Upon the difficulty of securing collectors, Frothingham remarks: "If it be such a good Cause, and no good men in the Society, to undertake that good Work, surely then such a Society is awfully declined, if that is the case." Frothingham quotes the Suttler of the "Dialogue" as saying, "We have good reason to believe, that if this Hedge of human Laws, and Enclosure of Order round the Church, were wholly broken down, and taken away, there would not be, ('t is probable) one regular visible Church left subsisting in this land, fifty years hence, or, at most, not many. "To this, Frothingham replied that if by the "visible church, here spoken of," is meant "Anti-Christ's Church, we should be apt to believe it," for "it needs Civil Power, Rates and Prisons to support it. But if the Gospel Church, set up at first without the aid of civil power could continue and spread, why can't it subsist without the Civil Power now as well as then?" "To this day," this author adds, "the true Church of Christ is in bondage, by usurping Laws that unrighteously intrude upon her ecclesiastical Rights and civil Enjoyments; .... And Wo! Wo! to New England! for the God-provoking Evil, which is too much indulged by the great and mighty in the Land. The cry of oppression is gone up into the ears of the Lord God of Sabbaoth." Frothingham thrusts at the payment or support of the ministry by taxation in his assertion that "there is no instance of Paul's entering into any civil Contract or Bargain, to get his wages or Hire, in all his Epistles; but we have frequent accounts of his receiving free contributions."[136] (Here, he but repeats a part of the Baptist protest in the Wightman-Bulkley debate of 1707.) Frothingham states that "the scope and burden of it [his book] were to shew ... both from scripture and reason that the standing ministers and Churches in this Colony [Connecticut] are not practising in the rule of God's word." The book at once commanded the attention desired by its author. It drew upon Frothingham the concentrated odium of the Rev. Moses Bartlett, pastor of the Portland church, in a fifty-four-paged pamphlet entitled "False and Seducing Teachers." Among such Bartlett includes and roundly denounces Frothingham and the two Paines, Solomon and his brother Elisha. Elisha Paine had removed to Long Island. Returning to Canterbury for some of his household goods, he was seized by the sheriff for rates overdue, and thrown into Windham jail.[137] After waiting some weeks for his release, he sent the following bold and spicy letter to the Canterbury assessors:-- To you gentlemen, practioners of the law from your prisoner in Windham gaol, because his conscience will not let him pay a minister that is set up by the laws of Connecticut, contrary to his conscience and consent.