Note 592 — Chapter XII · OBLIGATORY CIVIL MARRIAGE IN THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES (continued 2)

By this rule children born in less than seven months after marriage were refused baptism, that is, were put in peril of eternal damnation, unless the parents made public confession of their fault before the whole congregation: Adams, Some Phases of Sexual Immorality, 20 ff.

In like spirit other offenses were subjected to church discipline. For minor shortcomings, such as cheating, the culprit, after examination, was required to give "christian satisfaction" by public confession of penitence. If he refused, he was "suspended" from the communion. For adultery the penalty was "excommunication" on refusal to confess: and this punishment in Puritan New England meant as complete a social ostracism as it did in old England during the Middle Ages. Sometimes the most shameful wrongs resulted from these church trials; and this is well illustrated by the case of Abigail Muxon who, in 1783, on the unsworn testimony of two gossips, was condemned for alleged misconduct, thirty years after she was "suspended" on the same charge. She positively declared the evidence of the witnesses false. She was then an old woman; but "there was no friend or attorney to represent her before the self-righteous tribunal; and without cross-examining the unsworn witnesses, the church voted (men only were allowed to vote) that she is guilty of the charge." For weeks she refused to "confess," although she was "admonished" by the parson and "labored" with by the brethren. At last before a tribunal of six ministers "her excommunication was pronounced by Parson Everitt, who in his condemnation describes her 'as being visibly a hardened and impenitent sinner out of the visible Kingdom of Christ, one who ought to be viewed and treated by all good people as a heathen and publican in imminent danger of eternal perdition'": For a full discussion of this case see the fascinating book of Bliss, Colonial Times on Buzzard's Bay, 99-101, 111-14.