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

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Endicott further expresses the wish that they may all "as Christian
brethren be united by a heavenly and unfeigned love;" that as servants
of one Master and of one household they should not be strangers, but
be "marked with one and the same mark, and sealed with one and the
same seal, and have, for the main, one and the same heart guided by
one and the same Spirit of truth," and that they should bend their
hearts and forces to the furthering of the work for which they had
come into the wilderness. Thus, Salem had decided upon the type of
church her people wanted, while she still waited for the ministers who
were coming with the larger number of her colonists, and whom she
believed competent to guide her religious life.

Only a few weeks after the sending of Endicott's letter to Governor
Bradford, five vessels arrived, bringing several hundred well-equipped
colonists. They had been sent out by the Governor and Company of
Massachusetts Bay. This corporation had bought out the Salem Company,
and was backed by the most influential Puritans of wealth and social
prominence, by men who had lost all hope of either religious or civil
freedom when Laud had been raised to the bishopric of London and when
Charles persisted in his despotic government. By the elevation of Laud
to the bishopric of London, Charles offended the most puritanically
inclined diocese in England, and the whole Puritan party. In his new
office, Laud quickly succeeded in severing communication between the
Reformed churches on the Continent and those in England. He strictly
prohibited the common people from using the annotated pocket-Bibles
sent out by the Genevan press. He forbade the entrance into office of
nonconformists as lecturers or chaplains. He put an end to feofments,
so that puritanically inclined men of wealth could no longer control
the livings. He excluded suspended ministers from teaching, and also
from the practice of medicine, and even forbade their entering
business life. He required absolute conformity to his own high-church
standards. He insisted upon doing away with all Calvinistic
innovations tending to simplicity of ritual, and upon reviving many
ecclesiastical ceremonies which had fallen into disuse. Hence, English
Puritans saw in America the only hope of the future, and began that
exodus which, during the next ten years, or more, annually sent two
thousand emigrants to the Massachusetts shore to find homes throughout
New England. Of these, the Salem colonists were the first large body
of Puritans to emigrate. Among them were three ministers, Endicott's
former pastor Samuel Skelton, Francis Higginson, and Francis Bright.

When Higginson and Skelton learned of the friendship with Plymouth,
and that Endicott had adopted the system of church organization
established in the older settlement, they accepted it as being in
accord with the principles of the Reformed churches on the Continent,
whose pattern they had themselves resolved to follow in organizing the
church at Salem. Not so Francis Bright. He could not agree with the
others, and so withdrew to Charlestown in order not to embarrass the
young church. Higginson and Skelton were each, in turn questioned as
to their conception of a minister's calling. Replying that it was
twofold: a call from within to a conviction that a man was chosen of
God to be His minister, and thereby endowed with proper gifts, and a
call from without by the free choice of a "covenanted church" to be
its pastor, they were accepted as satisfactory candidates for the two
highest offices in the Salem church. Later, upon an appointed day of
prayer and fasting, July 20, 1629, the people by written ballot chose
Francis Skelton to be their pastor and Thomas Higginson their
teacher. When they had accepted their election, "first Mr. Higginson,
with three or four of the gravest members of the church, laid their
hands upon Mr. Skelton, using prayer therewith. This being done, there
was imposition of hands upon Mr. Higginson also." Upon a still later
day of prayer and humiliation, August 6, elders and deacons were
chosen and ordained. Upon this day, the two ministers and many among
the people gave their assent to the Confession and Covenant which the
pastor and teacher had revised. At the second of these two important
meetings, Governor Bradford and delegates from the Plymouth church
were present. "Coming by sea they were hindered by cross-winds that
they could not be there at the beginning of the day; but they came
into the assembly afterward, and gave them the right hand of
fellowship, wishing all prosperity and all blessedness to such good
beginnings." [19] The Salem covenant in its original form was a single
sentence: "We covenant with the Lord and with one another; and doe
bynd ourselves in the presence of God to walk together in all his
wayes, according as he is pleased to reveale him' self unto us in his
Blessed word of truth." [20]

The formation of the church of Salem by covenant practice[a] marked
the beginning of the Congregational polity among the Puritan body;
their local ordination of their minister, the break with English
Episcopacy, though, for a considerable while longer, the colonists
still spoke of themselves as members of the Church of England, for
both the colonial and the home authorities were equally anxious to
avoid the stigma of Separatism.

