Compare And Contrast Quaker's View Of Freedom And Puritan Freedom

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Quaker’s views of freedom and Puritan’s views of freedom differed in several significant ways. First of all, Freedom and liberty according to William Penn involves great religious tolerance. Penn discusses his views of the matter in the following passage, “Finding then by Sad Experience, and a long Tract of Time, That the very Remedies applied to cure Dissension increase it; and that the more Vigorously a Uniformity is coercively prosecuted, the Wider Breaches grown, the more Inflamed Persons are, and fixt in their Resolutions to stand by their Principles” (Penn). He believed in letting people worship whenever and however they pleased (within the limits of Christianity). Eric Foner explains that to Quakers, “liberty was a universal entitlement, not the possession of any single people—a position that would eventually make them the first group of whites to repudiate slavery” (Foner 95). This can be used to assume that Quakers, or the Society of Friends, were among the most liberal of …show more content…

Evidence of this can be found in the details surrounding the Salem Witch Trials. Salem was a harsh religious town that attributed what they didn’t know about science to witchcraft and the supernatural. Along with these things, Salem had a highly dysfunctional government and justice system that was integrated with the church. Most colonies were mostly Puritan. In the transcript of the Trial of Bridget Bishop, this situation shows how superstitious and broken the society is,“’They say you bewitcht your first husband to death.’ ‘If it please your worship I know nothing of it.’ She shake her head & the afflicted were tortured. The like again upon the motion of her head” (The Trial of Bridget Bishop). Eric Foner says that, “Nearly every colony levied taxes to pay the salaries of ministers of an established church, and most barred Catholics and Jews from voting and holding public

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