USA > Connecticut > The history of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, Vol. I > Part 4
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The churchmen of Stratford were organized into a parish, with Wardens and Vestrymen, at the visit of Mr. Muirson, in April 1707. Besides being attended by the distinguished Christian gentleman before men- tioned, he was on one occasion accompanied by the Rev. Evan Evans, a clergyman of the Church in Phil- adelphia, who was with him when he baptized some children at a private house in Fairfield, and witnessed there and in Stratford the course pursued by the min- isters and magistrates of the colony to prevent the introduction of Episcopacy. He witnessed also the prudence and discretion, the good temper and Chris- tian moderation of Mr. Muirson, and visiting England soon after, and knowing the hearty desires of the churchmen of Stratford that he might be located among them, and even being charged with such a petition, he interceded with the Society for the Prop- agation of the Gospel to secure his appointment as a Missionary to that place. But Muirson died in Octo- ber 1708, too soon to hear of his transfer, if not too soon for the Church in Connecticut. He was a man to be admired for his many excellent and Christian qualities. When the people at Norwalk and Fairfield
1 Appendix A.
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were ready to break open the meeting-house doors tc let him in, he would not permit the violence. He drew the picture of himself when he wrote thus to the Society, nine months before his untimely death: "Gentleness and sweetness of temper is the readiest way to engage the affections of the people; and charity to those who differ from us in opinion is the most likely to convince them that our labors are in- tended for the welfare of their souls; whereas pas- sionate and rash methods of proceeding will fill their minds with prejudices against both our persons and our principles, and utterly indispose them against all the means we can make use of to reclaim them from their errors."
The parish, with about thirty communicants and a respectable number of families, was now left to the occasional services of missionaries who chanced to visit this and the neighboring towns. The Rev. Mr. Talbot of New Jersey, the Rev. Christopher Bridges, stationed at Rye, and the Rev. Mr. Sharpe, are re- corded as coming from time to time to minister to the people and encourage them to persevere in the midst of their vexations and trials. Colonel Heath- cote still continued his watchful interest, and accom- panied, in January 1710, Mr. Sharpe, who spent "near a month " preaching from house to house and baptiz- ing many, "amongst whom was an aged man, said to be the first [white] man-child born in Connecticut." The Wardens and Vestrymen, who, before the death of Mr. Muirson, had resolved on building a church, ear- nestly appealed to the Society at home to be remem- bered in their deplorable destitution. They stated that, until the 12th day of December 1709, they had
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received no persecution -but that of the tongue Now came the operation of the law recently passed by the General Assembly, relaxing the rigor of Puri- tan rule ; and then followed the levy by distress upon their estates, the seizure and imprisonment of their persons, and, what was meaner than all, the combi- nation not to patronize those churchmen who were dependent for support upon their trades and employ- ments. But they were not to be crushed out in this way. They held together, and empowered one of their number to go before the General Court assem- bled at Hartford, and ask for a redress of their griev- ances, and for the adoption of some measures by which they might have peace for the future. But the attorney - William Jeanes-accomplished noth- ing by his efforts; for the General Court well knew that if the case of Stratford was decided in favor of the Church of England, there would soon be similar petitions coming from other towns.
The attempt has sometimes been made to depre- ciate the character of these men, or to speak in dis- paragement of them, as if they were insignificant tradesmen and mechanics. But they certainly showed good qualities of head and heart. Though poor in this world's goods, they were rich in faith. They were men who bore their trials and grievances nobly, and took especial pains to recommend their creed by pious and blameless lives; for Governor Hunter of New York, in a letter written in 1711, after a visit to Connecticut, described the churchmen of Stratford as " appearing very much in earnest, and the best set of men he met with in that country."
