“Here endeth,” says my author, “this sanguinary act, being more like to the decrees of the Spanish inquisition, than the laws of a reformed christian magistracy; consisting of such who themselves, to shun persecution (which was but a small fine for not frequenting the public worship) had left Old England.” And what was it occasioned this bloody law? Why, because the poor quakers refused to pull off their hats, and withdrew from the church assemblies of these independent persecutors, and frequented their own meetings, in opposition to their church order; and because the quakers held tenets opposite to the orthodox received opinions of the godly, i. e. opposite to their own opinions, who by flying from England seem to have imagined that they carried away with them all the orthodoxy and godliness out of the kingdom. And to shew the rigidness of their discipline, and that they did not intend this law merely “in terrorem,” they wickedly murdered several innocent persons under the cover of it, several of their priests standing with pleasure to see them executed. Thus William Robinson, merchant, Marmaduke Stephenson, Mary Dyer, and William Leddra, were hanged at Boston for being quakers; and they would have proceeded to more executions, had it not been for the Mandamus of Charles II. who, though a papist, yet was of a more merciful disposition than these New England disciplinarians, and ordered all proceedings against the quakers immediately to stop. It would be endless to recount all the cruelties they used to these poor people, whom they imprisoned, unmercifully whipped, oppressed with fines, and then condemned them to be sold to the plantations, to answer the fines they had laid upon them. But enough hath been said to shew the inhumanity of their spirit and practice, and to raise in the reader an abhorrence and detestation of such a conduct in men, who, though they had been persecuted themselves, carried the principles of persecution with them into the place of their banishment, and used worse severities towards others for conscience-sake, than what they themselves had experienced from the bitterness of their enemies; and thereby made it appear, that they complained against the persecutions of the prelatical party, not because they were for moderation and christian charity in their own conduct, but because they thought the right of persecution only in themselves, and that violence ought not to be made use of to support any but the orthodox opinions of such as they themselves esteemed to be godly, and to maintain what they called the order and fellowship of their own churches. [372]I have only to add, that I find also from the same author, that the quakers were much persecuted in Scotland; but as he hath given no particular account of that affair, I have nothing farther to enlarge upon that subject. ----- Footnote 372: p. 567. -----