“Yes, I do,” said the fellow doggedly. “And have you gone willingly to live with him as your husband?” “Yes,” said the frightened girl. “Then I pronounce you man and wife, and whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder. Be off with you. You are married now according to the law and the gospel.” This rehash of several aspersions, spiced by newspaper humor, has, as is perceived, for the best part of its joke (to those better informed than its writer) several amusing paradoxes; viz., that the opposing preacher should bear the name of _Bolles_; that John Rogers, instead of dying in New London a so-called religious fanatic, had a Rip Van Winkle sleep in New Jersey where he awoke an atheist and at the same time a Rogerene. The dragon’s tooth which Mr. Blake appears to have manufactured himself, with no assistance whatever, for his “History of the First Church of Christ, of New London,” is of a more serious character than even such anecdotes as these. This new production is to the effect that the General Court (1684) granted Matthew Griswold and his daughter Elizabeth further guardianship of John Rogers, Jr., “on account Of the continuance of his father in _immoral practices_.” The manner in which Mr. Blake so easily manufactured a statement never before made by any historian in regard to John Rogers, is by having (doubtless inadvertently) placed together as contexts two court records which have no relation to each other. The continuance of John Rogers, Jr., in the custody of Matthew Griswold and Elizabeth, granted in 1784, because John Rogers was “continuing in his evil practices,” etc., referred, as observed by previous historians, to the giving the two children into the mother’s charge in 1677, on account (as distinctly stated in the records) of John Rogers “being so hettridox in his opinion and practice,” even to breaking the holy Sabbath, etc. Mr. Blake went back of this the true context, to the alleged cause of the divorce suit in 1675, which cause was not so much as referred to by the court when the children were assigned to the care of the mother and grandfather, which assignment was wholly on the ground of the father’s “hettridoxy.” To have given the children to the care of the mother and grandfather on account of a charge against John Rogers of which he had been acquitted by the grand jury, would have been an impossible proceeding. His transgression of the ecclesiastical laws and usages were “evil practices” to the view of Matthew Griswold, Elizabeth, and the General Court.