ARTICLE IV. THE CHARTER OF CONNECTICUT AND

THE CHARTER OF YALE COLLEGE.

II.

THERE remain the anonymous pamphlets, which cannot be considered as heavy artillery. The guns came too late into the field, and are old and rusty and were long ago condemned. It is necessary to understand the situation. Two measures of President Clap's administration caused much irritation. One was the formation of a college-church and congregation or religious society in the college. This Dr. Woolsey thinks has proved wise and it agreed with the practice in Harvard and the British universities, and such church and congregation have been continued ever since. The other measure was unwise. That was an order of the corporation, that the Rev. Mr. Noyes, one of the fellows and pastor of the first church in New Haven, appear and be examined by them, for the purpose of inquiring into the soundness of his faith. This order Mr. Noyes resisted and refused to submit to, and the proceeding was abandoned. The corporation has no right to remove a member for his opinions. It has the right, for unfaithfulness to his trust, "for any misdemeanor, unfaithfulness, default or incapacity." The law deals with acts and failures or inability to act, not with opinions. The power has never needed to be and has never been exercised.

In 1753 the General Assembly resolved, that to "one principal end in erecting the college," it was requisite that the students "should have the best instruction in divinity, and the best patterns of preaching set before them. And that the settling of a learned, pious and orthodox professor of divinity in the college would greatly tend to promote that good end." At the request of the corporation President Clap performed the duties of a professor of divinity until a professsor should be procured, preaching in the college hall on Sunday, and the president and the students were withdrawn from attendance on divine service at the first church in New Haven, under the

enter into the ecclesiastical matters, into which we have been unwillingly led. Did Yale College by the act of 1745 become a secular college?

President Clap in his argument on the right of visitation says, "his most excellent majesty, who by the act of union was obliged to consent to the Westminster confession of faith, received in the Church of Scotland, as being agreeable to the word of God, and containing the sum and substance of the doctrine of the reformed churches." (2 Trumb. 332). Similar is the confession of faith of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. The important step was taken when any religious test not merely by subscription, but by declaration, was abolished by the corporation.

We are not anxious to defend the Puritans of New England. It is unnecessary. They must be judged according to their times, as the Rev. Phillips Brooks says or suggests of the fathers of the church. As has also been said, the foundation stones of a building are not the most nicely polished ones. The Puritans founded Harvard College or University and Yale College, grammar schools, and common schools. Their work in educacation remains, which shows some solidity in the foundations. * See sermon on All Saints' Day. Sermons published 1878, pp. 120-1.

WM. BLISS,

51 William St., City of New York.

A pretty slow movement! If its force may be judged from its rate of progress, it must have been for a long time feeble. The difficulty was that while the plan finally adopted of an alliance with the State by the addition of the governor and lieutenantgovernor, and six senior assistants, civilians of mature experience, to the corporation, was wise, and might much earlier have been wisely adopted, that on the one hand attempts were made to introduce laymen, in violation of the charter and the rights of the college, and on the other hand there was for a long time a want of the spirit of conciliation and a disposition to rest contentedly on the chartered rights of the college. Attacks tended to produce at least passive resistance.

To prevent misapprehension it may be well to quote what the late Prof. Kingsley has said as to the state of religious opinion in the colony as late as the American Revolution: "All who had separated from the Congregationalists were, at that time, but a small proportion of the population" (Kingsley's Hist. Dis., Note I).

We are not much in the habit of reading pamphlets to which the writers do not venture to give the voucher of their names. They may make history picturesque but often render it less authentic. In 1755 an anonymous pamphlet was published, since attributed to Dr. Benjamin Gale, an eccentric and disputatious physician of Killingworth, Connecticut, unfriendly to the government of the college, and, as alleged, to the faith of the founders. It appears that it is stated in this pamphlet that at the election of President Clap as rector, in 1739, several of the trustees voted for a layman, Daniel Edwards, of the class of 1720. If this were so the college records are the proper evidence of it, but show no trace of it.

