Mere adventurers, men of desperate fortunes,
bankrupts in character and purse, contrived to make gain of godliness
under the church and state government of New England, put on the austere
exterior of sanctity, quoted Scripture, anathematized heretics, whipped
Quakers, exterminated Indians, burned and spoiled the villages of their
Catholic neighbors, and hewed down their graven images and "houses of
Rimmon." It is curious to observe how a fierce religious zeal against
heathen and idolaters went hand in hand with the old Anglo-Saxon love of
land and plunder. Every crusade undertaken against the Papists of the
French colonies had its Puritan Peter the Hermit to summon the saints to
the wars of the Lord. At the siege of Louisburg, ten years before the
onslaught upon the Acadian settlers, one minister marched with the
Colonial troops, axe in hand, to hew down the images in the French
churches; while another officiated in the double capacity of drummer and
chaplain,--a "drum ecclesiastic," as Hudibras has it.
At the late celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims in New York, the
orator of the day labored at great length to show that the charge of
intolerance, as urged against the colonists of New England, is unfounded
in fact.
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