USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 10
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Accusations of corruption, sly priestcraft, overweening am- bition and obscurantism did make some popular impression through the efforts of pamphleteers. Englishmen and colonials became intensely suspicious of any clerical movement that could possibly be imagined as priestly grasping for power. That attitude inspired fear of the Society's missionaries in New England, and the almost hysterical opposition to colonial bishops - against which Con- necticut Churchmen contended in vain. The behavior of some
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High Church Tory clergymen in Queen Anne's reign unfortunately gave color to such fears. In reaction, the Church under the Georges, from 1715 to 1775, showed a timidity that agreed only too well with the natural hesitation of an established and privileged church to do anything extraordinary. Many clergymen and lay- men threw cold water on new enterprises, for fear of reviving the slumbering suspicion of thirst for power and glory. That was one reason for general English indifference to plans for bishops in the colonies, which the Connecticut clergy lamented and could never overcome.
Attacks upon ecclesiastical "ambition" and "corruption" were easier to meet, however, than the subtler sappings of rationalistic Deism, which appealed to the educated classes that were likely to be attracted to the Anglican Church. It appeared to express a genuine disgust at selfish individual piety intent on gaining reward or escaping punishment, and appealed to disinterested virtue. The "appeal to reason" quietly penetrated the Church through such writers as Bishop Hoadly, who proclaimed that "virtue is the imi- tation of God, and therefore must be the happiness of man. The chief happiness of a reasonable creature must consist in living as reason directs, whether he lives one day or to eternity.">
This rationalistic and Deistic climate favored a revival of the anti-Trinitarian theology known as "Arianism," from the name of its champion in the early Church. Its eminent leaders were the Rev. Samuel Clarke, the Cambridge University professor William Whiston, and Thomas Emlyn, an Irish Presbyterian minister of English birth. They were not extreme Unitarians but they alarmed conservative Churchmen, who feared that Christianity would be undermined by doctrines leading to Unitarianism. Anglican writers hastened to oppose the "novel" teaching, and Bishop Robinson of London warned his clergy against it. The move- ment crossed the Atlantic, and after flowing quietly for several decades, rose to flood in New England Unitarianism in the period from 1785 to 1825.
DEISM
The Unitarian tendency scarcely affected Connecticut, but Deism cropped up here and there even in Episcopalian parishes, and for a time attracted some of the best minds among the clergy. The Deistic controversy was at its height when Samuel Johnson
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and his intellectual friends were young, and they felt the charms of "rational" religion and of the "new science" that inspired it. As students and young priests they leaned toward the "pure and simple Religion of Nature," with its premise of a First Cause, its ac- ceptance of a future state, and emphasis upon virtuous living. Deism tried to win them through the science of Sir Isaac Newton, which pictured the Universe as "a vast machine set in motion by an Efficient Cause and run according to immutable natural laws."3
This ideal fascinated Johnson when he was a student at Yale, and later charmed his younger friend and correspondent, the Pennsylvania priest William Smith, who became head of the College of Philadelphia - which was favored by the Deist Benjamin Franklin. Johnson was receptive to the ideas of the milder Eng- lish Deists, and read Wollaston's Religion of Nature and Collins' Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion. Although the experience left him a good Christian, he still enter- tained some "Broad" views. But he never followed those who would attempt to "broaden" the Church by admitting a large number of Dissenters. There was, indeed, something enticing about the greatest possible freedom of discussion in non-essentials, but he would not accept rational religion as the sole basis of agreement and thus neglect revelation.
Johnson and those who followed him insisted that there was no conflict between the "new science" and older revealed truths, and accepted both natural religion and Christian revelation. In a sermon preached at Stratford in 1727, he illustrated the need of Christianity by arguing that "the light of nature" was not sufficient. He urged that reason be supplemented by divine revelation to teach the average man just ideas about God. About sixteen years later, he took the same line in his Introduction to the Study of Philosophy, and added that the good life consists in promoting individual and public welfare, and that personal conduct determines the future state.
