[65]
While this storm of persecution lasted, (a period of two or three years,) the different dissenting sects felt, in some measure, a common sympathy, and, while guarding themselves against their common foe, had little leisure for controversy with each other; but, as was natural, the abatement of their mutual suffering and danger was the signal for renewing their suspended quarrels. The Baptists fell upon the Quakers, with pamphlet and sermon; the latter replied in the same way. One of the most conspicuous of the Baptist disputants was the famous Jeremy Ives, with whom our friend Ellwood seems to have had a good deal of trouble. ‘His name,’ says Ellwood, ‘was up for a topping Disputant. He was well read in the fallacies of logic, and was ready in framing syllogisms. His chief art lay in tickling the humor of rude, unlearned, and injudicious hearers.’
The following piece of Ellwood's, entitled ‘An Epitaph for Jeremy Ives,’ will serve to show that wit and drollery were sometimes found even among the proverbially sober Quakers of the seventeenth century:—
Beneath this stone, depressed, doth lie
The Mirror of Hypocrisy—
Ives, whose mercenary tongue
Like a Weathercock was hung,
And did this or that way play,
As Advantage led the way.
If well hired, he would dispute,
Otherwise he would be mute.
But he'd bawl for half a day,
If he knew and liked his pay.For his person, let it pass;
Only note his face was brass.
