Timothy Cutler

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Timothy Cutler bigraphy, stories - Presidents

Timothy Cutler : biography

May 31, 1684 – August 17, 1765

Timothy Cutler (May 31, 1684 – August 17, 1765) was an American Episcopal clergyman and rector of Yale College.

Early life

When seventeen years old, Cutler graduated from Harvard College, and on January 11, 1709/10, having come from Massachusetts to Connecticut with the recommendation of being "one of the best preachers both colonies afforded", he was ordained pastor of the Congregational Church in Stratford.

On March 21, 1710/11, he married Elizabeth, daughter of Rev. Samuel Andrew of Milford, Connecticut, then acting rector of Yale College. Cutler served his parish acceptably until March 1718/19 when, conditions at Yale College calling imperatively for a resident rector, he undertook that office at the request of the trustees, his appointment being formally approved in September. Although his father-in-law was doubtless instrumental in securing his appointment, Cutler was in general well-fitted for the position, being "an excellent Linguist", a "good Logician, Geographer, and Rhetorician", while "in the Philosophy & Metaphysics & Ethics of his Day or juvenile Education he was great. . . . He was of an high, lofty, & despotic mien. He made a grand figure as the Head of a College".The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 1901, II, 339-40. Cutler continued to teach the Enlightenment Curriculum first instituted by Tutor Samuel Johnson in 1716, with courses on algebra, calculus, and moral philosophy.

The new rectorship "opened auspiciously and an era of prosperity seemed at hand when, on September 13, 1722, the rector, with Tutor Daniel Browne and several Congregational clergymen, met with the trustees, declared themselves doubtful of the validity of their ordination, and asked advice with regard to entering the Church of England." William Howard Wilcoxson, History of Stratford, Connecticut, 1639-1939, 1939, p. 186. Upon request they made a written statement of their position, and the meeting was adjourned for a month. In the meantime Governor Saltonstall arranged a public debate on the matter, held October 16, as a result of which, on the following day, at a special meeting of the trustees, it was voted to "excuse the Rev. Mr. Cutler from all further services as Rector of Yale College", and it was provided that all future rectors and tutors should declare to the trustees their assent to the Saybrook Confession of Faith, and give satisfaction as to their opposition to "Arminian and prelatical corruptions." They returned Yale to its previous orthodoxy, what the former Yale Tutor, the American Dr. Samuel Johnson in 1770 described as "the scholastic cobwebs of a few little English and Dutch systems that would hardly now be taken up in the street.” Samuel Johnson, Samuel Johnson, President of King’s College; His Career and Writings, editors Herbert and Carol Schneider, 1929, Volume 1, p. 6.

Several nineteenth century Harvard and Yale commentators, citing Cutler’s Puritan opponents, suggest that Cutler was never wholeheartedly a Dissenter, that he had been converted to Episcopalianism when at Stratford by John Checkley, and that in spite of this fact had accepted the rectorship of a Congregational college, publicly declaring what he had privately believed only when a desirable place in the Established Church was assured him.Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, ser. 2, IV, 299.Josiah Quincy, History of Harvard University, 1840, I, 365.F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, with Annals of the College History, vol. I, 1885, p. 271. With the 1929 publication of American Dr. Samuel Johnson’s Autobiography, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Johnson, President of King’s College; His Career and Writings, editors Herbert and Carol Schneider, 1929, Volume 1, pp. 10-21. we find that Cutler, Yale Tutor Daniel Brown, and seven other local clergy formed a study group in 1719. Assigning Johnson to translate, and meeting in secret at each others homes, they carefully studied the source texts in Yale’s library in the original languages over a three year period. They only reluctantly decided that their Presbyterian ordination was questionable, and that an Episcopal ordination was to be preferred. Despite great pressure from Governor Saltenstall, their family, friends and the Puritan community (so fierce, that five of the nine recanted), Cutler, along with three others, determined become ministers of the Church of England.