Injustice From Within

Injustice From Within

The most hurtful persecution is that which comes from God’s people.

THE PURITANS of New England were great men and women of God, but they had blind spots when it came to accepting fellow Christians whose doctrine differed from theirs. In 1651 three Baptists, Obadiah Holmes, John Clarke, and John Crandall, walked eighty miles to visit an elderly friend, William Witter. At Witter’s home the four men had a worship service together. In the midst of it, a marshal and his deputies broke in, arrested the three visitors, and escorted them to the Boston jail. They were charged with holding a private church service and rebaptizing persons who had already been baptized as infants.

After ten days the three were brought to trial. The prosecutor was none other than John Cotton, the leading Puritan minister in Boston. The accused sat in the prisoner’s box and heard Cotton in his misguided zeal declare them to be soul murderers since they denied the saving power of infant baptism. Cotton then declared that this offense demanded the death penalty, as would any other murder.

The judge, Governor John Endecott, agreed that the three should be put to death. However, he also challenged the three defendants to debate their Baptistic views with Puritan ministers. They were then returned to jail. John Clarke immediately wrote Governor Endecott and offered to debate any Puritan minister. For a while it appeared that John Cotton might debate him, but in the end he declined.

Finally, although Governor Endecott felt that the three deserved to die, he agreed to let them off with a fine. However, he declared that if they did not pay the fine and leave Massachusetts immediately, they would be whipped. Friends of the three raised the money to pay their fines. John Crandall was released from jail without a fine, but Clarke and Holmes refused to let others pay their fines because they thought that would be an admission of guilt. As Clarke was being led to the whipping post, a friend handed money to an official to pay the fines. Clarke was thus released, but Holmes continued to refuse to let anyone pay his fine. Holmes was then stripped to the waist and given thirty lashes.

Immediately after the whipping, two Baptists, John Hazel and John Spur, shook Holmes’s hand in a gesture of comfort. For their small kindness, Hazel and Spur were arrested. John Spur was sentenced to pay a fine of forty shillings or receive a whipping. Although he refused a friend’s offer to pay the fine, the court accepted it anyway and freed Spur.

John Hazel’s trial was held the next day. Hazel, a frail elderly man, was asked whether he agreed with the actions of Obadiah Holmes in holding a private church service. Hazel answered that he would not be questioned about the actions of another and demanded to know what law he had broken. Not knowing how to respond, Governor Endecott, returned him to jail for the night.

The next day, September 7, 1651, when John Hazel returned to court, Governor Endecott announced his sentence: a forty-shilling fine or a whipping. Again Hazel demanded to know what law he had broken. He was told that his crime was comforting a criminal. Hazel responded that he had comforted Holmes only after the whipping had satisfied the law and at that point Holmes was no longer a criminal. Nevertheless Hazel was told that he must return to jail until he either paid the fine or was whipped, although the number of stripes was reduced to ten because of his age.

Hazel continued to refuse to pay the fine, and day after day he was threatened with a whipping “tomorrow.” Finally, because he refused to pay the fine and because the court did not want the embarrassment of whipping a frail old man, he was released, but died a few days later.

Reflection

Have you ever encountered gross injustice at the hand of other Christians? Have you been able to forgive them? Somehow it seems even more painful when it comes from fellow believers. Think how Jesus must have felt when he came unto his own but his own received him not.

Jesus said, “Father, forgive these people, because they don’t know what they are doing.”

Luke 23:34