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The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 7. (ed. John Greenleaf Whittier), Criticism (search)
illiams was excused and partially justified; while the whipping, ear-cropping, tongue-boring, and hanging of the Quakers was defended, as the only effectual method of dealing with such devildriven heretics, as Mather calls them. The orator, in the new-born zeal of his amateur Puritanism, stigmatizes the persecuted class as fanatics and ranters, foaming forth their mad opinions; compares them to the Mormons and the crazy followers of Mathias; and cites an instance of a poor enthusiast, named Eccles, who, far gone in the tailor's melancholy, took it into his head that he must enter into a steeple-house pulpit and stitch breeches in singing time, —a circumstance, by the way, which took place in Old England,—as a justification of the atrocious laws of the Massachusetts Colony. We have not the slightest disposition to deny the fanaticism and folly of some few professed them as the Pope did one of their number whom he found crazily holding forth in the church of St. Peter, and consigned t