USA > Connecticut > The history of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, Vol. I > Part 14
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with citations from ecclesiastical history which stood in the way of their theories and declarations. Governor Hunter's description of the churchmen of Stratford, as far back as 1711, would apply very well to those in all parts of the colony about the middle of the eighteenth century. They showed the influence of the example and teaching of their Missionaries, and, like them, courted knowledge and invited investi- gation. Books were not as plentiful then as now; but they read all they could reach in favor of the Church, and entered into the controversies of the times with a spirit which proved that they knew how to defend and preserve the truth. Some of them were as useful, if not as great theologians, as their pas- tors, and not only became familiar with Doctrinal treatises, but with works on Practical Religion. They could cope with those who echoed the opinions of their ministers, and find reasons for "separation" from Independency, both sound and scriptural.
Education was a matter which had been almost wholly retained in the hands of what Mr. Wetmore called "one domineering sect." The few parish schools established by the Missionaries in Connecticut, and taught for the most part by those anticipating admis- sion to Holy Orders, were imperfectly supported, or completely overshadowed in their influence, by the ample provisions of the colony for public education. Dr. Johnson, in one of his communications to the So- ciety, mentioned this fact, and ceased thereafter to press the appointment of schoolmasters and the main- tenance of separate instruction for the children of churchmen. He was widely known as the friend and patron of classical learning, and he watched its prog- VOL. I. 12
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ress at Yale College, under the impetus of Berkeley's donations, with an interest and a minuteness which he failed not to communicate to that generous bene- factor. His writings had won for him respect and confidence, wherever his name was extended; and "when Franklin was about to establish a college at Philadelphia, there was no man whose counsel he sought more eagerly, or whose authority, as its future Provost, he was more anxious to secure, than that of Johnson." But he refused this distinguished honor. only to be importuned to accept the offer of another of a like character, the Presidency of King's (now Columbia) College, New York. A number of gentle- men in that city, chiefly of the Church of England, but who associated with themselves others of the Dutch and Presbyterian congregations, influenced by the example of Philadelphia, engaged in concerting measures for founding this Institution, and in the be- ginning of 1753 obtained an Act of Assembly, ap- pointing Lieutenant-Governor De Lancy, then the Ex- ecutive of the Province, and other gentlemen Trustees or Commissioners, for carrying this design into effect. Dr. Johnson, who had been all along consulted, and who in turn applied for advice and direction to his friend Bishop Berkeley, was chosen President in Jan- uary, 1754; and though he removed, without his fam- ily, as soon as possible to New York, that he might further their generous design, yet he begged the Trus- tees not to require his final decision upon their offer until the charter should be passed, and the question of his successor at Stratford had been determined. The charter asked for by a majority of the Trustees was warmly opposed by those unfriendly to the
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Church of England,1 and much discontent ensued. But it was finally granted; and among its provisions was embodied the condition upon which the Corpora- tion of Trinity Church gave a portion of the King's Farm to build the College on and for the use of the same, namely, that the President, "forever, for the time being," should be "in communion with the Church of England," and that "the Morning and Evening ser- vice in the College should be the Liturgy of the said Church, or a collection of prayers from her Liturgy."
The following extract from a letter of the Vestry to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, com- mending the new institution to their patronage and regard, will furnish the reasons for adhering strictly to this provision of the charter :-
"The Dissenters have already three seminaries in the Northern governments. They hold their synods, presbyteries, and associations, and exercise the whole of their ecclesiastical government to the no small ad- vantage of their cause; whilst those churches which are branches of the National establishment are de- prived, not only of the benefit of a regular church government, but their children are debarred the privi-
1 " The Gentlemen Trustees had no other than an extensive and benev- olent design to make the College a common blessing to all denominations, and therefore only desired that the Church, being much the majority, should however have no other preference than that the President should always be a member in full communion of the Church of England, and that the religious service should be a collection out of the Liturgy of the Church. To this all the Dutch gentlemen entirely agreed. But Mr. W. Living- ston, a violent Presbyterian, (joined with other leading Presbyterians and Freethinkers,) violently opposed it, and raised a hideous clamor against it, and printed a paper of 20 reasons to disaffect the Assembly against granting the money raised by Lotteries, which then amounted to about £3000."- MS. Autobiography of Dr. Johnson.
