Why should they not? Would not the Congregational church at that time have abhorred such a tax imposed upon them to support the Baptist ministry? Until we are willing to concede to others the rights that we claim for ourselves, we are not the followers of Him who speaketh from heaven. But the most glaring wrong done to these dissenters by the standing order, outvying perhaps Gov. Saltonstall’s groundless suit for damages, is found in the course taken by the magistrates, unrebuked, who, however small was the fine or however large the value of the property distrained, returned nothing to the victims of their injustice.
Says John Rogers, Jr.:—
For a fine of ten shillings, the officer first took ten sheep, and then complained that they were not sufficient to answer the fine and charges, whereupon, he came a second time and took a milch cow out of the pasture, and so we heard no more about it, by which I suppose the cow and the ten sheep satisfied the fine and charges.
As showing the absurd and unjust treatment that John Rogers endured at the hands of the civil and ecclesiastical power, we quote from Miss Caulkins. Clearly he was right with regard to the jurisdiction of the court:—
In 1711, he was fined and imprisoned for misdemeanor in court, contempt of its authority and vituperation of the judges. He himself states that his offense consisted in charging the court with injustice for trying a case of life and death without a jury. This was in the case of one John Jackson, for whom Rogers took up the battle axe. Instead of retracting his words, he defends them and reiterates the charge. Refusing to give bonds for his good behavior until the next term of court, he was imprisoned in New London jail. This was in the winter season and he thus describes his condition:—
“My son was wont in cold nights to come to the grates of the window to see how I did, and contrived privately to help me to some fire, etc. But he, coming in a very cold night, called to me, and perceiving that I was not in my right senses, was in a fright, and ran along the street, crying, ‘The authority hath killed my father’; upon which the town was raised, and forthwith the prison doors were opened and fire brought in, and hot stones wrapt in cloth and laid at my feet and about me, and the minister Adams sent me a bottle of spirits, and his wife a cordial, whose kindness I must acknowledge.
“But when those of you in authority saw that I recovered, you had up my son and fined him for making a riot in the night, and took, for the fine and charge, three of the best cows I had.”
John Bolles, born in 1677, a disciple of John Rogers, in his book entitled “True Liberty of Conscience is in Bondage to No Flesh,” makes this statement, on page 98:—
To my knowledge, was taken from a man, only for the costs of a justice’s court and court charge of whipping him for breach of the Sabbath (so-called) a mare worth a hundred pounds, and nothing returned, and this is known by us yet living, to have been the general practice in Connecticut.
His biographer adds, “Mr. Bolles was doubtless that man.”