USA > Connecticut > Tercentenary pamphlet series, v. 3 The Beginnings of Roman Catholicism in Connecticut > Part 44
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Bibliographical Note
THE author has published an earlier study of the Hart- ord Wits in Heralds of American literature (Chicago, 907). Accounts of the Hartford Wits, of varying length nd value, have appeared in the histories of American terature. There are also essays and special studies on hem collectively and individually, and biographies of Trumbull, Humphreys, and Barlow.
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PUBLICATIONS OF THE TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
The Committee on Historical Publications of the Connecticut Tercentenary Commission has issued, during the past few years, a series of small pamphlets upon a great variety of topics, selected for the purpose of making better known among the people of Connecticut and others as many of the features as possible of the history and life of Connecticut as colony and state. No attempt has been made to deal with these subjects in either logical or chronological order, the intention having been to issue pamphlets at any time upon any subject that seemed to be of interest and worthy to be made a matter of record.
The series will be completed with the issuance of a total number of sixty pamphlets. A small supplementary pamphlet providing biographical data about the authors and other information about the series has been prepared, and may be obtained without charge from the Yale University Press.
I. Connecticut and the British Government, by C. M. ANDREWS. 36 pp. . 25c. II. The Connecticut Intestacy Law, by C. M. ANDREWS. 32 pp. 25c.
III. The Charter of Connecticut, 1662, by C. M. ANDREWS and A. C. BATES. 24 pp.
IV. Thomas Hooker, by W. S. ARCHIBALD. 20 pp. .
V. The Story of the War with the Pequots Re-Told, by H. BRADSTREET. 32 pp. Illustrated. . · · .
VI. The Settlement of the Connecticut Towns, by D. DEMING. 80 pp. Illus- trated.
VII. The Settlement of Litchfield County, by D. DEMING. 16 pp.
VIII. George Washington and Connecticut in War and Peace, by G. M. DUTCHER. 36 pp. Illustrated. ·
IX. The Discoverer of Anaesthesia: Dr. Horace Wells of Hartford, by H. W. ERVING. 16 pp. Illustrated.
X. Connecticut Taxation, 1750-1775, by L. H. GIPSON. 44 pp.
XI. Boundaries of Connecticut, by R. M. HOOKER. 38 pp. Illustrated.
XII. Early Domestic Architecture of Connecticut, by J. F. KELLY. 32 pp.
XIII. Milford, Connecticut: The Early Development of a Town as Shown in Its Land Records, by L. W. LABAREE. 32 pp. Illustrated.
XIV. Roads and Road-Making in Colonial Connecticut, by I. S. MITCHELL. 32 pp. Illustrated.
XV. Hitchcock Chairs, by M. R. MOORE. 16 pp. Illustrated.
XVI. The Rise of Liberalism in Connecticut, 1828-1850, by J. M. MORSE. 48 pp. XVII. Under the Constitution of 1818: The First Decade, by J. M. MORSE. 24 pp. XVIII. The New England Meeting House, by N. PORTER. 36 pp. . XIX. The Indians of Connecticut, by M. SPIESS. 36 pp.
XX. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, by G. M. DUTCHER and A. C. BATES. 20 pp. Illustrated. 5ºc. 25c.
XXI. The Litchfield Law School, 1775-1833, by S. H. FISHER. 32 pp.
XXII. The Hartford Chest, by H. W. ERVING. 16 pp. Illustrated. 25c.
XXIII. Early Clockmaking in Connecticut, by P. R. HOOPES. 32 pp. .
XXIV. The Hartford Convention, by W. E. BUCKLEY. 32 pp.
XXV. The Spanish Ship Case: A Troublesome Episode for Connecticut, 1752- 1758, by R. M. HOOKER. 34 pp. .
XXVI. The Great Awakening and Other Revivals in the Religious Life of Con- necticut, by M. H. MITCHELL. 64 pp. . 5ºc. 25c.
XXVII. Music Vale Seminary, 1835-1876, by F. H. JOHNSON. 24 pp. Illustrated. XXVIII. Migrations from Connecticut Prior to 1800, by L. K. M. ROSENBERRY. 36 pp. . 25 ℃ .
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XXIX. Connecticut's Tercentenary: A Retrospect of Three Centuries of Self- Government and Steady Habits, by G. M. DUTCHER. 32 pp. . 25c.
. XXX. The Beginnings of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, by O. S. SEY- MOUR. 32 pp.
