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children fatherless;" they shall be continually vagabonds, and beg, and seek their bread also out of their desolate places;* and I will accomplish My wrath upon you in your destruction; and your carcasses shall fall, and be as dung on the face of the earth; and the worm shall be under you, and the worms shall cover you. They shall not say of you, "Ah, Lord! nor ah, His glory!" but ye shall be cast forth without the gates, and be buried with the burial of an ass; † the mouth of the Lord

ments that He hath brought upon them, and which have continually followed them, as confessed by Cotton Mather, in his Book of Witches, page 37, 38, &c., and that He did not spare nor pity them, they having shown none, nor had mercy, but His judgment took hold on them, and terror seized on them, and fear was round about them, and their young men fell by the sword, and their wives widows, and their children fatherless, was in a large manner fulfilled in the time of the Indian wars, as Cotton Mather confesses, in such a doleful manner, Book I., chap. ii., page 38, and Book VI., chap. ii., page 28, how the judgments of God have consumed and wasted them, and that the curse has devoured the land, that few young men are left; that when they have been pressed into the wars, they have been but numbered for the slaughter, and brought forth for the murderer. With much more that I am sorry to set down.

Cain was a vagabond, who was driven out from the presence of the Lord, though he had a city; and that they beg, and seek their bread out of their desolate places, which will not bring it forth to them, is plain, by the blasting of their principal grain, especially wheat, in Boston jurisdiction, ever since, as Morton in his Memorials, and Mather in his Book of Witches, and History of New England, confesses as aforesaid; so that though they sow, they do not reap, and consequently must seek it elsewhere, out of those desolate places that will not yield it to them, being smitten in the ear; and when they see it begin to wither, being smitten at the root, and hasten to cut it down for fodder, it is so loathsome, that the cattle will hardly eat it.-Representation to the King and Parliament, 1669. Yea, as if it was on purpose to answer to the word beg, he says, Book VII., chap. i., page 113, A lamentable cry for bread, bread, hath been heard in our streets."

† And that their carcasses fell, and were as dung on the face of the earth, and that they were cast forth, and buried with the burial of an ass, is evident, in that the Indians would sometimes watch the English, and would not suffer them to bury their slain, but forced them to flee before them; and then return and strip the slain naked, and leave their bodies to rot above ground. New England's Present Sufferings, page 6, and Increase Mather's History of the Wars, page 6, confesses, "The English were not in a capacity to look after their dead; but those dead bodies were left as meat for the fowls of heaven, and their flesh unto the beasts of the earth, and there was none to bury them." And his son, Cotton Mather, in his History, Book V., chap. ii., page 90, alluding to that Scripture, Jer. xxxiv. 20, which this relates to,

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of hosts hath spoken it. And ye shall know that I am the Lord when I have finished the thoughts of My heart upon you, and have laid you low,* even in the dust; and men shall fear, because of you, and what I will do unto you, saith the Lord. And Mine indignation shall smoke against you; and a fire shall be kindled in My wrath, which shall burn to the nethermost hell; and it shall devour you as stubble fully dry; and your iniquity shall lie upon your bones, and you shall descend into the pit, and there your iniquity shall be visited upon you, saith the Lord, the Mighty God, the Holy One of Israel, and his King, who liveth forever; to whom is the glory, and the praise, and the dominion forever.

Yet I have not done with you, but must have another reckoning for what the servants of the Lord have suffered by occasion of you in other plantations, as well as in these.

Robert Hodgson, a servant of the Lord, being at Hempstead, in the Dutch plantation in America, near to New England, and waiting there for Friends coming together in a meeting, as he was walking in the orchard, an officer came and violently laid hold on him, says, "which judgments have been verified upon us." And a man who had procured one of George Bishop's books of Friends' Sufferings, in the time of the wars, observing how this, and some others, as that their cup should be filled double, and their young men should fall by the sword, were fulfilled, being pressed in spirit, came several miles out of the country, and went to the General Court, then sitting, with George Bishop's book in his hand, and told them, he could not have rest in his mind, until he came to show them that book; and he delivered it to them, bidding them to read such a place, and consider if he was not a true prophet from the Lord, in what he had foretold; and whether it was not now come to pass; but they frowned hard upon him, and examined him, if he did go to the public worship, or nay? Whereupon he demanded his book again; but went away without it, which shows that they were convicted in themselves, though they would not confess it.

