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The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut

M >> M. Louise Greene, Ph. D. >> The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut




Of the two colonies founded after Massachusetts, Connecticut and New
Haven, the latter preserved the complete independence of her original
church until the admission of the shore towns[h] to her jurisdiction,
when she instituted that friendly oversight of the churches which had
begun to prevail elsewhere. Thereafter her General Court kept a
rigorous oversight over the purity of her churches and the conduct of
their members. The General Court of Connecticut early compelled a
recognition of its authority[i] over the religious life of the people
and its right of special legislation.[j] For example, in 1643, the
Court demanded of the Wethersfield church a list of the grievances
which disturbed it. In the next year, when Matthew Allyn petitioned
for an order to the Hartford church, commanding the reconsideration of
its sentence of excommunication against him, the Court "adjudged his
plea an accusation upon the church" which he was bound to prove.
These incidents from early colonial history in some measure illustrate
the practical working of the theory of Church and State. The
conviction that the State should support one form of religion, and
only one, was ever present to the colonial mind. If confirmation of
its worth were needed, one had only to glance at the turmoil of the
Rhode Island colony experimenting with religious liberty and a
complete separation of Church and State. Like all pioneers and
reformers, she had gathered elements hard to control, and would-be
citizens neither peaceable nor reasonable in their interpretation of
the new range of freedom. Watching Rhode Island, the Congregational
men of New England hugged more tightly the conviction that their
method was best, and that any variation from it would work havoc. It
was this theory and this conviction, ever present in their minds, that
underlay all ecclesiastical laws, all special legislation with
reference to churches, to their members, or to public fasts and
thanksgivings. This deep-rooted conviction created hatred toward and
fear of all schismatical doctrines, enmity toward all dissenting
sects, and opposition to any tolerance of them.


FOOTNOTES:

[a] "The one prime, all essential, and sufficient qualiiy of a
theocracy ... adopted as the form of an earthly government, was that
the civil power should be guided in its exercise by religion and
religious ordinances."--G. E. Ellis, _Puritan Age in Massachusetts,_
p. 188.

[b] "Noe man shal be admitted to the freedome of this body politicke,
but such as are members of some of the churches within the lymitts of
the same."--Mass. Col. Rec. i, 87, under date of May 28, 1631.

"Church members onely shall be free burgesses and they onely shall
chuse magistrates and officers among themselves to haue the power of
transacting in all publique and ciuill affayres of this
plantatio."--New Haven Col. Rec. i, 15; also ii, 115, 116.

The governments of Massachusetts and New Haven "never absolutely
merged church and state." The franchise depended on church-membership,
but the voter, exercising his right in directing the affairs of the
colony, was speaking, "not as the church but as the civil Court of
Legislation and adjudication."--W. Walker, _History of the
Congregational Churches_, p. 123.

Yet it was due to this merging and this dependence that on October 25,
1639, there were only sixteen free burgesses or voters out of one
hundred and forty-four planters in the New Haven Colony.--See
N. H. Col. Rec. i, 20.

"Theoretically Church and State (in Connecticut) were separated:
practically they were so interwoven that separation would have meant
the severance of soul and body."--C. M. Andrews, _Three River Towns
of Conn_. p. 22.

[c] To John Cotton's "democracy, I do not conceive that ever God did
ordain, as a fit government for church or commonwealth," and to
Gov. Winthrop's objections to committing matters to the judgment of
the body of the people because "safety lies in the councils of the
best part which is always the least, and of the best part, the wiser
is always the lesser," Hooker replied that "in all matters which
concern the common good, a general council, chosen by all, to transact
the business which concerns all, I conceive under favor, most suitable
to rule and most safe for the relief of the whole."--Hutchinson,
_Hist. of Mass._ i, App. iii.

[d] (1) To adjust a difference between Governor Winthrop and Deputy
Dudley in 1632; (2) about building a fort at Nantasket, February,
1632; (3) in regard to the settlement of the Rev. John Cotton,
September, 1633; (4) in consultation concerning Roger Williams's
denial of the patent, January, 1634; (5) concerning rights of trade at
Kennebec, July, 1634; (6) in regard to the fort on Castle Island,
August, 1634; (7) concerning the rumor in 1635 of the coming of a
Governor-General; and (8) in the case of Mr. Nowell.--_Winthrop_,
i, pp. 89, 99, 112, 122, 136-137, 159-181.

