ABSTRACT
If ethnic diversity and evangelical differentiation had set the conditions that ultimately would lead to the pattern of religious disestablishment, that consequence was by no means self-evident to the American colonists during the first half of the eighteenth century. Thomas Bradbury Chandler was prominent in the second generation of indigenous Anglicans who looked back to the defection of Timothy Cutler of Yale from the Connecticut establishment early in the eighteenth century for the origins of their party. William Livingston graduated from Yale in 1740 and subsequently read law, becoming a whig and staunchly anti-Anglican in his religious sentiment. The abuse of power has, in all ages, furnished the most copious fund of materials to the moralist and to the historian and has ever given the greatest perplexity to the legislator. Private persons doubtless affect the public weal by their vices and their crimes; but standing singly and alone their transgressions are easily corrected.
