Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/70

 observe: “Men come when they list to those meetings, and so time is lost; and when they do come, [take] no care, I had almost said conscience, to minde their work in hand, and do it with all their might, as it to which they are called; but Officers may speak, charge, ery, yea strike sometimes, yet [they] heed it not; it’s intolerable! But that Members of Churches, which should be examples to others, should do this, at best it is but brutishnesse.” With an inimitable mixture of the old bull-dog spirit and the new religious bigotry, he exclaims: “If there be but English blood in a Christian, he will endeavour to be perfect in his Art herein; but if grace, much more; that he may make one stone in the wall, and be fit to shed his blood, if need be, for the defence of Christs servants, Churches, and [the] cause of God.” The clergy, indeed, leaned heavily on the temporal arm, and noted its shakiness with keen apprehension. “’T is not now an artillery day,” explains Shepard, alluding. to the sermons always preached on those occasions, “only I must speak a word because ’t is a thing of moment, and matter of great conscience with me.”

Throughout the greater part of the colonial and provincial periods, speaking by and large, the militia system was notoriously ineffectual. Unless stiffened by professional aid from the old world, the native discipline