The next large body of colonists to leave England was Governor
Winthrop's company, and, upon their arrival, the Boston church quickly
followed the example of Salem. Next, the Dorchester church, afterwards
the church of Windsor, Connecticut, emigrated as a body from Plymouth,
England, where, before embarking, its members seem to have taken some
form of membership pledge,--an unusual proceeding, but operating to
put this church in line with those already organized in Plymouth and
Massachusetts. The Watertown church, whence emigrants were to settle
Wethersfield, Connecticut, also organized with a covenant similar to
that of Salem and Boston. These four oldest congregations set the type
for the thirty-five New England churches that were founded previous to
1640, as well as for the later ones that followed the standard thus
early set up by Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. There was
some variation in the form of covenant,[b] and to it a brief
confession of faith, or creed, was early added. There was some
variation also in the interpretation of the laying on of hands in
ordination as to whether it was to be considered, in cases where the
candidate had previously been ordained in England, as ordination or as
confirmation of that previously received.[c] In regard to officers,
the churches at first provided themselves with pastor, ruling elders
(one or two, but generally only one), and deacons. There were
exceptions among them, as at Plymouth, where there was no pastor for
ten years, and in which there had never been a teacher, for John
Robinson had filled both offices. As the first generation of colonists
passed away, partly because of lack of fit candidates, partly because
of the kinship of the two offices of pastor and teacher, and partly
because of the heavy expense in supporting both, the office of teacher
was dropped. The ruling eldership also was gradually discontinued; but
at first the churches generally had, with the exception of widows, the
full complement of officers as appointed by Browne and Barrowe. The
usual order of worship was (1) Prayer. (2) Psalm. (3) Scripture
reading, followed by the pastor's preaching to explain and apply
it. (4) Prophesying or exhortation, the elders calling for speakers,
whether members or guests from other churches. (5) Questions from old
or young, women excepted. (6) Occasional administration of the Lord's
Supper or of Baptism, rites known as the administration of "the Seals
of the Covenant." (7) Psalm. (8) Collection. (9) Dismissal with
blessing. Such were the New England churches, the churches of a
transplanted creed and race. They were Calvinistic in dogma,
democratic in organization, and of extreme simplicity in their order
of worship.

FOOTNOTES:

[a] This fundamental principle of Congregationalism belonged to the
Separatists and was one of their distinctive tenets. It was never
adopted by the English Puritans as a body, nor was ordination by a
local church. The Dorchester church had some form of pledge at the
time of its organization. So also, possibly, because influenced by
Dutch example, did Rev. Hugh Peter's church in Rotterdam. But these
were exceptions.--W. Walker, _Hist, of Cong._, p. 192.

[b] The evolution of the Salem covenant and creed is given in detail
in W. Walker's _Creeds and Platforms_, pp. 99-122.

The Windsor Creed of 1647, though not covering the range of Christian
doctrine, contained in simple phrase the essentials of Gospel
redemption from sin through repentance and faith in the atoning work
of Christ and a life of love toward God and our neighbor, through the
strength which comes from him.--W. Walker, _Creeds and
Platforms_, p. 154.

[c] The evolution of the Salem covenant and creed is given in detail
in W. Walker's _Creeds and Platforms_, pp. 99-122.

The Windsor Creed of 1647, though not covering the range of Christian
doctrine, contained in simple phrase the essentials of Gospel
redemption from sin through repentance and faith in the atoning work
of Christ and a life of love toward God and our neighbor, through the
strength which comes from him.--W. Walker, _Creeds and
Platforms_, p. 154.

CHAPTER III

CHURCH AND STATE IN NEW ENGLAND

For God and the Church!

With the great Puritan body in England, and with the great mass of the
English nation, whatever their religious opinions, the colonists of
Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven held in common one
foremost theory of civil government. Pausing for a brief consideration
of this fundamental and far-reaching theory, which created so many
difficulties in the infant commonwealths, and which confronts us again
and again as we follow their later history, we find that the Pilgrim
Separatist of Plymouth, the strict Puritan of Massachusetts, the voter
in the theocratic commonwealth of New Haven, and the holder of the
liberal franchise in Connecticut, all clung to the proposition that
the State's first duty was the maintenance and support of religion.
Thereby they meant enforced taxation for the support of its
predominant type, conformity to its mode of worship, and in the last
analysis supervision or control of the Church by the State or by the
General Court of each colony. As a corollary to this proposition, the
duty of the churches was to define the creed, to set forth the church
polity, and to determine the bounds of morality within the state. Two
of the colonies held the corollary to be so important that it almost
changed places with the proposition when Massachusetts and New Haven
became rigid theocracies.[a]

