Womans Life in Colonial Days | Page 7

in state forlorn, with natures so depraved Death was your
due because that you had thus yourselves behaved.
* * * * *

"Had you been made in Adam's stead, you would like things have
wrought, And so into the self-same woe yourselves and yours have
brought."
Then follows a reprimand upon the part of the judge because they
should presume to question His judgments, and to ask for mercy:
"Will you demand grace at my hand, and challenge what is mine? Will
you teach me whom to set free, and thus my grace confine.
"You sinners are, and such a share as sinners may expect; Such you
shall have, for I do save none but mine own Elect.
"Yet to compare your sin with theirs who liv'd a longer time, I do
confess yours is much less though every sin's a crime.
"A crime it is, therefore in bliss you may not hope to dwell; But unto
you I shall allow the easiest room in Hell."
Would not this cause anguish to the heart of any mother? Indeed, we
shall never know what intense anxiety the Puritan woman may have
suffered during the few days intervening between the hour of the birth
and the date of the baptism of her infant. It is not surprising, therefore,
that an exceedingly brief period was allowed to elapse before the babe
was taken from its mother's arms and carried through snow and wind to
the desolate church. Judge Sewall, whose Diary covers most of the
years from 1686 to 1725, and who records every petty incident from the
cutting of his finger to the blowing off of the Governor's hat, has left us
these notes on the baptism of some of his fourteen children:
"April 8, 1677. Elizabeth Weeden, the Midwife, brought the infant to
the third Church when Sermon was about half done in the afternoon ... I
named him John." (Five days after birth.)[3] "Sabbath-day, December
13th 1685. Mr. Willard baptizeth my Son lately born, whom I named
Henry." (Four days after birth.)[4] "February 6, 1686-7. Between 3 and
4 P.M. Mr. Willard baptized my Son, whom I named Stephen." (Five
days after birth.)[5]

Little wonder that infant mortality was exceedingly high, especially
when the baptismal service took place on a day as cold as this one
mentioned by Sewall: "Sabbath, Janr. 24 ... This day so cold that the
Sacramental Bread is frozen pretty hard, and rattles sadly as broken
into the Plates."[6] We may take it for granted that the water in the font
was rapidly freezing, if not entirely frozen, and doubtless the babe,
shrinking under the icy touch, felt inclined to give up the struggle for
existence, and decline a further reception into so cold and forbidding a
world. Once more hear a description by the kindly, but abnormally
orthodox old Judge: "Lord's Day, Jany 15, 1715-16. An extraordinary
Cold Storm of Wind and Snow.... Bread was frozen at the Lord's Table:
Though 'twas so Cold, yet John Tuckerman was baptised. At six
a-clock my ink freezes so that I can hardly write by a good fire in my
Wive's Chamber. Yet was very Comfortable at Meeting. Laus Deo."[7]
But let us pass to other phases of this theology under which the Puritan
woman lived. The God pictured in the Day of Doom not only was of a
cruel and angry nature but was arbitrary beyond modern belief. His
wrath fell according to his caprice upon sinner or saint. We are tempted
to inquire as to the strange mental process that could have led any
human being to believe in such a Creator. Regardless of doctrine, creed,
or theology, we cannot totally dissociate our earthly mental condition
from that in the future state; we cannot refuse to believe that we shall
have the same intelligent mind, and the same ability to understand,
perceive, and love. Apparently, however, the Puritan found no
difficulty in believing that the future existence entailed an entire change
in the principles of love and in the emotions of sympathy and pity.
"He that was erst a husband pierc'd with sense of wife's distress, Whose
tender heart did bear a part of all her grievances. Shall mourn no more
as heretofore, because of her ill plight, Although he see her now to be a
damn'd forsaken wight.
"The tender mother will own no other of all her num'rous brood But
such as stand at Christ's right hand, acquitted through his Blood. The
pious father had now much rather his graceless son should lie In hell
with devils, for all his evils, burning eternally."

(_Day of Doom._)
But we do not have to trust to Michael Wigglesworth's poem alone for
a realistic conception of the God and the religion of the Puritans. It is in
the sermons