S. 2.
If any man or woeman be a witch, (that is hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit,) They shall be put to death.
3.
Lev. 24. 15, 16.
S. 3.
If any man shall Blaspheme the name of god, the father, Sonne or Holie ghost, with direct, expresse, presumptuous or high handed blasphemie, or shall curse god in the like manner, he shall be put to death.
Puritan-Religious-Liberty!
Facsimile of original laws. From “Body of Liberties.” First legal code for the government of the Bay Colony. Drawn up by Rev. Nathaniel Ward, Lawyer-divine of Ipswich.
The Final Victory in the Long Struggle
Two Baptist organizations in close sympathy with each other contributed much toward the final victory. They made appeals to their immediate constituency and also to the larger following of all Baptists and other lovers of religious liberty. These were the Warren Association in New England, and the General Committee in Virginia. Each had a committee of grievances. The Baptists were nobly assisted by Presbyterians and Quakers in the final stages of the great conflict. Isaac Backus wrote his immortal work on “A History of New England, with Especial Reference to the Baptists.” He drafted appeals for the Association and for the committee on grievances to the General Assembly, published addresses on religious liberty, and inserted advertisements in leading papers. He believed that partial history and false statements regarding Baptist history and doctrines should be removed by scattering impartial and true knowledge. He was a Baptist giant and had his share in forming sentiment, which eventually made religious intoleration impossible in America.
Isaac Backus, with President Manning, of Brown University, then Rhode Island College, went to Philadelphia and with Quakers and others appealed to John Adams and other Massachusetts delegates in Carpenter Hall, Philadelphia. These advocates of soul-liberty took the position that to pay taxes to support a church clergy in which they did not believe was as much a wrong as to pay taxes for a government in which they had no representation. It was not the paltry tax of fourpence a man that the colonists in Massachusetts rebelled against. It was the principle that was back of paying the pence which they opposed. They were greatly amazed when John Adams told them that their own colony, Massachusetts, had “the most mild and equitable establishment of religion that was known in the world.”