With respect to taxation in the four colonies the statement should be
modified, inasmuch as the support of religion was at first voluntary
in all four: in Plymouth until 1657, in Massachusetts from 1630 to
1638, in Connecticut before 1640; yet both New Haven and Connecticut
accepted the suggestion made by the Commissioners of the United
Colonies on September 5, 1644, "that each man should be required to
set down what he would voluntarily give for the support of the gospel,
and that any man who refused should be rated according to his
possessions and compelled to pay" the sum so levied. Since in
religious affairs strict conformity was required by the three Puritan
colonies, and since the liberty accorded to the few early dissenters
in Plymouth was not such as to modify her prevailing polity or
worship, these first few years of voluntary assessment do not nullify
the dominant truth of the preceding statement.

In the intimate relation of Church and State, the people of these four
New England colonies regarded the magistrates as "Nursing Fathers" of
the Church, [2l] who were to take "special note and care of every
Church and provide and assign allotments of land for the maintenance
of each of them." [22] The State, accepting the same view of
caretaker, carried its supervision still farther and devised a system
for the maintenance of the ministry in accordance with sundry laws
made to insure the people's support, respect, and obedience. The
churches reciprocated. First of all, they provided their members with
the approved and accepted essentials of religious life, and they
further exercised a rigorous supervision over the moral welfare of the
whole community. Secondly, they aided the State through the influence
of their ministers, who, on all important occasions, were expected to
meet with the magistrates to consult and advise upon affairs whether
spiritual or temporal. But the framers of governments were not
satisfied with these measures that aimed to present a strongly
established church, capable of extending a fine moral, ethical, and
religious influence over the colonists, and also to enforce upon the
wayward, the careless, or the indifferent among them its support and
their obedience. If these measures provided for the ordinary welfare
of the community and for the usual relations b between the ministers
and their people, there were still possibilities of factional strife
to guard against, and such warfare in that age might or might not
confine itself within the limits of theological controversy or within
the lines of church organization. Consequently, the better to preserve
the churches from schism or corrupting innovations and the
commonwealth from discord, the supreme control of the churches was
lodged in the General Court of each colony. It could, whenever
necessary to secure harmony, whether ecclesiastical or civil,
legislate with reference to all or any of the churches within its
jurisdiction. Examples of such legislation occur frequently in the
religious history of the colonies, especially of Massachusetts and
Connecticut. Such interdependence of the spiritual and temporal power
practically amounted to a union of Church and State. Indeed, in
Massachusetts and New Haven, to be a voter, a man must first be a
member of a church of approved standing.[b] In more liberal Plymouth
and Connecticut, the franchise, at first, was made to depend only upon
conduct, though it was early found necessary to add a property
qualification in order to cut off undesirable voters.[23] In the
Connecticut colony, it was expressly enacted that church censure
should not debar from civil privilege. When advocating this amount of
separation between church and civil power, Thomas Hooker was not moved
by any such religious principle as influenced the Separatists of
Plymouth. On the contrary, it was his political foresight which made
him urge upon the colonists a more representative government[c] than
would be obtainable from a franchise based upon church-membership
where, as in the colonial churches, admission to such membership was
conditioned upon exacting tests. The great Connecticut leader was far
in advance of the statesmen of his time, for they held that the
religion of a prince or government must be the religion of the people;
that every subject must be by birthright a member of the national
church, to leave which was both heretical and disloyal and should be
punished by political and civil disabilities. This union of Church and
State was the theory of the age,--a principle of statecraft throughout
all of Europe as well as in England. Naturally it emigrated to New
England to be a foundation of civil government and a fortress for that
type of nonconformity which the colonists chose to transplant and make
predominant. The type, as we have seen, was Congregationalism, and the
Congregational church became the established church in each of the
four colonies.

