Note 243 — MR. COTTON’S LETTER EXAMINED AND ANSWERED.

[“I have been given to understand, that the increase of concourse of people to him on the Lord’s days in private, to the neglect or deserting of public ordinances, and to the spreading of the leaven of his corrupt imaginations, provoked the magistrates, rather than to breed a winter’s spiritual plague in the country, to put him a winter’s journey out of the country.” Notwithstanding, Mr. Cotton asserts that Mr. Williams was treated most tenderly by the officer, James Boone, “who dare not allow that liberty to his tongue, which the examiner often useth in this discourse.” Cotton’s Answer, p. 57.]