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lege of a liberal education, unless they will submit to accept of it on such conditions as Dissenters require, which, in Yale College, is to submit to a fine as often as they attend public worship in the Church of Eng- land, communicants only excepted, and that only on Christmas and sacrament days. This we cannot but look upon as a hard measure, especially as we can, with good conscience, declare that we are so far from that bigotry and narrowness of spirit they have of late been pleased to charge us with, that we would not, were it in our power, lay the least restraint on any man's conscience, and should heartily rejoice to con- tinue in brotherly love and charity with all our Prot- estant Brethren."1
In connection with the Presidency of the College, Dr. Johnson was chosen to be an assistant Minister of Trinity Church, an office which he accepted with diffidence, fearing that his "advanced years, verging towards the decline of life," might render him unequal to the expectations of the people. The whole project of removing to New York involved him in painful perplexities. He loved the quiet of rural life, and for thirty-one years the church at Stratford had been as happy in the enjoyment of his ministrations as he had been in the endearing and responsible relations of a Pastor. One principal objection in his own mind to the change was his dread of the small-pox, a disease to which he must often be exposed in the city, and which had already shaded with sorrow the remem- brance of an eventful passage in the history of his pilgrimage. Having taken an affectionate leave of his people, he transferred his family to New York,
1 Berrian's Hist. Trinity Church, p. 103.
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and entered vigorously upon his new duties, reconcil- ing his mind and conscience to the step by the hope of rendering himself more extensively useful to the Church in a matter of so much importance as Christian education.
Thus Episcopacy in Connecticut lost for a time its leading light, but the clergy did not cease to con- sult him in all their troubles, nor he to be deeply in- terested in all their labors. There were measures adopted about this time, by the authorities of Yale College, to "maintain in their soundness the faith and church theory of the Puritans," which operated hardly upon Episcopal students, and gave importance to the position of Dr. Johnson as the head of the more lib- eral Institution in New York. The establishment of a separate religious society and church in Yale Col- lege was, at first, unacceptable to a large portion of the standing order; but the resolution of the Fellows in 1753, "requiring that members of their own body, with the President, the Professor of Divinity, and Tutors, should give their assent to the Westminster Catechism and Confession of Faith, and should re- nounce all doctrines and principles contrary thereto, and pass through such an examination as the corpora- tion should order,"1 though designed to secure ortho- doxy, was a step backward rather than forward, and not calculated to quiet the fears of those whose pre- dilections were for the Church of England. The theo- logical controversy which sprung up at this time be- tween the Congregationalists, and the pamphlets published on both sides, kept the popular feeling in a state of excitement, and were no help to charity.
1 President Woolsey's Hist. Dis. 1850, p. 40.
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The number of graduates who became Episcopal clergymen during the administration of President Clap, which covered a period of nearly thirty years, was scarcely greater than the number during the ad- ministration of his predecessor, which embraced less than half the same period. Bishop Berkeley, in one of his letters to Dr. Johnson, shortly before his death, referring to the progress of learning in Yale College, expressed the "hope that virtue and Christian charity might keep pace with it." We can forgive the rigor- ous enactments of a period when there was but one way of thinking in the colony, and when it was the fault of the times to take a narrow view of the rights of conscience and of Christian liberty. We can al- most forgive-for we are persuaded that no one will defend them, looking back from the point of time on which we stand-those penal laws, dictated in a spirit of undisguised intolerance, and designed for the manifest perpetuity of the Puritan faith. But after the number of Episcopal families in Connecticut had reached into thousands, and after a parish had been formed, a church built, and a Missionary of the Venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had been stationed in New Haven, it would seem that, out of respect for their wishes, and out of gratitude to clergymen of the Church of England for important services and benefactions, some relaxation of the rigor of these laws should have appeared, at least so far as not to fine Episcopal students for preferring their own mode of worship on the Lord's day, and not to require the classes, through the whole term of their College life, to recite the Westminster Confession of Faith, received and approved by the churches in the colony,
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together with Wollebius's Theology, or Dr. Ames's Me- dulla and Cases of Conscience.
