these Consociations. In like manner the ministers of the various counties were to be grouped together in Associations to consult concerning the affairs of the church, provide ministerial licensure, examine complaints, and make recommendations to the legislature concerning the settlement of pastors with "bereaved" churches.[1]
The result of the deliberations of the Saybrook Synod was laid duly before the sessions of the General Court, in October, 1708, and formally adopted by that body in the following terms:
This Assembly do declare their great approbation of such a happy agreement, and do ordain that all the churches within this government that are or shall be thus united in doctrine, worship, and discipline, be, and for the future shall be owned and acknowledged established by law. Provided always, that nothing herein shall be intended and construed to hinder or prevent any society or church that is or shall be allowed by the laws of this government, who soberly differ or dissent from the united churches hereby established, from exercising worship and discipline in their own way, according to their consciences.[2]
This reëstablishment of the Congregational church in Connecticut determined the course of events, as far as the religious interests of the commonwealth were concerned, for a hundred years to come. By this it is not meant that the ecclesiastical system which was thus worked out and imposed upon the churches of the colony continued to operate in full force for that period; the Saybrook Platform was
- ↑ Walker, The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism, pp. 502-506, where "The Saybrook Meeting and Articles" are printed in full. For expositions, see Backus, History of New England, vol. i, pp. 470 et seq.; Palfrey, A History of New England, vol. iii, p. 342; Dexter, The Congregationalism of the last Three Hundred Years, pp. 489, 400.
- ↑ The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, vol. v, p. 87.
