The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut Part 8

The opposition of Episcopalian, Quaker, and Baptist to the Connecticut Establishment, if measured by ultimate results, was important and far-reaching. But it was dwarfed almost to insignificance, so feeble was it, so confined its area, when compared to that opposition which, thirty-five years after the Saybrook Synod and a dozen years after the exemption of the dissenters, sprang up within the bosom of the Congregational church itself, as a protest against civil enactments concerning religion. This protest was a direct result of the moral and spiritual renascence that occurred in New England and that became known as the "Great Awakening." History in all times and countries shows a periodicity of religious activity and depression. It would sometimes seem as if these periodic outbreaks of religious aspirations were but the last device of self-seeking,--were but attempts to find consolation for life's hardships and to secure happiness hereafter. Fortunately such selfish motives are trans.m.u.ted in the search for larger ethical and spiritual conceptions. An enlarged insight into the possibilities of living tends to slough off selfishness and to make more habitual the occasional, and often involuntary, response to Christlike deeds and ideals. But so ingrained is our earthly nature that, in communities as in nations, periods alternate with periods, and the pendulum swings from laxity to morality, from apathy to piety, gradually shortening its arc. So in Connecticut, numbers of her towns from time to time had been roused to greater interest in religion before the spiritual cyclone of the great revival, or "Great Awakening," swept through the land in 1740 and the two following years. The earlier and local revivals were generally due to some special calamity, as sickness, failure of harvest, ill-fortune in war, or some unusual occurrence in nature, such as an earthquake or comet, with the familiar interpretation that Jehovah was angry with the sins of his people. Sometimes, however, the zeal of a devoted minister would kindle counter sparks among his people. Such a minister was the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, who mentions five notable revivals, or "harvests,"[a] as he calls them, during his sixty years of ministry in the Northampton church. A few other New England towns had similar revivals, but they were brief and rare.

Notwithstanding these occasional local "stirrings of the heart," at the beginning of the second quarter of the eighteenth century a cold, formal piety was frequently the covering of indifferent living and of a smug, complacent Christianity, wherein the letter killed and the spirit did not give life. This was true all over New England, and elsewhere. Nor was this deadness confined to the colonies alone, for the Wesleys were soon to stir the sluggish current of English religious life. In New England, the older clergymen, like the Mathers of Ma.s.sachusetts, conservative men, whose memories or traditions were of the golden age of Puritanism, had long bemoaned the loss of religious interest, the inability of reforming synods to create permanent improvement, and the helplessness of ecclesiastical councils or of civil enactments to rouse the people from the real "decay of piety in the land," and from their indifference to the immorality that was increasing among them. This indifference grew in Connecticut after the Saybrook Platform had laid a firm hold upon the churches. Its discipline created a tendency, on the one hand, to hard and narrow ecclesiasticism, and, on the other, to careless living on the part of those who were satisfied with a mere formal acceptance of the principles of religion and with the bare acknowledgment of the right of the churches to their members' obedience.[b]

It is a great mistake [writes Jonathan Edwards] if any one imagines that all these external performances (owning the covenant, accepting the sacraments, observing the Sabbath and attending the ministry), are of the nature of a _profession_ of anything that belongs to _saving grace_, as they are commonly used and understood.... People are taught that they may use them all, and not so much as make any pretence to the least degree of _sanctifying grace_; and this is the established custom. So they are used and so they are understood.... It is not unusual ... for persons, at the same time they come into the church and pretend to own the covenant, freely to declare to their neighbors, that they have no imagination that they have any true faith in Christ or love to Him.[95]

The General Court, relieved from the oversight of the churches, had bent itself to preserving the colony's charter rights from its enemies abroad, and to the material interests involved in a conservative, wise, and energetic home development. The people's thoughts were with the Court more than with the clergy, who had fallen from a healthy enthusiasm in their profession into a sort of spiritual deadness and dull acceptance of circ.u.mstances. [96] As a sort of corollary to Stoddard's teaching that the Lord's Supper was itself a means toward attaining salvation, it followed that clergymen, though they felt no special call to their ministry, were nevertheless believed to be worthy of their office. The older theology of New England had tended to morbid introspection. Stoddard, in avoiding that danger, had thrown the doors of the Church too widely open, and the result was a gradual undermining of its spiritual power. The continued acceptance of the Half-Way Covenant, "laxative rather than astringent in its nature,"

