USA > Connecticut > The history of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, Vol. I > Part 15
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the privilege of public worship, and desired Mr. New- ton to take them under his care,- a desire to which he yielded, "preaching to them every fourth Sunday."
The growth of the Church in some localities was affected by the war carried on, at this period, for the protection of our frontiers from the invasions of the French and Indians. Dibblee wrote to the Society in the autumn of 1759: "The sound of the trumpet and the alarms to war, together with a concern for the events thereof, principally engross the attention of the people. Indeed, the church of Stamford is rather weakened than strengthened of late, by enlistments into public service, and by the surprising removal of a number of heads of families, through a very malig- nant disorder that has prevailed among my people. In less than a year past I have buried twelve heads of families, seven males, some of them the best orna- ments of religion and zeal for the Church, and the sup- port of it among us, and of good esteem among our dissenting brethren." In the same letter he men- tioned the fact that he had preached several times to the people in Salem, N. Y., once, "upon a special fast appointed in that province, to implore the smiles of Divine Providence to attend his Majesty's arms the ensuing campaign." The faithful Beach at Newtown, later in the autumn, also reported: "My parish is in a flourishing state in all respects, excepting that we have lost some of our young men in the army; more, in- deed, by sickness than by the sword, for this country- men do not bear a campaign so well as Europeans."
Public attention continued to be drawn to the Church of England by the controversies of the times, and especially by the sharp theological disputes into
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which the Congregationalists were plunged. "Arian and Socinian errors," said Mr. Beach, "by means of some books written by Dissenters in England, seem of late to gain ground a great pace in this country among Presbyterians, as they choose to be called, and some of our people are in no small danger from that infection. I have, therefore, at Dr. Johnson's desire and advice, prepared a small piece for the press, being an attempt to vindicate Scripture Mysteries." This he de- livered, in the shape of a discourse, before the clergy in 1760, and it was afterwards published, with a preface by Dr. Johnson, recommending it as a fit corrective of the latitudinarian spirit of the times. The clergy also testified their approbation of it; and Mr. Winslow, in a letter to the Society, thus speaks of the whole affair: "At a late Convention of the clergy of our Church in this colony, at New Haven, a sermon was preached by the Rev. Mr. Beach, wherein, much to his own reputation, and, I trust, by the Divine bless- ing, to the credit of religion and advantage of the Church here, he has with great zeal and faithfulness endeavored to vindicate and establish the important fundamentals of the Sacred Trinity, and the divinity of our blessed Saviour; his atonement and satisfac- tion; the necessity of the renewing and sanctifying influences of Divine Grace, and the eternity of future punishment; and to expose the falsehood and danger of the contrary pernicious errors, which, by means of spreading bad books and other industrious arts of too many men of bad principles in these parts, have been successfully propagated. The clergy have unitedly taken the occasion of the publication of this discourse to give their testimony against these errors, and to VOL. I. 13
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recommend the doctrines therein inculcated as the prime truths of the Gospel, and the foundation on which the whole structure of the Articles and Liturgy of the Church is framed. I hope Mr. Beach has, by this service, atoned in some measure for the ill effects of his former unhappy mistake, and that it may prove a seasonable means to preserve our people in their steadfastness, and to guide our dissenting brethren to that refuge from their various distractions among themselves, both about doctrines and discipline, which they must needs wish to find."
These "various distractions among the dissenting brethren " sprung from the seeds sown by Whitefield. It was an inglorious harvest of strife and contention, and the reapers in the fields were "upon bad ex- tremes." The great controversy between the Old Lights and the New Lights culminated in the Wal- lingford case, a case which more than all others be- came a matter of public concern, and opened a dis- tinct era in New-England theology, and in the history of the "liberties of the churches." For six years, the first church and society in Wallingford had not only been vacant, but in an unhappy, broken, and divided state. After many fruitless attempts to unite in the settlement of a pastor, James Dana of Cambridge, and a graduate of Harvard College, was set apart to the ministry by an Old-Light council, in the face of a protest from a respectable minority, and against the solemn interdict of the "Consociation of New Haven
1 In 1758 he published An Inquiry concerning the State of the Dead, which was misrepresented because misunderstood, and the printing of which he regretted.