XXXI: The Loyalists of Connecticut, by EPAPHRODITUS PECK. 32 pp.
XXXII. The Beginnings of Connecticut, 1632-1662, by C. M. ANDREWS. 84 pp.
XXXIII. Connecticut Inventors, by J. W. ROE. 32 pp. .
XXXIV. The Susquehannah Company: Connecticut's Experiment in Expansion, by J. P. BOYD. 48 pp.
XXXV. The Regicides in Connecticut, by L. A. WELLES. 32 pp. .
XXXVI. Connecticut Newspapers in the Eighteenth Century, by J. M. MORSE. 32 pp.
XXXVII. Slavery in Connecticut, by R. F. WELD. 32 pp. . ·
XXXVIII. Farmington, One of the Mother Towns of Connecticut, by QUINCY BLAKELY. 32 pp. Illustrated.
XXXIX. Yale Law School: The Founders and the Founders' Collection, by F. C. HICKS. 48 pp. Illustrated.
XL. Agricultural Economy and the Population in Eighteenth-Century Con- necticut, by A. L. OLSON. 32 pp.
XLI. The Beginnings of Roman Catholicism in Connecticut, by A. F. MUNICH. 32 pp.
XLII. A History of Banking in Connecticut, by FRANCIS PARSONS. 32 pp. 25c. 25c. XLIII. The History of Insurance in Connecticut, by A. A. WELCH. 36 pp. 25c. . XLIV. The Rise of Manufacturing in Connecticut, by CLIVE DAY. 32 pp, 25c. XLV. The First Twenty Years of Railroads in Connecticut, by SIDNEY WITH- INGTON. 36 pp. Illustrated. 25℃ .
XLVI. Forty Years of Highway Development in Connecticut, 1895-1935, by the STAFF OF THE STATE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT. 20 pp. Map. 25c. XLVII. A Lawyer of Kent: Barzillai Slosson and His Account Books, 1794-1812, by MABEL SEYMOUR. 36 pp. .
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XLVIII. The Rise and Fall of the New Haven Colony, by C. M. ANDREWS. 56 pp. XLIX. The Development of the Brass Industry in Connecticut, by W. G. LATHROP. 32 pp.
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L. The Colonial Trade of Connecticut, by R. M. HOOKER. 44 pp. 5ºc. LI. The Literature of Connecticut, by S. T. WILLIAMS. 24 pp. 25 ℃ . LII. The History of Tobacco Production in Connecticut, by A. F. McDONALD. 32 pp. · LIII. Connecticut's Contribution to the Development of the Steamboat, by P. R. HOOPES. 32 pp. . . . · . 25c. 25c. LIV. Migrations from Connecticut After 1800, by L. K. M. ROSENBERRY. 32 pp.
25c. LV. Educational Problems at Yale College in the Eighteenth Century, by ALEXANDER COWIE. 32 pp. ·
. · 25c. LVI. The Clergy of Connecticut in Revolutionary Days, by A. M. BALDWIN. 32 pp.
25c. 25c. LVII. Charities and Corrections in Connecticut, by W. W. T. Squire. 32 pp.
LVIII. Connecticut Influences in Western Massachusetts and Vermont, by R. L. MORROW. 24 pp. 25c.
LIX. The Hartford Wits, by A. R. Marble. 32 pp. 25c. LX. The Achievement of Religious Liberty in Connecticut, by P. W. COONS. · 25c. 32 pp.
Published and for sale for the Commission by
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT
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TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
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SUSTINET
TRANSTULIT
COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
LX The Achievement of Religious Liberty in Connecticut
PAUL WAKEMAN COONS
PUBLISHED FOR THE TERCENTENARY COMMISSION BY THE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1936
The Printing-Office of the Yale University Press
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TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
LX The Achievement of Religious Liberty in Connecticut
PAUL WAKEMAN COONS
I I N the same year that Roger Williams planted the settlement of Providence at the head of Narragan- sett bay, Thomas Hooker and his congregation established themselves in Connecticut. Religious liberty was from the outset provided for in Rhode Island: church and state were separated and freedom of conscience was made unconditional. The progress of Puritan Connecticut toward that goal was uncertain and halting, was marked now by advances, now by retro- gressions. Nearly two centuries were required to achieve full liberty.
