The Salem people, in their isolation three thousand miles from the home-land, felt the necessity of some form of church organization. As they had fled from the offensive ceremonial of the English Church, they determined to be free from cross and prayer-book, and from anything suggestive of offense. In the great matter of membership and constitution, their new church was to be brought still nearer to the requirements and simplicity of Gospel standards. More and more Puritans were coming to prefer the church of "covenant membership" to the birthright membership of the English Establishment. Many were urging a limited independence in the organization, management, and discipline of members of local churches. Some among the Puritans had adopted the Presbyterian polity, while many preferred that form of ordination. Such ordination had been accepted as valid for English clergymen during the earlier part of Elizabeth's reign. It was still so recognized by all the English clergy for the ministers of the Reformed churches on the Continent, and with such, English clergymen of all opinions still continued to hold very friendly intercourse. It was not until Laud's ascendency that claims for the divine right of Episcopacy, to the exclusion of other branches of the Christian faith, were strenuously urged. Thus it happened that after many conferences, Endicott could write to Governor Bradford in May of 1629, that:—
I acknowledge myself much bound to you for your kind love and care in sending Mr. Samuel Fuller among us, and rejoice much that I am by him satisfied touching your judgment of the outward form of God's worship. It is, as far as I can gather, no other than is warranted by the evidence of truth, and the same which I have ever professed and maintained ever since the Lord in mercy revealed Himself unto me: being far from the common report that hath been spread of you touching that particular.
Endicott further expresses the wish that they may all "as Christian brethren be united by a heavenly and unfeigned love;" that as servants of one Master and of one household they should not be strangers, but be "marked with one and the same mark, and sealed with one and the same seal, and have, for the main, one and the same heart guided by one and the same Spirit of truth," and that they should bend their hearts and forces to the furthering of the work for which they had come into the wilderness. Thus, Salem had decided upon the type of church her people wanted, while she still waited for the ministers who were coming with the larger number of her colonists, and whom she believed competent to guide her religious life.
Only a few weeks after the sending of Endicott's letter to Governor Bradford, five vessels arrived, bringing several hundred well-equipped colonists. They had been sent out by the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay. This corporation had bought out the Salem Company, and was backed by the most influential Puritans of wealth and social prominence, by men who had lost all hope of either religious or civil freedom when Laud had been raised to the bishopric of London and when Charles persisted in his despotic government. By the elevation of Laud to the bishopric of London, Charles offended the most puritanically inclined diocese in England, and the whole Puritan party. In his new office, Laud quickly succeeded in severing communication between the Reformed churches on the Continent and those in England. He strictly prohibited the common people from using the annotated pocket-Bibles sent out by the Genevan press. He forbade the entrance into office of nonconformists as lecturers or chaplains. He put an end to feofments, so that puritanically inclined men of wealth could no longer control the livings. He excluded suspended ministers from teaching, and also from the practice of medicine, and even forbade their entering business life. He required absolute conformity to his own high-church standards. He insisted upon doing away with all Calvinistic innovations tending to simplicity of ritual, and upon reviving many ecclesiastical ceremonies which had fallen into disuse. Hence, English Puritans saw in America the only hope of the future, and began that exodus which, during the next ten years, or more, annually sent two thousand emigrants to the Massachusetts shore to find homes throughout New England. Of these, the Salem colonists were the first large body of Puritans to emigrate. Among them were three ministers, Endicott's former pastor Samuel Skelton, Francis Higginson, and Francis Bright.
When Higginson and Skelton learned of the friendship with Plymouth, and that Endicott had adopted the system of church organization established in the older settlement, they accepted it as being in accord with the principles of the Reformed churches on the Continent, whose pattern they had themselves resolved to follow in organizing the church at Salem. Not so Francis Bright. He could not agree with the others, and so withdrew to Charlestown in order not to embarrass the young church. Higginson and Skelton were each, in turn questioned as to their conception of a minister's calling. Replying that it was twofold: a call from within to a conviction that a man was chosen of God to be His minister, and thereby endowed with proper gifts, and a call from without by the free choice of a "covenanted church" to be its pastor, they were accepted as satisfactory candidates for the two highest offices in the Salem church. Later, upon an appointed day of prayer and fasting, July 20, 1629, the people by written ballot chose Francis Skelton to be their pastor and Thomas Higginson their teacher. When they had accepted their election, "first Mr. Higginson, with three or four of the gravest members of the church, laid their hands upon Mr. Skelton, using prayer therewith. This being done, there was imposition of hands upon Mr. Higginson also." Upon a still later day of prayer and humiliation, August 6, elders and deacons were chosen and ordained. Upon this day, the two ministers and many among the people gave their assent to the Confession and Covenant which the pastor and teacher had revised. At the second of these two important meetings, Governor Bradford and delegates from the Plymouth church were present. "Coming by sea they were hindered by cross-winds that they could not be there at the beginning of the day; but they came into the assembly afterward, and gave them the right hand of fellowship, wishing all prosperity and all blessedness to such good beginnings." [19] The Salem covenant in its original form was a single sentence: "We covenant with the Lord and with one another; and doe bynd ourselves in the presence of God to walk together in all his wayes, according as he is pleased to reveale him' self unto us in his Blessed word of truth." [20]
The formation of the church of Salem by covenant practice[a] marked the beginning of the Congregational polity among the Puritan body; their local ordination of their minister, the break with English Episcopacy, though, for a considerable while longer, the colonists still spoke of themselves as members of the Church of England, for both the colonial and the home authorities were equally anxious to avoid the stigma of Separatism.
