, alas for the

the four colonies had been united upon all measures of common welfare, whether temporal or spiritual, had passed. There were now three colonies. One of these, much weaker than the others, was destined within comparatively few years to be absorbed by Massachusetts as New Haven had been by Connecticut. Meanwhile, Massachusetts and Connecticut were developing along characteristic lines and had each its individual problems to pursue. While in ecclesiastical affairs the conservative factions in the two colonies had much in common and continued to have for a long time, the Reforming Synod of 1679-80, held in Boston, was the last in which all the New England churches had any vital interest, because a period of transition was setting in. This period of transition was marked by an expansion of settlements with its accompanying spirit of land-grabbing, and by a lowering of tone in the community, as material interests superseded the spiritual ones of the earlier generations, an

visible and threatening, and was generally complained of and bewailed bitterly by the pious amon

e alike in danger of extinction. Shortly after the Revolution of 1688, when, under the larger tolerance of William and Mary, the Presbyterians and Independents strove to increase their strength by a union based upon the "Heads of Agreement," English and colonial nonconformity moved for a brief time nearer, and then still farther apart. The "Heads of Agreement"[a] was a compromise so framed as to admit of acceptance by the Presbyterian who recognized that he must, once for all, give up his hope of a national church, and by the Independent anxiously seeking some bond of authority to hold together his weak and scattered churches. After this comprom

according to what is therein declared from the Word of God." Cotton Mather in the "Magnalia," [5l] writing twenty years later, gives four points of departure from the Cambridge polity by the Reforming Synod. First, occasional officiations of ministers outside their own churches were authorized; secondly, there was a movement to revive the authority and office of ruling elder and other officers; thirdly, "plebeian ordination," or lay ordination, ordination by the hands of the brethren of the church in the absence of superior officers, was no longer allowed;[d] and fourthly, there was a variation from the "personal and public confession" in favor of a private exa

of individuals in godly living, a goodly number of converts were immediately added to the churches throughout all the colonies. Of these, the larger number were admitted on the Half-Way Covenant. But times had changed, and the churches could not keep pace. The attempts to

e rite of baptism, confined at first to children one at least of whose parents had been baptized, was later permitted to any for whom a satisfactory person-any one not flagrantly immoral-could be found to promise that the child should have religious training. Still another factor in the lowering of religious life was Stoddardeanism, or the teaching of the Rev. Solomon Stoddard of Northampton, Massachusetts, a most powerful preacher and for many years the most influential minister throughout the Connecticut valley. As early as 1679, he began to teach that baptized persons, who had owned the covenant, should be admitted to the Lord's Supper, so that the rite itself might exercise in them a regenerating grace. In its origin, this teaching was probably intended as a protest against a morbid, introspective, and weakeni

. These admitted inhabitants, armed with a certificate of good character from their town, presented themselves before the General Court as candidates for the freeman's franchise, and were admitted or not as the Court saw fit. Disfranchisement was the penalty for any scandalous behavior on the part of the successful candidate. One reason for the new and restrictive legislation was that from 1657 to 1660, from some cause unknown, large numbers of undesirable colonists flocked into the Connecticut towns, and thus it happened that, as the Church broadened her idea of membership, the State had need to limit its conception of democracy. Consequently, it narrowed the franchise by adding to the origin

d their subordinate deaconry. This excess of authority in the hands of one man tended to one-man rule and to frequent friction between the minister and his people. As a result councils might be called against councils in the attempt to settle quest

clergy attempted in the "Proposals of 1705" to increase the ministerial and synodical power within the churches, and to bring about a reformation in manners and morals by giving to these associations very large and authoritative powers. The Proposals provided that all ministers should be joined in Associations for mutual help and advice; for licensing candidates for the ministry; for providing for pastorless churches; for a general oversight of religion, and for the examination of charges brought against their own members. Standing Councils, composed of delegates from the Associations and also of a proper number of delegates (apparently laymen) to represent the membership of the churches, wer

, Yale, the most representative gathering of clergymen in the colony, were anxious to have the Court establish some system of ecclesiastical government stronger than that existing among the churches, and to have it send out some approved confession of faith and

ment to meet together at their respective countie towns, with such messengers as the churches to which they belong shall see cause to send with them on the last day of June next, there to consider and agree upon those methods and rules for the management of ecclesiastical discipline which shall be judged agreable and conformable to the word of God, and s

a law May 22. In the interim the words in italics were inserted in order to eliminate any possible loss of liberty to the c

and that their delegates met at Saybrook, September 9, 1708. At this second convention, twelve ministers, of whom eight were

oston in New England, May 12, 1680 being the Second Session of that Synod be Recommended to the Honbl. the Gen. Asse

the vnited Ministers formerly Called Presbyterian & Con

approval, the Court declaring its "great approbation of such a happy agreement" and ordaining "that all churches within this government that a

e Cambridge Platform to the comprehensive membership of a parish system and to the authoritative councils, or ecclesiastical

TNO

as destined to have more influ

lse may appeare necessary for the preventing schism, haeresies, prophaneness, and the establishment of the churches in one fai

the New England document. The Westminster Confession, the Savoy Declaration, and the later Heads of Agreement, were destined to have more influence in New England than in England, where the effect was transient. The Reforming Synod preferred the Savoy Declaration to the Westminster Confession because the terms of the former were more strictly Congregationa

Conn., was strongly opposed by a council of churches, but it was relucta

ng children and servants and famaly prayer; young persons shaking off the government of parents or masters; boarders and inmates neglecting the worship of God in famalyes where they reside; tipling & drinkeing; uncleanness; oppression in workmen and traders; which laws hav

Andros; King William's War, 1689-97, with its ex

e New England colonies." His influence over the clergy was almost absolute. "The Saybrook Platform was stamped