history so long as peaceful relations with the mother country were kept up. Buttressed on all sides by other colonies, as in King Philip's war, it suffered little from the colonial wars except in men. But its immunity from immediate danger had no effect in checking its readiness to make common cause with the other colonies. Soldiers were provided freely by the colony, and did their part manfully. But the brief story of Connecticut's colonial wars will fall better under the financial history with which they are closely connected.

CHAPTER XIII.

ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 1636-1791.

IT was probably inevitable, under the circumstances of time and place, that the first effort to establish a democratic commonwealth should be complicated with an ecclesiastical system entirely foreign to its real nature. Religious homogeneity almost compelled it. To the first settlers in Connecticut, though not for the same reason as in New Haven, civil and ecclesiastical affairs were convertible terms. The township and the church were coterminous: the town, by which term, as distinguished from the territorial township, was meant the body of voters within the township, settled civil and ecclesiastical affairs indifferently in the same town meeting; and as about all the voters were at first church-members and agreed closely in creed and methods, the dual system produced little friction for a time. It was inevitable that lapse of time should disturb the original homogeneity and bring trouble. The effort in New Haven to put off the evil day by the practical absorption of the state in the church led to the downfall of the commonwealth. The long contin

ued efforts in Connecticut to reconcile church and state under a free town system gave rise to difficulties whose history might fill volumes, and task the learning of an expert in church history. Mather, no mean expert, said of one of the opening struggles that its origin was as obscure as that of the Connecticut River. The attempt of a mere layman to penetrate such a labyrinth must necessarily be hazardous; and we are to venture in no further than relation is found to the peculiar development of the commonwealth.

It will easily be seen that a reconciliation between churches which acknowledged no earthly master, and a commonwealth legislature whose final authority was to be supreme, was a work of no little difficulty. The long and comparatively successful maintenance of the concordat in Connecticut seems to have been due to the character of Hooker and the impress which he left on the ecclesiastical traditions of the colony. He and Davenport were fair types of the methods of the two colonies. Both were masterful men, even for that time. Davenport applied his force directly, and failed. Hooker relied on influence, and succeeded. Most of Hooker's successors, in spite of an occasional slip into direct aggression, followed his methods with like success. With no official voice in legislation, and no direct appeal even to their arbitration, there was hardly an important piece of legislation which was not tested by their

approval or disapproval; and it is to their honor that they were content with the substance of power, based on the confidence of their people. Only this mutual confidence made the concordat possible. Many an act of the general assembly, which seems an interference with the liberty of the churches, was based in reality on the tacit approval of the ecclesiastical element of the colony. They were the voice of the ecclesiastical, speaking through the civil power.

The

At the beginning, the Connecticut and New Haven churches alike were Congregational and Calvinistic. Each church claimed complete control of its own affairs. In cases of doubt or dispute, it would submit to the decision of a council of neighbor or allied churches; but the selection of the churches which were to form the council was always a matter for mutual agreement, or fresh disputes, between the two parties. church knew no superior. It was begun by a common agreement in articles of faith by those who proposed to become members. The ceremony of the selection of the "seven pillars," already described, was peculiar to the churches of New Haven, Milford, and Guilford, and seems to have been in their cases an expedient of the leaders for the establishment of their politico-ecclesiastical system. A well-organized Connecticut church was at first supposed to have two ministers. One was the pastor, whose duties were mainly the ex

hortation, encouragement, and pastoral care of the members; the other was the teacher, whose work was the doctrinal defense of the church and the instruction of its people. The ruling elder was the executive officer of the church; but its success depended largely on the coöperation of the ruling elder with the pastor. The functions of the deacons were those which have always been familiar in those officers. Back of all of them was the vote of the church, a Calvinistic democracy, undefined in its powers, and ready, on occasion, to claim the full powers of an ecumenical council. When the union had been completed, there were fifteen of these churches in the colony: the Long Island churches, organized in the same way, had passed under the dominion of New York.

This

The first churches were mostly small. Those of Hartford and New Haven were of course the largest. The church of Wethersfield, when it split and the defeated party removed to Stamford, numbered but seven communicants, the orthodox majority numbering four and the heterodox minority three. Pierson's church at Southampton, on Long Island, numbered but sixteen. paucity of numbers, however, was due to the promptness of the first settlers in organizing their churches. The church really began with the settlement. The first item in the Norwalk town records provides for the restraint of wandering swine; the second, for the erection of a minister's house; the third, for a pound.