The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut by M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN CONNECTICUT

BY

M. LOUISE GREENE, PhD.

PREFACE

The following monograph is the outgrowth of three earlier and shorter
essays. The first, "Church and State in Connecticut to 1818," was
presented to Yale University as a doctor's thesis. The second, a
briefer and more popularly written article, won the Straus prize
offered in 1896 through Brown University by the Hon. Oscar S. Straus.
The third, a paper containing additional matter, was so far approved
by the American Historical Association as to receive honorable mention
in the Justin Winsor prize competition of 1901.

With such encouragement, it seemed as if the history of the
development of religious liberty in Connecticut might serve a larger
purpose than that of satisfying personal interest alone. In
Connecticut such development was not marked, as so often elsewhere, by
wild disorder, outrageous oppression, tyranny of classes, civil war,
or by any great retrograde movement. Connecticut was more modern in
her progress towards such liberty, and her contribution to advancing
civilization was a pattern of stability, of reasonableness in
government, and of a slow broadening out of the conception of liberty,
as she gradually softened down her restrictions upon religious and
personal freedom.

And yet, Connecticut is recalled as a part of that New England where
those not Congregationalists, the unorthodox or radical thinkers,
found early and late an uncomfortable atmosphere and restricted
liberties. By a study of her past, I have hoped to contribute to a
fairer judgment of the men and measures of colonial times, and to a
correct estimate of those essentials in religion and morals which
endure from age to age, and which alone, it would seem, must
constitute the basis of that "ultimate union of Christendom" toward
which so many confidently look. The past should teach the present,
and one generation, from dwelling upon the transient beliefs and
opinions of a preceding, may better judge what are the non-essentials
of its own.

Connecticut's individual experiment in the union of Church and State
is separable neither from the New England setting of her earliest days
nor from the early years of that Congregationalism which the colony
approved and established. Hence, the opening chapters of her story
must treat of events both in old England and in New. And because
religious liberty was finally won by a coalition of men like-minded in
their attitude towards rights of conscience and in their desire for
certain necessary changes and reforms in government, the final
chapters must deal with social and political conditions more than with
those purely religious. It may be pertinent to remark that the passing
of a hundred years since the divorce of Church and State and the
reforms of a century ago have brought to the commonwealth some of the
same deplorable political conditions that the men of the past, the
first Constitutional Reform Party, swept away by the peaceful
revolution of 1818.

For encouragement, assistance, and suggestions, I am especially
indebted to Professor George B. Adams and Professor Williston Walker
of Yale University, to Professor Charles M. Andrews of Bryn Mawr, to
Dr. William G. Andrews, rector of Christ Church, Guilford, Conn., and
to Professor Lucy M. Salmon of Vassar College. Of numerous libraries,
my largest debt is to that of Yale University.

M. LOUISE GREENE.

NEW HAVEN, October 20, 1905.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE EVOLUTION OF EARLY CONGREGATIONALISM

Preparation of the English nation for the two earliest forms of
Congregationalism, Brownism and Barrowism.--Rise of Separatism and
Puritanism.--Non-conformists during Queen Mary's reign.--Revival of
the Reformation movement under Queen Elizabeth.--Development of
Presbyterianism.--Three Cambridge men, Robert Browne, Henry Greenwood,
and Henry Barrowe.--Brownism and Barrowism.--The Puritans under
Elizabeth, her early tolerance and later change of policy.--Arrest of
the Puritan movement by the clash between Episcopal and Presbyterian
forms of polity and the pretensions of the latter.--James the First
and his policy of conformity.--Exile of the Gainsborough and Scrooby
Separatists.--Separatist writings.--General approachment of Puritans
and Separatists in their ideas of church polity.--The Scrooby exiles
in America.--Sympathy of the Separatists of Plymouth Colony with both
the English Established Church and with English Puritans.

II. THE TRANSPLANTING OF CONGREGATIONALISM

English Puritans decide to colonize in America.--Friendly relations
between the settlements of Salem and Plymouth.--Salem decides upon the
character of her church organization.--Arrival of Higginson and
Skelton with recruits.--Formation of the Salem church and election of
officers.--Governor Bradford and delegates from Plymouth present.--The
beginning of Congregational polity among the Puritans and the break
with English Episcopacy.--Formation and organization of the New
England churches.

III. CHURCH AND STATE IN NEW ENGLAND

Church and State in the four New England colonies.--Early theological
dissensions and disturbances.--Colonial legislation in behalf of
religion.--Development of state authority at the cost of the
independence of the church.--Desire of Massachusetts for a platform of
church discipline.--Practical working of the theory of Church and
State in Connecticut.

