Toleration Act and proviso notwithstanding, no rival church was desired at this time in Connecticut. No rival creed was recognized. True, there were a few handfuls of dissenters scattered through the colony, but Congregationalism, with a strong tincture of Presbyterianism, was almost the unanimous choice of the people. It was largely outside pressure that had forced the passage of the Toleration Act, even if it accounts for itself as a loyal following of the English precedent of 1689. Although it had always been understood that the colonies should make no laws repugnant to the organic or to the common law of England, Connecticut was determined to protect as much as possible her own approved church, to keep it free from the contamination not only of infidels and heretics, but also from Church-of-England dissenters and from all others. Accordingly she placed side by side upon her statute book a Toleration Act with a proviso in favor of her Established Church, and a Church platform with a proviso for "sober dissenters" therefrom.
The circumstances which led up to and enforced the passage of the Toleration Act were many and varied. The motives were complex. Considerations religious, political, social, and economic entered into the problem which met the Connecticut legislators when they found their colony falling into disfavor with the King. This problem, resolved into its simplest terms, consisted in securing continued exemption from external interference. If Connecticut could retain the King's approval, she could prevent the intrigues of her enemies at the English court and could control the situation in the colony, whatever its aspects, secular or religious. And with reference to the latter, she would still be able to exalt her Establishment and to keep dissenters, however they might increase in kinds or numbers, in a properly subordinated position.
In order to obtain a grasp of the situation within the colony at the time when its government concluded that the passing of the Toleration Act would be politic, it is necessary to examine the status of the dissenters there. Of these there were four classes, the Quakers or Society of Friends, the Episcopalians, the Baptists, and the Rogerines. Of these, the Quakers and the Episcopalians were the first to make the Connecticut government forcibly realize that, if she interfered with what they believed to be their rights, there would probably have to be a settlement with the home government. But as the efforts of these sects to interest the English government in their behalf run parallel with and mix themselves up with other complaints against Connecticut, it will make the history of the times clearer if the early story of the Baptists and Rogerines is first told.