According to Hooker's _Survey_ the magistrates had the right to summon synods because they have the right to command the faculties of their subjects to deliberate concerning the good of the State.--_Survey_, pt. iv, p. 54 _et seq_. [y] "However the controversy of the Connecticut River churches was embittered by political interests, it was essentially nothing else than the fermentation of that leaven of Presbyterianism which came over with the later Puritan emigration, and which the Cambridge Platform, with all its explicitness in asserting the rules given by the Scriptures, had not effectually purged."--L. Bacon, in _Contrib. to Eccl. Hist. of Conn_., p. 17. See also H. M. Dexter, _Congr. as seen in Lit_., pp. 468-69. Of the twenty-one contemporaneous documents, by various authors, none mention baptism as in any way an issue in debate. "Dr. Trumbull probably touches the real root of the affair when he speaks of the controversy as one concerning the 'rights of the brotherhood,' and the conviction, entertained by Mr. Goodwin, that these rights had been disregarded." The question of baptism ran parallel with the question under debate, incidentally mixed itself with and outlived it to be the cause of a later quarrel that should split the church.--G. L. Walker, _First Church in Hartford_, p. 154. [z] Mr. Stone admitted: "(1) I acknowledge yt it is a liberty of ye church to declare their apprehensions by vote about ye fitness of a p'son for office upon his tryall. (2) "I look at it as a received truth yt an officer may in some cases lawfully hinder ye church from putting forth at this or yt time an act of her liberty. (3) "I acknowledge ye I hindered ye church fro declaring their apprehensions by vote (upon ye day in question) concerning Mr. Wigglesworth's fitness for office in ye church of Hartford."--_Conn. Historical Society Papers_, ii. 51-125. [aa] In the New Haven letter, she wrote, "We hear the petitioners, or others closing with them, are very confident they shall obtain great alterations both in civil government and church discipline, and that some of them have procured and hired one as their agent, to maintain in writing (as it is conceived) that parishes in England, consenting to and continuing their meetings to worship God, are true churches, and such persons coming over thither, (without holding forth any work of faith) have all right to church privileges."--_New Haven Col. Records_, iii, 186. [ab] That is, they assent to the main truths of the Gospel and promise obedience to the church they desire to join. [ac] Among Massachusetts clergymen, Thomas Allen of Charlestown, 1642, Thomas Shepherd, Cambridge, 1649, John Norton, Ipswich, 1653, held that the baptismal privileges should be widened, and John Cotton himself was slowly drifting toward this opinion.