The next large body of colonists to leave England was Governor Winthrop's company, and, upon their arrival, the Boston church quickly followed the example of Salem. Next, the Dorchester church, afterwards the church of Windsor, Connecticut, emigrated as a body from Plymouth, England, where, before embarking, its members seem to have taken some form of membership pledge,—an unusual proceeding, but operating to put this church in line with those already organized in Plymouth and Massachusetts. The Watertown church, whence emigrants were to settle Wethersfield, Connecticut, also organized with a covenant similar to that of Salem and Boston. These four oldest congregations set the type for the thirty-five New England churches that were founded previous to 1640, as well as for the later ones that followed the standard thus early set up by Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. There was some variation in the form of covenant,[b] and to it a brief confession of faith, or creed, was early added. There was some variation also in the interpretation of the laying on of hands in ordination as to whether it was to be considered, in cases where the candidate had previously been ordained in England, as ordination or as confirmation of that previously received.[c] In regard to officers, the churches at first provided themselves with pastor, ruling elders (one or two, but generally only one), and deacons. There were exceptions among them, as at Plymouth, where there was no pastor for ten years, and in which there had never been a teacher, for John Robinson had filled both offices. As the first generation of colonists passed away, partly because of lack of fit candidates, partly because of the kinship of the two offices of pastor and teacher, and partly because of the heavy expense in supporting both, the office of teacher was dropped. The ruling eldership also was gradually discontinued; but at first the churches generally had, with the exception of widows, the full complement of officers as appointed by Browne and Barrowe. The usual order of worship was (1) Prayer. (2) Psalm. (3) Scripture reading, followed by the pastor's preaching to explain and apply it. (4) Prophesying or exhortation, the elders calling for speakers, whether members or guests from other churches. (5) Questions from old or young, women excepted. (6) Occasional administration of the Lord's Supper or of Baptism, rites known as the administration of "the Seals of the Covenant." (7) Psalm. (8) Collection. (9) Dismissal with blessing. Such were the New England churches, the churches of a transplanted creed and race. They were Calvinistic in dogma, democratic in organization, and of extreme simplicity in their order of worship.
[a] This fundamental principle of Congregationalism belonged to the Separatists and was one of their distinctive tenets. It was never adopted by the English Puritans as a body, nor was ordination by a local church. The Dorchester church had some form of pledge at the time of its organization. So also, possibly, because influenced by Dutch example, did Rev. Hugh Peter's church in Rotterdam. But these were exceptions.—W. Walker,Hist, of Cong., p. 192.
[b] The evolution of the Salem covenant and creed is given in detail in W. Walker'sCreeds and Platforms, pp. 99-122.
The Windsor Creed of 1647, though not covering the range of Christian doctrine, contained in simple phrase the essentials of Gospel redemption from sin through repentance and faith in the atoning work of Christ and a life of love toward God and our neighbor, through the strength which comes from him.—W. Walker,Creeds and Platforms, p. 154.
[c] The evolution of the Salem covenant and creed is given in detail in W. Walker'sCreeds and Platforms, pp. 99-122.
The Windsor Creed of 1647, though not covering the range of Christian doctrine, contained in simple phrase the essentials of Gospel redemption from sin through repentance and faith in the atoning work of Christ and a life of love toward God and our neighbor, through the strength which comes from him.—W. Walker,Creeds and Platforms, p. 154.
For God and the Church!
