The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut | Page 3

episcopate.--Movement for consolidation among all religious bodies.--Influences promoting nationalism and, indirectly, religious toleration.--Connecticut at the threshold of the Revolution.-- Connecticut clergymen as advocates of civil liberty.--Greater toleration in religion granted by the laws of 1770.--Development of the idea of democracy in Church and State.--Exemption of Separatists by the revision of the laws in 1784.--Virtual abrogation of the Saybrook Platform.--Status of Dissenters.
XII. CONNECTICUT AT THE CLOSE OF THE REVOLUTION
Expansion of towns.--Revival of commerce and industries.--Schools and literature.--Newspapers.--Rise of the Anti-Federal party.--Baptist, Methodist, and Separatist dissatisfaction.--Growth of a broader conception of toleration within the Consociated churches.
XIII. CERTIFICATE LAWS AND WESTEKN LAND BILLS
Opposition to the Establishment from dissenters, Anti-Federalists, and the dissatisfied within the Federal ranks.--Certificate law of 1791 to allay dissatisfaction.--Its opposite effect.--A second Certificate law to replace the former.--Antagonism created by legislation in favor of Yale College.--Storm of protest against the Western Land bills of 1792-93.--Congregational missions in Western territory.--Baptist opposition to legislative measures.--The revised Western Land bill as a basis for Connecticut's public school fund.--Result of the opposition roused by the Certificate laws and Western Land bills.
XIV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN CONNECTICUT
Government according to the charter of 1662.--Party tilt over town representation.--Anti-Federal grievances against the Council or Senate, the Judiciary, and other defective parts of the machinery of government.--Constitutional questions.--Rise of the Democratic- Republican party.--Influence of the French Revolution.--The Federal members of the Establishment or "Standing Order," the champions of religious and political stability.--President Dwight, the leader of the Standing Order.--Leaders of the Democratic-Republicans.--Political campaigns of 1804-1806.--Sympathy for the defeated Republicans.-- Politics at the close of the War of 1812.
XV. DISESTABLISHMENT
Waning of the power of the Federal party in Connecticut.--Opposition to the Republican administration during the War of 1812.-- Participation in the Hartford Convention.--Economic benefits of the war.--Attitude of the New England clergy toward the war.--The Toleration party of 1816.--Act for the Support of Literature and Religion.--Opposition.--Toleration and Reform Ticket of 1817.--New Certificate Law.--Constitution and Reform Ticket of 1818.--Its victory.--The Constitutional Convention.--New Constitution of 1818.--Separation of Church and State.
APPENDIX
NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN CONNECTICUT

CHAPTER I
THE EVOLUTION OF EARLY CONGREGATIONALISM
The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner.--Psalm cxviii, 22.
The colonists of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven were grounded in the system which became known as Congregational, and later as Congregationalism. At the outset they differed not at all in creed, and only in some respects in polity, from the great Puritan body in England, out of which they largely came. [a]
For more than forty years before their migration to New England there had been in old England two clearly developed forms of Congregationalism, Brownism and Barrowism. The term Congregationalism, with its allied forms Congregational and Congregationalist, would not then have been employed. They did not come into general use until the latter half of the seventeenth century, and were at first limited in usage to defining or referring to the modified church system of New England. The term "Independent" was preferred to designate the somewhat similar polity among the nonconformist churches in old England. [b] Brownism and Barrowism are both included in Dr. Dexter's comprehensive definition of Congregationalism, using the term "to designate that system of thought, faith, and practice, which starting with the dictum that the conditions of church life are revealed in the Bible, and are thence to be evolved by reverent common-sense, assisted but never controlled by all other sources of knowledge; interprets that book as teaching the reality and independent competency of the local church, and the duty of fraternity and co-working between such churches; from these two truths symmetrically developing its entire system of principles, privileges, and obligations." [1] The "independent competency of the local church" is directly opposed to any system of episcopal government within the church, and is diametrically opposed to any control by king, prince, or civil government. Yet this was one of the pivotal dogmas of Browne and of the later Separatists; this, a fundamental doctrine which Barrowe strove to incorporate into a new church system, but into one having sufficient control over its local units to make it acceptable to a people who were accustomed to the autonomy and stability of a church both episcopal and national in character.
In order to appreciate the changes in church polity and in the religious temper of the people for which Browne and Barrowe labored, one must survey the field in which they worked and note such preparation as it had received before their advent. It is to be recalled that Henry VIII substituted for submission to the Pope submission to himself as head of a church essentially Romish in ritual, teaching, and authority over his subjects. The religious reformation, as such, came later and by slow evolution through the gradual awakening of the moral and spiritual perceptions of the masses. It came very slowly