In 1658 the General Court declared: “Whereas it is the duty of the Christian magistrate to take care the people be fed with wholesome & sound doctrine, & in this houre of temptation, ... it is therefore ordered, that henceforth no person shall ... preach to any company of people, whither in church society or not, or be ordeyned to the office of a teaching elder, where any two organnick churches, councill of state, or Generall Court shall declare theire dissatisfaction thereat, either in refference to doctrine or practize... and in case of ordination... timely notice thereof shall be given unto three or fower of the neighbouring organicke churches for theire approbation.” [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ iv. pt. 1, p. 328.] And lastly, in 1679, the building of meeting-houses was forbidden, without leave from the freemen of the town or the General Court. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 213.] But legislation has never yet controlled the action of human thought. All experience shows that every age, and every western nation, produces men whose nature it is to follow the guidance of their reason in the face of every danger. To exterminate these is the task of religious persecution, for they can be silenced only by death. Thus is a dominant priesthood brought face to face with the alternative, of surrendering its power or of killing the heretic, and those bloody deeds that cast their sombre shadow across the history of the Puritan Commonwealth cannot be seen in their true bearing unless the position of the clergy is vividly before the mind. Cromwell said that ministers were “helpers of, not lords over, God’s people,” [Footnote: Cromwell to Dundass, letter cxlviii. Carlyle’s _Cromwell_, iii. 72.] but the orthodox New Englander was the vassal of his priest. Winthrop was the ablest and the most enlightened magistrate the ecclesiastical party ever had, and he tells us that “I honoured a faithful minister in my heart and could have kissed his feet.” [Footnote: _Life and Letters of Winthrop_, i. 61.] If the governor of Massachusetts and the leader of the emigration could thus describe his moral growth,--a man of birth, education, and fortune, who had had wide experience of life, and was a lawyer by profession,--the awe and terror felt by the mass of the communicants can be imagined.