Previous to this act, the penalty for baptizing by immersion was £5, which penalty was often inflicted upon John Rogers, as we have seen.
In the Boston plantation, for merely speaking against sprinkling of infants the like penalty was incurred. Thus thick was the cloud of bigotry and ignorance which had settled down on the people at that day and which John Rogers, and his followers by the light of truth labored to disperse, deserving honor instead of the reproaches which they have suffered from prejudiced and careless historians and narrow-minded ecclesiastics.
Still, in the face of facts like these, “all of which he saw and a large part of which he was,” the Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall asserts “that no man hath suffered on account of his religious opinions,” etc.
Dr. Trumbull says, “Mr. Saltonstall was a great man.”
“They helped every one his neighbor; so the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith.”—Isaiah. “And the great man he uttereth his mischievous desire: so they wrap it up.”—Micah.
CHAPTER IV.
One has said that an angel would feel as much honored in receiving a commission to sweep the streets as though called to a service higher in the world’s estimation. We confess to something like a street-cleaning duty in removing the scandals which have settled about the name of John Rogers.
Since the enemies of Rogers have mainly taken their artillery from Pratt’s work, the falsity of which has in part been shown, we now proceed to give it further notice and refutation. Base coin is sometimes passed around and received as genuine; put to the test, its worth vanishes. Written in a malignant spirit, with no regard to truth whatever, the untrustworthiness of Pratt’s book can scarcely be overstated.
We will continue to quote from this book, and John Rogers, 2d’s “Reply” to the same.
It remains (says Pratt) that I speak of the third step in Quakerism taken by John Rogers, who received his first notions of spirituality from Banks and Case, a couple of lewd men[[11]] of that sort called Singing Quakers. These men, as they danced through this Colony, lit on John Rogers and made a Quaker of him; but neither they nor the Spirit could teach him to sing. However, he remained their disciple for a while, and then, being wiser than his teachers, made a transition to the church of the Seventh Day Baptists. But, the same spirit not deserting him, but setting in with the disposition of his own spirit to a vehement affectation of precedency, he resolved to reach it, though it should happen to lead to singularity; whereupon, after a few revelations, he resolved upon Quakerism again, though under a modification somewhat new. I call it Quakerism, not but that he differed from them in many things, yet holding with them in the main, being guided by the same spirit, acknowledging their spirit and they his, he must needs be called a Quaker.