evidence of kindly and fraternal feeling, far beyond what might have
been expected, on the part of the New England clergy toward the
representatives of the Church of England. The first missionaries of the
"Venerable Society," Keith and Talbot, arriving in New England in 1702,
met with welcome from some of the ministers, who "both hospitably
entertained us in their houses and requested us to preach in their
congregations, which accordingly we did, and received great thanks both
from the ministers and people."[133:1] One of these hospitable pastors
was the Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall, of New London, who twenty years later,
as governor of the colony, presided at the debate which followed upon
the demission of Rector Cutler.

The immediate results of what had been expected to lead off a large
defection from the colonial clergy were numerically insignificant; but
very far from insignificant was the fact that in Connecticut a sincere
and spontaneous movement toward the Episcopal Church had arisen among
men honored and beloved, whose ecclesiastical views were not tainted
with self-seeking or servility or with an unpatriotic shame for their
colonial home and sympathy with its political enemies. Elsewhere in New
England, and largely in Connecticut also, the Episcopal Church in its
beginnings was handicapped with a dead-weight of supercilious and odious
Toryism. The example of a man like Johnson showed that one might become
an Episcopalian without ceasing to be a patriotic American and without
holding himself aloof from the fellowship of good men. The conference
in Yale College library, September 13, 1722, rather than the planting of
a system of exotic missions, marks the true epoch from which to date the
progress of a genuinely American Episcopal Church.[134:1]

Crossing the recently settled boundary line into New York, not yet risen
to rank with the foremost colonies, we find in 1730 a deepening of the
early character, which had marked that colony, of wide diversity among
the Christian people in point of race, language, doctrinal opinion, and
ecclesiastical connection.

The ancient Dutch church, rallying from its almost asphyxia, had begun
not only to receive new life, but, under the fervid spiritual influence
of Domine Frelinghuysen, to "have it more abundantly" and to become a
means of quickening to other communions. It was bearing fruit, but its
fruit had not seed within itself after its kind. It continued to suffer,
in commo