The following, which is an "exact coppie of ye petition sent to ye Honourable General Assembly of Connecticut," may have had something to do with procuring for the Baptists the exemption act of 1729. We extract it from the "Diary of John Comer":

To the Honourable General Assembly of ye Colony of Connecticut to be convened at New Haven on ye second Thursday of October next. The humble Memorial of ye General Association of ye Baptist Churches convened at North Kingston on ye 6th day of September, A. D. 1729, humbly showeth, That yr Honours' Petitioners having sundry Brethren of their Communion dwelling up and down in your Colony, they therefore do hereby humbly crave yt an Act of Assembly may be passed to free them from paying any taxes to any ministry except their own, and from building any meeting-houses except for their own use, humbly hoping your Honours will consider they are utterly unable to maintain their own way of worship and to pay taxes also to ye Presbyterians, and yt the gracious act of indulgence 'together with the reasonableness of our request will be motive sufficient to move yr Honours to grant ye request of yr Honours' humble Memorialists. "Signed in ye name and by ye order of the sd Association, by Elders Richard Sweet, Valentine Wightman, Samuel Fisk, John Comer, Pardon Tillinghast.”

In connection with this was sent another petition signed at Newport, September 10, 1729, by Governor Joseph Jenks, Elders James Clarke and Daniel Wightman, and two brethren, which petition reads as follows:

To the Honorable General Assembly of ye Colony of Connecticut to be convened at New Haven on ye 2nd Thursday of October next, these lines may signifie yt we ye subscribers do heartily concur with ye Memorial of our Brethren on ye other side and humbly request ye same may be granted, which we think will much tend to Christian unity and be serviceable to

Р

true religion, and will very much rejoice your Honours' friends and very humble servants. . .

There was drawn from ye Treasury of ye church at Newport 40s. towards defraying ye Charges in preferring ye Petition.

During the time of the Great Awakening, in 1742, an act was passed which deprived a settled minister of his salary if he preached in another parish without invitation or consent of the parish minister. And every offender, not an inhabitant within the colony, whether an ordained minister or only an exhorter, shall be sent as a vagrant person out of the bounds of the colony. as being not only a disorderly person, but guilty of a crime. This law of course had special reference to Whitefield and his fellow-laborers. Benedict states that an itinerant Baptist preacher, Rev. Mr. Marshall, was put in the stocks on a warm summer day, for aggression on parish lines, and was imprisoned in Windham jail "for preaching the gospel contrary to the law." In 1747 Rev. Philemon Robbins, who by request preached to a Baptist society, was for this offense excluded from the Consociation, deposed from the ministry and from communion in any of the churches "until he shall have in a public and Christian manner reflected on himself for his crimes and faults to the satisfaction of the Consociation of the county of New Haven." This virtually is the confession they drew up for him, but which he refused to sign: "I, the subscriber, acknowledge that I am sorry I preached disorderly at Wallingford [to the Baptists], and prayed at the separation at New Haven, and promise not to do so again."

In after years the first exempting acts were broad.

ened so that all dissenters could be exempted, provided they ordinarily attended meetings in their respective societies and paid their due proportion, etc. Some Baptists in Stafford joined a church in Wellington, but on account of the distance and roughness of the way could not attend as often as they wished, or the law required. In suing for their goods, which had been distrained from them, the counsel urged in their behalf that they were Baptists sentimentally, practically, and legally. Against them it was urged that they were amenable to the law, since they did not ordinarily attend their own meeting. The sympathies of the judge, who was an Episcopalian, were evidently on the side of the plaintiffs, and so he propounded the inquiry, how long a man who was a Baptist sentimentally, practically, and legally, must stay at home to become a Presbyterian? The Baptists won their case.

Like the other colonies, Connecticut early passed a law inflicting on those who neglected the public worship of God in some lawful congregation, and formed themselves into separate companies in private houses, a fine of twenty shillings for every such offense. Imprisonment, of course, in many cases, followed the nonpayment of fines. In February, 1744, seventeen persons, belonging in Saybrook, were arrested for "holding a meeting contrary to the law on God's holy Sabbath," and they were driven on foot twenty-five miles to New London, and were put in jail, suffering from weariness, want of food, and fire. One of these persons, Mr. Job Bulkley, at whose house the meeting was held, was an unconverted man; but witnessing the faith, fortitude, and Christian spirit of these disciples he gave

himself to the Lord Jesus Christ in the jail, and when the church was constituted, his name headed the list of members. Another of those arrested and taken to prison was a woman with an infant in her arms.1 In 1752 the widowed mother of Isaac Backus, being a separatist, was imprisoned for thirteen days, taken from her home in Norwich when sick, on a dark and rainy night, seventeen miles to New London jail. She was released by some one to her unknown. His brother Samuel lay in prison twenty days. In 1784 all dissenters had still to "produce certificates" signed by

the minister or other officer of their order. And "all persons shall be taxed for the support of the ministry and other charges of the society wherein they dwell, who do not attend and help support other worship." By a law of 1791, the certificate to be legal had to be approbated by one or more justices of the peace.

The following is one of the old forms of "Levy," dated Windham, September 12, 1794:

To Samuel Perkins, a Collector of Society Taxes in the first Society of Windham :

Greeting By authority of the State of Connecticut, you are hereby commanded forthwith to levy and collect of the persons named in the foregoing list herewith committed to you, each one his several proportion as therein set down, of the sum total of such list, being a rate agreed upon by the inhabitants of said Society, and to deliver and pay over the sums which you shall collect to the Treasurer of said Society within sixty days next coming; and if any person shall neglect or refuse to pay the sum at which he is assessed, you are hereby commanded to distrain the goods,

1 From Dr. S. D. Phelps' letter in "The Watchman," 1894, on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Baptist Church in Saybrook.

chattels, or lands of such person so refusing; and the same being disposed of as the law directs, return the overplus, if any, to the respective owners; and for want of such goods, chattels, or lands whereon to make distress, you are to take the body or bodies of the persons so refusing, and them commit to the keeper of the gaol in said County of Windham within the prison, who is hereby commanded to receive and safe keep them until they pay and satisfy the aforesaid sums at which they are respectively assessed, together with your fees, unless said assessment, or any part thereof, be legally abated.

JABEZ CLARK, Just. Peace.

In 1818 the new constitution put an end to all this oppression, and the Baptist pastor of Suffield, Rev. Asahel Morse, had the honor of penning the article which at last secured religious liberty.

II. THE FOUNDING OF THE WARREN ASSOCIATION AND THE COMMITTEE OF GRIEVANCES.

An important movement in the struggle for religious liberty was the forming of the "Warren Association" of Baptist churches in 1767, the Rev. James Manning, the pastor of the Warren Church and president of Rhode Island College, being the leader in this movement.1 Eleven Baptist churches were represented at its first meeting; but four only, the Warren, Haverhill, Bellingham, and Second Middleborough ventured to try the experiment. Others were generally friendly to the movement; but had some fears that it might interfere with church independence. At the Association

1 For some of the opposition which the Rhode Island College and Manning, as its president, had to encounter, see Dr. R. A. Guild's "Manning and Brown University," and more briefly in Dr. H. S. Burrage's

66

History of Baptists in New England," Am. Bap. Pub. Soc., 1894.