helped to produce a low estimate of religion. The tenderness that the Cambridge Platform had encouraged towards "the weakest measure of faith" had broadened into such laxity that, in many cases, ministers were willing to receive accounts of conversions which had been written to order for the applicants for church membership. The Church, moreover, had come directly under the control of politics, a condition never conducive to its purity. The law of 1717, "for the better ordering and regulating parishes or societies," had made the minister the choice of the majority of the townsmen who were voters. This reversed the early condition of the town, merged by membership into the church, to a church merged into the town. [97] There was still another factor, often the last and least willingly recognized in times of religious excitement, namely, the commercial depression throughout the country, resulting from years of a fluctuating currency. This depression contributed largely to the revival movement, and helped to spread the enthusiasm of the Great Awakening. Connecticut's currency had been freer from inflation than that of other New England colonies. But her paper money experiments in the years from 1714 to 1749 grew more and more demoralizing. Up to 1740, Connecticut had issued 156,000 in paper currency. At the time of the Great Awakening she had still outstanding 39,000 for which the colony was responsible. Of this, all but 6000 had been covered by special taxation. There still remained, however, about 33,000 which had been lent to the various counties. Taxation was heavy, wages low and prices high, and there was not a man in the colony who did not feel the effect of the rapidly depreciating currency.[98] This general depression fell upon a generation of New Englanders whose minds no longer dwelt preeminently upon religious matters, but who were, on the contrary, preeminently commercial in their interests.

Such were the general conditions throughout New England and such the low state of religion in Connecticut, when, in the Northampton church, Solomon Stoddard's grandson, the great Jonathan Edwards, in December, 1734, preached the sermons which created the initial wave of a great religious movement. This religious revival spread slowly through generally lax New England, and through the no less lax Jerseys, and through the backwoods settlements of Pennsylvania, until it finally swept the southern colonies. At the time, 1738, the Rev. George Whitefield was preaching in Carolina, and acceptably so to his superior, Alexander Garden, the Episcopal commissary to that colony. Touched by the enthusiasm of the onflowing religious movement, Whitefield's zeal and consequent radicalism, as he swayed toward the Congregational teaching and practices, soon put him in disfavor with his fellow Churchmen. Such disfavor only raised the priest still higher in the opinion of the dissenters, and they flocked to hear his eloquent sermons. Whitefield soon decided to return to England. There he encountered the great revival movement which was being conducted, princ.i.p.ally by the Wesleys, and he at once threw himself into the work. Meanwhile, he had conceived a plan for a home for orphans in Georgia, and, a little later, he determined upon a visit to New England in its behalf. Upon his arrival in Boston in 1740, the Rev. George Whitefield was welcomed with open arms. Great honor was paid him. Crowds flocked to hear him, and he was sped with money and good-will throughout New England as he journeyed, preaching the gospel, and seeking alms for the southern orphanage. His advent coincided in time with the reviving interest in religion, especially in Connecticut. Interest over the revival of 1735 had centred on that colony the eyes of the whole non-liturgical English-speaking world. Whitefield's preaching was to this awakening religious enthusiasm as match to tinder.

The religious pa.s.sion, kindled in 1735 by Edwards, and hardly less by his devoted and spiritually-minded wife, had in Connecticut swept over Windsor, East Windsor, Coventry, Lebanon, Durham, Stratford, Ripton, New Haven, Guilford, Mansfield, Tolland, Hebron, Bolton, Preston, Groton, and Woodbury. [99] The period of this first "harvest" was short. The revival had swept onward, and indifference seemed once more to settle down upon the land. But the news of the revival in Connecticut had reached England through letters of Dr. Benjamin Coleman of Boston. His account of it had created so much interest that Jonathan Edwards was persuaded to write for English readers his "Narrative of the Surprising Work of G.o.d." Editions of this book appeared in 1737-38 in both England and America, and all Anglo-Saxon non-prelatical circles pored over the account of the recent revival in Connecticut. Religious enthusiasm revived, and was roused to a high pitch by Whitefield's itinerant preaching, as well as by that of Jonathan Edwards, and by the visit to New England of the Rev. Gilbert Tennant, one of two brothers who had created widespread interest by their revival work in New Jersey. A religious furor, almost mania, spread through New England, and the "Great Awakening" came in earnest.

The Rev. George Whitefield reached Newport, Rhode Island, in September, 1740. Crowds flocked to hear him during his brief visit there. In October, he proceeded to Boston, where he preached to enthusiastic audiences, including all the high dignitaries of Church and State. During his ten days' sojourn in the city, no praise was too fulsome, no honor too great. Whitefield next went to Northampton, drawn by his desire to visit Edwards. After a week of conference with the great divine, Whitefield pa.s.sed on through Connecticut, preaching as he went, and devoted the rest of the year to itinerating through the other colonies. Already his popularity had been too much for him, and he frequently took it upon himself to upbraid, in no measured terms, the settled ministry for lack of earnestness in their calling and lack of Christian character. This visit of Whitefield was followed by one from the Rev. Gilbert Tennant, who arrived in Boston in December, and spent his time, until the following March, preaching in Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut. Tennant was also outspoken in his denunciations, and both men, while sometimes justified in their criticisms, were frequently hasty and censorious in their judgments of those who differed from them.

