USA > Connecticut > Contributions to the ecclesiastical history of Connecticut > Part 5
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ment, construed it rigidly according to the Articles of Disci- pline ;" and others by the Heads of Agreement ; or at least they were for softening down the more rigid articles by construing them agreeably to those heads of union." There remain, within our reach at this day, some facts and documents to illus- trate the testimony of this careful and honest historian.
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For example : The convention for New Haven county was held at Branford on the 13th of April, 1709. Five elders were present ; and their five churches were represented by eight messengers. Three churches and their elders made no appear- ance in the council,-namely, Guilford, where Thomas Rug- gles was pastor,-Wallingford, where Samuel Street had been pastor more than thirty years,-and East Haven, where Jacob Hemingway had been quite recently ordained to the pastoral office. The story is that the churches which were represented in the council had particularly charged their messengers to "take care to secure their Congregational privileges." Of course the Articles of Discipline were seriously called in ques- tion by some members of the council; and we are told that " the Rev. Mr. Andrew and Mr. Pierpont interpreted these ar- ticles to their satisfaction." Not content with oral explana- tions, they insisted that the sense of the ambiguous articles should be written and fixed to prevent a different interpreta- tion in time to come; and that written interpretation, which they placed upon their minutes, makes the Platform a purely and thoroughly Congregational confederation of Congregational churches. Even " the sentence of non-communion" against an erring and obstinate church, as provided for in the sixth article, was not to be declared till the constituent churches should have been informed of the council's judgment, and should have expressed their approval of it .*
*Narrative of the Proceedings of the First Society and Church in Wallingford, &c. By Jonathan Todd, 1759, pp. 33-37. Also, Congregational Order, pp. 284-286.
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On the other hand, the convention of elders and messengers for Fairfield County had held its meeting, at Stratfield, just four weeks earlier, [Mar. 16.] Every elder in the county was there, six in all. Of the eight churches, Greenwich only (which seems to have been in a disorganized condition) was not repre- sented ; and Norwalk alone was contented with a single mes- senger. The record of that meeting is preserved at length upon the record-book of the Stratfield church. It was not till the second day of the session that any vote was taken. Then, after a vote to institute one consociation for the county, an ex- tended ultra-Presbyterian interpretation and construction of the Articles of Discipline was put upon the record. It was dis- tinctly resolved that the pastors, met in one consociation, have power, with the consent of the messengers of our churches chosen and attending, authoritatively and decisively to deter- mine ecclesiastical affairs brought to their cognizance, accord- ing to the word of God; and that our pastors, with the con- currence and consent of the messengers to be chosen and that shall attend, upon all future occasions, have like authori- tative, juridical and decisive power of determination of affairs ecclesiastical ; and that in further and fuller meetings of two consociations together
* there is the like authorita- tive, juridical, and decisive power," &c. It was also resolved " that, in the sixth paragraph of said conclusions, we do not hold ourselves obliged in our practice to use the phrase of ' the sentence of 'non-communion' but instead thereof to use the phrase of the sentence of excommunication, which, in our judgment, may be formally applied in the case expressed in said paragraph ;" and furthermore, " that the judgment of the consociation or council be executed by any pastor appointed thereto by the council, when the pastor that hath already dealt in the case, hath not a freedom of conscience to execute the same." And as if to show more completely the genius of the system under that construction of it, there was a formal reso-
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lution " that all persons that are known to be baptized, shall, in the places where they dwell, be subject to the censures of admonition and excommunication, in case of scandal commit- ted and obstinately persisted in."
