He replied very spiritedly and pertinently that these dames
were "not desiryable women as to temporal graces," which was certainly
sufficient and proper reason for any man to give, were he Puritan or
Cavalier. Then acerb old John Cotton and some other Boston ascetics
(perhaps Goodman Newell and Goodman Upham, resenting for their wives the
_spretae injuria formae_) at once hunted up some plainly applicable
verses from the Bible that clearly proved him guilty of the alleged
sin--and summarily excommunicated him. He also wrote that the pious church
complained that the attractive, the temporally graced Mistress Wildbore
came vainly and over-bravely clad to meeting, with "wanton open-worked
gloves slitt at the thumbs and fingers for the purpose of taking snuff,"
and he resented this complaint against the fair one, saying no harm could
surely come from indulging in the "good creature called tobacco." He would
naturally feel that snuff-taking was a proper and suitable church-custom,
since his own conversion,--dubious though it was,--his religious belief had
come to him, "the spirit fell home upon his heart" while he was indulging
in a quiet smoke.
The story of his offences as told b his contemporaries does not assign to
him so innocuous a diversion as staring across the meeting-house, but the
account is quite as amusing as his own plaintive and deeply injured version
of his arraignment.
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