With the great Puritan body in England, and with the great mass of the English nation, whatever their religious opinions, the colonists of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven held in common one foremost theory of civil government. Pausing for a brief consideration of this fundamental and far-reaching theory, which created so many difficulties in the infant commonwealths, and which confronts us again and again as we follow their later history, we find that the Pilgrim Separatist of Plymouth, the strict Puritan of Massachusetts, the voter in the theocratic commonwealth of New Haven, and the holder of the liberal franchise in Connecticut, all clung to the proposition that the State's first duty was the maintenance and support of religion. Thereby they meant enforced taxation for the support of its predominant type, conformity to its mode of worship, and in the last analysis supervision or control of the Church by the State or by the General Court of each colony. As a corollary to this proposition, the duty of the churches was to define the creed, to set forth the church polity, and to determine the bounds of morality within the state. Two of the colonies held the corollary to be so important that it almost changed places with the proposition when Massachusetts and New Haven became rigid theocracies.[a]
With respect to taxation in the four colonies the statement should be modified, inasmuch as the support of religion was at first voluntary in all four: in Plymouth until 1657, in Massachusetts from 1630 to 1638, in Connecticut before 1640; yet both New Haven and Connecticut accepted the suggestion made by the Commissioners of the United Colonies on September 5, 1644, "that each man should be required to set down what he would voluntarily give for the support of the gospel, and that any man who refused should be rated according to his possessions and compelled to pay" the sum so levied. Since in religious affairs strict conformity was required by the three Puritan colonies, and since the liberty accorded to the few early dissenters in Plymouth was not such as to modify her prevailing polity or worship, these first few years of voluntary assessment do not nullify the dominant truth of the preceding statement.
In the intimate relation of Church and State, the people of these four New England colonies regarded the magistrates as "Nursing Fathers" of the Church, [2l] who were to take "special note and care of every Church and provide and assign allotments of land for the maintenance of each of them." [22] The State, accepting the same view of caretaker, carried its supervision still farther and devised a system for the maintenance of the ministry in accordance with sundry laws made to insure the people's support, respect, and obedience. The churches reciprocated. First of all, they provided their members with the approved and accepted essentials of religious life, and they further exercised a rigorous supervision over the moral welfare of the whole community. Secondly, they aided the State through the influence of their ministers, who, on all important occasions, were expected to meet with the magistrates to consult and advise upon affairs whether spiritual or temporal. But the framers of governments were not satisfied with these measures that aimed to present a strongly established church, capable of extending a fine moral, ethical, and religious influence over the colonists, and also to enforce upon the wayward, the careless, or the indifferent among them its support and their obedience. If these measures provided for the ordinary welfare of the community and for the usual relations b between the ministers and their people, there were still possibilities of factional strife to guard against, and such warfare in that age might or might not confine itself within the limits of theological controversy or within the lines of church organization. Consequently, the better to preserve the churches from schism or corrupting innovations and the commonwealth from discord, the supreme control of the churches was lodged in the General Court of each colony. It could, whenever necessary to secure harmony, whether ecclesiastical or civil, legislate with reference to all or any of the churches within its jurisdiction. Examples of such legislation occur frequently in the religious history of the colonies, especially of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Such interdependence of the spiritual and temporal power practically amounted to a union of Church and State. Indeed, in Massachusetts and New Haven, to be a voter, a man must first be a member of a church of approved standing.[b] In more liberal Plymouth and Connecticut, the franchise, at first, was made to depend only upon conduct, though it was early found necessary to add a property qualification in order to cut off undesirable voters.[23] In the Connecticut colony, it was expressly enacted that church censure should not debar from civil privilege. When advocating this amount of separation between church and civil power, Thomas Hooker was not moved by any such religious principle as influenced the Separatists of Plymouth. On the contrary, it was his political foresight which made him urge upon the colonists a more representative government[c] than would be obtainable from a franchise based upon church-membership where, as in the colonial churches, admission to such membership was conditioned upon exacting tests. The great Connecticut leader was far in advance of the statesmen of his time, for they held that the religion of a prince or government must be the religion of the people; that every subject must be by birthright a member of the national church, to leave which was both heretical and disloyal and should be punished by political and civil disabilities. This union of Church and State was the theory of the age,—a principle of statecraft throughout all of Europe as well as in England. Naturally it emigrated to New England to be a foundation of civil government and a fortress for that type of nonconformity which the colonists chose to transplant and make predominant. The type, as we have seen, was Congregationalism, and the Congregational church became the established church in each of the four colonies.
