“Jaws of the lion!” Perhaps Miss Caulkins builded wiser than she knew. We had not ourselves presumed to characterize Mr. Saltonstall as the king of beasts; but, since John Rogers, so far as we know, was never charged with deviation from the truth, except in the above mentioned suit, while the Rev. Mr. Saltonstall was not above suspicion, as will appear by the false charge of blasphemy he brought against Rogers, and by other acts of which we shall speak hereafter, we will leave the reader to judge on which side the truth lay in this case.
It should be remembered that years had elapsed after the fines, imprisonments, etc., of Rogers had commenced—for non-attendance at the meetings of the standing order, for baptizing, breach of the Sabbath, etc.—before he was charged with entering the meeting-house in time of public worship and remonstrating there with the people. It was not in self-defence alone, it was in defence of justice that he spoke. Who were the first aggressors? Who disturbed him in the performance of the baptismal rites? Who interfered with his meetings? Who entered them as spies, to lay the foundation for suits against him? These things have not been referred to; they have not been confessed; they have not been apologized for, on the part of the standing order. If John Rogers was such a terrible sinner for what he did to them, how much greater accountability will they have to meet who, without any just cause, made their attack upon him!
There are fires burning in the heart of every good man that cannot be quenched. As well undertake to smother the rays of the sun or to confine ignited dynamite. We would not justify breach of courtesy, or any other law not contrary to the law of God; but there are times when to be silent would be treason to truth.
John Roger’s father was the largest taxpayer in the colony, and had himself alone been subjected to the payment of one-tenth part of the cost of building the meeting-house, while John Rogers and his adherents, who were industrious, frugal, and thrifty people—or they never could have sustained the immense fines imposed upon them without being brought to abject poverty—had probably paid as much more; so we may suppose that at least one-fifth of the meeting-house, strictly speaking, belonged to them, while they were constantly being taxed for the support of this church of their persecutors.
The meeting-house was, in those times, quite often used for public purposes; in fact, the courts were frequently held there. How, upon a week day, could he have found an audience of his persecutors, or permission to address them? If he had published a circular it would have been deemed a scandalous paper, for which he might have been fined and imprisoned. He could scarcely get at the ear of the people in any other way than by the course he took, and he could in no other way put as forcible a check upon the church party persecutions of his own sect.
There are volcanoes in nature; may there not be such in the moral world? Who knows but they are safety valves to the whole system. It cannot be denied that the church gave ample and repeated occasion to call from these reformers something more than the sound of the lute. These moral upheavings must tend to a sublime end, and like adversity have their sweet uses. We are now breathing the fragrance of the flower planted in the dark soil of those turbulent times. Of the Puritanism of New England, we must say it is bespattered with many a blot, which ought not to be passed over with zephyrs of praise. “Fair weather cometh out of the north. Men see not the bright light in the cloud. The wind passeth over and cleanseth them.” Let us revere the names of all who, in the face of suffering and loss, have dared to stand up boldly in truth’s defence.
To impress men to haul an apostle of liberty from jail to jail, break into the sanctity of family relations, imprison fathers and mothers, purloin their property, for no just cause whatever, leaving their children to cry in the streets for bread, and this under the cloak of religion, is an offence incomparably greater than to make one’s voice heard in vindication of truth, even in a meeting-house.
The offences of John Rogers, whatever they may have been, encountering opposition with opposition, in which facts were the only swords, and words the only lash, are as insignificant as the fly on the elephant’s back compared with the treatment that he and his followers received from those who had fled from persecution in the Old World to stain their own hands with like atrocities in the New.
Of the almost unprecedented suffering and cruelties which John Rogers endured for conscience’s sake, and in the cause of religious freedom, for many years, and particularly of his confinement in the Hartford prison, he here tells the story, written by himself about twelve years after his release from that prison. See “Midnight Cry,” pages 4-16:—
Friends and Brethren:—