USA > Connecticut > The history of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, Vol. I > Part 6
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The successor of Mr. Pigot accepted all his mission- ary duties and trusts in Connecticut, and cared for the scattered families of the Church, as he found them in Fairfield, Norwalk, Newtown, Ripton, (now Huntington,) West Haven, and other portions of the province. In a letter, written to the Bishop of Lon- don soon after arriving at his station, referring to the condition of the colony, and the popular prejudices against the Church, he says: "This is come to pass chiefly in six or seven towns, whereof this of Strat- ford where I reside is the principal, and though I am unworthy and unmeet to be intrusted with such a
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charge, yet there is not one clergyman of the Church of England, besides myself, in this whole colony, and I am obliged in a great measure to neglect my cure at Stratford, (where yet there is business enough for one minister,) to ride about to other towns, (some ten, some twenty miles off;) when in each of them there is as much need of a resident minister as there is at Stratford, especially at Newtown and Fairfield, so that the case of these destitute places, as well as of myself, who have this excess of business, is extremely un- happy and compassionable." And then he goes on to renew his entreaty for the apostolic office, men- tioning that a considerable number of very promising young gentlemen, five or six, and the best educated here, declined the ministry, and went into secular business, because they were "unwilling to expose themselves to the danger of the seas," and the terri- fying fate of Mr. Brown; "so that," he continues, " the fountain of all our misery is the want of a Bishop, for whom there are many thousand souls in this country," (meaning all the colonies,) "that do impatiently long and pray, and for want of whom do extremely suffer."
The parish at Stratford, when he came to it, num- bered about thirty families ; and forty more - to say nothing of the few churchmen farther eastward - might be included in the neighboring towns and dis- tricts. From some of these places very urgent appeals had already gone over to England, requesting Chris- tian compassion in their behalf. As early as Octo- ber, 1722, in the midst of the events at Yale Col- lege, which convulsed the whole colony, fourteen sub- scribers, inhabitants of Newtown, including one from
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Woodbury, and one from Chestnut Ridge, (Redding,) returned their most hearty thanks for the ministra- tions which Mr. Pigot had introduced among them, and, " being cordially inclined to embrace the articles and Liturgy of the Church of England, and to ap- proach her communion, did humbly and earnestly re- quest the Honorable Society to send them a lawfully ordained minister." " We are," said they, "heads of families, and, with our dependents, shall appear the major party here ; therefore, we intend to set apart for our Episcopal teacher, whenever it shall please God to inspire your venerable body to appoint us one, at least two hundred acres of glebe for the support of a church minister forever."
The same hands which carried this appeal, carried another, (dated All Saint's Day,) from a larger num- ber of subscribers in Ripton, "of long standing, in- clined to the Church," and in which they expressed a desire to enjoy a pastor of their own, and a will- ingness to make provision for his maintenance. If this favor could not be allowed them, they entreated the Society that the Missionaries settled at Stratford and Newtown - anticipating the appointment of one to the latter place - might be instructed to officiate for them as often as every third Sunday, since they are conveniently located between these two stations. Among the subscribers in Ripton was the name of Daniel Shelton, a large landholder, and one of the little band that welcomed the early visits of Muirson and Heathcote, and who, thirteen years before, was seized at his residence and barbarously hurried away in mid-winter and lodged in the county jail until he should pay over the amount levied by distress of his
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estate for the support of the Congregational minister. And there was another name among these subscribers (John Beardsley, Jr.) that bore abundant fruit in subsequent times for the Church, though it shared not precisely the same unchristian persecution.