Ministers throughout New England were quick to support or to oppose the revival movement, and a goodly number of them, as itinerants, took up the evangelical work. Dr. Colman and Dr. Sewall of Boston, Jonathan Edwards and Dr. Bellamy of Connecticut, were among the most influential divines to support the Great Awakening,--to call the revival by the name by which it was to go down in history. Unfortunately, among the aroused people, there were many who pressed their zeal beyond the reverent bounds set by these leaders. The religious enthusiasm rushed into wild ecstasies during the preaching of the almost fanatic Rev. James Davenport of Southold, and of those itinerant preachers who, ignorant and carried away by emotions beyond their control, attempted to follow his example.

During this religious fever there were times when all business was suspended. Whole communities gave themselves up to conversion and to pa.s.sing through the three or more distinct stages of religious experience which Jonathan Edwards, as well as the more ignorant itinerants, accepted as signs of the Lord's compa.s.sion. Briefly stated, these stages were, first, a heart-rending misery over one's sinfulness; a state of complete submissiveness, expressing itself in those days of intense belief both in heaven and in a most realistic h.e.l.l, as complete willingness "to be saved or d.a.m.ned,"[c] whichever the Lord in his great wisdom saw would fit best into His eternal scheme. Finally, there was the blessed state of ecstatic happiness, when it was borne in upon one that he or she was, indeed, one of the few of "G.o.d's elect." [100] The revival meetings were marked by shouting, sobbing, sometimes by fainting, or by bodily contortions.

All these, in the fever of excitement, were believed by many persons to be special marks of supernatural power, and, if they followed the words of some ignorant and rash exhorter, they were even more likely to be considered tokens of divine favor,--ill.u.s.trations of G.o.d's choice of the simple and lowly to confound the wisdom of the world. The strong emotional character of the religious meetings of our southern negroes, as well as their frequent sentimental rather than practical or moral expression of religion, has been credited in large measure to the hold over them which this great religious revival of the eighteenth century gained, when its enthusiasm rolled over the southern colonies. Be that as it may, any adequate appreciation of the frequent daily occurrences in New England during the Great Awakening would be best realized by one of this twentieth century were it possible to form a composite picture, having the unbridled emotionalism of our negro camp-meetings superimposed upon the solid respectability and grave reasonableness of the men of that earlier day. As the lines of one and the other const.i.tuent of this composite picture blend, the momentary feeling of impatience and disgust vanishes in a wave of compa.s.sion as the irresistible earnestness and the pitiless logic of those days press, for recognition, and we realize the awful sufferings of many an ignorant or sensitive soul. It was not until the religious revival had pa.s.sed its height that the people began to realize the folly and dangers of the hysteria that had accompanied it. It was not until long afterward that many of its characteristics, which had been interpreted as supernatural signs, were known and understood, and correctly diagnosticated as outward evidence of physical and nervous exhaustion.

Such, outwardly, were the marked features of the Great Awakening. Yet its incentives to n.o.ble living were great and lasting. Its immediate results were a revolt against conventional religion, a division into ecclesiastical parties, and a great schism within the Establishment, which, before the breach was healed, had improved the quality of religion in every meeting-house and chapel in the land and broadened the conception of religious liberty throughout the colony.

FOOTNOTES:

[a] At Northampton in 1680, 1684, 1697, 1713, and 1719.

[b] As early even as 1711, the Hartford North a.s.sociation suggested some reformation in the Half-Way Covenant practice because it noted that persons, lax in life, were being admitted under its terms of church membership.

[c] This "to be saved or d.a.m.ned" was, later, a marked characteristic of Hokinsianism, or the teaching of the Rev. Samuel Hopkins, 1723-1813.

CHAPTER X

THE GREAT SCHISM

If a house be divided against itself.--Mark iii, 25.

From such a revival as that of the Great Awakening, parties must of necessity arise. Upon undisciplined fanaticism, the Established church must frown. But when it undertook to discipline large numbers of church members or whole churches, recognizedly within its embracing fold and within their lawful privileges, a great schism resulted, and the schismatics were sufficiently tenacious of their rights to come out victorious in their long contest for toleration.

The proviso of the Saybrook Platform had arranged for the continued existence of churches, Congregational rather than Presbyterian in their interpretation of that platform; yet, as late as 1730, when but few remained, the question had arisen whether members of such churches, "since they were allowed and under the protection of the laws," ought to qualify according to the Toleration Act. The Court decided in the negative, [101] arguing that, although they differed from the majority of the churches in preferring the Cambridge Platform of church discipline, they had been permitted under the colony law of May 13, 1669, establishing the Congregational church, and had been protected by the proviso of 1708. The Court in its decision of 1730 seems also to have included a very few churches that had revolted from the religious formalism creeping in under the Saybrook system, and that had returned to the earlier type of Congregationalism. After the Great Awakening, churches "thus allowed and under the protection of our laws" were found to increase so rapidly that the movement away from the Saybrook Platform threatened to undermine the ecclesiastical system, and to endanger the Establishment. Seeing this, the Court, or General a.s.sembly,[a] began to enforce the old colony law that with it alone belonged the power to approve the incorporating of churches. And shortly after it began to hara.s.s these separating churches, and to enact laws to prevent the farther spread of reinvigorated Congregationalism unless of the Presbyterian type. Soon after 1741, the churches that drew away from the Saybrook system of government became known as Separate churches, and their members as Separatists. When these people found that the a.s.sembly would no longer approve their organizing as churches, they attempted, as sober dissenters from the worship established in the colony, to take the benefit of the Toleration Act. The a.s.sembly next "resolved that those commonly called Presbyterians or Congregationalists should not take the benefit of that Act." [102]

