Thomas Clap

[2] He introduced Enlightenment math and science and Johnson's moral philosophy into the curriculum, while retaining its Puritan theology.

He personally built the first Orrery in America, a milestone of American science, and awarded his friend Benjamin Franklin an honorary degree.

Whiting's daughter Mary in 1727, and remaining 14 years with a ministry marked by a rather severe orthodoxy (he once traveled to Springfield to oppose the ordination of a minister accused of Arminian tendencies).

In 1741, two masters' candidates at Yale were denied their degrees for their "disorderly and reckless endeavors to propagate" the Great Awakening, and the college made it an offence for a student to imply that the rector, trustees, or tutors were "carnal or unconverted men" or "hypocrites".

Clap campaigned for laws to inhibit itinerant preachers and lay exhorters and to stop the disintegration of churches by separation.

He brought math and science into Yale's curriculum, and undergraduate studies in divinity were replaced by Johnson's non-denominational moral philosophy.

Clap published a Yale library catalog in 1743, with an index system based on his friend Samuel Johnson's map of learning, and drafted a new charter of the school, granted by the General Assembly in 1745, incorporating the institution as "The President and Fellows of Yale College in New Haven".

In 1746, Clap expelled Samuel Cooke from the Yale Corporation for his role in setting up the separatist congregation in New Haven.

Clap, meanwhile, was concerned by the poor preaching of Joseph Noyes and by the initiation of Anglican services in New Haven.

Samuel Johnson wrote to Clap that were he to continue with separate worship, the Episcopalians would complain, and that the charter of 1745 would be found to be invalid, as only the King could make a corporation, and that Yale would cease to exist.

Perhaps more important to Clap than questions of religion, the New Lights increased their political power in the Connecticut Assembly and the state established Congregational Church.

[6] Noyes offered to share his pulpit with the new professor, agreeing to subscribe to the Assembly's Catechism and the Savoy Confession of Faith, and the students returned to his First Church for worship.

Clap, however, became disenchanted with Noyes' Old Light orthodoxy and poor preaching and obtained a decision that not only could Yale students worship separately, they could form their own congregation and administer Communion.

The announcement of the corporation's decision on June 30, 1757, was bitterly controversial, and, in the aftermath, discipline at the college collapsed.

[9] Jackson Turner Main finds that teaching in colonial days was a poorly paid, part-time, temporary job.