external privilege which their heavenly Father hath bequeathed them, to interest them visibly in himself, his Son, his Spirit, his covenant of grace, and the tender bosom of their careful mother, the church.

"3. What an inhumanity it is to deprive parents of that comfort they may take, from the baptism of their infants, dying in their childhood.

"4. How unseasonably and unkindly it is, to interturb the state and church with their Amalekitish onsets, when they are in their extreme pangs of travail with their lives.

5. To take a thorough view of those who have perambled this bye path, being sometimes in the crouds of foreign Wedderdopers, i. e. anabaptists; and prying into their inward frames with the best eyes I had, I could not but observe these disguised guises in the generality of them. 1. A flat formality of spirit, without salt or savour, in the spiritualities of Christ, as if their religion had begun and ended in their opinion. 2. A shallow slighting of such as dissent from them, appearing too often in their faces, speeches, and carriages. 3. A feeble yet peremptory obstinacy; seldom are any of them reclaimed. 4. A shameful sliding into other such tarpauline tenets, to keep themselves dry from the showers of justice, as a rational mind would never entertain, if it were not errour-blasted from heaven and hell. I should as shrewdly suspect that opinion, that will cordially corrive* with two or three sottish errours, as that faith that can professedly live with two or three sordid sins. God is as jealous of his ordinances as men are of their opinions."

Thus far the Simple Cobbler, p. 16, 17, 18, a little of whose stirrup might have served to have better endoctrinated the unstable shoemaker of Woburn, who though himself uttered it as an argument of divine favour to his opinions, that none of them of that persuasion died of the contagious sickness of the small pox, whereof so many hundred died at Boston, yet they that survived him may take notice also, that God, in whose hands are all * From Latin, corrivor, "to flow together from different streams.”

Plin. ED.

men's times, did not suffer him to live above a year in the said Boston, whither he had translated himself, lest he should further translate others from the truth; yet is not that of the poet to be forgotten, careat successibus, opto, &c. It is too often seen, that those new sectaries, that go about to unchurch all other christian societies, do at last unchurch themselves, and from anabaptists become sebaptists, then seekers, and at last ranters; it being more usual for them, that out of a giddy, unstable mind have wandered from the truth, to run into the contrary extreme, than to close with the mean principles of truth and soberness, which they have at first deserted without cause. It hath been likewise a common observation, that these Wedderdoping, new sort of christians have proved but the materia prima of all the corrupt opinions that christian religion hath of late days, since the reformation of Luther, been besmeared withal. Let men take heed of attempting a new way to heaven, by a ladder of lying figments of their own, lest thereby they be thrown the deeper into hell, as saith the same author.

But to return to what is in hand, and give this gospel ordered church, (as J. Russell terms them,) what is their due from an historian. As for the persons of those seven he apologizes for, it may more easily be granted, that they were good in the main, than that it was a good work for God they were engaged in. Boni homines are sometimes found male feriati, i.e. good men may be found to be ill employed, as Peter was, whom Christ rebukes and calls satan, and bids get behind him. Whether any of them absolutely did deserve to be delivered to satan for their obstinacy in their opinions or other miscarriages, which either through weakness of their judgments or strength of their passions, which in defence of their opinions or practices they ran into, or whether there were not more acrimony of the salt than sweetness of the gospel spirit of peace, in those that managed the discipline of the church against some of them, that had been in the communion of some of the churches thereabout, must not be here discussed, only some sober christians that were of their own profession, viz. in opposition to infant bap

