USA > Connecticut > Connecticut in transition: 1775-1818 > Part 3
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Congregationalism of the Saybrook Platform broke the point of the "infidels' " strongest weapon of attack. Men, dissatisfied with the estab- lished order, could join one of the dissenting societies by complying with the certificate technicality. It acted as a safety-valve, for men were less apt to give up the church altogether. Furthermore, Congregational- ism itself was morally strengthened. President Dwight would never have agreed with such reasoning, for a little later he was inveighing un- compromisingly against the so-called "modern liberality." 14
Ethan Allen in 1784 printed his Oracles of Reason, which President Jared Sparks of Harvard at a later time assailed most vigorously and which Dwight of Yale noticed as the first formal publication in the United States against Christianity.15 Allen in his preface wrote that he was called a deist, though he himself did not know what he was, save that he assuredly was not a Calvinist, or hopeful of immunity from clerical attack. The book might best be characterized as an assault on Puritanism and its preachers. How widely the treatise was circulated cannot be determined, but, judging from Allen's popularity in Vermont, his Revolutionary services, his Litchfield birth, it is likely that it was read throughout New England. Its publication alone would incline one to doubt that there was the genuine, general aversion to deism which too great dependence on Dwight or Judge Swift might lead one to be- lieve.
President Dwight learned that as early as 1786 there were in America several branches of the Illuminati, that professedly higher branch of Free Masonry founded (to his regret, later on) by Professor Weishaupt of Ingolstadt. His auditors were not informed as to whether Connecticut had a chapter, but were told that this society propagated doctrines striking at the very root of human happiness, virtue, society and gov- ernment.16 If its purpose was to weaken the hold of religion on men, the time was propitious.
The years before the French Revolution and the establishment of a strong national government were lean, unstable years, when change was in the air. The critical period was one of discontent, a searching after a panacea. Is it surprising if many saw in deism a hope; in the church, a
14 Discourse (1801), p. 16; Zephaniah Swift, A System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut, I, 145.
15 Riley, American Thought, pp. 12-17, 56-58; Riley, American Philosophy, The Early Schools, pp. 48 ff .; Proceedings of Vermont Historical Society (1902), p. 6.
16 Dwight, Address, July 4, 1798, pp. 13-14.
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THE RISE OF INFIDELITY TO 1801
tyranny; and in the clergyman, an enemy? Hard times, commercial de- pression, slack shipping, depreciated currency, national, state and private debts in great volume, speculation, avaricious longing for wealth, inter- state land disputes caused general dissatisfaction. Then came the party or class struggle for and against a strong centralized government, with the people of property, social standing and orthodox religion on one side and the debtor and man of doubtful or no religion on the other. Once the national constitution was adopted, one would expect that re- ligious discontent would cease, as did political and economic dissatis- faction. An adjustment of religious differences in broader toleration, if not a turning from philosophic thought to the more practical concerns of every-day life, might have resulted if the French Revolution had not broken forth.
The importance of the French Revolution on the religious thought of Connecticut can hardly be over-estimated, yet it must not be held responsible for all the ungodliness of those years of Connecticut's dark- ness. As we have seen, the roots of irreligion and moral shortcomings went far behind the days of the French Revolution. That Revolution merely gave a powerful stimulus to deism and to all that was generally connoted by the term "Jacobinism." On the other hand it aroused the clergy to a united opposition to the enemies of religion. As evidence that the French Revolution was not the cause of the religious decline, consider the fiftieth anniversary sermon of Rev. Mr. White of Wind- ham, delivered in 1790, before the effects of the Revolution could pos- sibly have been felt:
In those days there were scarce any that were not professors of religion, and but few infants not baptized. No families that were prayerless. Profane swearing was but little known, and open violations of the Sabbath not prac- ticed as is common now. And there were no Deists among us. The people as a body were fearers of the Lord and observers of the Sabbath and its duties. But the present day is peculiar, for men's throwing off the fear of the Lord. Declensions in religion have been increasing for about thirty years past, such as profaneness, disregard of the Sabbath, neglect of family re- ligion, unrighteousness, intemperance, imbibing of modern errors and here- sies and the crying prevalence of infidelity against the clearest light.17
Jesse Lee, the pioneer Methodist exhorter, on his tour of 1789 found religion at a low ebb, though his testimony must be closely scrutinized. However, he seems to be borne out by other witnesses to whom the
17 Quoted in Rev. Elijah Waterman, Sermon, Dec. 10, 1800, p. 33, and in Larned, Windham County, II, 221.
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CONNECTICUT IN TRANSITION: 1775-1818
same declension of morals and religion was plainly, if painfully, visi- ble.18 This condition was not confined to particular sections of the state, for, if it had been, these early Methodist and Baptist itinerant evangelists would not have been so generally successful. Such was the religious life of Connecticut when the French Constituent Assembly was drafting the Constitution of the Clergy.
