The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut

by M. Louise Greene

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, and to several other reinvigorated churches in the southern part of the colony, roused the opposition of the Old Lights in the Assembly, 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 Assembly met for its fall session in that city, and, as has been said, the New Haven Association immediately sent a vote of thanks for the stringent laws passed 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 attitude 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 assessed for the benefit of the First Church. At last, in 1751, the October session of the General Assembly 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 Assembly 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 passed 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 Assembly. 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 Association passed 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 Assembly 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 Association 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 Assembly 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 Assembly, 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 principal 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 Assembly 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 assured 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 God, of the Colony and of the College."[119] The boys very ably argued that, under the circumstances, 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]

The leaders of the New Light party in the church of Canterbury were the nearest relatives and friends of the Cleveland boys, who came to be regarded as martyrs to their religion. Their treatment opened the question as to whether the steadily increasing numbers of New Lights were to lose for their children the benefit of the college, that they helped to support. Must they, in order to send their sons to college, deprive them for four years of a "Gospel ministry" and lay them open to consequent grave perils? Why should New Lights be required to make such a sacrifice, or why, in vacation, should their children be required to submit to the ecclesiastical laws of the college? If Episcopalians were permitted to have their sons, students at Yale, worship with them during the vacations, why should not the same liberty be granted to equally good citizens who differed even less in theological opinions?