In a brief address, about the same time, to Queen
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Anne, the Vestry alluded in modest terms to their many trials and troubles, and then meekly added, - " The want of a minister is the greatest of our afflic- tions." That want was shortly to be supplied ; for just before Christmas in 1712, the Rev. Francis Phil- ips arrived among them, having been sent out by the Propagation Society as a Missionary in charge of this station. The members were greatly encouraged by his appearance, and " the masters of considerable fam- ilies " were on the point of withdrawing from the Congregationalists and uniting with the Church of England, when, lo! the Missionary proved unfit for his position, and the brightest hopes again vanished. "As to Mr. Philips," says Colonel Heathcote, "tlie Society made a wrong choice in him; for that Mis- sionary being of a temper very contrary to be pleased with such conversation and way of living as Stratford affords, had no sooner seen that place but his thoughts were bent and employed how he should get from it." He spent much of his time in New York, and " the greatest thing the people had to charge him with, as touching his behavior whilst among them, was the neglect of his orders and commission." This certainly was enough. He left them abruptly in the midsum- mer of 1713, in a condition worse than he found them, - "a scorn and reproach to their enemies," - but still not quite disheartened.
Francis Philips yet lives in the person of many a clergyman who succeeds a good and judicious Rector in a well-ordered parish, but begins his ministrations by tilling the field in his own novel way, and with his plough turned backward.
Again the churchmen of Stratford were dependent
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for occasional services upon the neighboring mission- aries, and again the appeals went over to the Society for another minister. They wrote in April 1714, that they had felled the timber with which to erect an edi- fice, and expressed the hope that it might be "raised in three months' time "; but the hope was not realized. Four years later, we find them bemoaning to the Society their sorrowful condition, pleading for sym- pathy and succor, and closing their letter with this description and these few statistics : "As to our out- ward estate, it may very well be said that we are inconsiderable, it being the interests of our govern- ment so to make us ; but as to our number, we have had at least a hundred baptized into the Church, and have had at one time thirty-six partakers of the Holy Communion of the Lord's Supper, and have several times assembled in our own congregation between two and three hundred persons; and, if encouraged by your honors, [ours] may be as flourishing a church as any country church in America."
The minister of God, for whom we may believe they had so long prayed in the dark night of their discouragement and persecution, came to them at length, Trinity Sunday, 1722. Heathcote had gone suddenly to his rest the year before, and the Society in England sent out as missionary the. Rev. GEORGE PIGOT, who, on arriving in New York, thus addressed the churchmen of Stratford under date of April 23, 1722: "I take this opportunity by your own towns- man of informing you of the Society's great care of you, who have been pleased to appoint me, a mean yet willing watchman over you for the Lord. I chose to settle among you, because my family might be
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more easily transported from Rhode-Island (where they now reside) to your town, than to any other vacant mission in America. It is expected from you, that you will make some provision for me and mine ; that I may not be necessitated to settle elsewhere, as the Society have promised, if you do not take care accordingly. I am now waiting for a passage to Rhode-Island, from whence, after settlement of my affairs, you may expect your hitherto unknown and very humble servant."
For this favor, as well as for the books which Mr. Pigot brought with him, the people returned their most grateful acknowledgments. He won their hearts by his energy and edifying conversation, and the Church, whose " timber " had been seasoning for years, was at once put in the progress of completion, and on a site which the town in lawful meeting first refused, but afterwards was compelled to allow. By this time, some earnest inquiries had been started else- where, and soon those astounding events in the religious history of the colony occurred that widened the prospect of establishing the Church and increasing the number of her parishes. Samuel Johnson, an acceptable minister among the Congregationalists at West Haven, and Timothy Cutler, for ten years the popular preacher in Stratford, but now the classic Rector of Yale College, with their associates, Jared Eliot, John Hart, Samuel Whittelsey, James Wetmore, and Daniel Brown, coming together first as friends and brethren, had finally met in the Library of the Institution, and examined from time to time a few theological books sent over in kindness from the mother-country. They examined the doctrines and
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practices of the Primitive Church, and compared them with the model of their own discipline and worship; and the farther they pushed their inquiries, the more uneasy they became. As light would break in upon the darkened chamber of their toil, they were com- pelled at last to welcome it; and not only the two who occupied the eminently responsible positions in the College, but the rest, making no secret of their opinions, sent in to the Trustees, "Rev. Fathers and Brethren present in the Library," a formal statement of their views, and declared for Episcopacy, or doubted the validity of Presbyterian ordination. Unspeakable was the amazement of the grave assembly which heard the statement of Cutler and his associates ; overwhelming was the sorrow and wide the con- sternation as the tidings of it passed from town to town and village to village. "I suppose," says Presi- dent Woolsey, speaking of this event in the Historical Discourse delivered on occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Institution, "that greater alarm would scarcely be awakened now, if the Theological Faculty of the College were to de- clare for the Church of Rome, avow their belief in Transubstantiation, and pray to the Virgin Mary."
