The climax of the high-handed measures of the supporters of the Establishment was doubtless reached in this legislation. A retrograde movement in the cause of religious toleration set in,[135] the direct effects of which were not quickly overcome. Henceforth dissenters were to be annoyed and hampered as they had not been before. The necessity of appearing in person before the General Court when seeking exemption from ecclesiastical burdens,[136] the embarrassments and hardships that dissenting ministers suffered in their efforts to supply religious counsel to their people,[137] the growing aversion of the General Court to granting permission to unorthodox and dissenting groups to organize,[138] all serve to indicate the strength of the reaction that had set in. The impressions produced by this excess were even more significant than the direct results, deplorable as the latter were.[139] In the middle of the eighteenth century the Standing Order in Connecticut had gained for themselves an unenviable record for bigotry and persecution from which the events of the latter half of the century by no means cleared them. For a quarter of a century following the enactment of the legislative measures just considered, no advance step, general in its nature, was taken. Here and there a little larger measure of freedom was doled out to this or that aggrieved dissenting minister or church; but the situation as a whole was not materially changed. “Restriction was the rule, freedom the exception, and government the absolute and irresponsible dispenser of both.”[140] Finally, in 1778 some evidence that a change in sentiment was under way appeared in the fact that Separatists were exempted from taxes to support the state church. Six years later, in 1784, more satisfactory proof was forthcoming. That year, by the passing of an act entitled, “An Act for Securing the Rights of Conscience in Matters of Religion, to Christians of Every Denomination in this State,”[141] the General Court tacitly abrogated the Saybrook Platform and set the institutions of religion in Connecticut upon a new base. The act declared That no Persons in this State, professing the Christian Religion, who soberly and conscientiously dissent from the Worship and Ministry by Law established in the Society wherein they dwell, and attend public Worship by themselves shall incur any Penalty for not attending the Worship and Ministry so established, on the Lord’s Day, or on account of their meeting together by themselves on said Day, for public Worship in a Way agreeable to their consciences.