William Smith, who had great intellectual influence, was more advanced, and approached the views of the English "Broad" clergy. He heavily accented reason and understanding, and sought to advance both natural and revealed religion in his General Idea of the College of Mirania, and his Philosophical Meditation and Religious Address to the Supreme Being. Smith and Johnson
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both influenced Connecticut Episcopalians by maintaining that the authority of natural religion rests not upon reason alone, but also upon the Christian revelation that clarifies and strengthens it.
As Johnson aged, he perceived more clearly the weakness of a purely rational religion. By the 1750's, when he became president of King's College in New York, he was quite orthodox and fearful of Deistic ideas. He and the Connecticut clergy who revered him doubtless seemed cold, "reasonable," intellectual, and unemotional to ardent evangelists, but they never capitulated to Deism. In fact, strong opposition to Deism had long since ap- peared, pointing out that mystery is essential to religion. That position was defended for the scholarly by the great Bishop Butler in his Analogy, and by the vastly popular and influential William Law in his Spirit of Love. Further support came from the spiritual and idealistic philosophy of Bishop George Berkeley, who in- fluenced Connecticut through his patronage of Yale College and was admired by the youthful Johnson. Berkeley's influence caused Johnson to become suspicious of the rational Deism of Governor William Burnet of New York, to which he was attracted for a time. In time he became well aware of the religious and moral havoc wrought by popular and inconsiderate "free-thinking." Writing to Berkeley about the state of manners in England, he practically threw up his hands in despair. "But what can be ex- pected of such an age as this? O Deus bone, in quae tempora reservasti nos!"4 (O Good Lord, to what times hast thou banished us! )
When the Church was really beginning to grow in Con- necticut, the war between Christian champions and their critics was raging in England, and Deism was being hard pressed. The Faith did not lack defenders, such as the great dissenting minister Doddridge, Bishop Butler, the saintly William Law, and Bishop Warburton. The latter gave the Deists and rationalists a rough time of it, and his hammer blows probably had a more widespread effect than the calm reasoning of Butler's Analogy or Law's gentle appeals to deep mystical feeling. Some of the vast controversial literature reached Connecticut and was read by the Anglican clergy, who relied upon English champions of the Faith to rally their people and convince the waverers.
By the 1750's Deism was beginning to fade. People were
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weary of controversy and many shrank from the coarse irreligion of certain Deistic writers. Some sophisticates had gone so far in disbelief as not to care, and the Methodist and Evangelical move- ments were gaining strength. While some Deists of high character and learning sincerely tried to follow truth, abolish corruption, and purify Christianity, Deism was essentially negative and too intel- lectual for the masses. Its chief gift to the world proved to be its defense of liberty of thought. And in spite of much flippant and shallow scepticism, the Deistic controversy forced Christians to examine the grounds of their belief, and stirred a genuine and general interest in theology and morals. Many people gladly re- gained, upon firmer ground, a Gospel which they had hastily doubted or abandoned.
THE COUNTER-ATTACK
Although Deism spread in the colonies, Johnson's dread of it was exaggerated. Before the close of the Revolution, American Deists did not venture to make an open and critical assault upon the Bible as revealed truth. They and other free-thinkers merely set forth the tenets of "natural religion," and made no effort to popularize their views. Deism was largely an aristocratic intel- lectual cult in the towns. Some Revolutionary leaders accepted it or came close to it, but for the masses it was too speculative, un- emotional, vague, and "high-brow."
There was little danger that Episcopalians generally would become Deists. Johnson and his fellow priests could save their strength for combat with the other and more alarming doctrines which their letters often mentioned. As early as the 1720's, the colony was agitated by Tindal's Rights of the Christian Church, an attack against "priestcraft" and episcopal ordination. It fell in perfectly with the notions of some Congregational ministers, who even favored lay ordination, which Johnson declared had been frequently practiced in the country, and even in Stratford, while the people claimed "a share of authority with their ministers in all public acts of discipline." He hastened to seek the support of the Bishop of London in combatting the influence of Tindal's errors, "so great and so subversive of all religion."5
As English "liberal" theological ideas began to gain ground in the colonies, the Episcopal clergy took alarm. By 1760 Beach of
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Newtown was worried by the progress of Arian and Socinian (non- Trinitarian ) doctrines among the Congregationalists and Presby- terians, due to the circulation of books by English Dissenters. Believing that some Episcopalians were "in no small danger from that infection,"6 he published a tract against it, on the advice of Doctor Johnson, who wrote the preface.