While, therefore, in the matter of religious belief, the college regulations showed no more tenderness for the churchman than for the disciple of Whitefield, it was natural to turn to Johnson, opening the doors of his new Institution, and modestly inviting attention to the prescribed course of study. Many, especially of those looking forward to the Episcopal ministry, gathered around him, in preference to being shut up under an inexorable system with which they had no sympathy; and several such, who had graduated else- where, received from King's College the higher de- gree of Master of Arts on the occasion of its first Commencement. With the sanction of the Trustees, he took to aid him in his classes his younger son, William Johnson, a graduate of Yale, and a candidate for orders, "of fine genius and amiable disposition, and an excellent classical scholar." But this son, on the 8th of November, 1755, embarked for England for the purpose of being ordained, and with a view to assist and succeed the Missionary at Westchester, (Mr. Standard,) now worn out in the service of the Society. Two months only had elapsed before the father followed him with an affectionate letter, “hop- ing in the Almighty's protection" that he had safely reached "our old mother country," and desiring him, because the troubles on our frontiers were ripening into war, to use all possible dispatch and secure or- dination, that he might be ready to embrace the first good opportunity to return. He had been welcomed and honored in England, both for his own sake and that of his father. The same kind friends who, thirty-
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three years before, had entertained Dr. Johnson and his fellow-travellers, when they were at Canterbury on their way to London, received him with the warm- est hospitality; and Archbishop Secker, to quote the parent's grateful words, "treated him like his own son." He had been admitted to Holy Orders in the last week of March, had preached several times "with good acceptance," and was preparing to return to America, when he was seized with the small-pox, and died on the 20th of June, 1756,-a sad loss to the Church, and a sore affliction to his bereaved father. When the news reached him, on the 12th of Septem- ber, the shock was indeed terrible, for he had fixed his heart upon having one son who might succeed him in the priesthood. But he uttered no murmurs at the great disappointment. "The will of God," said he, "is done, and I have nothing to say on this un- happy event, but to bear it with as. much patience and resignation as I am able." . In answering some of the many affectionate letters of condolence which came to him from his friends in England, he took oc- casion to speak in the most earnest and pathetic terms of that abiding want of the Church-an American Episcopate. "I confess," said he, writing to an Eng- lish clergyman in December, 1756, "I should scarce have thought my dear son's life ill bestowed (nor I believe would he) if it could have been a means of awakening this stupid age to a sense of the necessity of sending Bishops (at least one good one) to take care of the Church in these vastly wide extended regions. But, alas! what can be expected of such an age as this! O Deus bone in que tempora reservastis nos ! This is now the seventh precious life (most of them
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the flower of this country) that has been sacrificed to the atheistical politics of this miserable, abandoned age, which seems to have lost all notion of the neces- sity of a due regard to the interest of religion, in order to secure the blessing of God on our nation both at home and abroad. As to us here, as things have hitherto gone, we can scarce look for anything else but to come under a foreign yoke."
In a letter to Dr. Bearcroft, twelve months later, after alluding to his affliction and the sympathy of the Society, he said: "There are now four or five va- cancies in these parts, but such melancholy events are so discouraging that there are little hopes of any of them being supplied from hence, and yet they are all solicitous, if possible, that they may be supplied with such as they have previously known. The small- pox has been so prevalent in New York for eight or ten months, that my friends thought it not best I should reside there, having two good Tutors to take care of the pupils. On this occasion I have retired to Westchester, the place where I desired my son might have been stationed, -where his service is ex- tremely wanted, and whose loss they sadly lament. Dr. Standard lives at Eastchester, another parish of his, where he makes a shift to officiate now and then ; but he is so infirm that he scarce ever expects to see this parish again. Wherefore that I might not be use- less in this interim, I have been officiating for him here, and I hope not without some good effect. Relig- ion was sunk to a very low ebb indeed. There were but five communicants at the first communion, one man and four women; at the last, there were five men and seven women, and the congregation is much increased."
