Note 541 — Chapter IX · (continued 2)

At last, in 1696, what was termed “owning the covenant” was first introduced into the church at Hartford. Under the influence of the synod held in Boston in 1662 of Massachusetts churches alone, the “Half-Way Covenant” had been adopted in that colony. A want of a closer union among the churches was a growing feeling in the colony of Connecticut not provided for by the Cambridge Platform; and the Saybrook Platform, the result of a Connecticut synod held in 1708, was an attempt to provide for this want. This ecclesiastical document was printed in New London in 1710, in a small, thin volume called a Confession of Faith, etc.; and is the first book, says Isaiah Thomas, printed in Connecticut. Trumbull, i. 471, 482.