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The rigid Presbyterians attributed the calamities of the colony to the wickedness of Jacobites, Prelatists, Sabbath-breakers, Atheists, who hated in others that image of God which was wanting in themselves. The accused malignants, on the other hand, complained bitterly of the impertinence of meddling fanatics and hypocrites. Paterson was cruelly reviled, and was unable to defend himself.
"No," said he, "they are in a particular cell. These are drovers who would fain escape to the place of the Sabbath-breakers, and are driven hither against their will." At that word, I looked, and perceived their polls full of the horns of sheep and cattle, and those who drove them, casting them down beneath the feet of the bloodiest robbers.
There are no Sabbath-breakers to be compared, in the vehemence of their Sabbath-breaking, to hard-worked parochial clergymen unless, indeed, it be Sunday-school children, who are forced on that day to learn long dark collects, and stand in dread catechismal row before their spiritual pastors and masters.
This may have been meant as a rebuke to the Sabbath-breakers. Boer riflemen were engaged at that time in the more reprehensible pastime of sniping our outposts at long range, and they kept this up until near sunset, as if engaged in the most laudable duty; but we have long since learned that the Boer judges his own conduct by one standard and ours by another.
But nothing can be more absurd, than to extend the command to all that bear the name of kings, who are acknowledged by a nation as kings, and while they do so own them, though their constitution should be most anti-christian, and they justly chargeable with unparalleled evils not only in their private character, but in their public conduct: be they idolaters, adulterers, blasphemers, sabbath-breakers, murderers, invaders, and avowed usurpers of the throne, crown and scepter, and incommunicable prerogatives of Christ, the glorious King of Zion, setting themselves in the temple of God, and exalting themselves above all that is called God, by dispensing with his laws, and, in place thereof, substituting their own wicked laws, whereby they establish iniquity, and enjoin, under severe penalties, the profanation of the name, day and ordinances of the Lord.
They thought the crew Sabbath-breakers from the lodge at Alt Garbh. What's that, he cried, at last seeing Blake, who lay supported against a rock, his eyes shut. Merton rapidly explained. 'It is as I thought, said Mr. Macrae resolutely. 'I knew it from the first. They have kidnapped her for a ransom. Let us go home.
Well, and if he is, I can make a final rush through the corn, can't I? There's not a creature in sight. The bell's down! What of that? There is the voluntary. Easy over the last fields. There are houses in sight, and there may be wicked Sabbath-breakers looking out of windows. Brown's foal has grown since July. Here we are! I am not the only Christian hurrying among the tombs.
The tithing-man still arrested Sabbath-breakers and shut them up in the town-cage in the market-place; he stopped all unnecessary riding or driving on Sunday, and haled people off to the meeting-house whether they would or not. Such restraints upon liberty were still endured by people who had dared and suffered so much for liberty's sake.
The time had passed when such offences could be punished either by fine or imprisonment, so it was voted "that if any person makes unnecessary Vizits on the Sabeth, They shall be Look't on with Contempt." This was the universal expression throughout the Puritan colonies; and looked on with contempt are Sabbath-breakers and Sabbath-slighters in New England to the present day.
The scandal blew over. At first it was expected that the minister would interfere to prevent the union, but beyond intimating from the pulpit that the souls of Sabbath-breakers were beyond praying for, and then praying for Sam'l and Sanders at great length, with a word thrown in for Bell, he let things take their course.
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