some pretended Ministers here have done, preaching one day Not to take an Eye for an Eye (Matt. v. 38), and another day to contradict it by taking Life?
“12. Whether there is any Example or President for it in Scripture, or in all Christendom, that Ministers should engross the worldly Government, as they do here? which hath proved of a very evil tendency.”[1]
There was enough of truth in the intimations contained in these queries to make them offensive and disagreeable. According to the account of it given by Caleb Pusey, an opponent of Keith, in his “Satan's Harbinger Encountered,” when Babbitt had stolen the sloop and escaped down the river, the three magistrates issued a warrant in the nature of a hue and cry, and a party of men went out in a boat and captured the robbers. As they were about to depart, Samuel Carpenter, a leading and wealthy Friend, stood up on the wharf and promised them one hundred pounds in the event of success. Doubtless they used some force; but to call them militia, and the warrant a commission, was, to say the least for it, quite ingenious on the part of Keith. The Appeal had the effect of converting what had hitherto been purely a matter of Church into one of State. Bradford and John McComb was arrested and committed for printing it, but were afterward discharged. Keith and Budd were indicted before the grand jury, tried, convicted and sentenced to pay a fine of five pounds each. These proceedings caused as much excitement as our placid forefathers were capable of feeling, and became the subject of universal comment. The justices, Arthur Cooke, Samuel Jennings, Samuel Richardson, Humphrey Murray, Anthony Morris, and Robert
- ↑ A mutilated copy of this Appeal is in the Friends' library on Arch street above Third.
