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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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.

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