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the total ruin of the offender, contrary to the established laws of the kingdom."

44. "The imprisonments to which they condemned any delinquent, was limited by no rule but their own pleasure.-These Ecclesiastical Commissioners were liable to no controul.-In a word, this court was a real Inquisition, attended with all the iniquities as well as cruelties inseparable from that tribunal."

CHAP.

XI.

England

VI,

45. The spirit of this bloody inquisition continued Hume's through the reign of king JAMES VI. who is canon- Hist. of ized, as the Most High, in that translation of the bi- Appen ble which he established. "Under this reign, (says dix to Jal Hume,) no toleration for the different sects.-Two Arians, under the title of heretics, were punished by fire; and no one reign since the Reformation had been free from like barbarities." And so they proceed.

46. A specimen of the barbarous decrees and tyrannical laws, established in those times, down to the reign of king CHARLES II. may be seen in the Westminster Confession of Paith, and National Covenant. "The sixty-ninth article, Parl. 6. of king JAMES VI. 'declares, that there is no other face of kirk, nor other face of religion, than was presently at that time established within this realm: Which therefore ' is ever styled God's true religion-and a perfect religion; which by manifold acts of parliament, all within this realm are bound to profess, to subscribe 'the articles thereof, the confession of faith, to re'cant all doctrine and errors repugnant to any of the 'said articles."

47. "And all magistrates, &c. on the one part, are ' ordained to search, apprehend, and punish all con'traveners. That all kings and princes, at their cor-onation, shall make their soieran oath in the presence of the eternal God,--that they shall be care'ful to root out of their empire all heretics, &c."*

Could the decrees of that horrible court of the

• In the National Covenant which was subscribed by king Charles II. in the year 1650, and 1651, and which all within the realm were bound by an ordiwance of council to subscribe, it is written. "We promise and swear by the Great name of the Lord our God, to continue in the profession of the aforesaid religion-and resist all contrary errors-all the days of our life. And in like manner we promise and swear, that we shall to the utmost of our power, with our means and lives, stand to the defence of our dread sovereign, the king's majesty, bis person and authority, in the defenes al preservation of the • aforesaid true religion.

CHAP. Papal Inquisition be more manifestly contrary to the spirit and precepts of the gospel?

XII.

48. Such were the dire decrees and bloody resolu tions by which they rooted out every appearance of true light, and in their rage for orthodoxy, went on butchering one another, until the testimony of George Fox furnished a common object of persecuting cruelty.

Sewel's History, p. 25.

tory, vol.

THE

CHAPTER XII.

The Subject continued.

HE same year in which the National Covenant of persecuting venom was subscribed by CHARLES, and the defenders of his sovereignty, George Fox, and those who embraced his testimony, received the name of Quakers, from GERVAS BENNET, a persecu ting magistrate, on account of George Fox's bidding him and those about him, tremble at the word of the Lord.

Eccl.His- 2. Mosheim says, "It is not at all surprising that T.P.451. 'the secular arm was at length raised against these 'pernicious fanatics, for they would never give to " magistrates those titles of honour and pre-eminence 'that are designed to mark the respect due to their authority; they also refused obstinately to take the ' oath of allegiance to their sovereign, and to pay 'tithes to the clergy; hence they were looked upon 'as rebellious subjects, and, on that account, were frequently punished [persecuted] with great sever"ity."

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3. The unreasonable fines, imprisonments, banishments, and other acts of cruelty which they suffered, under the united rage of Protestant priests and politicians, may be seen at large in Sewel's History of the people called Quakers; a few particulars of which we shall notice.

4. After relating many scenes of cruelty, which terminated in the death of the sufferers, the historian

CHAP.

IX.

History,

p. 335.

says, "Severe persecution raged not only in London, but all over the kingdom [in 1662] of which a relation was printed of more than four thousand two hun- sewel's dred of those called Quakers, both men and women, that were imprisoned either for frequenting meetings or for refusing to swear. Many of these were griev ously beaten, or their clothes torn, or taken away from them; and some were put into such stinking dungeons, that some great men said, they would not have put their hunting dogs there."

5." Some prisons were crouded full of both men and women, so that there was not sufficient room for all to sit down at once; and in Cheshire, sixty-eight persons were in this manner locked up in a small room. By such ill treatment many grew sick, and not a few died in such jails; for no age or sex was regarded, but even ancient people, of sixty, seventy, and more years of age, were not spared."

