Chapter XI: The Abrogation of the Saybrook Platform (2)

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.