Massah and Meribah, some that have the repute and I hope truly godly men, were so far gone with the temptation, that they accounted it a crime in any man to say that they hoped some of those Indians were pious persons, or that they had grounds of persuasion that such and such would he saved. This cruel frame of spirit (for I can give it no gentler denomination) arose I apprehend from a double ground, first, the malice of Satan against Christ's work among those Indians and to hinder their progress in religion; for they finding Englishmen, professing Christian religion, so enraged against them, and injurious to them without cause, as they well knew in their own consciences, whatever others thought or spake to the contrary, this was a sore temptation to such weak ones and little children as it were in the ways of Christianity, and hereby to incline them to apostasy, and if the devil by this stratagem could have prevailed, then the whole work of Christ among them, so spoken of, blessed and owned by the Lord, would have been utterly overthrown; this would have gratified Satan and his instruments greatly.
A second root of this trouble arose from the perfidious and unfaithful dealing of the wicked Indians, and their causeless rage and cruelty and fury against the English, and particularly the Springfield and Northampton Indians, who lived near the English and seemed to carry it fair for a time, but at last proved perfidious and treacherous. But there was not one of them that ever I heard of, that was a pretender to Christian religion. This defection of those Indians (though some near the mark have been ready to say that if they were prudently managed as others of their neighbours the Mohegans were, they might have continued in amity and been helpful to the English to this day,) but their defection at this time had a tendency to exasperate the English against all Indians, that they would admit no distinction between one Indian and another, forgetting that the Scriptures do record that sundry of the heathen in Israel's time, being proselyted to the Church, proved very faithful and worthy men and women; as Uriah the Hittite, Zeleg the Ammonite, Ithmah the Moabite, 1st Chron. xi. 39, 41, 46. And Rahab the harlot, and Ruth the Moabitess, and divers others, men and women. But this is no wonder that wicked men, yea, sometimes godly men, are angry and displeased with others that fear God, and too readily pass judgment on them that they are hypocrites and