IV. THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM AND THE HALF-WAY COVENANT

Necessity of a church platform to resist innovations, to answer
English criticism, and to meet changing conditions of colonial
life.--Summary of the Cambridge Platform.--Of the history of
Congregationalism to the year 1648.--Attempt to discipline the
Hartford, Conn., church according to the Platform.--Spread of its
schism.--Petition to the Connecticut General Court for some method of
relief.--The Ministerial Convention or "Synod" of 1657.--Its Half-Way
Covenant.--Attitude of the Connecticut churches towards the
measure.--Pitkin's petition to the General Court of Connecticut for
broader church privileges.--The Court's favorable reply.--Renewed
outbreak of schism in the Hartford and other churches.--Failure in the
calling of a synod of New England churches.--The Connecticut Court
establishes the Congregational Church.--Connecticut's first toleration
act.--Settlement of the Hartford dispute.--The new order and its
important modifications of ecclesiastical polity.

V. A PERIOD OF TRANSITION

Drift from religious to secular, and from intercolonial to individual
interests.--Reforming Synod of 1680.--Religious life in the last
quarter of the seventeenth century.--The "Proposals of 1705" in
Massachusetts.--Introduction in Connecticut of the Saybrook System of
Consociated Church government.

VI. THE SAYBROOK PLATFORM

The Confession of Faith.--Heads of Agreement.--Fifteen
Articles.--Attitude of the churches towards the Platform.--Formation
of Consociations.--The "Proviso" in the act of establishment.--Neglect
to read the proviso to the Norwich church.--Contention arising.--The
Norwich church as an example of the difficulty of collecting church
rates.

VII. THE SAYBROOK PLATFORM AND THE TOLERATION ACT

Toleration in the "Proviso" of the act establishing the Saybrook
Platform.--Reasons for passing the Toleration Act of 1708.--Baptist
dissenters.--Rogerine-Baptists, Rogerine-Quakers or Rogerines, and
their persecution.--Attitude toward the Society of Friends or
Quakers.--Toward the Church of England men or
Episcopalians.--Political events parallel in time with the dissenters'
attempts to secure exemption from the support of the Connecticut
Establishment.--General Ineffectiveness of the Toleration Act.

VIII. THE FIRST VICTORY FOR DISSENT

General dissatisfaction with the Toleration Act.--Episcopalians resent
petty persecution.--Their desire for an American
episcopate.--Conversion of Cutler, Rector of Yale College, and
others.--Bishop Gibson's correspondence with Governor Talcott.
--Petition of the Fairfield churchmen.--Law of 1727 exempting
Churchmen.--Persecution growing out of neglect to enforce the
law.--Futile efforts of the Rogerines to obtain exemption.--Charges
against the Colony of Connecticut.--The Winthrop case.--Quakers
attempt to secure exemption from ecclesiastical rates.--Exemption
granted to Quakers and Baptists.--Relative position of the dissenting
and established churches in Connecticut.

IX. "THE GREAT AWAKENING"

Minor revivals in Connecticut before 1740.--Low tone of moral and
religious life.--Jonathan Edwards's sermons at Northampton.--Revival
of religious interest and its spread among the people.--The
Rev. George Whitefield.--The Great Awakening.--Its immediate results.

X. THE GREAT SCHISM

The Separatist churches.--Old Lights and New.--Opposition to the
revival movement.--Severe colony laws of 1742-43--Illustrations of
oppression of reformed churches, as the North Church of New Haven, the
Separatist Church of Canterbury, and that of Enfield.--Persecution of
individuals, as of Rev. Samuel Finlay, James Davenport, John Owen,
and Benjamin Pomeroy.--Persecution of Moravian missionaries,--The
colony law of 1746, "Concerning who shall vote in Society
meeting."--Change in public opinion.--Summary of the influence of the
Great Awakening and of the great schism.

