Which is the greater sin—to die when you have it in your power to escape death, if you will, by a word? or to speak a word of untruth to save your life—
George Burroughs—I pray thee—suffer me to bid thee farewell.
No no, not yet. Hear me through—hear all I have to say. By this word of untruth, you save your own life, and perhaps many other lives. You punish the guilty. You have leisure to repent in this world of that very untruth—if such untruth be sinful. You have an opportunity of showing to the world and to them that you love, that you were innocent of that wherewith you were charged. You may root up the error that prevails now, and overthrow the destroyer, and hereafter obtain praise for that very untruth, whereby you hinder the shedding of more innocent blood; praise from every quarter of the earth, praise from every body; from the people, the preachers, the jury, the elders—yea from the very judges for having stayed them in their headlong career of guilt—
O George—
But if you die, and your death be sinful—and would it not be so, if you were to die, where you might escape death?—you would have no time to repent here, no opportunity, no leisure—you die in the very perpetration of your guilt—
If it is guilt, I do—
And however innocent you may be of the crimes that are charged to you, you have no opportunity of showing on this earth to them that love you, that you are so. Yet more—the guilt of your death, if it be not charged hereafter to you, will be charged, you may be sure, to the wretched women that pursue you; and all who might be saved by you, will have reason to lay their death at your door—
Well—
About life or death, you may not much care; but after death to be regarded with scorn, or hatred or terror, by all that go by your grave, my sister—how could you bear the idea of that? What say you—you shudder—and yet if you die now, you must leave behind you a character which cannot be cleared up, or which is not likely to be cleared up on earth, however innocent you may be (as I have said before)—the character of one, who being charged with witchcraft was convicted of witchcraft and executed for a witchcraft. In a word—if you live, you may live to wipe away the aspersion. If you die, it may adhere to you and to yours—forever and ever. If you live, you may do much good on earth, much to yourself and much to others, much even to the few that are now thirsting for your life—you may make lighter the load of crime which otherwise will weigh them down—you may do this and all this, if you speak: But if you do not speak, you are guilty of your own death, and of the deaths it may be of a multitude, here and hereafter.
Now hear me. I do not know whether all this is done to try my truth or my courage, but this I know—I will not leave thee in doubt concerning either. Look at me