gain
proving the worth of a mind that is imbued with a dominating religious
zeal.

Secondly, the principal vocation and recreation of these Fathers was
their religion. It is only reasonable to suppose that in such a truly
religious atmosphere morality should have reached its zenith of
perfection. What actually happened is well illustrated in a very
informative and case reporting work by Rupert Hughes, the novelist,
"Facts About Puritan Morals":

"Everybody seems to take it for granted that the behavior of the early
settlers of New England was far above normal. Nobody seems to take the
trouble to verify this assumption. The facts are amazingly opposite. The
Puritans admitted incessantly that they were exceedingly bad. The
records sustain them.... The Puritans wallowed in every known form of
wickedness to a disgusting degree. Considering the extremely meagre
population of the early colonies, they were appallingly busy in evil. I
do not refer to the doctrinal crimes that they artificially construed
and dreaded and persecuted with such severity that England had to
intervene: the crimes of being a Quaker, a Presbyterian, which they
punished with lash, with the gallows, and with exile. I do not refer to
their inclusion of lawyers among keepers of disorderly houses, and
people of ill-fame. I refer to what every people, savage or civilized,
has forbidden by law: murder, arson, adultery, infanticide, drunkenness,
theft, rape, sodomy, and bestiality. The standard of sexual morality
among the unmarried youth was lower in Puritan England than it is today
for both sexes.

"It is important that the truth be known. Is religion, is church
membership, a help to virtue? The careless will answer without
hesitation, Yes! of course. The statistics, when they are not smothered,
cry No!

"If church-going keeps down sin, then the Puritans should have been
sinless because they compelled everybody to go to church. They actually
regarded absence from church as worse than adultery or theft. They
dragged prisoners from jail under guard to church. They whipped old men
and women bloodily for staying away. They fined the stay-at-homes and
confiscated their goods and their cattle to bankruptcy. When all else
failed they used exile. Disobedience of parents was voted a capital
offense and so was Sabbath-breaking even to the extent of picking up
sticks.

"Yet, as a result of all this religion, the sex life of the Puritan was
abnormal.... Their sex