Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/89

 -1750] Religious conditions. 57 had a Congregational Church : more truly might it be said that Church and township were the same society seen from different points of view. Against this solid resisting body the efforts of Anglicanism profited little. In Connecticut the Church of England fared better than in Massachusetts. There was always in Connecticut a greater width of thought and more accessibility to new impressions. There Episcopacy obtained as recruits from the Independent ministry more than one man of ability, learning and high character. Episcopalians too were granted a form of concurrent endowment, whereby, if there were a church of their own denomination within reach, their rates for church-maintenance might be diverted thither. Episcopacy in Connecticut also benefited by a movement which ran through New England in the middle of the eighteenth century. The preaching of Whitfield and the emotional religion which it awakened were passionately accepted by one section of the Independent Churches and as passionately repelled and denounced by another ; and many persons, alienated by the violence of the contending parties, found a refuge in Anglicanism. In Rhode Island the majority of the inhabitants were Baptists. Quakers were also numerous; and the residue of the inhabitants were for the most part equally divided into Independents and Anglicans. The system was one of pure voluntaryism; and there was nothing in the moral and intellectual condition of the colony to furnish arguments either to the upholders or the opponents of Church establishments. The middle colonies were the region where the labours of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, founded in 1701, bore most fruit. This was partly due to the fact that there was not, as in New England, any one rival communion in occupation of the field. In religion, as in other matters, cosmopolitanism prevailed. Moreover the ground had been in a measure prepared by the Swedish Episcopalian Churches, which, remaining dependent on the mother-Church till long after the extinction of Swedish rule, yet maintained friendly relations with the Church of England, and were finally incorporated with it. The reports received from these colonies by the friends of the Church at home give evidence of a vitality, both in increased numbers and also in a growth of zeal and liberality, unknown to the other colonies. The legal position of the Church of England in New York and New Jersey was somewhat anomalous. Till 1693, whatever support had been given to the Church of England had been given in virtue of certain specific orders from the Crown. In 1693 an Act of extraordinary vagueness was passed, providing for the maintenance of a Protestant minister in certain portions of the province. The Act did not provide for the method of appointment, or impose any test on behalf of any special form of Protestantism; but by a succession of Anglican governors it was interpreted, not without protest and resistance, as making special provision for the Church of England. The state of things in New