N03404:15
A letter to the author of the pamphlet called An answer [sic] to the…A letter to the author of the pamphlet called An answeer [sic] to the…
A letter to the author of the pamphlet called An answer [sic] to the Hampshire narrative. : [Three lines from Proverbs]A letter to the author of the pamphlet called An answeer [sic] to the Hampshire narrative. : [Three lines from Proverbs]
Boston: : s.n., Printed in the year 1737
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
As to the Things insisted on, Page 3, 4, and 5. we shall have Occasion to speak afterwards. In Page 5,&6, after you had for two or three Pages been ridiculing our Association, and its Acts and Pretensions, you say, And when they (i. e. Associations) come ex-officio, to administer Oaths, it seems also to intrench upon the Authority of the civil Magistrate; and then in the Margin you say to the World, The Form of an Oath, or Declaration taken by a particular Minister, by Order of an Association, may be seen in the Narrative Page 49, the first, we suppose, of the Kind that has been given to the Public, and therefore worthy of special Notice. The Thing referred to in the Narrative,. is, that a particular Minister in Connecticut took the Evidence of certain Persons, in order to be sent to Springfield, at the Time of the sitting of the Council there; and they in giving their Evidence declared before GOD the Searcher of all Hearts, that their Evidence was the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but, the Truth.
As to the Things insisted on, Page 3, 4, and 5. we shall have Occasion to speak afterwards. In Page 5,&6, after you had for two or three Pages been ridiculing our Association, and its Acts and Pretentions, you say, And when they (i. e. Associations) come ex-officio, to administer Oaths, it seems also to intrench upon the Authority of the civil Magistrate; and then in the Margin you say to the World, The Form of an Oath, or Declaration taken by a particular Minister, by Order of an Association, may be seen in the Narrative Page 49, the first, we suppose, of the Kind that has been given to the Publick, and therefore worthy of special Notice. The Thing referred to in the Narrative,. is, that a particular Minister in Connecticut took the Evidence of certain Persons, in order to be sent to Springfield, at the Time of the sitting of the Council there; and they in giving their Evidence declared before GOD the Searcher of all Hearts, that their Evidence was the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but, the Truth.
Now, Reverend Sir, suppose this were indeed a proper Oath, and this Minister had been appointed to take it by the Association to which he belonged, What is that to us that an Association in Connecticut remote from us did so? As it is beside our Intention to say any thing on Defence of the Association of the County of Windham, so we are well assured, that those Gentlemen are well able to defend themselves, when it shall be needful for them to free themselves from Apprehensions of the civil Magistrate in their own Colony, who have often heard of such kind of Oaths or Declarations, without any Suspicion of the Ministers entrenching upon their Office.