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County," which had met in Wallingford to forbid the ordination of a candidate charged with doctrinal un- soundness, even with Socinian or Arminian proclivi- ties. The consociation and the council met, either by accident or design, on the same day, a day mem- orable in the annals of Congregationalism. The bold procedure of ordaining in spite of the prohibition was a triumph of the principle for which the New Lights had long contended, and the pens of the time were alive in its censure or in its defence. It was a triumph also over the powers of the "ecclesiastical constitution of the dissenters "; and Noah Hobart, aided by President Clap and other leading divines of the colony, proved to be a champion no more successful here for the Saybrook Platform than he had been in his Addresses . to the members of the Episcopal separation in New England. Those on the other side found support for their action in the popular voice, as well as in the voice of a body of ministers trained under the influ- ence of Whitefield's teachings. The pamphlets pub- lished by both parties stirred up such an acrimonious spirit, and threw so unsatisfactory a light upon the real questions involved, that many among the people escaped from these controversies to find peace and enjoyment in the communion of the Church. The Independent Society in Wallingford became divided, and when the dissentients proceeded to erect a new meeting-house, called the "Wells," an attempt was made to arrest their work, and a fight over the trenches dug for the foundations brought together the inhabitants for miles around to participate in the scene, or to witness its issue.
The Episcopal Clergy, as it has been already stated,
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took no part in the theological disputes which the Independents carried on among themselves. They quietly watched the progress of events, and seemed to feel, as Chandler expressed himself in writing to Dr. Johnson on a later occasion, "If these dissenters will but confute one another, it will save us the trouble." They were accused to the Society, and to their friends in England, with attempting to make proselytes; and this accusation was urged in order to depreciate their services, and prevent them from securing the boon they had so long implored-an American Episcopate. But Johnson denied this, and vindicated his brethren when he wrote to Archbishop Secker from New York; and after referring to his experience of thirty-one years in Connecticut, said: "I never once tried to proselyte dissenters, nor do I believe any of the other ministers did; we never concerned ourselves with them till they came to us; and when they did, we could do no other than give them the best instructions and assistance we could in making a right judgment for themselves. And so far were we from promoting or taking advantage of any quarrels that happened among themselves, that in many instances we obliged them to accommodate matters with their former brethren, or at least do all they could towards an accommoda- tion, before we would receive them to our commun- ion." Winslow, in a communication to the Society, after referring to the Wallingford case, said: "What- ever advantages in favor of the Church are to be made from this disturbed state of religion among the dis- senters, I hope our clergy, and the people of our com- munion, will be enabled to manage with such pru- dence as to keep ourselves from being unnecessarily entangled in their disputes."
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In the summer of 1758 the parish in Waterbury, through the Vestry, voted to give Mr. James Scovill £20 sterling per annum, and the use of the glebe, provided he should get no appropriation from the So- ciety "at home"; and also to allow him a gratuity sufficient to take him to England for ordination. He was a native of that place, and graduated at Yale College in 1757, when he was in the twenty-fifth year of his age. He was to relieve Mr. Mansfield, by taking charge of that portion of his Mission which embraced Waterbury and the districts within the former limits of that town. But the addition of his name, in 1759, to the list of Connecticut clergy was balanced by the loss of that of Mr. Camp. Dr. Johnson wrote to the Society in 1760 thus: "I wish Mr. Camp could have had £40 or £50 at Middletown, for partly his neces- sities and partly the invitation of Governor Dobbs put him on removing to North Carolina; but such is the case of those that go from the northward to these southward colonies: he has lost his health, and doubts whether he can live till he gets moved northward again, which he earnestly desires, and I have put his old people upon inviting him back." But in a sub- sequent letter he mentioned, "Middletown people are so displeased at his leaving them, that they will not invite him back, but have pitched on a promis- ing candidate, one Jarvis, who is not yet of age, for orders; so Mr. Camp must e'en take the fruit of his doings."