Here was a difficulty indeed. There was no place for the Separatist, yet there was need of him, and he felt sure there was. Furthermore, there were others who felt the need to the community of his strong religious earnestness, though they might deplore his extravagances. His strong points were his a.s.sertion of the need of regeneration, his rea.s.sertion of the old doctrines of justification by faith and of a personal sense of conversion, including, as a duty inseparable from church membership, the living of a highly moral life. The weakness of the Separatist lay in his a.s.sertion, first, that every man had an equal right to exercise any gifts of preaching or prayer of which he believed himself possessed; secondly, of the value of visions and trances as proofs of spirituality; and finally, of every one's freedom to withdraw from the ministry of any pastor who did not come up to his standard of ability or helpfulness. It followed that the Separatists insisted upon the right to set up their own churches and to appoint their own ministers, although the latter might have only the doubtful qualification of feeling possessed with the gift of preaching. The Separatists organized between thirty and forty churches. Some of them endured but a short time, suffering disintegration through poverty. Others fell to pieces because of the unrestrained liberty of their members in their exhortations, in their personal interpretation of the Scriptures, and in their exercise of the right of private judgment, with the consequent harvest of confusion, censoriousness, and discord that such practices created. In years later, many of the Separate churches, tired of the struggle for recognition and weighed down by their double taxation for the support of religion, buried themselves under the Baptist name. Indeed they "agreed upon all points of doctrine, worship, and discipline, save the mode and subject of baptism." A few Separatist churches, a dozen or more, continued the struggle for existence until victory and toleration rewarded them. After the teachings of Jonathan Edwards had purified the churches and had driven out the Half-Way Covenant, against which the Separatists uttered their loudest protests, many of these reformers returned to the Established church.

In the practice of--their principles, the Separatists, both as churches and as individuals, were often headstrong, officious, intermeddling, and censorious. They frequently stirred up ill-feeling and often just indignation. The rash and heedless among them accused the conservative and regular clergy of Arminianism, when the latter, influenced by the Great Awakening, revived the doctrines of original sin, regeneration, and justification by faith, but were careful to add to these Calvinistic dogmas admonitions to such practical Christianity as was taught by Arminian preachers. The Separatists feared lest the doctrine of works would cause men to stray too far from the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and they were often very intemperate in their denunciation of such "false teachers." It was a day of freer speech than now, and at least two of the great leaders in the revival had set a very bad example of calling names. Mr. Whitefield considered Mr. Tennant a "mighty charitable man," yet here are a few of the latter's descriptive epithets, collected from one of his sermons and published by the Synod of Philadelphia. Dr. Chauncey of Boston quotes them in an adverse criticism of the revival movement. Mr. Tennant speaks of the ministers thus:--hirelings, caterpillars, letter-learned Pharisees, Hypocrites, Varlets, Seed of the Serpent, foolish Builders whom the Devil drives into the ministry, dead dogs that cannot bark, blind men, dead men, men possessed of the devil, rebels and enemies of G.o.d. [103]

Naturally, party lines were soon drawn in New England. There were the Old Calvinists or Old Lights on the one side, and the Separatists and New Lights on the other. The New Lights were those within the churches who were moved by the revival and who desired to return to a more vital Christianity. In many respects they sympathized with the Separatists, although disapproving their extravagances. In many churches, hounded by the opposition of the conservatives, the New Lights drew off and formed churches of their own. Thus while the Separatists may be compared to the early English Separatists, the New Lights would correspond more to the Puritan party that desired reform within the Establishment. In the eighteenth century movement, in Connecticut, the Old Lights held the political as well as the ecclesiastical control until, in the process of time, the New Lights gained an influential vote in the a.s.sembly. Always, there was a good, sound stratum of Calvinism in both the Old and the New Light parties, and also among the Separatists, and the latter were generally included in the New Light party, especially if spoken of from the point of view of political affiliations. The idiosyncrasies of the Separatists softened down and fell away in time. The Calvinism of Old and New Lights became a rallying ground whereon each, in after years, gathered about the standard of a reinvigorated church life; and then the terms Old Light and New, with their suggestions of party meaning, whether religious, or political, pa.s.sed away. The term Separatist was retained for a while longer, merely to distinguish the churches that preferred to be known as strict Congregationalist rather than as Presbyterianized Congregationalist, or, for short, Presbyterian.