This theory of Church and State was the cause at bottom of all the early theological dissensions which disturbed the peace and threatened the colony of Massachusetts. Moreover, their settlement offers the most striking contrast between the fundamental theory of Congregationalism and the theory of a union between Church and State. With the power of supervision over the Church lodged in the General Court, whatever the theory of Congregationalism as to the independence of the individual churches, in practice the civil authority disciplined them and their members, and early invaded ecclesiastical territory. In Salem, Endicott took it upon himself to expel Ralph Smith for holding extreme Separatist principles, and shipped the Browns back to England for persisting in the use of the Book of Common Prayer. He considered both parties equally dangerous to the welfare of the community, because, according to the new standard of church-life, both were censurable. Endicott held that to tolerate any measure of diversity in religious practices was to cultivate the ferment of civil disorder. Considering the bitterness, narrowness, intensity, and also the irritating conviction that every one else was heretical and anti-Christian, with which men of that age clung to their religious differences, Endicott had some reason for holding this opinion. The Boston authorities believed in no less drastic measures to maintain the civil peace and consequent good name of the colony. John Davenport of New Haven voiced the Massachusetts sentiment as well as his own in: "Civil government is for the common welfare of all, as well in the Church as without; which will then be most certainly effected, when Public Trust and Power of these matters is committed to such men as are most approved according to God; and these are Church-members."[24] Consequently, the Massachusetts law of 1631 [25] forbade any but church members to become freemen of the colony, and to these only was intrusted any share in its government. A similar law was later formulated for the New Haven colony. John Cotton echoed the further sentiment of a New England community when, writing of the relations between the churches and the magistrates, he defined the church as "subject to the Magistrate in the matters concerning the civil peace, of which there are four sorts:" (1) with reference to men's goods, lives, liberty, and lands; (2) with establishment of religion in doctrine, worship, and government according to the Word of God, as also the reformation of corruption in any of these; (3) with certain public spiritual administrations which may help forward the public good, as fasts and synods; (4) and finally the church must be subject to the magistrates in patient suffering of unjust persecution, since for her to take up the sword in her own defense would only increase the disturbance of the public peace. [26] As a result of such public sentiment, churches were not to be organized without the approval of the magistrates, nor were any "persons being members of any church … gathered without the approbation of the magistrates and the greater part of said churches" (churches of the colony) to be admitted to the freedom of the commonwealth. [27] This law, or its equivalent, with reference to church organization was found upon the statute books of all four colonies.
In a pioneer community and a primitive commonwealth, developing slowly in accord with the new democratic principles underlying both its church and secular life, the "maintenance of the peace and welfare of the churches,"[28] which was intrusted to the care of the General Court, was frequently equivalent to maintaining the civil peace and prosperity of the colony. Endicott's deportation of the Browns and the report of the exclusiveness and exacting tests of membership in the colonial churches had early led the members of the Massachusetts Bay Company, resident in England, to fear that the emigrants had departed from their original intent and purpose. And the colonists began to feel that they were in danger of falling under the displeasure of their king and of their Puritan friends at home. Consequently, there entered into the settling of all later religious differences in the colony the determination to avoid appeals to the home country, and also to avoid any report of disturbance or dissatisfaction that might be prejudicial to her independence, general policy, or commercial prosperity. The recognition of such danger made many persons satisfied to submit to government by an exclusive class, comprising in Massachusetts one tenth of the people and in the New Haven colony one ninth. These alone had any voice in making the laws. In submitting to their dictation, the large majority of the people had to submit to a "government that left no incident, circumstance, or experience of the life of an individual, personal, domestic, social, or civil, still less anything that concerned religion, free from the direct or indirect interposition of public authority." [29] Such inquisitorial supervision was due to the close alliance of Church and State within the narrow limits of a theocracy. In more liberal Plymouth and Connecticut, the "watch and ward" over one's fellows, which the early colonial church insisted upon, was extended only over church members, and even over them was less rigorous, less intrusive. Something of the development of the great authority of the State over the churches and of its attitude and theirs towards synods may be gleaned from the earliest pages of Massachusetts ecclesiastical history. The starting-point of precedent for the elders of the church to be regarded as advisors only and the General Court as authoritative seems to have been in a matter of taxation, when, in February, 1632, the General Court assessed the church in Watertown. The elders advised resistance; the Court compelled payment. In the following July, the Boston church inquired of the churches of Plymouth, Salem, Dorchester, and Watertown, whether a ruling elder could at the same time hold office as a civil magistrate. A correspondence ensued and the answer returned was that he could not. Thereupon, Mr. Nowell resigned his eldership in the Boston church. [30] Winthrop mentions eight[d] important occasions between 1632 and 1635 when the elders, which term included pastors, teachers, and ruling elders, were summoned by the General Court of Massachusetts to give advice upon temporal affairs. In March of 1635-36 the Court "entreated them (the elders) together with the brethren of every church within the jurisdiction, to consult and advise of one uniforme order of discipline in the churches agreable to Scriptures, and then to consider how far the magistrates are bound to interpose for the preservation of that uniformity and peace of the churches." [31] The desire of the Court grew in part out of the influx of new colonists, who did not like the strict church discipline, and in part out of the tangle of Church and State during the Roger Williams controversy. The Court had disciplined Williams as one, who, having