"Sir Harry Vane returned to England immediately after the loss of his election. His personal experience of the uncharitableness and intolerance exercised upon one another by men who had themselves been the victims of a similar spirit at home, seems to have produced for some time a tranquilizing effect upon the mind of Vane. He was reconciled to his father, married by his direction a lady of family, obtained the place of joint treasurer of the navy, and exhibited for some time no hostility to the measures of the government. But his fire was smothered only, not extinguished."—Miss Aikin's Life of Charles I., vol. i., p. 481.
"After the Restoration of Charles II., Sir Harry Vane suffered death upon the block. (See Hallam, vol. ii., p. 443.) The manner of his death was the admiration of his times."—Bancroft, vol. ii., p. 40.
[338] Boston was the capital of Massachusetts, and the center of the most fervent Puritanism.
"Boston may be ranked as the seat of the Unitarians, as Baltimore is that of the Roman Catholics, and Philadelphia that of the Quakers.... No axiom is more applicable to the pensive, serious, scrutinizing inhabitant of the New England States than this: 'What I do not understand, I reject as worthless and false;' so said one of the most learned men of Boston to me. 'Why occupy the mind with that which is incomprehensible? Have we not enough of that which appears clear and plain around us?' ... The greater part of the Bostonians, including every one of wealth, talents, and learning, have adopted this doctrine."—Arfwedson, vol. i., p. 179.
"In Boston all the leading men are Unitarians, a creed peculiarly acceptable to the pride and self-sufficiency of our nature, asserting, as it does, the independence and perfectibility of man, and denying the necessity of atonement or sanctification by supernatural influences.
"Though every where in New England the greatest possible decency and respect with regard to morals and religion is still observed, I have no hesitation in saying that I do not think the New Englanders a religious people. The assertion, I know, is paradoxical, but it is nevertheless true, that is, if a strong and earnest belief be a necessary element in a religious character: to me it seems to be its very essence and foundation. I am not now speaking of belief in the truth, but belief in something or any thing which is removed from the action of the senses.... I am not trusting to my own limited observation in arriving at this conclusion; I find in M. de Tocqueville's work an assertion of the same fact. He accounts for it, indeed, in a different way.... What I complain of is, not the absence of nominal, but of real, heartfelt, unearthly religion, such as led the Puritan Nonconformists to sacrifice country and kindred, and brave the dangers of the ocean and the wilderness for the sake of what they believed God's truth. In my opinion, those men were prejudiced and mistaken, and committed great and grievous faults; but there was, at least, a redeeming element in their character—that of high conscientiousness. There was no compromise of truth, no sacrifice to expediency about them; they believed in the invisible, and they acted on that belief. Every where the tone of religious feeling, since that time, has been altered and relaxed, but perhaps nowhere so much as in the land where the descendants of those Pilgrims lived."—Godley's Letters from America, vol. ii., p. 90, 133.
[339] "The arbitrary will of the single tyrant, the excesses of the prerogative, seem light when compared with their (the Puritans') more intolerant, more arbitrary, and more absolute power."—Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles I., vol. iii., p. 28, by I. D'Israeli. London, 1830.
[340] Mather affirms that the Quakers used to go about saying, "We deny thy Christ: we deny thy God, whom thou callest Father, Son, and Spirit; thy Bible is the word of the devil." They used to rise up suddenly in the midst of a sermon, and call upon the preacher to cease his abomination. One writer says, "For hellish reviling of the painful ministers of Christ, I know no people can match them." The following epithets bestowed by Fisher on Dr. Owen are said to be fair specimens of their usual addresses: "Thou green-headed trumpeter! thou hedgehog and grinning dog! thou tinker! thou lizard! thou whirligig! thou firebrand! thou louse! thou mooncalf! thou ragged tatterdemalion! thou livest in philosophy and logic, which are of the devil." Even Penn is said to have addressed the same respected divine as, "Thou bane of reason and beast of the earth." When the governor or any magistrate came in sight, they would call out, "Woe to thee, thou oppressor," and in the language of Scripture prophecy would announce the judgments that were about to fall upon their head.—Neale, cap. i., p. 341-345. Mather, b. vii., cap. iv. Hutchinson, p. 196-205.
[341] "Sir Matthew Hale burned two persons for witchcraft in 1664. Three thousand were executed in England during the Long Parliament. Two pretended witches were executed at Northampton in 1705. In 1716, Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, aged nine, were hanged at Huntingdon. The last sufferer in Scotland was in 1722, at Dornoch. The laws against witchcraft had lain dormant for many years, when an ignorant person attempting to revive them by finding a bill against a poor old woman in Surrey for the practice of witchcraft, they were repealed, 10 George II., 1736."—Viner's Abridgement.
[342] Neale, vol. ii., p. 164-170. Mather, vol. ii., p. 62-64.