This theory of Church and State was the cause at bottom of all the
early theological dissensions which disturbed the peace and threatened
the colony of Massachusetts. Moreover, their settlement offers the
most striking contrast between the fundamental theory of
Congregationalism and the theory of a union between Church and
State. With the power of supervision over the Church lodged in the
General Court, whatever the theory of Congregationalism as to the
independence of the individual churches, in practice the civil
authority disciplined them and their members, and early invaded
ecclesiastical territory. In Salem, Endicott took it upon himself to
expel Ralph Smith for holding extreme Separatist principles, and
shipped the Browns back to England for persisting in the use of the
Book of Common Prayer. He considered both parties equally dangerous to
the welfare of the community, because, according to the new standard
of church-life, both were censurable. Endicott held that to tolerate
any measure of diversity in religious practices was to cultivate the
ferment of civil disorder. Considering the bitterness, narrowness,
intensity, and also the irritating conviction that every one else was
heretical and anti-Christian, with which men of that age clung to
their religious differences, Endicott had some reason for holding this
opinion. The Boston authorities believed in no less drastic measures
to maintain the civil peace and consequent good name of the
colony. John Davenport of New Haven voiced the Massachusetts sentiment
as well as his own in: "Civil government is for the common welfare of
all, as well in the Church as without; which will then be most
certainly effected, when Public Trust and Power of these matters is
committed to such men as are most approved according to God; and these
are Church-members."[24] Consequently, the Massachusetts law of 1631
[25] forbade any but church members to become freemen of the colony,
and to these only was intrusted any share in its government. A similar
law was later formulated for the New Haven colony. John Cotton echoed
the further sentiment of a New England community when, writing of the
relations between the churches and the magistrates, he defined the
church as "subject to the Magistrate in the matters concerning the
civil peace, of which there are four sorts:" (1) with reference to
men's goods, lives, liberty, and lands; (2) with establishment of
religion in doctrine, worship, and government according to the Word of
God, as also the reformation of corruption in any of these; (3) with
certain public spiritual administrations which may help forward the
public good, as fasts and synods; (4) and finally the church must be
subject to the magistrates in patient suffering of unjust persecution,
since for her to take up the sword in her own defense would only
increase the disturbance of the public peace. [26] As a result of such
public sentiment, churches were not to be organized without the
approval of the magistrates, nor were any "persons being members of
any church ... gathered without the approbation of the magistrates and
the greater part of said churches" (churches of the colony) to be
admitted to the freedom of the commonwealth. [27] This law, or its
equivalent, with reference to church organization was found upon the
statute books of all four colonies.

In a pioneer community and a primitive commonwealth, developing slowly
in accord with the new democratic principles underlying both its
church and secular life, the "maintenance of the peace and welfare of
the churches,"[28] which was intrusted to the care of the General
Court, was frequently equivalent to maintaining the civil peace and
prosperity of the colony. Endicott's deportation of the Browns and the
report of the exclusiveness and exacting tests of membership in the
colonial churches had early led the members of the Massachusetts Bay
Company, resident in England, to fear that the emigrants had departed
from their original intent and purpose. And the colonists began to
feel that they were in danger of falling under the displeasure of
their king and of their Puritan friends at home. Consequently, there
entered into the settling of all later religious differences in the
colony the determination to avoid appeals to the home country, and
also to avoid any report of disturbance or dissatisfaction that might
be prejudicial to her independence, general policy, or commercial
prosperity. The recognition of such danger made many persons
satisfied to submit to government by an exclusive class, comprising in
Massachusetts one tenth of the people and in the New Haven colony one
ninth. These alone had any voice in making the laws. In submitting to
their dictation, the large majority of the people had to submit to a
"government that left no incident, circumstance, or experience of the
life of an individual, personal, domestic, social, or civil, still
less anything that concerned religion, free from the direct or
indirect interposition of public authority." [29] Such inquisitorial
supervision was due to the close alliance of Church and State within
the narrow limits of a theocracy. In more liberal Plymouth and
Connecticut, the "watch and ward" over one's fellows, which the early
colonial church insisted upon, was extended only over church members,
and even over them was less rigorous, less intrusive. Something of
the development of the great authority of the State over the churches
and of its attitude and theirs towards synods may be gleaned from the
earliest pages of Massachusetts ecclesiastical history. The
starting-point of precedent for the elders of the church to be
regarded as advisors only and the General Court as authoritative seems
to have been in a matter of taxation, when, in February, 1632, the
General Court assessed the church in Watertown. The elders advised
resistance; the Court compelled payment. In the following July, the
Boston church inquired of the churches of Plymouth, Salem, Dorchester,
and Watertown, whether a ruling elder could at the same time hold
office as a civil magistrate. A correspondence ensued and the answer
returned was that he could not. Thereupon, Mr. Nowell resigned his
eldership in the Boston church. [30] Winthrop mentions eight[d]
important occasions between 1632 and 1635 when the elders, which term
included pastors, teachers, and ruling elders, were summoned by the
General Court of Massachusetts to give advice upon temporal
affairs. In March of 1635-36 the Court "entreated them (the elders)
together with the brethren of every church within the jurisdiction, to
consult and advise of one uniforme order of discipline in the churches
agreable to Scriptures, and then to consider how far the magistrates
are bound to interpose for the preservation of that uniformity and
peace of the churches." [31] The desire of the Court grew in part out
of the influx of new colonists, who did not like the strict church
discipline, and in part out of the tangle of Church and State during
the Roger Williams controversy. The Court had disciplined Williams as
one, who, having no rights in the corporation, had no ground for
complaint at the hostile reception of his teachings. These the
authorities regarded as harmful to their government and dangerous to
religion. His too warm adherents in the Salem church were, however,
rightful members of the community, and they had been punished for
upholding one whom the General Court, advised by the elders of the
churches, had seen fit to censure. Punished thus, ostensibly, for
contempt of the magistrates by the refusal to them of the land they
claimed as theirs on Marblehead Neck, and feeling that the
independence of their church life and their rightful choice in the
selection of their pastor had really been infringed, the Salem church
sent letters to the elders of all the other churches of the Bay,
asking that the magistrates and deputies be admonished for their
decision as a "heinous sin." The Court came out victorious, by
refusing at its next general session to seat the Salem deputies "until
they should give satisfaction by letter" for holding dangerous
opinions and for writing "letters of defamation," and by proceeding to
banish Roger Williams. Before the session of the Court, the elders of
the Massachusetts churches, jointly and individually, labored with the
Salem people and brought the majority to a conviction of their error
in supporting Roger Williams. [e]

