Boylston for murder. Having thus
settled his case for this world, they proceeded to settle it for
the next, insisting that "for a man to infect a family in the
morning with smallpox and to pray to God in the evening against
the disease is blasphemy"; that the smallpox is "a judgment of
God on the sins of the people," and that "to avert it is but to
provoke him more"; that inoculation is "an encroachment on the
prerogatives of Jehovah, whose right it is to wound and smite."
Among the mass of scriptural texts most remote from any possible
bearing on the subject one was employed which was equally cogent
against any use of healing means in any disease--the words of
Hosea: "He hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and
he will bind us up."
So bitter was this opposition that Dr. Boylston's life was
in danger; it was considered unsafe for him to be out of his
house in the evening; a lighted grenade was even thrown into the
house of Cotton Mather, who had favoured the new practice, and
had sheltered another clergyman who had submitted himself to it.
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