The two who had dared to take Obadiah Holmes by the hand, as, streaming with blood, he left the stake, were the silent witnesses of a great body of liberal opinion. While the ministers and magistrates were, of course, supported everywhere by very considerable numbers among the narrower and more zealous members of the churches, many causes were at work to reduce their proportion in relation to the community at large. Not only had the body of non-church members always constituted the great majority of the population, but even among the members themselves a new generation was growing up, which had known nothing of the spiritual experiences in England, and the struggle there against the established Church. Such a struggle, as the Massachusetts authorities were soon to find in the case of the Quakers, serves to intensify the zeal of the innovators. But in Massachusetts, the former innovators had become transformed into thoroughly orthodox members of a state church, supported by the arm of the civil power, enjoying all the comfortable, safe, and deadening results of an “establishment.” Their faith being no longer tried by opposition, the inevitable consequence was a decline in interest and in zeal. This was recognized by the ministers, and the rather curious situation resulted, in which we find them adopting an apparently more liberal attitude than the lay members themselves toward the question of admission to membership. If, however, in the ministerial convention of 1657 and the synod of 1662, the clergy were rather the more anxious of the two to effect a compromise on that point,[663] the cause is not far to seek. Their power and influence—and it must always be remembered that they thought they were using both for the work of the Lord—were dependent upon the maintenance of the numbers of the Church, quite as much as upon that of strict conformity and discipline. The theocracy was, in fact, in very unstable equilibrium, and was equally in danger from an increase in toleration or from a decrease in church-membership. It was the preservation of their influence, from high motives as well as from low, which was leading the clergy on the path to the “Half-Way Covenant”; and the fact that they felt the need of lowering the requirements for admission to the church is the strongest sort of evidence as to the extent to which liberal opinion had developed among the mass of laymen. Footnote 663: Walker, _Creeds_, pp. 244 _ff._ If, however, the clergy were to make the attempt, on the one hand, to prevent the numbers of their followers from declining, by no longer requiring them to have passed through the experience of conversion, on the other, they were about to engage in the most determined effort yet made to enforce conformity in matters of doctrine.