From the time of the Great Awakening, there were nearly forty years of party contest over religious privileges, many of which had been previously accorded but which were speedily denied to the Separatists by a party dominant in the churches and paramount in the legislature; by a party which was determined to bring the whole machinery of Church and State to crush the rising opposition to its control. Accordingly, it was nearly forty years before the Separatists received the same measure of toleration as that accorded to Episcopalian, Quaker, and Baptist. It was ten years before the New Lights in the a.s.sembly could, as a preliminary step to such toleration, force the omission from the revised statutes of all persecuting laws pa.s.sed by the Old Light party.

The keynote to the long struggle was sounded at a meeting of the General Consociation at Guilford, November 24, 1741. This was the first and only General Consociation ever called. It was convened at the expense of the colony, to consider her religious condition and the dangers threatening her from the excitement of the Great Awakening, from unrestrained converts, from rash exhorters, and from itinerant preachers, who took possession of the ministers' pulpits with little deference to their proper occupants. The General Consociation decided--

that for a minister to enter another minister's parish, and preach or administer the seals of the Covenant, without the consent of, or in opposition to the set tied minister of the parish, is disorderly, notwithstanding if a considerable number of the people in the parish are desirous to hear another minister preach, provided the same be orthodox, and sound in the faith and not notoriously faulty in censuring other persons, or guilty of any scandal, we think it ordinar rily advisable for the minister of the parish to gratify them by giving his consent upon their suitable application to him for it, unless neighboring ministers advise him to the contrary. [104]

This was not necessarily an intolerant att.i.tude, but it was hostile rather than friendly to the revival. It left neighboring ministers, that is, the a.s.sociations, if one among their number seemed to be too free in lending his pulpit to itinerant preachers, to curb his friendliness. Intolerance might come through this limitation, for the local a.s.sociation might be prejudiced. If its advice were disregarded and disorders arose, the Consociation of the county could step in to settle difficulties and to condemn progressive men as well as fanatics. In its phrasing, this ecclesiastical legislation left room for the ministrations of reputable itinerants, for among many, some of whom were ignorant and self-called to their vocation, there were others whose abilities were widely recognized. Foremost among such men in Connecticut were Jonathan Edwards himself, Dr. Joseph Bellamy of Bethlem, trainer of many students in theology, Rev. Eleazer Whelock of Lebanon, Benjamin Pomroy of Hebron, and Jonathan Parsons of Lyme. Among itinerants coming from other colonies, the most noted, after Whitefield and Tennant, was Dr. Samuel Finley of New Jersey, later president of Princeton. Naturally men like these, who felt strongly the need of a revival and believed in supporting the "Great Awakening," despite its excitement and errors, did not countenance the rash proceedings of many of the ignorant preachers, who ran about the colony seeking audiences for themselves.

The measures of the General Consociation were mild in comparison with the laws pa.s.sed by the legislature in the following May. Governor Talcott, tolerant toward all religious dissenters, had recently died, and the conservative Jonathan Law of Milford was in the chair of the chief magistrate. Governor Law had grown up among the traditions of that narrow ecclesiasticism which had always marked the territory of the old New Haven Colony. Moreover, the measures of the Consociation had been futile. One of the chief offenders against them was the Rev. James Davenport of Southold, Long Island, who not only went preaching through the colony, stirring up by his fanaticism, his visions, and his ecstasies, the common people, and finding fault with the regular clergy as "unconverted men," but who pushed his religious enthusiasm to great extremes by everywhere urging upon excitable young men the duty to become preachers like himself. He had introduced a kind of intoning at public meetings. This tended to create nervous irritability and hysterical outbursts of religious emotionalism, and these, Davenport taught his disciples, were the signs of G.o.d's approval of them and their devotion to Him. The government, watching these tumultuous meetings, concluded that it was time to show its ancient authority and to save the people from "divisions and contentions," the ecclesiastical const.i.tution from destruction, and the ministry from "unqualified persons entering therein." Accordingly, in May, 1742, the a.s.sembly pa.s.sed a series of laws, [105] so severe that even ordained ministers were forbidden to preach outside their own parishes without an express invitation and under the penalty of forfeiting all benefits and all support derived from any laws for the encouragement of religion ever made in the colony. The new enactments also forbade any a.s.sociation to license a candidate to preach outside its own bounds or to settle any disputes beyond its own territory.[106] These laws also permitted any parish minister to lodge with the society clerk a certificate charging that a man had entered his parish and had preached there without first obtaining permission. Furthermore, there was no provision for confirming the truth or proving the falsity of such a statement. In connection with the certificate clause, it was also enacted that no a.s.sistant, or justice of the peace, should sign a warrant for collecting a minister's rates until he was sure that nowhere in the colony was there such a certificate lodged against the minister making application for this mode of collecting his ministerial dues. [107]

Finally, the laws provided that a bond of 100 should be demanded of a stranger, or visiting minister, who had preached without invitation, and that he should be treated as a vagrant, and sent by warrant "from constable to constable, out of the bounds of this Colony."[108]

These laws restrained both _ordained Ministers_ and _licensed candidates_ from preaching in _other_ Men's Parishes without _their_ and the _Church's_ consent and wholly prohibited the _Exhortations of Illiterate Laymen_.

