In 1633 the Court of Assistants, thinking “the keepeing of lectures att the ordinary howres nowe obserued in the forenoone, to be dyvers wayes preiudiciall to the common good, both in the losse of a whole day, & bringing other charges & troubles to the place where the lecture is kept,” ordered that they should not begin before one o’clock. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ i. 110.] The evil still continued, for only the next year it was found that so many lectures “did spend too much time and proved overburdensome,” and they were reduced to two a week. [Footnote: Felt’s _Eccl. Hist._ i. 201.] Notwithstanding these measures, relief was not obtained, because, as the legislature complained in 1639, lectures “were held till night, and sometimes within the night, so as such as dwelt far off could not get home in due season, and many weak bodies could not endure so long, in the extremity of the heat or cold, without great trouble and hazard of their health,” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 324.] and a consultation between the elders and magistrates was suggested. But to have the delights of the pulpit abridged was more than the divines could bear. They declared roundly that their privileges were invaded; [Footnote: _Idem_, i. 325.] and the General Court had to give way. A few lines in Winthrop’s Journal give an idea of the tax this loquacity must have been upon the time of a poor and scattered people. “Mr. Hooker being to preach at Cambridge, the governor and many others went to hear him.... He preached in the afternoon, and having gone on, with much strength of voice and intention of spirit, about a quarter of an hour, he was at a stand, and told the people that God had deprived him both of his strength and matter, &c. and so went forth, and about half an hour after returned again, and went on to very good purpose about two hours.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 304.] Common men could not have kept this hold upon the inhabitants of New England, but the clergy were learned, resolute, and able, and their strong but narrow minds burned with fanaticism and love of power; with their beliefs and under their temptations persecution seemed to them not only their most potent weapon, but a duty they owed to Christ--and that duty they unflinchingly performed. John Cotton, the most gifted among them, taught it as a holy work: “But the good that is brought to princes and subjects by the due punishment of apostate seducers and idolaters and blasphemers is manifold. “First, it putteth away evill from the people and cutteth off a gangreene, which would spread to further ungodlinesse.... “Secondly, it driveth away wolves from worrying and scattering the sheep of Christ. For false teachers be wolves, ... and the very name of wolves holdeth forth what benefit will redound to the sheep, by either killing them or driving them away.