Johnson himself was disturbed by the spread of "liberal" doctrines among the Congregational ministers and even among Churchmen. Some leading laymen in the Litchfield County mission charged the Rev. Solomon Palmer with being a Calvinist and denying free will. They seemed to lean toward un-Trinitarian ideas (Socinianism), and the doctrine of total free-will and sal- vation by good works (Pelagianism). Johnson persuaded Beach to preach at the clerical convention of 1760 in defense of the doc- trine of the Trinity and against such "loose notions." The clergy were so pleased that the sermon was published, and Johnson promised to send a copy to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Rev. Edward Winslow of Stratford praised it as an effectual coun- terweight to Socinian and other errors.
Beach became the Church's watchman against the abounding errors of the times. The next one was Antinomianism, which he spotted in a thesis published at the Yale commencement in 1764 - that personal obedience is not necessary for justification. The Antinomians, Beach declared, based justification only upon the law of innocence and sinless obedience. He considered himself bound by his ordination vow to defend the people against such teaching, and plunged into a controversy with some of the Congregational ministers. He was successful enough to boast that his own flock were well fortified against Antinomianism and Enthusiasm, and not in the least tainted with Deism. His congregation continually increased by the conversions of rational and intelligent dissenters, who became disgusted with Antinomian ideas.
Shortly afterward, Beach was appalled by the appearance of the Scottish preacher Sandeman to "propagate infidelity, libertinism, or no religion, under the mask of Free Grace." Over- come by curiosity, he went to hear the stranger preach in the meeting-houses, and later tried to summarize his doctrine: "that Christ has done all and every thing for our salvation which God requires of us, and that mere assent to this report is saving faith;
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and to have the least solicitude about any thing we have to do to obtain salvation is that damning sin of unbelief, in which all the Christian world, except his sect, is involved."7 Beach was con- vinced that the result of such teaching would be infidelity, and casting off all moral restraints, while quieting the conscience and retaining the name of belief, hoping for eternal salvation while in- dulging the passions.
This novel teaching threw the Newtown Congregationalists into an uproar, while the "Sandemanians" held regular Sunday meetings, but without anything that Beach would call worship. Dibblee also was alarmed and warned the S. P. G. that both Antinomian and Baptist principles were being "industriously pro- pagated." Lamson was not too worried and felt that the more serious general interest in the Church was due partly to "the many pernicious books dispersed in the country," particularly Sandeman's writings, which convinced many people "that truth and safety are to be found only in the Church, and not among the Sectaries."8
The clergy generally felt that the Church's destiny was to stand like a rock amid roaring storms of infidelity and enthusiasm. Winslow believed that both were trying to weaken or wreck the Church as a barrier against them, and that serious Christians would more and more turn to it as a safeguard against the extremes of rationalism and "enthusiasm."
The Church was actually helped by the spread of another type of doctrine. This was the emphasis upon free will in the process of salvation, named "Arminianism" for the theologian Arminius. Such thought began to appear among Connecticut Churchmen in the 1720's. The trustees of Yale College implied that the Episcopal converts of 1722 had turned to Arminianism, by voting to compel future teachers to reject "Arminian and Pre- latical Corruptions." The accusation was levelled at later Congre- gational ministers who turned to the Church, including John Beach, Ebenezer Punderson, and Jonathan Arnold.
Johnson showed the trend unmistakably in his Letters from a Minister of the Church of England, published in 1733-1734. While he refused the name of Arminius, he acknowledged some common ground with him, and denied that the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion in the Prayer Book were strictly Calvinistic. The Congregational clergy suspected wrathfully that the quiet spread
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of free-will doctrine promoted defections to Anglicanism, and by the 1740's books by declared Arminian Episcopalians had appeared in New England. Jonathan Edwards, the great Calvinistic theologian, sounded the alarm, claiming that the simultaneous progress of Arminianism and the Episcopal Church was no accident.
