USA > Connecticut > Contributions to the ecclesiastical history of Connecticut > Part 3
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tory will undertake to find that Presbyterian element in the fact that every church was to have its eldership, including one at least beside the teaching elders; nor in the fact that the Cambridge Platform insists on the duties of churches toward each other. Neither of these facts has any relation to the dif- ference between the Presbyterianism of that age, and "the Congregational way." Some of the first ministers of New England were avowed Presbyterians. Such were Thomas Parker of Newbury, and his kinsman and colleague James Noyes, the father of the two Noyeses in our Saybrook synod. Such was also John Woodbridge, first of Andover, and after- wards of Newbury, another kinsman of Thomas Parker, and the father of that Timothy Woodbridge who was also a mem- ber of our synod. Others were semi-presbyterians, or infected with a presbyterian tendency. Such was Samuel Stone, the famous colleague of the more famous Hooker. He appears to have held firmly enough the principle that all church power inheres in every organized local church ; but his Presbyterian tendency is intimated by the tradition which imputes to him the saying that " a church is a speaking aristocracy in the face of a silent democracy." The elders ouly were to speak in the transaction of church affairs ; the brethren were to give their consent in silence. While Thomas Hooker lived, the presby- terianizing tendency in his colleague teacher was effectually counteracted, or perhaps was not developed. But soon after the first pastor's death, the conflict of opinions in that most important church began. And soon, as all the traces of the story show, the conflict involved not only the rights and functions of the brotherhood in the government of the church, but also the qualifications for baptism, and the conditions and nature of church-membership. Soon, thoughtful men, in various parts of New England, were able to discern how far the influence of the principles that had been newly broached at Hartford might extend, and how perilous a defection from the Congre-
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gational way was impending. The demand for a promiscuous administration of baptism after the way of national churches, and for the recognized church-membership of all baptized per- sons not convicted of some overt and positive offence, had been peeped and muttered elsewhere, but had been suppressed with- out much trouble. It has been often alleged, that this de- mand originated in the unwise exclusion of all but church members from participation in political power, and that a reasonable extension of the right of suffrage would have silenced the demand. But on such a theory how is it to be explained that the troubles which the theory accounts for, be- gan in just that colony in which no such exclusion had ever been established or attempted ? No; the controversy which agitated the churches on the river, however it may have been embittered by political interests, as well as by personal feel- ings, was essentially nothing else than the fermentation of that leaven of Presbyterianism which came over not with the Pilgrims in the Mayflower, but with the later Puritan emigra- tion, and which the Cambridge Platform, with all its explicit- ness in asserting the rules given in the Scriptures, had not effectually purged out.
That local controversy at Hartford and Wethersfield, gave origin to the third New England Synod. Once and again the General Court of the colony had interposed in vain. Council after council had given advice in vain. At last, at the request of the government in Connecticut, the government of Massa- chusetts gave out the invitation for a synod, which was con- vened in 1657. Twenty-one questions "about church af- fairs," and especially about the relation of baptized persons as such to the church, had been sent from Connecticut to Massa- chusetts, and were the subject matter on which the synod was to give light. In one respect this differed from the two for- mer synods. Instead of being a general convention of " el- ders and other messengers " from the churches, it was rather a
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select assembly of divines, commissioned by the several gov- ernments. Twelve eminent elders were appointed by the General Court of Massachusetts. Four, viz : the aged War- ham, of Windsor, Stone, of Hartford, Blinman, of New Lon- don, and Russell of Wethersfield, (the father of that Samuel Russell who was a member of our Saybrook synod,) were commissioned from Connecticut. But the General Court of the New Haven jurisdiction having, " seriously considered " the matter, " with the help of such elders as were present," declined the invitation in a courteous but significant letter, which they carefully put upon their own records. They had " heard of some petitions and questions at first unwarrantably procured and presented at Connecticut, but since, under the name of liberty, offensively if not mutinously prosecuted." They " approved the readiness " of Massachusetts " to afford help when the case requires it, yet themselves