This disreputable and
most unclerical affair did not operate against him in the minds of the
contemporaneous public, for ten years later he received the degree of
Doctor of Divinity from Princeton College; and he did not hesitate to joke
about his liquor manufacturing, saying to two of his brother-clergymen,
"Oh, we are all three in the same boat together,--Brother Prime raises the
grain, I distil it, and Brother Flint drinks it."
Impostors there were--false parsons--in the early struggling days of New
England (since "the devil was never weary and never ceasing in disturbing
the peace of the new English church"), and they plagued the colonists
sorely. The very first shepherd of the wandering flock--Mr. Lyford, who
preached to the planters in 1624--was, as Bradford says, "most unsavory
salt," a most agonizing and unbearable thorn in the flesh and spirit of the
poor homesick Pilgrims; and he was finally banished to Virginia, where it
was supposed that he would find congenial and un-Puritanlike companions.
Another bold-faced cheat preached to the colonists a most impressive sermon
on the text, "Let him that stole steal no more," while his own pockets were
stuffed out with stolen money. "Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth
speaketh."
Dicky Swayn, "after a thousand rogueries," set up as a parson in Boston.
But, unfortunately for him, he prayed too loud and too long on one
occasion, and his prayer attracted the attention of a woman whose servant
he had formerly been.
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