How far this new ecclesiastical constitution, as expounded and applied in Fairfield county, differed from the Congrega- tional way as marked out by the fathers of New England-by how many " degrees toward the antarctique" (in the phrase of the first John Davenport, ) it had " varied from the first ways of reformation here begun" is evident enough to any who will consult such an authority as our venerable Hooker. He says distinctly. The church " is so far subject to the consociation of churches, that she is bound, in case of doubt and difficulty, to crave their counsel, and if it be according to God, to follow it ; and if she shall err from the rule, and continue obstinate there- in, they have authority to renounce the right hand of fellow- ship with her."* He says expressly, in treating of the power of synods or councils, " They have not power infli- gendi censuras, utpote excommunicationis." "They have no power to impose their canons or conclusions on the church- es."+ And throughout the whole of the fourth part of his Survey of the sum of church discipline, he reasons continually against that same juridical and decisive power of councils or synods, and especially that power of excommunicating individuals or churches, which the Fairfield consociation in 1709 dared to challenge for itself.
John Woodward, pastor of the Norwich church, has already been named as one of the scribes in the Saybrook synod. The incident has been commemorated, doubtless with some degree of correctness, that when the act of the legislature, adopting the new Platform as the ecclesiastical constitution of the colo- ny, had been passed, he read that act to his congregation but without the proviso. Thereupon, as the story is given by
* T. Hooker, Survey, part 2, chap. 3, p. 80. t Ibid. p. 4, c. 3.
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Isaac Backus the Baptist historian, "Richard Bushnell and Joseph Backus, Esquires, who [as representatives of the town] had opposed that scheme in the Assembly, informed the church of the liberty they had to dissent from it; but the minister carried a major vote against them. Therefore these represen- tatives and other fathers of the town withdrew * * and held worship by themselves for three months. For this the minister and his party censured them." "But not long after the Norwich minister had censured their representatives, he con- sented to refer the matter to a council ; and they followed it with council after council for about six years." " At last, by advice of a council that met August 31, 1716, said minister was dismissed, and the church in Norwich determined to abide upon its ancient foundation." The successor of Mr. Wood- ward, Dr. Lord, was required at the time of his settlement to accept the Cambridge Platform as the assertion of the rules of discipline given in the Scriptures .*
Many incidents may be gleaned from public and private re- cords to show what kind of a government in and over the churches was intended by the anti-congregational party in those times. The first pastor in Durham was Nathaniel Chann- cey, a very near relative of that Charles Chauncey who was a member of the Saybrook synod. His ordination took place in February 1711, after nearly five years of service as a candi- date. The question of his settlement had been long pending, because a portion of the people were not satisfied with his " judgment as to matters of discipline." Here was an instance of the conflict of opinions which at that period was producing so many divisions in Connecticut. What the particular ques- tions were between Mr. Chauncey and the dissentients from his judgment, does not distinctly appear. But just as the diffi- culty was coming to a crisis, " I heard" says Chauncey, " of
* Hovey, Life and Times of Isaac Backus, pp. 23, 24. Backus, (I. c.) adds, "The church in East Windsor, under the care of Mr. Timothy Edwards, father of Mr. Jona- than, also refused to receive the Saybrook Platformn."
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the general meeting of the elders to be held at Saybrook. I told some of them [the malcontents] I thought it was wisdom to tarry until that was over. As soon as I could, I got a copy [of the new Platform] and let them have it to read among themselves. And having read and considered it, those that were members in full communion came to me, and told me that their business was to tell me they were all suited." There- upon he was invited to " take the pastoral charge." " At this meeting," he says, " something was said about the understand- ing of the Articles, to which I replied, if difficulty should be there, we must refer ourselves to the same power which drew them up, which was not objected against." The trouble, how- ever, was not yet disposed of. A mutual council was proposed, and was agreed to, but was afterwards merged in the ordaining council. The questions between the candidate and the minor- ity were laid before that council ; and according to his state- ment, " The result was this. I was called for and asked wheth- er, in difficult and weighty cases, I was willing the mind of the church should be known by some sign. I replied, I designed neverto be any other than tender in such cases, and should like to have the concurrence of the church. But it may be that might be insisted on by some in trivial matters ; whereto, reply was made 'in things that I might judge or account best.' This I duly assented to. This is the whole of what I was obliga- ted to at that time ; namely, that the mind of the church be known by some sign in things that I myself should judge to be weighty and difficult."* Such was Nathaniel Chauncey's construction of the first article in the Saybrook Platform, which is that " the elder or elders of a particular church, with the consent of the brethren of the same, have power, and ought to exercise church discipline according to the rule of God's word in relation to all scandals that fall out within the
* Chauncey Memorials, pp 102-103.
