meat.... After much patience, and divers admonitions not prevailing, the
church cast her out. Whereupon she grew worse; so as the magistrate
caused her to be whipped. Whereupon she was reformed for a time, and
carried herself more dutifully to her husband, but soon after she was so
possessed with Satan, that he persuaded her (by his delusions, which she
listened to as revelations from God) to break the neck of her own
child, that she might free it from future misery. This she confessed
upon her apprehension; yet, at her arraignment, she stood mute a good
space, till the governour told her she should be pressed to death, and
then she confessed the indictment. When she was to receive judgment, she
would not uncover her face, nor stand up, but as she was forced, nor
give any testimony of her repentance, either then or at her execution.
The cloth which should have covered her face, she plucked off, and put
between the rope and her neck. She desired to have been beheaded, giving
this reason, that it was less painful and less shameful. Mr. Peter, her
late pastor, and Mr. Wilson, went with her to the place of execution,
but could do no good with her."[15]


_VI. Woman's Comfort in Religion_

Little gentleness and surely little of the overwhelming love that was
Christ's are apparent in a creed so stern and uncompromising. But the
age in which it flourished was not in itself a gentle and tolerant era.
It had not been so many years since men and women had been tortured and
executed for their faith. The Spanish Inquisition had scarcely ceased
its labor of barbarism; and days were to follow both in England and on
the continent when acts almost as savage would be allowed for the sake
of religion. In spite, moreover, of all that has been said above, in
spite of the literalness, the belief in a personal devil, the fear of an