P. 514.

6. "This year [1676] died in prison John Sage, bid being about eighty years of age, after having been in prison at Ivelchester, in Somersetshire, almost ten years, for not paying tithes. And it appeared, that since the restoration of king CHARLES, above two hundred of the people called Quakers, died in prisons in England, where they had been confined because of their religion."

7. The first of those called Quakers, who really suffered banishment, were Edward Brush and James Harding, who were carried to Jamaica. And it is stated as a remarkable fact, that the plague which soon after raged with such violence in London, first broke out in a house next door to where Edward had lived.

8. In the forepart of the year 1665, many of the Quakers were sentenced to be transported; and as the sentences of transportation were multiplied in the course of the following summer; so (as is remarked) the number of those that died of the pestilence much more increased.

9. In consequence of those cruel sentences, fiftyfive Quakers, eighteen of whom were women, were put on board one ship; but before they were able to proceed on their voyage, the plague so increased that many died on board the ship; and according to the

ibil. p. 430

XII.

CHAP. bills of mortality, in the beginning of August, while the ship was yet in port, upwards of three thousand died in one week in the city of London.

Sewel's

p. 403.

10. Notwithstanding the number of deaths still increased, and the pestilence raged to that degree, in the latter end of September that upwards of eight thousand people died in London in one week, and the grass grew in the most populous streets of the city; yet the Quakers meetings were still disturbed, and sentences of transportation still continued.

11. According to the laws of the realm, the penalty History, for attending any conventicle or religious meeting, separate from the established worship, was three months imprisonment or five pounds for the first offence, and ten pounds or six months imprisonment for the second, and banishment beyond the seas, for seven years, for the third offence, or one hundred pounds for a discharge, and the additional sum of one hundred pounds more for every new offence committed.

ild.

P. 486.

12. And in case that any one, being condemned to banishment, should escape or return within the time prescribed, he should suffer death, and forfeit all his goods and chattels forever. Under this worse than savage system many were fleeced of their whole estates, while the malicious priests exercised their utmost vigilance to detect the innocent, and inflame the civil powers, with whom they shared the spoil.

13. It would be endless to enumerate the sums unjustly aud cruelly extorted from the hurmless Quakers, by those greedy degs. "Among others (says Sewel,) one Henry Marshall, having several benefices—yet how great soever his revenues were, kept poor people of that persuasion in prisen for not paying tithes to him and once he said, from the pulpit, that not one Quaker should be left alive in England." And the bishop of Peterborough said publicly-" When the parliament sits again, a stronger law will be 'made, not only to take away their lands and goods, 'but also to sell them for bond slaves."

14. Thus the churchmen blew the fire of persecution, and kindled so high a flame in the breasts of unmerciful statesmen, that, Justice PENNISTON WHA

XII.

LEY, who had fined many of those called Quakers CRAP. for attending their religious meetings, encouraged the people at the sessions to persecute the Quakers Sewel's without pity, saying, "Harden your hearts against History, them, for the act of the thirty-fifth of Q. ELIZABETH, 'is not made against the Papists; since the church of 'Rome is a true church, as well as any other church; 'but the Quakers are erroneous and seditious persons.”

15. And again, at the trial of William Penn, the recorder of the court ventured to say, "Till now I never understood the reason of the policy and prudence of the Spaniards in suffering the Inquisition ' among them. And certainly it will never be well with us, till something like the Spanish inquisition, 'be in England." The fact is, they never had been without something like it, during the whole progress of the Reformation, as their own histories, creeds and confessions abundantly declare.

16. The same histories, creeds and confessions, with the impartial records of other writers, make it also most pointedly manifest, that there is no essential difference between the spirit and conduct of the Protestant reformers, and those infernal and beastly cruelties practised in the darkest ages of popery, and that they, as well as their Catholic ancestors, gloried in nothing greater than in building up their Zion with blood.

17. We shall now leave Europe, and trace the conduct of those famous Protestants who called themselves Puritans, who fled from the iron arm of persecution at home, and crossed the Atlantic, to find liberty of conscience in the destined land of American freedom.

18. The persecution of the Quakers in New-England, under the established hierarchy of Governor John Endicot, Priests Norton, Wilson, and others, differed from these before mentioned, only as a small stream differs from a great flood. The same spirit prevailed, and the same cruelties were exercised: such as imprisoning, fining, confiscation of goods, banishing, unmerciful scourging, burning with hot irons, cutting off ears, and destroying their innocent lives by the ignominious gallows.

p. 486.

ibid.

19. These detestable scenes of more than savage p. 157.

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