USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Guilford > A history of Christ Episcopal Church in Guilford, Connecticut : an address delivered by the Rector, Rev. William G. Andrews, in September, 1894, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the parish > Part 2
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It was at least seven years, or in the autumn of 1723, be- fore Mr. Johnson came to his father's house in Guilford as a presbyter of the Church of England. He was on his way to the one mission which the Society for the Propagation of the Gos- pel had thus far established in Connecticut. It had been under- taken chiefly for the benefit of recent emigrants at Stratford, who were already Episcopalians. The Society, therefore,
I New Haven Probate Records, iv. 540-1; v. 14-15; Talcott's Guilford Genealogy (MS.) ; Samuel Johnson's Autobiography (MS.) ; Beardsley's Life and Correspondeuce of Samuel Johusou, 12.
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which had now been in operation more than twenty years, was not making very strenuous efforts to convert Congregationalists, neither, so far as it appears, was Samuel Johnson. He said long afterwards, "I never once tried to proselyte dissenters, nor do I believe any of the other ministers did."1
The Society was not indifferent to the performance of the task which its missionary seemed to disclaim, for that was the reconciliation of separated brethren, the healing of a schism which in England had but lately become complete (1689). It instructed its representatives in America that their duty towards "Parishioners" opposed to or dissenting from the Church of England was to seek "to convince and reclaim them with a spirit of meekness and gentleness." Its first missionary (1702- 4), George Keith, a converted Quaker, not eminent for "meek- ness and gentleness," though a good man, was prompt in sug- gesting measures which he believed "would effectually contribute to the proselyting the main body of the Dissenting People, to their Ancient Mother, the Church," towards which he found many of them, even in New England, cherishing a filial spirit.2 Keith's mission was primarily one of investigation, and his reports determined the choice of positions to be occu- pied. That the Society, nevertheless, as informed by him, regarded other parts of America as more in need of its help than the two Congregational colonies, everywhere furnished with ministers and meeting-houses, appears from the fact that in 1728 it had but two missionaries in Connecticut, and, apparent- ly, but three in Massachusetts.3 It was the strong and persist- ent pressure on the part of the colonists themselves which led the Society to establish its New England missions, and it was never able fully to meet the demand. The eagerness of young men to "go home for orders" from Connecticut, had to be checked, and the sincerity and extent of the popular desire was thoroughly tested by throwing on the people not only the ex- pense, no trifling matter, of sending the young men "home," and of building churches, but also of paying part of the stipend,
I Beardsley's History of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, i. 196.
2 Anderson's Hist. of Col. Ch., iii. 66-7, 229; Collect. P. E. Hist. Soc., 1851, pp. ix., xviii., 26-7 etc.
3 Humphreys, "History of the Propagation Society," in Ch. Rev. (vols. iv., v.), Jan., 1852, p. 614 ; Jan. 1853, pp. 621-32.
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Christ Church Parish, Guilford, Conn.
with the serious additional cost of providing a house and a glebe.1 Samuel Johnson, then, was acting in the spirit of his instruc- tions, as interpreted by the attitude of the Society (more dis- tinctly cautious as the century advanced), when he contented himself with aiding those who sought information or advice, and vigorously defending his church against attacks, made with growing bitterness. That the Church of England steadily in- creased in this commonwealth was due far less to "aggressive work" on the part of the Anglican clergy than to the fact that the Anglican church supplied what Puritanism had taught men to value as their lives, and New England Congregationalism, with an honorable, though misguided zeal for the holiness of God's House, had placed almost out of their reach. Their "Ancient Mother" entered New England in response to the cry of her wandering children, and the Venerable Society, upon the whole, simply pursued the course defined by its title, in labor- ing to propagate the Gospel by the method prescribed in its charter, of providing for the wants of English subjects with "The Administration of God's Word and Sacraments." The history of the parish at Guilford, the home of Johnson's family, whom he often visited, and likely, one would have thought, soon to furnish material for a conforming congregation which the Society would carefully watch over and sustain, is a striking illustration of all this.
