dark, stinking, noisome dungeon, where she could hardly stir or stand upright, two days and two nights, without food, so much. as bread and water, and imprisoned a Friend for coming to relieve her, and bringing her a little milk; and fined him four pounds for entertaining her and another; and afterwards, according to their law, whipped her thirty stripes, through three towns, in a frosty morning, Cambridge, Watertown, and Dedham (dead'em indeed, with whipping them), and so carried her into the wilderness, where were bears that have set upon men and torn them to pieces; against night, where she had twenty miles to go in frosty weather, without any company and through many great waters, without bridges, being forced to wade through, and get over as she could, at the hazard of her life, ere she came to any town; and yet was she preserved, and came to Rhode Island. And taking her daughter, and Samuel Coleman, an inhabitant, back with her to fetch her clothes, which they would not let her take with her, they were taken up again by the constable at Charlestown,' and had in a cart to Cambridge, where the scholars again mocked and abused them, telling Sarah Coleman (an ancient woman, who had fed them), "That she should be whipped with thongs and ends;" her husband being a shoemaker, who had given them the making and mending of their shoes. Thus they were put in the House of Correction, as wandering vagabond Quakers, though she would have bought a house, if they would have suffered her; and they were whipped ten stripes a-piece, one morning before it was light, because works of darkness will not bear the light; by a member of their church, who had told her before, "That the Governor of Boston was his God, and the magistrates his Gods." This was their entertainment of strangers, that Cotton Mather boasts of being so kind to (of which more hereafter), to abuse, put in the stocks and dungeon, imprison, whip, and drive her into the wilderness without her clothes, and the like again for coming again to fetch them; and also two innocent women, ancient and young, with her, Sarah Coleman, and her own daughter, for nothing but being in her company to help her; and one saying, when they asked her, "Whether she was of her religion, and owned her way?" "That she owned the way of God;" and the

daughter, for not denying her mother, had her arm bruised in the hole of the whipping-post, Daniel Goggings, magistrate, going away with her Bible; and after the king's letter to restrain them, and the coming of his commissioners, she was whipped at Boston, at a cart's tail, through the street, and so all along out of their jurisdiction, with a warrant to pass her from constable to constable, to drive her out of their jurisdiction; and they set up a new gallows, saying, "If she came again, she should be hanged." Eight times was this innocent woman whipped, and four times they carried her into the wilderness, among wild beasts, to be devoured, where were bears and wolves, besides wild Indians; and this is their civility and treatment of women, as well as men; so that whether young or old, inhabitants or strangers, men or women, was all alike to them; which he would seek to cover by that story he mentions; and who knows but such a thing might be suffered, if not ordered, as has been by men, seeing they made no difference in stripping and whipping not only men but women also, as a sign of their wretchedness and inhumanity, in such a shameless and immodest manner as they did; so cruel and merciless were they to them that fell into their hands, without respect to youth or age, sex or condition, as in the former treatise may be seen at large. These inhuman whippings the aforesaid George Joy thus describes:-*

"Twelve innocents, without e're guilt or crime,
With cruel whips were scourgéd at one time;
And six days after, fifteen more, by force,
Were beaten like the first,-without remorse.
Seven tender women, young and old, were stripped
All naked to the waist, and cruelly whipped:
Immodest action, greatest wrong, with shame,
Which never will be clear from guilt or blame:
And twenty men, well bred, of good descent,
Fit for assistants to their government;

Each of such good report and high repute,
Their foes could not accuse them, but were mute:

Only a law unjust, forbid their meeting

To serve the Lord, and whips must be their greeting."

And now, Cotton, thou mayest see we have other New England

* Innocency's Complaint.

persecutions besides what thou mentionest; and why couldst thou not have mentioned some of these, or the like instances of their cruelties and inhuman persecutions, as well as that of which thou mightest have had enough at hand, hadst thou been minded or willing to write true history, and not rather willing to conceal the truth, though thou pretendest to it in thy History, by endeavouring to cover it over with that story aforesaid, which is more than is true, as thou relatest it, as far as I can find by the former treatise ?

