[n] West, in his Essay on Moral Agency, defended Edwards's Freedom of the Will against the Rev. James Dana of New Haven in 1772, but his Scripture Doctrine of Atonement, published in 1785, was his best-known work. In his doctrinal views, he was greatly influenced by Hopkins. Both West and Smalley trained students for the ministry. The latter was the teacher of Nathaniel Emmons. Smalley was settled in what is now New Britain, Conn., from 1757-1820.
[o] Emmons died there, in 1840, at the age of ninety-five. Apart from his influence upon the development of doctrine, he did more than any other man to bring back the early independence of the churches and to create the Congregational polity of the present day.
[p] To fortify their position, this party cited various acts of Parliament and the Act of Union, 1707, wherein Scotland is distinctly released from subjection to the Church of England,—an exemption, they maintained, that had never formally been extended to the colonies.
[q] On January 30, 1750, Jonathan Mayhew preached a forceful sermon upon the danger of being "unmercifully priest-ridden."
[r] Rev. East Apthorpe, S. P. G. missionary at Cambridge, Mass., had replied to a newspaper criticism upon the policy of the Society for Propagating the Gospel in New England, in his Considerations on the Institutions and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Jonathan Mayhew published in answer his Observations on the Character and Conduct of the Society, censuring the Society not only for intruding itself into New England, but for being the champion of the proposed episcopate, which he denounced. This was in 1763. For two years the controversy raged. There were four replies to Mayhew. Two were unimportant, a third presumably from Rev. Henry Caner, and the fourth, Answer to the Observations, an anonymous English production, really by Archbishop Seeker. Mayhew wrote a Defense, and Apthorpe summed up the whole controversy in his Review.—A. L. Cross, Anglican Episcopate, p. 145 et seq.; footnote 1, p. 147.
John Adams's Works, x, 288.
[t] Dr. Charles Chauney attacked the S. P. G. as endeavoring to increase their power, not to proselytize among the Indians, but to episcopize the colonists. Dr. Chandler, of Elizabethtown, N. J., replied in An Appeal to the Public. Chauney retorted with The Appeal Answered, and Chandler with The Appeal Defended. The newspapers of 1768-69 took up the controversy.
In 1767, Dr. Johnson in a letter to Governor Trumbull assured him that "It is not intended, at present, to send any Bishops into the American Colonies,… and should it be done at all, you may be assured that it will be done in such manner as in no degree to prejudice, nor if possible even give the least offense to any denomination of Protestants."—E. E. Beardsley, Hist, of the Epis. Church in Conn., i, 265.
[v] There were nine clergymen from Connecticut, and twenty-five from New York and vicinity.
[w] The Association had sent petitions in behalf of the Baptists to the legislatures of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Both were refused. For its Circular Letter of 1776, see Hovey's Life of Backus, p. 289; also p. 155.