Re: M`I'5-Pers ecution . my response to t he harassme nt

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time], and after our public lecture, to be especially the times of their
mirth, and company-keeping. But a sermon was now preached on the sabbath
before the lecture, to show the evil tendency of the practice, and to
persuade them to reform it; and it was urged on heads of families that
it should be a thing agreed upon among them, to govern their families,
and keep their children at home, at these times. It was also more
privately moved, that they should meet together the next day, in their
several neighborhoods, to know each other's minds; which was accordingly
done, and the notion complied with throughout the town. But parents
found little or no occasion for the exercise of government in the case.
The young people declared themselves convinced by what they had heard
from the pulpit, and were willing of themselves to comply with the
counsel that had been given: and it was immediately, and, I suppose,
almost universally, complied with; and there was a thorough reformation
of these disorders thenceforward, which has continued ever since.

Presently after this, there began to appear a remarkable religious
concern at a little village belonging to the congregation called
Pascommuck, where a few families were settled, at about three miles
distance from the main body of the town. At this place, a number of
persons seemed to be savingly wrought upon. In the April following, anno
1734, there happened a very sudden and awful death of a young man in the
bloom of his youth; who being violently seized with a pleurisy, and
taken immediately very delirious, died in about two days; which
(together with what was preached publicly on that occasion) much
affected many young people. This was followed with another death of a
young married woman, who had been considerably exercised in mind, about
the salvation of her soul, before she was ill, and was in great distress
in the beginning of her illness; but seemed to have satisfying eviden