Nathan Gold, the Lieutenant-Governor of the colony and a mortal foe to Episcopacy, had his seat in Fair- field, and carried his intolerant spirit to such an extent as to propound to the General Court a law to confine Mr. Pigot to the exercise of his ministerial functions within the limits of Stratford. But the churchmen in Fairfield multiplied notwithstanding this; and chiefly through the influence of the Society's Missionary and Dr. James Labarie, a French gentleman and physician, licensed by Bishop Compton as a teacher and cate chist, the communion there promised to be as large as at Newtown. Much attention in several towns was now directed to the Church. Prayer Books and other religious publications were circulated, and the eyes of many were opened to the great injustice of the course pursued by the more violent or more rigid In- dependents. Their fears were naturally awakened for the security of their order, when they saw some of its prominent supports dropping off; but certainly it was no way to strengthen it to resort to persecution. The steady and firm mind of Johnson was equal to the emergencies of the time, and though surrounded on all sides by bitter and watchful adversaries, he still maintained his calmness and benevolence of temper, and mingled and conversed with those who had for- merly been his friends, whenever they gave him an opportunity, with frankness and Christian courtesy. If they publicly branded him with the name of traitor,
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and strove by unworthy acts to thwart his purposes and render his situation intolerable, he preserved his patience, and went on discharging his duties to the Church, and sending home frequent reports of his hopes and encouragements, of his fears and suffer- ings, and of the trials, vexations, and despondencies of his people. In a letter to the Secretary of the Society, dated June 11, 1724, he spoke of having preached at New London, where he had sixty hearers, and where there was a good prospect of increase, if they could be supplied with regular services. “New- town," he added, "is distressed for a minister, their teacher being quite beat out; and the whole town would, I believe, embrace the church, if they had a good minister at Fairfield. I have a vast assembly every time I visit them, but though I have made all proper and modest applications to the government, both privately and publicly, we have yet no abate- ment of persecution and imprisonment for taxes, which sundry people, and those of both sexes, have unreasonably suffered since my last, and I fear that, if we can't have some relief from the Honorable Society, people will grow quite discouraged." He
repeated the same fears to the Bishop of London a few days later ; but while there was no redress of the grievances complained of, the Church continued to advance and receive accessions. The Episcopalians at Newtown and Ripton, by reason of the exactions of the government, were unable to offer sufficient in- ducements to encourage the Society to send them a Missionary. Besides, the Independent ministers of the colony, taking advantage of a vacancy in their own pastorate at Newtown, and telling the people that if
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the Church of England were a true church, and thought bishops necessary, they would have sent over one before this, "prevailed upon a very popu- lar, insinuating young man to go among them ;" and he "pleased them so well, that many of them, imp .?- tient for the ministrations of religion," and thinking him favorably " affected towards the Church, because he took some of the prayers out of the Liturgy," were disposed to join in "settling him with Presbyterian ordination." We shall have much to say of this " popular and insinuating young man" - who was none other than John Beach - in future chapters. But in Fairfield, the chief seat of opposition to Epis- copacy, a small church was built, which was opened by Johnson with divine services, in the autumn of 1725, though in an unfinished state, and this was the second erected in the colony. Talcott, the Governor of Connecticut, writing to the Bishop of London in 1726, in answer to an inquiry into the true state of the Church in his Majesty's government in the colony, treated slightly both the system of taxation and some of the complainants. "The law of this colony," said he, "is such, that the major part of the house- holders in every town shall determine their minister's maintenance, and all within the precincts of the town shall be obliged to pay their parts in an equal pro- portion to their estates in said towns or societies ; and so in the precincts of each ecclesiastical society. Under this security, all our towns and ecclesiastical societies are supplied with orthodox ministers. We have no vacancies at present. When the death of the incumbent happens, they are quickly supplied by persons of our own communion, educated in our pub- lic schools of learning."
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Governor Talcott was a Congregationalist, who had no desire to see Episcopacy growing, or a bishop's influence and prerogatives established in Connecticut. He took good care to appear liberal, as the laws stood, but no effort for their modification was promised or intimated. The charter granted by Charles the Sec- ond, and out of which all his authority flowed, did not convey any right to set up a form of religion that should thus exclude the Church of England, and for- ever oppress her dutiful members. At least, it was a forced construction which the civil magistrates put upon it, when they assumed the liberty to boast themselves an establishment, and to treat the Church " as a despicable, schismatical and Popish Commun- ion." Surely the wrongs could not have been slight, which induced Johnson to begin a letter to the Propa- gation Society, in February 1727, with these words : " I have just come from Fairfield, where I have been to visit a considerable number of my people, in prison for their rates to the dissenting minister, to comfort and encourage them under their sufferings. But, verily, unless we can have relief, and be delivered from this unreasonable treatment, I fear I must give up the cause, and our church must sink and come to nothing. There are thirty-five heads of families in Fairfield, who, all of them, expect what these have suffered ; and though I have endeavored to gain the compassion and favor of the government, yet I can avail nothing; and both I and my people grow weary of our lives under our poverty and oppression."
