Peter, and consigned
them to the care of physicians as religious monomaniacs, no sane man
could have blamed them. Every sect, in its origin, and especially in its
time of persecution, has had its fanatics. The early Christians, if we
may credit the admissions of their own writers or attach the slightest
credence to the statements of pagan authors, were by no means exempt from
reproach and scandal in this respect. Were the Puritans themselves the
men to cast stones at the Quakers and Baptists? Had they not, in the
view at least of the Established Church, turned all England upside down
with their fanaticisms and extravagances of doctrine and conduct? How
look they as depicted in the sermons of Dr. South, in the sarcastic pages
of Hudibras, and the coarse caricatures of the clerical wits of the times
of the second Charles? With their own backs scored and their ears
cropped for the crime of denying the divine authority of church and state
in England, were they the men to whip Baptists and hang Quakers for doing
the same thing in Massachusetts?
Of all that is noble and true in the Puritan character we are sincere
admirers.
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