the approved and accepted essentials of religious life, and they
further exercised a rigorous supervision over the moral welfare of the
whole community. Secondly, they aided the State through the influence
of their ministers, who, on all important occasions, were expected to
meet with the magistrates to consult and advise upon affairs whether
spiritual or temporal. But the framers of governments were not
satisfied with these measures that aimed to present a strongly
established church, capable of extending a fine moral, ethical, and
religious influence over the colonists, and also to enforce upon the
wayward, the careless, or the indifferent among them its support and
their obedience. If these measures provided for the ordinary welfare
of the community and for the usual relations b between the ministers
and their people, there were still possibilities of factional strife
to guard against, and such warfare in that age might or might not
confine itself within the limits of theological controversy or within
the lines of church organization. Consequently, the better to preserve
the churches from schism or corrupting innovations and the
commonwealth from discord, the supreme control of the churches was
lodged in the General Court of each colony. It could, whenever
necessary to secure harmony, whether ecclesiastical or civil,
legislate with reference to all or any of the churches within its
jurisdiction. Examples of such legislation occur frequently in the
religious history of the colonies, especially of Massachusetts and
Connecticut. Such interdependence of the spiritual and temporal power
practically amounted to a union of Church and State. Indeed, in
Massachusetts and New Haven, to be a voter, a man must first be a
member of a church of approved standing.[b] In more liberal Plymouth
and Connecticut, the franchise, at first, was made to depend only upon
conduct, though it was early found necessary to add a property
qualification in order to cut off undesirable voters.[23] In the