Nothing could shake the strongest of these men from their convictions. They had been looked upon as brethren of highest promise and influence, and there- fore every effort was made to remove their doubts and misgivings, to settle them back into the prevail- ing faith, and thus to quiet the apprehensions and alarm of the pastors and the people. The General Assembly was to have a session in the ensuing Octo- ber, and Saltonstall, the Governor of the colony, - of
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whom Dr. Trumbull speaks as "a great man, well versed in the Episcopal controversy," - with a view to these benevolent ends, invited and presided over a debate held the day after the session commenced, and in which he appears himself to have borne a con- spicuous part. The friendly conference was invited with no expectation that it would terminate virtually in the discomfiture of the Trustees of the College; but it was soon discovered that the parties were une- qually matched, - the advocates for the Church hav- ing weighed and examined the points in controversy with the utmost care, while to Saltonstall and his sup- porters many of them were new and perplexing. The defence of Episcopacy by one of the number ex- citing some irritating remarks from the other side, the Governor abruptly put an end to the debate, and it never was reopened in the same way. Cutler, Johnson, and Brown wavered not, having studied the matter too thoroughly to be shaken by anything but fair and solid argument. But three others, Eliot, Hart, and Whittelsey, who only doubted the validity of Presbyterian ordination, continued in their respec- tive places, and for the rest of their days "were never known to act or say or insinuate anything to the dis- advantage of the Church." Wetmore, who stood up side by side with his friends in the College Library, defending Episcopacy, surrendered his pastoral charge a few months later, and followed them to England for Holy Orders.
In closing this chapter, it is impossible not to be grateful to the Giver of all good for the priceless inheritance which we have received. With every revolving year we may find new and stronger rea-
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sons to bless God for his Church, which is the pillar and ground of the truth, and for the Book of Com- mon Prayer, which is the beautiful child of the Ref- ormation, or, to use another figure, the golden casket that contains spolia opima, the richest spoils of one of the noblest and mightiest conflicts ever waged with " principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places." Since the fathers of Christendom fell asleep for " the truth as it is in Jesus," there has been no such struggle with the champions of error, igno- rance, and superstition as that which Wickliffe com- menced, and Cranmer and Ridley and Latimer con- tinued even to martyrdom. Honor be to the Church, then, - with all her shortcomings and all the evils that inhere in her as a national hierarchy, - which does not forget her children, but follows them forth into the wilderness, and feeds them there with the bread of life, comforts them with the prayers of her venerable Liturgy, and cheers them with hymns and chorals, around which cluster the precious memo- ries of confessors and martyrs and saints in all ages. She goes where the English tongue goes, and blesses with her holiest benedictions the lowliest vales of poverty and the highest seats of power.
" She kindles realms so far apart, That, while her praise you sing,
These may be clad with Autumn's fruits, And those with flowers of Spring."
She has claimed " the heathen for her inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for her pos- session."
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CHAPTER III.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE LITURGY AND TEACHINGS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND ; AND THE RESULTS OF THE DEBATE IN THE LIBRARY OF YALE COLLEGE.