The French Revolution in its early years was as generally approved in Connecticut as elsewhere in America.19 The attack on the church was applauded in a short-sighted, if not bigoted, manner, as the fulfillment of their long-predicted overthrow of Anti-Christ, of Babylon.20 For the sake of consistency, it would have been well if the Congregational ministers had realized that Jacobinism was essentially an attack on Christianity. This would have relieved them in ensuing years from the biting ridicule of bitter democratic pens when they favored the coali- tion to such an extent that they could rejoice in the Concordat and even in the ultimate re-establishment of the Bourbons and the church. This complete turn of sympathy on the part of the ministry and in general of the upper social class can be accounted for by England's declaration that she stood as the bulwark of religion as well as by the unbridled excesses of the revolutionists. America could not condone the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the worship of the Supreme Being, the full Terror, and the blood of Toulon and La Vendée. Then the fear aroused by the close association of Jacobinism with the Revolutionary Societies of England and with the beginnings of the Republican move- ment at home brought many to the other extreme of not being able to see any good in the whole convulsion.
At length the Connecticut ministry concluded that Jacobinism was not only anti-clerical, but positively anti-Christian. Dwight stood fore- most among his brethren when, in 1798, he pointed out that the perse- cution to which the Catholic church was subjected was contrary to his desires. However, he carefully explained that he was no friend to its
18 Nathan Bangs, History of the Methodist-Episcopal Church, I, 288-290; Bishop Francis Asbury, Journal, II, 102; Sketch of R. M. Sherman, pp. 20-22.
19 Ezra Stiles, Diary, III, 391, 432, 467; Noah Webster, Ten Letters; The Rev- olution in France; James Gould, July 4th Address (1798), pp. 21 ff .; James Dana, Two Discourses, pp. 54 ff .; Dwight, Travels, IV, 371-375; Charles D. Hazen, Con- temporary American Opinion of the French Revolution.
20 Anson Ely Morse, The Federalist Party in Massachusetts to the Year 1800, pp. 88 ff.
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THE RISE OF INFIDELITY TO 1801
system.21 In 1801 he set forth his opinion-somewhat dictatorially- in answer to certain excuses for French infidelity, as follows:
It is true, that the persecution of modern Infidels has fallen principally on Catholics, and not on Protestants, and it is equally true, that they have not persecuted them at all as Catholics, but merely as Christians. They them- selves have often told us their real design. They have ridiculed, denied, and decried Religion as such; and not as the Catholic system; and have fought and butchered the Catholic soldiers, and the people, as the Armies and ad- herents of Jesus, by name. ... The religion, the piety of these men consti- tuted the crime, for which they died; not the character of Catholics. Ac- cordingly the persecution has fallen indiscriminately on Protestants as well as Catholics; not so often; because there were not so many of them; but never the less, because they were Protestants. This distinction was invented here, and by us; and was not so much as thought of by themselves.22
Furthermore, Dwight painfully maintained that he was equally un- friendly to Rome and such infidels as refused to differentiate between true and false religion, while he admitted, on the other hand, that there were pious Catholics. In thinking otherwise he felt that one would be guilty of the bigotry with which they are charged. What wonder is it, then, that the Republican of 1801 ridiculed the political inconsistency of the federalist ministry? 23
During the closing years of the century Dwight assumed undoubted leadership. His study of the deistic movement and literature was more thorough than that of any Connecticut man since President Stiles. As scholarly as Stiles, he was a more aggressive character, a stouter debater as well as a more popular preacher. He was a born leader. His orthodoxy was unquestioned. As Yale's head, he was the chief of the clerical fac- tion which was fast forming in answer to Jacobinical attacks on the clergy and their interests. His sermons demonstrated not only that he knew his subject, but that he had closely studied the writings of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, of Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Hume, Bolingbroke, Gibbon, d'Alembert, Voltaire, Rousseau and a host of minor philoso- phers, as well as the leading English works refuting them. He was able
21 Address, July 4, 1798, p. 9; Rev. Nathan Strong exhibited the same views in his Thanksgiving Sermons of 1798 and 1800. Strong's toleration was evidenced in his invitation to Abbé Matignon to use his pulpit when on a visit to Hartford in 1813. Catholic Historical Review, I, 151.