The earliest proof of any leaning towards conformity here which I have found, appears nearly four years after Johnson's return from England. His father, Deacon Samuel Johnson, died in 1727 (May 8), and the son writes that he "would have communicated with us if he had lived." But the missionary adds that his father did not "think it necessary to leave the Dissenting communion," although he had already renounced its theology .? The statement shows, it may be observed, that Mr. Johnson followed the Catholic usage of the mother church, never departed from, I suppose, in this parish, of recognizing the right to the Holy Communion conferred in baptism, and pre-
I Humphreys, in Ch. Rev., Oct., 1851, p. 457; Abstract of Proceedings of S. P. G., 1763, 1773; Conn. Ch. Docs., i. 96, 216, 233-4, 237, 269; ii. 103; Beardsley, Hist. of P. E. Ch. in Conn., i. 103.
2 Beardsley's Life and Correspondence of Samuel Johnson, 59.
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served by a godly life, and that he acknowledged as valid the baptism of his Congregational brethren. This is the more note- worthy because he himself, after communicating at King's Chapel, Boston, in virtue of his own baptism at the hands, pre- sumably, of Thomas Ruggles the elder, satisfied his personal scruples by receiving hypothetical baptism in London.1 Several months after Deacon Johnson's death, his younger son, Nathan- iel, then twenty-two years old, was appointed a rate-collector in the First Society, being, evidently, still a Congregationalist. 2 It may be that within three years, or in 1730, he and one or two others declared their conformity, but I have found no con- temporary evidence to that effect.3 In the mean time the Church of England was slowly growing in Fairfield county, where Samuel Johnson's parish lay, and in New London county, where there were English Episcopalians of note, and by the year 1736 six clergymen, all born in New England, though one resided just west of the border, were caring for missions within those limits, as well as for scattered families elsewhere.4 In 1736 the first missionary was settled in New Haven county, in the person of Jonathan Arnold, formerly pas- tor at West Haven, as Johnson had been before him. He lived in that village, but he practically took the county for his mis- sionary district, while he often went beyond it.5 And in May, 1738, the name of Nathaniel Johnson, with two others after- wards found in our parish records, appears in a list of seventy- three adult male members of the Church of England under Mr. Arnold's care." It is at least highly probable that all the three were at that date residents of Guilford, and that, in the families of Nathaniel Johnson, Thomas Walstone and David Naughty, we have the nucleus of this congregation. It is also probable that the second of these families conformed in Branford as early as 1728, and lived there fully two years longer.7 Pos-
I Life and Correspondence, 23, 34.
2 Record of Votes and Acts, etc. (Dec. 19, 1727).
3 Church Review, April, 1848, p. 15.
4 Beardsley, Hist. of P. E. Ch. in Conn., i. 92, 100-10I.
5 Ibid., i. III-2 ; Letters in possession of S. P. G., Vol. A. 26 (189). Copies of letters re- lating to this region were made in 1893 for the Rev. Dr. Harwood of New Haven.
6 Ch. Rev. April, 1857, p. 113. One of the names is Waughty, almost certainly a mis- print.
7 Registry Book (Christ Ch., Stratford), 6, 8. There was a Nathanael Johnson of Branford, but he can hardly have declared himself in 1730. Bailey's Trinity Church, Branford, 6, 8, II.
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Christ Church Parish, Guilford, Conn.
sibly Samuel Johnson received in 1730 declarations of conform- ity from his brother and Mr. Naughty, either at Guilford or at Branford, where he baptized two members of the Walstone fam- ily on the twentieth of October. This might account for the statement to which I have alluded, that there were conformists here in that year. Be this as it may, it is in 1738 that the first indications known to me of the existence of anything like a company of Episcopalians in Guilford appear in early records. And it was six years longer before a parish was organized. There may have been more than one cause for this slow rate of progress, in virtue of which at least eighteen parishes in Connecticut were organized earlier than ours. It seems to me not impossible that Samuel Johnson's own influence with his friends in Guilford was thrown against haste on their part. For we know that during some portion of the period before 1740 he cherished strong hopes of a general adhesion to the Church of England, if entire conformity were not demanded. In 1732 he had submitted to the Bishop of London certain pro- posals looking towards a "comprehension" of the colonists under episcopal government, but without imposing "all the ceremonies and constitutions of our Church." Such proposals he had been asked by several of his Congregational friends to draw up, and there can be little doubt that he would have been ready to unite with them and other Christians on the broad basis laid down by our Bishops a century and a half later, of the Scriptures, the Creed, the two Sacraments and the Historic Episcopate. It is, moreover, a very reasonable conjecture that Thomas Ruggles of Guilford was one of the "several ingenious men among the dissenters" who seemed to have thought a com- prehension possible. In the following year (1733) when, after a long and bitter struggle, the now extinct Fourth Church had practically achieved its independence, the First Society protested against a recent attempt of the legislature to impose the decis- ion of a council convoked by itself upon the church, and appealed to the opinion of a high authority in England that the calling of synods by the colonial assemblies was "a breach of the royal prerogative." Towards the end of the same year (Dec. 10, 1733, ) Mr. Johnson wrote to the Bishop of London on the same subject at the request of some "dissenting minis-
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ters."1 It is almost impossible to doubt that Mr. Ruggles, who must have known Johnson, about eight years his senior, from childhood, was one of these ministers, and very easy to believe that the two had previously discussed the question of comprehension. And if Thomas Ruggles, who long afterwards declared his people members of the Church of England by in- heritance, was at this period thinking kindly of a possible rec- ognition of him and them on the generous terms suggested by Samuel Johnson, we can well believe that the latter would not have been eager to promote a second separation from his Con- gregational brother's flock.
