attending the preaching of one Clark, a baptist, from Rhode Island, who had come to propagate his tenets in Massachusetts. The constable who took them into custody, carried them to church, as a more proper place of Christian worship, where Clark put on his hat the moment that the minister began to pray. Clark, Holmes, and another, were sentenced to pay small fines, or be flogged; and thirty lashes were actually inflicted on Holmes, who resolutely persisted in choosing a punishment that would enable him to show with what constancy he could suffer for what he believed to be the truth. A law was at the same time passed, subjecting to banishment from the colony every person who should openly condemn or oppose the baptism of infants, who should attempt to seduce others from the use or approbation thereof, or purposely depart from the congregation when that rite was administered."*

About the same time as the baptists, the quakers also attempted to introduce themselves into the colony.

"It was in the month of July, 1566, that two females, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, arrived in New England from Barbados; and not long after, nine more individuals of the same tenets came from England. They were very speedily brought before the court of assistants, where they gave what were deemed very contemptuous replies to the interrogatories which they were required to answer; and the court did not hesitate to commit them to prison. The court ultimately passed sentence of banishment against them all; and required the captain who brought them from England to find sureties to a heavy amount, that he would carry them out of the colony, detaining them in prison till the vessel was ready to sail.

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Up to this period there had been no special law for the punishment of quakers, but they had been proceeded against under the general law respecting heretics. At the next

* Grahame's Rise and Progress of the United States, vol. i. pp. 343, 346.

sessions of the general court, an act passed, laying a penalty of one hundred pounds upon the master of any vessel who should bring a known quaker into any part of the colony, and requiring him to give security to carry him back again; enacting, also, that the quaker should be immediately sent to the house of correction, receive twenty stripes, and afterwards be kept to hard labour till transportation. They also laid a penalty of five pounds for importing, and the like for dispersing, quakers' books, and severe penalties for defending their heretical opinions. The next year an additional law was made, by which all persons were subjected to the penalty of forty shillings for every hour's entertainment given to any known quaker: after the first conviction, if a man, he was to lose one ear, and a second time, the other; a woman, each time to be severely whipped; and the third time, man or woman, to have their tongues bored through with a red-hot iron; and every quaker who should become such in the colony to be subjected to the like punishment. In May, 1658, a penalty of ten shillings was laid on every person present at a quakers' meeting, and five pounds upon every one speaking at such meeting. Notwithstanding all this severity, the number of quakers, as might well have been expected, increasing rather than diminishing, in October a further law was made, for punishing with death all quakers who should return into the jurisdiction after banishment." Upon three persons was this last atrocious sentence ultimately executed. As this act of barbarity excited considerable discontent, the magistrates put forth a public vindication of their conduct: a curious document, which we think it may be useful to introduce into our narrative, not merely as authenticating the fact beyond question, but also as showing the spirit in which the persecuting tendency of state-churchism was defended: :

"A Declaration of the General Court of Massachusetts, holden at Boston, October 18, 1659, and printed by their order. "Although the justice of our proceedings against William

* Hinton's History of the United States, vol. i. pp. 80, 81.

Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, and Mary Dyer, supported by the authority of this court, the laws of the country, and the law of God, may rather persuade us to expect encouragement and commendation from all prudent and pious men, than convince us of any necessity to apologise for the same; yet, forasmuch as men of weaker parts, out of pity and commiseration (a commendable and Christian virtue, yet easily abused, and susceptible of sinister and dangerous impressions), for want of full information, may be less satisfied, and men of perverser principles may take occasion hereby to calumniate us, and render us as bloody persecutors, to satisfy the one and stop the mouths of the other, we thought it requisite to declare : That, about three years since, divers persons, professing themselves quakers (of whose pernicious opinions and practices we had received intelligence from good hands, both from Barbados and England), arrived at Boston, whose persons were only secured to be sent away by the first opportunity, without censure or punishment, although their professed tenets, and turbulent and contemptuous behaviour to authority, would have justified a severer animadversion ; yet the prudence of this court was exercised only in making provision to secure the peace and order here established against their attempts, whose design (we were well assured of by our own experience, as well as by the example of their predecessors in Munster,) was to undermine and ruin the same. And, accordingly, a law was made and published, prohibiting all masters of ships to bring any quakers into this jurisdiction, and themselves from coming in, on penalty of the house of correction, till they could be sent away. Notwithstanding which, by a back door they found entrance; and the penalty inflicted upon themselves proving insufficient to restrain their impudent and insolent obtrusions, was increased by the loss of the ears of those who offended the second time; which also being too weak a defence against their impetuous fanatic fury, necessitated us to endeavour our security; and, upon serious consider

ation, after the former experiment, by their incessant assaults, a law was made, that such persons should be banished, on pain of death, according to the example of England, in their provision against Jesuits, which sentence being regularly pronounced at the last court of assistants against the parties above-named, and they either returning or continuing presumptuously in this jurisdiction, after the time limited, were apprehended, and, owning themselves to be the persons banished, were sentenced by the court to death, according to the law aforesaid, which hath been executed upon two of them. Mary Dyer, upon the petition of her son, and the mercy and clemency of this court, had liberty to depart within two days, which she hath accepted of. The consideration of our gradual proceedings will vindicate us from the clamorous accusations of severity; our own just and necessary defence calling upon us (other means failing) to offer the point which these persons have violently and wilfully rushed upon, and thereby become felones de se, which might have been prevented, and the sovereign law, salus populi, been preserved. Our former proceedings, as well as the sparing of Mary Dyer, upon an inconsiderable intercession, will manifestly evince we desire their lives, absent, rather than their death, present.'

Such was the natural and characteristic working of the system which had been adopted. "Thus," says an American historian, "the creation of a national and uncompromising church led the congregationalists of Massachusetts to the indulgence of the passions which had disgraced their English persecutors, and Laud was justified by the men whom he had wronged."+

2. The influence of the colonial church establishments was palpably and lamentably adverse to the interests of religion itself.

Hubbard's History of New England, pp. 572, 573. Mary Dyer afterwards returned, and was executed.

+ Bancroft's History of the United States, pp. 450, 451.

In Virginia and the neighbouring colonies, the endowment of episcopacy recoiled upon the favoured church in a strong, but very natural, feeling of dislike, amounting even to antipathy. Members of other churches, or of none, felt galled at the levying of taxes for the support of a dominant sect, and learned hostility to a body to which they might otherwise have been at least indifferent, if not friendly. The episcopal church reaped a copious harvest of injury from the seeds of animosity thus sown.

And the interest of religion suffered as greatly as the interest of the church. "To coerce men," says an American writer," into the outward exercise of religious acts by penal laws, is indeed possible; but to make them love the religion which is thus enforced, or those who enforce it, is beyond the reach of human power. There is an inherent principle of resistance to oppression in the very constitution of most men, which disposes them to rebel against the arbitrary exercise of violence, seeking to give direction to opinions."* And thus religion itself was at a disadvantage.

Nor was this all. In Virginia and Maryland, the presentation to ecclesiastical benefices gave occasion to violent and almost incessant disputes between the governors and the parish vestries; while both vestries and governors alike were careless of the character of the men whom they thrust into the pastoral office. These colonies, indeed, were most infelicitously supplied with episcopal ministers. This care devolved upon the successive bishops of London, some of whom took a deep interest in the colonial church, and did what they might to provide the parishes with godly and zealous men. Many of a very different class, however, found their way there. So gross were the immoralities of the clergy at large, that in 1651 the General Assembly found it necessary to interfere; and they enacted, that Mynisters shall not give themselves to excesse in drink

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* Hawks's History of the Episcopal Church in Virginia, p. 49.