These laws were a high-handed infringement of the rights of conscience, and in a few years fell and buried with them the party that had enacted them. These were the laws which he (Davenport) exhorted his hearers to set at defiance; and seldom, it must be acknowledged, has a more plausible occasion been found in New England to preach disregard for the law.

The laws were framed to repress itinerants and exhorters through loss of their civil rights. By them, a man's good name was dishonored and he was deprived of all his temporal emoluments. By many, in their own day, the laws were regarded as contrary to scriptural commands, and to the opinion and practice of all reformers and of all Puritans. These laws, with others that followed, were not warranted by the ecclesiastical const.i.tution of the colony, and could find no parallel either in England or in her other colonies. Trumbull calls them--

a concerted plan of the Old Lights or Arminians both among the clergy and civilians, to suppress as far as possible, all zealous Calvinistic preachers, to confine them entirely to their own pulpits; and at the same time to put all the public odium and reproach upon them as wicked, disorderly men, unfit to enjoy the common rights of citizens. [109]

Yet for these laws the a.s.sociation of New Haven sent a vote of thanks to the a.s.sembly when it convened in their city in the following fall.

Jonathan Edwards opposed both the spirit of the General Consociation and also the legislation of the a.s.sembly. He expressed his att.i.tude toward the Great Awakening both at the time and later. In 1742 he wrote:--

If ministers preached never so good a doctrine, and are never so laborious in their work, yet if at such a day as this they show their people that they are not well affected to this work [of revival], they will be very likely to do their people a great deal more hurt than good.

Six years later Edwards wrote a preface to his "An Humble Inquiry into the Qualifications for Full Communion in the Visible Church of G.o.d," a treatise severely condemning the Half-Way Covenant, and urging the revival of the early personal account of conversion. In this preface he excuses his hesitation in publishing the work, on the ground that he feared the Separatists would seize upon his arguments to encourage them and strengthen them in many of their reprehensible practices. These, Edwards reminds his reader, he had severely condemned in his earlier publications, notably in his "Treatise on Religious Affections," 1746, and in his "Observations and Reflections on Mr. Brainerd's Life." In his preface Edwards repeats his disapproval of the Separatist "notion of a _pure church_ by means of a _spirit of discerning_; their _censorious outcries_ against the standing ministers and churches in general, their _lay ordinations_, their _lay-preaching_ and _public exhortings_ and administering sacraments; and their self-complacent, presumptuous spirit." Edwards believed that enthusiasts, though unlettered, might exhort in private, and even in public religious gatherings might be encouraged to relate in a proper, earnest, and modest manner their religious experiences, and might also entreat others to become converted. He maintained that much of the criticism of an inert ministry was well founded, that much of the enthusiastic work of laymen and of the itinerants deserved to be recognized by the regular clergy, and that they ought to bestir themselves in furthering such enthusiasm among their own people. Edwards urged also his belief in the value of good works, not as meriting the reward of future salvation, but as manifesting a heart stirred by a proper appreciation of G.o.d's attributes. Jonathan Edwards held firmly to the foundation principles of the conservative school, while he sympathized with and supported the best elements in the revival movement.

This att.i.tude of Edwards eventually cost him his pastorate, for he judged it best to resign from the Northampton church, in 1750, because of the unpopularity arising from his repeated attacks upon the Half-Way Covenant and the Stoddardean view of the Lord's supper. Nevertheless, it was the influence of Jonathan Edwards and of his following which gradually brought about a union of the religious parties, after the Separatists had given up their eccentricities and the leaven of Edwards' teachings had brought a new and invigorated life into the Connecticut churches. This preacher, teacher, and evangelist was remarkable for his powerful logic, his deep and tender feeling, his sincere and vivid faith. These characteristics urged on his resistless imagination, when picturing to his people their imminent danger and the awful punishment in store for those who continued at enmity with G.o.d. Of his work as a theologian, we shall have occasion to speak elsewhere.

Some ill.u.s.trations of church life in the troublous years following the Great Awakening will best set forth the confusion arising, the difficulties between Old and New Lights, and the hardships of the Separatists. Among the colony churches, the trials of three may be taken as typical,--the New Haven church[110], the Canterbury church,[111] and the church of Enfield.[112] Nor can the story of the first two be told without including in it an account of later acts of the a.s.sembly and of the att.i.tude of the College during the years of the great schism.

