[688]. Ibid., p. 102. The law is in Massachusetts Records, vol. IV, pt. i, pp. 345 ff.
[689]. Massachusetts Records, vol. IV, pt. i, p. 348; also, The Heart of New England rent at the Blasphemies of the present Generation; Cambridge, 1659. The liberty of conscience which the more liberal part of the community was striving for he denounced as liberty “to answer the dictates of the errors of Conscience in walking contrary to Rule. It is a liberty to blaspheme, a liberty to seduce others from the true God. A liberty to tell lies in the name of the Lord” (p. 51). We may note here that several New England historians, as one of the defenses of Massachusetts, lay stress upon the vituperative language employed by the Quakers. As a matter of fact, none found in the contemporary records at all equals that of the Puritans, the violence of whose language is open for any to read in their legislative enactments and state documents. Many remarks addressed by officers of the Puritan courts, from Endicott down, to their helpless prisoners, could be expressed in modern books only by a series of dashes.
[690]. Massachusetts Records, vol. IV, pt. i, pp. 349, 367, 366; Bishop, New England Judged, p. 107.
[691]. Massachusetts Records, vol. IV, pt. i, pp. 383 f.
[692]. Bishop, New England Judged, p. 134.
[693]. Massachusetts Records, vol. IV, pt. i, p. 419.
[694]. Besse, Abstract of the Sufferings, etc., cited by Jones, Quakers, pp. 91 ff.
[695]. Massachusetts Records, vol. IV, pt. i, pp. 384 ff.; Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Series III, vol. II, p. 203.
[696]. W. Sewel, History of the Quakers (New York, 1844), vol. I, p. 338.
[697]. Ibid., p. 344; Massachusetts Records, vol. IV, pt. ii, p. 20.