no rights in the corporation, had no ground for complaint at the hostile reception of his teachings. These the authorities regarded as harmful to their government and dangerous to religion. His too warm adherents in the Salem church were, however, rightful members of the community, and they had been punished for upholding one whom the General Court, advised by the elders of the churches, had seen fit to censure. Punished thus, ostensibly, for contempt of the magistrates by the refusal to them of the land they claimed as theirs on Marblehead Neck, and feeling that the independence of their church life and their rightful choice in the selection of their pastor had really been infringed, the Salem church sent letters to the elders of all the other churches of the Bay, asking that the magistrates and deputies be admonished for their decision as a "heinous sin." The Court came out victorious, by refusing at its next general session to seat the Salem deputies "until they should give satisfaction by letter" for holding dangerous opinions and for writing "letters of defamation," and by proceeding to banish Roger Williams. Before the session of the Court, the elders of the Massachusetts churches, jointly and individually, labored with the Salem people and brought the majority to a conviction of their error in supporting Roger Williams. [e]
The platform of church discipline which the Court advised in 1635-36 was not forthcoming, and the matter was allowed to rest.[f] In 1637, with the consent of the General Court, a synod of elders and lay delegates from all the New England churches was called to harmonize the discordant factions created by the heated Antinomian controversy. During the synod, the magistrates were present all the time as hearers, and even as speakers, but not as members. The dangerous schism was ended more by the Court's banishment of Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson, together with their more prominent followers, than by the work of the synod. However, Governor Winthrop was so delighted with the conferences of the synod that, in his enthusiasm, he suggested that it would be fit "to have the like meeting once a year, or at least the next year, to settle what yet remained to be agreed, or if but to nourish love."[32] But his suggestion was voted down, for the Synod of 1637 was considered by some to be "a perilous deflection from the theory of Congregationalism."[33] Even the fortnightly meeting of ministers who resided near each other, and which it had become a custom to call for friendly conference, was looked at askance by those[g] who feared in it the germ of some authoritative body that should come to exercise control over the individual churches. When this custom was endorsed and permitted in the "Body of Liberties," in 1641, the assurance that these meetings "were only by way of Brotherly conference and consultation" was felt to be necessary to appease the opposition. When, two and four years later, Anabaptist converts and a flood of Presbyterian literature called for measures of repression, and the Court summoned councils to consult upon a course of action, it was most careful in each case to reassert the doctrine of the complete independence of the individual church. Synods, from the purely Congregational standpoint, were to be called only upon the initiative of the churches, and were authoritative bodies, composed of both ministerial and lay delegates from such churches, and their duty was to confer and advise upon matters of general interest or upon special problems. In cases where their decisions were unheeded, they could enforce their displeasure at the contumacious church only by cutting it off from fellowship. Consequently, though there was some opposition to the Court's calling of synods and a resultant general restlessness, there was none when the Court confined its supervision and commands to individually schismatic churches or to unruly members. The time had not yet come for the recognition of what this double system of church government—government by its members, supervision by the Court —foreboded. The colonists did not see that within it was the embryo of an authoritative body exercising some of the powers of the Presbyterian General Assembly. The supervising body might be composed of laymen acting in their capacity as members of the General Court, but the powers they exercised were none the less akin to the very ones that Congregationalism had declared to be heretical and anti-Christian. Moreover, the tendency was toward an increase of this authoritative power every time it was exercised and each time that the colonists submitted to its dictation.
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.
[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'sEarly Gov't. in Conn.p. 347, inN. 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 indexConn. Col. Rec.vols. i, ii, iii, and iv.
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.
(f) Concerning synods,[w] the Platform asserts that they are "necessary to the well-being of churches for the establishment of truth and peace therein;" that they are to consist of elders, or ministerial delegates, and also of lay delegates, or "messengers;" that their function is to determine controversies over questions of faith, to debate matters of general interest, to guide and to express judgment upon churches, "rent by discord or lying under open scandal." Synods could be called by the churches, and also by the magistrates through an order to the churches to send their elders and messengers, but they were not to be permanent bodies. On the contrary, unlike the synods of the Presbyterian system, they were to be disbanded when the work of the special session for which they were summoned was finished. Moreover, they were not "to exercise church censure in the way of discipline nor any other act of authority or jurisdiction;" yet their judgments were to be received, "so far as consonant to the word of God," since they were judged to be an ordinance of God appointed in his Word.
(g) The Platform's section "Of the Civil Magistrate in matters Ecclesiastical"[x] maintains that magistrates cannot compel subjects to become church-members; that they ought not to meddle with the proper work of officers of the churches, but that they ought to see to it that godliness is upheld, and the decrees of the church obeyed. To accomplish these ends, they should exert all the civil authority intrusted to them, and their foremost duty was to put down blasphemy, idolatry, and heresy. In any question as to what constituted the last, the magistrates assisted by the elders were to decide and to determine the measure of the crime. They were to punish the heretic, not as one who errs in an intellectual judgment, but as a moral leper and for whose evil influence the community was responsible to God. The civil magistrates were also to punish all profaners of the Sabbath, all contemners of the ministry, all disturbers of public worship, and to proceed "against schismatic or obstinately corrupt churches."
