Dennison spoke with an unerring instinct when he said they could not live together, for the faith of the Friends was subversive of a theocracy. Their belief that God revealed himself directly to man led with logical certainty to the substitution of individual judgment for the rules of conduct dictated by a sacred class, whether they claimed to derive their authority from their skill in interpreting the Scriptures, or from traditions preserved by Apostolic Succession. Each man, therefore, became, as it were, a priest unto himself, and they repudiated an ordained ministry. Hence, their crime resembled that of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who “made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi;” [Footnote: Jeroboam’s sin is discussed in _Ne Sutor_, p. 25; _Divine Right of Infant Baptism_, p. 26.] and it was for this reason that John Norton and John Endicott resolved upon their extermination, even as Elisha and Jehu conspired to exterminate the house of Ahab. That they failed was due to no mercy for their victims, nor remorse for the blood they made to flow, but to their inability to control the people. Nothing is plainer upon the evidence, than that popular sympathy was never with the ecclesiastics in their ferocious policy; and nowhere does the contrast of feeling shine out more clearly than in the story of the hanging of Robinson and Stevenson. The figure of Norton towers above his contemporaries. He held the administration in the hollow of his hand, for Endicott was his mouthpiece; yet even he, backed by the whole power of the clergy, barely succeeded in forcing through the Chamber of Deputies the statute inflicting death. “The priests and rulers were all for blood, and they pursued it.... This the deputies withstood, and it could not pass, and the opposition grew strong, for the thing came near. Deacon Wozel was a man much affected therewith; and being not well at that time that he supposed the vote might pass, he earnestly desired the speaker ... to send for him when it was to be, lest by his absence it might miscarry. The deputies that were against the ... law, thinking themselves strong enough to cast it out, forbore to send for him. The vote was put and carried in the affirmative,--the speaker and eleven being in the negative and thirteen in the affirmative: so one vote carried it; which troubled Wozel so ... that he got to the court, ... and wept for grief, ... and said ‘If he had not been able to go, he would have crept upon his hands and knees, rather than it should have been.’” [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, pp. 101, 102.] After the accused had been condemned, the people, being strongly moved, flocked about the prison, so that the magistrates feared a rescue, and a guard was set.