A. D. 1722-1723.
THE Commencement at Yale College in 1722 at- tracted unusual attention. The events briefly noted in the conclusion of the previous chapter were not anticipated, but there had been some whisperings about the frequent conferences in the Library, of Cutler and the neighboring ministers, and a word had been dropped here and there which boded the probability of a strange development. Johnson had made a summer visit to Mr. Pigot at Stratford; and the interview showed so plainly the direction in which the thoughts and affections of the inquirers were drifting, and so surprised and gratified the Missionary of the Church of England, that he could neither refrain from hinting the matter to his good parishioners, nor refuse the courteous invitation of the Rector of the College to be present at the approaching Commence- ment. He came not, however, to take any part in that earnest debate which was subsequently held, much less to bolster up the courage of his new and sympathizing friends in their meditated change. It does not appear that he was at any time, or in any way, the aider or suggester of their united action.
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As far as related to the main points at issue, they probably understood them as thoroughly as the Mis- sionary himself. In a communication to the Society written just before this eventful Commencement, he says: "Those gentlemen who are ordained pastors among the Independents, namely, Mr. Cutler, the President of Yale College, and five more, have held a conference with me, and are determined to declare themselves professors of the Church of England, as soon as they shall understand they will be supported at home."
It may be proper to mention in this place, that the Institution, located first at Saybrook, and then car- ried fractionally to other towns of the colony, was finally, by a major vote of the Trustees, established at New Haven in 1716. A storm of continued opposi- tion arose to this action, broken at last by the inter- ference of the General Assembly ; but all the elements of discord appear to have been completely hushed when Cutler was called to be the first resident Rector, and Brown was appointed to assist him in his office. Johnson now relinquished his own situation as a tutor, held by him for three years, being contented to leave the College - which had been, and still was, an object of his affection -in the care of his two friends, and from whose society he would not be withdrawn in retiring to West Haven, then a part of New Haven, and entering upon the more congenial duties of pas- toral life. There he was set apart to the Congrega- tional ministry, March 20, 1720, when he was in the twenty-fourth year of his age. Fairer fields of labor and more inviting offers, in many respects, had been tendered his acceptance; but as one prominent ob- VOL. I. 3
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ject with him at this period was the improvement of his mind, with a view to more extended usefulness, he could not be distant from the College, the Library, and his friends; and so West Haven, the birthplace of Brown, was selected for the beginning of his min- isterial work.
A good man in Guilford (Smithson) - blessed be his memory !- had a Prayer Book, which he put into the hands of the youthful Johnson before he left his native town, and he read and re-read it until his mind was charged with its contents, and he began to feel as the celebrated George Herbert of old felt and said, when he lay on the bed of death, "There are no prayers like those of my mother, the Church of Eng- land." Many of these prayers he committed to mem- ory and used as occasion required in public worship, alike to the comfort of himself and to the comfort and edification of his flock. So much were they admired by people in general, that, we are told, “it was com- mon for persons belonging to the neighboring parishes to come to West Haven on purpose to hear them." He had previously perused a discourse of Archbishop King, " On the Inventions of Men in the Worship of God," and the argument to him was so convincing against public prayer carried on in the extempore way, that he was already prepared to lay it aside. It is no wonder, therefore, while thus engaged, that all his prejudices against the Church should disappear, and feelings of reverence and admiration for her Ritual come to take strong possession of his mind. It is no wonder that he should wish to communicate his thoughts to his friends, and to consult them in a matter of such momentous importance, and in rela-