[e] Roger Williams was the real author of the letters which the Salem
church was required to disclaim.

[f] Upon a further suggestion from the General Court, John Cotton
prepared a catechism entitled, _Milk for Babes_.

[g] Governor Winthrop replied to Dr. Skelton's objections that "no
church or person could have authority over another church."--See
H. M. Dexter, _Ecclesiastical Councils of New England_, p. 31;
_Winthrop_, i. p. 139.

[h] Guilford, Branford, Milford, Stamford, on the mainland, and
Southold, on Long Island.

[i] The General Court was head of the churches. "It was more than
Pope, or Pope and College of Cardinals, for it exercised all
authority, civil and ecclesiastical. In matters of discipline, faith,
and practice there was no appeal from its decisions. Except the right
to be protected in their orthodoxy the churches had no privileges
which the Court did not confer, or could not take away."--Bronson's
_Early Gov't. in Conn._ p. 347, in
_N. H. Hist. Soc. Papers_, vol. iii.

[j] On August 18, 1658, the court refused, upon complaint of the
Wethersfield church, to remove Mr. Russell. In March, 1661, after duly
considering the matter, the court allowed Mr. Stow to sever his
connection with the church of Middletown. It concerned itself with
the strife in the Windsor church over an assistant pastor from 1667 to
1680. It allowed the settlement of Woodbury in 1672 because of
dissatisfaction with the Stratford church. It permitted Stratford to
divide in 1669. These are but a few instances both of the authority
of the General Court over individual churches and of that discord
which, finding its strongest expression in the troubles of the
Hartford church, not only rent the churches of Connecticut from 1650
to 1670, but "insinuated itself into all the affairs of the society,
towns, and the whole community." Another illustration of the court's
oversight of the purity of religion was its investigation in 1670 into
the "soundness of the minister at Rye." For these and hosts of similar
examples see index _Conn. Col. Rec._ vols. i, ii, iii, and iv.



CHAPTER IV

THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM AND THE HALF-WAY COVENANT


It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason
for the faith that is within him.--Sydney Smith.

In each of the New England colonies under consideration, the settlers
organized their church system and established its relation to the
State, expecting that the strong arm of the temporal power would
insure stability and harmony in both religious and civil life. As we
know, they were speedily doomed to disappointment. As we have seen,
they failed to estimate the influences of the new land, where freedom
from the restraint of an older civilization bred new ideas and
estimates of the liberty that should be accorded men. Within the first
decade Massachusetts had great difficulty in impressing religious
uniformity upon her rapidly increasing and heterogeneous
population. She found coercion difficult, costly, dangerous to her
peace, and to her reputation when the oppressed found favorable ears
in England to listen to their woes. Ecclesiastical differences of less
magnitude, contemporary in time and foreshadowing discontent and
opposition to the established order of Church and State, were settled
in more quiet ways. John Davenport, after witnessing the Antinomian
controversy, declined the pressing hospitality of Massachusetts, and
led his New Haven company far enough afield to avoid theological
entanglements or disputed points of church polity. Unimpeded, they
would make their intended experiment in statecraft and build their
strictly scriptural republic. Still earlier Thomas Hooker, Samuel
Stone, and John Warham led the Connecticut colonists into the
wilderness because they foresaw contention, strife, and evil days
before them if they were to be forced to conform to the strict policy
of Massachusetts.[a] They preferred, unhindered, to plant and water
the young vine of a more democratic commonwealth. And even as
Massachusetts met with large troubles of her own, so smaller ones
beset these other colonies in their endeavor to preserve uniformity of
religious faith and practice. Until 1656, outside of Massachusetts,
sectarianism barely lifted its head. Religious contumacy was due to
varying opinions as to what should be the rule of the churches and the
privileges of their members. As the churches held theoretically that
each was a complete, independent, and self-governing unit, their
practice and teaching concerning their powers and duties began to show
considerable variation. Such variation was unsatisfactory, and so
decidedly so that the leaders of opinion in the four colonies early
began to feel the need of some common platform, some authoritative
standard of church government, such as was agreed upon later in the
Cambridge Platform of 1648 and in the Half-Way Covenant, a still later
exposition or modification of certain points in the Platform.

