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NOTE 2. Presbyterian Connecticut

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Volume 2, Chapter 2, Presbyterian Connecticut

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During the first half of the 18th century, Connecticut, Mirabele Dictou replaced Massachusetts

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Bay as the fountainhead of Calvinist orthodoxy in America.

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While the Massachusetts church was prevented by determined opposition from budging much

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and much beyond its half-way position between congregational and Presbyterian polities,

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Connecticut Puritanism eagerly went all the way toward a Presbyterian position.

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By adopting the Saybrook Platform in 1708, the Puritans of Connecticut became virtually

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Presbyterian in church government.

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Connecticut now had an established Presbyterian church.

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Not only that, the orthodox Calvinist of Connecticut, seeing Harvard go the way of liberalism, determined

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to establish another college, to reestablish a fountainhead of rigid Calvinism for New England.

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Accordingly, Yale was founded in 1701, receiving its permanent location at New Haven in 1716.

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Its original name was Collegiate School of Connecticut, becoming Yale College in 1718.

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The governing body of the college consisted completely of ministers who, it was ruled,

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must be free of all deviations, whether to the ecclesiastical right or left.

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Even the Connecticut establishment, however, found that it had to relax its full rigor.

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As in Massachusetts, it was compelled, after a while, to exempt members of various religious

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sects from having to pay taxes to support the Presbyterian establishment.

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In 1727, the Connecticut General Court passed a law exempting any Anglicans from payment,

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Two years later, this immunity was extended to Quakers and Baptists.