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same." Surely the notion of " a silent democracy" had been fully developed when a pastor was settled with no other con- cession of privilege to the brotherhood in matters of church government, than that he would permit the mind of the church to be known by some sign in difficult and weighty cases, he himself being the sole judge as to what cases were weighty and difficult.
The history of the churches in Connecticut, under the con- stitution formed at Saybrook, divides itself naturally into three half-century periods. For nearly fifty years, the working of the constitution was chiefly in the hands of the men who, to- ward the close of that period, became distinguishable as the "old light" party, They were Calvinists in theory ; they seem to have accepted and held the established Confession of Faith without any difficulty or equivocation ; but they had been molded in their intellectual and religious habits, and in all their ideas of the church and its ordinances, by the influences which brought in the half-way covenant. They were very naturally, not to say inevitably, formalists, if we may use that word without implying that they rejected the idea of spiritual religion. It is not for any of us to say that they were not truly good men, and in their way earnest and faithful ; or that they were not doing a good work in their day, unlike as their ideas and modes of working were to ours. In those fifty years, the ecclesiastical constitution, notwithstanding any imperfections of its own, and notwithstanding any errors or excesses in the administration of it, was gradually bringing the churches, and especially the ministers into a closer union with each other ; and was preparing them for perils and conflicts, and for achieve- ments of which they had little anticipation. During that period, new towns were settled and incorporated, and every new town had its church, its meeting-house, and its minister ; two new counties were organized, and each new county had its consocia- tion of churches, and its association of pastors, according to the
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Platform. The collegiate school soon migrated from its tem- porary abode at Saybrook ; and in the home which, after a per- ilous conflict, had been gained for it at New Haven, it grew into a flourishing institution in a most intimate connection with the clergy, who, at the close of this period, had been ed- ucated there, almost without an exception. Great and persist- ent efforts were made for the reformation of morals, for the thorough indoctrination of the people by the domestic and pa- rochial catechising of children, and for the general education of the young in such parochial schools as the poverty of that period could provide. The dreadful tendency to barbarism- a tendency incident to the growing up of a colony in such a wilderness, and aggravated by the effects of wars, Indian, French and Spanish, was heroically and not unsuccessfully re- sisted. By the laborious fidelity of those pastors in their ways of working, the people of their parishes were prepared, in some sort, for the great and memorable religious awakening which marks so signally the latter part of that half-century. And that the enthusiastic excesses, and the acrimonious controver- sies and recriminations which followed the awakening, did not produce by their repulsive force a far wider defection through cold Aminianism and Socinianism into mere Deism and Infi- delity, may perhaps be ascribed in part, to those intimate rela- tions among the churches, and especially among their pastors, which had been effected by the ecclesiastical constitution of the colony.
But we must not forget what were the ends which the pro- jectors and contrivers of this constitution had in view. "A permanent establishment " was indeed obtained, for church and state were more securely bound together than before ; but how was it in regard to that "good and regular issue in cases sub- ject to ecclesiastical discipline," which was hoped for? The venerable Dr. 'Trumbull, ardent in everything, was an ardent friend to the ecclesiastical constitution ; but the second volume
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of his history shows what he thought about the way in which it was administered while the " old light " men had the work- ing of it. That it had any efficacy at all in preventing, or in adjusting those local controversies which are inevitably inci- dent to the government of all self-governed churches, does not appear in all the history of that half-century.
