Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/133

"My present Thoughts of Episcopacy with what I conceive may justifie me in accepting Presbyterial Ordination," which prepares us to accept without surprise his eventual adoption of Episcopalian views. Many of his friends were moved in the same direction; and when the Rev. Timothy Cutler, the President of the College, Rev. John Hart, Rev. Samuel Whittelsey, Rev. Jared Eliot, Rev. James Wetmore, Rev. Daniel Brown, and himself, made a public declaration on Commencement Day, 17 September, 1722, "that some of them doubted the validity, and the rest were more fully persuaded of the invalidity of Presbyterian ordination in opposition to the Episcopal," we can scarcely picture to ourselves in these later days the grief and surprise with which it was received not only in the College, but throughout the colony where State and Church were almost indissoluble. This was a theological and religious movement without parallel in colonial days. The public discussions held to convince them of their error, had the effect of preventing Eliot, Hart and Whittelsey actually seeking Episcopal ordination, and these remained to the end of their days in the Congregational ministry, and they continued friends but not members of Episcopacy. Johnson, Cutler, and Brown sailed in a few weeks for England, and on 22 March, 1723 they were ordained Deacons, and on 31 March, Priests, both ordinations being held at St. Martins-in-the-Fields, London; but Brown fell a victim to smallpox and died on 13 April, a disease Cutler was seized with on his arrival but happily recovered from. Johnson returned to Stratford by November following. There was no place of public worship for Episcopalians in Connecticut, but one had been begun in Stratford, of which Johnson took the Rectorship, and it was opened for religious services on the Christmas twelvemonth. Here he continued faithful in the discharge of his pastoral duties, with an affectionate interest for his alma mater, in whose early tribulations he had a share, and with a revival of his taste for teaching in the growth of his children, his eldest son being born in 1727 whose early years found all their mental training at his hands; and "that it might be more agreeable to them to have companions, he took several gentlemen's sons of Newport and