Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays

[218] 1700 they usually replace the black skull-cap of earlier pictures, and in 1752 the tables had so far turned that a church-member in Newbury refused communion because “the pastor wears a wigg.” Yet Increase Mather thought they played no small part in producing the Boston Fire. “Monstrous Periwigs, such as some of our church-members indulge in, which make them resemble the Locusts that came out of ye Bottomless Pit. Rev. IX. 7, 8,and as an eminent Divine call them, Horrid Bushes of Vanity; such strange apparel as is contrary to the light of Nature and to express Scripture. 1 Cor. XI. 14, 15. Such pride is enough to provoke the Lord to kindle fires in all the towns in the country.”

Another vexation was the occasional arrival of false prophets in a community where every man was expected to have a current supply of religious experiences always ready for circulation. There was a certain hypocritical Dick Swayn, for instance, a seafaring man, who gave much trouble; and E. F.,--for they usually appear by initials,--who, coming to New Haven one Saturday evening, and being dressed in black, was taken for a minister, and asked to preach: he was apparently a little insane, and at first talked “demurely,” but at last “railed like Rabshakeh,” Cotton Mather says. There was also M. J., a Welsh tanner, who finally stole his employer's leather breeches and set up for a preacher,--less innocently apparelled than George Fox. But the worst of all was one bearing the since sainted name of Samuel May. This vessel of wrath appeared in 1699, indorsed as a man of a sweet gospel spirit,--though, indeed, one of his indorsers had himself been “a scandalous fire-ship among the churches.” Mather declares that every one went a-Maying after this man, whom he maintains to have been