It was opposed not so much because it was thought to be the first step towards forming a Church Establishmentin this [whole] country, as because the Colonists had a peculiar abhorrence of the methods of enforcing the jurisdiction of the English Church as they were familiar with them in the old country. They may have forgotten many of the sufferings they had endured in England in consequence of their non-conformity and even committed themselves to a theory of. Church establishment, but there was one thing they never could forget, and that was the prelatical government of Land and the High Commission, and upon this were founded the popular notions of the authority wielded by Bishops. ... I I am well aware that these statements of the general prevalence of a principle here during the Colonial period, which in contrast to that now universally recognized I must call the principle of religious intolerance, will ai)pear to many too wide and sweeping. But a very slight examination of the provisions in this subject in the laws of the Colonies will, if I mistake not, produce a different impression. In Vii-ginia where the English Church was early established by law and endowed, men who refused or neglected to bring their children to be baptized were punished with civil ]>enalties; Quakers were expelled from the Colony, and should they return thither a third time, they were lialjle to capital punishment. Any one who denied the Trinity or the truth of the Christian religion was deprived by the Act of 1704 of his civil rights, and was rendered incapable of suing for any gift or legacy. In New England, except in Rhode Island, religious intolerance was very bitter. It is true that in Massachusetts, under the charter of 1691, the power of committing those barbarous acts of persecution of which the theocracy of the old standing order had been guilty was taken away, and all Christiana, save Roman Catholics, were permitted to celebrate their worship, yet none but members of the Congregational Church could be freemen, and all were taxed for the support of the Ministry of that Church.