Samuel Gorton, Simplicity’s Defense Against Seven-Headed Policy (London, 1644), William R. Staples, ed., (Providence: Marshall Brown, 1835), 80-83

But finding them to be a company of gross and dissembling hypocrites, that,under the pretence of law and religion, have done nothing else, but gone about to establish themselves in ways to maintain their own vicious lusts, we renounce their diabolical practice, being such as have denied in their public courts that the laws of our native country should be named amongst them; yea, those ancient statute laws, casting us into most base, nasty and insufferable places of imprisonment, for speaking according to the language of them; in the meanwhile, breaking open our houses in a violent way of hostility, abusing our wives and our little ones, to take from us the volumes wherein they are preserved thinking thereby to keep us ignorant of the courses they are resolved to run, that so the vitiosity of their own wills might be a law unto them; yea, they have endeavored, and that in public expressions, that a man being accused by them, should not have liberty to answer for himself, in open court… But the God of vengeance, unto whom our cause is referred, never having our protector and judge to seek, will shew himself in our deliverance out of the hands of you all; yea, all the house of that Ishbosheth and Meribbosheth, nor will he fail us to utter and make known his strength wherein we stand, to serve in our age and to minister in our course, today, and to-morrow; and on the third day, can none deprive us of perfection… the Lord never gives a name as an empty title, but according to the nature of the thing named, so that if he speak, I have said ye are gods, of any besides himself, it is to declare, that they have not only the name but the very nature of the god of this world; and therefore he saith, they shall die even as Adam, who aspired and usurped the place of God…