lief was granted to Baptists and Quakers. The exemption laws passed in their behalf, however, made necessary the presentation of certificates vouching for the claims of the holders that they were conscientious supporters of the principles and faithful attendants upon the worship of one or the other of these bodies. 1
The introduction of the custom of requiring certificates encountered the same sense of injustice and bitter resentment that dissenters in Massachusetts manifested. Besides, the exemption laws just referred to failed to operate in a uniform and equitable manner. Episcopalians and Baptists, particularly, found frequent occasion to complain of the miscarriage of this legislation and to groan under the double burden of taxation from which they had obtained no actual relief. 2
But as in Massachusetts, so in Connecticut, the greatest hardships befell the Separatists who went out from the fold of the orthodox church. Unable to achieve within the Establishment that reformation of doctrine, polity, and spiritual life which they deemed requisite, they associated themselves together in churches committed to their own convictions. Opposition confronted them at every turn. Obstructions were thrown in the way of their efforts to obtain legal permission to constitute their churches; the civil power persisted in treating them as law-breakers and incorrigibles; their ministers were drastically dealt with by Consociations which regarded them as wicked men filled with the spirit of insubordination. 3 A group of laws as severe
- 1 The Pub. Records of the Colony of Conn., vol. vi, pp. 237, 257. Unlike the Massachusetts exemption laws passed on behalf of these two bodies, these were perpetual.
- 2 Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society: Talcott Papers, vol. v, pp. 9-13; Backus, History of New England, vol. ii, pp. 98 et seq.
- 3 Parker, History of the Second Church of Christ in Hartford,. pp. 117, 119; Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society, vol. iv: The Bradford Annals, pp. 318 et seq.; Backus, History of New England, vol. ii, pp. 57 et seq., 79 et seq. For the account of the difficulties of a particular Separatist congregation, see Button, The History of the North Church in New Haven, pp. 25-28. Cf. The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, vol. xi, pp. 323 et seq.', also Beardsley, The History of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, vol. i, p. 140.
