[32] The Rev. Alonzo B. Chapin, in his _History of Ancient Glastenbury, Conn._ (p. 80), says that the church records, during the pastorate of the Rev. John Eels [1759-1791], "compel us to believe that the influence of the French war had been as unfavorable to morals as destructive to life; and that the absurd practice of _bundling_ prevalent in those days, was not infrequently attended with the consequences that might have been expected, and that both together, aided by a previous growing laxity of morals, and accelerated by many concurrent causes, had rolled a tide of immorality over the land, which not even the bulwark of the church had been able to withstand. The church records of the first society, from 1760 to 1790, raise presumptions of the strongest kind, that then, as since, _incontinence_ and _intemperance_ were among the sins of the people. What the condition of things in Eastbury [an ecclesiastical society in the east part of Glastenbury] was, we have no means of knowing, _as that portion of the church records which treats of this point, was long ago_ carefully _removed_. [N.B. Italics are our own.] There is no reason, however, to suppose that this state of thing's was peculiar to Glastenbury, for there is too much evidence that it prevailed throughout the country." Mr. Chapin's deductions from the revelations of the Glastenbury records, will be fully justified by the experience and observation of every antiquarian who has had occasion to _dig deep_ among the civil and ecclesiastical records of almost any one of the older towns of New England. We have before us, while writing, a copy, made some years since, by ourselves, of the records of the first church of Woodstock, Conn., covering the period from 1727 to 1777, in which are a large number of entries, mostly the names of parties who made _confessions_ of this sort before that church. These cases occur most frequently between the years 1737 and 1770. Our own observation among the records of the old churches in Windsor and East Windsor, is, in effect, the same, and we have occasionally happened upon the original manuscript confessions of individuals read to the church before they were formally admitted to its communion. [33] _History of Dedham, Mass_, (by Erastus Worthington, 1827), page 108. Under ministry of Rev. Jason Haven, ordained February 6, 1756.