“Earth-born religion!” In regard to doctrinal points in religion they differed not from the Congregational church. Mr. Field himself said, in the discourse from which we have before quoted, “In their opinions concerning the doctrines of religion generally they coincided with other Christians, and they did not abandon, as do the Quakers, the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.” And Miss Caulkins, in her history, says that John Rogers was strenuously orthodox in his religious views, as all his writings clearly show. The Rogerenes baptized by immersion, it is true, and much of their suffering was on that account. Benedict, in his Church History, speaks of them as “Rogerene Baptists.” This feature of their belief, ancient though it may be, against which the Congregational church a century or two ago set itself in such violent opposition, has now become current and popular. With the progress of religious freedom and of gospel truth, the Rogerenes have long since affiliated with other denominations and are as one with them. We shall, presently, show to the reader that prominent ministers, in different denominations, have been of Rogerene descent. “But why,” says Mr. McEwen, “you may be ready to ask, rake from oblivion a sect devised for nothing but to destroy the religion of the gospel and destined to vanish away?”[19] ----- Footnote 19: Apparently, Mr. McEwen judged the Puritan Sabbath to have been one and the same with the “religion of the gospel.” ----- In view of what we have already said and shown, we are now somewhat at a loss which of Solomon’s rules to adopt (see Proverbs xxvi, 4 and 5), and therefore deem it the part of wisdom to make no answer at all. Had Mr. McEwen attempted to rear a monument to his own ignorance, he could not have succeeded better than by uttering the words above quoted. “Our answer is,” he continues, “to confirm our faith in the Almighty Saviour, who said, ‘Every plant which my Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.’” We are glad that our faith needs no such confirmation. Said the apostle, “We know whom we have believed.” But what have the ages preceding the Rogerene movement not lost, who lived and passed away before this new means of confirming the truth of the gospel was discovered! “Shall be rooted up.” If he refers to the principles advocated by the Rogerenes, to the seed of equal religious rights sown by them, these are deeper rooted in the hearts, consciences and understandings of men to-day than ever before at any period in the world’s history. To quote further from Mr. McEwen’s discourse: “Men and women of low minds, in regions of darkness, now invent religions.” An insinuation, perhaps, that the Rogerenes were “men and women of low minds.” They did not invent a new religion, as we have fully shown, and, for intelligence, for wealth, for moral rectitude, were not behind others, as will further appear.