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see that your hearts are as rotten toward him as they are toward God. Therefore, seeing that you and I are subjects to the king, I demand to be tried by the laws of my own nation." "You shall be tried," replied you, "by a bench and jury." "That is not the law," said Wenlock, "but the manner of it; for if you will be as good as your word, you must set me at liberty, for I never heard nor read of any law that was in England to hang Quakers." Your governor replied, "That there was a law to hang Jesuits." Wenlock answered, "If you put me to death, it is not because I go under the name of a Jesuit, but a Quaker;. therefore," said he, "I do appeal to the laws of my own nation." Then one of you said, "That he was in your hands, and had broken your law, and you would try him." Wenlock denied to be tried by your law, yet you caused the jury to be called over, and you told him, "He had liberty to object against them, or any of them." Wenlock still appealed to the law of his own nation, but still you cried out, "That you would try him," and so you denied his appeal. "Then," said Wenlock, "your will is your law, and what you have power to do, that you will do. And, seeing that the jury must go forth on my life, this I have to say to you in the fear of the living God, Jury, take heed what you do, for you swear by the living God, That you will true trial make, and just verdict give, according to the evidence. Jury, look for your evidence: what have I done worthy of death? Keep your hands out of innocent blood." To which one of the jury replied, "It is good counsel."

So away they went; but having received their lesson from you, and being of the same spirit, they quickly brought him in guilty. Whereupon your secretary said, "Wenlock Christison, hold up your hand." "I will not," said Wenlock; "I am here, and can hear thee." Then he cried, "Guilty or not guilty?" "I deny all guilt," replied Wenlock, "for my conscience is clear in the sight of God." Your governor answered, "The jury hath condemned thee." But he answered, "The Lord doth justify 'me,—who art thou that condemnest ?" Then you voted as to the sentence of death, and were in a manner confounded; for several

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could not vote him guilty, and sentence him to death, so far did the Witness of God as to the innocency of the man prevail. Then said your governor, after they had voted once and some of them would not consent, "I could find in my heart to go home," being in a great rage, and having such a thirst after the blood of the innocent; and he so misbehaved himself in the seat of judgment, that he flung something furiously on the table. Wenlock said, "It were better for thee to be at home than here, for thou art about a bloody piece of work." Whereupon your governor put the Court to vote again, which they did, notwithstanding there were some of you (Richard Russell and others) that would not consent; which so filled and inflamed your governor with wrath, that he stood up and said, "You that will not consent, record it." And, like a man drunk, he said, "I thank God, I am not afraid to give judgment." (See to what a narrow strait things were brought, that he was constrained to force over-judgment in himself.) "Wenlock Christison, hearken to your sentence: you must return unto the place from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, and there you must be hanged until you be dead, dead, dead, upon the thirteenth day of June, being the Fifth day of the week.' Which being thus cruelly pronounced, Wenlock Christison cried out and said, "The Will of the Lord be done, in whose will I came amongst you, and in His counsel I stand, feeling His eternal Power, which will uphold me until the last gasp; I do not question it." Moreover he cried out, saying, "Known be it unto you all, that if you have power to take my life from me, that my soul shall enter into everlasting rest and peace with God, where you yourselves shall never come. And if you have power to take my life from me, the which I do question, I do believe you shall never more take Quakers' lives from them, *note my words. Do not think to weary out the living God, by taking away the lives of His servants. What do you gain by it? For the last man that you put to death, here are five come in his

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* Wenlock Christison prophesies that no more Quakers shall be put to death by them, which was literally fulfilled.

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room. And if you have power to take my life from me, God can raise up the same principle of life in ten of His servants, and send them among you in my room, that you may know torment upon torment, which is your portion. For there is no peace to the wicked, saith my God."