The platform of church discipline which the Court advised in 1635-36
was not forthcoming, and the matter was allowed to rest.[f] In 1637,
with the consent of the General Court, a synod of elders and lay
delegates from all the New England churches was called to harmonize
the discordant factions created by the heated Antinomian
controversy. During the synod, the magistrates were present all the
time as hearers, and even as speakers, but not as members. The
dangerous schism was ended more by the Court's banishment of
Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson, together with their more prominent
followers, than by the work of the synod. However, Governor Winthrop
was so delighted with the conferences of the synod that, in his
enthusiasm, he suggested that it would be fit "to have the like
meeting once a year, or at least the next year, to settle what yet
remained to be agreed, or if but to nourish love."[32] But his
suggestion was voted down, for the Synod of 1637 was considered by
some to be "a perilous deflection from the theory of
Congregationalism."[33] Even the fortnightly meeting of ministers who
resided near each other, and which it had become a custom to call for
friendly conference, was looked at askance by those[g] who feared in
it the germ of some authoritative body that should come to exercise
control over the individual churches. When this custom was endorsed
and permitted in the "Body of Liberties," in 1641, the assurance that
these meetings "were only by way of Brotherly conference and
consultation" was felt to be necessary to appease the
opposition. When, two and four years later, Anabaptist converts and a
flood of Presbyterian literature called for measures of repression,
and the Court summoned councils to consult upon a course of action, it
was most careful in each case to reassert the doctrine of the complete
independence of the individual church. Synods, from the purely
Congregational standpoint, were to be called only upon the initiative
of the churches, and were authoritative bodies, composed of both
ministerial and lay delegates from such churches, and their duty was
to confer and advise upon matters of general interest or upon special
problems. In cases where their decisions were unheeded, they could
enforce their displeasure at the contumacious church only by cutting
it off from fellowship. Consequently, though there was some opposition
to the Court's calling of synods and a resultant general restlessness,
there was none when the Court confined its supervision and commands to
individually schismatic churches or to unruly members. The time had
not yet come for the recognition of what this double system of church
government--government by its members, supervision by the Court
--foreboded. The colonists did not see that within it was the embryo
of an authoritative body exercising some of the powers of the
Presbyterian General Assembly. The supervising body might be composed
of laymen acting in their capacity as members of the General Court,
but the powers they exercised were none the less akin to the very ones
that Congregationalism had declared to be heretical and
anti-Christian. Moreover, the tendency was toward an increase of this
authoritative power every time it was exercised and each time that the
colonists submitted to its dictation.

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