Some months later, in replying to several specific inquiries of the Honorable Society, he presented a succinct view of the history of Episcopacy in Strat-
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ford, from the commencement, and showed that he had then in his parish fifty families, or about one seventh of the whole number of families in the town. The actual state of the Church in other parts of the colony, and of his own duties and ministrations, cannot be given in briefer and more graphic language than he himself used in the same sketch : "There is no church westward within forty miles, only Fairfield, which is eight miles off, where there is a small wooden church built, and about forty families, who hope for Mr. Caner to be sent them from the Society; and there is no church eastward within one hundred miles, only at New London, about seventy miles off, where I sometimes preach to a good number of people, and they are building a wooden church something larger than ours, and hope for a Missionary, and have de- sired me to recommend their case to the honorable Society, that they may be supplied as soon as may be, and there is there a good prospect of a large increase. There is no church northward of us at all. We lie upon the sea, (i. e. the Sound,) and directly over against us, southward on Long Island, lies Brook Haven, about twenty miles over the water, where I have often preached." This communication was penned under date of September 20, 1727.
We have seen that the Church in Connecticut was rooted amid storms and opposition. It was the tough, strong, sapling of the forest, which was bent and borne down by the tempest, but never broken by its fury. No schemes of her adversaries could crush out her life; and the good character of those who bore the standard of apostolic order and faith, their piety, their meekness, their patient endurance of evils, were as
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sermons preached in the ears of the constituted au- thorities of the land. The champions of civil and religious liberty -that is, those who had always avowed themselves to be such-undertook a profit- less task, therefore, when they attempted to set back the stream of inquiry, or to turn again into the con- tracted channel of their own thoughts the minds that had been refreshed at the fountains of English theol- ogy as well as at
" Siloa's brook that flowed Fast by the oracle of God."
The treatment of the first churchmen of Connecticut by the Puritans is a chapter which cannot be over- looked in this history; for it is an instructive com- mentary on the purity and spirituality of their pre- tensions, and on the tenderness of their consciences. Let us thank God that we live at a period when these old prejudices, with all their sharpness, are worn away; when religious persecution is unknown; when more charitable feelings prevail among all Christian communions ; when Bishops, as successors of the Apos- tles, are loved and honored for their godly works and examples rather than for their office; and when, too, the Church of our affections is not, others being judges, the fearful corrupter of "pure and undefiled religion," which she unfortunately appeared to be to the early settlers and generations of New England.
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CHAPTER V.
THE EFFECT OF CANDID INVESTIGATION, AND THE ENACTMENT OF A LAW IN CONNECTICUT TO RELIEVE CHURCHMEN.
A. D. 1727-1729.
IT is a very common impression that the first set- tlers of New England emigrated to this country, not only to escape direct persecution at home, but to establish here, in all its freedom and fulness, the Puri- tan faith, and to promote in every possible way its peculiar interests. Under the influence of such an impression, questions like these have sometimes been thrown out: "Why were they not permitted to enjoy their religious liberty without molestation by the Church of England? Why did that hated hierarchy pursue them into this New World, and seek to over- throw their establishment, and make confusion in their churches, by introducing the Apostolic discipline and a Liturgical form of worship ?"
