The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut

by M. Louise Greene

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 Assembly,[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 harass 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 Assembly 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 Assembly 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 assertion of the need of regeneration, his reassertion 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 assertion, 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 God. [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 Assembly. 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, passed 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 Assembly could, as a preliminary step to such toleration, force the omission from the revised statutes of all persecuting laws passed 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 attitude, but it was hostile rather than friendly to the revival. It left neighboring ministers, that is, the Associations, 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 Association 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 passed 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 God'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 constitution from destruction, and the ministry from "unqualified persons entering therein." Accordingly, in May, 1742, the Assembly passed 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 Association 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 assistant, 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]