The following list, though far from complete, will serve to illustrate this point. Without the consent of the General Court, churches could not be organized,[102] nor bonds be severed between pastors and their flocks.[103] The formation of new parishes and the fixing of their limits,[104] the calling of new ministers,[105] the determination of the time at which arrearages in ministers’ salaries must be paid fully,[106] the fixing of the location of new houses of worship,[107] the disposition of cases of discipline appealed from the decisions of local church courts,[108] the settlement of the question as to who were to be permitted to receive the Lord’s Supper,[109] the proffer of counsel concerning the behavior offended members were expected to manifest toward pastors for whom they entertained no affection nor respect[110]—these all were regarded as part of the proper business of the General Court. The dangers inherent in such a system are not difficult to divine. The churches themselves upon which such paternal legislative care was imposed generally found their affairs taken out of their hands. Civil authority disciplined them and their members, and made independent ecclesiastical rule little more than a fiction. Again, the committal of the political government to a particular type of religious polity and worship aroused antagonisms in the minds of men who hated the palest shadow of the principle that the religion of a prince or government must be the religion of the people. However tolerant toward non-conformity such a state may show itself to be—and none will deny that Connecticut rose to comparatively high levels of justice in this regard[111]—the favoritism of government puts dissent at a disadvantage; and when narrow and intolerant men are at the helm of state, disadvantage passes rapidly into positive deprivation and injury. Once more, so close an alliance between politics and religion as the Standing Order in Connecticut represented, invites similar combinations on the part of men, some of whom have political and some religious objects to serve, and who, therefore, in the presence of a common foe gladly make common cause. All of which we shall see illustrated later.