This Cotton Mather confesses, in his Book of Witches, page 44, that "They may truly and sadly say, they are brought very low. Low indeed," (says he,) "when the serpents of the dust are crawling and coiling about us, and insulting over us; may we not say, we are in the very belly of hell when hell itself is feeding upon us?" And so Priest Higginson confesses, Preface to New England History, page 2, that they are brought low. And Ỉ doubt not but they know, as they have confessed, that it is the Lord that afflicts them, though they will not plainly confess wherefore it is.

and brought him before one Gildersleave, an Englishman and a magistrate there, who committed him to prison, and rode to the Dutch governor and acquainted him therewith; and came from him with a guard of musketeers and the fiscal, who laid hold of him and searched him, and took away his knives and papers and Bible; and so pinioned him all the night and the next day, that he could hardly help or refresh himself in any ways; and made diligent inquiry after those who had entertained him, and took into custody two women upon occasion thereof, one of whom had two small children, one sucking at her breast; and got a cart and conveyed the women away in it, and Robert also, whom they fastened to the hinder part of the cart, pinioned, and so drew him and them through the woods in the night season, whereby he was much torn and abused; and, at the town called New Amsterdam, loosed him and led him by the rope, with which he was fastened to the cart, to the dungeon, into which he was cast,- -a filthy, miry, unwholesome place, and full of vermin,-and the two women to another place, and there continued them during their pleasures.

Their Court coming to sit, they called him before them, and took his examination in writing, and committed him to the dungeon again, and afterwards had him forth and read this sentence to him in their own language, which was to this effect: "It is the general's pleasure that you work two years at the wheelbarrow with a negro, or pay, or cause to be paid, six hundred guilders." Captain Willet, of Plymouth Patent, was much the occasion of his sufferings by incensing the governor and those people against him, with lies and falsehoods, who before were moderate to them when Robert was with them.

To this he attempted to make his defence in a sober reply, but was not suffered to speak, but he was had away and returned to the dungeon again, and there kept, and no English people suffered to come to him for several days. Then they took him out and pinioned him, and set his face towards the Court-chamber, and took off his hat and read another sentence to him in Dutch, which he understood not; but many of that nation, who heard it,

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shook their heads; and when it was done, they cast him into the dungeon again. Out of which, after certain days, they drew him betimes in a morning and chained him to a wheelbarrow, and commanded him to work. He answered, "He was never brought up

nor used to that work." Upon which they caused a negro to take a pitched rope, nigh four inches about, and to beat him; who beat Robert with it till he fell down. Then they took him up, and caused the negro to beat him with the said rope until he fell down the second time. It was judged that he received about one hundred blows with the rope as aforesaid. Then they forced him up with the barrow to the fort, before the governor's house, and complained to him that they could not make him work; and continued him chained to the barrow all that day, about the middle of which the sun shining very hot, and his body being much bruised and swelled with the blows, and kept without food, he was very faint, and sat upon the ground waiting on the Lord, who was near unto him and refreshed him and made him whole; and then they loosed him about the seventh or eighth hour at night, and put him in the dungeon until the morning, and then had him forth about the sixth hour, at which time they locked him to the wheelbarrow as before, and set a sentinel over him, that none might come so much as to speak with him; and he was there kept till the seventh hour at night, and then had to the dungeon, and the next day had forth and chained in like manner, and then loosed, and had before the governor, who demanded of him to work, otherwise, he said, "he should be whipped every day." Robert asked the governor, "What law he had broken?" and called for his accusers, that he might know his transgression; and told him, "That if he were called to that work of the Lord, he should not refuse it." Then he was chained up to the barrow again and threatened, "That if he spake to any one he should be punished worse; yet his mouth was opened to such as came to him, as he found it of the Lord. They, seeing that they could not keep him silent, then put him into prison again, and kept him close there for several days and two nights, and a day and a half of it without bread and water.

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After this they took him forth very early in the morning into a private chamber, and stripped him to the waist and hung him up by the hands, and tied a great log of wood to his feet, so that he could not turn his body, and set a strong negro with rods to whip him, who laid many stripes upon him, both backwards and forwards, which cut his flesh very much and drew much blood. Then they let him down and put him into the dungeon,-too bad a place for swine, being a stinking hole full of vermin,-not suffering any to come to him or to wash his stripes. Within two days after, they had him forth again and hung him up as before; and the jailer, being very drunk, forced another negro to lay many more stripes upon him,-Robert seeing no end of their cruelty, but in his life, and being weary and faint. But the Lord was with him, who suffered them not to take away his life, which they drove. at. He enabling him to bear, to see how far they would go, gave him freedom to desire some time to consider, and to suffer some English people to come to him, which was granted. And an Englishwoman came and washed his stripes; who, seeing him 'brought so low in body through those cruel sufferings, was so in the sense thereof that she thought he would not live till next morning, and so she told her husband; which took such an impression upon him, that he went to the fiscal, and proffered him a fat ox to suffer him to be at his house until he was well. But the fiscal would not, unless the whole fine was paid; which many would have gladly done, but Robert could not suffer it. And within three days after he was thus whipped he was made whole, and as strong as ever and free to labour.

On the other hand, this his freedom to labour was a great torment to them, whose aim was to get money by their cruelty; and it was a great trouble to many, both Dutch and English, that he could not consent for the fine to be paid, but would rather work, that he might not be burdensome to any. Nor could he eat the governor's bread, except he wrought for it, notwithstanding little was brought to him besides; and that which he wrought for was so coarse, that it troubled tender people that he should eat it,— it being such as they gave to their slaves: he choosing to do so

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