The need for the Platform arose, also, from two other causes: one
purely colonial, and the other Anglo-colonial. The first was, since
everybody had to attend public worship, the presence in the
congregations of outsiders as distinct from church members. These
outsiders demanded broader terms of admission to holy privileges and
comforts. The second cause, Anglo-colonial in nature, arose from the
inter-communion of colonial and English Puritan churches and from the
strength of the politico-ecclesiastical parties in England. Whatever
the outcome there, the consequences to colonial life of the rapidly
approaching climax in England, when, as we now know, King was to give
way to Commonwealth and Presbyterianism find itself subordinate to
Independency, would be tremendous.

In the first twenty years of colonial life, great changes had come
over New England. Many men of honest and Christian character--"sober
persons who professed themselves desirous of renewing their baptismal
covenant, and submit unto church discipline, but who were unable to
come up to that experimental account of their own regeneration which
would sufficiently embolden their access to the other sacrament"
(communion) [34]--felt that the early church regulations, possible
only in small communities where each man knew his fellow, had been
outgrown, and that their retention favored the growth of
hypocrisy. The exacting oversight of the churches in their "watch and
ward" over their members was unwelcome, and would not be submitted to
by many strangers who were flocking into the colonies. The
"experimental account" of religion demanded, as of old, a public
declaration or confession of the manner in which conviction of
sinfulness had come to each one; of the desire to put evil aside and
to live in accordance with God's commands as expressed in Scripture
and through the church to which the repentant one promised
obedience. This public confession was a fundamental of
Congregationalism. Other religious bodies have copied it; but at the
birth of Congregationalism, and for centuries afterwards, the bulk of
European churches, like the Protestant Episcopal Church to-day,
regarded "Christian piety more as a habit of life, formed under the
training of childhood, and less as a marked spiritual change in
experience." [35]

It followed that while many of the newcomers in the colonies were
indifferent to religion, by far the larger number were not, and
thought that, as they had been members of the English Established
Church, they ought to be admitted into full membership in the churches
of England's colonies. They felt, moreover, that the religious
training of their children was being neglected because the New England
churches ignored the child whose parents would not, or could not,
submit to their terms of membership. Still more strongly did these
people feel neglected and dissatisfied when, as the years went by,
more and more of them were emigrants who had been acceptable members
of the Puritan churches in England. They continued to be refused
religious privileges because New England Congregationalism doubted the
scriptural validity of letters of dismissal from churches where the
discipline and church order varied from its own. Within the membership
of the New England churches themselves, there was great uncertainty
concerning several church privileges, as, for instance, how far infant
baptism carried with it participation in church sacraments, and
whether adults, baptized in infancy, who had failed to unite with the
church by signing the Covenant, could have their children baptized
into the church. Considerations of church-membership and baptism, for
which the Cambridge Synod of 1648 was summoned, were destined, because
of political events in England, to be thrust aside and to wait another
eight years for their solution in that conference which framed the
Half-Way Covenant as supplementary to the Cambridge Platform of faith
and discipline.

What has been termed the Anglo-colonial cause for summoning the
Cambridge Synod finds explanation in the frequent questions and
demands which English Independency put to the New England churches
concerning church usage and discipline, and in the intense interest
with which New England waited the outcome of the constitutional
struggle in England between King and Parliament.

