😂 Okay, I am laughing for all the wrong reasons, but before I dive into a couple hours of novel-writing, please enjoy this document from Massachusetts Bay, 1697 with me.
Yeah, yeah, it's a list of brutal punishments outlined for anyone who denies, curses, or reproaches god/Christianity...
But look at that last part. How can you *not* laugh at the attempt to show restraint?
"We'll do all of these terrible things to atheists, but only two at most for the same offence! What are we, monsters?!" 😂
Oh, and for anyone struggling with image quality and/or the older text - in which a long curly "f" is actually an "s" - here's the text transcribed on the Wikipage:
This is the grief of brief lifespans: how little time we have to absorb the past before we repeat its errors.
I remember watching Bush talk about going to war - his enthusiasm ill-befitting a world that claimed to honour the horror of war every Veteran's and Memorial Day. But as a teen then, it dawned on me that *of course* he could be excited. He hadn't lived out those mistakes himself.
So long as we need firsthand experience to believe, we will heap horror upon horror ad aeternum.
Language is the mediator between our passed follies, and our current dilemmas. Keep writing. It's kinda important.
Funnier still if you read it as though the s were an f? Such terrible punifments for atheifm and curfing!
Hilariouf.
😂
"Doſt thou curſe at me, Goodman Greene?"
"Ay, Goodman William, but I do curſe at thee!"
"Nay, Goodman Greene, thou doſt not curſe only at me, but alſo at our Creator, in the foul nature of thine unholy ſpeech! To the Pillory with thee!"
"Ahhhhh ſſſſſſſſſſhit."
@MLClark 🤣
"Goodman William, could not thou burn Goody Hopkinf at the ftake firft???"
🔥😂
"Goodman Greene, I could not, for Goody Hopkinſ now runſ Sneed's feed and ſeed, which uſed to be owned by Goodman Chuck, and even now the men of thiſ fine town are indiſposed, trying to aſcertain if ſhe intendſ to honor all that once waſ promiſed over the old front door.
...But after? Yeſ."
(Bonus Simpſons reference!)
@MLClark 😂 😂 😂
Sorry I miffed this last night!!! Well done on finding a medial s too! I'm not awake enough yet to figure out how to get one, lol.
@MLClark furely they can't be feriouf!
@MLClark
The US was colonized by outcast, wackos, religious nuts, and debtors. They almost didn't make it. Only the amazing bounty of food and natural resources saved them. They were exiled for a reason. They were narcissistic exploiters of everything they touched.
And now we are here, having learned little.