The
females blushed and hung down their heads. The men, too, hung down their
heads, and now and then looked out from under their fallen eyebrows, to
observe how others supported the attack. If the outward appearance of
the assembly was somewhat composed, there was a violent internal
agitation in many minds. And now, when forty-five years have expired,
the persons who were present at the delivery of that sermon, express its
effects by saying: 'How queerly I felt!' 'What a time it was!' 'This was
close preaching indeed!' The custom was abandoned. The sexes learned to
cultivate the proper degree of delicacy in their intercourse, and
instances of unlawful cohabitation in this town since that time have
been extremely rare."
[34] _Butler's History of Groton_ (Pepperell & Shirley), page 174. At a
church meeting, Feb. 29, 1739-40, the subject of compelling persons to
confess themselves guilty of an offense, of which they said, "if not
absolutely, yet next to impossible to convict them," was acted upon, and
some relaxation made in the rule before adopted; but a part of the
record is so worn as to be illegible.
Page 177. June 1, 1761. "The church also at this meeting, voted in
relation to the confession necessary to be made by parents, to entitle
their children to the rite of baptism, who might be supposed to have
committed the offence of which, in Mr.
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