The movement was felt by the colonial statesmen to be dangerously akin to other British encroachments on colonial rights.

The Massachusetts Assembly instructed its agent in London strenuously to oppose it.

In Virginia, the Episcopalian clergy themselves at first refused to concur in the petition for bishops; and when at last the concurrence was voted, it was in the face of a formal protest of four of the clergy, for which they received a vote of thanks from the House of Burgesses.[207:1] The alliance thus occasioned between the national synod of the Presbyterian Church and the Congregationalist clergy of the little colony of Connecticut seems like a disproportioned one.

And so it was indeed; for the Connecticut General Association was by far the larger and stronger body of the two.

By and by the disproportion was inverted, and the alliance continued, with notable results.
FOOTNOTES: [182:1] See G.P.Fisher, "History of Christian Doctrine," pp.