Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays

[205] Colony had afterwards become convinced that the war was unrighteous, the troops were recalled, though already far towards the field, no pride or policy preventing the original order from being rescinded.

These were some of the labors of the clergy. But no human being lives without relaxation, and they may have had theirs. True, “ministers have little to joy in in this world,” wrote old Norton; and one would think so, on reading the dismal diaries, printed or manuscript, of those days. “I can compare with any man living for fears,” said Hooker. “I have sinned myself into darkness,” said Bailey. “Many times have I been ready to lay down my ministry, thinking God had forsaken me.” “I was almost in the suburbs of hell all day.” Yet who can say that this habit of agonizing introspection wholly shut out the trivial enjoyments of daily life? Who drank, for instance, those twelve gallons of sack and those six gallons of white wine which the General Court thought it convenient that the Auditor should send, “as a small testimony of the Court's respect, to the reverend assembly of Elders at Cambridge,” in 1644? Did the famous Cambridge Platform rest, like the earth in the Hebrew cosmology, upon the waters,--strong waters? Was it only the Derry Presbyterians who would never give up a p'int of doctrine nor a pint of rum? It is startling to remember that in 1685 it was voted, on occasion of a public funeral, that “some person be appointed to look after the burning of the wine and the heating of the cider,” and to hear that on this occasion there were thirty-two gallons of wine and still more of cider, with one hundred and four pounds of that insnaring accessory, sugar. Francis Higginson, in writing back to the mother country that one sup of New England's air was better than a whole draught