conceive that the elders of Connecticut colony, with due assistance from their court, had been fully sufficient to clear and maintain the truth, and to suppress the boldness of such petitioners, without calling a synod or any such meeting, which in such times may prove dangerous to the purity and peace of these churches and colonies." They say, "We hear the petitioners, or others closing with them, arc very confident they shall obtain great alterations both in civil government and in church discipline, and that some of them have procured and hired one as their agent, to maintain in writing (as is conceived, ) that parishes in England, consenting to and continuing their meetings to worship God, are true churches, and such persons coming over hither, (without holding forth any work of faith, &c., ) have right to all church privileges. And probably they expect their deputy should employ himself and improve his interests, to spread and press such paradoxes in the Massachusetts, yea at the synod or meeting." Intimating the probability that "some in all the colonies, affecting such liberty, may too readily
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hearken and comply," they at the same time expressed their hope that the "general conrts who have framed their civil pol- ity and laws according to the rules of God's most holy word, and the elders and churches who have gathered and received their discipline out of the same holy Scriptures, will unani- mously improve their power, and endeavor to preserve the same inviolably." They refer to the condition of their churches, weakened within a few years by the removal or death of sev- eral elders, whose places had not been supplied, and to " Mr. Davenport's personal unfitness for so long a journey in the heat of summer," as showing that " it would be very inconve- nient for them to send or spare any of their remaining teach- ing officers to a service like to require much time." At the same time the elders of that jurisdiction have perused the twenty-one questions that are to be considered by the synod ; and their answer, " drawn up by Mr. Davenport," and " fully approved " by the court, is sent with the letter, and so the whole matter is by them devoutly commended to God, " without whose special blessing, (according to the present state and frame of things in Connecticut colony, which may soon spread farther,) such a meeting if it hold, may produce sad effects."* How much effect this indirect but strong remonstrance had upon the meeting in its discussions and conclusions, does not distinctly appear. The result of the meeting was to some extent, (per- haps not entirely,) what the New Haven authorities, civil and ecclesiastical, had feared ; for that meeting of divines first gave authority and credit to the notion of what afterwards became so celebrated in our church history, under the name of the " half way covenant."
At first the churches seem not to have accepted at all the new principle which had been commended to them. But the proposal struck the previously existing system just at its weak-
* New Haven Colonial Records, (C. J. Hoadly,) vol. ii, pp. 195, 198.
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est point. Some modification of what had been, till then, the actual working of the Congregational church order, was inevitable. Two serious inconveniences (to use the softest phrase) had been developed in attempting to carry into effect that cardinal principle, that " saints by calling" are the only fit material of a church. First, there was felt to be a necessity for some arrangement that should recognize the obvious rights of those who, while they were required to aid in the support of the ministry, had no voice or power in the election of the ministers-the class whose rights are now amply guarded in the constitution and powers of our parishes or ecclesiastical societies ; and, secondly, there must needs be some arrangement that should recognize the Christian standing of those other- wise Christian people, who misled by inadequate or erroneous views of religious experience, or trying their own experience by traditional and technical methods, or for any other reason, dared not profess that they had been effectually called by the work of the Holy Spirit-a class of worshipers whom we now endeavor to instruct and guide by setting before them the prima- ry act of repentance towards God and of trust in Christ, not mere- ly as an experience to be waited for, but rather as an immediate and urgent duty, and by illustrating in every way the simpli- city, and (so far as consciousness reaches) the naturalness of a truly Christian experience. The expedient of recognizing a qualified church-membership in all baptized persons, not only during their childhood, but after coming to maturity, and of inviting them to assume and renew the engagements that were made for them in their baptism, and to bind themselves by a public religious vow to live a Christian life, without any pro- fession of a Christian experience,-aggravated, instead of expo- sing to refutation, the religious and theological error from which it sprung. Thus the synod of 1656 prepared the way for another which was assembled only six years afterwards.