22 Discourse (1801), pp. 54-56; cf. Dwight, Travels, IV, 367.
23 Constitutional Telegraph quoted in American Mercury, June 12, 19, 1800; April 22, July 8, 1802.
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CONNECTICUT IN TRANSITION: 1775-1818
to trace the rise of the Illuminati. He had even looked into the "loose moral principles" of Kant and other German writers. The immature thinker of 1788 who had written the Triumph of Infidelity 24 was now ready to lead and able to convince men of his inherent right of leader- ship in the crusade against irreligion.
The Congregational clergy, seeing the necessity of concerted action, were thankful to have a Dwight for their leader. Scarcely one failed to take his place in the line of battle in defense of church and state. That they might wage a more effective campaign, was their chief plea for a general entrance into politics. In so doing, they made themselves the mark for virulent Republican attacks, with the result that Republican- ism represented to them all that was blackest in Jacobinism. Between the two, they would not differentiate. The increasingly numerous sec- tarians also strove against infidelity by preaching and revivals, with rather more success, for they did not assail Republicanism as part of the deistic movement. Methodist and Baptist exhorters even as Republicans contended against irreligion. As the excesses of the French Revolution had cured of their revolutionary ardor all but the violent partisans, Re- publicans themselves realized that the popular association of deism, in- fidelity and Republicanism would endanger their cause. This concerted action on the part of the settled ministry, supplemented by the telling labors of churchmen and despised sectarians, preserved religion in Con- necticut 25 during this period of crisis.
French books of philosophy were coming rapidly into vogue with translations and popularized pamphlet abridgments.26 The Age of Rea- son by Thomas Paine was read with avidity and by all classes, as editions were cheap and frequently distributed gratis. Rev. William Bentley noted that Paine was universally read in Connecticut, and assumed im- portance because of the diatribes or eulogies heaped upon him by the respective parties.27 He might be labeled a genius without morals, a "strolling preacher of Jacobinism"; but men had not forgotten that, like Ethan Allen, he deserved well of America and evil of England. More-
24 Stiles, Diary, III, 326.
25 Cf. M. Louise Greene, The Development of Religious Liberty in Con- necticut, pp. 410-412.
26 Dwight, Travels, IV, 368; Dana, Two Discourses, p. 33; Abraham Bishop, Oration (1801), pp. 87-88; Dwight, Discourse (1801), p. 50; Rev. Moses Welsh, Sermon (1807), p. 17; Riley, American Thought, pp. 87, 162, 305; Bangs, Methodist Church, II, 21.
27 Diary, III, 42.
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THE RISE OF INFIDELITY TO 1801
over, he reached the masses by popularizing the philosophers whose thoughts were too obscured in their rhetoric and diction to be compre- hended by the uneducated. In this way the simple-minded frontiers- man was often contaminated before the evangelistic exhorter arrived. While Paine's influence was greater outside of New England and espe- cially Connecticut than within, it may be considered a chief factor in the rise of infidelity in the commonwealth.28
Another influential emigrant was the deist, Dr. Joseph Priestley, dis- coverer of oxygen and member of the constitutional reform societies of England, who sought a haven in America from the Birmingham mob who burned his laboratory and library. As a naturalized citizen and a Republican he came to have considerable influence. He was frequently quoted by Republican editors. The American Mercury of Hartford made his name so familiar that the church-goers sometimes dubbed the unreligious as "Priestleians." 29 His Corruptions of Christianity influ- enced Jefferson who in 1803 wrote a moderately deistic Syllabus of an Estimate of the Doctrines of Jesus, compared with those of others.30
Abraham Bishop, a prominent local Republican, while denying charges of being an atheist himself and declaring his doubts as to the likelihood of there being an atheist in all America, bitterly attacked the clergy and advised them to steer clear of politics and stop teaching the people to label men infidels. He further suggested that they refrain from calling to mind Bolingbroke, Hume and Voltaire, who could not be re- futed by being called fools. If Bishop's addresses encouraged infidelity, they served the further purpose of unsettling the church members and spurring them to action. The versatile Joel Barlow, poet, scholar, diplo- mat, cosmopolitan, and deist, likewise must have drawn the attention of his fellow-citizens toward France and her literature. At any rate, the French philosophers were widely read. Their high abstractions and their beguiling style made them more popular and hence difficult to combat. The clergy found an advantage in associating infidelity with immorality and faction, thereby demonstrating the danger to state as well as church.
