ascertaining the facts in such cases was contemplated by the law. Justices of the peace were forbidden to sign a warrant authorizing the collection of a minister's rates until they were assured that no such certificate had been lodged against the clergyman involved. 1 Heavy bonds were to be imposed upon ministers from outside the colony who might venture to preach within its limits without invitation, with the added provision that such men were to be treated as vagrants and bundled out of the colony as speedily as possible. 2 Ministers who had not been graduated from Yale or Harvard, or some other Protestant college or university, were debarred from all benefits of ministerial support as provided by law. 3
The climax of the high-handed measures of the supporters of the Establishment was doubtless reached in this legislation. A retrograde movement in the cause of religious toleration set in, 4 the direct effects of which were not quickly overcome. Henceforth dissenters were to be annoyed and hampered as they had not been before. The necessity of appearing in person before the General Court when seeking exemption from ecclesiastical burdens, 5 the embarrassments and hardships that dissenting ministers suffered in their efforts to supply religious counsel to their people, 6 the growing aversion of the General Court to granting permission to unorthodox and dissenting groups
- 1 The Pub. Records of the Colony of Conn., vol. viii, p. 456.
- 2 Ibid., p. 457.
- 3 Backus, History of New England, vol. ii, p. 57.
- 4 Cobb, The Rise of Religious Liberty in America, pp. 274 et seq. Greene, The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut, pp. 244 et seq.
- 5 Cf. supra, note i, p. 57.
- 6 Backus, History of New England, vol. ii, pp. 59 et seq., 62, 65 et seq., 77 et seq., 81 et seq.