In 1760 the Episcopalians in that part of Walling- ford called Cheshire "built themselves a small church for their greater convenience in the winter season, when their families could not well attend at the
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other." It was opened in December of the same year, with services and a sermon, by the Rev. Mr. Scovill. A parish organization was formed, with a Clerk, Church- wardens, and Vestrymen, and the people continued to meet on Sundays, and to be thankful for the privilege of lay reading, until another Missionary had been provided to take the place of Mr. Camp. A parish arose at North Haven in 1759, and a house of worship was, in the succeeding year, erected, under the guidance of Mr. Punderson, to whose "pastoral care and charge" the people submitted themselves. Guilford, Branford, Derby, and Oxford were receiving frequent accessions to their numbers; and thus, while the Church was growing in other places, at New Haven, the centre of Punderson's Mission, there was not the life or prosperity which had been hoped or expected. It is true, he had strong prejudices among the people to overcome, and sleepless vigilance to meet. For eight years he toiled patiently on, and his families, according to the note of Stiles, in his "Itin- erary," had only increased to the number of twenty- five, comprising ninety-one souls. Dr. Johnson lets us into the secret reason of this slow growth, when, in writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in the summer of 1760, he said: "Mr. Punderson seems a very honest and laborious man; yet the church at New Haven appears uneasy, and rather declining under his ministry, occasioned, I believe, partly by his want of politeness, and partly by his being absent so much, having five or six places under his care. I wish he was again at Groton, and some politer person in his place, and another at Guilford and Branford."
Through fear of being unnecessarily minute, we
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may have passed over some topics which deserve con- sideration, and touched upon others with too slight a comment. The list of the Missionaries of the So- ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel within the last seven years has been lengthened by the names only of Christopher Newton, Solomon Palmer, and James Scovill. But the appeals have become more frequent and urgent for clergymen in other places, though the prospect of securing an American Episco- pate, so long and so earnestly prayed for, is still as dim and distant as ever. It is a contrast, to be con- templated with grateful emotions, that in a place where a century ago twenty-five families gathered in an incapacious wooden edifice to lift their hearts and voices to God, and to praise him in the forms of the Liturgy, there are now to be found at least a thousand families, and nearly two thousand commu- nicants, cherishing the same venerable faith, and wor- shipping the same Triune Jehovah, in larger, loftier, and more enduring or more costly temples.
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CHAPTER XV.
PROSPERITY OF THE CHURCH IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY, AND ALONG THE SHORE FROM NORWICH TO GREENWICH.
A. D. 1760-1762.
THE Church, though bitterly opposed, was steadily progressing in the northern part of the colony under the energetic ministrations of Solomon Palmer. At the date of his appointment as an itinerant, the Society had no resident Missionary in Litchfield County, and his labors, therefore, reached over a wide circuit into all the towns and villages where scattered families of churchmen dwelt. He even penetrated beyond the lines into the provinces of New York and Massachu- setts, and was the pioneer of the Church in several places where it early gained a firm footing. His long residence at Cornwall as "a teacher in the dissenting way" had made him familiar with the region; but his right to the lands, granted by the government as an encouragement to the first minister settling on that frontier, was not agreeable to the Presbyterians, and they brought an action for damages against him for breaking his covenant and conforming to the Church of England ; and, strange to say, so little regard was paid to the sanctity of conscience that they recovered £15 with the costs. In a communication to the So- ciety, referring to this matter, he said: "By my settling among them as a teacher, I became, by act of the As-
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sembly, a proprietor in common with the other pro- prietors, and the same patent was and is absolute and unconditional; so that even the power that gave it could not legally, and I am sure not justly, reassume or require damages; for so great were the expense, fatigue, and hardship that I endured for the three first years, that I would not suffer them again for the whole township. I continued with that people, before and after my settling among them, fifteen years, till I had spent an estate of my own, of more value than the right of land, and till the people had got through all the difficulties of settling a new town, and they and I began to live pretty well."