The pastor of the New Haven church was Mr. Noyes, whom many of his parishioners thought too noncommittal, erroneous, or pointless in discussing the themes which the itinerant preachers loved to dwell upon. Moreover, Mr. Noyes had refused to allow the Rev. George Whitefield to preach from his pulpit while on his memorable pilgrimage through New England. Mr. Noyes had also forbidden the hot-headed James Davenport to occupy it. As a result of their minister's actions, the New Haven church was divided in their estimate of their pastor. There were the friendly Old Lights and the hostile New.

Neither party wished to carry their trouble before the Consociation of New Haven county, for that had come at last to be a tribunal "whose decision was at that time considered _judicial_ and _final_." Moreover, at the meeting of the General Consociation at Guilford in November, 1741, it was known that Mr. Noyes had been a most active worker in favor of suppressing the New Light movement. Consequently the New Lights, though at the time in the minority, sought to find a way out from under the jurisdiction of the Saybrook Platform and its councils by declaring that the church had never _formally_ been made a Consociated church. This was literally true, but the weight of precedent and their own observances were against them. Like other churches in the county, which had come slowly to the acceptance of the Saybrook councils as ecclesiastical courts, it had finally accepted them in their most authoritative character. Such being the case, the New Lights hesitated to appeal against their minister before a court presumably favorable to him. After the New Lights had declared the church not under the Saybrook system, Mr. Noyes determined to take the vote of his people as to whether they considered themselves a Consociated church. But as he was a little fearful of the result of the vote, he secured the victory for his own faction by excluding the New Lights from voting. Thereupon, the New Lights took the benefit of the Toleration Act as "sober dissenters," and became a Separate church. The committee, appointed for the organization of the new church, declared that "they were reestablished as the original church." The benefit of the Toleration Act accorded to these New Light dissenters in New Haven, to some in Milford,[b] and to several other reinvigorated churches in the southern part of the colony, roused the opposition of the Old Lights in the a.s.sembly, and, as they counted a majority, they repealed the act in the following year, 1743. Three or four weeks after the New Haven New Lights had formed what was afterwards known as the North Church, the General a.s.sembly met for its fall session in that city, and, as has been said, the New Haven a.s.sociation immediately sent a vote of thanks for the stringent laws pa.s.sed at the May meeting. The Court, moved by this indication of the popular feeling, by the importance of the church schism and its influence throughout the colony, by the conservative att.i.tude of Yale College, and also by having among its delegates large numbers of Old Lights, proceeded to enact yet more stringent measures than those of the preceding session. The result was that the North Church could hire no preacher until they could find one acceptable to the First Church and Society, because the pastor elected by the First Church was the only lawfully appointed minister, since he owed his election to the majority votes of the First Society. Furthermore, the Court, in 1743, refused a special application of the North Church for permission to settle their chosen minister, and it was some five or six years before it ceased this particular kind of persecution and permitted the church to have a regular pastor.

The story of this New Haven church extends beyond the time-limit of this chapter, but it is better completed here. The stringency of the laws only increased the bitterness of faction. In 1745, feeling ran so high that a father refused to attend his son's funeral merely because they belonged to opposing factions, and an attempt to build a house of worship for this Separate church resulted in serious disturbances and in the charge of incendiarism. The New Lights preferred imprisonment to the payment of taxes a.s.sessed for the benefit of the First Church. At last, in 1751, the October session of the General a.s.sembly thought it best "for the good of the colony and for the peace and harmony of this and other churches" infected by its example, to advise that the differences within it be healed by a council to be composed of both Old and New Lights.[113] The suggestion bore no fruit, and a year later the New Lights themselves again asked for a council, even offering to apologize to the First Church for their informality in separating from it, and for their part in the heated controversy that followed; but Mr. Noyes induced his party to refuse to accede to the proposed conference. As the North Church had grown strong enough by this time to support a regular pastor, Mr. Bird accepted its call; yet for six years longer, because the a.s.sembly refused to divide the society, the New Lights were held to be members of the First Society and taxable for its support. But in 1757, the New Lights gained the majority both in church and society, a majority of _one_. At once, the New Lights were released from taxes to the First Church. Now the dominant party, they attempted to pay back old scores, and accordingly demanded a division of both church and society property. The claim to the first was unfair, and they eventually abandoned it. The church quarrel finally ceased in 1759, after a duration of eighteen years, and in 1760 Mr. Bird was formally installed with fitting honors.

