§ 11. While these things were managing, there happened some very surprizing prodigies, which were lookt upon as testimonies from Heaven, against the ways of those greater prodigies, the sectaries. The erroneous gentlewoman her self, convicted of holding about thirty monstrous opinions, growing big with child, and at length coming to her time of travail, was delivered of about thirty monstrous births at once; whereof some were bigger, some were lesser; of several figures; few of any perfect, none of any humane shape. This was a thing generally then asserted and believed; whereas, by some that were eye-witnesses, it is affirmed that these were no more monstrous births, than what it is frequent for women, labouring with false conceptions, to produce. Moreover, one very nearly related unto this gentlewoman, and infected with her heresies, was on October 17, 1637, delivered of as hideous a monster as perhaps the sun ever lookt upon. It had no head: the face was below upon the breast: the ears were like an ape's, and grew upon the shoulders; the eyes and mouth stood far out; the nose was hooking upwards; the breast and back were full of short prickles, like a thorn-back; the navel, belly, and the distinction of sex, which was female, were in the place of the hips; and those back-parts were on the same side with the face; the arms, hands, thighs and legs, were as other childrens; but instead of toes, it had on each foot three claws, with taleons like a fowl: upon the back above the belly it had a couple of great holes like mouths; and in each of them stood out a couple of pieces of flesh; it had no forehead, but above the eyes it had four horns; two of above an inch long, hard and sharp; and the other two somewhat less. The midwife was one strongly suspected of witchcraft; and a prime Familist: thro' whose witchcrafts probably it came to pass that most of the women present at the travel were suddenly taken with such a violent vomiting and purging, tho' they had neither eaten nor drunken any thing to occasion it; that they were forced immediately to go home: others had their children so taken with convulsions, which they never had before or after, that they also were sent for home immediately; whence none were left at the time of the monster's birth, but the midwife and two more, whereof one was fallen asleep: and about the time of the monster's death, which was two hours before his birth, such an odd shake was by invisible hands given to the bed as terrify'd the standers-by. It was buried with out noise of its monstrosity; but it being whispered a few days after about the town, the magistrates ordered the opening of the grave, whereby there was discovered this

Monstrum, horrendum, in forme, ingens.*

But of this monster, good reader, let us talk no further: for at this instant I find an odd passage in a letter of the famous Mr. Thomas Hooker about this matter; namely, this: "While I was thus musing, and

• A monster, hideous, shapeless, huge.—VIRGIL,

thus writing, my study where I was writing, and the chamber where my wife was sitting, shook, as we thought, with an earthquake, by the space of half a quarter of an hour. We both perceived it, and presently went down. My maid in the kitchen observed the same. My wife said, it was the devil that was displeased that we confer about this occasion."

§ 12. It was but a few years after these things-namely, in the year 1643-that the government of Barbadoes, being disturbed by such turbulent and tumultuous Familists as those which now pestered New-England, were forced by their outrages to sentence them with banishment. Nor must it be made a reproach, if New-England also ordered a sort of banishment for these intoxicated sectaries, who began to deny or degrade the magistracy of the country, and call the king of England, "the king of Babylon," but you shall hear the effect of that procedure. Being advised of an island beyond Cape-Cod, and near the Narraganset-Bay, they fairly purchased it of the natives; thither they transplanted themselves with their families; in this transplantation, accompanied by many others of their own uncertainty in religion, whỏ yet had not come under any censures of either the court or the church for their misdemeanours. Having peopled this island, now known by the name of Rhode-Island, they swarmed over unto the main, where they also purchased some tracts of land, now covered with the two towns of Providence and Warwick; for all of which they obtained at last a charter from King Charles II., with ample priviledges. I cannot learn that the first planters of this colony were agreed in any one principle so much as this, "that they were to give one another no disturbance in the exercise of religion;" and tho' they have sometimes had some dif ference among them, as to the exercise of that principle also, I believe there never was held such a variety of religions together on so small a spot of ground as have been in that colony. It has been a colluvies of Antinomians,. Familists, Anabaptists, Anti-sabbatarians, Arminians, Socinians, Quakers, Ranters, every thing in the world but Roman Catholicks, and real Christians, tho' of the latter, I hope, there have been more than of the former among them; so that, if a man had lost his religion, he might find it at the general muster of opinionists! "Tis a good piece of antiquity that Josephus has given us, when he tells us the consequences of Nehemiah's chasing away a son of Jojada, the son of Eliash the high-priest, for marrying the daughter of Sanballat the Heronite, the chief person among the Samaritans. The father-in-law of this Menasses (for. it seems that was his name) built a temple on Gerizzim, in opposition to that at Jerusalem, and obtained a charter from the kings of Persia for the encouragement thereof, that so his daughter Nicasso (for so she was called) might not lose her husband, who was thus made a Metropolitan. After this time, all that were indicted for crimes at Jerusalem, would fly to Gerizzim, and Sichem was now the common receptacle and sanctuary of Jewish offenders: This -as R. Abrah. Zaccuth tells us-"this, was the beginning of heresie!"

