Unquestionably, at that time no one had been banished; but in 1644 “one Painter, for refusing to let his child be baptized, ... was brought before the court, where he declared their baptism to be anti-Christian. He was sentenced to be whipped, which he bore without flinching, and boasted that God had assisted him.” [Footnote: Hutch. Hist. i. 208, note.] Nor was his a solitary instance of severity. Yet, notwithstanding the scorn and hatred which the orthodox divines felt for these sectaries, many very eminent Puritans fell into the errors of that persuasion. Roger Williams was a Baptist, and Henry Dunster, for the same heresy, was removed from the presidency of Harvard, and found it prudent to end his days within the Plymouth jurisdiction. Even that great champion of infant baptism, Jonathan Mitchell, when thrown into intimate relations with Dunster, had doubts.
“That day ... after I came from him I had a strange experience; I found hurrying and pressing suggestions against Pædobaptism, and injected scruples and thoughts whether the other way might not be right, and infant baptism an invention of men; and whether I might with good conscience baptize children and the like. And these thoughts were darted in with some impression, and left a strange confusion and sickliness upon my spirit. Yet, methought, it was not hard to discern that they were from the Evil One; ... And it made me fearful to go needlessly to Mr. D.; for methought I found a venom and poison in his insinuations and discourses against Pædobaptism.” [Footnote: Magnalia, bk. 4, ch. iv. Section 10.]
Henry Dunster was an uncommon man. Famed for piety in an age of fanaticism, learned, modest, and brave, by the unremitting toil of thirteen years he raised Harvard from a school to the position which it has since held; and though very poor, and starving on a wretched and ill-paid pittance, he gave his beloved college one hundred acres of land at the moment of its sorest need. [Footnote: Quincy’s History of Harvard, i. 15.] Yet he was a criminal, for he would not baptize infants, and he met with the “lenity and patience” which the elders were not unwilling should be used toward the erring.
He was indicted and convicted of disturbing church ordinances, and deprived of his office in October, 1654. He asked for leave to stay in the house he had built for a few months, and his petition in November ought to be read to understand how heretics were made to suffer:—
“1st. The time of the year is unseasonable, being now very near the shortest day, and the depth of winter.
“2d. The place unto which I go is unknown to me and my family, and the ways and means of subsistance....
“3d. The place from which I go hath fire, fuel, and all provisions for man and beast, laid in for the winter.... The house I have builded upon very damageful conditions to myself, out of love for the college, taking country pay in lieu of bills of exchange on England, or the house would not have been built....
“4th. The persons, all beside myself, are women and children, on whom little help, now their minds lie under the actual stroke of affliction and grief. My wife is sick, and my youngest child extremely so, and hath been for months, so that we dare not carry him out of doors, yet much worse now than before.... Myself will willingly bow my neck to any yoke of personal denial, for I know for what and for whom, by grace I suffer.” [Footnote: History of Harvard, i. 18.]
He had before asked Winthrop to cause the government to pay him what it owed, and he ended his prayer in these words: “Considering the poverty of the country, I am willing to descend to the lowest step; and if nothing can comfortably be allowed, I sit still appeased; desiring nothing more than to supply me and mine with food and raiment.” [Footnote: Idem, i. 20.] He received that mercy which the church has ever shown to those who wander from her fold; he was given till March, and then, with dues unpaid, was driven forth a broken man, to die in poverty and neglect.
But Jonathan Mitchell, pondering deeply upon the wages he saw paid at his very hearthstone, to the sin of his miserable old friend, snatched his own soul from Satan’s jaws. And thenceforward his path lay in pleasant places, and he prospered exceedingly in the world, so that “of extream lean he grew extream fat; and at last, in an extream hot season, a fever arrested him, just after he had been preaching.... Wonderful were the lamentations which this deplorable death fill’d the churches of New England withal.... Yea ... all New England shook when that pillar fell to the ground.” [Footnote: Magnalia, bk. 4, ch. iv. Section 16.]