USA > Connecticut > Contributions to the ecclesiastical history of Connecticut > Part 4
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tem under which the local church, as a covenanted brother- hood of souls renewed by the experience of God's grace, was to be merged in the parish ; and all persons of good moral character living within the parochial bounds, were to have, as in England and Scotland, the privilege of baptism for their households, and of access to the Lord's table .*
From that time, the Legislature seems not to have meddled again directly with the question, being satisfied, perhaps, that time would bring the change so much desired. And time did bring the change. It is difficult to say where the resistance to the half-way covenant ceased. Gradually, the churches, weary of contention, fell into the new way for the sake of peace. Perhaps the great movement for a moral and religious reformation, inaugurated in Massachusetts by the reforming synod (as it is called ) of 1679-80, with those solemn covenantings which ensued, contributed something to the change. The church at New Haven, I suspect, yielded at or soon after the ordination of Mr. Pierpont in 1684. Near the close of the century when Haynes and Whiting had been succeeded by Woodbridge in the First church, and Buckingham in the Second, we find both pastors and both churches united in the half-way cove- nant method of churchdiscipline. The principles of the synod of 1662 were for the time victorious throughout New England ;
* "At a Court of Election held at Hartford, May 13th, 1669" * * *
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" The return of the Reverend Mr. James Fitch, Mr. Buckley, Mr. Wakeman and Mr. Eliot was read in this Court, and left upon the file"
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" This Court having seriously considered the great divisions that arise amongst us about matters of Church government, for the honor of God, welfare of the churches, and preservation of the publie peace so greatly hazarded, do declare that whereas the Congregational churches in these parts, for the general of their profession and prac- tiee have hitherto been approved, we can do no less than still approve and eounte- nanee the same to be withont disturbance until better light in an orderly way doth ap- pear ; but yet forasmuch as sundry persons of worth for prudence and piety amongst ns are otherwise persuaded, (whose welfare and peaceable satisfaction wc 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 profession in church ways or assemblies without disturbance." J. H. Trumbull's Colonial Records of Connecticut
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. and the new system was bringing forth fruit after its kind, in the wide growth of a reliance on forms and outward moralities as the only attainable substitute for an unattainable experience of spiritual conversion, and in the development of a porten- tous though unrecognized tendency toward the hierarchical and sacramentarian type of Christianity. In 1708, when the Gen- eral Court of Connecticut issued its rescript to convene our Saybrook synod, the venerable Stoddard, of Northampton, a soundly Calvinistic divine, a faithful pastor, an earnest and evan- gelical preacher, had already published his argument to prove that men confessedly without any spiritual experience are fit subjects of full communion in the church, and ought not to be excluded from that most important means of spiritual quicken- ing, the Lord's Supper, if only they will honestly engage to con- form their outward conduct to the accepted rules of Christian morality. Nor was the principle for which he argued, and which afterwards bore his name, a novelty at that time in New England. Silently, widely, and for at least a quarter of a century, the practice had preceded the public vindication of it.
What then remained to carry out and finish the great change which had already been achieved ? It will be remembered that two questions had been referred to the Massachusetts synod of 1662. In the great controversy and agitation that arose upon the answer given to the first of those questions, the whole sub- ject matter of the second seems to have been for the time for- gotten. But there was an answer to the second question and in proportion as the principles asserted by the synod in relation to church membership prevail, and are carried out to their re- sults, it becomes necessary to provide a government not only in the churches, but over them. To the question, " whether, ac- cording to the word of God, there ought to be a consociation of churches, and what should be the manner of it ?"-the sy- nod of 1662 had given a clear and unequivocally Congrega- tional answer. It declared the entire and complete ecclesiasti-
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cal power of every local or particular church. It re-affirmed, with much accuracy of statement, the principles which the Cambridge Platform had affirmed concerning " the commun- ion of churches one with another." It defined " the consoci- ation of churches " as " their mutual and solemn agreement to exercise communion in such acts as aforesaid among them- selves, with special reference to those churches which by Prov- idence are planted in a convenient vicinity, though with liberty reserved, without offense, to make use of others, as the nature of the case, or the advantage of opportunity may be had thereun- to." It commended such consociation to " the churches of Christ in this country having so good opportunity for it," as a duty urged upon them by various considerations of expedi- ency, and warranted by principles laid down in texts of Holy writ. It proposed, as the manner in which this consociation, or explicit covenant of communion between churches, should be effected; that each church should enter into the confedera- tion by giving its open consent to these principles and rules of intercourse. In Massachusetts, the ancient charter of self- government had been abrogated, and the colony had been brought into a stricter dependence on the king, before the the- ory of the half-way covenant had obtained its full ascendency in the churches ; and there it could not but be felt that any attempt to set up a new and more formal church-establishment, might possibly result in subjecting all their churches to Eng- lish laws and the English Episcopacy. But in this colony there was a different condition of affairs, and a different feeling. Here the ample charter of political power, obtained by the ad- mirable diplomacy of Winthrop from the easy good-nature of Charles II, and the ignorance or thoughtlessness of his minis- ters, had been strangely continued in force ; and a more explicit ecclesiastical establishment might seem to be as practicable as it was desirable.
