: "Whether she owned the things there written and read unto her?" and she owning them very boldly, I shall find them causing her, and the master of the ship, and the Jesuit, to withdraw; which they doing, and being called in again, I shall find them tendering to her a paper to sign, to this effect, "Not to come on shore again at that place, or discourse with any of that nation;" which she refusing, or to promise any such thing, they dismissed her and the master of the ship, after they had been there the space of two hours: the said great officers of state taking them into the coach again, conducting them to the river's side, and giving a charge to a waterman to convey them to the ship again, and defraying the charge, to the praise of their moderation, and to your confusion. Being thus clear of these other parts of the world, shall I cross the Main again to America, and in an untrodden path by any English hitherto, as hath been heard of, seek out death, and make my way some miles on foot from Virginia to New England, through uncouth passages, vast wildernesses, and uninhabited countries for near two hundred miles together, and there finish your account? There I shall find Thomas Thirstone, one of those whom you so barbarously used, and Josiah Cole, of Winterburne, near Bristol, his companion, and Thomas Chapman, of Virginia, traversing the said ground from Maryland to the Susquehannas, the most warlike of those Indians, and receiving from them the most courteous entertainment, not only in lodging and provisions, such as they had, but some of them accompanying them, even to the Dutch Plantation close by you; and so tender were they over them, that they not only sought out provisions, and killed such deer as they could come at for them, but spared of their own provisions to the said Thomas Thirstone on the way, when he was sick. After which, being come to another Nation of the Indians, and Thomas Thirstone being sick amongst them many days, and that near unto death, I shall find the Indians very friendly to them all, and taking what care they could of him in all things; and one of the Susquehannas, whom the rest left behind them, when Thomas Thirstone lay so long sick, conducted them to the Dutch Plantation after ten weeks from their first setting out. And so came to you, to bear their testimony against a stiff-necked people, as the Lord had said to the said Thomas, when he lay so weak and desired death, viz., "I who have brought thee hither by My mighty arm, will carry thee through to witness for Me against a stiff-necked people in New England;" and some of the Susquehanna Indians came to visit him, when they heard he was in prison afterwards in Virginia, thus finishing your account, which will be sore in the day of the Lord, which is even coming upon you, who will cut you off, and give you your portion with hypocrites and sinners; and such will be His hand upon you, and so manifest His judgments, because of what you have done to His people, that as to what He shall do therein, men shall glorify God, and say:Righteous art Thou, O Lord; "just and true are Thy ways, thou King of saints! Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? for Thy judgments are made manifest?"Rev. 3, 4. And so after a long descent and travel in the deep, and an abiding there; after a diligent inquisition into all religions, Calvinists, Lutherans, Papists, so called, Protestants, Jews, and Mahometans; after a narrow search among nations, kindred, tongues and people, Swedes, Danes, Germans, Dutch, French, Italians, Jews, Turks, Portuguese, and Indians, whereunto shall I liken you, unto what compare you, from whence fetch your judgment, and from what nation condemn you? After a long course, from the Southwest to the Northwest, from the Northwest to the East, and from the East back to the Southwest again, of what I have found, this is the sum, -That, "when they were but a few men in number, yea, very few, and strangers in [those lands]; when they went from one nation to another, from one kingdom to another people; [(the Lord) suffered no man to do them wrong; yea, He reproved kings for their sakes; saying, Touch not Mine anointed, and do My prophets no harm."-Psa. cv. 12-15. But as for you, ye men of New England, ye rulers of Boston, of Plymouth Patent, of New Haven, ye shame of men, ye refuse of mankind, higher than the highest in the profession of godliness, and lower than the lowest in the power thereof,- far beneath the worst of men, whom the Lord hath tried in this, His day, by His messengers; ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, what have ye done to the innocent, and with what despite, to those whom He hath sent to gather you, and to turn you unto God? But, to proceed : What are the opinions and practices of those people, which ye call pernicious, and of which you say, "Ye received intelligence from good hands from Barbadoes and England?" What is your intelligence, and from whom did you receive it, seeing that, upon this, you have grounded all your illegal and barbarous proceedings against them? What are their tenets, which ye call professed? And what is it that they did profess? What their behaviour to authority, which ye term turbulent and contemptuous, and