For example : In 1728, a difficulty arose in Guilford about the ordination of a pastor. A large minority of the church and parish protested in vain. Finding their protest disregard- ed by the ordaining council, as well as by the majority of the church and parish, they refused to sit under the ministry that had been thus imposed upon them, and withdrew. Nearly fifty of them were members of the church. They were nu- merous enough to be a church by themselves ; and they judged themselves able to support the expenses of public worship. They distinctly renounced the Saybrook Platform, and falling back upon rights which they considered older and more sacred than the work of any synod, they set up worship as an inde- pendent Christian congregation, having employed a regularly approbated candidate to preach to them. In all these proceed- ings, we find no interference of the consociation. On the contrary when this seceding minority applied to the legislature, in 1729, for leave to become a distinct ecclesiastical society, their petition was rejected, and a commission of three minis- ters was appointed by the General Court to visit Guilford and attempt a reconciliation between the parties. That commit- tee, having heard and considered the objections urged by the seceding party against the minister, pronounced the objections insufficient, and simply advised the secession to return and fill up the vacant sittings in the great new meeting house, and to let the past be forgiven and forgotten on both sides. Of course such advice, offered in such a way, was not accepted ; and if the Reverend Commissioners had understood the nature of a Guilford parish controversy as well as we do in these later
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times, they might have saved the paper on which their advice was written. Those seceders had made up their minds that Mr. Rnggles, the young minister imposed upon them by the majority, was not the minister for them. They had therefore made up their minds to disown the Saybrook Platform, with which, as the ecclesiastical establishment of the Colony, the cause of Mr. Ruggles and the majority seemed to be, in some way identified. On both points they were conscientious as well as willful-perhaps the more conscientious for being will- ful-certainly the more willful for being conscientious. The result of their petition to the General Court had wakened them to grave doubts concerning the right of the legislature to in- terpose with unsolicited advice in a dispute about the fitness of a given preacher for a given parish. Guided either by their own ingenuity or by that of some adviser, they came to the conclusion that as British subjects, they had a right to se- cede from the establishment. / An act of Parliament, passed in the reign of William and Mary, and referred to in a statute of the Colony, for similar purposes, provided relief for sober dis- senters from the established order, and prescribed the steps by which a dissenting preacher and his congregation might obtain a legal protection. Claiming the benefit of that twofold legis- lation, the seceding party presented themselves before the coun- ty court in New Haven, that by taking the necessary oaths, and subscribing the required declaration, they might be qualified in law to worship by themselves. After a five months' oppor- tunity for deliberation and for consultation, the court yielded to their demand. But this, of course, did not exempt them from the necessity of paying the taxes imposed upon them by the parish from which they had seceded. They, therefore, from the vantage ground which they had gained, renewed their petition to the legislature for relief, and for a full incorporation as an ecclesiastical society. A partial relief was granted ; but the legislature adhering to its old habit of playing the bishop
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over the churches, must needs persist in the preposterous at- tempt to bring the seceders back, and make theni settle down under the ministry of Mr. Ruggles. An ecclesiastical council of ten ministers and churches, selected from three counties by the legislature, was ordered to meet in Guilford, and bring the controversy to a close. In compliance with the advice of that council, the church, acting judicially, suspended from com- munion those who had seceded from it, already more numerous than those they had left behind. It was yet to be discovered that church-censures in such cases have no efficacy for good. Thus the controversy proceeded. The General Association, at the proposal of the legislature, and with the consent of the separating party, met at Guilford, heard the parties, and adjourn- ed. Then the legislature sent a committee of its own, who heard the parties and reported recommending the appointment of another council. Such a council was appointed, with a commission from the legislature to hear and " finally deter- mine" the case ; but it accomplished nothing. Then another committee from the legislature went, heard the parties and report- ed ; then a third legislative committee went, who at last reported that to grant the prayer of the persevering petitioners, whose continual coming had so long wearied that honorable body, would be " for the peace of the town and the interests of reli- gion." Five years that conflict raged, and thus it ended .*
All this while the church in Guilford, so persistently patron- ized by the General Court, had never accepted the Saybrook Constitution, and therefore was not really one of the established churches according to the act of 1708. In that case, the church was not considered as dis-established by adhering to the original platform of the New England churches. But when a somewhat similar case of difficulty arose in Canterbury, a few years later, a very dissimilar course was taken. The majority of the church refused to accept, as their pastor, the minister whom
* Trumbull, Hist. of Conn. vol. ii, chap. 7.