Do we not find, in all this, some illustration to aid in the in-
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terpretation of that legislative order by which the synod of 1708 was convened at Saybrook ? What were the "defects in the discipline of the churches of this government ?" What need was there of " a more explicit asserting of the rules giv- en in the Holy Scrictures?" The notorious defects, and the want of a more explicit asserting of scriptural rules, might all be summed up in two facts. First, the old Congregational way had been gradually given up, and what they called a " large" Congregationalism-a loose half-way covenant Congre- gationalism, "moderately Presbyterian " in its sympathies and tendencies, and more than moderately Presbyterian in its needs, had been gradually accepted ;- and secondly, those loosely Con- gregational churches, with all their Presbyterian need of gov- ernment over them, were independent of external rule. The General Court, with its constant intermeddling in church quar- rels, could only aggravate the evils which it could not control ; and there was no ecclesiastical authority that could decide judi- cially and conclusively. Here then was the need of a new plat- form in order to a more formal and explicit church establish- ment. " Strict Congregationalism," whatever may be its ad- vantages in other respects, is, for such purposes, a very incon- venient and intractable form of organic Christianity.
The original bill for that act of the General Court-the ver- itable autograph, as it passed through the forms of legislation one hundred and fifty-one years ago, has been preserved in the archives of the State. A few days ago, I had the opportunity of seeing it. The endorsements on that little slip of paper tell us that the bill passed first in the upper House (no date being given )-then, that on the 22d of May, a committee of confer- ence was appointed in the lower House-then, that on the 24th the bill passed. Evidently there was something in it which encountered opposition among the plain honest men of democratic tendencies and sympathies, such as have always constituted the House of Representatives in the General As.
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sembly of Connecticut. Some of them were evidently afraid that some danger to liberty, or to the true order of the gospel, might be concealed in the proposal. It would be interesting to know what was said in the House, and what was done in the committee of conference. Did mere explanation satisfy ? Or was some amendment necessary, before the deputies from the towns would consent to the proposal which had come from Governor Saltonstall and the Assistants? Turning from the en- dorsements to the face of the bill, we find one significant inti- mation. In its original draft, the order required the ministers of the colony to meet at their respective county towns to con- sult and agree ou plans for the government of the churches. The words, " with such messengers as the churches to which they belong shall see cause to send with them," are an interlin-
eation. Whoever may have been the author of this project, the first intention was, that a representative body of ministers, convened by the authority of the civil government, without any opportunity given for the churches to express either ap- probation or dissent, should prepare a system or "form of ecclesiastical discipline," which might be commended to the churches, perhaps imposed upon them, by the legislative power of the colony. By way of afterthought and concession, an opportunity was given to the churches to participate in the proceeding by sending messengers, or to express their disap- probation by refusing to send.
It is noticeable that the records of the meeting at Saybrook show a very great disparity of numbers between the ministers who were present and the messengers of the churches ; the ratio of the ministers to the messengers being that of three to one. How many of the churches had " seen canse " to give their sanction to the constituent county meetings by sending their delegates, does not appear. Was it merely accidental that from New Haven county not one individual appeared as repre- senting any church ? Had the old antipathy which the church-
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es in the New Haven jurisdiction cherished against any possi- bility of subjecting the churches to the civil power, survived so long ?
The first act of the synod was one in which we may be sure they were unanimous. As yet there had been in New England, since the synod of 1637, no controversy or discussion properly theological. No indication of any serious difference of judg- ment among the churches, or among their pastors and teachers, on any doctrinal question, appears till a much later date, so far as I can remember. Doubtless, then, it was with one consent, and without any demurrer or delay, or any suspicion of each other's soundness, that the synod (for so it was in some sense, though it did not formally represent the churches) ac- cepted the Confession of Faith which stands connected with the Saybrook Platform. "We agree that the Confession of Faith owned and assented unto by the elders and messengers assembled at Boston, in New England, May 12, 1780, being the second session of that synod, be recommended to the Honora- ble General Assembly of this Colony, at the next session, for their public testimony thereunto as the faith of the churches of this Colony." There was no need for them to declare, by any authority of their own, what was, and ever had been the doc- trinal belief of the churches of Connecticut. But what they proposed was that the civil government of the Colony should give a " public testimony " to that well known confession- originally drawn up by the Westminster Assembly under a commission from the Long Parliament ; then revised and mod- ified by a meeting of Congregational pastors and delegates con- vened at the Savoy in London by the permission of the Lord Protector Cromwell ; then modified again by the Reforming Sy- nod of Massachusetts in 1680, and by them brought into a near- er conformity with the original Westminster Confession. By a " public testimony from the civil government," that confession was to be invested with a new authority in Connecticut, and
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was to become the doctrinal basis of a new ecclesiastical " es- tablishment."