But his conscience would not allow him peace in this condition; and when he had returned from Eng- land, whither he went for Episcopal ordination, nothing would satisfy his now alienated flock but prosecution and damages. The remembrance of all former toils and privations had disappeared, and he was compelled to stand forth in the attitude of a defender at once of his personal rights and of the rights of the Church. To add to his distress and make his case still more perplexing, the rates of the Episcopalians at Cornwall were withholden from him, and went to the mainten- ance of the dissenting minister, and no relief could be obtained from these exactions until, by his own request, his Mission was made to embrace only the limits of Litchfield County. Familiar as he was with the management of the Congregationalists in raising money for the support of their religious teachers, he strongly urged upon the Society the duty of making larger demands upon the liberality of churchmen, since many of them were as able to contribute as
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their poor benefactors at home. Notwithstanding the bitter spirit of persecution, he saw the good effects which the Liturgical services produced, and in one of his letters to the Society mentioned an instance where a neighboring congregation of Dissenters, "ob- serving our regular method of reading the Scriptures in church, had, in their last parish meeting, voted that a new folio Bible be bought for them, and that their teacher shall read lessons out of it every Sunday morning and evening."
Mr. Beach, always careful to note the temper of the times, writing from Redding under date of April 6th, 1761, concluded his letter with a testimony to the growth of the Church and the influence of the Society, too strong not to be quoted in this connection: "My weak and painful state of body admonishes me, that, although this may not be the last time of my writing, yet the last cannot be afar off; therefore I take this opportunity to return my humble and hearty thanks to the Venerable Society for the charitable support they have given me for twenty-nine years, in which time I have faithfully, though weakly and imperfectly, endeavored to propagate true religion; and I think I have not been unsuccessful, for the number of the pro- fessors of the Church of England in these parts in this space of time is increased more than from one to ten, and, what is of much greater importance, their con- duct for the most part is a credit to their profession, and they are constant and devout attendants on the worship of God, according to the Church. Indeed, were it not for the Venerable Society's charity, I know not what would become of many thousands in these parts who have so great a love and esteem of
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our Church, and so great an aversion to the Indepen- dent methods; yet, if they were deprived of that which they admire, they never would join with the others; nay, the venerable Society's charity to us has proved no small advantage to the Independents, for they who live near to the Church of England ac- quire juster notions of religion, and become more regular in their worship."
The church at Litchfield, to which place Mr. Palmer removed, after residing in New Milford for five years, was composed of "a body of religious, sober, and order- ly people, steady in their principles, and constant in their attendance upon public worship." In those days, the privileges of the sanctuary were prized by devout men, and sacrifices to enjoy them, little thought of by the present generation, were readily made. The dis- tance which some families were obliged to travel before they reached the house of God, and their in- convenient and slow modes of conveyance, seem hardly credible to Christians accustomed to the ease and luxurious habits of our time. Frequently the family was mounted, the parents upon one steed, with a child in the arms to be christened, and the older branches upon another, or else the whole were clus- tered together in a rude vehicle used upon the farm; and in this way they were "glad to go up to the house of the Lord, and to give thanks unto his name." If the customs of those times, so far as they related to church-going, were simple and primitive, there was yet a spirit, a heartiness in them which it would be pleasant to see infused into the more genteel fash- ions of the age in which we live, at least infused into the minds of those who are governed in their worship
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of God more by comfort and convenience than by duty and principle.