These seven points summarize the important work of the Cambridge Synod and the Platform wherein it embodied the church usage and fixed the ecclesiastical customs of New England. Concerning its own work, the Synod remarked in conclusion that it "hopes that this will be a proof to the churches beyond the seas that the New England churches are free from heresies and from the character of schism," and that "in the doctrinal part of religion they have agreed entirely with the Reformed churches of England." [36]
Let us in a few sentences review the whole story thus far of colonial Congregationalism. With the exception of the churches of Plymouth and Watertown, the colonists had come to America without any definite religious organization. True, they had in their minds the example of the Reformed churches on the Continent, and much of theory, and many convictions as to what ought to be the rule of churches. These theories and these convictions soon crystallized out. And the transatlantic crystallization was found to yield results, some of which were very similar to the modifications which time had wrought in England upon the rough and embryonic forms of Congregationalism as set forth by Robert Browne and Henry Barrowe. The characteristics of Congregationalism during its first quarter of a century upon New England soil were: the clearly defined independence or self-government of the local churches; the fellowship of the churches; the development of large and authoritative powers in the eldership; a more exact definition of the functions of synods, a definite limitation of their authority; and, finally, a recognition of the authority of the civil magistrates in religious affairs generally, and of their control in special cases arising within individual churches. In the growing power of the eldership, and in the provision of the Platform which permits ordination by the hands of elders of other churches, when a church had no elders and its members so desired, there is a trend toward the polity of the Presbyterian system. In the Platform's definition of the power of the magistrates over the religious life of the community, there is evident the colonists' conviction that, notwithstanding the vaunted independence of the churches, there ought to be some strong external authority to uphold them and their discipline; some power to fall back upon, greater than the censure of a single church or the combined strength and influence derived from advisory councils and unauthoritative synods. In Connecticut, this control by the civil power was to increase side by side with the tendency to rely upon advisory councils. From this twofold development during a period of sixty years, there arose the rigid autonomy of the later Saybrook system of church-government, wherein the civil authority surrendered to ecclesiastical courts its supreme control of the churches.
Turning from the text of the Cambridge Platform to its application, we find among the earliest churches "rent by discord," schismatically corrupt, and to be disciplined according to its provisions, that of Hartford, Connecticut. From the earliest years of the Connecticut colony there had been within it a large party, constantly increasing, who, because they were unhappy and aggrieved at having themselves and their children shut out of the churches, had advocated admitting all of moral life to the communion table. The influence of Thomas Hooker kept the discontent within bounds until his death in 1647, the year before the Cambridge Synod met. Thereafter, the conservative and liberal factions in many of the churches came quickly into open conflict. The Hartford church in particular became rent by dissension so great that neither the counsel of neighboring churches nor the commands of the General Court, legislating in the manner prescribed by the Cambridge instrument, could heal the schism. The trouble in the Hartford church arose because of a difference between Mr. Stone, the minister, and Elder Goodwin, who led the minority in their preference for a candidate to assist their pastor. Before the discovery of documents relating to the controversy, it was the custom of earlier historians to refer the dispute to political motives. But this church feud, and the discussion which it created throughout Connecticut, was purely religious, and had to do with matters of church privileges and eventually with rights of baptism.[y] The conflict originated through Mr. Stone's conception of his ministerial authority, which belonged rather to the period of his English training and which was concisely set forth by his oft-quoted definition of the rule of the elders as "a speaking aristocracy in the face of a silent democracy."[z] Mr. Stone and Elder Goodwin, the two chief officers in the Hartford church, each commanded an influential following. Personal and political affiliations added to the bitterness of party bias in the dispute which raged over the following three questions: (a) What were the rights of the minority in the election of a minister whom they were obliged to support? (b) What was the proper mode of ecclesiastical redress if these rights were ignored? (c) What were those baptismal rights and privileges which the Cambridge Platform had not definitely settled? The discussion of the first two questions precipitated into the foreground the still unanswered third. The turmoil in the Hartford church continued for years and was provocative of disturbances throughout the colony. Accordingly, in May, 1656, a petition was presented to the General Court by persons unknown, asking for broader baptismal privileges. Moved by the appeal, the Court appointed a committee, consisting of the governor, lieutenant-governor and two deputies, to consult with the elders of the churches and to draw up a series of questions embodying the grievances which were complained of throughout the colony as well as in the Hartford church. The Court further commanded that a copy of these questions be sent to the General Courts of the other three colonies, that they might consider them and advise Connecticut as to some method of putting an end to ecclesiastical disputes. As Connecticut was not the only colony having trouble of this sort, Massachusetts promptly ordered thirteen of her elders to meet at Boston during the following summer, and expressed a desire for the cooperation of the churches of the confederated colonies. Plymouth did not respond. New Haven rejected the proposed conference. She feared that it would result in too great changes in church discipline and, consequently, in her civil order,—changes which she believed would endanger the peace and purity of her churches;[aa] yet she sent an exposition, written by John Davenport, of the questions to be discussed. The Connecticut General Court, glad of Massachusetts' appreciative sympathy, appointed delegates, advising them to first take counsel together concerning the questions to be considered at Boston, and ordered them upon their return to report to the Court.