The simple answer to these questions is, that their own men -Puritans by birth and education - began a disturbance of the settled order of things, at least as far as Connecticut is concerned. The little de- spised band of freeholders at Stratford who first professed their love for Episcopacy, and were fed, though fed but poorly, through the efforts of Heath- cote, by the Society for the Propagation of the Gos- pel, never would have grown into a formidable body, -
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never would have made any progress in converting to their views the strong-minded Congregationalists, - had not Providence sent a spirit of inquiry among the officers of Yale College and the ministers in its neighborhood.
Quincy, in his "History of Harvard University," referring to the conversion of Cutler and his asso- ciates, makes an assertion and a comment in these words: "This event shook Congregationalism through- out New England like an earthquake, and filled all its friends with terror and apprehension. The effect of the direct operations of the 'Society for the Propaga- tion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,' was seen and recognized in these conversions. They had occurred In Stratford, or its vicinity ; a place in which the funds of the Society had been most lavishly ex- pended ; and the fact that the head of one of the most cherished seminaries of learning in New Eng- land had yielded to its influence, was indicative of its power and ominous of Episcopal success." This state- ment thus made is in strange opposition to the facts which have been previously narrated. It gives quite too much influence to the operations and money of the Society. At that date, its "lavish expenditures " for Stratford consisted in having provided for the sup- port of Francis Philips during the five months of his irregular and unprofitable ministrations, and for Mr. Pigot who had tarried now a shorter period before proceeding to the mission at Providence, in Rhode Island. Only about four months had elapsed since his arrival in Connecticut; and these gentlemen, without any prompting on his part, had held a conference with him prior to their public declaration, and indi-
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cated the direction of their. thoughts and feelings. But long before this, the light had been gently streaming into their minds through the windows of the College Library, and they finally accepted it, for the simple reason that it was no longer to be resisted. Cutler, at the age of forty, with a wife and seven children, relinquished the highest literary and ecclesi- astical position in the colony, and separated himself from its emoluments and from the association of his early friends, because his conscience would not allow him to remain outside of the communion of the Church of England. Johnson was equally pure and conscientious in his motives; and so were Brown and Wetmore, and all those who subsequently broke away from the ranks of Puritanism, and firmly resolved to adopt the ancient form of faith, and henceforth to worship God after the order of the Book of Common Prayer.
The little wooden church at Fairfield, which had been so far completed as to be opened with Divine services in the autumn of 1725, was permitted, two years later, to welcome a settled Missionary, - the Rev. Henry Caner, - a graduate of Yale in the class of 1724, and consequently a member of the Institu- tion while it was under the charge of Rector Cutler. He was a son of Henry Caner, the builder of the first college edifice, including a president's house, erected in New Haven, and whose name still designates a water locality (Caner's Pond) in the northern borders of New Haven. The father was from England, where the son was born, according to a statement of Dr. Trum- bull ; and if he was originally a Congregationalist, he early conformed to the Church, - for he is entered
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upon the list of communicants by Mr. Pigot, in the "Registry Book " at Stratford, September 2d, 1722, and his son is entered by Mr. Johnson, March 28th, 1725. He evidently went to that place to com- mune-as many churchmen scattered in the neigh- boring towns were accustomed to do - when the only Episcopal clergyman in the colony was sta- tioned there. He died at the age of sixty; and John- son came to New Haven, September 24, 1731, to attend his funeral, as he had been here six years be- fore to attend the funeral of Elizabeth Caner. It is an interesting fact, that, after his ordination in the Church of England, so little were the services of Johnson called for to baptize, marry, or bury the dead, in the immediate scene of his early religious struggles, that for more than fifteen years the only official acts of this kind in New Haven, with one ex- ception, - of which there is any record, - were per- formed for the Caner family. He appears, however, to have been a frequent visitor at the College, to have interested himself in its welfare, and to have rendered it important aid, notwithstanding the change in his religious feelings and attitude. It was shortly after the annual Commencement in 1732 that he wrote to the Secretary of the Honorable Society, using this language : " I continue to preach with success at New Haven, and I hope there will be a church there in time; though they labor under great opposition and discouragements from the people of the town, who will neither give nor sell them a piece of land for them to build a church on."