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It is proper in this place to open the Parochial Register "belonging to the church at Stratford," and glance at the entries in the handwriting of Dr. John- son. From November 5th, 1723, the date of his arrival at the Mission, to November 10th, 1754, the date of his final departure for New York, he had bap- tized eighty-one adults and nine hundred and thirteen infants; and had admitted to the Holy Communion four hundred and forty-two; fourteen of this number being gentlemen who afterwards crossed the ocean for Holy Orders. In this period of thirty-one years, his ministrations had reached into all parts of the col- ony, and of the Baptisms and admissions to the Com- munion many were in other towns than Stratford. His parishioners, as those of all the Missionaries, were chiefly European settlers and their descendants; but the record of his pastoral labor shows that neither the American Indians nor the poor Africans were neg- lected. "I have always," said he, in one of his letters to the Society, "had a catechetical lecture during the summer months, attended by many negroes and some Indians, about seventy or eighty in all; and, as far as I can find, where the dissenters have baptized one, we have baptized two, if not three or four negroes or Indians, and I have four or five communicants."
The humble petition of the Mohegans, of whom there were about four hundred, living equidistant from "the church at Norwich" and "from the Groton church," called for the continuance at the Landing of one Mr. Cleveland, " an English minister," in whose services they hoped to have a share, that they might learn the lessons of a better life; or, to use the lan- guage of the petitioners, " that we may be taught to
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go to that good place when we die as well as white men." 1 The poor tribe of Mohegans had no money to bestow, but they were ready, according to their primitive occupations, to give of their luck something to "a good, true-hearted minister, that would teach them the right path to heaven, and not cheat them by showing them the wrong path." This was in 1756; and while there is no evidence that the peti- tion was granted, its very transmission to the Society proves that these Indians had some hope as well as claim to be considered in the interests of the Church and of Christianity.
1 Rev. Aaron Cleveland, for several years the Congregational minister at Haddam, having changed his views of ecclesiastical polity, left his family at Norwich and embarked for England, where he was ordained by the Bishop of London in the summer of 1755. He had been requested to be- come the Missionary at Norwich and Groton; but the venerable Society finally appointed him to a vacancy in Delaware, and he was licensed for Pennsylvania July 28, 1755. He visited his new field of labor, but died in Philadelphia, in the house of Dr. Franklin, while on his way back to make arrangements for the removal of his family. He is undoubtedly the clergy- man referred to in the petition of the Mohegans. - Sprague's Annals of American Epis. Pulpit, pp. 164, 165.
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CHAPTER XIV.
SUCCESSOR TO DR. JOHNSON AT STRATFORD, AND THEOLOGICAL DISPUTES BETWEEN THE OLD LIGHTS AND NEW LIGHTS.
A. D. 1756-1760.
DR. JOHNSON had recommended as his successor in Stratford the faithful Missionary at Newtown. The infirm health of Mr. Beach called for some contrac- tion of his extensive labors, and riding so much and so far had become wearisome to him; but he was so attached to his people and they to him, that the pro- posal for a change was mutually disagreeable, and therefore the Society appointed the Rev. Edward Winslow; and Dr. Bearcroft, the Secretary, in com- municating his appointment to the Vestry of the church, under date of May 2d, 1755, said, we "hope from the very good character, both for morals and learning, transmitted of him by Governor Shirley, Dr. Cutler, and many other gentlemen of Boston, and con- firmed upon his appearance here, and on his examina- tion for Holy Orders, into which he has been received, that he in a good measure will supply the loss of your late most worthy Pastor, and after his example go before in those paths of righteousness, holiness, and truth, which lead to eternal happiness in Christ in heaven." Mr. Winslow was born at Boston, a grad- uate of Harvard College in the class of 1741, and a
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clergyman who, it was afterwards said, besides “ex- celling all in the colony as a preacher," was "behind none of them in discretion and good conduct." Among his earliest movements was one to secure an organ for the church; and thirty-three persons bound them- selves to Mr. Gilbert Doblois of Boston, Merchant, in the aggregate sum of sixty pounds sterling, to be paid within six years, "in six equal payments of ten pounds sterling per annum, without any demand of interest." The organ was to be delivered by the last of April, 1756, and "Mr. Doblois was to take upon himself the risk of transporting it from Boston to Stratford." It is believed to have been the first in- strument of the kind used in a house of public wor- ship in Connecticut. In the summer of the year 1755 the Rev. Christopher Newton, an Alumnus of Yale, was sent to the long waiting parish at Ripton, and Solomon Palmer, a native of Branford, another Alumnus, and for fourteen years the Congregational minister at Cornwall, greatly surprised his people on a Sunday in March, 1754, by "declaring himself to be an Episcopalian in sentiment." He soon after went to England, was ordained by the Bishop of Bangor (Dr. Pierce), and returned to this country with the appointment of an itinerant Missionary for the dis- trict surrounding New Milford and Litchfield.
