USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > History of the colony of New Haven to its absorption into Connecticut > Part 17
USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > History of the colony of New Haven to its absorption into Connecticut > Part 17
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"Although no creature be lord or have power over the faith and consciences of men, nor may constrain them to believe or profess against their consciences, yet to restrain or provide against such as may bring in dangerous errors or. heresies, tending to corrupt and destroy the souls of men, it is ordered, That if any Christian within this jurisdiction shall go about to subvert or destroy the Christian faith or religion by broaching, publishing, or maintaining any dangerous error or heresy, or shall endeavor to draw or seduce others thereunto, every such person so offending, and continuing obstinate therein, after due means of conviction, shall be fined, banished, or otherwise severely punished, as the court of magis- trates duly considering the offence, with the aggravating circum- stances and danger like to ensue, shall judge meet."
Winthrop's journal affords a telling illustration of the maintenance of this distinction in the neighbor- ing colony of Massachusetts. Recording the punish- ment of a Baptist, who was too poor to be fined, he says, "He was ordered to be whipped, not for his opinion, but for reproaching the Lord's ordinance, and for his bold and evil behavior, both at home and in the court." That the distinction was not merely theoretical, is evident from the fact that many Baptists were un- molested, among them the first two presidents of Har- vard College. Dunster, the first president, was an avowed anti-pedobaptist ; yet he held the office for fourteen years, and might have held it longer had he not, in a moment of excitement, burst the bonds of his usual discretion, and inveighed openly, in the church at Cambridge, against infant baptism. For
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this offence he was obliged to resign, but suffered no further molestation. His successor, while approving of infant baptism, held that immersion was the only mode; and his peculiarity in this respect was known before his election. "Mr. Mather and Mr. Norton were desired by the overseers of the college to tender unto Rev. Mr. Charles Chauncey the place of presi- dent, with the stipend of one hundred pounds per annum, to be paid out of the country treasury ; and withal to signify to him that it is expected and desired that he forbear to disseminate or publish any tenets concerning immersion in baptism, and celebration of the Lord's Supper at evening, or to expose the re- ceived doctrine therein." I Mr. Chauncey agreed to this stipulation, and was never disturbed.
There were Baptists at New Haven, but no action was taken against them by the civil authority. Per- haps their immunity is sufficiently accounted for when we learn that the wife of Gov. Eaton was one of them. "The first discovery of her peremptory engagement was by her departing from the assembly after the morning sermon when the Lord's Supper was administered, and the same afternoon, after sermon, when baptism was administered, judging herself not capable of the former, because she conceited herself to be not baptized, nor durst she be present at the latter, imagining that pædo- baptism is unlawful." Mr. Davenport, finding that others of his flock were also astray, undertook to prove in a sermon on the next Lord's Day that "baptism is come in place of circumcision, and is to be adminis- tered unto infants ;" which he himself says was done
' Mass. Hist. Coll., X., p. 175. Pierce's History of Harvard College.
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" with a blessing from God for the recovery of some from this error, and for the establishment of others in truth. Only Mrs. Eaton [received] no benefit by all, but continued as before." It is, however, more proba- ble that the immunity was due to the discretion of the dissenters, who did not attempt, so far as appears, to make proselytes. That there was some jocose talk about banishment, as if such a penalty might follow the dissemination of their opinions, appears in the trial of Mrs. Brewster for sundry vituperative speeches con- cerning the church, its pastor, and the magistrates. A maid testified that "she heard Mrs. Brewster, speaking aloud to Mrs. Eaton concerning banishment, say, they could not banish her but by a general court, and, if it come to that, she wished Mrs. Eaton to come to her and acquaint her with her judgment and grounds about baptizing, and she would by them seduce some other women, and then she, the said Mrs. Brewster, would complain to the court of Mrs. Eaton, and the other women should complain of her, as being thus seduced, and so they would be banished together, and she spoke of going to Rhode Island. Mrs. Brewster confesseth the charge, but saith she spoke in jest and laughing." I
" The action of the church in reference to Mrs. Eaton may be seen in the Appendix to Bacon's Historical Discourses.
