Taken by themselves, the fifteen articles were stringent enough to satisfy the most ardent High Churchmen among the Congregationalists of that day; taken, however, in connection with the London document previously adopted, and by the spirit of which--apparently--they were always to be construed, their stringency became matter of differing judgment, so that what on the whole was their intent has never been settled to this day. [63] In accordance with the system of government outlined in the Platform, the churches of the colony were at once formed into five Associations and five Consociations, one each in New Haven, New London, and Fairfield counties, and two in Hartford. In later years, new bodies were organized, as the other four Connecticut counties were set off from these original ones. The churches of the New Haven county Consociation, long cleaving to the purest Congregationalism, refused to adopt the Platform until they had recorded their liberal construction of it. Fairfield went to the other extreme, and put on record their acceptance of the Consociations as church courts. Hartford and New London accepted the Platform as a whole, as it came from the synod, leaving to time the decision as to its loose or strict construction. A legislative act was necessary to make the Platform the legal constitution of the Congregational Establishment. Such an act immediately followed the presentation of the report by the committee, whom the Saybrook convention, in accordance with the Court's previous command, sent to the Assembly. Having examined the Platform, the Legislature declared its strong approval of such a happy agreement, and in October, 1708, enacted that-- all the Churches within this government that are, and shall be thus united in doctrine, worship and discipline, be, and for the future shall be, owned and acknowledged, established by law: Provided always that nothing herein shall be intended or construed to hinder or prevent any society or church that is or shall be allowed by the laws of this government, who soberly differ or dissent from the united churches hereby established, from exercising worship and discipline in their own way, and according to their conscience. [64] The purport of this proviso was to safeguard churches which had been approved according to the standards formerly set up by the Court, and also to prevent the Act of Establishment from seeming to contradict a "Toleration Act for sober dissenters" from the colony church that had been passed at the preceding May session. Out of this proviso grew a misunderstanding in the Norwich church, which happens also to furnish a typical illustration of the difficulties sometimes encountered in trying to collect a minister's salary.