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

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

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During these years of persecution, the opposition to the Old Light
policy was gradually gaining effective power, although the college had
expelled Brainerd, and Mr. Cook, one of the Yale corporation, had
found it expedient to resign because of his too prominent part in the
formation of the North Church of New Haven. The Old Lights in the
legislature of 1743 passed the repeal of the Toleration Act because
the New Lights had no commanding vote; but they were increasing
throughout the colony. Fairfield East Consociation had licensed
Brainerd the year that Yale expelled him. Twelve ministers of New
London and Windham county had met to approve the revival,
notwithstanding the repeal of the Toleration Act and the known
antagonism of the Windham Association to the Separatists. Windham
Consociation and that of Fairfield East favored the revival. Large
numbers of converts were made in these districts, and many also in
Hartford county. In the New Haven district the spirit of antagonism
and of persecution was strongest.

It was in accordance with the laws of 1742-43 that Mack, Shaw, and
Pyrlaus, Moravian missionaries, on a visit in 1744 to their mission
stations among the Indians in Connecticut, were seized as Papists and
hustled from sheriff to sheriff for three days until "the Governor of
Connecticut honorably dismissed them," though their accusers insisted
upon their being bound over under a penalty of L100 to keep the law.
"Being not fully acquainted with all the special laws of the country,
they perceived a trap laid for them and thought it prudent to retire
to Shekomeko" (Pine Plains, Dutchess County, N. Y.). Missionaries sent
out from Nazareth and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had established this
sub-centre for work in New York and Connecticut, and in the latter
colony, in 1740-43, had made Indian converts at Sharon, Salisbury
Indian Pond, near Newtown, and at Pachgatgoch, two miles southwest of
Kent. Here was their principal station in Connecticut. They had made,
in all, some twenty converts among the Indians, and had reclaimed
several of their chief men from drunkenness and idleness. Moravian
principles forbade these missionaries to take an oath. Consequently,
the greed of traders, the rivalry of creeds, together with the belief
that there was something wrong about men who would not swear
allegiance to King George,--notwithstanding their willingness to
affirm it, and notwithstanding their denial of the Pretender,--gave
rise to the conviction that they must be Papists[d] in league with the
French and their Indian allies. Accordingly both magistrates and
ministers arrested the missionaries, and hurried them before the court
at Poughkeepsie or at New Milford. Though the governors of both states
recognized the value of the mission work, popular feeling ran so high
that New York, in September, 1744, passed a law requiring them to take
the oaths prescribed or to leave the country, and also commanding that
"vagrant Teachers, Moravians, and disguised Papists should not preach
or teach in public or private" without first obtaining a license. In
Connecticut, as has been said, the laws of 1742-1743 were enforced
against them; later, when during the Old French War groundless rumors
of their intrigues with hostile Indians were circulated against them,
a vain hunt was made for three thousand stands of arms that were said
to be secreted in their missions. The severe persecution in New York
had driven these missionaries into Pennsylvania and into Connecticut,
but these rumors of intrigue broke up their work and caused the
abandonment of their stations in the latter colony. Some of these,
such as Kent, Sharon, and Salisbury, were revived in 1749-1762, at the
request of the English settlers as well as of the Indian
converts.[126]

Returning to the main story of the progress of dissent, we find that
in 1746 the General Court of Connecticut felt obliged to safeguard the
Establishment by the passage of a law entitled, "Concerning who shall
vote in Society Meetings."[127] Its preamble states that persons
exempted from taxes for the support of the established ministry,
because of their dissenting from the way of worship and ministry of
the Presbyterian, Congregational, or Consociated churches, "ought not
to vote in society meetings with respect to the support or to the
building and maintaining of meeting houses," yet some persons,
exempted as aforesaid, "have adventured to vote and act therein," as
there was no express law to the contrary. The new law forbade such
voting, and limited the ecclesiastical ballot to members of the
Establishment who "were persons of full age and in full communion with
the church," and to other unexempted persons who held a freehold rated
at fifty shillings per year, or personal property to the value of
forty pounds. This law was just, in that it excluded all dissenters
who had received exemption from Presbyterian rates. It included all
others having the property qualification, whether they wanted to vote
or not. That it was felt to be a necessity is a witness to the
increasing recognition of the strength of the dissenting element.