The pastor, finding that she had received no benefit from his sermon, put himself "to a further task for her good," writing a treatise which was read to her in private. This effort, however, was as fruitless as the former. What course the church might have taken with her for what they regarded as the error of her judgment, or for turning her back on its ordinances, does not appear ; for, at this stage of the proceedings, "divers rumors were spread up and down the town of her scandalous walking in her family." " Upon inquiry, it appeared the reports were true, and inore evils were discovered than we had heard of. We now began to see that
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While the few Baptists in the colony were quiet in their dissent, the Quakers were more troublesome. The first to appear was Humphrey Norton, who, hav- ing been banished from Plymouth, came to Southold, whence, within six months after his banishment from Plymouth, he was sent as a prisoner to New Haven. This was in 1658. It is an illustration of the prevalent neglect to distinguish between the jurisdiction court and the court of the principal plantation, that he was indicted before the plantation court of New Haven. Mr. Leete of Guilford and Mr. Fenn of Milford were, indeed, called in to assist ; and the proceedings were afterward read to, and approved by, the court of the jurisdiction. The charges against Norton were : -
" I. That he hath grievously and in manifold wise traduced, slandered, and reproached Mr. Youngs, pastor of the church at Southold, in his good name, and the honor due to him for his work's sake, together with his ministry, and all our ministers and ordinances.
"2. That he hath endeavored to seduce the people from their
God took us off from treating with her any further about the error of her judgment till we might help forward by the will of God her repentance for those evils in life, believing that else these evils would by the just judgment of God hinder from receiving light." Seventeen specifications of " scandalous walking" were presented to the church; the first charging her with striking her mother-in-law, the second with an assault upon her step-daughter, and all showing a violent, ungoverned temper. After waiting nine months for satisfaction, "with much grief of heart and many tears the church proceeded to censure," cutting her off from its com- munion.
The conduct of Mrs. Eaton was so strange as to suggest the conjecture that she was either insane, or in that state of nervous excitement which borders on insanity, and that medical treatment would have been more appropriate than church discipline.
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due attendance upon the ministry and the sound doctrines of our religion settled in this colony.
"3. That he hath endeavored to spread sundry heretical opin- ions, and that under expressions which hold forth some degree of blasphemy, and to corrupt the minds of people therein.
"4. That he hath endeavored to vilify or nullify the just author- ity of the magistracy and government here settled.
" 5. That in all these miscarriages he hath endeavored to dis- turb the peace of this jurisdiction."
The sentence was, in the excess of punishment which it ordered, worthy of the High Commission, or of the Star-Chamber. It discovers in the court a hatred of the prisoner's opinions, which is but thinly covered by the specification of overt crimes. Norton was fined, whipped, branded, and banished.
At the session of the colonial court next following, the proceedings against Norton having been approved, laws were enacted against "a cursed sect lately risen up in the world, which are commonly called Quakers," im- posing fines on any who should bring them into the col- ony, or harbor them ; requiring Quakers coming in about "their civil, lawful occasions," upon their first arrival, to appear before the authority of the place, and from them have license to pass about and issue their lawful occa- sions ; and providing penalties if they attempt to seduce others, if they revile or reproach, or any other way make disturbance or offend. If a Quaker having fallen under these penalties, and having been sent out of the juris- diction, should presume to return, penalties increasing in severity are provided for the second, the third, and the fourth offence. Penalties are also provided for bringing into the jurisdiction Quaker books, and for circulating or concealing them.
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The cruelty of laws whose penalties culminated in "tongues bored through with a hot iron" must be re- volting, even to those who justify the fathers of the New Haven Colony in intrusting with political power only such as were of the "religion settled in this colony." But such penalties were not peculiar to New Haven or to New England. In England, two years earlier, a Quaker by the name of James Naylor had been bored through the tongue, and otherwise tor- mented. So that, however true it may be that "emi- gration tends to barbarism," the severest punishment with which Quakers were threatened by the people of New Haven was not invented on this side of the Atlantic.