XI. THE ABROGATION OF THE SAYBROOK PLATFORM

Revision of the laws of 1750.--Attitude of the colonial authorities
toward Baptists and Separatists.--Influence on colonial legislation of
the English Committee of Dissenters.--Formation of the Church of Yale
College.--Separatist and Baptist writers in favor of
toleration.--Frothingham's "Articles of Faith and Practice."--Solomon
Paine's "Letter."--John Bolles's "To Worship God in Spirit and in
Truth."--Israel Holly's "A Word in Zion's Behalf."--Frothingham's "Key
to Unlock the Door."--Joseph Brown's "Letter to Infant
Baptizers."--The importance of the colonial newspaper.--Influence of
English non-conformity upon the religious thought of New England.--The
Edwardean School.--Hopkinsinianism and the New Divinity.--The clergy
and the people.--Controversy over the renewed proposal for an American
episcopate.--Movement for consolidation among all religious
bodies.--Influences promoting nationalism and, indirectly, religious
toleration.--Connecticut at the threshold of the
Revolution.--Connecticut clergymen as advocates of civil
liberty.--Greater toleration in religion granted by the laws of
1770.--Development of the idea of democracy in Church and
State.--Exemption of Separatists by the revision of the laws in
1784.--Virtual abrogation of the Saybrook Platform.--Status of
Dissenters.

XII. CONNECTICUT AT THE CLOSE OF THE REVOLUTION

Expansion of towns.--Revival of commerce and industries.--Schools and
literature.--Newspapers.--Rise of the Anti-Federal party.--Baptist,
Methodist, and Separatist dissatisfaction.--Growth of a broader
conception of toleration within the Consociated churches.

XIII. CERTIFICATE LAWS AND WESTEKN LAND BILLS

Opposition to the Establishment from dissenters, Anti-Federalists, and
the dissatisfied within the Federal ranks.--Certificate law of 1791 to
allay dissatisfaction.--Its opposite effect.--A second Certificate law
to replace the former.--Antagonism created by legislation in favor of
Yale College.--Storm of protest against the Western Land bills of
1792-93.--Congregational missions in Western territory.--Baptist
opposition to legislative measures.--The revised Western Land bill as
a basis for Connecticut's public school fund.--Result of the
opposition roused by the Certificate laws and Western Land bills.

XIV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN CONNECTICUT

Government according to the charter of 1662.--Party tilt over town
representation.--Anti-Federal grievances against the Council or
Senate, the Judiciary, and other defective parts of the machinery of
government.--Constitutional questions.--Rise of the
Democratic-Republican party.--Influence of the French Revolution.--The
Federal members of the Establishment or "Standing Order," the
champions of religious and political stability.--President Dwight, the
leader of the Standing Order.--Leaders of the
Democratic-Republicans.--Political campaigns of 1804-1806.--Sympathy
for the defeated Republicans.--Politics at the close of the War of
1812.

XV. DISESTABLISHMENT

Waning of the power of the Federal party in Connecticut.--Opposition
to the Republican administration during the War of
1812.--Participation in the Hartford Convention.--Economic benefits of
the war.--Attitude of the New England clergy toward the war.--The
Toleration party of 1816.--Act for the Support of Literature and
Religion.--Opposition.--Toleration and Reform Ticket of 1817.--New
Certificate Law.--Constitution and Reform Ticket of 1818.--Its
victory.--The Constitutional Convention.--New Constitution of
1818.--Separation of Church and State.

APPENDIX

NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN CONNECTICUT

CHAPTER I

THE EVOLUTION OF EARLY CONGREGATIONALISM

The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the
corner.--Psalm cxviii, 22.

The colonists of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven
were grounded in the system which became known as Congregational, and
later as Congregationalism. At the outset they differed not at all in
creed, and only in some respects in polity, from the great Puritan
body in England, out of which they largely came.[a]

For more than forty years before their migration to New England there
had been in old England two clearly developed forms of
Congregationalism, Brownism and Barrowism. The term Congregationalism,
with its allied forms Congregational and Congregationalist, would not
then have been employed. They did not come into general use until the
latter half of the seventeenth century, and were at first limited in
usage to defining or referring to the modified church system of New
England. The term "Independent" was preferred to designate the
somewhat similar polity among the nonconformist churches in old
England.[b] Brownism and Barrowism are both included in Dr. Dexter's
comprehensive definition of Congregationalism, using the term "to
designate that system of thought, faith, and practice, which starting
with the dictum that the conditions of church life are revealed in the
Bible, and are thence to be evolved by reverent common-sense, assisted
but never controlled by all other sources of knowledge; interprets
that book as teaching the reality and independent competency of the
local church, and the duty of fraternity and co-working between such
churches; from these two truths symmetrically developing its entire
system of principles, privileges, and obligations." [1] The
"independent competency of the local church" is directly opposed to
any system of episcopal government within the church, and is
diametrically opposed to any control by king, prince, or civil
government. Yet this was one of the pivotal dogmas of Browne and of
the later Separatists; this, a fundamental doctrine which Barrowe
strove to incorporate into a new church system, but into one having
sufficient control over its local units to make it acceptable to a
people who were accustomed to the autonomy and stability of a church
both episcopal and national in character.