The two questions which since the summoning of the Cambridge Synod had been under discussion throughout all New England were the right of non-covenanting parishioners in the choice of a minister, and the rights of children of baptized parents, that had not been admitted to full membership. These were the main topics of discussion in the Synod, or, more properly, Ministerial Convention, of 1657, which assembled in Boston, and which decreed the Half-Way Covenant. The Assembly decided in regard to baptism that persons, who had been baptized in their infancy, but who, upon arriving at maturity, had not publicly professed their conversion and united in full membership with the church, were not fit to receive the Lord's Supper:—
Yet in case they understood the Grounds of Religion and are not scandalous, and solemnly own the Covenant in their own persons,[ab] wherein they give themselves and their own children unto the Lord, and desire baptism for them, we (with due reverence to any Godly Learned that may dissent) see not sufficient cause to deny Baptism unto their children. [37]
Church care and oversight were to be extended to such children. But in order to go to communion, or to vote in church affairs, the old personal, public profession that for so many years had been indispensable to "signing the covenant" was retained [38] and must still be given.
This Half-Way Covenant, as it came to be called, enlarged the terms of baptism and of admission to church privileges as they had been set forth in the Cambridge Platform. The new measure held within itself a contradiction to the foundation principle of Congregationalism. A dual membership was introduced by this attempt to harmonize the Old Testament promise, that God's covenant was with Abraham and his seed forever, with the Congregational type of church which the New Testament was believed to set forth. The former theory must imply some measure of true faith in the children of baptized parents, whether or no they had fulfilled their duty by making public profession and by uniting with the church. This duty was so much a matter of course with the first colonists, and so deeply ingrained was their loyalty to the faith and practice which one generation inherited from another, that it never occurred to them that future descendants of theirs might view differently these obligations of church membership. But a difficulty arose later when the adult obligation implied by baptism in infancy ceased to be met, and when the question had to be settled of how far the parents' measure of faith carried grace with it. Did the inheritance of faith, of which baptism was the sign and seal, stop with the children, or with the grandchildren, or where? To push the theory of inherited rights would result eventually in destroying the covenant church, bringing in its stead a national church of mixed membership; to press the original requirements of the covenant upon an unwilling people would lessen the membership of the churches, expose them to hostile attack, and to possible overthrow. The colonists compromised upon this dual membership of the Half-Way Covenant. As its full significance did not become apparent for years, the work of the Synod of 1657 was generally acceptable to the ministry, but it met with opposition among the older laity. It was welcomed in Connecticut, where Henry Smith of Wethersfield as early as 1647, Samuel Stone of Hartford, after 1650, and John Warham of Windsor, had been earnest advocates of its enlarged terms. As early as in his draft of the Cambridge Platform, Ralph Partridge of Duxbury in Plymouth colony had incorporated similar changes, and even then they had been seconded by Richard Mather.[ac] They had been omitted from the final draft of that Platform because of the opposition of a small but influential group led by the Rev. Charles Chauncey. As early as 1650, it had become evident that public opinion was favorable to such a change, and that some church would soon begin to put in practice a theory which was held by so many leading divines. Though the Half-Way Covenant was strenuously opposed by the New Haven colony as a whole, Peter Prudden, its second ablest minister, had, as early as 1651, avowed his earnest support of such a measure.
The Half-Way Covenant was presented to the Connecticut General Court, August, 1657. Orders were at once given that copies of it should be distributed to all the churches with a request for a statement of any exceptions that any of them might have to it. None are known to have been returned. This was not due to any great unanimity of sentiment among the churches, for in Connecticut, as elsewhere, many of the older church-members were not so liberally inclined as their ministers, and were loth to follow their lead in this new departure. But when controversy broke out again in the Hartford church, in 1666, because of the baptism of some children, it was found that in the interval of eleven years those who favored the Half-Way covenant had increased in numbers in the church,[ad] and were rapidly gaining throughout the colony, especially in its northern half. By the absorption of the New Haven Colony, its southern boundary in 1664 had become the shore of Long Island Sound.
Though public opinion favored the Half-Way Covenant, the practice of the churches was controlled by their exclusive membership, and, unless a majority thereof approved the new way, there was nothing to compel the church to broaden its baptismal privileges.[ae] This difference between public opinion and church practice, between the congregations and the coterie of church members, was provocative of clashing interests and of factional strife. For several years these factional differences were held in check and made subordinate to the urgent political situation which the restoration of the Stuarts had precipitated, and which demanded harmonious action among the colonists. A royal charter had to be obtained, and when obtained, it gave Connecticut dominion over the New Haven colony. The lower colony had to be reconciled to its loss of independence, in so much as the governing party, with its influential following of conservatives, objected to the consolidation. The liberals, a much larger party numerically, preferred to come under the authority of Connecticut and to enjoy her less restrictive church policy and her broader political life. Matters were finally adjusted, and delegates from the old New Haven colony first took their seats as members of the General Court of Connecticut at the spring session of 1665. Thereafter, in Connecticut history, especially its religious history, the strain of liberalism most often follows the old lines of the Connecticut colony, while that of conservatism is more often met with as reflecting the opinions of those within the former boundaries of that of New Haven.
