Note 145 — Chapter I

This is readily explicable in view of the fact that most of the magistrates were adherents of the Establishment. The comment of Backus touches the pith of the matter, as dissenters saw it: “Thus the civil authority in the uppermost religious party in their State, was to judge the consciences of all men who dissented from their worship.” (History of New England, vol. ii, p. 345.)