But for the Separatists to obtain exemption from ecclesiastical taxes for the benefit of the Establishment required seven more years of argument and appeal. During the time, they and the Baptists continued to increase in favor. The Separatist, Isaac Holly, preached and printed a sermon upholding the Boston tea-party. The Baptists were so patriotic as to later win from Washington his "I recollect with satisfaction that the religious society of which you are members have been throughout America uniformly and almost unanimously the firm friends of civil liberty, and the persevering promoters of our glorious revolution." [155] In 1774, good-will was shown to the Suffield Baptists by a favorable answer to their memorial to be relieved from illegal fines. In behalf of these Baptists, Governor Trumbull frequently exerted his influence. He also wrote to those of New Roxbury, who were in distress as to whether they had complied with the law, assuring them that the act of 1770 had done away with the older requirement of a special application to the General Assembly for permission to unite in church estate. [156] Notwithstanding such favor, there was still so much injustice that the Baptists of Stamford wrote, during the rapid increase of the sect through the local revivals of 1771-74, that the emigration from Connecticut of Baptists was because "the maxims of the land do not well suit the genius of our Order, and beside, the country is so fully settled, as population increases, the surplusage must go abroad for settlements." Among the Baptists, the most vigorous champion for mutual toleration and for liberty of conscience was Isaac Backus, "the father of American Baptists," and their first historian. In _An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty_, Boston, 1773, after calling attention to the lack of state provision in Massachusetts as well as in Connecticut for ecclesiastical prisoners,[157] he thus defines the limits of spiritual and temporal power:-- And it appears to us that the true difference and exact limits between ecclesiastical and civil government is this. That the church is armed with _light and truth_, to pull down the strongholds of iniquity and to gain souls to Christ and into his church to be governed by his rules therein; and again to exclude such from their communion who will not be so governed; while the state is armed with _the sword to guard the peace and to punish those who violate the same_. Where they have been confounded together no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued.