The words of John Rogers were perfectly scriptural, as will be understood by every intelligent reader of the Bible.
The Apostle speaks of the church as the body of Christ. Again, “Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?” And other passages to the same effect.
The cry of blasphemy has been a favorite device with murderers and persecutors in all ages.
When Naboth was set on high by Ahab to be slain, proclamation was made, “This man hath blasphemed God and the King.”
“For a good work we stone you not,” said the Jews to Christ, “but for blasphemy.” And the high priest said of Christ himself, “What need we any further witness? Have we not heard his blasphemy from his own mouth?”
Miss Caulkins, in her “History of New London,” although inclined to favor the ecclesiastical side, says: “The offences of the Rogerenes were multiplied and exaggerated, both by prejudice and rumor. Doubtless a sober mind would not now give so harsh a name to expressions which our ancestors deemed blasphemous.”
It will be remembered that in 1677, “the court ordered that John Rogers should be called to account once a month and fined £5 each time,” irrespective of his innocence or guilt, and without trial of either. This unrighteous order would seem to have been in force fifteen years later, viz., in November, 1692. “At that time,” says Miss Caulkins, “besides his customary fines for working on the Sabbath and for baptizing, he was amerced £4 for entertaining Banks and Case (itinerant exhorters) for a month or more at his house.”—“Customary fines!”
In the spring of 1694, Rogers was transferred from the New London to the Hartford Prison. Why was this transfer made? Perhaps that the charges of blasphemy brought against him might with more certainty be sustained where he was not known. Perhaps that the sympathies of the people would not be as likely to find expression there as they sometimes did at his outrageous treatment in New London; as will be seen. Or, by a more rigorous treatment he might be made to submit.
In Hartford he was placed in charge of a cruel and unprincipled jailer, who was entirely subservient to the will of his enemies, and who told John Rogers he would make him comply with their worship, if the authorities could not.
What prompted, we might ask, the unusual and merciless treatment that he received during this imprisonment at Hartford? He had not offended the authorities nor the people there; he was a stranger in their midst. The same remorseless spirit that had delivered him up to them as guilty of blasphemy was doubtless the moving, animating cause of such savage conduct. Scarcely four months had elapsed after his release from the Hartford prison where he had been confined nearly four years, before the Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall brought a suit of defamation against him, for the most trivial reasons, as we have seen (Chapter I), and upon no legal grounds whatever; yet a parasitical jury awarded the august complainant damages in the unconscionable sum of £600. Of this proceeding, Miss Caulkins, in her “History of New London,” says: “Rogers had not been long released from prison, before he threw himself into the very jaws of the lion, as it were, by provoking a personal collision with Mr. Saltonstall, the minister of the town.”