And now, with some allusion to that piece of antiquity, I may venture to say, that Rhode-Island has usually been the Gerizzim of New-England. The island is indeed, for the fertility of the soil, the temperateness of the air, the commodiousness of scituation, the best garden of all the colonies; and were it free from serpents, I would have called it, "the paradise of NewEngland;" but the number of sensible and ingenious gentlemen, whereof there are some upon the island, will find it hard enough to rescue it from an extream danger of that character, Bona Terra, Mala Gens.* The condition of the rising generation upon that island, is indeed exceeding lamentable! Lactantius complains of Arcesilaus, that having much considered the contradictions of the philosophers one unto another, at last he contemned them all, and instituted a new philosophy, of not philosophising at all. The former generation of Rhode-Islanders is now generally gone off the stage; and all the messengers which the churches of the Massachuset-colony, whereto any of them did belong, sent with admonitions after them, could reclaim very few of them; the rising generation, confounded by the contradictions in religion among their parents, and under many horrible temptations, and under some unhappy tendencies to be of no religion at all; and when the ministers of this province have several times, at their own united expences, employ'd certain ministers of the gospel, to make a chargeless tender of preaching the word among them, this charitable offer of ministers has been refused; tho' it seems they are now beginning to embrace it; the indefatigable, and evangelical, and very laudable industry of Mr. John Danforth, the minister of Dorchester, has, with the blessing of our Lord thereupon, overcome a number of them, not only to hear the gospel from a worthy young preacher, Mr. Nathaniel Clap, sent thither, but also to build a meeting-house for that purpose; yea, and the liberal merchants of Boston have, in this present year 1695, been exemplary, by their bearing the expences of ministers which we have sent forth to make tenders of the gospel unto other Paganizing plantations on the Main belonging to that colony; albeit some of those tenders also have been scandalously rejected by the inhabitants. If I should now launch forth into a narrative of the marvellous lewd things which have been done and said by the giddy sectaries of this island, I confess the matter would be agreeable enough to the nature and the design of a church history, and for a warning unto all to take heed how they forsake the word of God and his ordinances in the societies of the faithful, and follow the conduct of new lights, that are no more than so many fool'sfires in the issue; but the merriment arising from the ridiculous and extravagant occurrences therein, would not be agreeable to the gravity of such an history. Wherefore I forbear it; only wishing that the people of this island may effectually feel the favourable influences and protections of the crown of England, extended unto them, inasmuch as the ridiculously comical expressions of their late address to the Queen, January 30, 1689,

A goodly land, a bad people.

are, "May it please your excellent majesty: we humbly petition your most excellent majestie's grace and favour towards us your most humble subjects and supplicants, that you would please, being Pater Patriæ,* to extend your fatherly care, in granting a confirmation to our charter." Whereupon they add, "Your transcendant love and favour extended towards us, hath so radicated it self in our hearts, never to be forgotten, that it obliges us to offer up our selves, lives, and fortunes, to be at your majesty's service, beyond the power of any command.”

CHAPTER IV.

IGNES FATUI;

OR, THE MOLESTATIONS GIVEN TO THE CHURCHES OF NEW-ENGLAND

BY THAT ODD sect of PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS.

