For is he not prevailing, in spite of all our efforts?
You know there are at least four hundred members of what rightly calls itself the Church of England--for certainly it is not the church of Christ--in Boston alone! When the royal Governor made the town authorities give up the South Church--even our own Church, built with our own money--to their so-called Rector to hold their idolatrous services in, we might have known that Satan was at our doors!" "Oh, that such horrible things should happen in the godly town of Boston!" responded Squire Hathorne.

"But when the King interfered between Justice and the Quakers, and forbade the righteous discipline we were exercising upon them, of course a door was opened for all other latitudinarianism and false doctrine.

Why, I am told that there are now quite a number of Quakers in Boston; and that they even had the assurance to apply to the magistrates the other day, for permission to erect a meeting-house!" "Impossible!" exclaimed Master Putnam.

"They ought to have been whipped out of their presence." "Yes," continued the worthy Magistrate irefully; "but when the King ordered that the right of voting for our rulers should no longer be restricted to church-members; but that every man of fair estate and good moral character, as he phrases it, should be allowed to vote, even if he is not a member at all, he aimed a blow at the very Magistracy itself." "Yes, that is worse than heresy! And how can a man possess a good moral character, without being a member of the true church ?" "Of course--that is self-evident.

But it shows how the righteous seed is being over-flooded with iniquity, even in its last chosen house; how our Canaan is being given up to the Philistines.