The Rogerenes. John R. Bolles
worship, never being acquainted with any other sect; and although they were zealous of the form which they had been brought up in, yet were wholly ignorant as to the work of regeneration, until, by a sore affliction which John Rogers met with, it pleased God to lay before his consideration the vanity of all earthly things and the necessity of making his peace with God and getting an interest in Jesus Christ, which he now applies himself to seek for, by earnest prayer to God in secret and according to Christ’s words, Matt. vii, 7, 8, “Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth,” etc.
And he coming to witness the truth of these scriptures, by God’s giving him a new heart and another spirit, and by remitting the guilt of his sins, did greatly engage him to love God with all his heart, and his neighbor as himself, as did appear by his warning all people he met with to make their peace with God, declaring what God had done for his soul.
Now his wife, observing the great change which was wrought in her husband, as appeared by his fervent prayers, continually searching the scriptures, and daily discoursing about the things of God to all persons he met with, and particularly to her, persuading her to forsake her vain conversation and make her peace with God, did greatly stir her up to seek to God by earnest prayer, that he would work the same work of grace in her soul, as she saw and believed to be wrought in her husband.
After some time, upon their diligent searching the holy scriptures, they began to doubt of some of the principles which they had traditionally been brought up in; and particularly that of sprinkling infants which they had been taught to call Baptism; but now they find it to be only an invention of men; and neither command nor example in Scripture for it. Upon which, they bore a public testimony against it, which soon caused a great uproar in the country.
And their relations, together with their neighbors, and indeed the world in general who had any opportunity, were all united in persuading them that it was a spirit of error by which they were deluded.
But the main instrument which Satan at length made use of to deceive John Roger’s wife, was her own natural mother, who, by giving her daughter an account of her own conversion, as she called it, and telling her daughter there was no such great change in the work of conversion as they had met with; but that it was the Devil had transformed himself into an angel of light, at length fully persuaded her daughter to believe that it was even so.
Whereupon, she soon publicly recanted and renounced that Spirit which she had been led by, and declared it to be the spirit of the Devil, and then vehemently persuaded her husband to do the like, telling him, with bitter tears, that unless he would renounce that spirit she dare not live with him. But he constantly telling her that he knew it to be the Spirit of God and that to deny it would be to deny God; which he dare not do.
Whereupon she left her husband, taking her two children with her, and with the help of her relations went to her father’s house, about eighteen miles from her husband’s habitation.
And I do solemnly declare, in the presence of God, that this is a true relation of their first separation, as I received it from their own mouths, as also by the testimony of two of their next neighbors is fully proved. (See Chapter IV, 1st Part.)
So doubtful was she herself of the lawfulness of her subsequent marriage with the father of Peter Pratt, that she never signed her name Elizabeth Pratt to any legal document; but “Elizabeth, daughter of Matthew Griswold,” many instances of which are on record.
This charge made against John Rogers, in Dr. Trumbull’s History, is further shown to be false by the record of the Court at Hartford, May 25, 1675; the grand jury returning that they “find not the bill.” Yet, in the face of this patent fact, has this false charge been perpetuated by ecclesiastical historians and their followers. We note, however, one shining exception, contained in the Saulisbury “Family Histories,” under the Matthew Griswold line, treating of the divorce of his daughter Elizabeth, which is here given:—
In 1674, her first husband departed from the established orthodoxy of the New England churches, by embracing the doctrines of the Seventh Day Baptists; and, having adopted later “certain peculiar notions of his own,” though still essentially orthodox as respects the fundamental faith of his time, became the founder of a new sect, named after him Rogerenes, Rogerene Quakers, or Rogerene Baptists. Maintaining “obedience to the civil government,” he denounced as unscriptural all interference of the civil power in the worship of God.
It seemed proper to give these particulars with regard to Rogers, because they were made the ground[9] of a petition by his wife for divorce, in May, 1675, which was granted by the “General Court,” in October of the next year, and was followed in 1677 by another, also granted, for the custody of her children, her late husband being so “hettridox in his opinions and practice.”
The whole reminds us of other instances, more conspicuous in history, of the narrowness manifested by fathers of New England towards any deviations from the established belief, and of their distrust of individual conscience as a sufficient rule of religious life, without the interference of civil authority. There is no reason to believe that the heterodoxy “in practice” referred to in the wife’s last petition to the Court, was anything else than a nonconformity akin to that for the sake of which the shores of their “dear old England” had been left behind forever by the very men who forgot to tolerate it themselves, in their new Western homes. Of course, like all persecuted, especially religious, parties, the Rogerenes courted, gloried in, and profited by, distresses.
In Trumbull’s History, we also find the scandalous statement, to which we have previously referred: “They would come on the Lord’s day into the most public assemblies nearly or quite naked.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no evidence on record, or tradition, concerning any such act. Among the hundreds of prosecutions against the Rogerenes, no such thing is alluded to on the records, etc. Miss Caulkins in her History makes no reference to this stigma. Yet Mr. McEwen, in his Half-Century Sermon, says: “Dr. Trumbull and perhaps some others give us some historical items of the Rogerenes.”
By thus referring to Dr. Trumbull’s History, he virtually, we would hope not intentionally, indorses all the errors concerning this sect, which are contained in that work.
But, like the entablature of a column, crowning all the rest, are the words of Rev. Mr. Saltonstall, credited to same ‘History,’ and which we have before quoted:—
There never was, for this twenty years that I have resided in this government, any one, Quaker or other person, that suffered on account of his different persuasion in religious matters from the body of this people.
Why were the Rogerenes fined for observing the seventh day instead of the first day of the week, consistently with their profession? Why fined for absenting themselves from the meetings of the Congregational church? Why forbidden to hold meetings of their own? Why was John Rogers fined for every one he baptized by immersion, and for entertaining Quakers, as we have seen? And why did the Hartford jailer say to him: “I will make you comply with their worship if the Authority cannot”?
Miss Caulkins, though writing in partial defence of the Church, speaks truthfully on this subject when she says:—
It was certainly a great error in the early planters of New England to endeavor to produce uniformity in doctrine by the strong arm of physical force. Was ever religious dissent subdued either by petty annoyance or actual cruelty? Is it possible to make a true convert by persecution? The principle of toleration was, however, then less clearly understood.
This self-justification of Mr. Saltonstall would seem to vie for insincerity with the language used by papists, as they handed over heretics to the civil power, asking that they be treated with mercy and that not a drop of blood be shed, meaning that they be burned.
It is not unlike what that most cruel persecutor, Philip II of Spain, husband of Bloody Mary, said of himself: “that he had always from the beginning of his government followed the path of clemency, according to his natural disposition, so well known to the world;” or what Virgilius wrote of the merciless