The fines for the neglect of the established worship and for assembling for worship approved by conscience [leave] no gap for one breath of gospel liberty. For if we exercise our gifts and graces in the lawful assemblies, we are had up, and carried to prison, for making disturbance on the Sabbath. I myself have been confined in Hartford prison near five months, for nothing but exhorting and warning the people, after the public worship was done and the assembly dismissed. And while I was there confined, three more persons were sent to prison; one for exhorting, and two for worshipping God in a private house in a separate meeting. And quick after I was released, by the laws being answered by natural relations unbeknown to me, then two brethren more was committed for exhorting and preaching, and several afterward, for attending the same duties and I myself was twice more sent to prison for the ministers rates.[144] I have no Man or Men's persons as such, in View in my Writings, But would as much as is proper, separate Ministers, Civil Rulers, and Churches, from the Constitution, and consider this Religious Constitution as it is compiled or written, as though it was not established in this Colony; but presented here from some remote part of Christendom, for Examination, to see if it was according to the Word of God, and the sacred Right of Conscience.[145] In scathing terms, Frothingham attacks the "Anti-Christian" character of the Establishment and its fear that, by granting liberty of conscience, an open door for church separation would result, and thereby its speedy downfall, because of the multiplication of churches and the loss of taxes enforced for its support. Experience had taught the authorities that, even when all the people favored one form of religion, compulsory support had to be resorted to as a spur to individual contributious. Moreover, the best governments of which they knew had recourse to a similar system in order to maintain purity of religion and the moral welfare of the state. The authorities could not see, as did the champion of religious liberty, the opportunities of oppression that such a system afforded; nor could they feel with him the harshness of its taxation, nor the injustice of distraining dissenters' goods,--or, as he phrased it, "their lack of faith in God and in God's people to uphold religion." They certainly would not acknowledge Frothingham's charge that they seriously feared the loss of political power through the granting of soul liberty, and as a consequence the probable disintegration of the Establishment. Frothingham argues that to suffer the existence of different sects would really strengthen the authority of the colony; since,--