"
"But the great occasion you took against him, was his hat, which you
commanded him to pull off: 'He told your governour he could not.' You
said, 'He would not.' He told you, 'It was a cross to his will to keep it
on; ... and that he could not do it for conscience sake.' ... But your
governour told him, 'That he was to have been tryed for his life, but that
you had made your late law to save his life, which, you said, was mercy to
him.' Then he asked you, 'Whether you were not as good to take his life
now, as to whip him after your manner, twelve or fourteen times at the
cart's tail, through your towns, and then put him to death afterward?'" He
was condemned to be flogged through Boston, Roxbury, and Dedham; but he,
when he heard the judgment, "with arms stretched out, and hands spread
before you, said, 'Here is my body, if you want a further testimony of the
truth I profess, take it and tear it in pieces ... it is freely given up,
and as for your sentence I matter it not.'" [Footnote: _New England
Judged_, ed. 1703, pp. 354-356.]
This coarse, blustering, impudent fanatic had, indeed, "with a dogged
pertinacity persisted in outrages which "had driven" the authorities
almost to frenzy; "therefore they tied him to a cart and lashed him for
fifteen miles, and while he "sang to the praise of God," his tormentor
swung with all his might a tremendous two-handed whip, whose knotted
thongs were made of twisted cat-gut; [Footnote: _New England Judged_,
ed.
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