In the year 1755, the same in which he established the college church, President Clap issued his "History and Vindication of the doctrines received and established in the Churches of New England," [c] to which Thomas Darling's "Some Remarks on President Clap's History" was a scathing rejoinder. Darling asserted that for the President to uphold the Saybrook System of Consociated Churches was to set up the standards of men, a thing the forefathers never did;[138] that the picture of the Separatists' "New Scheme," which the President drew, was a scandalous spiritual libel;[139] and then, falling into the personal attacks permitted in those days, Darling adds that President Clap was an overzealous sycophant of the General Assembly, a servant of politics rather than of religion, and that it would be better for him to trust to the real virtues of the Consociated Church to uphold it than to strive for legal props and legislative favors for his "ministry-factory,"[140] the college. To raise the cry of heresy, Darling declared, was the President's political powder, and "The Church, the Church is in danger!" his rallying cry. He concluded his arraignment with:—
But would a man be tried, judged and excommunicated by such a standard as this? No! Not so long as they had one atom of common sense left. These things will never go down in a free State, where people are bred in, and breathe the free air, and are formed upon principles of liberty; they might answer in a popish country, or in Turkey, where the common people are sank and degraded almost to the state of brutes…. But in a free state they will be eternally ridiculed and abhorred…. 'T is too late in the Day for these things, these gentlemen should have lived twelve or thirteen hundred years ago.
Among the champions of religious liberty was the Seventh-day Baptist, John Bolles. He wrote "To worship God in Spirit and in Truth, is to worship him in true Liberty of Conscience," and also "Concerning the Christian Sabbath, which that Sabbath commanded to Israel, after they came out of Egypt, was a Sign of. Also Some Remarks upon a Book written by Ebenezer Frothingham." These works were published in 1757, and, five years later, called out in defense of the Establishment Eobert Ross's "Plain Address to the Quakers, Moravians, Separates, Separatist-Baptists, Rogerines, and other Enthusiasts on immediate impulses, and Revelation, &c," wherein the author considers all those whom he addresses as on a level with Frothingham, whom he names and scores for "trampling on all Churches and their Determinasions, but your own, with the greatest disdain."[141]
In the same year, 1762, the Separatist Israel Holly published a defense of his opinions, quoting freely from Dr. Watts and from his own earlier work, "A Seasonable Plea for Liberty of Conscience, and the Eight of private Judgment in matters of Religion, without any control from Human Authority." This "A Word in Zion's Behalf" [d] boldly ranges itself with Frothingham and Bolles, arguing against, and emphatically opposing, the state control of religion. Holly also engaged in a printed controversy, publishing in connection with it "The Power of the Congregational Church to ordain its officers and govern itself."
In 1767, while the Separatists still outnumbered the Baptists in Connecticut, Ebenezer Frothingham put forth another powerful and closely argued tract, "A Key to unlock the Door, that leads in, to take a fair view of the Religious Constitution Established by Law in the Colony of Connecticut," [e] etc. In his preface he states:—
The main Thing I have in View thro' the whole of this Book is free Liberty of Conscience… the Right of thinking and choosing and acting for one's self in matters of Religion, which respects God and Conscience … for my Readers may see Liberty of Conscience, was the main and leading Point in View in planting this Land and Colony.
Frothingham defines the Religious Constitution as "certain Laws in the Colony Law Book, called ecclesiastical, with the Confession of Faith, agreed upon by the Elders and Messengers of the Churches, met at Saybrook, especially the Articles of Administration of Church Discipline." This Constitution Plan "gives the General Assembly (which is, and always should so remain, a civil body to transact in civil and moral things) power to constitute or make a spiritual or ecclesiastical body."[142]
Such power, Frothingham maintains, is contrary to reason. Citing from the Colony Law Book the statute, "Concerning who shall vote in town or Society meeting" Frothingham comments thus:—
This supposes no person to have a right to form themselves into a religious society without their [the Assembly's] leave. No,—not King George the Third himself would have liberty to worship God according to his conscience. [Yet] any Atheist, Deist, Arian, Socinian, a Prophane Drunkard, a Sorcerer, a Thief, if they have such a freehold (as the law demands), can vote to keep out a minister. [Such a] plan challenges the sole right of making religious societies and the government of conscience. Yea, I think it assumes the prerogative that belongs to the Son of God alone.[143]
The fines for the neglect of the established worship and for assembling for worship approved by conscience [leave] no gap for one breath of gospel liberty. For if we exercise our gifts and graces in the lawful assemblies, we are had up, and carried to prison, for making disturbance on the Sabbath. I myself have been confined in Hartford prison near five months, for nothing but exhorting and warning the people, after the public worship was done and the assembly dismissed. And while I was there confined, three more persons were sent to prison; one for exhorting, and two for worshipping God in a private house in a separate meeting. And quick after I was released, by the laws being answered by natural relations unbeknown to me, then two brethren more was committed for exhorting and preaching, and several afterward, for attending the same duties and I myself was twice more sent to prison for the ministers rates.[144]