Under the continued and growing pressure of the difficulties
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which I have just mentioned, the General Court of Massachu- setts issued an order for a general synod of elders and messen- gers from all the churches of that colony. That fourth synod met at Boston in 1662. Two questions only were referred to it for discussion and decision :- first, " Who are the subjects of baptism ?"-and secondly, " Whether according to the word of God there ought to be a consociation of churches, and what should be the manner of it?" After much deliberation and debate, the synod gave its answer, not unanimously, but by a vote of more than seven to one, as reported by Cotton Ma- ther. Yet in that small minority there were " several reverend and judicious persons," whose dissent greatly impaired the force of the result. Most of the seven " propositions " in which the judgment of the majority concerning the subjects of baptism was summed up, are substantially accordant with what I suppose to be the ordinary practice in our churches at the present time. But the fifth of those propositions reaffirmed and com- mended to the churches the crude expedient of the half-way covenant .* It did not merely provide that baptized persons growing up in the bosom of the church with blameless char- acter, and without any overt denial of the faith in which they were nurtured, might offer their children for baptism without being required to demand and obtain at the same time the privilege of full communion. But it also provided that such persons, as a condition preliminary to the baptism of their children, should make a certain public profession of Christian faith and Christian obedience, including a formal covenant with God and with the church, which at the same time was to be understood as implying no profession of any Christian experi-
* " Church members who were admitted in minority, understanding the doctrine of faith, and publicly professing their assent thercto; not scandalous in life ; and solemnly owning the covenant before the church, wherein they give up themselves and children to the Lord, and subject themselves to the government of Christ in the church,-their children are to be baptized."
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ence. The former, by itself, might have been a comparatively harmless innovation. The latter was a grave theological error, hardening and establishing itself in the form of an ecclesias- tical system.
Neither of the two western colonies was represented in that synod. Connecticut was occupied just then with the excite- ment of receiving its charter from the king, and with the effort to extinguish the independent jurisdiction of the New Haven colony, in which there was a strong and united opposition to the principles that seemed likely to prevail. But as soon as it had become certain that New Haven was under a necessity of giving up its independence, and that a new and greater danger, impending over all the colonies, would compel those towns to take refuge under the charter, the General Court of Con- necticut availed itself of the opportunity to give a very explicit sanction to the new principle of church-membership, com- mending it to all the ministers and churches, for adoption, as a rule of practice. It even " desired that the several officers of the respective churches would be pleased to consider whe- ยท ther it be not the duty of the court to order the churches to practice according to the premises, if they do not practice without such order."* Here is evidence not only that the old way of the churches was to be subverted, but also that the churches were slow in yielding to the outside pressure. Had they stood upon their congregational independency alone, they would not have submitted.
Less than two years after that intermeddling of the legisla- ture with a purely ecclesiastical question, the difficulties that had so long existed in the church at Hartford, were coming to a crisis. John Whiting, a son of one of the wealthiest and most honored among the first planters of Hartford, and Joseph Haynes, a son of the first governor of that colony, had be-
* Colonial Records of Conn., (J. HI. Trumbull,) vol. i, 438. 1
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come the successors of Hooker and Stone. Both were young ; Whiting thirty-one years old, and Haynes only twenty-five. A letter from John Davenport to Gov. Winthrop, dated June 14, [24] 1666, gives us some insight into the state and pro- gress of the controversy. " I feel at my heart," said the stiff old Congregationalist, "no small sorrow for the public divi- sions and distractions at Hartford. Were Mr. Hooker now in v'vis, it would be as a sword in his bones that the church which he had planted there should be thus disturbed by inno- vations brought in and urged so vehemently by his young suc- cessor in office, not in spirit ; who was so far from these lax ways that he opposed the baptizing of grandchildren by their grandfathers' right." "But he is at rest; and the people there grow wofully divided, and the better sort are exceedingly grieved, while the looser and worser party insult, hoping that it will be as they would have it, viz : that the