To show that the synods are not quite so harmless as Mr. Neal reports, I will give an instance of their authority exercised in Connecticut in 1758. A Mr. Merret, of Lebanon, having lost his wife, with whom he had lived childless forty years, went to Rhode-Island, and married a niece of his late wife, which was agreeable to the laws of that province. By her having a child, Mr. Merret offered the same for baptism to the minister of whose church he was a member. The minister refused, because it was an incestuous child; and cited Merret and his wife to appear before himself and his church upon an indictment of incest. Merret appeared; the verdict was, “Guilty of incest.” He appealed to the Association, which also found him guilty of incest. He again appealed to the Consociation, and was again found guilty of incest. Merret and his wife were then ordered to separate, and make a public confession, on pain of excommunication. Merret refused; whereupon the minister read the act of excommunication, while the deacons shoved Merret out of the meeting-house. Being thus cast out of the synagogue, and debarred from the conversation of any one in the parish, it was well said by Mr. Merret: “If this be not to exercise the power of the keys, I know not what it is.” The poor man soon after died with a broken heart, and was buried in his own garden by such christian brethren as were not afraid of the mild puissance of the Consociation. Mr. Neal says, also, p. 609, after evincing his jealousy at the growth of the Church of England in New-England: “If the religious liberties of the plantations are invaded by the setting up of spiritual courts, &c., they will feel the sad effects of it.” In this sentiment I agree with Mr. Neal; but, unluckily, he meant the bishops courts, and I meant the courts of synods, composed of his “meek, exemplary, and learned divines of New-England,” but who are more severe and terrible than even was the Star-Chamber under the influence of Laud, or the Inquisition of Spain. The ecclesiastical courts of New-England have, in the course of 160 years, bored the tongues with hot needles, cut off the ears, branded the foreheads of, and banished, imprisoned, and hanged more quakers, baptists, adamites, ranters, episcopalians, for what they call heresy, blasphemy, and witchcraft, than there are instances of persecution in Fox’s book of Martyrology, or under the bishops of England since the death of Henry VIII. And yet Mr. Neal was afraid of spiritual courts, and admired the practice of New-England churches, who only excommunicated offenders, delivering them over to the civil magistrates to torture and ruin. If I remember right, I once saw the Inquisition of Portugal act after the same manner, when the priest said, “We deal with the soul, and the civil magistrate with the body.”