Court demanded of the Wethersfield church a list of the grievances
which disturbed it. In the next year, when Matthew Allyn petitioned
for an order to the Hartford church, commanding the reconsideration of
its sentence of excommunication against him, the Court "adjudged his
plea an accusation upon the church" which he was bound to prove.
These incidents from early colonial history in some measure illustrate
the practical working of the theory of Church and State. The
conviction that the State should support one form of religion, and
only one, was ever present to the colonial mind. If confirmation of
its worth were needed, one had only to glance at the turmoil of the
Rhode Island colony experimenting with religious liberty and a
complete separation of Church and State. Like all pioneers and
reformers, she had gathered elements hard to control, and would-be
citizens neither peaceable nor reasonable in their interpretation of
the new range of freedom. Watching Rhode Island, the Congregational
men of New England hugged more tightly the conviction that their
method was best, and that any variation from it would work havoc. It
was this theory and this conviction, ever present in their minds, that
underlay all ecclesiastical laws, all special legislation with
reference to churches, to their members, or to public fasts and
thanksgivings. This deep-rooted conviction created hatred toward and
fear of all schismatical doctrines, enmity toward all dissenting
sects, and opposition to any tolerance of them.


FOOTNOTES:

[a] "The one prime, all essential, and sufficient qualiiy of a
theocracy ... adopted as the form of an earthly government, was that
the civil power should be guided in its exercise by religion and