Beloved Friend,
These lines are to acquaint you, that five of our committee, who are appointed to care for, and consult the general good of the Baptist churches in this Country, especially as to their union and their liberties, met with me at Boston, on May the 5^th 1773, when we received accounts that several of our Baptist friends at Mendon, have lately had their goods forceably taken from them for ministerial rates, and that three more of them at Clemsford, (two of which, was members of the Baptist church there,) were seized for the same cause last winter, and carried prisoners to Concord goal: So that liberty of conscience, the greatest and most important article of all liberty, is evidently not allowed as it ought to be in this country, and that even by the very men who are now making loud complaints of encroachments upon their own liberties; and as it appears clear to us that the root of these difficulties, and that which has done amazing mischief in our land, is civil rulers assuming a power to make any laws to govern ecclesiastical affairs, or to use any force to support ministers: Therefore these are to desire you to consider, whether it is not our duty to strike so directly at the root, as to refuse any conformity to their laws about such affairs, even so much as to give any certificates to their assessors; and we are fully persuaded that if we were fully united to bear our part of what others of our friends might, for a little while, suffer on this account, a less sum that has already been expended to lawyers and courts on such accounts, would carry us through the tryal; and if we may be enabled to treat our oppressors with a Christian temper, would make straining upon others under a pretense of supporting religion, appear so odious, that they could not get along with it. We desire you would consider of these matters, and send in your mind to the assembly of our churches, which is to meet at Medfield, on the seventh of September next; when it will be proposed to have these matters, both as to principle and facts, as clearly stated as we can, and to see if all our churches cannot agree upon publishing our joint testimony for true liberty, and against the oppressions of the present day.

From yours in Gospel Bonds,
Isaac Backus, agent by advice of the committee

P.S. Our charter gives no more power for other denominations to tax the Baptist, than it does the Baptist to tax others; and in the town of Boston, they have all along had this equality; so that there has not been any occasion for one society to give certificates to another there; and why may not the country enjoy the same liberty?