He had previously written in April of the same year to the Bishop of London, thus : "I have lately VOL. I. 5
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been preaching at New Haven, where the College is, and had a considerable congregation, and among them several of the scholars, who are very inquisitive about the principles of our church; and, after sermon, ten of the members of the church there subscribed £100 towards the building a church in that town, and are zealously engaged about undertaking it; and I hope in a few years there will be a large congregation there."
Mr. Johnson acted as the theological guide and instructor of the young men whose attention was drawn to the study of Divinity and Episcopacy; and Henry Caner, Jr., for a period of three years after he left college, lived under his eye,- and in all this time assisted him and did good service for the Church at Fairfield, in the capacity of a catechist and school- master. When his age would permit him to receive Holy Orders, he embarked for England, and took with him a letter from Johnson to the Honorable Society, dated April 28th, 1727, in which he spoke of the " great comfort" it would be to him "in his solitary neighborhood" to have his young friend appointed a missionary to Fairfield, where the churchmen knew his good qualities and were ready to welcome him, as their address, which he enclosed, would sufficiently show. He also expressed a desire, for the encourage- ment of others who might undertake them, that the "Society would be pleased to defray the expenses of the voyages to England " for ordination, according to a pledge previously given, and especially that Mr. Caner might have the benefit of that pledge. And then, with an eye to his own personal interest, he added, "I should be very thankful if that char-
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itable order of the Society might look back with a favorable aspect upon us, who first undertook this difficult and dangerous expedition." Though Fair field was the chief seat of opposition to the Church of England, and honored with the residence of Lieu- tenant-Governor Gold, - its eminent persecutor, - yet there was something in the religious and public affairs of the town at this period which assisted the organization and gathering of an Episcopal parish. Among the manuscripts on file in the office of the Secretary of State at Hartford, may be found evi- dence that the General Association of Congregational ministers memorialized the Honorable Assembly "of the infirmities of Rev. Mr. Webb, and the present cir- cumstances of that Society of which he is pastor," thinking the " case called for a speedy visitation, and that nothing less would attain the end designed and so earnestly to be desired for that people than an act " "requiring that one or more of the ministry from the several counties or associations of this colony be sent to convene at Fairfield, for the consideration of their state and the application of proper expedients for their united continuance in the faith and estab- lished order of the church of Christ in this colony." And thereupon the General Assembly, under date of May 14, 1725, adopted a resolve, "that Fairfield should call some other orthodox minister to help Mr. Webb, that their sorrowful and sinking circumstances might be relieved." The last clause in this resolu- tion has been partially erased, but without it there is very little force in the response to the memorial of the association.
When Mr. Caner arrived at his mission in Fairfield
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late in the autumn of 1727, he found "the heavy taxes levied for the support of dissenting ministers," joined with voluntary contributions for the mainten- ance of their own services, so burdensome as to render his parishioners almost incapable of carrying on and completing their house of worship. All they could raise for his personal support was not above ten pounds sterling, and this, with the addition of sixty pounds sterling, - the salary usually voted by the Society to its Missionaries, though in his case the al- lowance does not appear at first to have been so large, -constituted his living. But his presence among the people freshened their zeal, and he sought out and encouraged the churchmen scattered in the contigu- ous villages, and penetrated with frequent ministra- tions to Norwalk, and even beyond, to Stamford and Greenwich. In his first report to the Society, made some three months after his return from England, he speaks of "a village northward of Fairfield, about eigh- teen miles, containing near twenty families, where there is no minister of any denomination whatsoever; the name of it is Chestnut Ridge (Redding), and where I usually preach or lecture once in three weeks. New- town, which is about twenty-two miles northwest of Fairfield, Mr. Johnson and I supply between us,-it being equally distant from us." He also visited Ridg- field and Danbury, as often as his duties would per- mit, and stated that there were in most of these places seven, ten, or fifteen families professing the Church of England, and severely taxed for the established order. But his parishioners increased notwithstand- ing all discouragements, and he reported in the same letter an addition of four families, one of which was
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