Dan. 8. 23. Now the king of the south ruled on the other side of Dan. 7. 2. the great sea. He was a king of a fierce countenance, and his power was mighty; and he destroyed wonderfully, and prospered, and destroyed the mighty And through his policy also he caused craft to prosper in his hand; and by peace he destroyed many. And he did according to Dan. 11 36. his will, and he exalted himself and magnified himself above every god, and spake marvellous things against the God of gods. Neither did he regard the God of his fathers, nor regard any god; for he magnified himself above all. But in his stead he honored the god of forces, or the god of wars and fortune, a god whom his fathers knew not. The ships of Chittim alone stood against him, therefore was he grieved, and returned from Egypt, and was filled with rage. Nevertheless he prospered till the indignation of heaven was accomplished; and the fear of him and the dread of him fell on all nations. Dan. 11. 30. Dan. 11. 36. Deut. 2. 25. Ps. 135. 10. Dan. 5. 20. And it came to pass, that after he had smitten great nations and slain mighty kings, that his heart was lifted up, and his mind hardened in pride, and his mouth spake great things, and he said, Surely I shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces. And he, even the king of the south, was moved with choler, and assembled a multitude of great forces, and went forth to fight with the king of the north. And the king of the south sent messengers before him, saying, Thus shall ye Is. 37. 9. speak to the king of the north, saying, Let not thy God, in whom thou trustest, deceive thee, saying, Thy city shall not be given into the hand of the king of the south. Behold, thou hast heard what I have done to all lands, by destroying them utterly, and shalt thou be delivered? Have the gods of the nations delivered them which I have destroyed, as Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the children of Eden which were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arphad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah? And the king of the north received the message, and went up into the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord. And he prayed unto the Lord, saying, O Lord of hosts, thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; thou hast made heaven and earth. Of a truth, Lord, the king of the south hath laid waste all the nations and their countries. Now, therefore, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord, even thou only. Then a prophet sent unto the king of the north, saying, Thus saith the Lord God, Whereas thou hast prayed Is. 87. 25. to me against the king of the south, this is the word which the Lord hath spoken concerning him, The inhab Is. 37. 13. Is. 37. 26. Rev. 12. 12. Dan. 11. 25. Ps. 74, 6, 8. itants of the north have despised thee and laughed thee to scorn, they have shaken their heads at thee. Whom hast thou reproached? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? Thou hast said, By the multitude of my chariots am I come up to the height of the mountains, and I will cut down the tall cedars and the choice fir-trees; and I will enter into the height of the borders, and into the forests. I have digged and drunk water, and with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers of the besieged places. Hast thou not heard long ago how I have done it, and of ancient times that I have formed it? Now have I brought it to pass that thou shouldest be to lay waste defenced cities into ruinous heaps. Therefore their inhabitants were of small power; they were dismayed and confounded; they were as the grass of the field and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up. But I know thy abode, and thy going out and thy coming in, and thy rage against me, and thy tumult is come up into mine ears; therefore will I put my hook into thy nose, and my bridle into thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest. Howbeit, the king of the south went on with great wrath, because he knew that he had but a short time. And he was stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army; and he overflowed and passed through the country and took many fenced cities. And he burned up the houses of God in the land, and brake down the carved work thereof with axes and hammers. But a voice was heard in the north, Blow ye the trumpet in your cities; sound an alarm on your plains and mountains: let all the inhabitants of the land assemble, for the day of darkness and gloominess is come, the day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains. The trumpet was blown, and all the inhabitants of the villages came to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. They were a great people and strong; there hath not been ever the like. A fire devoured before them, and behind them the flame of their great city burned. The land was as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness. The appearance of them was as the appearance of horses, and as horsemen so did they run. They ran like mighty men; they climbed the wall like men of war; and they marched every one on his ways, and did not break their ranks. Before their face the people of the south were much pained; all their faces gathered blackness. And the destroying angel went with them and smote in the camp of 2 Sam. 2. 3, 10. their enemies an hundred and fourscore and five thousand, Joel 2. 2. Is. 37. 36. and the residue were carried into captivity. And the Ps. 75. 1. Lord wrought a great victory that day; and the king of the north gave thanks unto God. But the king of the south gat him by stealth into his own city, as a man, be- 2 Sam. 19. 8. ing ashamed, stealeth away when he fleeth in battle. And he sent to gather together the princes, the governors, the Dan. 3. 2. judges, the treasurers, and the counsellors, and commanded them to worship the image which he had set up. But tidings out of the east and out of the north troubled Dan. 11. 44. him, therefore he determined still to go forth with great fury to destroy and utterly to make away many. But be not dismayed, ye that fear God. For I have Is. 41. 10. read the handwriting on the wall, and thus is it written, Rev. 18. 1, 2. God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. And I have seen an angel come down from heaven, and he cried mightily, with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen. The kingdoms of this world belong unto God. Sing Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Comfort ye, therefore, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to the inhabitants of this land, and ery unto them, Your warfare is accomplished. God hath broken in pieces the oppres sor. Rev. 11. 15. Rev. 19. 6. Is. 40. 1, 2. 1 Sam. 8. 11. Jer. 51. 57. Is. 66. 12. Blessed be the Lord who hath not given us as a prey to his teeth. The king of the south will not now take our sons to run before his chariot, and wise men will no longer be made drunk with his cup. And when the spirit of righteousness is poured upon us from on high, then will peace be extended to us as a river; our nation will not lift up sword against any nation, neither shall we learn war any more. God will restore our judges as at Is. 1. 