Either these laws were very effective in deterring persons of the troublesome and hated sect from remain- ing within the jurisdiction, or there was little occasion for the terror which led to their enactment. Only three instances are found, subsequent to the enact- ment of the laws against Quakers, in which action is taken against persons thus denominated. The first oc- curred a few days after the laws were enacted, and resulted in a fine imposed upon an inhabitant of Green- wich for the miscarriages of himself and his wife in the use of the tongue against elders and magistrates. In the second, a seaman was sent on board his vessel lying in the harbor of New Haven; and the master was required to keep him on board till he should carry him out of the jurisdiction. The third concerned a Quaker brought over from Southold : it was ordered that the offender " be whipped, and that he be bound in a bond of fifty pounds for his good behavior for the
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time to come, to carry it in a comely and inoffensive manner."
Besides Baptists and Quakers, there were no sec- taries in the colony of New Haven till after its absorp- tion into Connecticut. Thirteen years after the union, the Lords of the Privy Council, through their commis- sioners for trade and foreign plantations, sent out a schedule of questions concerning the condition of Con- necticut. The twenty-sixth inquiry was as follows : viz., "What persuasion in religious matters is most prevalent ? and among the varieties, which you are to express, what proportion in number and quality of people [ does ] one hold to the other?" To this ques- tion Gov. Leete replied one year later, "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 in the colony. There are four or five Seventh-day men, and about so many more Quakers." The "moderate Pres- byterians " to whom the governor alludes were a party in the church at Hartford, including Mr. Stone, the pastor, who maintained that Congregationalism was "a speaking aristocracy in the face of a silent democ- racy." He, and those who agreed with him in thus magnifying the authority of the elders, were naturally called Presbyterians by those who magnified the rights of the brotherhood; I but there was no outward sep- aration of them from "Congregational men," either "strict " or "large ; " and they did not call themselves
' Gov. Leete was a member of the church in Guilford, which from its beginning would never have a ruling elder.
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Presbyterians, but claimed that theirs was genuine Con- gregationalism. The condition of the united colony fourteen years after the union being such as Gov. Leete represents, we may conclude that in the colony of New Haven, previous to the union, there was to all intents and purposes entire ecclesiastical uniformity.
As another inquiry of the commissioners related to religion, we may as well record the reply of Gov. Leete. Though covering the whole territory of Connecticut, it throws light on the religious condition of that portion of it which a few years before had been the jurisdic- tion of New Haven. The twenty-seventh inquiry was : "What course is taken for the instructing of the peo- ple in the Christian religion ? How many churches and ministers are there within your government, and how many are yet wanting for the accommodation of your corporation ?" The reply was, " (1) Great care is taken for the instruction of the people in the Christian re- ligion, by ministers catechising of them, and preach- ing to them twice every sabbath day, and sometimes lecture days ; and so by masters of families instructing or catechising their children and servants, being so re- quired to do by law. (2) In our corporation are twenty- six towns, and there are one and twenty churches in them. (3) There is, in every town in our colony, a settled minister, except it be in two towns new begun ; and they are seeking out for ministers to settle amongst them."
It was held in those days, that there should be in every church, if possible, a pastor, a teacher, a ruling elder, and one or more deacons. In the church at New Haven Mr. Davenport was chosen pastor, and Robert
.N
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Newman and Matthew Gilbert deacons, soon after the organization. In 1644 Rev. William Hooke was or- dained teacher ; and about the same time Robert New- man, one of the deacons, was ordained ruling elder.1 "Thus," says Dr. Bacon, "the church became com- pletely supplied with the officers which every church in that day was supposed to need. It had within itself a complete presbytery, - a full body of ordained elders, competent to maintain a regular succession, without any dependence on the supposed ordaining power of ministers out of the church, and without any necessity of resorting to the extraordinary measure of ordination by persons specially delegated for that purpose. The three elders - one of whom was to give attention chief- ly to the administration of the order and government of the church, while the others were to labor in word and doctrine- were all equally and in the same sense 'elders,' or 'overseers,' of the flock of God. The one was a mere elder ; but the others were elders called to the work of preaching. The distinction between pas- tor and teacher was theoretical, rather than of any practical importance. Both were in the highest sense ministers of the gospel ; as colleagues they preached by turns on the Lord's Day, and on all other public occa- sions ; they had an equal share in the administration
' Robert Newman returned to England, and no one was appointed to succeed him as ruling elder. Mr. Hooke also returned to the mother country, and was succeeded by Rev. Nicholas Street. Mr. Street was born in Taunton, England, was educated at Oxford University, and had been teacher of the church in Taunton in the colony of Plymouth. He was in- stalled at New Haven, according to the church record, Nov. 26, or, as Davenport writes in a letter to John Winthrop, jun. (Mass. Hist. Coll. XXXVII., 507), Nov. 23, 1659.
