[A History of American Christianity by Leonard Woolsey Bacon]@TWC D-Link book
A History of American Christianity

CHAPTER X
6/43

In the year 1718 the Baptist church of Boston received fraternal recognition from the foremost representatives of the Congregational clergy of Boston, with a public confession of the wrong that they had done.[130:1] It is surprising to find, after all this agitation and sowing of "the seed of the church," that in all New England outside of Rhode Island there are in 1730 only six Baptist churches, including (an honorable item) two Indian churches on the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.[131:1] The other departure from the "standing order" was at this date hardly more extensive.

The early planting of Episcopalian churches in Maine and New Hampshire, with generous patronage and endowment, had languished and died.

In 1679 there was no Episcopal minister in all New England.

In 1702 were begun the energetic and richly supported missions of the "S.
P.G." At the end of twenty-eight years there were in Rhode Island four Episcopalian churches; in Massachusetts, three, two of them in the city of Boston; in Connecticut, three.[131:2] But in the last-named colony an incident had occurred, having apparently no intimate connection with the "Venerable Society's" missions, but charged with weighty, and on the whole beneficent, consequences for the future of the kingdom of Christ in America.
The incident was strikingly parallel to that of seventy years before, when the president of Harvard College announced his acceptance of Baptist principles.

The day after the Yale commencement in September, 1722, a modest and respectful paper was presented to the trustees of the college, signed by Rector Timothy Cutler and Tutor Brown (who constituted the entire faculty of the college) and by five pastors of good standing in the Connecticut churches.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books