“Sherman was not wiser than his generation in regard to matters of religion. His reading had been mainly in English history and law; but the subject next most interesting to him was theology. He accepted Calvinism. He believed in the Puritans. He distrusted and feared the Church of England. It was the day when so tolerant and fair-minded a man as President Stiles could record as among the fourteen trials and difficulties of this life: ‘Concern for the Congregational churches, & prevalence of Episcopacy & Wickedness.’[23] “When, therefore, about the middle of the eighteenth century, the Episcopalians, who were especially strong in Connecticut, began to push for the appointment of one or more American bishops, it is not surprising that Sherman’s voice was raised in opposition. “A long letter on this subject, written in 1768, which, it is believed, came from his pen, is among the files of the New Haven East Association, to which his church belonged. In this it is urged that if Parliament provides for American bishops, they might bring here all the functions and authority of those of England, and hold ecclesiastical courts like those of Laud, from which our fathers fled into the wilderness. “There was this piece of solid ground under Sherman’s argument. Grant the power of Parliament to establish an American episcopate, and a new point was made in favor of the general right of Parliament to legislate as to all American affairs. This consideration, no doubt, greatly influenced his course; and it was sufficient to defeat the consecration of any bishop for America until that of Dr. Seabury, which followed closely after the Revolution. “The Wyoming controversy between Connecticut and Pennsylvania was one in which Sherman took an active part. “Our charter bounded us ‘on the North by the line of the Massachusetts Plantation; and on the South by the Sea; and in Longitude as the Line of the Massachusetts Colony, running from East to West, _That is to say_, From the said Narragansett Bay on the East to the South Sea on the West part, with the Islands thereto Adjoining.’ This gave us a paper title to a swath of North America sixty miles wide, at least, running from Rhode Island to the Pacific, and taking in what are now the sites of Wilkesbarre, Cleveland, Chicago, and Omaha. Our people, as early as 1762, began to make settlements in that part of it in western Pennsylvania known as the Wyoming Valley. The General Assembly made it a county in 1776, styling it Westmoreland County, and it furnished the Twenty-fourth Connecticut Regiment in the Continental Army.