113231. 1134431.

US 14841,2575

1864. Sec. 20

Gift of

Brinley of Hartford.

PUBLISHED BY REQUEST

OF THE

COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS.

HISTORICAL DISCOURSE.

our nature.

We have been summoned to this place, not to be dazzled by a splendid but idle pageantry, nor to be excited to a factitious enthusiasm, but to contemplate with reverence the honored past, and to learn from it the lessons of admonitory wisdom. The feeling which has brought us hither is a sacred one. That we instinctively venerate the men and principles of ancient days, is itself most honorable to So amiable is this spirit and so generous and elevating is its influence; that we pardon it even when it is excessive, and give it leave to magnify that which is mean, and to palliate that which plainly deserves reprobation. We even sympathize with the descendant of a long ancestral line, who prides himself that he can trace its origin to some rough warrior of olden time, who received his extended manor from lands subdued by the Norman conqueror, or to some pliant courtier, who largely shared with his royal master, in his robbery of the church.

We, however, ask no such pardon or sympathy, as we honor our sires. They are separated from us by too few generations, to profit greatly by the distance or the dimness of antiquity. Their principles and characters stand out too distinctly to view, to receive any other than a rational homage; and in their austere presence, none other should we dare to give.

One claim they have upon their descendants, which is peculiar. They toiled for us, not as men commonly toil for their posterity, in an incidental and necessary way,

with their eyes mainly fixed on selfish and present gain; but with a most distinct reference to those who were to come after them; in whom they trusted that their spirit would ever live, and who upon this soil, would enjoy the rich blessings, which their faith beheld in the "good foundation" of principles and institutions; brought as the ark of the covenant by reverent hands and with priestly adoration, across the western sea.

Who then were our Fathers? I ask this question here, though it has been so often asked and answered, as to leave little opportunity, to cast new light upon their characters and history. This occasion however demands that these should again be considered; that the men of this ancient town, should for themselves know well the spirit in which it was planted, and which still broods over these valleys, wanders up and down these streams, and haunts these woods.

In the splendid reign of the far-famed queen Elizabeth, there were gathered in England, the elements of a powerful religious and political party; the movements of which afterwards shook the whole kingdom, maintaining as it did, for more than a century, a constant and determined warfare with the maiden queen, and after her with the whole Stuart family. It assembled just two hundred years ago the long parliament, which wrested from unwilling hands the constituent principles of English liberty; then it burst forth in "the great rebellion"; brought Charles I. to the block of the executioner, and upheld the usurpation of Cromwell, in its glory and substantial profit to the English people. After the death of Cromwell and the abdication of his honest but incompetent successor, weary of the government of a divided military faction, fearful of anarchy, and yielding to the national impulse which pointed to the hereditary successor of the throne, this Puritan party

was foremost in the restoration of Charles II. Under his thoughtless and corrupt administration it reaped an abundant harvest of suffering from royal ingratitude, and sorely learned the lesson which it afterward turned to so good account, that civil and religious rights, to be safe, must be secured. Under the despotism and papacy of James II. it banished the Stuart family forever from the throne; triumphantly seated upon it William, the Prince of Orange, and wrought the great English revolution, when in 1688, the principles of English Liberty were declared by English Law.

The moving occasion of this party, and its most active influence, was Non-conformity to the Church of England. At the accession of Elizabeth to the throne, she proceeded to re-organize the church, which had been reformed by her father and brother, but cloven down by her sister Mary. She found herself at once embarrassed by scruples among many of the choicest Protestant teachers, as to the lawfulness of certain usages, and dresses or habits, retained from the ceremonial of the Romish church. These scruples had been of long existence, and had gathered strength in the minds of teachers and people, who in their exile during the persecution of Mary, had been attracted by the beauty of simpler forms of worship; and revolted from rites and robes that in their view partook so largely of a popish character, and were attended by so many associations of popish superstition.

Against these scruples she steadily contended, for though a Protestant queen, and regarded as the bulwark of the Protestant interest, she was nevertheless determined to have Protestantism ordered after her own fashion, and to make the Reformed church of England, in the splendor and uniformity of its ceremonial, a fit appendage to her queenly glory. She was hardly persuaded to go as far as she did in the way of reformation. It was only at the instigation

and by the perseverance of the clergy, that she consented to the destruction of images in the churches. In her own chapel, she retained a crucifix during most of her reign. She was never reconciled to the marriage of the clergy, and the statute of her sister against it was not repealed till after her death. The Bishops and clergy married by her connivance, or rather her ungracious permission, and their children were treated by the law as illegitimate.

Upon the question of uniformity, the most eminent of her clergy were with few exceptions at first against the queen. Though they themselves conformed, they would gladly have abolished the usages complained of, and thus have conciliated so many learned and godly ministers to the church. The first Convocation of the clergy decided against the abolition of the usages by one vote alone.

Her Privy council were against her. The majority of those men whose names to the present day are names honored for sagacious and dignified wisdom, were at first opposed to the queen, and many continued through her reign, the ineffectual arbiters of peace between her majesty and so many valuable subjects. Lord Bacon has left in writing his testimony in relation to this painful dispute, in his “ Advertisement touching the controversies of the church of England"; a testimony which while it reproves the faults of the Non-conformists, must affix forever to her majesty and the Bishops, the name of having sacrificed the dictates of wisdom to the stubbornness of will.

Her Parliament were also often opposed. Through the whole of her reign, with an occasional exception, a large number of the commons, arrayed themselves against her majesty, upon the questions of the church, till she was at last so vexed by their pertinacity, that she rarely summoned them together.

But Elizabeth persisted and prevailed. As the consequence, the church was not more, but it was less at peace.