ORANGE CONG. CHURCH 75
ple, when the sound of drum or stroke of bell called them to the meeting-house, went out of their homes serious, quiet and clean." It was quite in keeping with the whole spirit and method of the colonists that a rigid observance of the Sabbath should be enforced by pains and penalties. They believed that the day, in all its Mosaic strictness, was of divine authority ; and this belief was incorporated in their legislation. The whole people were required by statute "carefully to apply themselves to the duties of religion and piety publicly and privately," and to abstain from servile labor. They were required to go to meeting, and were not allowed to go anywhere else, the fine for transgressing the law being, in each case, five shillings. "Single persons being boarders or sojourners, and young persons under the government of parents or masters," were not allowed to meet together in company in the street or elsewhere. It was made the duty of constables and grand jurors to walk the streets and duly search all suspected places, and to bring the violators of this law to justice. "These," says Dr. Henry Bronson, in his History of Waterbury, "are the statutes which our fathers lived under, till after the Revolution, and which assisted in moulding their characters and opinions." In this same History of Waterbury (pp. 318, 319), an interesting illustration is afforded of what was considered "servile labor" by the case of Isaac Bronson in 1737. From Isaac Bronson's own account it appears that he had a sister, who had lived at his house, about four miles out of town ; that on account of severe illness she went home to her mother and stayed with her ; but that, having recovered, and desiring to return to her brother's, she asked him, on Sunday afternoon, after meeting, to let her ride home behind him ; and that he consented to do so. For this act-taking his sister home with him on the Sabbath, instead of coming for her on Monday, or waiting until after sunset-he was arraigned before Justice Timothy Hopkins, convicted, and fined five shillings and costs. Dissatisfied with the decision, and considering himself "wholly innocent of the crime" of Sabbath-breaking, Bron[-]