The early seventeenth-century Puritan reflected the religious fervor of the age in holding the conviction that he was God's chosen custodian of religious truth and morality. Hence, it is not surprising that the authors of the Fundamental Orders dedicated the infant colony of Connecticut to "decent Gouerment established according to God" and contracted to "mayntayne and presearue the liberty and purity of the gospell of our Lord Jesus
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which we now professe, as also the disciplyne of the Churches which according to the truth of the said gospell is now practised amongst vs." In that day the attain- ment of such objectives usually involved suppression of heresy.
The early years of the colony's history, however, were comparatively free from the persecuting spirit. The Fundamental Orders embodied two principles poten- tially favorable to the growth of leniency in dealing with religious dissent. The first was that government should be by consent of the governed, that rulers should be respon- sible and responsive to the will of the electorate. Though, in the minds of the fathers of the Orders, this did not mean democracy as the term is used today, it did estab- lish a principle which was to be invoked frequently when any portion of the population desired a widening of religious privilege. The second was the separation of civil privilege from church membership, except in the case of the governor, who was to be a member of an approved congregation. Thus a principle was established which implied, at least, that loyalty to the state did not entail loyalty to the established church.
Other tendencies toward reasonableness during the early years were the general approbation of the judicious and temperate views of Hooker and the spirit of freedom and individualism characteristic of a pioneer settlement. For more than a century, the homogeneity of the popula- tion excluded many of the causes for religious trouble. After 1660, the magistrates displayed a high degree of political shrewdness in avoiding intervention of the English authorities, by discreet treatment of persons holding dissenting opinions. So, while the avowed inten- tions of Connecticut's founders to maintain the purity of the Puritan faith unquestionably narrowed their outlook,
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several conditions, prevailing partly by design and partly by accident, led to the adoption of a religious policy in which the prospect for freedom of conscience, if not bright, was not hopelessly dim.
State guardianship of the churches was the keynote of the policy of the founders. They looked upon the state as the secular arm of the church, which it was their duty to protect and encourage, in order that citizens might be trained in civic responsibility and moral uprightness. Such an alliance between the government and the churches appeared to them essential, in a well-ordered community, to insure against the dangers of a theocracy on the one hand and of religious anarchy on the other. Between 1644 and 1657, the establishment of the Congregational churches was confirmed by legislation, and steps were taken to assure them financial security and the full support of the government. The maintenance of a healthy financial situation in the churches of a pioneer settlement was no small problem: to admit the voluntary principle or to per- mit the organization of new churches, when a community had difficulty in supporting one with befitting dignity, hardly seemed wise. Consequently, following a recommen- dation of the New England Confederation, the general court ordered the salaries of ministers guaranteed by mag- isterial assessment and collection wherever necessary. Furthermore, no church was to be organized or to engage in religious activity without the consent and approval of the legislature. Thus the government became moderator of ecclesiastical affairs: the secular power stood ready to uphold the dignity and purity of the faith, to assure the collection of church taxes, to promote the settlement of church disputes, and in general to advance religious well- being within the jurisdiction.
The paternalistic attitude of the government was note-
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worthy for the absence of avowed hostility to other forms of religion beside the Congregational. This was only in part due to the absence of other forms, for true bigotry would probably have decreed their exclusion from the outset. Noteworthy, too, is the fact that the authorities were not intended to employ inquisitors like those who were serving the régimes of Laud in England and of the Puritans in Massachusetts, nor did they attempt to do so.
In 1648 delegates from Connecticut assembled at Cambridge, with others from the New England Confed- eration, to draw up a standard to be used by all the churches for the ordering of their doctrine, polity, and discipline. The Cambridge Platform, as it was known, recognized the independence of local churches from any ecclesiastical domination, provided that offenders in matters ecclesiastical were to suffer only through the deprivation of church-not civil-rights, and declared that church taxes were to be collected, if necessary, by the magistrates. It was furthermore decided that the civil authorities were not to compel church membership, but were to enforce godliness and church decrees and to sup- press heresy. At the time, the formulation of the platform did little beside revealing the tendencies of Connecticut toward a policy more liberal than that of either Massa- chusetts or New Haven. A century later, the principle embodied in the Cambridge Platform, that every church had the right to freedom from outside interference, was to be invoked by opponents of the Saybrook Platform in a. crucial era of Connecticut's religious history.I
The Code of 1650 contained several laws calculated to restrain the irreligious, to safeguard the dignity and financial security of the clergy, and to assert the authority
I See below, pp. 13-22.
