Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/231

218 denied the Trinity. He said Jesus Christ was not God. He declared that babies dying unsprinkled by a priest, would not be damned everlastingly. I set the magistrates on him, and we have just burned him, in the name of God and the Protestant church of Christ. Glory be to the triune God, and to the Saviour of men—the Prince of Peace!" I come still nearer—I come down to New England. It is Tuesday, the first of June, 1660. The magistrates of Massachusetts—peaked hats on their heads, broad ruffles at their necks—have just hanged a woman on Boston common; a handsome woman, a milliner, a wife and mother also. Her dead body is swinging in the wind, hanging from one of the branches of yonder elm,—standing still. "Why did you kill her?" I ask of the Rev. John Norton—a tall, gaunt, harsh-looking minister, on a white horse, with a scholar's eyes, and the face of a hangman,—Geneva bands on his neck, a wig on his head,—the man who seemed more interested in the proceeding than any other one of the company. "Why did you do this?" "She was a Quaker. She said that magistrates had no right over the consciences of men ; that God made revelations now as much as ever, and was just as near to George Fox as to Moses and Paul, and just as near to her as to Jesus Christ; that priests had no right to bind and loose; that we should call no man master on earth; that sprinkling water on a baby's face did it no good, and gave no pleasure to God. Besides, she said war was wicked, and that woman had just as much right as man; and when we bade her hold her peace, she impudently declared that she had as good a right to publish her opinions as we had to publish ours. So we hanged her by the neck, in the name of God and of the Puritan church of New England. It is an act of religion. Glory to God, and the vine he has planted here in the wilderness!"

I come down still further. It is the same Boston,—the month of March, 1858. Saturday, afternoon, in a meeting- house, I find men and women met together for prayer and conference;—honest-looking men, and respectable—I meet them every day in the street. Most exciting speeches are made, exciting stories are told, exciting hymns are sung, fanatical prayers are put up. Half the assembly seem a