essence of true religion is a voluntary obedience to God.[79] Here was strong meat for a people for whom the word freedom was rapidly coming to have an enlarged signification. The most convincing exposition of the democratic tendencies of the age came from another quarter, and in a sense belonged to the past. Spurred by the fact that at the beginning of the century a resolute effort had been made, both in Massachusetts and Connecticut, to obtain more compact and rigid ecclesiastical control,[80] the Reverend John Wise, of Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1710 had issued a satirical tract entitled, _The Churches’ Quarrel Espoused_, and later, in 1717, a more serious production entitled, _A Vindication of the Government of the New England Churches_. In 1772 a new edition of these tracts, published by subscription, came from the Boston press.[81] The enduring quality of the task Wise had performed is shown by the fact that, while these two slight volumes had been conceived as a protest against the encroachments of ecclesiastical tyranny in the first two decades of the century, they now, a half-century later, served equally well to voice the deep passions and impulses of a people who for the moment were engrossed in the concerns of civil government.[82] Wise rejected the ideals of monarchy and aristocracy for the church, and took his stand upon the proposition that democracy alone stands the test of reason and revelation.[83] Of all systems, democracy alone cherishes the precious interests of man’s original liberty and equality. It alone serves effectually to restrain the disposition to prey and embezzle, and to keep the administration of government firmly fixed upon the main point, “the peculiar good and benefit of the whole.” “It is as plain as daylight, there are no species of government like a democracy to attain this end.”[84] Such literary assaults upon the usurpations of government, upon the violation of individual rights, and upon obstructions erected in the path of democracy, were frontal. As has been said, they were also happily timed. The oppressed would have to content themselves a little longer with a type of toleration which seemed but the shadow of genuine freedom; but the broad dissemination of such principles as those proclaimed by Backus and Wise had had the effect of altering appreciably the spirit of the times.