dividual dissent, broadened the platform of opposition to Governor Law's administration. It demonstrated the community of interests of all friends of liberty, political and religious. Parties in Connecticut were hereafter to contend on a more comprehensive issue than that of Calvinism against Arminianism, or the New Light against the Old.

When Roger Wolcott became governor in 1750, the "political New Lights" had already obtained a majority in the general assembly; and two or three years later President Clap himself was coöperating with them against his old friends, the Arminians. The election of two or three new members into the corporation of Yale had given the New Lights a majority of the board, and the President was not a whit behind the very chiefest in his zeal for orthodoxy.*

แ

The students had been accustomed to attend worship with the first church in New Haven, of which the Rev. Joseph Noyes (a fellow of the college) was pastor. As a preacher, Mr. Noyes is said to have "had little animation, and not to have given satisfaction, as to his language or doctrines." In the judgment of the New Lights, he was an Arminian, and suspected of Arianism. President Clap resolved that the college should have a professor of divinity and a church of its own, so that the students might be withdrawn from the danger of being infected with errors" at the New Haven church. Bent upon purging Yale of every taint of heresy and to guard against corruption of doctrine in the future, he determined to subject the Fellows and instructors to such a test of orthodoxy as might satisfy even the most exacting of Calvinists. In 1753, an act was adopted by the corporation, requir ing every Fellow, professor, and tutor, to publicly declare his assent to the Assembly's Catechism and Confession of Faith, and to denounce as wrong and erroneous "all expositions of Scripture contrary to the doctrines laid down in these composures." In 1754, the President published a pamphlet on The

* The change was rather in the President's relations to the two great parties, than in his individual position. He had coöperated with the Arminians, against separation and for the maintenance of church establishment; he now coöperated with the New Lights, in defence of orthodoxy. For an explanation of his course, in the different periods of his presidency, see Professor Fisher's Commemorative Discourse, Appendix, No. viii.

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Religious Constitution of Colleges, in which he maintained the position, that colleges, being "superior societies for religious purposes," were entitled to carry on distinct and separate worship within their own jurisdiction.

The withdrawal of the students from the church of New Haven, the proposed organization of a separate church for the college, and the imposition of a religious test, roused violent opposition, of which New Haven was the centre. "There were

at that time," says Dr. Trumbull (Hist. of Conn., ii. 332), "numbers of leading men in New Haven, and in other parts of the colony, who were strongly opposed to the doctrines contained in the Confession of Faith and in the Catechism They were opposed to all confessions of faith, and some of them wrote against them. Two or more of the corporation were supposed to be of this number."

The President was charged with doing himself, by "separation" of the college from an established church, what he had condemned in others. "The pranks that have been played in the government by the scheming and political New Lights are now a going to be acted over again (and possibly with this dif ference only, that there are some new actors), under the more sacred name of orthodoxy"-wrote one of the President's assailants. Orthodoxy is going to be made the stirrup, for some men to mount the saddle by," said another. It was now the turn of the Arminians-and those who made a common cause with them-to talk about liberty and the rights of conscience.

"One of the writers who employed his pen and talents against the college, was Dr. Gale of Killingworth, a gentleman well known," says Dr. Trumbull, "to be opposed to the doctrines contained in the Assembly's Catechism and in the Westminster and Savoy Confessions of Faith." Benjamin Gale graduated from Yale in 1733, studied medicine with the Rev. Jared Eliot (one of whose daughters he married), and practiced his profession-and much else—in Killingworth, for fifty years and more, till his death in 1790. He wrote, and wrote well, on a great variety of topics-the Saybrook platform, inoculation for the small pox, finance, the interpretation of prophecy, the reduction of town representation, and the millennium;

and he received a medal from the Society of Arts, for the invention of an improved drill-plough. Like his father-in-law, Jared Eliot, he disliked confessions of faith, and advocated the largest religious liberty. In politics, he went with the Arminians-but even the Arminians * the Arminians questioned his orthodoxy. He complained that his opponents instead of disproving his statements tried to discredit them by calling him "an Arminian, Arian, Taylorist, Infidel." He was bitterly opposed to the "Eastern faction"-as it began to be called-which threatened to transfer to the counties of New London and Windham a controlling influence in public affairs.

In April, 1755, a pamphlet appeared, without name of author or printer, entitled: "The Present State of the Colony of Connecticut Considered. In a Letter from a Gentleman in the Eastern Part of said Colony to his Friend in the Western Part of the same." In this pamphlet, of which Dr. Gale was understood to be the author, President Clap's administration was sharply criticised, objections were urged to the establishment of a professorship of divinity and a separate church, and the Assembly was advised to withhold the annual grant of £100 to the college. Two answers to this attack were made: the first, by President Clap (anonymously), as "The Answer of the Friend in the West to a Letter," &c.; the other, printed early in August, entitled, "Congratulatory Letter from a Gentleman in the West, to his Friend in the East," &c. The latter, like the two preceding, was anonymous. A copy in Yale College library is ascribed-seemingly by the hand of President Stiles-to the Rev. Noah Hobart, of Fairfield. Mr. Hobart, already distinguished by his writings in defence of the validity of Presbyterian ordination, against the Episcopalians, had been chosen a Fellow of the College in 1752.

