... But the
reason wherefore wee are loath either to repeale or alter the law is,
because wee would have it ... to beare witnesse against their judgment,
... which we conceive ... to bee erroneous." [Footnote: _Hypocrisie
Unmasked_, 101.]
Unquestionably, at that time no one had been banished; but in 1644 "one
Painter, for refusing to let his child be baptized, ... was brought before
the court, where he declared their baptism to be anti-Christian. He was
sentenced to be whipped, which he bore without flinching, and boasted that
God had assisted him." [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ i. 208, note.] Nor was
his a solitary instance of severity. Yet, notwithstanding the scorn and
hatred which the orthodox divines felt for these sectaries, many very
eminent Puritans fell into the errors of that persuasion. Roger Williams
was a Baptist, and Henry Dunster, for the same heresy, was removed from
the presidency of Harvard, and found it prudent to end his days within the
Plymouth jurisdiction. Even that great champion of infant baptism,
Jonathan Mitchell, when thrown into intimate relations with Dunster, had
doubts.
"That day ... after I came from him I had a strange experience; I found
hurrying and pressing suggestions against Paedobaptism, and injected
scruples and thoughts whether the other way might not be right, and infant
baptism an invention of men; and whether I might with good conscience
baptize children and the like.
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