This is no description of an accomplished member of society. Faithful subjects, when you execute the priest’s office in my service, put on a dress suitable to your ministration; and let your bodily presence be amiable and your speech affable, and your countenance grave and solemn. Salute the people with a comely behavior, that you may glory in your own presence. For verily I say unto you, except your outward appearance of righteousness shall exceed that of Christ’s ministers, you shall in no case deserve the world....

Agreeably to my counsel, in all cases resent an insult from your fellows and go forth to war with them; embody yourselves and march to the field of battle, with religion at your right; and appoint one of my servants, your ministers, a chaplain to pray for your success. And there encamp, one against the other; and let my servants, your priests, on both sides, put up a prayer to the God of heaven that you may gain the victory over each other; cherishing the belief that all that die gloriously in battle go immediately to heaven. And when you are coming together to do the work of human butchery, if a sense of the horrid piece of work which you are about to perform shall fill your soldiery with terror, benumb their senses with intoxicating liquor; and put on confusion and distraction, under the name of courage and valor; and fear not, for I will be with you and fill your hearts with such vengeance, through the immediate influence of my spirit, that you shall be able to perform all my will and pleasure. And, when you have sufficiently soaked the ground with the blood of your fellow men, and humbled their hearts and have gotten your wills upon them; then return and let my servant, your minister, lift up his voice before you, unto the God of heaven, with praise and thanks for the victory; that you have been able to do such deeds as to bereave parents of their sons, wives of their husbands and children of their fathers.... And then return home full of the glory of your own shame, and tell your rulers you have saved their pride, gratified their ambition and saved a little of the trash of this world; for which you have taken the lives of your fellow creatures, each one of whom is worth more than all the treasures of India. For all such things belong to the religion that I delight in.

Ye fathers, I exhort that you exercise yourselves in laying up treasure on earth. And ye, young men, that you likewise embrace every opportunity to get riches, which are an honor to youth; that in the performance thereof your hearts may be raised higher in pride.

And ye, ministers of the civil law, I counsel that you swerve not from mutual confederacy with the ecclesiastical system. That, for the sake of your honor, you strictly attend to your oaths; and put in motion all laws and modes of punishments which may tend to compel all kinds of people to submit to our precepts, which are in opposition to the rules of Christ.

A Sermon To the Priests.

It is well known that the Christian religion has been in the world 18 centuries, since she first visited the earth, and also that 300 yrs. of the first part of the time, altho’ she stood in opposition to the powers of this world, and under cruel persecutions, yet she mightily grew and flourished until about the 4th century, at which time, a general revolution took place through the governing parts of the earth and she was delivered from her persecution, being a great church and standing on her own foundation. And from that day down to this the priesthood of this religion (falsely so called) has been preaching to us a sinful world, though broken in sect, but under one lineage of ordination. Yet they have not brought the world, nor the church to a state of perfection; but much to the contrary. For when they first took the Christian church by the hand to lead her through the ensuing ages of the world, she then stood on her own feet, enjoying a well-united system of her own. And what is she now?... she is now broken all to pieces and become a house divided against herself. And this unparalleled circumstance has rendered it necessary that the sinful world unto whom you, the said priests, have been preaching, should have somewhat to preach unto you....

THE SUBSCRIBERS PETITION TO HIS COUNTRYMEN
FOR HIS RIGHTS AND
PRIVILEGES.

Whereas I am once more called to suffer for conscience’s sake, in defense of the gospel of Christ; on the account of my son, who is under age, in that it is against my conscience to send him into the train-band. For which cause, I have sustained the loss of my only cow that gave milk for my family; through the hands of William Stewart, who came and took her from me and the same day sold her at the post. Which circumstance, together with the infirmity of old age, has prevented my making my usual defence at such occasion. I have therefore thought proper and now do (for myself and in behalf of all my brethren that shall stand manfully with me in defense of the gospel of Christ) publish the following as a petition to my countrymen for my rights and privileges; and especially to those that have or shall have any hand in causing me to suffer.

Fellow Countrymen:

You esteem it a great blessing of heaven that you live in a country of light, where your rights and privileges are not invaded by a tyrannical Government. And for this great blessing of heaven do you not feel yourselves under obligation of obedience to heaven’s laws; to do unto all men as you would that men should do unto you? Or which of you on whom our Lord hath bestowed ten thousand talents should find his fellow servant that owed him fifty pence and take him by the throat, saying, “Pay that thou owest me,” and, on refusal, command his wife and children to be sold and payment to be made?