periwigs;—and by some women wearing borders of hair, and their cutting, curling, and immodest laying out of their hair," (does this hint at puff-combs?) "which practice doth increase, especially among the younger sort." Not much was effected, however,—"divers of the elders' wives," as Winthrop lets out, "being in some measure partners in this disorder." The use of wigs also, at first denounced by the clergy, was at last countenanced by them: in portraits later than 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 y^e Bottomless Pit. Rev. ix. 7, 8,—and as an eminent Divine calls 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 mostly 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 a barber previously, and who knew no Latin, Greek, Hebrew, nor even English,—for (as he indignantly asserts) "there were eighteen horrid false spells, and not one point, in one very short note I received from him." This doubtful personage copied his sermons from a volume by his namesake, Dr. Samuel Bolton,—"Sam the Doctor and Sam the Dunce," Mather calls them. Finally, "this eminent worthy stranger," Sam, who was no dunce, after all, quarrelled [pg 284] with his parish for their slow payments, and "flew out like a Dragon, spitting this among other fire at them:—'I see, no longer pipe, no longer dance,'—so that they came to fear he was a cheat, and wish they had never seen him." Then "the guilty fellow, having bubbled the silly neighbors of an incredible number of pounds, on a sudden was gone," and Cotton Mather sent a letter after him, which he declares to have been the worst penalty the man suffered.

It is safer to say little of the theological scheme of the Puritan ministers, lest the present writer be pronounced a Wanton Gospeller, and have no tithingman to take his part. But however it may be with the regular standards of theology of that period, every one could find a sufficient variety to suit him among its heresies. Eighty-two "pestilent heresies" were counted as having already sprung up in 1637; others say one hundred and six; others, two hundred and ten. The Puritans kept Rhode Island for what housekeepers call an "odd drawer," into which to crowd all these eccentricities. It was said, that, if any man happened to lose his religious opinion, he might be sure to find it again at some village in Rhode Island. Thither went Roger Williams and his Baptists; thither went Quakers and Ranters; thither went Ann Hutchinson, that extraordinary woman, who divided the whole politics of the country by her Antinomian doctrines, denouncing the formalisms around her, and converting the strongest men, like Cotton and Vane, to her opinions. Thither went also Samuel Gorton, a man of no ordinary power, who proclaimed a mystical union with God in love, thought that heaven and hell were in the mind alone, but esteemed little the clergy and the ordinances. The colony was protected also by the thoughtful and chivalrous Vane, who held that water baptism had had its day, and that the Jewish Sabbath should give place to the modern Sunday. All these, and such as these, were called generally "Seekers" by the Puritans,—who claimed for themselves that they had found that which they sought. It is the old distinction; but for which is the ship built, to be afloat or to be at anchor?

Such were those pious worthies, the men whose names are identified with the leadership of the New-England colonies,—Cotton, Hooker, Norton, Shepard, the Higginsons, the Mathers. To these might be added many an obscurer name, preserved in the quaint epitaphs of the "Magnalia":—Blackman, "in spite of his name, a Nazarene whiter than snow";—Partridge, "a hunted partridge," yet "both a dove and an eagle";—Ezekiel Rogers, "a tree of knowledge, whose apples the very children might pluck";—Nathaniel Rogers, "a very lively preacher and a very preaching liver, he loved his church as if it had been his family and he taught his family as if it had been his church";—Warham, the first who preached with notes, and who suffered agonies of doubt respecting the Lord's Supper;—Stone, "both a loadstone and a flint stone," and who set the self-sacrificing example of preaching only one hour.

These men had mingled traits of good and evil, like all mankind,—nobler than their descendants in some attributes, less noble in others. The most strait-laced Massachusetts Calvinist of these days would have been disciplined by them for insufferable laxity, and yet their modern successor would count it utter shame, perhaps, to own a slave in his family or to drink rum-punch at an ordination,—which Puritan divines might do without rebuke. Not one of them has left on record a statement so broad and noble as that of Roger Williams:—"To be content with food and raiment,—to mind, not our own, but every man the things of another,—yea, and to suffer wrong, and to part with what we judge to be right, yea, our own lives, and, as poor women martyrs have said, as many as there be hairs upon our heads, for the name of God and for the Son of God's sake,—this is humanity, this is Christianity; the [pg 285] rest is but formality and picture-courteous idolatry, and Jewish and Popish blasphemy against the Christian religion." And yet the mind of Roger Williams was impulsive, erratic, and unstable, compared with theirs; and in what respect has the work they left behind them proved, after the testing of two centuries, less solid or durable than his?

These men were stern even to cruelty against all that they held evil,—Satan and his supposed emissaries, witches, Quakers, Indians, negligent parishioners, disobedient offspring, men with periwigs, and women in slash apparel. Yet the tenderest private gentleness often lay behind this gloomy rigor of the conscience. Some of them would never chastise a son or daughter, in spite of Solomon; others would write in Greek characters in their old almanacs quaint little English verses on the death of some beloved child. That identical "Priest Wilson" who made the ballad at Mary Dyer's execution attended a military muster one day. "Sir," said some one, "I'll tell you a great thing: here's a mighty body of people, and there's not seven of them all but loves Mr. Wilson." "Sir," it was replied, "I'll tell you as good a thing: here's a mighty body of people, and there's not one of them all but Mr. Wilson loves him." Mr. Cotton was a terror to evil-doers, yet, when a company of men came along from a tavern and said, "Let