plantations shall be brought into a parish way, against which Mr. Hooker hath openly borne a strong testimony in print. The most of the churches in this jurisdiction are professedly against this new way, both in judgment and practice, upon gospel grounds, namely : New Haven, Milford, Stratford, Branford, Guilford, Norwalk, Stamford, and those nearer to Hartford, namely Farm- ington, and the sounder portion of Windsor, together with their reverend pastor Mr. Warham, and I think Mr. Fitch and his church also." Probably the writer suspected, if he did not positively know, that his friend the governor was prudently favoring the innovation. If so, we can easily understand the reason of his writing just in this vein. After having intimated that he and others who were of the same opinion, could not be expected to continue silent when " the faith and order of the churches of Christ " were to be contended for ; and having made allusion to the work which he had published against the propositions of " the Bay-Synod," and to another book of his on the same theme, which remained unpublished, he proceeds
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to let the governor know how the facts then recent at Hartford, seemed, when reported at a distance. "I shall briefly sug- gest unto you what I have heard, viz : that before the last lecture-day, when it was young Mr. Haynes' turn to preach, he sent three of his party to tell Mr. Whiting, that the next lecture-day he would preach about his way of baptizing, and would begin the practising of it on that day. Accordingly he preached, and water was prepared for baptism, (which I suppose was never administered in a week-day in that church before,) but Mr. Whiting, as his place and duty required, testi- ficd against it, and refused to consent to it. Much was spoken to little purpose by some of Mr. Haynes' party. [The "silent democracy " had found their tongues.] But when Mr. War- ham began to speak, one of the church rudely hindered him, saying to this purpose, 'What hath Mr. Warham to do to speak in our church matters ?' This check stopped Mr. Warham's proceeding at that time." The writer then interrupts his nar- rative to show that inasmuch as the matter in hand con- cerned not that church only, but was " of common concern- ment to all the churches in these parts," Mr. Warham ought to have been heard ; " but," he adds, with something of an old man's querulousness, " we live in times and places when the faces of the elders are not duly honored." Resu- ming his narrative, he says, " Yourself prudently concluded that that day was not a fit season to begin their purposed practice, seeing it was not consented to but opposed. And so it ceased for that time." He then proceeds to expostulate against an arrangement which, as he was informed, had been made for a public dispute between the two ministers on the next lecture day, and to propose in place of it, a written discussion of the question. Of the former plan he says, " No good issue can ra- tionally be expected of a verbal dispute, at that time, and in that place, where so many are likely to disturb the business with interruptions and clamors, and to prepare a sufficient
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number to overvote the better party, for the establishment of the worser way. So truth shall be dethroned, and error set up in the throne." Of his own plan he says, "This is the most suitable way for a peaceable issuing of the dispute, with solid judgment, and with due moderation and satisfaction ; and let all practice of Mr. Haynes' opinion be forborne till the truth be cleared. But if Mr. Haynes refuseth this way, I shall suspect that he more confides in the clamors of his party than in the goodness of his cause, or in the strength of his arguments, or in his ability for disputation."* What the result was of young Mr. Haynes' challenge of his colleague to a public dispute, or of old Mr. Davenport's gratuitously offered advice, we have no means of knowing, except in general that Mr. Haynes and " his way of baptizing," were in the major- ity ; and that three years afterwards Mr. Whiting and his ad- herents, under the advice of a council of elders, and with a full permission from the General Court, withdrew from the original church in Hartford, for the sake of "practicing the Congregational way." In the preamble to the covenant which they adopted on the day of their being formally con- stituted a distinct church, (Feb. 12, [22] 1670,) the seceding party made a distinct profession of the Congregationalism, from which the First church had departed. " Public opposi- tion and disturbance," such was the language of their pre- amble, " hath of late years been given, both by preaching and practice, to the Congregational way of church order, by all manner of orderly establishments settled, and for a long time unanimously approved and peaceably practiced in this place." " We," therefore, " declare that according to the light we have hitherto received, the forementioned Congregational way (for the substance of it,) as formerly settled, professed and prac- ticed, under the guidance of the first leaders of this church of
* History and Genealogy of the Davenport Family, pp. 360-364.
