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Updated: June 9, 2025
These laws were enforced one Sunday in 1725 against a company of Rogerines who were going quietly on their way through Norwich to attend services in Lebanon. The outburst of religious fervor spent itself in two or three years.
Thus, while maintaining that there should be no public worship, Rogers, after his separation from the Seventh-day Baptists, perversely chose Sunday as the day most convenient for the Rogerines to hold their meetings. They not only exhorted and testified in the streets, but forced their way into the churches, pestering the ministers to argue disputed points.
The Rogerines determined to break up the observance of the Puritan Sabbath. Immediately, an "Act for the Better Detecting and more effectual Punishment of Prophaneness and Immorality" was passed. It was especially directed against the Rogerines.
Rogers refused upon the ground that he had a right to use the colony churches for his preaching, since he and his people were obliged to contribute to their maintenance. This was logical, but not acceptable to the Connecticut magistrates, who continued to cool the enthusiasm of the Rogerines by occasional heavy penalties, and to look upon them as a set of fanatics, doomed to self-extinction.
As the years went on and their little sect were permitted to indulge their peculiar notions, and the props of the State were not weakened nor the purity of religion vitally assailed, the Rogerines contributed their mite towards convincing mankind, and the Connecticut people in particular, that brethren of different creeds and religious practices might live together in security and harmony without danger to the civil peace.
When he pushed his personal opinions too far, the Newport church attempted to discipline both him and his following, but, this attempt failing, the Rogerines became henceforth a distinct sect.
Governor Talcott did not believe in strong repressive measures, and it was soon conceded that the ignoring of their eccentricities, if kept within reasonable bounds, was the most efficient way to discourage the Rogerines. Summarizing the influence of this sect, we find that they contributed nothing definite to the slow development of religious toleration in Connecticut.
For this reason, though they were weak in numbers and often an exasperating set of fanatics, they deserve a hearing. Their persecution began about 1677, while these people were chiefly resident in New London and the Seventh-day men were mostly members of the Rogers family. Later, the Rogerines spread to Norwich and Lebanon and their immediate vicinity.
While the Episcopalians were agitating for a larger liberty than that granted by the Toleration Act, the other dissenters, Rogerines, Quakers, and Baptists, were not idle. The efforts of the Rogerines were marked more by violence than by success. They had become less fanatic, and persecution had died away during the first ten years following the passage of the Toleration Act.
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.
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