The General Association of Congregational ministers in Massachusetts met at Brookfield, June 27, 1837, and issued a Pastoral Letter to the churches under its care. The immediate occasion of it was the profound sensation produced by the recent public lecture in Massachusetts by Angelina and Sarah Grimke, two noble women from South Carolina, who bore their testimony against slavery. The Letter demanded that "the perplexed and agitating subjects which are now common amongst us... should not be forced upon any church as matters for debate, at the hazard of alienation and division," and called attention to the dangers now seeming "to threaten the female character with widespread and permanent injury." So, this is all,--the utmost reach Of priestly power the mind to fetter! When laymen think, when women preach, A war of words, a "Pastoral Letter!" Now, shame upon ye, parish Popes! Was it thus with those, your predecessors, Who sealed with racks, and fire, and ropes Their loving-kindness to transgressors? A "Pastoral Letter," grave and dull; Alas! in hoof and horns and features, How different is your Brookfield bull From him who bellows from St. Peter's Your pastoral rights and powers from harm, Think ye, can words alone preserve them? Your wiser fathers taught the arm And sword of temporal power to serve them. Oh, glorious days, when Church and State Were wedded by your spiritual fathers! And on submissive shoulders sat Your Wilsons and your Cotton Mathers. No vile "itinerant" then could mar The beauty of your tranquil Zion, But at his peril of the scar Of hangman's whip and branding-iron. Then, wholesome laws relieved the Church Of heretic and mischief-maker, And priest and bailiff joined in search, By turns, of Papist, witch, and Quaker The stocks were at each church's door, The gallows stood on Boston Common, A Papist's ears the pillory bore,-- The gallows-rope, a Quaker woman! Your fathers dealt not as ye deal With "non-professing" frantic teachers; They bored the tongue with red-hot steel, And flayed the backs of "female preachers." Old Hampton, had her fields a tongue, And Salem's streets could tell their story, Of fainting woman dragged along, Gashed by the whip accursed and gory! And will ye ask me, why this taunt Of memories sacred from the scorner? And why with reckless hand I plant A nettle on the graves ye honor? Not to reproach New England's dead This record from the past I summon, Of manhood to the scaffold led, And suffering and heroic woman. No, for yourselves alone, I turn The pages of intolerance over, That, in their spirit, dark and stern, Ye haply may your own discover! For, if ye claim the "pastoral right" To silence Freedom's voice of warning, And from your precincts shut the light Of Freedom's day around ye dawning;