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The next act of the synod, in the order of their report, is given in these words : " We agree also, that the Heads of Agree ment assented to by the United Ministers, formerly called Pres- byterian and Congregational, be observed by the churches throughout this Colony." Here we find the synod acting, or seeming to act, as if it were invested with full and final power to impose a Platform on the churches. "We agree " that a certain code of rules and principles " be observed by the churches throughout this Colony." Doubtless it was a very reasonable and proper thing for them to agree in accepting and approving the Heads of Agreement. And if they had com- mended those Heads of Agreement to the churches for their acceptance and adoption, that also would have been a very reasonable and proper thing. Or if they had commended the Heads of Agreement to the government of the Colony that it might be by them incorporated with the basis of the proposed religious establishment, that would have been in full conform- ity with the commission under which they were sitting as a synod. But that imperious phrase, " We agree that the Heads of Agreement be observed by the churches throughout this Col- ony " might seem to have been an oversight.
Those "Heads of Agreement, assented to by the United Ministers formerly called Presbyterian and Congregational," were an English platform. In old England, Puritanism had been broken down, and had suffered a total defeat, in conse- quence of the pertinacious disagreement between the Presby- terians with their passion for a national church and a state es- tablishment of religion, and the Independents or Congregation- alists, with their unyielding demand for a more radical refor- mation, and a larger measure of ecclesiastical liberty. After the restoration of the Stuarts to the throne, and of the old ecclesi- astical system, the mutual repulsion between those two bodies
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of Nonconformists was gradually weakened under the pressure of an impartial persecution ; while the restraints and disabil- ities which hedged them in, made it impossible for them to organize anything. When a more tolerant policy had begun to prevail under the reign of William and Mary, the differences between Presbyterians on the one hand, who could only gather isolated congregations, and who had lost all hope of ever be- coming the national church of England, and Independents on the other, who repudiated the idea of a national church ; and who desired no classical . or synodical organizations-was theoretical rather than practical. At last, in the year 1691, a formal union of the Pedo-baptist dissenting ministers in and about London, was effected on a platform of rules and Serip- tural principles, which, for the most part, ignored, or covered up in comprehensive statements, the heads of difference be- tween the Presbyterian and Congregational theories. That platform, for so it might have been denominated by those who framed it, was modestly entitled " Heads of Agreement." It was not a compact among churches, nor was it formed by any representative convention. It was only the statement of a method in which certain ministers of the gospel, differing in the theory of ecclesiastical order, had agreed to recognize each other, and to bring about, if they could, a more intimate com- munion among their churches. Framed for such a purpose, it could not but imply as its basis the right of each congregation or worshiping society to manage its affairs in its own way ; and so it was in fact, though not in name, a Congregational plat- form. While the differences between that and the Cambridge Platform are not very striking, and are by no means offensive in expression, even to a rigid Congregationalist, the setting up of the Heads of Agreement by the Saybrook synod, as a substi- tute for the old platform, was not without significance. It im- plied that the new form of ecclesiastical government in Connec-
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ticut was to be, in some sort, and to some extent, a compro- mise with Presbyterian principles.
A single glance at the English platform thus introduced and commended, is sufficient to discover that it is designed to pro- duce some uniformity of discipline in churches mutually inde- pendent. But in respect to any method of making an appeal from the erroneous judgment of a particular church, or bring- ing the influence of neighbor churches to bear on a delin- quent church, it is far less explicit than the Cambridge Plat- form. There remained, therefore, for the synod, another, and more difficult duty. That " permanent establishment among ourselves " which the political leaders of the Colony so much desired, and that " good and regular issue in cases subject to ecclesiastical discipline," without which, the hope of an estab- lishment would be chimerical, had not yet been provided for.
Fifteen " Articles of Discipline "-the synod's own work- were therefore introduced into the report, as having been agreed upon " for the better regulation of the administration of church discipline in relation to all cases ecclesiastical, both in particular churches and councils, to the full determining and executing the rules in all such cases." What the meaning of those articles is, or rather what their meaning was when they were new, remains to this day a doubtful question ; and I believe that I may say that, even now, one of our heads of agreement, here in Connecticut, is that on that question we agree to differ. The synod's fifteen Articles seem to be, in effect, a compromise between that simple and purely Congregational method of consociation which was proposed by the Massachu- setts synod of 1662, and something else that was intended to be a great deal more stringent.
