72 CENTENNIAL HISTORY
ed in 1770. Almost from the first, severe penalties were inflicted on "profanely behaved" persons, who lingered "without doors at the meeting-house." Any such person was first "admonished" by the constables ; on a second offense he was "set in the stocks," and if his moral sense was still perverted he was summoned before the courts. It was decreed that if any man should interrupt the preacher, or falsely charge him with error "in the open face of the church," or otherwise make God's ways contemptible and ridiculous, he should be reproved openly by the magistrates at some lecture, and bound to good behavior, and for a second such offense should either pay five pounds to the public treasure, "or stand two hours openly upon a block or stool four foot high, upon a lecture day, with a paper fixed on his breast written with capital letters, 'An open and obstinate contemner of God's holy ordinances.'" The feeling of reverence of which I have spoken extended also to the ministry in those days. The clerical prefix "Reverend," as the title of an individual minister, does not occur in the colonial records of Connecticut until about 1670, although the general term "reverend elders" is found much earlier. But the popular estimate of ministers was as high as the most dignified and exacting of them could wish it to be. And there was reason why it should be high. Says Hollister in his "History," "The most thoroughly patrician body of men in Connecticut were the clergy, who exercised an almost unlimited authority over the inhabitants. I do not believe there ever was an aristocracy more deserving of respect, as well from the high tone of its morality as for the stateliness and general decorum that distinguished its members." "Most of these clergymen were gentlemen of uncommon powers of mind, of elegant manners, and thoroughbred scholars in an age when scholars were rare. … At no time since that day has there been such a class of educated gentlemen in New England as were the imigrant [i.e., immigrant] pastors of Connecticut." Elliott, in his "New England History," does not strike so high a note of eulogy, but he