Note 7 — Chapter I

The Essex Watchmen to the Inhabitants of the said County. London, 1649. This publication, referring to the clause in the agreement, "so it be not compulsory," declared that "this one little parenthesis was the fly in the box of ointment," which made it "an abhorring in the nostrils of every one who is knowingly judicious and pious." The ministers lamented that, in consequence of those five fatal words, heads of families would be prevented from obliging their children and servants to attend public worship; and thus, they said, an inlet was opened for domestic profanity. In their estimation, not to compel people to be religious was to grant them "liberty to apostatize, and cast off the profession of Christianity;" and before concluding their testimony, they denounced toleration as a satanic engine "for demolishing the beauty, yea, the being of religion."