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ENTERED, according to an Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
WEBB, GILL & LEVERING, in the Clerk's Office of the District
Court of the United States for the District of Kentucky.

ENTERED, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1866,
BY JOHN MURPHY,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Maryland.

ENTERED, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1894,
BY JOHN MURPHY & CO.,

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

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XX. OUR COLONIAL BLUE LAWS *

ARTICLE II.

-HERETICS, QUAKERS, AND WITCHES.

Two characteristics of the Puritans-Scenting out heresy and witchcraft-Preaching and practice— Consistency - Which colony deserves the palm-Roger Williams-His principles and banishmentLaws against Quakers-How executed-A strong protest-How answered-Persecution avowed and proved from the Bible-Witchcraft in New England-Why so prevalent there-Exposition of Cotton Mather-Shrewdness of the witches-How they were exterminated-" Eight firebrands of hell "— Hanging first, and trying afterwards-Humorous passage from Irving.

FOR two things were the good pilgrim fathers especially remarkable : their hatred of heresy, and their mortal aversion to witches. Wo to the bold man, who, during the good old days of Puritanism in New England dared to think for himself in matters of religion; if, while enjoying this privilege, he unfortunately differed in opinion from the majority then wielding power. Wo to him if he chanced not to be orthodox for the time being; that is, not so rigidly Calvinistic as his brethren, He was sure to become the victim of a most relentless persecution; and, if he escaped with sound ears, or an unbored tongue, or even with his life, he might deem himself a very lucky man. And as to the luckless wizard, who, at that enlightened period, dared wave his mystic wand of incantation; or the haggard old witch, who, toothless and lustreless, and mounted on her broom-stick, ventured to perform her stated aerial evolutions, "to sweep the cobwebs from the sky;"- they were placed entirely without the pale of society; they were outlawed, and no more mercy was shown them than to the very imps of Satan, who, it was devoutly believed, bodily inhabited their persons!

The pilgrim fathers were certainly excellent heresy-hunters. They could detect the lurking infection in a twinkling. They could discover beams in the eyes of their neighbors, in which others, less keen-sighted,

*I. The Blue Laws of New Haven Colony, usually called the Blue Laws of Connecticut; Quaker Laws of Plymouth and Massachusetts; Blue Laws of New York, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. First Record of Connecticut; interesting extracts from Connecticut Records; cases of Salem witchcraft; charges and banishment of Rev. Roger Williams, &c., and other interesting and instructive antiquities. Compiled by an Antiquarian. Hartford Printed by Case, Tiffany & Co. 1838. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 336.

II. The Code of 1656; being a compilation of the earliest Laws and Orders of the General Court of Connecticut: also, the Constitution, or civil compact entered into and adopted by the towns of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, in 1638–9. To which are added some extracts from the laws and judicial proceedings of the New Haven Colony, commonly called Blue Laws. Hartford: Judd, Loomis & Co. 1836. 1 vol. 16mo., pp. 19.

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could scarcely have perceived motes. And as for withcraft, they could scent it from afar, probably in consequence of the strong odor of brimstone which it usually gave out; and they could tell, to a nicety, its exact symptoms and diagnosis, with as much facility and certainty, as the physician can tell the disease of his patient, by feeling his pulse and examining his tongue. But, unlike the skillful physician, and like the empiric, they had but one remedy for the cure of the malady; a remedy, however, at once very simple and very efficacious, -the halter. This medicine was never known to fail in effectually subduing the most obstinate case of witchcraft!

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It would, indeed, appear that the Puritans who peopled New England should have learned some mercy and toleration, in the severe school of suffering in which they had been trained up in Protestant England. It would seem that, having felt the smart of the rod of persecution on their own shoulders, they should have been very slow in applying it to the shoulders of others. Having emigrated to a new world for the enjoyment of the inestimable blessings of religious liberty; having braved, for this high and noble motive, the unknown perils of a boundless ocean, and the untried hardships and dangers of a frightful wilderness in a new world; they were surely not going to re-assert the very same intolerant principle, to which they had been indebted for all their past trials and sufferings. They were surely not going to set up again, in a virgin hemisphere yet unstained with the blood of the martyr, that very Moloch which had consumed their fathers, and had threatened themselves with a fiery death. If they were really sincere and consistent in their principles, they would certainly have done for ever with all kinds of persecution, no matter what might be the pretext for it; and they would have given to the breeze the glorious banner of universal civil and religious liberty.

But, alas for the weakness and inconsistency of poor human nature! These, our reasonable anticipations, are all doomed to utter disappointment, and we find the Puritans, who, in England and in Holland, were the loudest champions of the fullest liberty of conscience, become themselves, immediately after their arrival in America, the most stern and relentless persecutors! We find them setting up on our continent that very principle of church and state in which all their wrongs had originated, and lording it over the consciences of their fellow-men, with as high a hand as ever the haughty church of England had lorded it over themselves! Were they sincere, were they honest in all this? Or were they merely weak and inconsistent? Were they hypocrites, or were they mere blind fanatics? We venture not to decide. But of one thing we are quite certain ;—they were not the immaculate saints they are usually represented to have been. The inimitable Washington Irving thus humorously hits off their canting inconsistency and hypocrisy in the matter of persecution :

"Having served a regular apprenticeship in the school of persecution, it behoved them to show that they had become proficients in the art. They accordingly employed their leisure hours in banishing, scourging, or

hanging divers heretical Papists, Quakers, and Anabaptists, for daring to abuse the liberty of conscience, which they now clearly proved to imply nothing more than that every man should think as he pleased in matters of religion, provided he thought right, for otherwise it would be giving a latitude to damnable heresies. Now as they (the majority) were perfectly convinced that they alone thought right, it consequently followed that whoever thought differently from them thought wrong, and whoever thought wrong, and obstinately persisted in not being convinced and converted, was a flagrant violator of the inestimable liberty of conscience, and a corrupt and infectious member of the body politic, and deserved to be lopped off and cast into the fire."'