And as to his saying, "Their stories about their sufferings are as little to be credited as their stories about their miracles;" as little, argues nothing; but that they may be as much credited as the other, that is, what miracles they ever pretended to; but that of "George Fox having the gift of tongues" is a story of his own, or at least none of ours, for we never said he had; and his name being to the Battle Door, was with respect to the Preface, and some of the English part, and a little paper of Exhortation to the Light, which was translated into the several languages, as they went along, with his name to it, as some other of his books have been ; which no more argues that he pretended to understand them, than that Paul, or any other of the apostles, understood English or Welsh, into which their Epistles have been translated: so that the scornful flirt of proud fool, he casts on him, he may take to himself and his brethren, who have had no more wit than so to construe it. And what if a Jew was hired to help in some part of that work, was that any crime? It was known that John Stubbs, the chief author of it, was a very learned man, and knew thirty languages, almost as many as are in that book, as Cotton Mather's champion, Roger Williams, confessed.

Cotton Mather, Ibid. sec. 3.—“The more sensible sort of men that go under the name of Quakers, finding the gross heresies of the old Foxian Quakerism to be so indispensable, (chap. ii.,) have of later time set themselves to refine it, with such concessions and confessions of truth, as that in their system it is quite another thing than what once it was." Answer. Quakerism (as he scoffingly calls our holy religion) is no other thing for substance than

what it was, viz., true Christianity, though it may be more explained of late times, and the principles of it, as held by the said people, more fully stated and explicated in our day, than it was in its first publication, which began with warnings, exhortations, and invitations to turn to the Light of Christ in themselves, to which coming into obedience, and "doing His will," they came to "know of His doctrine;" for the Church has its growth as well as particular men, and doth not attain to its full growth and perfection all at once, as to wisdom, power, and glory, but by degrees, as is manifest since the beginning of the Reformation. And though he himself says, Introduction, chap. i., page 2, "That it is very certain that the first reformers never intended that what they did should be the absolute boundary of reformation, so that it should be a sin to proceed any further, as is abundantly demonstrated, by their own going beyond Wickliffe," &c., they have endeavoured to hinder any from going further, and yet often confesses, "That they are short in reformation," as I have before related, but I doubt not but the Church will increase in purity, (of doctrine, life, and discipline,) power, and glory, even to its full completement, as the light shines brighter and brighter, unto the perfect day, even till it arrive at the perfection of beauty, but "the New England Quakerism," as he calls it, "is still that old Foxian Quakerism." If they are of the good old way, I doubt not but they are of the new and living way; and that all real Quakers, in all parts of the world, are one with us in life and principle. And that "they," as he says, "utterly renounce the letter of everything," I do not believe on his say-so, without proof. Nor do "these New Quakers," as he calls them, "cover their sentiments with such fallacious and ambiguous expressions, that all Fox's gross Quakerism," or anything else, "can be at once either asserted or denied," but speak as plain as they can, and if there is anything hard to be understood, it is to them that are unlearned in spiritual things, as were some things in Paul's Epistles, which such wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction; and as it was then, so it is now.

Cotton Mather.-"There was one Keith particularly, who dif

fered almost as much from the generality of the New England Quakers, as we that persecuted them; and yet did such an unaccountable thing as to appear like a champion for them, in opposition to the Churches of New England." Answer. It is well he confesses they persecuted our Friends. However, I do not believe what he says of George Keith, but know the contrary; as by his own books appears, and as in the book entitled, Judas and the Chief Priests, &c., is shown, by many quotations out of his own books, which he since opposes, to his own confusion, though it is true, he then appeared in vindication of our Friends against Cotton Mather and his father, in which he convicted them of many abuses and falsehoods, which they never cleared themselves of; though Cotton Mather says, "The ministers of Boston were put upon publishing of divers books, to maintain the religion of their Churches, against his impetuous batteries." But who put them? What! is all that they do mercenary? So Cotton Mather published his Book of Witches at the command of the governor, and so to vindicate their proceedings against the Quakers, John Norton was appointed by the General Court to write his book against them, entitled, The Heart of New England Rent, though it was rather hardened; which shows their mercenariness. Yet I do not believe that their writing against him or the Truth was any occasion of turning him from it, or altering his mind; for he defended our Friends against them to the last, as in his Serious Appeal to the People of New England, printed in 1692, which I never heard they answered. Though it is partly true, as he says, "It came to pass that afterwards this very Keith," by letting in envy against his brethren, and seeking preferment elsewhere, "appeared publicly in the confutation of those Quakers," as he calls it, though not truly in that; but he might better and much truer have said, in opposition to those doctrines he had so long and lately defended. "And that in the year 1694 he printed a quarto treatise in confutation of above thirty gross errors commonly held among them," which, I say, is false; for many of those errors he pretended and suggested in that treatise were never so held by any, that I know of, among them; and instead of con