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Hartford, is the way of Christ." Their statement of the " main heads or principles " which constitute and define the Congregational way, though very brief, is an exact summary of the Congregationalism which we find asserted in the Cam- bridge Platform .*
Notwithstanding the strenuousness of the opposition, and the divisions among ministers and churches,-of which the proceedings at Hartford are a specimen,-the new principles and practice gradually prevailed. There was no longer any pretense that the new way was really and simply the Congre- gational way. In 1676, the ecclesiastical and religious character of Connecticut was officially represented to the Lords of trade and plantations, in these words : "Our people, in this colony, are some of them strict Congregational men, others more large Congregational men, and some moderate Presbyterians. The Congregational men of both sorts are the greatest part of the people of the colony. There are four or five Seventh-day men, and about so many more Quakers." A very intelligible classification in the light of what we know about the eccle- siastical movement then in progress ! The new system was " LARGE Congregationalism," with some not yet assimilated mixture of " moderate Presbyterianism ;" and the " strictness" of the old Congregational way was gradually failing and dying out. As the aged ministers and other old men, honored and influential, who had resisted the conclusions of the Mas- sachusetts synod, passed away, the half-way covenant came in with the new generation of pastors and church members.
From the first, the predominating influence in the govern- ment seems to have favored the new system. I have already men- tioned one instance of direct legislative intermeddling, which occured even before the absorption of the New Haven colony by Connecticut had been quite consummated. Another in- stance took place in 1666, while Mr. Whiting and Mr. Haynes,
* Trumbull's History, vol. i, pp. 461-463.
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in the church at Hartford, were at the hight of their dispute. At that time the General Court undertook to force the new system into operation by means of a clerical convention, in- cluding all the teaching elders in the colony, together with those ministers who, like the two Noyeses, were settled in towns where no churches had been gathered, to whom were to be added four from Massachusetts, selected and invited by the same authority. At first it was thought that such a conven- tion might be made to pass for a synod, and it was so denom- inated in the order. But the jealousy of the churches having had time to manifest itself, the name was changed, and by a new order the meeting was required to take the humbler title of "an assembly of the ministers of this colony." The whole movement, however, notwithstanding this timely con- cession, seems not to have proceeded according to the inten- tion of its authors, and after one session, [May, 1667] in which it became manifest that the ministers were not very manage- able, the assembly was quietly and adroitly got rid of before the time arrived to which it had adjourned itself.
The next year a different movement was made. Four min- isters, one from each county,* were commissioned to meet at Saybrook, "to consider of some expedient for our peace, by searching out the rule, and thereby clearing up how far the churches and people may walk together within themselves, and one with another, in the fellowship and order of the Gos- pel, notwithstanding some various apprehensions among them in matters of discipline respecting membership and baptism, &c." Those commissioners made their report in May, 1669, but what it was does not appear. No trace of it can be found, save one enactment which stands upon the record of that ses- sion, and which appears to have been intended as a comprom- ise. The preamble of that act refers to the great divisions
* The ministers appointed were James Fitch, of Norwich, Gershom Bulkley, of Wethersfield, Joseph Eliot, of Guilford, and Samuel Wakeman, of Fairfield.
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in the colony " about matters of church government." Moved by a regard " for the honor of God," for the " welfare of the churches," and for " the public peace so greatly endangered," the court undertakes to pronounce upon the matter. First, " This Court do declare, that whereas the Congregational churches in these parts, for the general of their profession and practice, have hitherto been approved, we can do no less than still approve and countenance the same to be without disturb- ance until better light in an orderly way doth appear." Is there not something particularly significant in this ? "The Congregational Churches in these parts," whose way was mark- ed out and defended by Hooker and Davenport, as well as by Cotton and the authors of the Cambridge Platform, have hith- erto been approved " for the general of their profession and practice," and therefore their liberty to continue in their course is to be undisturbed " until better light in an orderly way doth appear." But this intimation of another ecclesiastical system looming in the future is not all. In the second place, "For- asmuch as sundry persons of worth for prudence and piety amongst us are otherwise persuaded, (whose welfare and peace- able satisfaction we desire to accommodate,) this Court doth declare that all such persons, being also approved according to law as orthodox and sound in the fundamentals of Christian religion, may have allowance of their persuasion and profes- sion in church ways or assemblies without disturbance." All this was right undoubtedly. But it shows, plainly enough, that the deplored divisions about church government were caused by the strong preference which "sundry persons of worth for prudence and piety" had manifested for a new ecclesiastical system which was not Congregationalism. That system was old in the old world, but new in New England. It was the system of all national churches, and therefore of the Presbyte- rian party in the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assem- bly. It was what Davenport called the " parish way"-a sys-
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