tism, have said that they could not but look upon their way to be evil, and such as could not be justified. It hath possibly also been observed by some, that though slow bellied Cretians, as Paul speaks to Titus, are to be rebuked sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, yet men of a grave and serious spirit and of sober conversations, as Thomas Gold and some of the rest were said to be, would easier in all likelihood have been reclaimed from the errour of their judgments by gentler means of persuasion and long suffering, than by the corrosives of severity and sharp censures of the church, which if it were granted, yet that can give no colour to their irregular and hasty casting themselves into the mould of a partic ular church, under the specious varnish of a church in gospel order, consisting only of a few giddy sectaries, that fondly conceit themselves to be an orderly church, when their very coalition is explicitly not only without, but against the consent of all the rest of the churches in the place, as well as the order of the civil authority. . I shall conclude with the last words of the late synod:* "Inasmuch as a thorough and hearty reformation is necessary in order to obtaining peace with God, and all outward means will be ineffectual unto that end, except the Lord pour down his Spirit from on high, it doth therefore concern us to cry mightily unto God, both in ordinary and extraordinary manner, that he would be pleased to rain down righteousness upon us;" and that the north wind would awake, and the south come and blow, that the spices thereof may flow out, that the whole church of Christ in these deserts of America may be found unto her beloved, as an orchard of pomegranates with all pleasant fruits.

CHAP. LXXIII.

Memorable accidents during this lustre of years, from

1671 to 1676.

MUCH hurt done by thunder and lightning about these times. To those mentioned before may be added * Reforming Synod, A. D. 1679. ED.

several awful strokes of thunder and lightning within the bounds of Ipswich, viz. the great oak in that called Scott's lane, which on a Saturday night in August, anno 1668, (or 1667,) was broken all apieces, and some logs rent off from it, as much and more than a man could lift, were flung several rods from the place. A man in the house next to the place was struck down with the crack of thunder, but had no other hurt.

In the year 1670, the barn of one Edward Allin, in Ipswich, was fired with lightning in the time of harvest, with sixteen loads of barley newly carried thereinto. Several of the harvest men were but newly gone out of the barn into the dwelling house, and so their destruction was prevented thereby.

May 18, 1671, the house of Sergeant Perkins in Ipswich, was smitten with lightning, while many were met together at the repetition of the sermon that day preached, it being the Lord's day; several breaches were made in the timber work, and some persons were struck down therewith, yet came to life again. Sergeant Perkins himself had his waistcoat pierced with many holes like goose shot, yet had no other considerable harm, only beaten down, as if he had been dead for the present.

In the year 1671, a whirlwind at Cape Anne passed through the neck of land that makes one side of the harbour towards the main sea; its space or breadth was about forty feet from the sea to the harbour, but it went with such violence that it bore away whatever it met in the way, both small and great trees, and the boughs of trees, that on each side hung over that glade, were broken off and carried away therewith. A great rock that stood up in the harbour, as it passed along, was scarce able to withstand the fury of it, without being turned over.

About that time, or not many years before, some of the inhabitants of Ipswich, on the northwest side of the river, in a thunder storm, saw a sheet of fire, as they imagined, fall down just before the house of Mr. W. H. but it reached not the house, only rent the body of an oak that stood not far from it.

CHAP. LXXIV.

A further continuation of the narrative of the troubles with the Indians in New England, from April 1677 to June 1680.

An attempt was made against our Indian enemies, by way of a diversion, in the spring of the last year, 1677, by treating with the Mohawks or Mawques Indians, partly to secure them to be our friends, as hitherto they had been, and partly to see if they could not be induced to prosecute their inbred antipathy against our Indian enemies, with whom they have had a long and deadly feud heretofore. Something was done that way by the help and advice of Maj. Andros, the governour of New York; and probably the fear thereof was the only thing that awed the Indians about Pemaquid into a stricter correspondency and more ready compliance with the English; but the truth of this will be judged by the event hereafter.

A long, troublesome, and hazardous journey was un dertaken by the Hon. Maj. Pinchon, of Springfield, and Mr. Richards, of Hartford, in behalf of those two colo nies: they were followed with as much success as they could expect. The Mawque Indians made a great shew of cordial friendship to the English, and bitter enmity to the Indians that have risen against them, making large promises of pursuing their quarrel against them, to the uttermost of their power; but distance of the place, and difficulty of the journey, hath prevented any great mat. ter of effect in that kind, as was expected.

For though some of them armed themselves and came down within the territories of those Indians, that have of late so much infested the English plantations, yet the distance between their own place and that of the other Indians was so great, that they did little execution upon their own or our enemies. The most good it is hoped they did, was by the rumour of their coming down upon the backs of our enemies; it being known to be their nat ural temper to be very fearful of any evil while it is far off,