In 1747, the Consociation of Windham sent forth a violent pamphlet
describing the Separatists as a people in revolt against God and in
rebellion against the Church and government. But the tide of public
opinion was turning, and popular sentiment did not support the writers
of this pamphlet. Moreover, the secular affairs of the colony were
calling minds away from religious contentions as the stress of the Old
French War was more and more felt. In 1748, venturing upon the
improvement in public sentiment, Solomon Paine sent to the legislature
a memorial signed by three hundred and thirty persons and asking for a
repeal of such laws as debarred people from enjoying the liberty
"granted by God and tolerated by the King."[128] It was known to these
memorialists that a revision of the laws, first undertaken in 1742,
was nearing completion, and their desire was that all obnoxious or
unfair acts should be repealed. The petition met with a sharp rebuff,
and, as a punishment, three members were expelled from the Assembly
for being Separatists. But by such measures the Old Lights were
overreaching themselves. A mark of the turning of public opinion was
given this same year, when, upon the request of his old church in
Hebron, the church vouching for his work and character, the Assembly
restored to his ministerial rights and privileges the Rev. James
Pomeroy. The unjust laws of 1742-43 and of the following years were
never formally repealed, but were quietly dropped out of the revision
of the laws issued in 1750.

Thenceforth the people began to tolerate variety in religious opinions
with better grace, and the dominant authoritative rule of the Saybrook
Platform began to wane, though for twenty years more it strove to
assert its power. In 1755, the Middletown Association advised
licensing candidates for the ministry for a term of years. The idea
was to prevent errors arising from the personal interpretation of the
Scriptures and indifference to dogmatic truths of religion from
creeping into the churches. About the same time, the Consociation of
New Haven invited their former member, Mr. Bobbins of Branford, to sit
with them again at the installation of Mr. Street of East
Haven. Conciliatory acts and measures such as these originated with
both the Old and New Lights, and did much to lessen the division
between them. Discussion turned more and more from personal opinions,
character, and abilities, to considerations of doctrinal points. The
churches found more and more in common, while worldly interests left
the masses with only a half-hearted concern in church discussions.

To summarize the effect of the Great Awakening as evidenced by the
great schism and its results thus far considered: The strength of the
revival movement, as such, was soon spent. The number of its converts
throughout New England was estimated by Dr. Dexter to be as high as
forty or fifty thousand, while later writers put it as low as ten or
twelve thousand, out of the entire population of three hundred
thousand souls. The years 1740-42 were the years of the Great
Awakening, and after them there were comparatively few conversions
during any given time. Even in Jonathan Edwards's own church in
Northampton there were no converts between 1744 and 1748. The
influence of the Great Awakening was not, however, transient, nor was
it confined to the Congregational churches, whether of the Cambridge
or the Saybrook type. Baptist churches felt the impetus, receiving
many directly into their membership, and also indirectly, from those
Separatist churches which found themselves too weak to
endure. Episcopalians added to their numbers from among religiously
inclined persons who sought a calm and stable church home unaffected
by church and political strife. The Great Awakening created the
Separatist movement and the New Light party, revitalized the
Established churches, invigorated others, and through the persecution
and counter-persecution that the great schism produced, taught the
Connecticut people more and more of religious tolerance, and so
brought them nearer to the dawn of religious liberty. Such liberty
could only come after the downfall of the Saybrook, Platform, and
after a complete severance of Church and State. The last could not
come for three quarters of a century. Meanwhile the leaven of the
great revival would be working. On its intellectual side, the Great
Awakening led to the discussion of doctrinal points, an advance from
questions of church polity. These themes of pulpit and of religious
press led, finally, to a live interest in practical Christianity and
to a more genial religion than that which had characterized the
Puritan age. The Half-Way Covenant had been killed. Education had
received a new impulse, Christian missions were reinvigorated, and the
monthly concert of prayer for the conversion of the world was
instituted. [129] True, French and Indian wars, the Spanish
entanglement with its West Indian expedition, and the consuming
political interests of the years 1745-83, shortened the period of
energetic spiritual life, and ushered in another half century of
religious indifference. But during that half century the followers of
Edwards and Bellamy were to develop a less severe and more winning
system of theology, and the fellowship of the churches was to suggest
the colonial committees of safety as a preliminary to the birth of a
nation, founded upon the inherent equality of all men before the
law. This conception of political and civil liberty was to develop
side by side with a clearer notion of the value of religious freedom.

FOOTNOTES:

[a] This term came with the royal charter of 1662, but only gradually
displaced the familiar "General Court."

[b] The Milford church, like that of New Haven, suffered for many
years from unjust exactions and taxation.

[c] Commencement then came in September.

[d] And this notwithstanding their willingness to include in their
affirmation a denial of Mariolatry, purgatory, and other vital Romish
tenets.

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.

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