The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut. M. Louise Greene

The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut - M. Louise Greene


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it was due to this merging and this dependence that on October 25, 1639, there were only sixteen free burgesses or voters out of one hundred and forty-four planters in the New Haven Colony.—See N. H. Col. Rec. i, 20.

      "Theoretically Church and State (in Connecticut) were separated: practically they were so interwoven that separation would have meant the severance of soul and body."—C. M. Andrews, Three River Towns of Conn. p. 22.

      [c] To John Cotton's "democracy, I do not conceive that ever God did ordain, as a fit government for church or commonwealth," and to Gov. Winthrop's objections to committing matters to the judgment of the body of the people because "safety lies in the councils of the best part which is always the least, and of the best part, the wiser is always the lesser," Hooker replied that "in all matters which concern the common good, a general council, chosen by all, to transact the business which concerns all, I conceive under favor, most suitable to rule and most safe for the relief of the whole."—Hutchinson, Hist. of Mass. i, App. iii.

      [d] (1) To adjust a difference between Governor Winthrop and Deputy Dudley in 1632; (2) about building a fort at Nantasket, February, 1632; (3) in regard to the settlement of the Rev. John Cotton, September, 1633; (4) in consultation concerning Roger Williams's denial of the patent, January, 1634; (5) concerning rights of trade at Kennebec, July, 1634; (6) in regard to the fort on Castle Island, August, 1634; (7) concerning the rumor in 1635 of the coming of a Governor-General; and (8) in the case of Mr. Nowell.—Winthrop, i, pp. 89, 99, 112, 122, 136–137, 159–181.

      [e] Roger Williams was the real author of the letters which the Salem church was required to disclaim.

      [f] Upon a further suggestion from the General Court, John Cotton prepared a catechism entitled, Milk for Babes.

      [g] Governor Winthrop replied to Dr. Skelton's objections that "no church or person could have authority over another church."—See H. M. Dexter, Ecclesiastical Councils of New England, p. 31; Winthrop, i. p. 139.

      [h] Guilford, Branford, Milford, Stamford, on the mainland, and Southold, on Long Island.

      [i] The General Court was head of the churches. "It was more than Pope, or Pope and College of Cardinals, for it exercised all authority, civil and ecclesiastical. In matters of discipline, faith, and practice there was no appeal from its decisions. Except the right to be protected in their orthodoxy the churches had no privileges which the Court did not confer, or could not take away."—Bronson's Early Gov't. in Conn. p. 347, in N. H. Hist. Soc. Papers, vol. iii.

      [j] On August 18, 1658, the court refused, upon complaint of the Wethersfield church, to remove Mr. Russell. In March, 1661, after duly considering the matter, the court allowed Mr. Stow to sever his connection with the church of Middletown. It concerned itself with the strife in the Windsor church over an assistant pastor from 1667 to 1680. It allowed the settlement of Woodbury in 1672 because of dissatisfaction with the Stratford church. It permitted Stratford to divide in 1669. These are but a few instances both of the authority of the General Court over individual churches and of that discord which, finding its strongest expression in the troubles of the Hartford church, not only rent the churches of Connecticut from 1650 to 1670, but "insinuated itself into all the affairs of the society, towns, and the whole community." Another illustration of the court's oversight of the purity of religion was its investigation in 1670 into the "soundness of the minister at Rye." For these and hosts of similar examples see index Conn. Col. Rec. vols. i, ii, iii, and iv.

       Table of Contents

      THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM AND THE HALF-WAY COVENANT

      It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him.—Sydney Smith.

      In each of the New England colonies under consideration, the settlers organized their church system and established its relation to the State, expecting that the strong arm of the temporal power would insure stability and harmony in both religious and civil life. As we know, they were speedily doomed to disappointment. As we have seen, they failed to estimate the influences of the new land, where freedom from the restraint of an older civilization bred new ideas and estimates of the liberty that should be accorded men. Within the first decade Massachusetts had great difficulty in impressing religious uniformity upon her rapidly increasing and heterogeneous population. She found coercion difficult, costly, dangerous to her peace, and to her reputation when the oppressed found favorable ears in England to listen to their woes. Ecclesiastical differences of less magnitude, contemporary in time and foreshadowing discontent and opposition to the established order of Church and State, were settled in more quiet ways. John Davenport, after witnessing the Antinomian controversy, declined the pressing hospitality of Massachusetts, and led his New Haven company far enough afield to avoid theological entanglements or disputed points of church polity. Unimpeded, they would make their intended experiment in statecraft and build their strictly scriptural republic. Still earlier Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and John Warham led the Connecticut colonists into the wilderness because they foresaw contention, strife, and evil days before them if they were to be forced to conform to the strict policy of Massachusetts.[a] They preferred, unhindered, to plant and water the young vine of a more democratic commonwealth. And even as Massachusetts met with large troubles of her own, so smaller ones beset these other colonies in their endeavor to preserve uniformity of religious faith and practice. Until 1656, outside of Massachusetts, sectarianism barely lifted its head. Religious contumacy was due to varying opinions as to what should be the rule of the churches and the privileges of their members. As the churches held theoretically that each was a complete, independent, and self-governing unit, their practice and teaching concerning their powers and duties began to show considerable variation. Such variation was unsatisfactory, and so decidedly so that the leaders of opinion in the four colonies early began to feel the need of some common platform, some authoritative standard of church government, such as was agreed upon later in the Cambridge Platform of 1648 and in the Half-Way Covenant, a still later exposition or modification of certain points in the Platform.

      The need for the Platform arose, also, from two other causes: one purely colonial, and the other Anglo-colonial. The first was, since everybody had to attend public worship, the presence in the congregations of outsiders as distinct from church members. These outsiders demanded broader terms of admission to holy privileges and comforts. The second cause, Anglo-colonial in nature, arose from the inter-communion of colonial and English Puritan churches and from the strength of the politico-ecclesiastical parties in England. Whatever the outcome there, the consequences to colonial life of the rapidly approaching climax in England, when, as we now know, King was to give way to Commonwealth and Presbyterianism find itself subordinate to Independency, would be tremendous.

      In the first twenty years of colonial life, great changes had come over New England. Many men of honest and Christian character—"sober persons who professed themselves desirous of renewing their baptismal covenant, and submit unto church discipline, but who were unable to come up to that experimental account of their own regeneration which would sufficiently embolden their access to the other sacrament" (communion) [34]—felt that the early church regulations, possible only in small communities where each man knew his fellow, had been outgrown, and that their retention favored the growth of hypocrisy. The exacting oversight of the churches in their "watch and ward" over their members was unwelcome, and would not be submitted to by many strangers who were flocking into the colonies. The "experimental account" of religion demanded, as of old, a public declaration or confession of the manner in which conviction of sinfulness had come to each one; of the desire to put evil aside and to live in accordance with God's commands as expressed in Scripture and through the church to which the repentant one promised obedience. This public confession was a fundamental of Congregationalism. Other religious bodies have copied it; but at the birth of Congregationalism, and for centuries afterwards, the bulk of European churches, like the Protestant Episcopal Church to-day, regarded "Christian piety more as a habit of life, formed under the training of childhood, and less as a marked spiritual


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