For a while the Connecticut authorities refused to recognize "as sober Dissenters" any converts other than the stationed preachers and their charges. The persecutions which the Methodists suffered were those of slander, the refusal to them of halls, churches, or public buildings; the refusal to permit their ministers, unless located, to perform the marriage ceremony; and petty fines, with occasional unjust imprisonment.
[p] Portsmouth, N. H.
[q] "A pure democracy which places every member of the church upon a level and gives him perfect liberty with order." Under such a definition of a church as this, its pastor becomes only a moderator at its meetings, and every church is absolutely independent. It would follow that from its decisions there could be no appeal. Emmons was fond of declaring that "Association leads to Consociation; Consociation leads to Presbyterianism; Presbyterianism leads to Episcopacy; Episcopacy to Roman Catholicism, and Roman Catholicism is an ultimate fact."
In spite of his teaching as to democracy, Emmons was as intolerant of it in the State as he was earnest for it in the Church.
CHAPTER XIII
CERTIFICATE LAWS AND WESTERN LAND BILLS
And make the bounds of Freedom wider yet.—Alfred Tennyson.
The legal recognition of conscience, the acknowledgment of fundamental dogmas held in common, the gradual approachment of the various religious organizations in polity, their common interest in education and good government, would seem to furnish grounds for such mutual esteem that the government would willingly do away with the objectionable certificates. On the contrary, the old conception of a state church, and of its value to the body politic, was so strongly intrenched in the hearts of the majority of the people that they felt it incumbent upon them to require the certificates as guarantees that those who were without the Establishment were fulfilling their religious duties. Particularly was this the case when new sects continued to increase and radical opinions to spread among the masses. And as the government saw these apparently destructive ideas permeating the people, it endeavored, rather unwisely, to hem dissent in closer bounds, and to favor still more Cougregationalists and Presbyterian-Congregationalists.
The aggressively successful proselytizing by the Methodists revived the old dislike of rash exhorters and itinerant preachers, and the old contempt for an ignorant and unlearned ministry. The proselytizing movement had also created a suspicion that it was hypocritical, and that it was masking a deliberate attempt to undermine the Establishment. Outside this Methodist propaganda there were also all sorts of unorthodox ideas that were spreading notions of Universalism, Arianism, deism, atheism, and freethinking, and making many converts. These proselytes were frequent among the untutored and irresponsible members of society who caught at the doctrines of greater freedom, and sometimes translated them, theoretically at least, into principles of greater personal license; and where they did not do this, the authorities felt sure that they would soon, and if unrestrained by ecclesiastical law, would quickly become lawless, first in religious affairs and then, as a consequence, in moral ones. Not only in this radical class, but among the recognized dissenters and among a minority of other, religious folk, there was a tendency to question both the authority and the justice of the government in its restrictive religious laws, its ecclesiastical taxation, and its Sabbath-day legislation. Particularly was there opposition to the fine for absence from public worship on Sunday, unless excused by weighty reasons, and to the assessment upon every one of a tax for the support of some form of recognized public worship, even though the tax-payer had no personal interest or liking for that which he was obliged to support. The feeling that such injustice ought not to continue was strong among some members of the Establishment. They found a powerful advocate in Judge Zephaniah Swift of Windham, the author of the "System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut."
Judge Swift was a thorough-going Federalist, but so bitter an opponent of the union of Church and State that his enemies, and even members of his own party, taunted him with being a freethinker,—a serious charge in those days. Nevertheless, Judge Swift held the loyalty of a county and of one rather tolerant of dissent. "The Phenix or Windham Herald," founded in 1790, though Federal in politics, became Judge Swift's organ; and so acceptable were his opinions, taken all in all, to the community, that from 1787 to 1793 it returned this arch-enemy of the Establishment as its deputy to the House, and then his congressional district honored him with a seat in the national council until 1799. He became chief justice in 1806, and died in 1819, having lived to see the charter constitution set aside and Church and State divorced.