thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, "Certain men, the
children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the
inhabitants of their city, saying, let us go and serve other gods, which
you have not known;" and then rushed at once into the midst of his
subject.

The harangue of Mucklewrath was as wild and extravagant as his intrusion
was unauthorized and untimely; but it was provokingly coherent, in so far
as it turned entirely upon the very subjects of discord, of which it had
been agreed to adjourn the consideration until some more suitable
opportunity. Not a single topic did he omit which had offence in it; and,
after charging the moderate party with heresy, with crouching to tyranny,
with seeking to be at peace with God's enemies, he applied to Morton, by
name, the charge that he had been one of those men of Belial, who, in the
words of his text, had gone out from amongst them, to withdraw the
inhabitants of his city, and to go astray after false gods. To him, and
all who followed him, or approved of his conduct, Mucklewrath denounced
fury and vengeance, and exhorted those who would hold themselves pure and
undefiled to come up from the midst of them.

"Fear not," he said, "because of the neighing of horses, or the
glittering of breastplates. Seek not aid of the Egyptians, because of the
enemy, though they may be numerous as locusts, and fierce as dragons.
Their trust is not as our trust, nor their rock as our rock; how else
shall a thousand fly before one, and two put ten thousand to the flight!
I dreamed it in the visions of the night, and the voice said, 'Habakkuk,
take thy fan and purge the wheat from the chaff, that they be not both
consumed with the fire of indignation and the lightning of fury.'
Wherefore, I say, take this Henry Morton--this wretched Achan, who hath
brought the accursed thing among ye, and made himself brethren in the
camp of the enemy--take him and stone him with stones, and thereafter
burn him with fire, that the wrath may depart from the children of the
Covenant. He hath not taken a Babylonish garment, but he hath sold the
garment of righteousness to the woman of Babylon--he hath not taken two
hundred shekels of fine silver, but he hath bartered the truth, which is
more precious than shekels of silver or wedges of gold."

At this furious charge, brought so unexpectedly against one of their most
active commanders, the audience broke out into open tumult, some
demanding that t