AND SOME UNCOMFORTABLE OCCURRENTS RELATING TO A SECT OF OTHER AND BETTER PEOPLE.

Hæreses non dolemus venisse, quia novimus esse
Pradictas.t-TERTUL.

§ 1. Ir the churches of our Lord Jesus Christ must in every age be assaulted by HERETICKS, acting under the energy of that old serpent, who knowing that as the first creation, so the new creation begins with light, hath used thousands of blinds to keep a saving light from entring into the souls of men, that being a "people of wrong understanding, he that made them shall not have mercy on them;" it must be expected that the churches of New-England should undergo some assaults from the worst of HERETICKS that this age has produced. Now, I know not whether the sect which hath appeared in our days under the name of Quakers, be not upon many accounts the worst of hereticks; for in Quakerism, which has by some been called, the "sink of all heresies," we see the vomit cast out in the by-past ages, by whose kennels of seducers, lick'd up again for a new digestion, and once more exposed for the poisoning of mankind; though it pretends unto light, yet by the means of that very pretence it leaves the bewildred souls of men "in chains unto darkness," and gives them up to the conduct of an Ignis Fatuus: but this I know, they have been the most venomous of all to the churches of America. The beginning of this upstart sect has been declared, by one who was a pillar of it, in a pamphlet written in the year 1659, where this passage occurs: "It is now about seven years since the Lord raised us up:" And the north of Eng

Father of his country.

+ We do not grieve that heresies have come, for we knew they were predicted.

i.

land was reckon'd the place of its nativity. Nevertheless, I can tell the world that the first Quakers that ever were in the world, were certain fanaticks here in our town of Salem, who held forth almost all the fancies and whimsies which a few years after were broached by them that were so called in England, with whom yet none of ours had the least communication: except my reader will rather look for the first Quakers at the Delphian Oracle upon Parnassus, [originally perhaps wn, Parai-nahas, e., Hiatus Divinationis*] where the usage was, for a certain woman sitting upon a tripos over a cave, to be possessed with a dæmon, in the Scripture called Ob, which entring into her, she was immediately taken with an extraordinary trembling of her whole body, and foaming horribly, there issued from her the prophecies which enchanted all the world into a veneration of them. Our Salem Quakers indeed of themselves died childless; but the numbers of those in England increasing, they did in the year 1657 find a way into New-England, where they first infested Plymouth colony, and were for a while most unhappily successful in seducing the people not only to attend unto the mystical dispensations of the light within, as having the whole of religion contained therein, but also to oppose the good order, both civil and sacred, erected in the colony. Those persons in the Massachusets-colony, whose office it was to be watchmen of it, were much alarmed at the approach of so great a plague, and were at some loss how to prevent it, and avoid it. Although Quakerism has, by the new-turn that such ingenious men as Mr. PENN have given to it, become quite a new thing; yet the old Foxian Quakerism, which then visited New-Eng-/ land, was the grossest collection of blasphemies and confusions that ever was heard of. The CHRIST then witnessed by the Quakers was "a certain heavenly, divine body, constituted of invisible flesh, blood and bones, in which Christ came from Heaven; and he put that body into the other body of our nature, which he took of the Virgin, and that outermost body he left behind, when he ascended into heaven, nobody knows where; and this heavenly and spiritual body" (which the Quakers at length evaporate into a meet mystical dispensation, and at last it is nothing but that excusing and condemning principle in man which we call the natural conscience!) "is the Man Christ, a measure of which is in the Quakers; upon which accounts the Quakers made themselves to be Christ's as truly as ever was Jesus the Son of Mary." There is in every man a certain excusing and condemning principle, which indeed is nothing but some remainder of the divine image, left by the compassion of God upon the conscience of man after his fall; and this principle the Quakers called, "a measure of the Man Christ the light, the seed, the word." The whole history of the gospel they therefore beheld as acted over again every day, as literally as ever it was in Palestine; and what befals this principle in us, they advanced as the truth of Christ "sacrificed for us, dying, risen, sitting at the

A cave of divination.