LIVES OF THE PURITANS. in the light of day. Crosby, alluding to the above cir- cumstance, observes that, in the year 1646, Mr. Oates took a journey into Essex, .preached in several parts of that county, and baptized by immersion great numbers of people, especially about Bocking, Braintree, and Terling. This made the presbyterians in those parts very uneasy; especially the ministers, who complained bitterly that such things should be permitted, and would have urged the magistrates tosuppress them. " No magistrate in the country, however, dare meddle with him ; for they say they have hunted such persons out of the country into their dens in London, and imprisoned some of them, but they have been released.". If any credit may be given to Mr. Edwards, the conduct of Mr. Oates and some others, in one of their excursions, was highly censurable. He says, " I was informed for certain, that, not long ago, Oates, an anabaptist, and some of his fellows, went their progress into Essex to preach and clip, and among other places they came, to Billericay. On a Tuesday at a lecture kept there, Oates and his company, with some of the town, when the minister had done preaching, went up in a body, about twenty of them, (divers of them having swords,) into the upper part of the church, and there quarrelled with the minister that preached,.pretending they would be satisfied about some things he had delivered, saying to him, he had not preached free grace. But the minister, one Mr. Smith, replied, if they would come to a place where he dined he would satisfy them ; but it was not a time now to speak. Whereupon these anabaptists turned to the people, and said to them, they were under antichrist, and in antichrist's way," and more to the same purpose. After this they com- mitted a riot in the town.i. The same author relates a circumstance in the life of Mr. Oates, that was attended with more serious consequences. " Last summer," says he, " I heard he went his progress into Surrey and Sussex, but now this year he is sent out into Essex. This Oates is a young lusty fellow, and hath traded chiefly with young women and young maids, dipping many of them, though 'all is fish that comes to his net. A godly minister of Essex, coming out of those parts, related, that he hath baptized a great number of women; and that they were called out of their beds to-go a dipping in rivers, dipping many of them in the night, so that their husbands and masters could not keep them in their houses ; and it is Edwards's Gangrmna, partii. p. 3, 8.-Crosby's Baptists, vol. 1. p.236. Edwards'sGarigrmia, part i. p. 106. Third edit.
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