921.73 W589w.pdf - Mesa FamilySearch Library

78 Memoir of
glory of God to take away the lives of his creatures
for maintaining tenets contrary to what
they professed themselves." _ How far the first
settlers of Massachusetts Bay were justified in
making a system of laws by which personal
freedom was nearly abandoned; and in submit-
ting to an ecclesiastical authority by which the
right of private judgment on questions of re-
ligion was denied, in violation of the principles
which led them to quit their native country, is
not the question now to be decided. It is the
opinion of most of our great historians, that
the circumstances in which they were placed
afforded ample excuse for their conduct.t If
this opinion is well founded, it cannot but en-
hance our respect and veneration for the moral
and intellectual grandeur of the few men, whe-
ther connected with the magistracy or the min-
istry of the gospel, who in those days of dark-
ness maintained the true principles of freedom
in matters of conscience and of government,
principles which their posterity, with singular
* I Hutchinson, 175.
t See Histories of Hutchinson, _Iinot,'Bancroft, Palfrey, Barre, &c,