say, "It would have justified a severer animadversion?" What were the attempts which, ye say, they made against "the peace and order established among you," in making provision to secure which, ye say, "the prudence of your court was only exercised?" And how came ye to, or could ye, be well assured, by your own experience, who had none, nor did ye ever see them before, or any of those people, or the example of those of Munster, whom ye call their predecessors, that their "design was to undermine and ruin the same?" Now, in these things ye ought to have been f particular, as I have said, if ye meant anything that might satisfy the understandings of men or clear your guilt; and not to go and put men to death, and cruelly exercise them, as a court of justice, and then apologize for what ye have done, and so submit it to the judgment of others, which should have none to judge it had it been truth. But the judgment should lie in the justice of the thing, which is higher than all, and cannot be submitted; and when ye have so done, and submitted it to charge only in the general, and so ridiculously too, that any wise man may see through it before it is opened, as if so be you were not to account. So, working backward and forward, up and down, now here and now there, as men drunk, indeed, with the blood of the innocent, whom guilt suffers not to be silent; and yet, when ye speak, ye manifest your guilt. For, as I have said to you, justice needeth no apology, but its defence lies in the justice of the thing that arraigns the malefactor; which answers to that of God in every man's conscience; not in the Declaration or Apology, which arraigns the justice. So, had ye been wise men, ye would have been silent, and have let the thing alone to have wrought as it would, and not-as Cain, who slew his brother about religion, the state of you-have snatched and caught at everything to save you, who thereby show that ye are afraid of everything. "Behold, Thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth," said Cain, when he had slain his brother, his guilt spake in him; "and from Thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me."- Gen. iv. 14. Who put ye upon this apology? Who called you to account? Who disturbed you? What is the matter? When a superior power had called ye to an account for the blood of the innocent, and the cruelties of the oppressed, then it had been a time for you to have produced your cause and brought forth your strong reasons, and to have shown, if ye could have told how, ground for your work and justice for your doings. But thus to apologize, to beg, to beseech for a right understanding, or such an understanding as ye would have, as is the English of such a Declaration, when ye seem to be in the height of your blood and on the pinnacle of your throne, and thus pitifully to do it and to cut your own throats, showeth you much below the understanding of men, as it manifesteth your guilt. Thus much in answer to this part of your Declaration. DECLARATION. "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 should be sent away." ANSWER. Hitherto I have had to do with you as to that part of the sufferings of those people as were by you indicted before the sitting of your Court, or that any law was made by you against them; also, as to the ground or reason of your proceedings, who made them suffer without a law. All of which I have answered in the beginning, because you have placed it so, and in regard that it contains the sum of your charge against them, or the cause of their sufferings; for that which follows is but the gradation of your proceedings from imprisonment to death, and rather demonstrates that ye did such and such things, than the grounds, or that ye had grounds, on which ye did them; and so your Declaration is a charge against yourselves. Now, as to your laws, and the grounds of them, and the sufferings as to each; and because every determination of man is justifiable or not, according to the ground on which it stands; I shall begin with your grounds, which I shall find to be two, and then proceed to the rest. The first is hearsay, -" Of whose pernicious opinions and practices we had received intelligence," &c., say ye in your Declaration, as aforesaid. Answer. Now, this is so poor and slender a foundation-or, rather, none at all-on which to ground, or by which to warrant what ye have done, and the laws ye have made, and so abominable, that I shall need no further to evince it than in the saying of Virgil, a heathen poet so accounted, viz. : "Fama, maluni quo non aliud velocius ullum; Fame-report, hearsay-is an evil, than which there is none more swift: it lives by motion, and by going getteth strength. The second is generals,-"Pernicious opinions and practices, "professed tenets, turbulent and contemptuous behaviour, at"tempts, design," with such like, which I shall repeat as I proceed to the following parts of your Declaration. Answer. Now, generals are but the casts of a cause: they prove nothing, as I have said, and signify little but a design to slander, and in them is conversant and lurks deceit. And yet, upon these two-and no other-foundations, as to matter of fact, are your laws built, unto which I proceed. |