Three of these men remained in "doubt," and continued within the Congregational church.[a] Four of them, Rector Timothy Cutler, Tutor Daniel Brown, Rev. James Wetmore of North Haven, and Rev. Samuel Johnson of West Haven, went to England to receive Episcopal ordination.[b] The story of their conversion is to Churchmen an illustration of the scriptural command, "Cast your bread upon the waters and it will return to you after many days." The Connecticut authorities had chosen the Rev. Timothy Cutler because of his eloquence, and had sent him to Stratford to counteract the early successes of the Church-of-England missionary priests, who were at work among the people there. Later, in 1719, Cutler, because of his abilities, was chosen President, or Rector, of Yale, as, in the early days, the head of the college was called. The seeds of doubt had entered his mind during his Stratford pastorate. He and his associates found many books in the college library that, instead of lessening, increased their doubts. After presiding for three years over the greatest institution of learning in the colony, which had for its object the preparation of men for service in civil office and, even more in those days, for service in religion, Rector Cutler, together with his associates, announced their change of faith. The colony was taken by storm, and there spread throughout its length and breadth, and throughout New England also, a great fear that Episcopacy had made a _coup d'etat_ and was shortly to become the established church of her colonies as well as of England herself. Naturally, among the colonial Churchmen, it excited the largest hope "of a glorious revolution among the ecclesiastics of the country, because the most distinguished gentlemen among them are resolutely bent to promote her (the Church's) welfare and embrace her baptism and discipline, and if the leaders fall in there is no doubt to be made of the people." [83]
These hopes were in a degree confirmed by the conversion of one or two more ministers, and by the Yale men that the classes of 1723, 1724, 1726, 1729, and 1733 gave to Episcopacy. By the impetus of these conversions, within a generation, "the Episcopal Church under a native born minister had penetrated every town, had effected lodgment in every Puritan stronghold, and had drawn into her membership large numbers of that sober-minded, self-contained, tenacious people who constitute the membership of New England to-day."[84] After the conversions of 1722, the movement for the apostolic episcopate in America became more determined, and never wholly ceased until the consecration of Samuel Seabury as bishop of Connecticut in 1784.