... In page 8, they assert ... “That he be given to hospitality” and say they, “how is it possible for him to be so, if you be given to covetousness, and given to dishonesty and cheat him of his maintainance?”
To which I answer If it be the people’s gift, its their hospitality and not the ministers: the churl may be liberal, if other men’s purses make him so. But the ministers of the Gospel are given to hospitality of that which their own hands have ministered to them, and are obedient to their Master’s words, who hath said unto them, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
... And it is a shame for you to tell of the galling of your hands with inferior labor for the getting of bread; it is your duty to do so, and if the people be the cause, as you say, of your laboring with your hands, they are worthy of praise in causing you to do your duty, and you ought to have done it without their causing you to do it, and therefore you proclaim your shame. For you ought to have taken the holy prophets, and Christ and his apostles for your example, to have labored with your hands, and not the false prophets and false teachers, who sought to live upon the people,... Christ shews that such stewards as those could not dig for their living, and to beg they were ashamed....
And the true prophets, and Christ with his apostles have set us better example.... Here you may see that Elijah was plowing ... here Elisha went to Jordan with the sons of the prophets and cut down wood.... Amos was a husbandman and a gatherer of wild figs.... Christ was a carpenter.... Paul was a tayler or tent-maker and worked at it tho’ he were a travelling minister of the gospel,—and so did the rest of the apostles, as is to be seen.... These examples, with that apostolical command (to the elders of the church) Acts 20, 34, 35, ought to be attended by Christ’s ministers....
FROM REPLY TO PETER PRATT.
John Rogers, 2d.
As it has ever been allowed that the defaming of the dead is a mark of the most unmanly and base spirit of a coward and ought to be abhorred by all persons who bear the image of man; then how much more abominable is it of P. P. to sport himself with his own lies over a man in his grave? And I think no person of common reason will expect any apology of me on account of this my undertaking, since my silence in this matter would have rendered me very unmanly....
... If John Roger’s books contain “but few of his principles” then how comes P. P. to know what his principles are, several years after his death? except the same spirit which once deceived him in the matter of longitude has again deceived him concerning J. R.’s principles; and we have as much reason to question the truth of what he tells us of J. R.’s principles (since he has no better proof than his own bare word) as the General Assembly had to question the truth of longitude, which soon after proved a delusion of Satan....
Now by these foolish and vain pretended reasons, the reader may plainly see that he only wanted an excuse to evade J. R.’s books, that he might take his full swing to bely and abuse him at his pleasure; because he well knew that if he had quoted his books, they would have discovered his falsehoods....
But I should not have enlarged so much upon this head, were it not that I am sensible that there are many thousands of grown persons in this Colony that for want of opportunity to be informed in the principles of other sects remain so ignorant that they know no difference between the Church of England and the Papists, nor between the Quakers and the Baptists, but esteem each couple to be alike. And now is it possible that such persons should be able to discern the ignorance of P. P.?...