In order to appreciate the changes in church polity and in the
religious temper of the people for which Browne and Barrowe labored,
one must survey the field in which they worked and note such
preparation as it had received before their advent. It is to be
recalled that Henry VIII substituted for submission to the Pope
submission to himself as head of a church essentially Romish in
ritual, teaching, and authority over his subjects. The religious
reformation, as such, came later and by slow evolution through the
gradual awakening of the moral and spiritual perceptions of the
masses. It came very slowly notwithstanding the fact that the first
definite and systematic opposition to the abuses and assumptions of
the clergy had arisen long before Henry's reign. As early as 1382, the
itinerant preachers, sent out by Wyckliff, were complained of by the
clergy and magistrates as teachers of insubordinate and dangerous
doctrines. Thenceforward, outcroppings of dissatisfaction with the
clergy appear from time to time both in English life and
literature. This dissatisfaction was silenced by various acts of
Parliament which were passed to enforce conformity and to punish
heresy. Their character and intent were the same whether the head of
the church wore the papal tiara or the English crown. Two hundred
years after Wyckliff, in 1582, laws were still fulminated against
"divers false and perverse people of certain new sects," for
Protestant England would support but one form of religion as the moral
prop of the state. She regarded all innovations as questionable, or
wholly evil, and their authors as dangerous men. Chief among the
latter was Robert Browne. But before Browne's advent and in the days
of Henry the Eighth, there had been a large, respectable, and steadily
increasing party whose desire was to remain within the English church,
but to purify it from superstitious rites and practices, such as
penances, pilgrimages, forced oblations, and votive offerings. They
wished also to free the ritual from many customs inherited from the
days of Rome's supremacy. It was in this party that the leaven of
Protestantism had been working. Luther and Henry, be it remembered,
had died within a year of each other. Under the feeble rule of Edward
the Sixth, the English reform movement gained rapidly, and, in 1550,
upon the refusal of Bishop Hooper to be consecrated in the usual
Romish vestments, it began to crystallize in two forms, Separatism and
Puritanism.[c] In spite of much opposition, the teachings of Luther,
Calvin, and other Continental reformers took root in England, and
interested men of widely different classes. They stirred to new
activity the scattered and persecuted groups, that, from time to time,
had met in secret in London and elsewhere to read the Scriptures and
to worship with their elected leaders in some simpler form of service
than that prescribed by law. Under Mary's persecution, these
Separatists increased, and with other Protestants swelled the roll of
martyrs. In her severity, the Queen also drove into exile many able
and learned men, who sought shelter in Geneva, Zurich, Basle, and
Frankfort, where they were hospitably entertained. Upon their return,
there was a marked increase in the Calvinistic tone both of preaching
and teaching in the English church and in the university lecture
rooms, especially those of Cambridge. Among the most influential
teachers was Thomas Cartwright,[d] in 1560-1562, Lady Margaret
Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. While having no sympathy with the
nonconformist or Separatist of his day, Cartwright accepted the polity
and creed of Calvin in its severer form. He became junior-dean of
St. John's, major-fellow of Trinity, and a member of the
governing-board. In 1565 he went to Ireland to escape the heated
controversy of the period which centred in the "Vestiarian"
movement. He was recalled in 1569 to his former professorship, and in
September, 1571, was forced out of it because, when controversy
changed from vestments to polity, he took extreme views of church
discipline and repudiated episcopal government.[e] While Cartwright
was very pronounced in his views, his desire at first was that the
changes in church polity should be brought about by the united action
of the Crown and Parliament. Such had been the method of introducing
changes under the three sovereigns, Henry, Mary, and Elizabeth. With
this brief summary of the reform movements among the masses and in the
universities covering the years until Cartwright, through the
influence of the ritualistic church party, was expelled from
Cambridge, and Robert Browne, as a student there, came under the
strong Puritan influence of the university, we pass to a consideration
of Brownism.