Edward's influence imparted to the Great Awakening a definitely Calvinistic tone. That brought "enthusiasm" into direct conflict with the Episcopalians, who often leaned towards Arminian ideas, and led many moderate Congregationalists to look favorably upon the Anglican Church.
Doctor Johnson noticed the disposition to seek the Church as a port in a storm. "Scarce ever was there a people in a more bewildered, confounded condition than those in this colony generally are, as to their religious affairs ... which occasions the most sensible of them to be still every where looking toward the Church as their only refuge."9 In spite of the Church's political isolation, this trend gradually caused Episcopalians to become a more accepted element in the religious life of the community.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
THE CHURCH IN THE COMMUNITY A House of Prayer for All People
GROWING TOLERANCE
P 2 ROLONGED persecution by the government made it virtually impossible for Churchmen to participate actively in local politics. In that respect they stood apart from the community, and rarely were elected even to the humblest town offices. The po- litical leaders, who were closely allied with the Congregational clergy, tried to exclude Episcopalians from all places of trust and honor. That did not usually worry Churchmen, for they generally considered it wise not to contend against overwhelming odds. The result was a peace of mind which their neighbors, when distracted by factions, really envied.
As the decades rolled away, the growing number of mod- erate and tolerant Congregationalists seemed for a time to promise closer and more cordial relations between the Episcopal Church and the community. The change was due partly to the in- creasingly moderate and "reasonable" temper of the age, and partly to weariness after the bitter controversies of the preceding centuries. The appeal of Anglicanism to men of respectable intellectual caliber, such as Doctor Johnson and his circle, con- vinced many well-read and thoughtful people that the Episcopal Church was not a refuge of superstition and obscurantism. After meeting a priest, many gainsayers rapidly lost their bitter, inherited prejudices.
In the middle years of the century such reports began to stream into the Society's mail from all over the colony. In North Groton Punderson enjoyed the "unspeakable comfort" of seeing many former revilers and haters of the Church at service on Christ- mas Day. In the West Haven mission, although the ministers and political leaders were "hot spirits," many of the people appeared friendly and likely to attend the Church. Many in distant towns
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would conform if there was a church reasonably near, and even were dispirited because the missionary could not visit them more frequently. Some privately admitted their friendliness, their dis- like of Congregational ordination, and their approval of the Episcopal liturgy, but feared being economically boycotted by the majority.
The Great Awakening was indeed an eye-opener for many dissenters from the Church. Around Newtown they noticed how steadfast Episcopalians were, while their own people often were at the mercy of every wind of doctrine. Converts came so fast that churches were built without any immediate prospect of a pastor. When the Congregational pulpits in Greenwich and Stamford were vacant, the people invited Ebenezer Dibblee to officiate in their meeting-houses. People of all faiths flocked to hear him, and even "cheerfully" participated in the service. In Ripton many Dissenters came to service and wanted to learn the liturgy; some of them once would not have set foot in the church and had scornfully called it a "Mass house."
Similar reports came even from the Puritan stronghold of Norwich. Ebenezer Punderson noticed a generally mollified disposition in the eastern towns, and after 1750 Matthew Graves in New London baptized Quakers by immersion before crowds of well-behaved spectators. To the aging father of the Connecticut Church, Doctor Johnson, such reports were comforting in the midst of his many vexing burdens as head of the new Episcopalian King's College in New York.
But to the Congregational leaders the trend was ominous and frightening. They were deeply disturbed by the importation of many Prayer Books for converts, the signs of growing aversion to Congregational or "Independent" ways, and the increasing favor towards liturgical worship. Of course, there were degrees and degrees of conversion, and missionaries noticed that some converts were very earnest. When Samuel Peters of Hebron visited Killing- worth, he reported that he had "never yet found any so rubrical, both old and young, as these conformists are."1 But some con- versions were distinctly for fair weather only and soon faded out. Roger Viets of Simsbury noted that several hasty converts within the last five years had made a hasty departure.
