It happened about this time, that some of the people called Quakers that lived there, being had before the magistrates, it was demanded by one of them, how they might know a Quaker; to which Simon Broadstreet, one of the magistrates, answered, ‘Thou art one, for coming in with thy hat on.’ Which made the other reply, it was a horrible thing to make such cruel laws, to whip and cut off ears, and bore through the tongue, for not putting off the hat. Then one of the bench said, that the Quakers held forth blasphemies at their meetings. To which one of the others desired him to make such a thing appear, if it were so, that they might be convinced: and further, that they should do well to send some to their meetings, that they might hear, and give account of what was done and spoken there; and not conclude of a thing they knew not. ‘But,’ said major-general Denison, ‘if ye meet together, and say any thing, we may conclude that ye speak blasphemy.’ A very strange syllogism indeed. No better, (to prove persecution lawful,) was the argument of Charles Chansey, chief teacher at the university, who in a sermon at Boston, argued thus: ‘suppose you should catch six wolves in a trap, and ye cannot prove that they killed either sheep or lambs: and now you have them they will neither bark nor bite: yet they have the plain marks of wolves, and therefore ye knock them down.’ A base expression, thus to compare man to a beast; for God said in plain terms to Noah, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” But these persecutors thought there was stress enough in it to call the Quakers wolves; and to make one pass for a Quaker, they counted it a sufficient proof, when they saw he did not put off his hat to men; ‘Knock him down, it is a wolf.’