But a deeper and more powerful influence than the senior missionary's fair dream of comprehension kept in check the impulse towards conformity in his native town. Long before the close of the seventeenth century, under the famous "Halfway Covenant," the sacraments had been made more accessible. Those who "owned the covenant," that is, formally acknowledged the obligations imposed in baptism, might then bring their children to be baptized, or even obtain baptism for themselves if necessary. In Massachusetts, though never, I think, in Connecticut, it became common to allow such persons, while supposed to be still unconverted, to receive the communion. The mistake of using improper tests of conversion was sought to be remedied by treating conversion itself as not essential in the visible church .? The Halfway Covenant was a wrong method of righting a wrong. Nevertheless, it went far towards silencing complaint, and keeping Congregationalists within the Puritan fold. It did not wholly remove the griev- ance, and in Connecticut it came into use rather slowly, so that the early missionaries were met at once with requests for one or both sacraments.3 But the religious life of the eighteenth cen- tury was everywhere comparatively feeble on the side of the affections, and it is evident that the desire for the highest Chris-
I Conn. Ch. Docs. i. 151-4, 155-6; MS. of Hon. Ralph D. Smith, relating chiefly to the Fourth Church.
2 Mather's Magn., ii. 277-315; Stoddard's Appeal to the Learned ; Trumbull's Hist. of Conn., i. 297, 312, 471-2 ; ii. 19, 143; Contribut. to Eccles. Hist. of Conn., 411; Palfrey's Hist. of New England, ii. 487-94; Dutton's Hist. of North Ch., New Haven, 10, 11-13, 126-7; etc., etc.
3 Trumbull, Hist. of Conn., i. 477; Conn. Ch. Docs., i. 10, 11, 17, 19, 23, 39, 253 ; ii. 8, 29, 31, 55, 134, 169.
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Christ Church Parish, Guilford, Conn.
tian privilege, that of admission to the Lord's Supper, was not strong. It was indeed still regarded as much more than a priv- ilege, and in 1732 forty-six persons in Guilford, who had preaching but not the sacraments, complained that their souls were suffering because "the spiritual food thereof was denied them.''1 But during sixteen years after that date the number of communicants in the First Church slightly decreased. It apparently continued to decrease for half a century longer,? although most of the adult members of that congregation had probably "owned the covenant," therein pledging themselves to "endeavor to observe all" the laws of God's kingdom (which certainly included the use of the second sacrament), "so far," in the words of the formula, "as he hitherto hath or hereafter shall discover your duty to you."3
In many communities the great revival of 1740, which, for the time, intensified religious emotions, and which ultimately brought new power into American Christianity, made the rela- tion of experiences easy for multitudes, and these flocked into the Congregational churches. It was, however, attended by gross excesses, and by a narrowness and censoriousness which some of its warm friends confessed and deplored. In this way it promoted the growth of the Church of England, in which large numbers of conservative Christians sought a less heated atmosphere. But in Guilford the influence of Mr. Ruggles was conscientiously thrown against the revivalists, as was that of Sam- uel Smithson's son-in-law, Samuel Russell, in North Guilford.4 With regard to opposition to a revival like that of 1740, 011 the part of good men, it is worth while to quote the words of the late Dr. Charles Hodge, a very eminent Presbyterian : "It is well that there are such opposers, else the church would soon be over-run with fanaticism."5 Mr. Ruggles seems to have been successful in his opposition, as far as his own church was con- cerned, and he doubtless thereby kept the allegiance of many who might have become conformists. In the Fourth Society, occu-
I Smith MS.