28 Morse, Federalist Party, pp. 217 ff .; Swift, System of Laws, II, 323.
29 Stiles, Diary, III, 525; Dana, Two Discourses, p. 65; Rev. William W. An- drews, The Correspondence of John Cotton Smith, p. 67.
30 Riley, American Thought, pp. 77 ff.
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CONNECTICUT IN TRANSITION: 1775-1818
2. The Religious Life of Yale College
To appreciate the labors of President Dwight and the widespread influence of deistic thought, one must consider the religious life of Yale College during this era. By noting the hold of infidelity on both faculty and students, a better idea is obtained of the diffusion of irreligious phi- losophy throughout the state. As the center of learning, with a divinity school where practically all of the Congregational clergy were trained, the position of Yale was one of obvious importance.31 If its students could be impressed with orthodox Calvinism as well as with conservatism in politics, the "Old Order" would remain supreme throughout the state; for the influence of Yale men in the pulpit, at the bar, in medicine and in civil office cannot easily be overestimated. On the other hand, if unortho- dox thinking and political liberalism were to saturate the student body, a new régime in the life of the commonwealth would soon follow. There was, then, a political struggle to gain the College, against which the re- form or opposition party were quick to level their shafts. In part the reformers were successful in forcing a compromise by which the Legis- lature granted $40,000 to the College only in consideration that the governor and lieutenant governor and six assistants be admitted to the governing board.32
Liberalism in Yale might be traced back even as far as 1722 when Rector Cutler and Samuel Johnson left the Congregational fold to iden- tify themselves with the infant Anglican organization. While this was an interesting revolt against the severe Calvinism of the College which had been founded because of Harvard's weakening orthodoxy, a liberal spirit was hardly evident until the time of the Great Awakening.
Then Whitfield reported that, while he found little religion in Yale, there was considerable interest in his teaching. In 1745 Yale followed Harvard by formally denouncing Whitfield, and preventing the students from hearing his sermons. As the First Church of New Haven, then the
81 Stiles calculated in 1774 that of the 158 Congregational ministers in the state 131 were Yale men. Diary, II, 415.
32 May, 1792; William L. Kingsley, Yale College, A Sketch of its History, I, 108- 109; Stiles, Diary, III, 8; Franklin B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, I, I. Material of value is to be found in two pamphlets by Dr. Benja- min Gale, A Calm and Full Vindication and A Reply to a Pamphlet; a Letter to a Member of the House, by John Graham, and a Letter to a Honourable Gentleman of the Council-Board by Benjamin Trumbull.
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THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF YALE COLLEGE
common meeting-place of the students and townsmen, was closed to him, he was compelled to speak on the Green. Yet his teaching influenced the student body, for a few became Separates despite the disciplinary at- tempts of President Clap, an extreme anti-revivalist.33 Illustrative of this inquisitorial policy, an attempt had been made in 1743 to suppress a re- print of Locke's Letters on Toleration which the senior class had printed at their own expense.34 In answer to a petition of certain parents that their sons be allowed to attend an outside church, if necessary under proctors, President Clap pointed out that it was impracticable, for proc- tors could not be relied upon, as only the governors of the College could supervise and enforce discipline. To clinch his argument, he asked if the college authorities could be expected to punish students for their failure to attend a Jewish synagogue, if there were one in the vicinity, or an Arian church, when they considered such service worse than none. To avoid this difficulty and increase religious fervor, the college church was established in 1756.35
President Clap did his best to stay the inflow of deistic thought by guarding against the entrance of heretical books into the library. This seems strange in view of the Berkeley donation which the president had himself once catalogued. However, he refused a library from a New- port merchant in schismatic Rhode Island, though Ezra Stiles remon- strated with him:
It is true with this Liberty Error may be introduced; but turn the Tables, the propagation of Truth may be extinguished. Deism has got such Head in the Age of Licentious Liberty, that it would be in vain to try to stop it by hiding the Deistical Writings: and the only Way left to conquer and de- molish it, is to come forth into the Field and Dispute this matter on even Footing-the Evidences of Revelation in my opinion are nearly as demonstra- tive as Newton's Principia, and these are the Weapons to be used. Deism propagates itself in America very fast, and on this Found, strange as it may seem, is the Chh. of Engld built up in politic life. A man may be an excellent chhman and yet a profound Deist. While public popular Delusion is kept up by Deistical Priests, sensible Laymen despise the whole, and yet, strange Contradiction joyn it and entice others to joyn it also, ... and they say all
33 Dexter, Biographical Sketches, I, 771. II, 29, 149. Williston Walker, Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism, p. 497; H. B. Wright et al., Two Centuries of Christian Activity in Yale, pp. 19 ff .; Kingsley, Yale College, I, 77 ff .; George P. Fisher, Church of Christ in Yale, pp. 54 ff.
