“The 3d month, 10th day, 1649.

“Jo.  Endicott, Governor.
Tho.  Dudley, Dep.  Governor
Rich.  Bellingham. 
Rich.  Salton Stall. 
Increase Nowell. 
William Hibbins. 
Tho.  Flint. 
Rob.  Bridges. 
Simon Bradstreet.’

“Laws were made to regulate the intercourse between the sexes, and the advances towards matrimony.  They had a ceremony of betrothing, which preceded that of marriage. Pride and levity came under the cognizance of the magistrates.  Not only the richness, but the mode of dress, and cut of the hair, were subject to regulations.  Women were forbidden to expose their arms or bosoms to view.  It was ordered, that their sleeves should reach down to their wrists, and their gowns to be closed round the neck.  Women offending against these laws were presentable by the grand jury.

“The following were some of their favourite arguments in favour of persecution.  The celebrated Cotton, in a treatise published in 1647, laboured to prove the lawfulness of the magistrate using the civil sword, to extirpate heretics, from the command given to the jews, to put to death blasphemers and idolaters!

“After saying it was toleration, which made the world antichristian, he concludes his work with this singular ejaculation:—­’The Lord keep us from being bewitched with the whore’s cup, lest while we seem to reject her with our profession, we bring her in by a back door of toleration, and so drink deeply of the cup of the Lord’s wrath, and be filled with her plagues!’

“During a war with the eastern Indians, a council was called, and a proposal made to draw upon them the Mohawks, their ancient enemy, though then at peace:  the lawfulness of this proceeding was doubted by some tender consciences; but all their doubts vanished, when it was urged, that Abraham had entered into a confederacy with the Amorites, among whom he dwelt, and made use of their assistance in recovering his kinsman Lot from the hands of their common enemy.”

* * * * *

“The quakers at first were banished; but this proving insufficient, a succession of sanguinary laws were enacted against them; such as imprisonment, whipping, cutting off the ears, boreing the tongue with a red-hot iron, and banishment on pain of death.  In consequence of these laws, four quakers were put to death at Boston only; when their friends in England procured an order from king Charles the Second, which put a stop to capital executions.”

And now, friend Joseph, what do you think of these primitive christians?  When the real Christian William Penn arrived in America, what was his retaliation? He called his city Philadelphia, to perpetuate a memorial of the cords of peace and good will, which bound him, and all his followers, not only to one another, but even to his enemies at Boston, were they inclined to come and settle with them.—­The following words of his proclamation ought to be written in letters of gold:—­