You go back to the time of the founders and fathers of the colony, and it is no better. In 1667, Mr. Wilson, who had "A singular gift in the practice of discipline," on his death-bed declared, that "God would judge the people for their rebellion and self-willed spirit, for their contempt of civil and ecclesiastical rulers, and for their luxury and sloth," and before that he said, "People rise up as Corah, against their ministers." "And for our neglect of baptizing the children of the church,... I think God is provoked by it. Another sin I take to be the making light ... of the authority of the Synods." John Norton, whose piety was said to be "Grace, grafted on a crab-stock," in 1660, growled, after his wont, on account of the "Heart of New England, rent with the blasphemies of this generation." John Cotton, the ablest man in New England, who "Liked to sweeten his mouth with a piece of Calvin, before he went to sleep," and was so pious that another could not swear while he was under the roof, mourned at "The condition of the churches;" and, in 1652, on his death-bed, after bestowing his blessing on the President of Harvard College, who had begged it of him, exhorted the elders to "Increase their watch against those declensions, which he saw the professors of religion falling into."[2] In 1641, such was the condition of piety in Boston, that it was thought necessary to banish a man, because he did not believe in original sin. In 1639, a fast was appointed, "To deplore the prevalence of the small-pox, the want of zeal in the professors of religion, and the general decay of piety." "The church of God had not been long in this wilderness," thus complains a minister, one hundred and fifty years ago, "before the dragon cast forth several floods to devour it; but not the least of these floods was one of the Antinomian and familistical heresies." "It is incredible what alienations of mind, and what a very calenture the devil raised in the country upon this odd occasion." "The sectaries" "began usually to seduce women into their notions, and by these women, like their first mother, they soon hooked in the husbands also." So, in 1637, the Synod of Cambridge was convened, to despatch "The apostate serpent:" one woman was duly convicted of holding "About thirty monstrous opinions," and subsequently, by the civil authorities, banished from the colony. The synod, after much time was "spent in ventilation and emptying of private passions," condemned eighty-two opinions, then prevalent in the colony, as erroneous, and decided to "Refer doubts to be resolved by the great God." Even in 1636, John Wilson lamented "The dark and distracted condition of the churches of New England."