Shall faint and freeze no more."
Pierpont.
The persecutions of the Quakers, the proceedings against persons accused of witchcraft, * the disfranchisement of those who were not church members, and many other enactments in their civil code, considered alone, mark the Puritan as bigoted, superstitious, intolerant, unlovely in every aspect, and practically evincing a spirit like that of Governor Dudley, expressed in some lines found in his pocket after his death.
"Let men of God in courts and churches watch
O'er such as do a toleration hatch,
Lest that ill egg bring forth a cocatrice,
To poison all with heresy and vice.
If men be left, and otherwise combine,
My epitaph's, 'I died no libertine!'"
But when a broad survey is taken of the Puritan character, these things appear as mere blemishes—spots upon the sun—insects in the otherwise pure amber. In religion and morality they were sincerely devoted to right—"New England was the colony of conscience." ** Their worship was spiritual, their religious observances were few and simple. To them the