CHAPTER VII.
We had not intended to make further reply (see Chapter [II]) to Mr. McEwen’s Half-Century Sermon; but lest our silence should be construed by some as implying an inability to do so, we turn to it again.
“The elder Gov. Griswold,” he says, “acted at one time as prosecuting attorney against the Rogerenes.” If this was so, he was prosecuting his somewhat near relatives, so far as the descendants of John Rogers, 2d, were concerned, Henry Wolcott and Matthew Griswold, Sr., being their common ancestors.
Is it not strange that ministers of religion should delight in showing the powers of this world to be their support, as if to add honor and respectability to the church? “Who is she that”—without secular pomp—“looketh forth as the morning; fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?”
Mr. McEwen proceeds, “I have not yet spoken of scourging, nor of the effect of it; which, in the consummation of judgments, actually befell these crusaders against idolatry,” referring to the “outbreak” of 1764-6.
Neither does Mr. McEwen speak of fines, imprisonments, setting in stocks, and other barbarous cruelties practised upon John Rogers and his followers; but he adds: “What the law could not do, in that it was weak, lynching did.” We wonder that Mr. McEwen should have made this admission; but we honor him for it, although he gives away his cause. “Lynching did.” Here is an acknowledgment that the church and government of that day, regardless even of their own laws, resolved themselves into a mob.
Says Mr. McEwen:—
Historical fidelity constrains me, though with reluctance and sadness, to say that our forefathers of this congregation, in the extremity of their embarrassment, took the disturbers of public worship out, tied them to trees, and permitted the boys to give them a severe whipping with switches taken from the prim bush.
This treatment was made more disgraceful from the fact, admitted by Mr. McEwen, that the Rogerenes, “in common with Quakers, held the doctrine of non-resistance to violence from men,” as an example of which, he says:—
A constable often took out a lusty man and with a twine tied him to a tree. He was studious not to break the ligature; but stood, conscientiously, until the close of divine service, when he was officially released.