When the great controversy broke out in England between Presbyterians
and Independents, the fortunes of Massachusetts (who felt every wave
of the struggle) and of New England were in the balance. Presbyterians
in England proclaimed the doctrine of church unity, and of coercion if
necessary, to procure it; the Independents, the doctrine of
toleration. Puritans, inclining to Presbyterianism, were disturbed
over reports from the colonies, and letters of inquiry were sent and
answers returned explaining that, while the internal polity of the New
England churches was not far removed from Presbyterianism, they
differed widely from the Presbyterian standard as to a national church
and as to the power of synods over churches, and that they also held
to a much larger liberty in the right of each church to appoint its
officers and control its own internal affairs. At the opening of the
Long Parliament (1640-1644), many emigrants had returned to England
from the colonies, and, under the leadership of the influential Hugh
Peters, had given such an impetus to English thought that the
Independent party rose to political importance and made popular the
"New England Way."[b] The success of the Independents brought relief
to Massachusetts, yet it was tinctured with apprehension lest
"toleration" should be imposed upon her. The signing of the "League
and Covenant" with England in 1643 by Scotland, the oath of the
Commons to support it, and the pledge "to bring the churches of God in
the three Kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in
religion, confession of faith, form of church government and
catechizing" (including punishment of malignants and opponents of
reformation in Church and State), carried menace to the colonies and
to Massachusetts in particular. The supremacy of Scotch or English
Nonconformity meant a severity toward any variation from its
Presbyterianism as great as Laud had exercised.[c]

In 1643 Parliament convened one hundred and fifty members[d] in the
Westminster Assembly to plan the reform of the Church of
England. Their business was to formulate a Confession which should
dictate to all Englishmen what they should believe and how express it,
and should also define a Church, which, preserving the inherent
English idea of its relation to the State, should bear a close
likeness to the Reformed churches of the Continent and yet approach as
nearly as possible both to the then Church of Scotland and to the
English Church of the time of Elizabeth. The work of this assembly,
known as the Westminster Confession, demonstrated to the New England
colonists the weakness of their church system and the need among them
of religious unity.[e]

Many among the colonists doubted the advisability of a church
platform, considering it permissible as a declaration of faith, but of
doubtful value if its articles were to be authoritative as a binding
rule of faith and practice without "adding, altering, or omitting."
Men of this mind waited for controversial writings,[f] to clear up
misconception and misrepresentation in England, but they waited in
vain. Moreover, the Puritan Board of Commissioners for Plantations of
1643 threatened as close an oversight and as rigid control of colonial
affairs from a Presbyterian Parliament as had been feared from the
King. Furthermore, a Presbyterian cabal in Plymouth and Massachusetts,
1644-1646, gathered to it the discontent of large numbers of
unfranchised residents within the latter colony, and under threat of
an appeal to Parliament boldly asked for the ballot and for church
privileges. In view of these developments, nearly all the colonial
churches, though with some hesitation, united in the Synod of
Cambridge, which was originally called for the year 1646.

In the calling of the synod Massachusetts took the lead. Several years
before, in 1643, the four colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and New Haven had united in the New England Confederacy,
or "Confederacy of the United Colonies," for mutual advantage in
resisting the encroachments of the Dutch, French, and Indians, and for
"preserving and propagating the truth and liberties of the gospel." In
the confederacy, Massachusetts and Connecticut soon became the
leaders. Considering how much more strongly the former felt the
pulsations of English political life, and how active were the
Massachusetts divines as expositors of the "New England way of the
churches," the Bay Colony naturally took the initiative in calling the
Cambridge Synod. But mindful of the opposition to her previous
autocratic summons, her General Court framed its call as a "desire"
that ministerial, together with lay delegates, from all the churches
of New England should meet at Cambridge. There, representing the
churches, and in accordance with the earliest teachings of
Congregationalism, they were to meet in synod "for sisterly advice and
counsel." They were to formulate the practice of the churches in
regard to baptism and adult privileges, and to do so "for the
confirming of the weak among ourselves and the stopping of the mouths
of our adversaries abroad." During the two years of unavoidable delay
before the synod met in final session, these topics, which were
expected to be foremost in the conference, were constantly in the
public mind. Through this wide discussion, the long delay brought much
good. It brought also misfortune in the death of Thomas Hooker in
1647, and by it loss of one of the great lights and most liberal minds
in the proposed conference. Nearly all the colonial churches[g] were
represented in the synod. When, during its session, news was received
that Cromwell was supreme in England, its members turned from the
discussion of baptism and church-membership to a consideration of what
should be the constitution of the churches. The supremacy of Cromwell
and of the Independents who filled his armies cleared the political
background. All danger of enforced Presbyterianism was over. The
strength of the Presbyterian malcontents, who had sought to bring
Massachusetts and New England into disrepute in England, was
broken. Since the colonists were free to order their religious life as
they pleased, the Cambridge Synod turned aside from its purposed task
to formulate a larger platform of faith and polity.