The Society had twelve Missionaries in Connecti- cut at the beginning of the old French war in 1756, namely, Edward Winslow at Stratford, Joseph Lam- son at Fairfield, John Beach at Newtown and Red- ding, John Fowle at Norwalk, Christopher Newton at Ripton (now Huntington), Ebenezer Dibblee at Stamford, Matthew Graves at New London, Richard
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Mansfield at Derby and Waterbury, Ichabod Camp at Middletown and Wallingford, Ebenezer Punderson in New Haven and neighboring towns, William Gibbs at Simsbury, and Solomon Palmer in Litchfield County. Twelve laymen from Roxbury and the adjoining towns formed themselves and their families into a parish about the year 1753, and first met for worship at a private house in Roxbury, as being the most conven- ient and central place. In the full persuasion that God would bless their undertaking, because the Church was an institution of his own, and having no prospect of soon securing a person in Holy Orders to minister among them, they made choice of a prominent lay- man, Captain Jehiel Hawley, to be their reader,-a choice which was repeated for eleven successive years, and within which time an edifice had arisen that was consecrated by the occasional services of Mr. Palmer, the itinerant Missionary stationed at New Milford. A year later another church arose at Sharon, in the remote corner of the State; and Mr. Palmer, in communicating to the Society, in 1760, the state of his mission, represented his labors to be "successful beyond expectation, having now four good timber churches, subscriptions for another, and two in private houses." This language will be explained by an ex- tract from another letter, written by the Missionary in the same year, as follows: "Besides the three congre- gations to which at first I was particularly appointed, I have three more, namely, at Roxbury, Cornwall, and Judea. The two last consist of fifteen families each, and there are subscriptions raising for the building a church in Kent, (which they design to forward as fast as they can,) at a place convenient for about fifty
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families, to meet from several different towns. These are all in Litchfield County; and since April 16, 1758, I have baptized an hundred and twenty-two children." Mr. Newton, under date of June 25th, 1760, commu- nicated to the Society the increase of his charge, and the effect of his ministrations upon a number of fam- ilies "living at the distance of about eight, and some ten miles from Ripton," to whom he had frequently preached. "Of late," said he, "they have been more ready to hear than formerly, and seem to be relig- iously disposed, and sensible of the importance of at- tending public worship, and, accordingly, have built a church thirty-six feet long and twenty-six feet wide; and in about six weeks from the beginning so far fin- ished it that we met in it for public worship, and a large congregation attended, it was supposed upward of three hundred people. These people live at a great distance from any public worship, and many of them are so poor that they have not horses to carry their families to worship if they would; and others, it seems by their conduct, choose to spend the Sabbath in hunting and unnecessary visits, and are not only dila- tory in religious matters, but in secular affairs. Many live but little above the Indian, and are destitute of the comforts of life." Some persons of ample means were influenced by this gloomy prospect to erect the church at Tashua. One gentleman, for years an Epis- copalian, declared that he felt it to be his duty to expend a part of his estate in providing what, with the divine blessing, would prevent the people from becoming heathens. The enterprise was rewarded with success, and those who had hitherto been so neg- lectful in religious matters, seemed highly to prize
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