Early in the spring of 1761, Thomas Davies, Sam- uel Andrews, and John Beardsley embarked for Eng- land to receive Holy Orders, carrying with them letters from the clergy of Connecticut in testimony of their learning, good character, and fitness for the sacred ministry. They were all reared in the colony, and the two first were graduates of Yale College. Of the other, Dr. Johnson, who baptized him in his in- fancy, his parents being among his original parishion- ers in Stratford, thus wrote in a letter to Archbishop Secker: "As to Mr. Beardsley, he had been two years educated at Yale College, since which he was here under my direction in his studies, and has conducted very seriously and industriously, and, I believe, will be a very useful person. The gentlemen that recom- mend him speak of him as having been graduated here, as he would have been if he could have stayed a few days, as they expected, till our Commencement,- which he could not do, being obliged to embark sooner; but he will certainly be admitted A. B., though thus necessarily absent,-as will likewise the other two to the Master's degree." They were absent less than a year, and on their return to this country proceeded immediately to the respective stations to which they had been appointed. Mr. Davies was sent into Litch- field County, near his own friends, and to places which had applied and provided for him previous to his departure, and where he had for some time served as a lay reader. He fixed his residence at New Mil- ford, and went as an itinerant over much of the ground traversed by Mr. Palmer, relieving that de-
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voted Missionary of a large share of his burden, and giving his own zeal, the dew of his youth, and the strength of a robust constitution to the service of the Society and the advancement of the Church. He was in reality appointed a successor to Mr. Palmer, who, on account of bodily infirmity, had been desirous of a less extensive charge, and already designated for Amboy, N. J .; but the people there were averse to receiving him, having fixed their hearts upon an- other clergyman; and he was equally averse to going. "I herewith send you," said Dr. Johnson, writing April 12th, 1762, "an earnest address to the Society from Litchfield, a county town in Connecticut, desir- ing that their minister, Mr. Palmer, who is ordered to Amboy, may be continued with them; and another from him, that he may be continued there, or sent to Rye, which is vacant." Mr. Davies could not well resist the importunities of the people, who, in distant places, loathing the rigid Calvinism of their dissenting teachers, invited him to come among them; but that he might spare himself the inconvenience of frequent visits and still keep the leaven of Episcopacy at work, he encouraged them to assemble at stated times for lay reading. In 1762, before the leaves of the trees had begun to put on their autumn tints, he went to Great Barrington, Mass., upon the invitation of a few families there; and writing, in Christmas week, to the Secretary of the Society an account of his visit, he said: "I chose a clerk, a very regular and pious man, long acquainted in the church, to read prayers with them, as they could not in conscience go to meeting. One of the most steady among them was imprisoned last summer for non-attendance; and they all would
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be if they did not meet among themselves. There are near forty families, conformists, in this town,-people of worth and good fame." Mr. Andrews, the youn- gest of eight sons, and born within the limits of the present town of Meriden, was appointed to Walling- ford, with the addition of Cheshire and North Haven. The prophet had honor in his own country. Walling- ford was the chief seat of those prolonged controver- sies which had thrown the standing order into such confusion and disquietude ; and Winslow, the accom- plished Missionary at Stratford, had been frequently requested to officiate to the churchpeople there, com- posed of a very considerable number of substantial persons, and who prudently avoided entangling them- selves in the religious disputes of the Independents, and thus gained the affection of both parties.
Mr. Beardsley was sent to the long waiting people at Norwich and Groton. They had been doomed to repeated disappointment in their efforts to secure a successor to Mr. Punderson, after his removal to New Haven; but notwithstanding this, divine service was kept up in both the churches, and the eldest son of Punderson, a graduate of Yale College, had read gratuitously in Groton for nearly six years. For some time before he embarked for England, John Beards- ley "read prayers and sermons" in the vacant Mis- sion "to very good acceptance," and the people bound themselves in a stated sum for his support, when he should return to them clothed with authority to exe- cute the office of a Priest in the Church of God. Mr. Punderson, whose daughter he afterwards married, commended him in a special letter to the Society, and said of him, he "is a person of unspotted character,
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