The third falsehood is his saying, “He remained their disciple for awhile;” since it is fully proved that he never was their disciple at all.
The fourth falsehood is his saying that “after he had remained their disciple awhile he made a transition to the church of the Seventh Day Baptists.” Whereas it is fully proved that his joining with the Seventh Day Baptists was many years before those people first came into this Colony.
And among his other scoffs and falsehoods, he asserts that John Rogers “often changed his principles.” To which I answer that upon condition that Peter Pratt will make it appear that John Rogers ever altered or varied in any one article of his religion, since his separating from the Presbyterian church and joining with the Seventh Day Baptists, which is more than fifty years past (excepting only as to the observation of the seventh day), I will reward him with the sum of £20 for his labor. No, verily, he mistakes the man; it was not John Rogers that used to change his religion, but it was Peter Pratt himself.
Here follow more of the false statements made by Peter Pratt, which have been repeated by Trumbull, Barber, and others:—
Great part of his imprisonment at Hartford was upon strong suspicion of his being accessory to the burning of New London meeting-house.
To which John Rogers, 2d, replies:—
As to this charge against John Rogers concerning New London meeting-house, were it not for the sake of those who live remote, I should make no reply to it; because there are so many hundreds of people inhabiting about New London who know it to be notoriously false, and that John Rogers was a close prisoner at Hartford (which is fifty miles distant from New London) several months before and three years after said meeting-house was burnt. And that this long imprisonment was for refusing to give a bond of £50, which he declared he could not in conscience do, and to pay a fine of £5, which he refused to do, for which reason he was kept a prisoner, from the time of his first commitment, three years and eight months, and then set at liberty by open proclamation, is so fully proved by the records of Hartford that I presume none will dare contradict.
And now, in order to prove Peter Pratt’s affirmation to be false, in that he affirms that “great part of his imprisonment at Hartford was upon strong suspicion of his being accessory to the burning of New London meeting-house,” take these following testimonies:—
“The testimony of Thomas Hancox, aged about eighty years, testifieth, That when I was goal keeper at Hartford, John Rogers, late of New London, deceased, was a prisoner under my charge for more than three years; in which time of his confinement at Hartford, New London meeting-house was burnt, and I never heard or understood that the Authority, or any other person, had any mistrust that he was any way concerned in that fact, nor did he ever suffer one hour’s imprisonment on that account.
Thomas Hancox, Kinsington, Sept. 17, 1725.”