into
tears, she turned to fly. "Stay yet a moment," said Martin, in a hoarse
and subdued voice. He caught hold of her arm. She shrieked as if in
mortal jeopardy.
"Let go the gal, let her go!" said old Job Clements, thrusting the long
barrel of his gun through the bushes within a few feet of the head of
the Familist. "A white man, as sure as I live! I thought, sartin, 't
was a tarnal In-in." Martin relinquished his hold, and, the next
instant, found himself surrounded by the settlers.
After a brief explanation had taken place between Mr. Ward and his
sister-in-law, the former came forward and accosted the Familist.
"Richard Martin!" he said, "I little thought to see thee so soon in the
new world, still less to see thee such as thou art. I am exceeding
sorry that I cannot greet thee here as a brother, either in a temporal
or a spiritual nature. My sister tells me that you are a follower of
that servant of Satan, Samuel Gorton, and that you have sought to entice
her away with you to the colony of fanatics at Rhode Island, which may
be fitly compared to that city which Philip of Macedonia peopled with
rogues and vagabonds, and the offscouring of the whole earth."
"John Ward, I know thee," said the unshrinking Familist; "I know thee
for a man wise above what is written, a man vain, uncharitable, and
given to evil speaking. I value neither thy taunts nor thy wit; for the
one hath its rise in the bitterness, and the other in the vanity, of the
natural Adam. Those who walk in the true light, and who have given over
crucifying Christ in their hearts, heed not a jot of the reproaches and
despiteful doings of the high and mighty in iniquity. For of us it hath
been written: 'I have given them thy word and the world hath hated them
because they are not of the world. If the world hate you, ye know that
it hated me before it hated you. If they have hated me they will hate
you also; if they have persecuted me they will persecute you.' And, of
the scoffers and the scorners, the wise ones of this world, whose wisdom
and knowledge have perverted them, and who have said in their hearts,
There is none beside them, it hath been written, yea, and will be
fulfilled: The day of the Lord of Hosts shall be upon every one that is
proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up, and he shall be
brought low; and the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the
haughtiness of man shall be brought low; and the Lord alone sha
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