In the matter of the Blue Laws proper, we must award the palm of excellence to Connecticut; but in the matter of scourging, branding, banishing, or hanging heretics and witches, we must certainly assign the precedency to Massachusetts. Whether it was, that there were more heretics and witches in the latter colony, or that the hardy pioneers of the former had become more civilized, and their hearts softer in consequence of their greater proximity to the Indians, certain it is that the adventurous "moss troopers," who inhabited the plantations on the Connecticut river, are not recorded to have actually hung any witches or heretics; though they had severe laws against both, and though they more than once put both in bodily terror. On the contrary, the unadulterated and unmitigated Puritans of Massachusetts were not satisfied with mere laws on paper, or with mere empty threats; they went boldly to work to rid the country, -given by the Lord "as an inheritance to his saints," —of all the pests, which tainted its moral and religious atmosphere by their poisonous breath. No one could be either a heretic or a witch in Massachusetts, and live. The colony was too holy by far for any such wretches, and they must either die the death, or seek from the savage of the unexplored wilderness that mercy, which they sought in vain from their Christian brethren! So blind and unfeeling is bigotry!

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It was thus that the famous Roger Williams was driven forth, to say nothing of the treatment of Richard Waterman, of Ann Hutchinson, and of a number of other "pestilent heretics" of Massachusetts. And what were the offenses which drew down upon Roger Williams the terrible chastisement, of being driven out into the wilderness in the dead of winter, there to find shelter from the savages, or to perish of hunger and cold? The following are the weighty charges preferred against him in the General Court, held July 8th, 1635:

That he held these "dangerous opinions: 1. That the magistrate ought not to punish the breach of the first table, otherwise than in such cases as did disturb the civil peace. 2. That he ought not to tender an oath to an unregenerate man. 3. That a man ought not to pray with

1 History of New York. Irving's works, in two volumes, 8vo. Philadelphia, 1840. Vol. i, p. 76. 8 Sentence of banishment was passed on him in October, 1685; and the court mercifully allowed him to remain in the colony till the following spring, on condition of his not disseminating his doctrines; yet it became necessary for Williams to fly in the following January, as he learned that his accusers were about sending him to England for trial and punishment..

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such, though wife, children, &c. 4. That a man ought not to give thank after sacrament, nor after meals."'

The first article was evidently the main ground of difficulty. The Puritans asserted, and Roger Williams denied, that the civil magistrate had any right to punish mere religious delinquencies, or "breaches of the first table" of the commandments, embracing the duties we owe to God, unless such delinquencies should disturb "the civil peace." The Paritans asserted, and Roger Williams protested against, the principle of a union of church and state. The Puritans asserted the right in the state to enforce religious conformity; Roger Williams protested against that right. The Puritans triumphed, and so did Roger Williams; they drove him out, and he, when driven out, became the founder of a new colony, which he moulded according to his own liberal principles.

We subjoin the sentence of banishment pronounced against him, as a curious specimen of colonial jurisprudence :

"Whereas Mr. Roger Williams, one of the elders of the church of Salem, hath broached and divulged divers new and dangerous opinions against the authority of magistrates, as also written letters of defamation both of magistrates and churches here, and that before any conviction, and yet maintaineth the same without retraction; it is therefore ordered that the said Mr. Williams shall depart out of this jurisdiction within six weeks now next ensuing, which, if he neglects to perform, it shall be lawful for the governor and two of the magistrates to send him to some place out of this jurisdiction, not to return any more without license from the court."

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This and many similar sentences of banishment against heretics, found on the old Massachusetts Records, exhibit the stern and relentless spirit of the Puritans; a spirit worthy of all reprobation, and reproved in the following fine passage of the Protestant divine, Jortin, whom our author quotes, and of whose sentiments we heartily approve :

"To banish, imprison, starve, hang, and burn men for their religion, is not the gospel of Christ, but the gospel of the devil. Where persecution begins, Christianity ends, and if the name of it remains, the spirit is Christ never used anything like force or violence, except once, gone. and that was to drive men out of the temple, and not to drive them in."

But the Quakers, the poor, harmless, and inoffensive Quakers,— were those who smarted most under the lash of puritanical intolerance:

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The Quakers were whipped, branded, had their ears cut off, their tongues bored with hot irons, and were banished, upon the pain of death in case of their return, and actually executed upon the gallows."

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Yet they had asked for no special privilege; they had merely sought the boon of religious toleration. They could not find this privilege in England; and, like the Puritans themselves, they had emigrated to the new world with the fondly cherished hope that, here at least, they might enjoy freedom of conscience. But sadly were they mistaken. The

1 Record of the court. Blue Laws of Massachusetts. p. 65.

2 Massachusetts Records.

October 1635

Blue Laws &c., p. 67.

3 Blue Laws, etc., p 68, note.

4 Ibid. Preface, D. vi.

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