In the early days of the Great Awakening, the Canterbury church became divided into Old Lights and New, and a separation took place. Before the separation, a committee, who were appointed to look up the church records, gave it as their opinion that the church was not and never had been pledged to the Saybrook Platform. Nevertheless, the very men who gave this decision became the leaders of the minority, who determined to support the government in carrying out its oppressive laws of 1742. These laws had been pa.s.sed while the committee were searching the church records. The majority of the church, incensed at having their liberty curtailed, proceeded to defy the law by listening to lay exhorters and to itinerants just as they had been in the habit of doing ever since the church had felt the quickening influences of the Great Awakening. This majority declared that it was "regular for this church to admit persons into this church that are in full communion with other churches and come regularly to this." This decision the minority characterized as unlawful according to the recent acts of the a.s.sembly. The majority proceeded to argue the right of the majority in the church as above the right of the majority in the society, or parish, to elect the minister and to guide the church. In an attempt to satisfy both parties, candidates were tried, but they could not command a sufficient number of votes from either side to be located permanently. A meeting in 1743 of the Consociation of Windham (to whose jurisdiction the Canterbury church belonged), together with a council of New Lights, brought temporary peace. A candidate was agreed upon; but in a few months the New Lights became dissatisfied with him because of his approval of the Saybrook system of church government, his acceptance of the Half-Way Covenant, and other opinions. Controversy revived. The majority of the church withdrew, and for a while met in a private house for services, which were conducted by Solomon Paine or by some other layman. As a result, the Windham a.s.sociation pa.s.sed a vote of censure against the seceders. Paine wrote a sharp retort, for which he was arrested, although ostensibly on the charge of unlawfully conducting public worship. He refused to give bonds and was committed to Windham jail in September, 1744. Such crowds flocked to the prison yard to hear him preach, and excitement ran so high, that the officer who had conducted his trial appeared before the a.s.sembly to protest that such legal proceedings did but tend to increase the disorders they were intended to cure. Accordingly, Paine was released in October.

The interest of the whole colony was now centred on the defiant and determined Canterbury Separate church, and the November meeting of the Windham a.s.sociation had the schism under consideration, when Yale expelled two Canterbury students whose parents were members of that church.

In October, 1742, in order to protect the college and the ministry and to deal a blow at the "Shepherd's Tent," a kind of school or academy which the New Lights had set up in New London for qualifying young men as exhorters, teachers, and ministers, the General a.s.sembly had decided that no persons should presume to set up any college, seminary of learning, or any public school whatever, without special leave of the legislature.[115] The Court had also enacted that no one should take the benefit of the laws respecting the settlement and support of ministers unless he were a graduate of Yale or Harvard, or some other approved Protestant university. It had also given explicit directions for the supervision of the schools throughout the colony and of their masters' orthodoxy,[116] and had advised Yale to take especial care that her students should not be contaminated by the New Lights. The Congregationalists had reported the "Shepherd's Tent" as a noisy, tumultuous resort, because it was occasionally used for meetings, and had added that it was openly taught in that school that there would soon be a change in the government, and that disobedience to the civil laws was not wrong. The a.s.sembly, fearing that it might "train up youth in ill practices and principles," sought to put an end to it. As to the advice to the college, Yale was only too eager to follow it, and the same year expelled the saintly David Brainerd[117] for criticising the prayers of the college preachers as lacking in fervor. His offense was against a college law of the preceding year which forbade students to call their officers "hypocritical, carnal or unconverted men." The college, as the New Light movement increased, came to the further conclusion that--

since the princ.i.p.al design of erecting this college was to train up a succession of learned and orthodox ministers by whose example people might be directed in the ways of religion and good order ... it would be a contradiction to the civil government to support a college to educate students to trample upon their own laws, to break up the churches which they establish and protect, especially since the General a.s.sembly in May 1742, thought proper to give the governors of the college some special advice and direction upon that account, which was to the effect that proper care should be taken to prevent the scholars from imbibing those or like errors; and those who would not be orderly and submissive, should not be allowed the privileges of the college.

Solomon Paine made answer to this law. With fine irony, he a.s.sured the people that in effect it forbade all students attending Yale College to go to any religious meeting even with their parents, should they be Separatists or New Lights, because--

no scholar upon the Lord's day or other day, under pretence of religion, shall go to any public or private meeting, not established or allowed by public authority or approved by the President, under penalty of a fine, confession, admonition or otherwise, according to the state and demerit of the offence, for fear that such preaching would end in "Quakerism," open infidelity, and the destruction of all Christian religion, and make endless divisions in the Christian church till nothing hut the name of it would be left in the world.

The two Cleveland brothers, John and Ebenezer, had spent the fall vacation of 1744 [c] with their parents at their home in Canterbury, and by request of their elders had frequented the Separatist church there. On their return to Yale, the boys were admonished. They professed themselves ready to apologize, but not in such words as the authorities thought sufficiently submissive, for the latter considered that the boys had broken the laws "of G.o.d, of the Colony and of the College."[119] The boys very ably argued that, under the circ.u.mstances, there had been nothing else for them to do but to go to church with their parents when requested to do so, and held to their position. Yale expelled them, and there followed a sensation throughout the colony.[120]