The scandal over Abigail Muxom's alleged affair with Joseph Benson now became even wider as Parson Everett invited outsiders to help judge her:
From the neighboring towns six ministers were then summoned to the inquest. They came and made a holiday; the six ministers on horseback, and the village idlers, to whom the spicy story was familiar, crowding around them and believing that justice must reign though the heavens fell.
Again there was a meeting of the church; Abigail Muxom stood in the sovereign presence of the six ministers, while the floor and galleries of the meeting-house were crowded by curious spectators attracted by what was to them "the greatest show on earth." The evidences were read aloud from the records: the accused woman again denied their truth; the six ministers were requested "to give their opinion what particular immodest conduct our sister is guilty of, and how this church ought to proceed with her." They, "having conversed with the Brethren of the church and heard what said Abigail had to say in her own defence," consulted together, and declared that her "immodest conduct in former years with one Doct. Joseph Benson was forbidden by the 7th commandment," and that it was her duty "to make a penitent and public confession of her sin ;" and "if she refuse or neglect to do it," the church "to proceed after other suitable forbearance to excommunication." The church then "Voted that Abigail Muxom is guilty of immodest conduct according to the opinion of the Revd Pastors," and it appointed three stern-visaged men to converse with her in the hope of obtaining a confession of the alleged sin. Their mission, as they reported, "appeared to have no good effect." Then, after another delay indicating a reluctance to pass such a terrible judgment upon "this unhappy sister," the church came together and the men "Voted that Abigail Muxom be rejected and excommunicated from the communion of this church, as being visibly a hardened and impenitent sinner out of the visible Kingdom of Christ, one who ought to be viewed and treated by all good people as a heathen and a publican in imminent danger of eternal perdition. Praying that this separation of hers from christian fellowship may not be eternal, but a means of her true and unfeigned repentance that her soul may be saved in the day of the Lord.-pp156-159
Colonial Times on Buzzard's Bay Houghton, Mifflin, Cambridge, Ma 1888
Notice that in all this there is no mention of what Doctor Joseph Benson had to say for himself. Perhaps he had died earlier, or maybe, like other members of the family, he had moved north to Maine or New Hampshire.
I don't know if Abigail Muxom ever reconciled with her church.
And that's where the story ends.
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