Before we leave this part of your Excellency's speech, we would observe, that the great design of our ancestors in leaving the kingdom of England, was to be freed from a subjection to its spiritual laws and courts, and to worship God according to the dictates of their consciences. Your Excellency, in your history observes, that their design was "to obtain for themselves and their posterity, the liberty of worshipping God in such manner as appeared to them most agreeable to the sacred scriptures." And the General Court themselves declared in 1651, that "seeing just cause to fear the persecution of the then Bishop, and high commission for not conforming to the ceremonies of those under their power, they thought it their safest course, to get to this outside of the world, out of their view and beyond their reach." But, if it had been their sense, that they were still to be subject to the supreme authority of Parliament, they must have known that their design might, and probably would be frustrated; that the Parliament, especially considering the temper of those times, might make what ecclesiastical laws they pleased, expressly to refer to them, and place them in the same circumstances with respect to religious matters, to be relieved from which, was the design of their removal; and we would add, that if your Excellency's construction of the clause in our present charter is just, another clause therein, which provides for liberty of conscience for all christians, except papists, may be rendered void by an act of Parliament made to refer to us, requiring a conformity to the rights and mode of worship in the church of England, or any other. Thus we have endeavored to show the sense of the people of this colony under both charters; and, if there have been in any late instances a submission to acts of Parliament, it has been, in our opinion, rather from inconsideration, or a reluctance at the idea of contending with the parent state, than from a conviction or acknowledgment of the Supreme Legislative authority of Parliament.