Men such as the ministers who have been described could not fail to exercise a good deal of authority in the communities to which they belonged.  The effect of the Revolution must have been to create a tendency to rebel against spiritual dictation.  Republicanism levels in religion as in everything.  It might have been expected, therefore, that soon after civil liberty had been established there would be conflicts between the traditional, authority of the minister and the claims of the now free and independent congregation.  So it was, in fact, as for instance in the case which follows, for which the reader is indebted to Miss Lamed’s book, before cited.

The ministerial veto allowed by the Saybrook Platform gave rise, in the year 1792, to a fierce conflict in the town of Pomfret, Connecticut.  Zephaniah Swift, a lawyer of Windham, came out in the Windham “Herald,” in all the vehemence of partisan phraseology, with all the emphasis of italics and small capitals.  Was it not time, he said, for people to look about them and see whether “such despotism was founded in Scripture, in reason, in policy, or on the rights of man!  A minister, by his vote, by his single voice, may negative the unanimous vote of the church!  Are ministers composed of finer clay than the rest of mankind, that entitles them to this preeminence?  Does a license to preach transform a man into a higher order of beings and endow him with a natural quality to govern?  Are the laity an inferior order of beings, fit only to be slaves and to be governed?  Is it good policy for mankind to subject themselves to such degrading vassalage and abject submission?  Reason, common sense, and the Bible, with united voice, proclaim to all mankind that they are all born free and equal; that every member of a church or Christian congregation must be on the same footing in respect of church government, and that the constitution, which delegates to one the power to negative the vote of all the rest, is subversive of the natural right of mankind and repugnant to the word of god.”

The Reverend Mr. Welch replied to the lawyer’s attack, pronouncing him to be “destitute of delicacy, decency, good manners, sound judgment, honesty, manhood, and humanity; a poltroon, a cat’s-paw, the infamous tool of a party, a partisan, a political weathercock, and a ragamuffin.”

No Fourth-of-July orator would in our day rant like the lawyer, and no clergyman would use such language as that of the Reverend Moses Welch.  The clergy have been pretty well republicanized within that last two or three generations, and are not likely to provoke quarrels by assertion of their special dignities or privileges.  The public is better bred than to carry on an ecclesiastical controversy in terms which political brawlers would hardly think admissible.  The minister of religion is generally treated with