2 Ibid .; Manual of First Congregational Church.
3 "Form of owning the Baptismal Covenant," in the handwriting of Rev. Aaron Dut- ton, but without date. Kindly copied for me by Mr. Wallace D. Norton.
4 Declaration of the Association of the County of New Haven, etc. (1745).
5 History of the Presbyterian Church, Pt. II., 12. Phil., 1851.
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Early History of
pying the same territory with the First, owning the covenant was apparently not practiced until 1750, nor continued after 1771.1 In 1743, a year before our organization, James Sproat, an able man, and a warm friend of the revival, became pastor, and retained that position for twenty-five years .? Some members of his congregation were early supporters of this parish, and it is not impossible that it was Mr. Sproat's zeal for the methods of the revivalists which gave the final impulse to the cause of con- formity.
On the whole, the spirit of eighteenth century piety, real, but not very emotional, was strong in Guilford. Towards the close of the century, when the Fourth Church had just dismissed its last pastor and begun to decay (1789), the excellent pioneer of New England Methodism, Jesse Lee, reported "some lively Christians" here "of the Baptist persuasion," as if the Guilford Congregationalists did not conform to his standard of liveliness, which is more than probable.3 The Church of England was, therefore, less in request than it often was elsewhere as a "haven of refuge ; " it attracted the most earnest of the class excluded by contemporary Congregationalism from the Holy Table, with such as might become convinced that not Congregationalism but Episcopacy is the kind of church government "exactly de- scribed in the Word of God."' Accessions on both grounds were to be looked for from among the friends and kindred of Samuel Johnson. And it is a pleasant thought that the wish to receive the communion, as a duty and a right, was one of the chief forces which produced this parish. It is to be observed, moreover, that the denial, in some places, of the first sacrament, and of the second everywhere, to those from whom the Church of England, even when controlled by Puritans, had never with- held them, abundantly justified the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in planting missions in this Christian common- wealth. For within its borders were great numbers of the King's "loveing subjects," suffering that want of "the Administration of God's Sacraments" which the society's charter required it to supply.
I Smith M.S.
2 Smith, History of Guilford, 100-102 ; Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, iii. 125-9.
3 Stevens, History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, ii. 428.
4 See "Cambridge Platform," Chap. I., 3.
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Christ Church Parish, Guilford, Conn.
Jonathan Arnold, as in a loose sense, the first missionary for New Haven county, may be regarded as the first appointed for Guilford, which it is nearly certain that he visited as early as the spring of 1738. I11 1740 he was succeeded in his mission by Theophilus Morris, an Englishman who also lived at West Haven.1 It was not as easy then as now, when far more fre- quent intercourse with the world tends to make everybody less provincial, for men of foreign birth and training to adapt theni- selves to the ways of Connecticut people. Mr. Morris had diffi- culties for which his personal qualities, rather than his English nativity, were responsible,? but he did some good work in his mission. I find no record of visits made by him at Guilford, but as he had the oversight of the Wallingford conformists he probably came here.3 In 1743 what we may call the New Ha- ven county mission passed into the care of the clergyman under whose guidance the parish was organized, the Rev. James Lyons, a native of Ireland, who resided at Derby. Once more the missionary's foreign birth was a disadvantage to him, and he suffered from it in ways far more discreditable to others than to himself. But, although he was diligent and useful, he had an infirmity of temper which long afterwards exposed him to severe and just censure. 4
Mr. Lyons visited Guilford presumably in 1743, and cer- tainly made several visits before the parish was organized, preaching and administering baptism. About four months. before the organization (May 8, 1744,), Dr. Johnson (as he had now become) preached a week-day sermon here, the manuscript of which is, by the kindness of his descendants, in my posses- sion. It is extremely interesting to students of the history of theology, as showing that Johnson had departed from the ordi- nary Protestant view of the great doctrine of justification, and had accepted the teaching of a famous Anglican divine, Bishop Bull. That teaching might tempt men to overrate the value of their own obedience, but it required nobody to be self-righteous, and might, on the other hand, guard some against the tempta-
I Digest of Records of S. P. G., 1701-1892 ; Beardsley, Hist. of Ch. in Conn., i. 115-7.