When the Cambridge Synod adjourned, the orthodoxy of the New England
churches could not be impugned. In all matters of faith "for the
substance thereof" they accepted the Westminster Confession of Faith,
but from its measures of government and discipline they differed.[h]
This Cambridge Platform was more important as recognizing the
independence of the churches and the authority of custom among them
than as formulating a creed. It governed the New England churches for
sixty years, or until Massachusetts and Connecticut Congregationalism
came to the parting of the way, whence one was to develop its
associated system of church government, and the other its consociated
system as set forth in the Saybrook Platform, formulated at Saybrook,
Connecticut, in 1708. Meanwhile, the Cambridge Platform[i] gave all
the New England churches a standard by which to regulate their
practice and to resist change.[j]

A study of the Platform yields the following brief summary of its
cardinal points:--

(a) The Congregational church is not "National, Provincial or
Classical,"[k] but is a church of a covenanted brotherhood, wherein
each member makes public acknowledgment of spiritual regeneration and
declares his purpose to submit himself to the ordinances of God and of
his church.[l] A slight concession was made to the liberal church
party and to the popular demand for broader terms of membership in the
provision for those of "the weakest measure of faith," and in the
substitution of a written account of their Christian experience by
those who were ill or timid. This written "experimental account" was
to be read to the church by one of the elders. In the words of the
Platform, "Such charity and tenderness is to be used, as the weakest
Christian if sincere, may not be excluded or discouraged. Severity of
examination is to be avoided."[m]

(b) The officers of the church are elders and deacons, the former
including, as of old, pastors, teachers, and ruling elders. That the
authority within the church had passed from the unrestrained democracy
of the early Plymouth Separatists to a silent democracy before the
command of a speaking aristocracy[n] is witnessed to by the Platform's
declaration that "power of office" is proper to the elders, while
"power of privilege"[o] belongs to the brethren. In other words, the
brethren or membership have a "second" and "indirect power," according
to which they are privileged to elect their elders. Thereafter those
officers possess the "direct power," or authority, to govern the
church as they see fit.[p] In the matter of admission, dismission,
censure, excommunication, or re-admission of members, the brotherhood
of the church may express their opinion by vote.[q] In cases of
censure and excommunication, the Platform specifies that the offender
could be made to suffer only through deprivation of his church rights
and not through any loss of his civil ones.[r] In the discussion of
this point, the more liberal policy of Connecticut and Plymouth
prevailed.

(c) In regard to pastors and teachers, the Platform affirms that they
are such only by the right of election and remain such only so long as
they preside over the church by which they were elected.[s]

Their ordination after election, as well as that of the ruling elders
and deacons, is to be by the laying on of hands of the elders of the
church electing them. In default of elders, this ordination is to be
by the hands of brethren whom because of their exemplary lives the
church shall choose to perform the rite.[t]

A new provision was also made, one leaning toward Presbyterianism,
whereby elders of other churches could perform this ceremony, "when
there were no elders and the church so desired."

(d) Church maintenance, amounting to a church tax, was insisted upon
not only from church-members but from all, since "all that are taught
in the word, are to contribute unto him that teacheth." If necessary,
because corrupt men creep into the congregations and church
contributions cannot be collected, the magistrate is to see to it that
the church does not suffer.[u]

(e) The Platform defined the intercommunion of the churches[v] upon
such broad lines as to admit of sympathetic fellowship even when
slight differences existed in local customs. In so important a matter
as when an offending elder was to be removed, consultation with other
churches was commanded before action should be taken against him. The
intercommunion of churches was defined as of various kinds: as for
mutual welfare; for sisterly advice and consultation, in cases of
public offense, where the offending church was unconscious of fault;
for recommendation of members going from one church to another; for
need, relief, or succor of unfortunate churches; and "by way of
propagation," when over-populous churches were to be divided.

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