AN ACCOUNT OF THE PERSECUTIONS IN LITHUANIA AND POLAND.  
The persecutions in Lithuania began in 1648, and were carried on with great severity by the Cossacks and Tartars. The cruelty of the Cossacks was much, that even the Tartars, at last, grew ashamed of it, and rescued some of the intended victims from their hands.
 
The barbarities exercised were these: skinning alive, cutting off hands, taking out the bowels, cutting the flesh open, putting out the eyes, beheading, scalping, cutting off feet, boring the shin bones, pouring melted lead into the flesh, hanging, stabbing, and sending to perpetual banishment.
 
The Russians, taking advantage of the devastations which had been made in the country, and of its incapability of defence, entered it with a considerable army, and, like a flood, bore down all before them. Every thing they met with was an object of destruction; they razed cities, demolished castles, ruined fortresses, sacked towns, burnt villages, and murdered people. The ministers of the gospel were peculiarly marked out as the objects of their displeasure, though every worthy christian was liable to the effects of their cruelty.
 
As Lithuania recovered itself after one persecution, succeeding enemies again destroyed it. The Swedes, the Prussians, and the Courlanders, carried fire and sword through it, and continual calamities, for some years, attended that unhappy district. It was then attacked by the prince of Transylvania, who had in his army, exclusive of his own Transylvanians, Hungarians, Moldavians, Servians, Walachians, &c. These, as far as they penetrated, wasted the country, destroyed the churches, rifled the nobility, burnt the houses, enslaved the healthy, and murdered the sick.[179]
 
A clergyman, who wrote an account of the misfortunes of Lithuania, in the seventeenth century, says, "In consideration of these extremities, we cannot but adore the judgment of God pour............