It does not appear to be stated who the trustees were, nor any of them who so voted, or from whom the information was received, or whether it was derived from report. It is not pretended that Dr. Gale had or could have any personal knowledge on the subject. The amount of it all is that sixteen years after the election, Dr. Gale says anonymously, that he has heard that at that election several votes were cast for Mr. Edwards. It is said that Dr. Gale was related by marriage to Jared Elliot, a trustee, having married his daughter, and that Mr. Elliot pro

the rudely carved or moulded masses of wood, stone, and metal, but they offered devotion to an idea which the image merely brought to mind. Mars was honored by every nation that delighted in war for its own sake; Minerva was reverenced wherever philosophy was made the chief end of life. The ceremonies with which at special times the divinity was worshiped were mere external signs of the inward life of the people. Starting with this spiritual conception of the gods of old-gods still at the present day, though not openly acknowledged-Milton was able to give his descriptions, a verisimilitude which perhaps could have been gained in no other way, and at the same time to proceed with that confidence and positiveness which come only from the consciousness of stating unassailable truth.

With a little careful thought it is possible in most cases to determine with certainty what moral quality each of Milton's characters is intended to represent. The form, stature, attire, words and actions of each are always consistent with its central nature. Each is also associated with some force, agent, or phenomenon in the material world which suggests and illustrates it. Besides, the gods of the Orient and those of the Occident were essentially the same, so that while the poet commonly prefers the Biblical names and descriptions, his spirits may and do reappear in the lines of Homer and Virgil. This fact often gives us the advantage of two sets of examples to fix the precise nature of each spirit. Even when a spirit is merely named, and that but once, we have usually the means of finding the reasons for its introduction. Let us examine some of the results which a course of study under the guidance of these principles has given.

To avoid the confusion which would come from an attempt to carry on all the parts of the subject together, I propose to notice first the moral qualities which the spirits represent, then the external forms in which they appear, and afterward the relation of Milton's characters to Homer's and Virgil's. The moral part may be regarded as the essential nature of the characters which the external form is intended to manifest and illustrate to human sense; while the identification of his characters with those of the epic writers of old, gives Milton a literary authority which cannot be spoken against.

age, when a controversy had arisen with President Clap or his friends.

About two years later, in 1757, another anonymous pamphlet was published which has been attributed to the Rev. Wm. Hart of Saybrook. In this he says: "The president is a minister but he does not preside there in the character of a minister. . . . The fellows and overseers of the college are ministers of the church. But they don't take the oversight and direction of the college upon themselves by virtue of their being ministers but by virtue of a civil appointment and authority decreed to them by the charter of the Government. ... And there is no one act peculiar to their office as trustee or fellow (the words are again used synonymously), which a layman might not perform with as much propriety, etc. There is nothing in the nature of the office, which confines it to clergymen; nor in the charter of the Assembly, by which the college is incorporated and invested with all its powers," that is, in the act of 1745. Our argument has not claimed, we do not know that any one has claimed, that that act confines the office to clergymen, or absurdly that a person becomes a president or fellow by being a minister. The offices are held under the charter of a civil government, but neither the president nor the fellows are civil or public officers. Nothing is said of the right of choosing laymen or others residing out of the colony, or young men under thirty years of age. These pamphlets purport to be addressed to individuals, the latter being entitled "Letter to a Friend, etc.," and the subject "Mr. Noyes' Proposed Examination by the Corporation of Yale College," and the former, "Reply to a pamphlet, entitled 'The Answer of the Friend in the West,'" etc.

Now it is said, that these assertions, in those anonymous pamphlets, really written by two graduates of the college, that laymen might be elected president or fellows by the corporation were allowed to pass in silence, by pamphlets on the other side of the controversies, which drew them forth, that is of course so far as such pamphlets have been preserved, collected, and examined, and that this is convincing proof that the assertions were admitted to be true, and that they show the opinion of the alumni and the public, when the charter was granted