It was in the year following the union of the two colonies that the quarrel in the Hartford church broke out afresh. The fall preceding the consolidation of the colonies, an appeal was made to the Connecticut General Court which helped to swell the dissatisfaction in the Hartford church and to bring it to the bursting point. In October, 1664, William Pitkin, by birth a member of the English Established Church[af] and a man much esteemed in the colony, as shown, politically, by his office of attorney,[39] and socially by his marriage with Elder Goodwin's daughter, petitioned the General Court in behalf of himself and six associates that it—
would take into serious consideration our present state in this respect that wee are thus as sheep scattered haveing no shepheard, and compare it with what wee conceive you can not but know both God and our King would have it different from what it now is. And take some speedy and effectual course of redress herein, And put us in full and free capacity of injoying those forementioned Advantages which to us as members of Christ's visible Church doe of right belong. By establishing some wholesome Law in this Corporation by vertue whereof wee may both clame and receive of such officers as are, or shall be by Law set over us in the Church or churches where wee have our abode or residence those forementioned privileges and advantages.
Further wee humbly request that for the future no Law in this corporation may be of any force to make us pay or contribute to the maintenance of any Minister or officer in the Church that will neglect or refuse to baptize our Children, and to take charge of us as of such members of the Church as are under his or their charge and care—
Signed—Admitted freemanOct. 9th, 1662, Hartford, Wm. Pitkin.
Admitted freemanMay 21, 1657, Windsor, Michael Humphrey.
Admitted freemanMay 18, 1654, Hartford, John Stedman.Windsor, James Eno.
Admitted freemanMay 20, 1658, — Robart Reeve.Windsor, John Morse.
Admitted freemanMay 20, 1658, Windsor, Jonas Westover. [40]
Eno and Humphrey had been complained of because their insistence upon what they considered their rights had caused disturbance in the Windsor church. Now, with the other petitioners, they based their appeal in part upon the King's Letter to the Bay Colony of June 26th, 1662, wherein Charles commanded that "all persons of good and honest lives and conversation be admitted to the sacrament of the Lord's supper, according to the said book of common prayer, and their children to baptism."
This petition of Pitkin and his associates was the first notable expression of dissatisfaction with the Congregationalism of Connecticut. Several Episcopal writers have quoted it as the first appeal of Churchmen in Connecticut. In itself, it forbids such construction. The petitioners had come from England and from the church of the Commonwealth. They were asking either for toleration in the spirit of the Half-Way Covenant or for some special legislation in their behalf. Further, they were demanding religious care and baptism for their children from a clergy who, from the point of view of any strict Episcopalian, had no right to officiate; and, again, it was nearly ten years before the first Church-of-England men found their way to Stratford.[41]
The Court made reply to Pitkin's petition by sending to all the churches a request that they consider—
whither it be not their duty to entertaine all such persons, who are of honest and godly conuersation, hauing a competency of knowledge in the principles of religion, and shall desire to joyne with them in church fellowship, by an explicitt couenant, and that they haue their children baptized, and that all the children of the church be accepted and acco'td reall members of the church and that the church exercise a due Christian care and watch ouer them; and that when they are grown up, being examined by the officer in the presence of the church, it appeares in the judgment of charity, they are duly qualified to participate in the great ordinance of the Lord's Supper, by their being able to examine and discerne the Lord's body, such persons be admitted to full comunion.
The Court desires y't the seuerall officers of y'e respectiue churches, would be pleased to consider whither it be the duty of the Court to order churches to practice according to the premises, if they doe not practice without such an order.[42]
The issue was now fairly before the churches of the colony. The delegates of the people had expressed the opinion of the majority. The Court had invited the expression of any dissent that might exist, yet, despite the invitation, it had issued almost an order to the churches to practice the Half-Way Covenant, and with large interpretation, applying it, not only to the baptism of children who had been born of parents baptized in the colonial church, but also to those whose parents had been baptized in the English communion, at least during the Commonwealth.[ag] Pitkin at once proceeded in behalf of himself and several of his companions to apply for "communion with the church of Hartford in all the ordinances of Christ." [43] This the church refused, and wrought its factions up to white heat over the baptism of some child or children of non-communicants. The storm broke. Other churches felt its effects. Windsor church was rent by faction, Stratford was in turmoil over the Half-Way Covenant, and other churches were divided.