John Webster Quotes
Oh, yes, thy sins Do run before thee to fetch fire from hell, To light thee thither.
Webster, John. The White Devil. 1612. Act 5, sc. 6.
Action he advocated to his followers who attacked and killed pro-slavery advocates in Kansas. The civil war of Kansas was over whether Kansas would enter the Union as a slave state of a free state. If a free state, the free states would be able to block further slavery. If Kansas were to become a slave state, the slave states would have a sufficient majority to make all future expansion hospitable to slavery. The slavery forces started sending man and families into Kansas so that they could vote; the abolitionists did the same. Both sides armed and a war began with each faction trying to kill or drive the other faction out of Kansas before the vote. See {617388} and {612516}.
In addition to the immense secular powers that can be used to obtain obedience, in a theocracy, there is the additional weapon of damnation. See {628182} for his use of some of the others.
John Webster (c. 1580 – c. 1632) was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. His life and career overlapped Shakespeare's.