Thus the work of the synod was completed. Whether they understood their own work or not, they unanimously voted for it ; Fand the three documents which constitute the Saybrook Platform, were, one month afterward, presented to the legisla-
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ture, in its October session at New Haven, for approval and es- tablishment. The legislative act which ensued, is, every word of it, worth repeating here.
" The Reverend ministers, delegates from the elders and messen- gers of this government, met at Saybrook September 9th, 1708, having presented to thisA ssembly a Confession of Faith, Heads of Agreement, and regulations in the administration of church disci- pline, as unanimously agreed and consented to by the elders and churches in this government ; this Assembly doth declare their great approbation of such an happy agreement, and do ordain that all the churches within this government that are, or shall be, thus united in doctrine, worship, and discipline, be, and for the future shall be owned and acknowledged established by law ;- provided that nothing herein shall be intended or construed to hinder or prevent any society or church, that is or shall be allowed by the laws of this government, who soberly differ or dissent from the united churches hereby established, from exercising worship and discipline, in their own way, according to their consciences."
Several particulars in this act seem remarkably significant. First, it is very coolly-and, with due reverence to the memory of Governor Saltonstall and his associates in the government, we might even say, audaciously-affirmed that the Saybrook Platform had been presented to that General Court as a thing " unanimously agreed and consented to by the elders and churches." In other words it was pretended that those sixteen men at Saybrook, twelve of them ministers convened only as ministers by the simple mandate of the government without any reference whatever to the consent of the churches, and the other four of them deputies of the deputies whom some of the churches had sent to the several county meetings-were "the elders and churches of this government ;" and that what they, in that little conclave, had "agreed and consented to," needed no approbation or acceptance from any of the forty churches
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then existing in Connecticut. It may be doubted whether a more signal instance of merely arbitrary imputation can be found any where save in some men's science of theology. Yet this is only an instance of the style in which the legislature of Con- necticut, from the first, was wont to meddle in ecclesiastical affairs.
In the next place, the new Platform is deliberately and dis- tinctly imposed upon the churches by excluding from the benefits of the previously existing establishment every church that should refuse conformity. Heretofore, all churches, formed with the consent of the government and the approbation of neighbor churches, had been equal in privileges. Their teach- ing elders, and none others, were the authorized ministry in the several towns and parishes, their administrations the only au- thorized administrations. But this act expresses the intention of the government to repudiate and disown all churches that should insist on the ancient system of church order, or what was called the Congregational way. Forty years before, it had been ordained that as the Congregational churches had been approved, they should still be countenanced and protected till better light should appear ; though, inasmuch as there were sundry persons of prudence and piety presbyterially inclined, it was provided that such persons, being approved according to law as orthodox in the fundamentals of the Christian reli- gion, should be allowed their own persuasion and profession of church ways without disturbance. But now the long expected light had come, and henceforth the churches of the new Plat- form were to be the only ecclesiastical establishment in Con- necticut.
In the third place, was the proviso at the close of the act fairly understood on all sides? The fair construction of it seems to be that if the church in New Haven, for example, or the church in Norwich, should refuse submission to the Say- brook Platform, and insist upon proceeding in the Congrega-
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tional way, it might indeed maintain its separate worship without disturbance, but it should no longer be in a legal con- nection with the town ; it should no longer have a right to the place of worship established by the town, and its ministers should no longer have a right to public encouragement and support. But there is reason to doubt whether the proviso was so understood by those who enacted it-or at least whether it was so understood by all of them.
In conformity with this new law, a convention, or council of ministers and churches was soou held in each of the four counties into which our territory was then divided. In Hart- ford County, (which included Waterbury in one direction, and Windham, Colchester and Plainfield in another, ) the thirteen churches then existing were confederated under the new reli- gious constitution of the Colony in two consociations, and their elders were accordingly united in two associations. Each of the other counties became one ecclesiastical district. So that when the first General Association of the Colony of Connecticut was convened at Hartford in May, 1709-a meeting of which no record is extant, but which is incidentally noted in the Colo- nial Records *- the body included five particular associations.
But how was the new religious constitution received by the churches ? And how did they understand it when they sub- mitted to it? Our venerable historian, Dr. Trumbull, says that the Platform " met with a general reception, though some of the churches were extremely opposed to it." He also tells us that " somewhat different constructions were put upon the con- stitution. Those who were for a high consociational govern-
* May, 1709. "It is ordered and enacted by the Governor, Council, and Represen- tatives in General Conrt assembled, and by authority of the same, That the Reverend Elders, the General Delegates of the several Associations of Elders within this Colo- ny, now assembled in Hartford, do revise and prepare for the press the Confession of Faith, Articles of Agreement between the united brethren in England, formerly called Presbyterian and Congregational, together with the Discipline agreed upon by the General Council of the Reverend Elders and churches of this Colony assembled at Saybrook " "and being revised, that the same shall be forthwith printed."
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