Fellow Countrymen, this case between you and me I shall now lay open before your eyes, seeing it is pending before the judgment seat of the same Lord. Our Lord and Master hath commanded us not to hate our enemies, like them of old times under the law of Moses. But hath, under the dear gospel dispensation, commanded us, saying: “I say unto you love your enemies, do good to them that hate you and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, and if any man shall sue you at the law and take away your coat, forbid him not to take your cloak also.” “If thine enemy hunger, feed him, if he thirst, give him drink.” And again: “I say unto you that ye resist not evil.”
For these, and many other like commands of our Saviour, Christ, I have refused to bear arms against any man in defense of my rights and privileges of this world. For which cause, you have now taken me by the throat, saying: “Go break the laws of your Lord and Master.” And because I have refused to obey man rather than God, you have taken away the principal part of the support of my family and commanded it to be sold at the post.
And thus you, my fellow-servants (under equal obligation of obedience to the same laws of our Master) have invaded my rights and privileges and robbed me of my living, for no other reason but because I will not bear the sword to defend it. And if a servant shall be thought worthy of punishment for transgressing his master’s laws, of how much punishment shall he be thought worthy that shall smite his fellow servant, because he will not partake with him in his transgression? But I wist that through ignorance you have done it, as have also your rulers; and for this cause do I hold the case before you, that you may not stand in your own light, to stretch out against me the sword of persecution; but agree with your adversary whilst you are in the way with him. But if you shall refuse to hear this my righteous cause and shall pursue your fellow servant that owes you nothing, and who wishes you no evil, neither would hurt one hair of your head, and although you take away his goods, yet he asks them not again; but commits his cause to Him that shall judge righteously; I say if you shall follow hard after him, as the Egyptians did after Israel, God shall trouble your host and take off your chariot wheels, so that you shall drive them heavily. For I know, by experience, that no device shall stand against the counsel of God; for I am not a stranger in this warfare, neither is it only the loss of goods that I have suffered heretofore; but extreme torments of body, while my life lay at stake under the threat of my persecutors, and yet God, through his mighty power, has never suffered me to flee before my enemies, but has brought me to the 83d year of my age, though all my persecutors have been dead these many years.
Alexander Rogers.
January 7th, 1810. Waterford, New London County.
ROGERENE WRITINGS.
The following works of John Rogers, Sr., are most of them still extant, although copies are very rare and command high prices. The locality of copies known to the author of this history will be found indicated:—
1. “An Epistle to the Church Called Quakers. New York. Printed by William Bradford, 1705.”
2. “An Epistle to the Seventh Day Baptists,”—date unknown.
3. “Treatise on Divorce.”