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of the general court over matters affecting the welfare of the churches. Any person convicted of slandering God's word, or its preacher, was to be reprimanded openly for the first offense, and for the second was either to pay a fine of five pounds or to stand in public view on lecture day bearing the inscription, "An Open and Ob- stinate Contemner of God's Holy Ordinances." Church attendance was made compulsory-the penalty for each absence being five shillings. The basic conceptions, that it was the duty of the government to be the protector of the moral and social order and that church officials should not intermeddle in civil matters, could hardly be more clearly stated than in the following enactment:
Forasmuch as the peace and prosperity of Churches and members thereof, as well as Ciuill rights and Libberties are carefully to bee maintained,-It is ordered by this Courte and decreed, that the Civill Authority heere established hath power and libberty to see the peace, ordinances and rules of Christe bee obserued in euery Church according to his word; as allso to deale with any Church member in a way of Ciuill [justice], notwithstanding any Church relation, office or inter- est, so it bee done in a Ciuill and not in an Eclesiasticall way: nor shall any Church censure degrade or depose any man from any Civill dignitye, office or authority hee shall haue in the Commonwealth.
The religious life of the colony was untroubled for the first twenty years. Then, about 1656, the Quaker heresy pushed its way into New England. The Puritan authori- ties of that day viewed Quakers in approximately the same light that capitalist governments view communists today-namely, as a menace to the social order. Their attitude becomes understandable when it is recalled that Quakers at the time occasionally sought to give utterance to the Spirit's promptings by going about naked, by rude conduct in church services, or, more frequently, by de-
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nouncing other faiths as instruments of Satan. Their refusal to take oaths or pay respect to magistrates seemed to render them politically dangerous. They were feared and persecuted because their principles and antics seemed to strike at the foundations of both state and church.
The Connecticut authorities never went so far as to hang Quakers, but there was considerable legislative furor and popular agitation against the heresy in 1656 and 1657. The remarkable thing about the laws against them was that not the Quakers but the town officials and individuals who entertained them were to suffer if the "notorious Heretiques" were not removed within four- teen days. In 1658 two of their number, Rous and Cope- land, were admonished by the court not to violate the law, and to continue on to Rhode Island. Rous later declared that "among all the colonies, found we not moderation as this; most of the magistrates being more noble than those of the others." Indeed, the general court seemed to be anxious to rid itself of responsibility for rooting out the Quakers, for it presently assigned the task to the discretion of the local magistrates.
In 1675, at the beginning of King Philip's War, the court relaxed the laws against Quakers in order to keep in the good graces of both the Quakers and the Rhode Island government, each of whom had much influence among the Indians. Although still forbidden to hold assemblies, Quakers were to be excused from the penal- ties for absence from church. A quarter of a century later, when the activities of Anglicans and Baptists began to worry the Congregationalists, fear for the safety of the established church led to a revival of the persecuting spirit, which vented itself on Quakers as well as other dissenters. The matter was brought to the attention of the authorities in England, who in 1705 annulled the
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Connecticut laws of 1656, 1657, and 1658. Whether from a feeling that the laws were needlessly severe-the Quakers numbered only a handful-or merely from politic motives, the court seconded the annulment by prompt repeal of the acts.
The beginning of the Quaker troubles coincided with an outstanding instance of the Connecticut magistrates' concern for the welfare of the churches. Owing to the fact that the children of the first settlers often found them- selves unable to testify to an experience of conversion, church membership in the years just preceding 1656 had been falling off at an alarming rate. Moreover, since church rules permitted only the children of converted persons to receive baptism, there was further cause for anxiety. The wide extent of these conditions throughout the Puritan colonies led to the calling of a synod in Boston in 1656 to devise a remedy. The result of the deliberations was the Half Way Covenant, by which the right of baptism was to be extended to children of un- converted but baptized persons, and the right of admis- sion to the church to such children upon public profession of faith. Regretful though it was that the decline of religious experience had reached such a pass as to make these measures necessary, the general court of Con- necticut approved the plan for the established churches.
Dissension thereupon broke out in numerous churches between factions favoring and opposing the covenant. The task of reconciling the two sides was almost more than the tact and patience of the court could accomplish. In the Hartford church, the question of accepting the covenant fanned the fires of faction to such an extent that part of the church threatened to withdraw. The court met the threat in 1658 with a law that no church could be formed without its consent and the approval of adjacent
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churches. A decade later the problem in this church was to evoke a law of distinct significance in Connecticut's progress toward religious liberty. Meantime Charles II granted a charter which enabled Connecticut to absorb New Haven.
