That Christ has conveyed all power to his people both in church and state; which power they are to exercise until Christ shall return on earth to reign one thousand years over his militant saints--that all other kings, besides Christ and his elected people, are pestilent usurpers, and enemies of God and man--that all vicars, rectors, deans, priests, and bishops, are of the devil; are wolves, petty popes, and antichristian tyrants; that pastors and teachers of particular congregations are of Christ and must be chosen by his people, i. e., the elect and chosen from the foundation of the world, or else their entrance and ministry are unlawful; that all things of human invention in the worship of God, such as are in the Mass-Book and Common-prayer, are unsavory in the sight of God; that ecclesiastical censures ought to be exercised by the members of particular congregations among themselves; that the people should not suffer this supreme power to be wrested out of their hands until Christ shall begin his reign; that all good people ought to pray always that God would raze the old papal foundation of the episcopal government, together with the filthy ceremonies of that antichristian church; that every particular who neglects this duty, may justly fear that curse pronounced against Meroz (Judges v. 23): “Curse ye Meroz, because they came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty” enemies of God and his church; that every particular congregation is an absolute church, the members of it are to be all saints; those must enter into covenant among themselves, and without such covenant there can be no church; that it is a heinous sin to be present when prayers are read out of a book by a vicar or bishop; that subjects promise obedience to obtain help from the magistrates, and are discharged from their promise when the magistrates fail in their duty; that, without liberty from the prince or magistrate, the people may reform the church and state, and must not wait for the magistrate, etc., etc. This Dominion, this tyrant of tyrants, adopted the Bible for its code of civil laws, till others should be made more suitable to its circumstances. The provision was politic. The lawgivers soon discovered that the precepts in the Old and New Testaments were insufficient to support them in their arbitrary and bloody undertakings; they, therefore, gave themselves up to their own inventions in making others, wherein, in some instances, they betrayed an extreme degree of wanton cruelty and oppression, that even the religious fanatics of Boston, and the mad zealots of Hertford, put to the blush, christened them the “Blue Laws,” and the former held a day of thanksgiving, because God, in his good providence, had stationed Eaton and Davenport so far from them.[15]