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whoops, Mr. Visey read portions of the Holy Scriptures, Litany, etc. The sea was put into great motion. The pow-wows stopped. The Indians dispersed, and never more held pow-wows in Stratford. The inhabitants were struck with wonder at this event, and held a conference to discover the reason why the devils and pow-wowers had obeyed the prayers of one minister, and had paid no regard to those of fifty. Some thought that the reading of the Holy Scripture, others that the Litany and the Lord's Prayer, some again that the Episcopal power of the minister, and others that all united were the means of obtaining the heavenly blessing they received.
"Those who believed that the Holy Scriptures and Litany were effectual against the devil and his legions, declared for the Church of England; while a majority ascribed their deliverance to a complot between the devil and the Episcopal minister, with a view to overthrow Christ's vine, planted in New England. Each party acted with more zeal than prudence. The church, however, increased, though oppressed by more persecutions and calamities than ever experienced by Puritans from bishops and pow-wowers. Even the use of the Bible, the Lord's Prayer, the Litany, or any part of the Prayer Book, was forbidden. Nay, ministers taught from their pulpits, according to the Blue Laws, that the lovers of Zion had better put their ears to the mouth of hell and learn from the whispers of the devil than read the bishop's books, while the churchmen, like Michael the archangel, contending with the devil about the body of Moses, dared not bring against them a railing accusation. But this was not all. When the Episcopalians had collected timber for a church, they found the devils had not left the town, but only changed their habitations had left the savages and entered into fanatics and wood. In the night, before the church was to be begun, the timber set up a country dance, skipping about and flying in the air, with as much agility and sulphurous stench as ever the devils had exhibited around the camp of the Indians pow-wowers. This alarming circumstance would have ruined the credit of the church, had not the Episcopalians ventured to look into the phenomenon, and found the timber to have been bored with augurs, charged with gunpower, and fired off by matches a discovery of bad consequence in one respect, it has prevented annalists of New England from publishing this among the rest of their miracles.
About 1720 the patience and sufferings of the Episcopalians, who were then but a handful, procured some friends, even among their persecutors, and these friends condemned the cruelty