The drift towards the Church, however, was unmistakable,
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and continued even into the disturbed years before the Revolution, when Episcopalians were becoming politically unpopular. In Norwalk it had gone so far that dissenting ministers were even criticized by their own people for preaching contrary to Anglican doctrine. In Simsbury even the town's lone Deist and the two Roman Catholic families came to Saint Andrew's, and a Roman Catholic asked Viets to baptize one of his children. John Beach of Newtown in 1771 aptly described the general disposition in re- porting that the dissenters were more friendly towards the Church than they were to each other.
THE MISSION TO NEGROES
Churchmen got along well with other groups in the com- munity, including two that were rather generally despised and abused - the Negroes and the Indians. It is an often repeated charge that the colonial Episcopal Church neglected the humble, particularly the Negro. Nothing could be more untrue. Con- version of the Negro was a fixed purpose of the Church's colonial missions.
When the S. P. G. was founded and for many years later, the Church of England did not question the right to hold slaves, and did not attempt to free them, but did insist that slavery should not preclude conversion. The clergy owned slaves, and churches even accepted them as a form of endowment. The Church earnestly strove to win the Negroes, in spite of discouraging obstacles, urged their masters and the clergy to instruct them, strove to persuade masters to let their slaves attend church, and baptized and admitted them to Holy Communion.
The campaign to Christianize the Negro began soon after the Society's organization, and continued throughout the colonial period. Bishops continually promoted it in their sermons to the annual meetings. As early as 1706, Bishop Williams of Chichester confronted the problem presented by the great age and depth of Negro culture, and strove to convince planters that conversion did not mean emancipation, although personally he disliked slavery. Among the famous prelates who sought to arouse the Church to this duty were William Fleetwood of St. Asaph, Thomas Secker of Oxford, and William Warburton of Gloucester. Some did not mince words, and in 1754 Drummond of St. Asaph severely scored
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planters for not allowing Christian education of slaves, and de- clared that they were moved by "avarice, inhumanity, or irreligion."2
The Society repeatedly mailed instructions to the mis- sionaries regarding the Christian training of Negroes. David Humphreys, secretary and historian of the society, in 1730 published a widely circulated pamphlet to encourage the cause, including an account of the successful work in New York as an example; an appeal to Christian people for help in the colonies; and letters by Bishop Edmund Gibson of London to masters and mistresses of colonial families and to the missionaries, with editorial comments. In 1768 the work received further encouragement from William Knox's tracts on instruction and conversion of Indians and slaves. The Society distributed large quantities of small books and tracts among literate Negroes.
Reports from missionaries in Connecticut abound in references to work among the Negroes. Doctor Johnson began almost as soon as he settled in Stratford, and apparently made a better record than his Congregational critics. The Dissenters in town about 1727 had around one hundred and fifty slaves, but only a few had been baptized, and many were uninstructed. Six or seven attended Christ Church, and four had been baptized by the Doctor himself. During the first twenty years of his ministry he reported many baptisms of Negro children and adults, and oc- casionally he admitted a Negro to the Holy Communion.
Similar reports came from other parishes, and apparently the most active missionaries to the Negro were Caner in Fairfield, Leaming of Norwalk, Samuel Seabury the Elder of New London, and Beach in Newtown. Beach tackled the hard assignment with his usual zeal and determination, and by 1749 had instructed and baptized all the few slaves of his parishioners. He even had some Negro communicants who appeared to be "serious Christians." Twenty years later there were about fifty Negroes in his parish, and he had baptized most of them after instruction.
The Church in Middletown evidently took care of the Negroes; a census of the parish before 1776 lists the number of them in each family. Most of the conversions were in coast and river towns where commerce produced wealth and some Church- men could afford to keep household servants. The Society's
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schools in Connecticut were "integrated," and admitted Negro children and adults who had little other chance for elementary education.
Missions to Negroes were a step toward freedom, and were deliberately aimed to improve the relation between master and slave. The more they succeeded, the more difficult it became to regard the Negro merely as a piece of property. The rise of the British and colonial anti-slavery sentiment, and the judicial de- cisions of the 1770's abolishing slavery in Great Britain and Ireland, probably were partly the result of the Society's championship of the Negro and the Indian.
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