They are the phenomena that regularly attend a certain stage of human development,--the absorption of power by an aristocracy. The clergy’s rule was rigid, and met with resistance, which was crushed with an iron hand. Was it defection from their own ranks, the deserters met the fate of Wheelwright, of Williams, of Cotton, or of Hubbert; were politicians contumacious, they were defeated or exiled, like Vane, or Aspinwall, or Coddington; were citizens discontented, they were coerced like Maverick and Childe. The process had been uninterrupted alike in church and state. The congregations, which in theory should have included all the inhabitants of the towns, had shrunk until they contained only a third or a quarter of the people; while the churches themselves, which were supposed to be independent of external interference and to regulate their affairs by the will of the majority, had become little more than the chattels of the priests, and subject to the control of the magistrates who were their representatives. This system has generally prevailed; in like manner the Inquisition made use of the secular arm. The condition of ecclesiastical affairs is thus described by the highest living authority on Congregationalism:-- “Our fathers laid it down--and with perfect truth--that the will of Christ, and not the will of the major or minor part of a church, ought to govern that church. But somebody must interpret that will. And they quietly assumed that Christ would reveal his will to the elders, but would not reveal it to the church-members; so that when there arose a difference of opinion as to what the Master’s will might be touching any particular matter, the judgment of the elders, rather than the judgment even of a majority of the membership, must be taken as conclusive. To all intents and purposes, then, this was precisely the aristocracy which they affirmed that it was not. For the elders were to order business in the assurance that every truly humble and sincere member would consent thereto. If any did not consent, and after patient debate remained of another judgment, he was ‘partial’ and ‘factious,’ and continuing ‘obstinate,’ he was ‘admonished’ and his vote ‘nullified;’ so that the elders could have their way in the end by merely adding the insult of the apparent but illusive offer of cooperation to the injury of their absolute control. As Samuel Stone of Hartford no more tersely than truly put it, this kind of Congregationalism was simply a ‘speaking Aristocracy in the face of a silent Democracy.’” [Footnote: _Early New England Congregationalism, as seen in its Literature_, p. 429. Dr. Dexter.]