The two chief calumnies in this work of Peter Pratt having been presented, attention is now called to two of a different character.
I saw him once brought into court,—he had contrived the matter so as to be just without the door when he was called to answer. His features and gestures expressed more fury than I ever saw in a distracted person of any sort, and I soberly think that if a legion of devils had pushed him in headlong, his entrance had not been more horrid and ghastly, nor have seemed more preternatural.
John Roger’s declaration that the indictment was a lie is brought out in similar style, also the exclamations of other Rogerenes present in the court-room.
This plainly refers to the trial before the County Court in November, 1719, when John Rogers is said (by court records) to have come into court “in a violent manner,” etc., and, when the indictment was read, to have exclaimed that it was “a devilish ly” (see Chapter IX), for which contempt of court he was fined only twenty shillings, which nominal sum was never collected. Taking into consideration the evident sympathy of the jury on this occasion of “violent entrance,” etc., and the great ease with which Peter Pratt is proven capable of misstating and exaggerating facts, the reader will admit the probability that this entrance of John Rogers into the court-room, and his words there spoken, together with those of his followers, were neither more nor less than impassioned expressions of indignation and protest regarding the terrible cruelty to which the wife of John Bolles was then being subjected. She was, as will be remembered, at that moment lying in a critical condition in New London prison, where the death of her child had just occurred. Peter Pratt, then present in that court-room, by his own avowal, knew all of these facts, and knew also that the life of this woman was saved only by such determined efforts at full publicity on the part of the Rogerenes and their sympathizers. Yet he utterly conceals these circumstances from the reader, while he exaggerates the Rogerene protests, and represents them as being simply senseless and grotesque.
It is from this description by Peter Pratt that historians have borrowed their statements regarding the loud voice of John Rogers, and that Rogerenes were accustomed to charge dignitaries with lying, etc.[[187]]
The singularly false and indecent statements made by Peter Pratt—in regard to the divorce of John Rogers and the marriage to Mary Ransford—and his exaggerated description of the scene in the court-room, form almost the entire portion of the account of the Rogerenes contained in Trumbull’s “History of Connecticut,” which is the standard history (first published, 1818) from which, as has been said, later historians have derived their ideas and representations in regard to this sect.
Of the many lesser aspersions cast by Peter Pratt upon the character and teachings of John Rogers, one of the most astonishing (seeing that Peter Pratt himself refutes it) is to the effect that John Rogers held that “a man dies even as a dog.” In another place he says John Rogers “held both to the resurrection and the day of judgment, although doubted whether the body to be raised would be the same that fell, yet owned it would have the same consciousness.”
The author guilty of the above (and many another) self-contradiction, says of the writings of John Rogers: “For that they are so perplexed and ambiguous, that he that will attend the rules of reason and speech can prove scarcely anything of the chief articles of his faith by his books.”
Careful perusal of the many extant writings of John Rogers will prove to any candid person that they are written in the clearest manner, having in them nothing which cannot be understood by the most ordinary reader. Peter Pratt, being unable to quote from these writings anything that could substantiate his statements concerning them, had need to manufacture some excuse for such omission of evidence.
It would be exceedingly difficult, if not wholly impossible, to find another book from which historians have condescended to quote which contains so many contradictions in itself, so many utterly and needlessly vulgar expressions, and so many easily proven falsehoods, as does this calumnious work of Peter Pratt. The favor it received in ecclesiastical quarters is proof that there was almost no device, however underhanded, of which the enemies of the Rogerenes would not stoop to avail themselves in branding this daring opponent of ecclesiastical rule.