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IN the hands of John Davenport and his company, New Haven represented a strenuous attempt to unite church and state, and to maintain the Puritan faith uncorrupted. The Fundamental Agreement, the town compact of 1639, made the Word of God the only rule in government, declared that the function of the civil authorities was to serve the church, and specified that only church members were eligible to citizenship. Whereas in Connecticut the churches were by law dependent upon the state, the founders of New Haven legislated to effect the depend- ence of the civil power on the will of church members.
New Haven's religious policy was, however, essentially like that of the Hartford government. The primary duties of the general court were to maintain the purity of religion, to suppress corruption, and to make known and establish God's laws, which were basically assumed to be the Mosaic code. The organization of any church was contingent upon the approval of the magistrates. From the beginning, church attendance was compulsory, with a five-shilling fine for each absence. Severe punishments were to be meted out to "Contemners" of the clergy, to blasphemers, and to heretics. All were enjoined to con- tribute to the support of the ministry, if not willingly, then by magisterial taxation. In view of the central purpose of the founders to erect a Puritan common- wealth, in which heresy could not break through and corrupt the faith, it is somewhat surprising to find a law
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of 1643 recognizing the futility of trying to force belief against one's conscience. The sequel to this clause was more in tune with the spirit of its authors. If any caused the faithful to wander from the fold by his unorthodox notions, then fine, banishment, or other punishment was to follow.
Quaker disturbances called forth between 1656 and 1658 a series of legal anathemas with punishments, ranging from the mere guarding of Quakers coming on business to a fifty-pound fine for bringing a heretic into the colony. Quakers who might offend four times by communicating with citizens were to have their tongues bored through with a hot iron. A few unfortunates suf- fered under these laws.
The history of the colony was too brief to reveal how these principles might have been applied in the course of years. That the founders were filled with high seriousness there can be no doubt. In 1665 the union of New Haven with Connecticut strengthened such intolerant tendencies as may have existed in the Hartford jurisdiction.
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THE royal charter, the constitutional basis for the gov- ernment of Connecticut for more than a century and a half, placed the control of religious matters entirely in the hands of the magistrates who were granted all power
... for the directing, ruleing and disposeing of all other matters and things whereby our said People Inhabitants there may bee soe religiously peaceably and civilly Governed as their good life and orderly Conversacion may wynn and invite the Na- tives of the Country to the knowledge and obedience of the onely true God and Saviour of mankind and the Christian faith which in our Royall intencions and the Adventurers free profession is the only and principall end of this Plantacion.
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In view of this absence of explicit regulation of ecclesias- tical matters, the church establishment, together with all the laws to enforce godliness and to maintain the favored position of the Congregational churches remained un- touched.
In 1664, two years after the grant of the charter, com- missioners of the crown visited Connecticut and laid before the general court the proposition that all peace- able persons, though of dissenting opinions, be allowed to enjoy liberty of conscience and worship. The court had no difficulty in assuring the commissioners that the colony already conformed. The reply was, “ ... we know not of any one, that hath bin troubled by us for attending his conscience, provided he hath not disturbed the publique." The commissioners made no reference to the Anglican service or to the prayer book, both matters of unpleasantness when they had visited Massachusetts. Nor did they question the right of the general court to levy a tax for the maintenance of the clergy. Their silence on these questions is largely explained by the fact that there were so few Anglicans in Connecticut that no church was formed until 1723. Up to 1664, no complaint of mistreatment of them had reached the home gov- ernment.
The problem of dealing with a powerful sentiment of dissatisfaction with the established order first confronted the general court in 1664. As noted before, the Half Way Covenant had brewed discontent and strife in the Hartford church and in others. The faction in the Hart- ford church desiring the covenant petitioned the court for a law to permit a division in the church and exemp- tion of those withdrawing from the regular rates. A lengthy discussion followed, during which the court asked all the churches to consider the question in a tem-
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perate spirit, and practically ordered the acceptance of the covenant. Finally, in 1669, provision was made for the toleration of peaceable and pious dissenters from the covenant. The court, after reiterating its approval of the way hitherto approved, added:
.. . yet forasmuch as sundry persons of worth for prudence and piety amongst us are otherwise perswaded, (whose wellfare and peaceable sattisfaction we desire to accomadate,) This Court doth declare that all such persons being allso approued according to lawe as orthodox and sownd in the fundamentalls of Christian religion may haue allowance of their perswasion and profession in church wayes or assemblies without dis- turbance.
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