26. the first, and our counsellors as at the beginning; afterwards we shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city. For the peace of our country let us all devoutly pray, for they shall prosper that love it. Let us say, Peace be within thy walls and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions' sakes I will Ps. 122, & now say, Peace be within thee. [The paper by Dr. Ellis, on "The King's Missive," read at this meeting, was printed in the "Boston Daily Advertiser" on the day after the meeting, and elicited from Mr. Whittier some criticisms which appeared in that journal on the 29th of March. To Mr. Whittier's letter Dr. Ellis replied in a communication printed the next day. A short answer by Mr. Whittier was printed in the same journal on the 31st, and a brief rejoinder by Dr. Ellis on the 1st of April. It has seemed desirable to the Committee for publishing the Proceedings, to insert here the first two of these letters as an appendix to Dr. Ellis's paper. The proofs have been corrected by the writers, and Mr. Whittier has added a few notes to his letter as first printed, to which Dr. Ellis has furnished a brief reply at the end of his letter. In a note addressed to the Committee Mr. Whittier states that it has been his intention "at some time to prepare a full and exhaustive history of the relations of Puritan and Quaker in the seventeenth century." To the Editors of the Boston Daily Advertiser: A friend has called my attention to a paper read by Dr. Ellis before the Massachusetts Historical Society upon the persecution of the Friends in New England of the seventeenth century, in which my poetic version of an incident of that period, the "King's Missive" to Governor Endicott, is criticised. It is not easy, in a poem of the kind referred to, to be strictly accurate in every detail, but I think the ballad has preserved with tolerable correctness the spirit, tone, and color of the incident and its time. At least, such was my intention. Certainly, I did not profess to hold up that reprobate monarch, Charles II., as a consistent friend of toleration, or of any other Christian virtue. The Quakers of his time knew him too well to attribute his actions to any other than selfish motives. They were never deceived by his professions of liberality, as Baxter and his friend, "old Mr. Ash," were, when they wept for very joy over his gracious words and promises. They sought to obtain from him some relief from their sufferings, and did so in a few instances, when it suited his caprice, or when the persecutors complained of happened to be Puritans. The letter of the king commanded that further proceedings against the imprisoned Friends should be stayed, and that they should be sent to England for trial. To this Governor Endicott promised implicit obedience. The prisoners were released from the jail, and they and their friends outside were for the first time permitted to meet together in Boston, and praise God for their deliverance.* That the persecution *The missive was signed September 9. The Friends had to charter and prepare a vessel to carry it to Boston, and considerable delay must have been occasioned. The precise date of the vessel's sailing is not known, but it was probably about the 1st of October. It was six weeks on its passage, and probably arrived in Boston somewhere near the middle of November. The records of the General Court for November 29 show that the missive had been received, though the document itself is not recorded. They state "That we may not in the least offend His Majesty, the Court doth hereby order and declare that the execution of the laws in force against the Quakers, so far as they respect corporal punishment or death, be suspended until the Court take farther notice." On the 9th of December, an order from the court for the release of the prisoners was issued. A copy of this document is given in Besse's "Sufferings of the Quakers," and in the "History of the People Called Quakers," by the historian Sewel, whose careful statements made when many of the per did not cease is true. But ever after the hunted Quakers breathed more freely, and felt that the end of their long night of tribulation was near. That the prisoners were not sent to England was probably due to the fears of the governor and his advisers that their doings would not bear a legal investigation. The only way of evading the king's requisition was to have no prisoners in the jail! Drake's History of Boston, page 357, says: "An order was issued for the discharge of the Quakers then in prison. William Salter was the prison-keeper. There were a little previous to this twenty-eight persons lying in Boston jail, one of whom, Wenlock Christison, was under sentence of death." In Bryant and Gay's History of the United States. vol. ii., page 197, it is stated that "William Salter, keeper of Boston jail, was at once ordered to release and discharge all the Quakers in his custody." In the Journal of George Fox it is said, in relation to this matter, that "the passengers in the ship and the Friends in the town met together, and offered up praise and thanksgiving to God, who had so wonderfully delivered them out of the teeth of the devourer"; and that, while they were thus met, "in came a poor Friend, who, being sentenced by their bloody law to die, had lain some time in irons, expecting execution." Dr. Evans, in his carefully compiled "History of Friends in the 17th Century," says: "The council issued an order to the keeper of the prison to set at liberty all the Quakers then in confinement." Page 250. It I think it will be seen that there was a "general jail delivery" in consequence of the king's command; that the Friends met together and thanked God for their deliverance, and that "one appointed to die," and who had lain in irons expecting death, was with them. has been said that Wenlock Christison was released before Shattuck's arrival, in consequence of his "recantation." He recanted nothing. He stated only that he found a freedom in his mind to depart out of the jurisdiction, and that he did not know as he should ever come back. Mary Dyer left the colony under the same circumstances, and after a time felt herself called upon to return. It seems more than probable that Christison was not set at liberty until after the arrival secutors and persecuted were still living have never been contradicted. It is as follows:;"To William Salter, keeper of the prison in Boston. "You are required by authority and order of the General Court forthwith to release and discharge the Quakers who at present are in your custody. See that you do not neglect this. "BOSTON, 9th of Dec., 1661." "By order of Court, EDWARD RAWSON, Secretary." That this order was not placed on record by the court is easily accounted for. The king's letter required that the prisoners should be sent to England with the charges against them and the proceedings of the court in the several cases. This would have revealed the court's usurpation of authority, and shown that the hanging and maiming were contrary to the colony's charter and the laws of England. The court released the prisoners without sending them to England, and left no record of their action to be used against them. |