with provision against too
rigid a construction, was adopted and a step was thus taken toward
harmonizing with the "Regular" Baptists of the Philadelphia type. When the
General Association was sub-divided (1783), a General Committee, made up of
delegates from each district association, was constituted to consider
matters that might be for the good of the whole society. Its chief work was
to continue the agitation in which for some years the body had been
successfully engaged in favour of religious equality and the entire
separation of church and state. Since 1780 the "Separate" Baptists had had
the hearty co-operation of the "Regular" Baptists in their struggle for
religious liberty and equality. In 1787 the two bodies united and agreed to
drop the names "Separate" and "Regular." The success of the Baptists of
Virginia in securing step by step the abolition of everything that savoured
of religious oppression, involving at last the disestablishment and the
disendowment of the Episcopal Church, was due in part to the fact that
Virginia Baptists were among the foremost advocates of American
independence, while the Episcopal clergy were loyalists and had made
themselves obnoxious to the people by using the authority of Great Britain
in extorting their tithes from unwilling parishioners, and that they
secured the co-operation of free-thinking statesmen like Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison and, in most measures, that of the Presbyterians.

The Baptist cause in New England that had profited so largely from the
Great Awakening failed to reap a like harvest from the War of Independence.
The standing order in New England represented the patriotic and popular
party. Baptists lost favour by threatening to appeal to England for a
redress of their grievances at the very time when resistance to English
oppression was being determined upon. The result was slowness of growth and
failure to secure religious liberty. Though a large proportion of the New
England Baptists co-operated heartily in the cause of independence, the
denomination failed to win the popularity that comes from successful
leadership.

About 1762 the Philadelphia Association began to plan for the establishment
of a Baptist institution of learning that should serve the entire
denomination. Rhode Island was finally fixed upon, partly as the abode of
religious liberty and because of its intelligent, influential and
relatively wealthy Baptist constituency, the consequen