Robert Browne was graduated from Cambridge in 1572, the year after
Cartwright's expulsion. The next three years he taught in London and
"wholly bent himself to search and find out the matters of the church:
as to how it was guided and ordered, and what abuses there were in the
ecclesiastical government then used." [2] When the plague broke out in
London, Browne went to Cambridge. There, he refused to accept the
bishop's license to preach, though urged to do so, because he had come
to consider it as contrary to the authority of the
Scriptures. Nevertheless, he continued preaching until he was silenced
by the prelate. Browne then went to Norwich, preaching there and at
Bury St. Edmunds, both of which had been gathering-places for the
Separatists. At Norwich, he organized a church. Writing of Browne's
labors there in 1580 and 1581, Dr. Dexter says: "Here, following the
track which he had been long elaborating, he thoroughly discovered and
restated the original Congregational way in all its simplicity and
symmetry. And here, by his prompting and under his guidance, was
formed the first church in modern days of which I have any knowledge,
which was intelligently and one might say philosophically
Congregational in its platform and processes; he becoming its pastor."
[3] Persecution followed Browne to Norwich, and in order to escape it
he, in 1581, migrated with his church to Middelburg, in
Zealand. There, for two years, he devoted himself to authorship,
wherein he set forth his teachings. His books and pamphlets, which had
been proscribed in England, were printed in Middelburg and secretly
distributed by his friends and followers at home. But Browne's
temperament was not of the kind to hold and mould men together, while
his doctrine of equality in church government was too strong food for
people who, for generations, had been subservient to a system that
demanded only their obedience. His church soon disintegrated. With but
a remnant of his following, he returned in 1583 by way of Scotland
into England, finding everywhere the strong hand of the government
stretched out in persecution. Three years later, after having been
imprisoned in noisome cells some thirty times within six years,
utterly broken in health, if not weakened also in mind, and never
feeling safe from arrest while in his own land, Browne finally sought
pardon for his offensive teachings and, obtaining it, reentered the
English communion. Though he was given a small parish, he was looked
upon as a renegade, and died in poverty about 1631, at an extreme old
age. He died while the Pilgrim Separatists were still a struggling
colony at Plymouth, repudiating the name of Brownists; before the
colonial churches had embodied in their system most of the
fundamentals of his; and long before the value of his teachings as to
democracy, whether in the church or by extension in the state, had
dawned upon mankind.

The connecting link between Brownism and Barrowism, whose similarities
and dissimilarities we shall consider together, or rather the
connecting link between Robert Browne and Henry Barrowe, was another
Cambridge student, John Greenwood. He was graduated in 1581, the year
that Browne removed to Middelburg. Greenwood had become so enamored
with Separatist doctrines, that within five years of his graduation he
was deprived of his benefice, in 1586, and sent to prison. While
there, he was visited by his friend, Henry Barrowe, a young London
lawyer, who, through the chance words of a London preacher, had been
converted from a wild, gay life to one devout and godly. During a
visit to Greenwood, Barrowe was arrested and sent to Lambeth Palace
for examination. Upon refusing to take the oath required by the
bishop, Barrowe was remanded to prison to await further
examination. Later, he damaged himself and his cause by an
unnecessarily bitter denunciation of his enemies and by a too dogmatic
assertion of his own principles. Accordingly, he was sent back to
prison, where, together with Greenwood, he awaited trial until March,
1593. Then, upon the distorted testimony of their writings, both men
were sentenced as seditious fellows, worthy of death. Though twice
reprieved at the seemingly last hour, they were hanged together on
April 6, 1593.

Both Greenwood and Barrowe frequently asserted that they never had
anything to do with Browne. [4] Yet it is probable that it was
Browne's influence which turned Greenwood's puritanical convictions to
Separatist principles. Barrowe had been graduated from Clare Hall,
Cambridge, in 1569-70; Browne, from Corpus Christi in 1572. The two
men, so different in character, probably did not meet in university
days, and certainly not later in London, where one went to a life of
pleasure and the other to teaching and to the study of the
Scriptures. Greenwood, however, had entered Cambridge in 1577-78, and
left it in 1581. Thus he was in college during the two years that
Browne was preaching in and near Cambridge. It is safe to assume that
the young scholar, soon to become a licensed preacher, and overflowing
with the Puritan zeal of his college, might be drawn either through
curiosity or admiration to hear the erratic and almost fanatic
preacher. Later, when Browne's writings were being secretly
distributed in England, both Barrowe and Greenwood had come in contact
with the London congregations to whom Browne had preached. The fact
that many men in England were thinking along the same lines as the
Separatists; that Browne had recanted just as Barrowe and Greenwood
were thrust into prison; and that they both disapproved in some
measure of Browne's teachings, might account for a denial of
discipleship. Browne's influence might even have been unrecognized by
the men themselves. Be that as it may, during their long
imprisonment, both Barrowe and Greenwood, in their teachings, in their
public conferences, and in their writings strove to outline a system
of church government and discipline, which was very similar to and yet
essentially different from Browne's.

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