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tion to which he both needed and prayed for direc- tion and assistance. Hence from first meeting to- gether in a fraternal way at the residences of each other, and conversing upon the subject of church gov- ernment, they had proceeded to a more formal and thorough investigation, and read carefully the best books which the Library furnished on either side of the controversy. Barrow, Patrick, South, Tillotson, John Scott, Whitby, Burnet, Sharp, and Sherlock, eminent authorities in English theology then, and eminent authorities still, were among the writers whose works, through Jeremiah Dummer, were do- nated to the College, while yet it was in an imperfect and wandering condition. These fell under their im- mediate inspection and review; and probably no books, in connection with the Bible, were ever more intently examined and studied. The eyes of seven men, seek- ing the truth, were bent upon them from day to day and month to month, and around the subjects of which they treated, their thoughts hung constantly in mingled fear and hesitation. In surrendering their respective positions, and changing the form of their faith, they could not have been influenced by any prospect of bettering their temporal fortunes, and they must have foreknown that it would be a severe trial for them to withstand the alternate reproaches and entreaties of their friends. Undoubtedly they were sincere and honest in their intentions; and had their inquiries settled them all back confidingly in the established religion of the colony, - situated as they were, and despised and abused as the Church of England then was, -it would have been a most welcome result. Johnson showed the workings of his mind and his
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whole desire to be led into a right path, when he noted in his private journal, three months before the final shock came, these touching words: - "I hoped, when I was ordained, that I had sufficiently satisfied myself of the validity of Presbyterian ordination under my circumstances. But, alas ! I have ever since had growing suspicions that it is not right, and that I am an usurper in the House of God, which sometimes, I must confess, fills my mind with a great deal of per- plexity, and I know not what to do: my case is very unhappy. Oh, that I could either gain satisfaction, that I may lawfully proceed in the execution of the ministerial function, or that Providence would make my way plain for the obtaining of Episcopal orders ! What course I shall take I know not. Do Thou, O my God, direct my steps; lead and guide me and my friends in Thy way everlasting." Again, immediately after the Commencement, and when he had been ad- vised to suspend for the present the exercise of his ministry, he made another record of his feelings, as follows :- "It is with great sorrow of heart that I am forced thus, by the uneasiness of my conscience, to be an occasion of so much uneasiness to my dear friends, my poor people, and indeed to the whole colony. O God, I beseech Thee, grant that I may not, by an adherence to Thy necessary truths and laws, (as I profess in my conscience they seem to me,) be a stumbling-block or occasion of fall to any soul."
Six of these men had been educated, wholly or in part, at Yale College, and three of them, Brown, Johnson, and Wetmore, were classmates and intimate friends. Cutler was of Massachusetts birth, a grad- uate of Harvard, and the eldest of the number, to
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whom the rest looked up with a degree of filial rever- ence, and as the guide and the steadier of their move- ments. His popularity as a preacher, his extensive learning, and the responsible office which he held, gave him a good reputation and great influence throughout the colony. An American writer, review- ing the progress and events of the eighteenth cen- tury, and who had no sympathy with any theology but Presbyterian, sums up an estimate of his charac- ter in words too honorable and impartial not to be quoted here. "In Connecticut, at this time, literature and science were, on the whole, gaining ground. The appointment of the Rev. Dr. Cutler, as President" (or Rector, the term used in those days) “of Yale College was an auspicious event to that institution. He was a man of profound and general learning in the various branches of knowledge cultivated in his day, particularly in Oriental literature, and presided over the seminary which he was called to superintend, with dignity, usefulness, and general approbation."
The Trustees, too, at the Commencement following his appointment, indorsed his prudent and successful course in a formal vote, " That his service hitherto, in the place of a Rector, was to their good satisfaction, and therefore they desired him to continue in it."
Such had been the current of events, and such was the state of popular feeling in reference to the admin- istration of the College just prior to the time when Cutler and his associates revealed the change in their religious sentiments. The Trustees, alarmed and grieved at the intelligence which reached them, re- quested an interview with these gentlemen in the Library, and there, the day after the Commencement,
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they were all asked, from the youngest to the eldest, to state their views on the matters which troubled their consciences, and not only to state them, but to express them briefly in writing. The modest paper, reluctantly prepared in obedience to this challenge, ran thus : -
" To the Rev. Mr. Andrew, and Mr. Woodbridge and others, our Reverend Fathers and Brethren, present in the Library of Yale College, this 13th of September, 1722.
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