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the majority of the parish had chosen. Yet the consociation of Windham county convened ; and by counting in sundry de- linquent members who were under censure, they increased the minority into what they thought might pass for a majority, and then proceeded to ordination. The church withdrew from the consociation, and from the parish, placed itself upon the ancient Congregational platform, and found that its separate meeting for worship was pronounced not only schismatic but illegal .* In Milford, not far from the same time, a minority protesting against the settlement of a pastor, and afterwards seceding, were compelled to take a course like that which had been taken by the minority at Guilford, and were even con- strained to make themselves, for the time being, Presbyterians under the presbytery of New Brunswick, in order to gain a toleration which they could not have as Congregationalists. After twelve years of legalized annoyance, they obtained from the legislature an incorporation as the Second Ecclesiastical Society in Milford, and their Presbyterianism vanished away.t
At an early stage in the progress-or perhaps I might more properly say, in the sequel-of the great awakening, as soon as the irregularities and extravagances incidental to such a move- ment in such times, began to appear, the great body of the ministers throughout the colony were not unreasonably alarm- ed; and it is not to be wondered at that, in their inexperience as to the way of dealing with such perils, and under the guid- ance of principles which they had always assumed as axioms, they were led into a too conservative policy. In New Haven county especially, the severest measures were employed by the association and the consociation against those pastors who could be charged with any irregularity. The pastor of Derby was excluded from the association because he had preached to a Baptist congregation within some other minister's parochial
* Trumbull, vol. ii, pp. 178-184. Hovey, Life and Times of Isaac Backus, p. 18.
t Trumbull, vol. ii, chap. 13.
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bounds. The pastor of West Haven, for some imprudent ex- pressions, was dismissed from his charge, notwithstanding his frankly expressed regret, and thereupon the " old light " men expressed their exultation by saying that they had put out one new light, and would put them all out. Three of the members of the New Haven association assisted in the ordination of a pastor over the church in Salisbury, which had been formed on the Cambridge Platform, and for that reason they were sus- pended from all associational communion .* The minister of Branford was a new light. On one occasion he preached to a little Baptist church in Wallingford. His so doing was, by the consociation, pronounced disorderly, and he was therefore de- prived of his seat in that body. Not long afterwards, he was arraigned for various extravagant expressions in his sermons- some of them obviously perverted and distorted, and for the general course of his policy in regard to the excitements of those times, and at last he was, in form, deposed from the ministry. He went on with his work in his own church and parish, his people, with few exceptions, adhered to him, not forgetting to pay his salary, and even increasing it. The legislature, on the petition of a few disaffected parishioners of his, endeavored to interfere, but did not succeed ; and that was the end of it. About seven years afterwards, he was quietly invited to sit with the consociation ; aud no more was said on the subject.t
The extant records of the General Association begin with the year 1738. That year there was a full meeting of ten members, every association being represented by two delegates. In 1741, eight were present, of whom the youngest was Joseph Bellamy. On that occasion, with warm expressions of thank- fulness to God " for an extraordinary revival of religion in this land," the most judicious and Christian suggestions were made to the particular associations as to what ministers should do at
* Trumbull, vol. ii, pp. 195, 196. + Trumbull, vol. ii, pp. 196-233.
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such a time, not only to promote the great awakening, but to maintain mutual confidence and earnest co-operation among themselves. The next year, with renewed expressions of thankfulness, warnings and cautions against errors of doctrine and irregularities in practice, and against the impending danger of divisions in the churches, were given out to the ministers and to the churches. The next year, (1743,) the utterances from the General Association are in a tone of still greater alarm ; yet there is no syllable which we, as their successors, after the lapse of one hundred and sixteen years, have any occasion to regret. But two years afterwards, (1745,) eight members be- ing present, " the following resolve was come into."
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