Then your governor said, "Take him away." So to prison he. was sent, resting in sweet peace and quietness of spirit, where he was detained from the Fifth-day to the Third-day of the week following, at which time one of your marshals and a constable came unto him in the prison with an Order from the Court for his enlargement, with seven-and-twenty more of the Friends of Truth, namely, John Chamberlain, John Smith and Margaret his wife, Mary Trask, Judith Brown, Peter Pearson, George Wilson, John Burstow, Elizabeth Hooton, Joan Brokesup, Mary Malins, Catharine Chatham, Mary Wright, Hannah Wright, Sarah Burton, Sarah Coleman and three or four of her children, Ralph Allen, William Allen, Richard Kirby, and others, then in prison for their testimony to the Truth. And the marshal and constable said, "They were ordered by the Court to make them acquainted with their new law." Then said Wenlock, "What means this? Have you a new law?" "Yes," said they. "Then you have deceived most people," said Wenlock. "Why?" said they. "Because," said Wenlock, "they did think the gallows had been your last weapon; have you got more yet?" "Yes," said they. "Read it," said Wenlock; which they did. Then Wenlock said, "Your magistrates said that your law was a good and wholesome law, made for your peace and the safeguard of your country: what, are your hands now become weak? The power of God is over you all!" Then the prison-doors were set open, and twenty-seven more besides Wenlock were turned forth as aforesaid, whereof two were stripped to the waist, made fast to the tail of a cart, and whipped through the town of Boston with twenty cruel stripes on their naked backs and shoulders. Many

* Elizabeth Hooton, Joan Brokesup, Mary Malins, and Catharine Chatham, who came in sackcloth and ashes, John Burstow, and George Wilson, besides the inhabitants.

mouths were opened, and the mighty day of the dreadful God was sounded forth by the servants of the mighty God, who had wrought deliverance for His chosen vessels. So they were driven into the wilderness by your men with swords and clubs, who had received orders from you thus to force them out of your jurisdiction, which they performed. "Glory, glory, be given unto the Lord over all, saith my soul, who never leaves nor forsakes the righteous, but redeems His faithful ones out of all their troubles. Praise the Lord, all ye His saints, who are upon the Rock of Ages. And the gates of hell cannot prevail against you," saith Wenlock Christison.

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One thing more I think convenient to touch on, ere I pass from this particular, which concurred in the wisdom and counsel of the Lord to break and wear out this wicked law of yours for blood. You have heard how Wenlock Christison, being banished upon pain of death, came in the dread and power and motion of the eternal God upon you, with his life in his hand, when you had William Leddra before you; at that time you sentenced him to die whom you had not power to put to death, though you had him before you whilst you were executing William Leddra, but reserved him for your next Court. And now, your next Court being come, whilst you were trying Wenlock for his life, Edward Wharton, an inhabitant of Salem and a housekeeper, and banished upon pain of death, came upon you also for his life; who being at his house at the time of your sitting, and being sensible of the consequence of his being within your jurisdiction after the expiration of his days for staying after his sentence, according to the rate of your cruelty; as a man neither afraid of your law nor his life, in the noble spirit of Truth, which gives power to overcome and look death in the face, and makes a man not to be afraid of what men can do unto him; as a man not shunning, but seeking you,-not being terrified by you, but embracing the opportunity of looking you and your Valley of Achor (which an old priest, one Thomas Thatcher, said of your gallows) in the face as aforesaid, he wrote unto you to signify, That, whereas you had banished him on pain of death, yet was

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he at home, at his house in Salem, and could not go away," and therefore intimated to you, "to take off your wicked sentence from him, that he might go about his occasions out of your jurisdiction," according as he said unto you when you sentenced him, "Friends, have a care what you do, for I shall not go from you;" which was when you had William Leddra before sentenced him to death, as hath been said. you, as to death, upon the trial of Wenlock Christison, after your barbarous murder of William Leddra, even as Wenlock told you, and that "if you should have power to put him to death," which he told you he did question, and, as it appears, he was not without ground for his faith, "the Lord would bring ten more upon you, for the Spirit of the Lord can never be wearied out." And you were mistaken to think that, by all your cruelties, yea, by death itself, you could wear out the saints of the most high God, whom He armed with His power in the naked proof of Truth against you, and brought them all upon you, which gave you occasion to think within yourselves, and, instead of cutting off any more of the servants of the Lord, to cut off your own law with your own hands.

While the hand of the Lord so wrought with you in New England by the blood of His servants, and their offering up of themselves, thus breaking your bloody law, it will not be amiss to show how He wrought in Old England, and what influence the blood and sufferings of the innocent had with the king, who for some time before was returned to his regal jurisdiction, and before whom you seemed to kneel with your lips, when your hearts were far from him; to whom also you had presented an address, by Liverets, your agent, looking this way, and by private instructions to your agent and others, rowing another way, as by and by I shall give you to understand. But the king, being informed of your bloody work, the cruelty you had exercised, and how you had denied appeals to England; and reading the speech of your sometime major-general, Daniel Dennison, mentioned in the former treatise, "This year you will go to complain to the Parliament, and the next year they will send to see how it is,

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