Note 762 — Chapter XIII · ECCLESIASTICAL RITES AND THE RISE OF CIVIL MARRIAGE IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES

After thus expressing the motive for toleration, the Constitutions curiously provide that any seven or more persons agreeing in any religion may form themselves into a "church or profession;" and no person over seventeen years of age "shall have any benefit or protection of the law, or be capable of any place of profit or honor, who is not a member" of such a church or profession, "having his name recorded in some one, and but one religious record at once."—Ibid., 1407.