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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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.

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