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of discipline ; and if Mr. Davenport was more venerated than Mr. Hooke, and had more influence in the church and in the community generally, it was more because of the acknowledged personal superiority of the former in respect to age and gifts and learning, than because of any official disparity. The Cambridge platform, which was framed in 1648, and with which Mr. Daven- port, in his writings on church government, fully agrees, says, in defining the difference between pastors and teachers, 'The pastor's special work is to attend to exhortation, and therein to administer a word of wis- dom; the teacher is to attend to doctrine, and therein to administer a word of knowledge ; and either of them to administer the seals of that covenant, unto the dis- pensation of which they are alike called; as also to execute the censures, being but a kind of application of the Word : the preaching of which, together with the application thereof, they are alike charged withal.' The pastor and teacher gave themselves wholly to their ministry and their studies, and accordingly re- ceived a support from the people : they might properly be called clergymen. The ruling elder was not neces- sarily educated for the ministry: he might without impropriety pursue some secular calling ; and, though he fed the flock occasionally with 'a word of admoni- tion,' the ministry was not his profession. Inasmuch as he did not live by the ministry, he was a layman."
But there was perhaps no other church in the colony provided with a presbytery complete according to the Cambridge platform, than that of New Haven. The church at Guilford had for its pastor Rev. Henry Whit- field, under whose guidance most of the people had
.
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crossed the ocean ; and for its teacher Rev. John Hig- ginson, a son-in-law of its pastor. But, to borrow the the language of one of its later pastors, "they never had, and upon principle never would admit, a ruling elder. Although in all other things Mr. Whitfield and Mr. Davenport and their churches exactly agreed, yet in this they were quite different. I have made diligent in- quiry into the subject, many years ago, with old people who were personally acquainted with the first members of the church. They all invariably agree, that as Mr. Whitfield was never ordained in any sense at Guilford, but officiated as their pastor by virtue of his ordination in England, so neither he nor the church would allow of a ruling elder ; and the ancient tradition in the church here was, that New Haven, and afterward other churches in the colony, conformed their judgment and practice to Mr. Whitfield's and his church's judgment." I After the return of Mr. Whitfield to England, Mr. Higginson was both pastor and teacher, until 1659, when he removed to Salem. At Milford Mr. Prudden was the only preaching elder, Rev. John Sherman, a resident of the town, having declined the office of teacher to which the church had elected him ; but Zachariah Whitman, as ruling elder, was associated with Mr. Prudden in the care of the church. Mr. Prudden, dying in 1656, was succeeded, after an interim of four years, by Rev. Roger Newton, who, like his predecessor, was the only preach- ing elder. No records of the church at Southold of an carlier date than 1745 being extant, we cannot ascer- tain whether it had a ruling elder; but there is no
' Letter of Rev. Thomas Ruggles, author of a History of Guilford, to Rev. Dr. Stiles ; printed in Mass. Hist. Coll., X. 91.
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reason to doubt that Mr. Youngs was its only preaching officer. At Stamford Rev. John Bishop was both pas- tor and teacher ; as was Rev. Abraham Pierson at Bran- ford, when, with the approbation of the Jurisdiction Court, a settlement had been made, and a church had been gathered, in that place.
