Other ministers were affected by these unorthodox views, notably

Ebenezer Gay, Daniel Shute, and John Rogers. This religious

development was cut short by the early death of the leaders and by the

Revolutionary contest. Briant died in 1754, Jonathan Mayhew in 1766,

and his father in 1758.--See W. Walker, _Hist. of the Congregational

Churches in the United States_, chap. viii.

[m] Hopkins replied in 1765 to Jonathan Mayhew's sermons of

1761. Mayhew died before he could answer, but Moses Hemenway of Wells,

Maine, and also Jedediah Mills of Huntington, Conn, (a New Light

sympathizer), answered Hopkins's extreme views in 1767 in _An

Inquiry concerning the State of the Unregenerate under the

Gospel_. This involved Hopkins in further argumentation in 1769,

and drew into the discussion William Hart (Old Light) of Saybrook, and

also Moses Mather of Darien, Conn, (also Old Light). This attack upon

Hopkins resulted in 1773 in his greatest work, _An Inquiry into the

Nature of True Holiness_. The whole question at stake between the

Old Calvinists and the followers of the New Divinity was how to class

men, morally upright, who made no pretensions to religious experience.

[n] West, in his _Essay on Moral Agency_, defended Edwards's

_Freedom of the Will_ against the Rev. James Dana of New Haven in

1772, but his _Scripture Doctrine of Atonement_, published in

1785, was his best-known work. In his doctrinal views, he was greatly

influenced by Hopkins. Both West and Smalley trained students for the

ministry. The latter was the teacher of Nathaniel Emmons. Smalley was

settled in what is now New Britain, Conn., from 1757-1820.

[o] Emmons died there, in 1840, at the age of ninety-five. Apart from

his influence upon the development of doctrine, he did more than any

other man to bring back the early independence of the churches and to

create the Congregational polity of the present day.

[p] To fortify their position, this party cited various acts of

Parliament and the Act of Union, 1707, wherein Scotland is distinctly

released from subjection to the Church of England,--an exemption,

they maintained, that had never formally been extended to the

colonies.

[q] On January 30, 1750, Jonathan Mayhew preached a forceful sermon

upon the danger of being "unmercifully priest-ridden."

[r] Rev. East Apthorpe, S. P. G. missionary at Cambridge, Mass., had

replied to a newspaper criticism upon the policy of the Society for

Propagating the Gospel in New England, in his _Considerations on the

Institutions and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the

Gospel in Foreign Parts_. Jonathan Mayhew published in answer his

_Observations on the Character and Conduct of the Society_,

censuring the Society not only for intruding itself into New England,

but for being the champion of the proposed episcopate, which he

denounced. This was in 1763. For two years the controversy

raged. There were four replies to Mayhew. Two were unimportant, a

third presumably from Rev. Henry Caner, and the fourth, _Answer to

the Observations_, an anonymous English production, really by

Archbishop Seeker. Mayhew wrote a _Defense_, and Apthorpe summed

up the whole controversy in his _Review_.--A. L. Cross,

_Anglican Episcopate_, p. 145 _et seq._; footnote 1, p. 147.

[s] John Adams's _Works_, x, 288.

[t] Dr. Charles Chauney attacked the S. P. G. as endeavoring to

increase their power, not to proselytize among the Indians, but to

episcopize the colonists. Dr. Chandler, of Elizabethtown, N. J.,

replied in _An Appeal to the Public_. Chauney retorted with

_The Appeal Answered_, and Chandler with _The Appeal

Defended_. The newspapers of 1768-69 took up the controversy.

[u] In 1767, Dr. Johnson in a letter to Governor Trumbull assured him

that "It is not intended, at present, to send any Bishops into the

American Colonies,... and should it be done at all, you may be assured

that it will be done in such manner as in no degree to prejudice, nor

if possible even give the least offense to any denomination of

Protestants."--E. E. Beardsley, _Hist, of the Epis. Church in

Conn._, i, 265.

[v] There were nine clergymen from Connecticut, and twenty-five from

New York and vicinity.

[w] The Association had sent petitions in behalf of the Baptists to

the legislatures of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Both were

refused. For its Circular Letter of 1776, see Hovey's _Life of

Backus_, p. 289; also p. 155.

[x] This year the Royal Society awarded him the Copley medal for his

discovery that lightning was a discharge of electricity.

In 1761 the medal of the Royal Society was also awarded to the

Rev. Jared Eliot of Killingworth, Conn., for making iron and steel

from black ferruginous sand.

[y] John Trumbull, b. 1750, d. in Michigan, 1831; Joel Barlow,

b. 1754, d. in Poland, 1812; Gen. David Humphreys, b. 1752, d. in New

Haven, 1818. These Yale men, together with Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, were

the leadjng spirits in the club known as "The Hartford Wits."

Dr. Dwight was a fellow collegian with them. Trumbull and Dwight did

much to interest the students in literature. The latter was also tutor

in rhetoric and professor of belles-lettres and oratory.

[z] Conn. Col. Rec. xii, Appendix. This was drawn up by the Governor

and three members of the General Assembly, May, 1761.

[aa] With grim humor, he turned to one of his escort, saying that he

at last realized the description in Revelation of "Death riding a

white horse and hell following behind."

[ab] The latter half of the title was omitted about 1775.

[ac] Foster replied: "One man is not to be called a 'heretick,' purely

because he differs from another, as to the articles of faith. For

either we should all be 'hereticks' or there would be no 'heresy'

among us.... Heresy does not consist in opinion or sentiments: it is

not an error of head but of will."--Foster, _A Defense of Religious

Liberty_, p. 47.

[ad] This revision of the laws was in charge of Roger Sherman and

Richard Law.

[ae] Quakers and Baptists frequently crossed the state line to attend

services in Rhode Island.

[af] There was only an occasional Romanist; Unitarians first took

their sectarian name in 1815; Universalists were few in number until

the second quarter of the new century.

[ag] This sect received its name from Robert Sandeman, the son-in-law

of its founder, the Rev. John Glass of Scotland. Sandeman published

their doctrines about 1757. In 1764, he left Scotland and came to

America, where he began making converts near Boston, in other parts of

New England, and in Nova Scotia. He died at Danbury, Connecticut,

1771. The members of the sect are called Glassites in Scotland, where

the Rev. John Glass labored. He died there in 1773. See W. Walker, in

_American Hist. Assoc. Annual Report_, 1901, vol. i.