The "Congratulatory Letter" purports to be written by the Friend and correspondent of A. Z. (the initials subscribed to Dr. Gale's pamphlet), and makes frequent reference to a secret political club, to which they both belong. General meetings of

* "Hart [Rev. William, of Saybrook], Gale, &c., are followers of Taylor, Foster, &c., and I doubt Socinianism is at the bottom."-Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson, to Archbishop Secker, 1760 (in N. Y. Colon. Docs., vii. 439.)

It was printed at New London, by T. Green.

this club or "fraternity" are mentioned, and allusion is made to the correspondence carried on between its members in different parts of the colony:

"We have succeeded, beyond imagination, in practising upon the conclusions of our general meetings in October last.” (p. 2.) This brings to mind the observation made in our aforesaid meeting, by our worthy Friend, and the Patron of our Club or Fraternity," etc. (p. 3.) "By intelligence from our Brethren of other parts of the colony, about the Representatives, I learned what sort of men our Lower House of Assembly was like to consist of." (p. 1.) "If you'll wait till we meet at the next general Annual Meeting of the Brethren, I will bring it with me," etc. (p. 14.)

The defence of civil and religious Liberty was the professed object of this association :

"A good cause may sometimes warrant a seeming falsehood; and this Article so advantageous to our cause, could not otherwise have been made use of. Freedom, Sir, and Liberty, are noble things, and what you know we profess to aim at; and since our designs are so sublime, its warrantable in some instances to be boundless in our pursuits." (p. 4.)

"Why, our very Profession is Liberty, and it is the glory of our Religion, to be freed from all Forms, and all stingy notions; and indeed, from any set of Principles at all," etc. (p. 10.)

"May we not, my Friend, fairly conclude, that we are the true Sons of righteous Liberty, and that our cause is right?" (p. 2).

Once, towards the close of the Letter (p. 11), the name of the club is introduced, emphasized by capitals:

"Some of the Friends are mightily pleased with observing the two letters [A. Z.] with which you signed your Letter; supposing that you acted the prophet, in using the first and last letters of the alphabet; and that they were emblematical of what we should ere long accomplish; that we should, by-and-by, scoop all into our scheme, and all become SONS OF LIBERTY."

It was the interest and the manifest purpose of the author of the "Congratulatory Letter" to present this association and its members in the worst possible light. What he says of its aims and proceedings, must be taken with large allowance. There seems, however, no reason for rejecting his testimony on two points the existence of a political club, of some sort, in Connecticut before 1755; and the fact that its members were called "Sons of Liberty." It is not necessary to believe that they were all Infidels, Socinians, or Taylorists—though the majority perhaps agreed with "numbers of leading men in New Haven and in other parts of the colony," in "opposition to the doc

trines contained in the Confession of Faith and the Catechism." Its theological position was perhaps as undefined as that of Franklin's club in Philadelphia, "The Junto," or as that of the "Caucus Club," which, some years later, began to be heard of in Boston. Resistance to real or apprehended encroachments on the liberties of the people, appears to have been their bond of union, rather than community of belief, or disbelief, in the doctrines of the Westminster Catechism.

We do not find the "Sons of Liberty" again mentioned by name, in the course of the controversy concerning the college, but the schemes and operations of Dr. Gale's "accomplices" are often alluded to. One of President Clap's defenders (the Rev. John Graham) writes: "Mr. Gale and his accomplices bitterly inveighed against [the college law of 1753], calling it, by way of banter, the Test Act." "It is known to many that he has made a practice of treating orthodoxy with ridicule and banter" and, observes Mr. Graham, in a foot-note, "I have heard of a club where they drank confusion or damnation to orthodoxy. And of another who drank destruction to all calvinistical doctrines and ministers."

Something of a political revolution had been effected in 1754, by the election of Thomas Fitch as governor, in the place of Roger Wolcott. The change was unfavorable to the New Lights and the "Eastern faction." The author of the "Congratulatory Letter" charges Dr. Gale and his club with having been the principal agents in defeating Wolcott: "a little insinuation, prudently scattered, easily jostled him out of the chair" (p. 3); and the charge is reiterated by Mr. Graham, in the pamphlet above mentioned.

It is not probable that any list of the members of this club is preserved; but, knowing who were Dr. Gale's principal "accomplices," in his controversy with President Clap's friends, and who agreed with him in opposing confessions of faith and political New Lightism--we may guess who were some of the "Sons of Liberty" of 1755.

The first rejoinder to the President's "Answer of the Friend in the West" appears to have come (through the columns of the Connecticut Gazette) from Jared Ingersoll. Dr. Gale, in his

* An Answer to Mr. Gale's Pamphlet, p. 25.