34 Greene, Religious Liberty, pp. 260 ff.
35 Thomas Clap, The Religious Constitution of Colleges, pp. 12 ff .; Dexter, Bio- graphical Sketches, II, 354.
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CONNECTICUT IN TRANSITION: 1775-1818
priests are alike, we all try to deceive Mankind, there is no Trust to be put in us. Truth and this alone being our Aim in fact, open, frank, and generous we shall avoid the very appearance of Evil.36
Stiles, as has been noticed, could cite his own religious experiences in proof of the efficiency of open, rational refutation.
As the succeeding president, Stiles followed this plan. He met with failure, the religious life of the College becoming worse and worse; for he seems to have been too much the scholar successfully to reach the student body.37 Some of the subjects for the senior debates, noted in his Diary, suggest the thought of the College and the method of refuta- tion. Quite a list of these could be compiled, but a very few will serve our purpose: "Whether the Immortality of the Soul can be proved by reason," "Whether the historical parts of the Bible are of Divine In- spiration," "Whether there be anything contradictory to Reason in Scripture," "Whether an unconverted man ought to enter into the min- istry," "Whether religion has on the whole been of a benefit to man- kind." Other debates dealt with the granting of civil rights to Catholics, to deists in religion and to libertines in morals.38 Now the mere fact that these subjects were considered debatable is enough to show an interest in toleration for all men. Furthermore, they suggest that in some minds deism had reached the point of a menace to the state.
On Dwight's accession to the presidency in 1795, infidelity was rife, in spite of its rigorous punishment. Denial of the Scriptures and propa- gation of heresy were listed before blasphemy, robbery, fornication, theft, forgery and duelling.39 While the fear of expulsion must have prevented too open a display of heresy, yet Lyman Beecher, writing of his undergraduate days, emphasized above all else the prevalence of infidelity and the bravado with which students used such names as Vol- taire and Rousseau.4º Nor were the faculty all religious men, even if they did not parade unorthodox views. Exemplary Tutor Silliman was re- garded as a deist, not professing Christianity until a revival in 1803
36 Stiles Mss., letter, Aug. 6, 1779, quoted in Riley, American Philosophy, p. 2 16; Holmes, Stiles, p. 79.
37 Wright, Two Centuries, pp. 45 ff .; Stiles, Diary, III, 30, 439, 504; Anson P. Stokes, Memorials of Eminent Yale Men, I, 53. Conditions at King's College and Harvard were no better. William E. Channing, Memoirs, I, 70.
38 Stiles, Diary, II, 512. III, 76, 123, 149, 167, 257, 267, 359.
39 Statutes of Yale College, 1795, 1808.
40 Autobiography, I, 43.
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THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF YALE COLLEGE
which Dr. Dwight's vigorous sermons and crusading zeal had inspired. Roger M. Sherman, shaken by Hume, was another who later waxed enthusiastic on reading Edwards and hearing Dwight. Uniting with the college church, he lived ever afterward a Calvinist of the Edwardsian type and became a pillar of the Norwalk society.41 Joel Barlow, a for- mer army chaplain and candidate for the ministry, whose beliefs were a matter of no doubt, described the unreasoning attitude of the authori- ties when, on meeting Silliman in London shortly after Austerlitz, he expressed his satisfaction on learning that chemistry had been added to the curriculum, declaring that:
He would have sent out a chemical apparatus and preparations had he not supposed that, coming from him, the college authorities would make a bonfire of them in the college yard.42
Dwight waged an aggressive campaign against infidelity.43 In his sermons he recounted the danger to church, state, and morals of the popular philosophy, and in debate he encouraged free and open discus- sion of religious doubts and perplexities, thereby gaining an opportunity to refute points raised by doubters. It was the same method that Dr. Joseph Bellamy had pursued with his divinity students. Prospective pur- chasers of his library had been astounded on finding that most of his books were of an irreligious character, until they learned that he pur- chased and critically read them in order to controvert their tenets.44
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