The preaching elders were maintained from the treasury of the church, and not of the town, the treas- ury being supplied by contributions made every Lord's Day ; but these contributions were, if not from the be- ginning, certainly very soon after the beginning, made in accordance with a pledge which every inhabitant was required to give, that he would contribute a certain amount yearly for the maintenance of the ministry. The law respecting such pledges reads as follows : -
"It is ordered, that when and so oft as there shall be cause, either through the perverseness or negligence of men, the particu- lar court in each plantation, or, where no court is held, the deputies last chosen for the General Court, with the constable, or other officer for preserving peace, and so forth, shall call all the inhabitants, whether planters or sojourners, before them, and desire every one particularly to set down what proportion he is willing and able to allow yearly, while God continues his estate, toward the main- tenance of the ministry there. But if any one or more, to the dis- couragement or hinderance of this work, refuse or delay, or set down an unmeet proportion ; in any and every such case, the par- ticular court, or deputies and constable as aforesaid, shall rate and assess every such person, according to his visible estate there, with due moderation and in equal proportion with his neighbors. But if after that he deny or delay, or tender unsuitable payment. it shall be recovered as other just debts. And it is further ordered, That if any man remove from the plantation where he lived. and leave or suffer his land there, or any part of it, to lie unimproved, neither selling it, nor freely surrendering it to the plantation, he shall pay
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one third part of what he paid before for his movable estate and lands also. And in each plantation where ministers' maintenance is allowed in a free way without rating, he shall pay one third part of what other men of the lowest rank enjoying such accommoda- tions, do pay; but if any removing, settle near the said plantation, and continue still to improve his land, or such part of it as seems good to himself, he shall pay two-thirds of what he paid before when he lived in the plantation, both for movable estate and land, or two-thirds-part of what others of like accommodation pay."
There is, perhaps, an intimation in the law, that the amount which each inhabitant should pay for the main- tenance of the elders was determined, in some of the plantations, by assessors and not by himself. Practi- cally, there could not be much difference in the two methods, since, if the "free way without rating " was practised, the order of the court obliged non-resident proprietors and unwilling residents to pay according to their taxable estates.
The general synod at Cambridge, which in 1648 pre- pared, agreed to, and published the system of ecclesias- tical polity known as the Cambridge platform, included representatives of the churches in the colony of New Haven ; and this platform fairly represents the Congre- gationalism of these churches from their organization to the formation of the Saybrook platform in the early part of the eighteenth century. The same synod took action on the confession of faith published by the Westminster Assembly of divines, as follows : -
"This synod, having perused and considered, with much glad- ness of heart and thankfulness to God, the confession of faith published of late by the reverend assembly in England, do judge it to be very holy, orthodox, and judicious in all matters of faith ;
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and do therefore freely and fully consent thereunto, for the sub- · stance thereof. Only in those things which have respect to church government and discipline, we refer ourselves to the plat- form of church discipline agreed upon by this present assembly."
The Presbyterian party being at that time in the as- cendant in England, the synod adopted the Westmin- ster Confession, instead of framing one for themselves, for the sake of vindicating in the mother country the orthodoxy of New England Congregationalists. They say in their preface : -
"We, who are by nature Englishmen, do desire to hold forth the same doctrine of religion, especially in fundamentals, which we see and know to be held by the churches of England." " By this our professed consent and free concurrence with them in all the doctrinals of religion, we hope it may appear to the world, that, as we are a remnant of the people of the same nation with them, so we are professors of the same common faith, and fellow-heirs of the same common salvation."
If the Church of England had been at that time Episcopal, the Cambridge Synod would with equal will- ingness have adopted the doctrinal part of the Thirty- Nine Articles. These articles they heartily received, according to the interpretation generally given to them in the reign of Elizabeth, in the first part of the reign of James I., and by the Calvinistic party in the Church of England subsequently. The pastors and teachers of the churches in the New Haven colony retained the Calvinistic theology in which they had been indoctri- nated in the universities, and believed, as did their teachers, that it was consistent with and embodied in the Thirty-Nine Articles. After the restoration of the Thirty-Nine Articles in the national church of England,
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