The Development of Religious Liberty in ConnecticutGreene, M. Louise (Maria Louise)
History
The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut
Greene, M. Louise (Maria Louise)
Connecticut -- Church history
The interest of the whole colony was now centred on the defiant and
determined Canterbury Separate church, and the November meeting of the
Windham Association had the schism under consideration, when Yale
expelled two Canterbury students whose parents were members of that
church.
In October, 1742, in order to protect the college and the ministry and
to deal a blow at the "Shepherd's Tent," a kind of school or academy
which the New Lights had set up in New London for qualifying young men
as exhorters, teachers, and ministers, the General Assembly had
decided that no persons should presume to set up any college, seminary
of learning, or any public school whatever, without special leave of
the legislature.[115] The Court had also enacted that no one should
take the benefit of the laws respecting the settlement and support of
ministers unless he were a graduate of Yale or Harvard, or some other
approved Protestant university. It had also given explicit directions
for the supervision of the schools throughout the colony and of their
masters' orthodoxy,[116] and had advised Yale to take especial care
that her students should not be contaminated by the New Lights. The
Congregationalists had reported the "Shepherd's Tent" as a noisy,
tumultuous resort, because it was occasionally used for meetings, and
had added that it was openly taught in that school that there would
soon be a change in the government, and that disobedience to the civil
laws was not wrong. The Assembly, fearing that it might "train up
youth in ill practices and principles," sought to put an end to it. As
to the advice to the college, Yale was only too eager to follow it,
and the same year expelled the saintly David Brainerd[117] for
criticising the prayers of the college preachers as lacking in
fervor. His offense was against a college law of the preceding year
which forbade students to call their officers "hypocritical, carnal or
unconverted men." The college, as the New Light movement increased,
came to the further conclusion that--
since the principal design of erecting this college was to train
up a succession of learned and orthodox ministers by whose example
people might be directed in the ways of religion and good order
... it would be a contradiction to the civil government to support
a college to educate students to trample upon their own laws, to
break up the churches which they establish and protect, especially
since the General Assembly in May 1742, thought proper to give the
governors of the college some special advice and direction upon
that account, which was to the effect that proper care should be
taken to prevent the scholars from imbibing those or like errors;
and those who would not be orderly and submissive, should not be
allowed the privileges of the college.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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