2 Conn. Ch. Docs., i. 198-202 ; Beardsley, Hist. etc., i. 135-6.
3 Conn. Ch. Docs., i. 138-9 (misplaced), 176, 202.
4 Digest of Rec. of S. P. G., 853 ; Conn. Ch. Docs .. i. 102, 208-10 ; ii. 51, 67, 126-7 ; Christ" Church Records.
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tion to which the revivalists were greatly exposed, of attaching too little importance to personal holiness. But the sermon, as far as it influenced their religious thinking, would have helped to remove the early Episcopalians of Guilford farther from the sympathy of many of their fellow Christians.
On the day on which this sermon was preached, Mr. Lyons wrote from Derby to the secretary of the Venerable Society to the effect that eight families in Guilford, embracing thirty-six children, had subscribed a paper declaring their conformity.1 If we knew when this paper was signed we should have the date of what was perhaps the first step towards organization. And if we knew who signed it we should have the names of those who effected the organization. Now a letter to the Society in Eng- land from the churchwardens at Wallingford, dated December I, 1743, being written "on behalf" also of "brethren inhabit- ing in the neighboring towns of Guilford and Branford,"2 makes it probable that there had already been some sort of joint action here, and possibly the declaration of conformity was made towards the close of 1743. And it so happens that we get from our own records and otherwise, the names of exactly eight men, heads of families, who had in various ways indicated their disposition to accept the ministrations of the Church of England before May, 1744. It is not certain that all these men lived in Guilford, still less that all lived in this part of the township, but it is a fair inference from what we do know that the major- ity were present at the so-called "vestry" at which the first churchwardens and clerk were appointed. Five of these names have been mentioned already, those of the three officials, Na- thaniel Johnson, William Ward, and Samuel Collins, and those of Thomas Walstone and David Naughty, in whose households at Branford and Guilford baptismn had been administered. The three remaining names are those of Caleb Wetmore, Abijah Watrous (or Waterhouse) and Hezekiah Bishop, all parents of children baptized in Guilford.3
You would, of course, like to know something of those who bore a part in founding the parish, or in carrying it through
I Conn. Ch. Docs., i. 208.
2 Conn. Ch. Docs., i. 202.
3 Christ Ch. Rec .; Registry Book, Stratford.
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Christ Church Parish, Guilford, Conn.
the hard struggles of its first half century. It is impossible, in some cases for want of material, in others for want of time, to give information full enough to be interesting or valuable. I feel bound, however, to tell as much of what I have been able to learn about the founders as my limits will permit.
Nathaniel Johnson, brother of the distinguished clergymail of whom I have spoken so often, was an important member, not only of the parish, but of the community. In becoming an Episcopalian he probably gave offence to inany of his townsmen, but it is creditable to him and to them that he evidently retain- ed their confidence and respect. Within about eight years he was commissioned first lieutenant, and then captain, of the local military company. And he seems to have marched at the head of it when Connecticut, having already furnished fourteen hundred men, sent out five thousand more after the disaster at Fort William Henry in 1757.1 He was connected somewhat closely by blood or marriage with at least eight families appar- ently belonging to this congregation in the last century. His first wife, Margery Morgan, the mother of his children, was a descendant of Governor Eaton, and had near relatives who must have been the principal supporters of the congregation after- wards formed in Killingworth. His second wife, Diana, the daughter of Captain Andrew Ward, and widow of Daniel Hub- bard, was the mother of Rev. Dr. Bela Hubbard, of whom I must speak later. Captain Johnson's son, Samuel, married the daughter of Samuel Collins, and their descendant, Samuel Col- lins Johnson, is still remembered with honor in the parish and the town.2 Descendants of other names are with us, one being our junior warden.
Of others I must speak more briefly. William Ward was the son of William Ward of Wallingford, and nephew of An- drew Ward of Guilford. His appointment as second warden, and the fact that the parish was organized in his house, mark him as a valuable member of the little company. He has, I believe, descendants of the name living elsewhere. Samuel Collins, a descendant, through his mother, of Governor Leete,
I Connecticut Colonial Records, ix. 420; x. 128; Trumbull, Hist. of Conn., ii. 382 ; Guil- ford Celebration, 183. (Paper of Bernard C. Steiner, Ph. D.)
2 Talcott's Guilford Genealogy (MS.), etc.
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