Roger Williams, Prophet and Pioneer of Soul-Liberty

by Arthur Barsazou Strickland

During the Colonial period, the laws of Massachusetts and Virginia relating to soul-liberty were most severe; those in Maryland and Pennsylvania, the most lenient, outside of Rhode Island.

Order banishing the Founders of the First Baptist Church in Boston.

1644. Nov. 13.

Whereas Thomas Gold (and others) obstinate and turbulent Annabaptists, have some time since combined themselves wh others in a pretended church estate xxxxx to the great griefe and offence of the godly orthodox xxxxxxxx and about two years since were enjoyned by this Court to desist from said practise and to returne to our allowed Church Assemblies, xxxxxx this Court doe judge it necessary that they be removed to some other part of this country or elsewhere: and accordingly doeth order that (they) doe before the twentieth of July next remove themselves out of this jurisdiccon.

In Massachusetts the Baptist sentiment did not die out with the banishment of Roger Williams. In 1640, Rev. Mr. Chauncey advocated the immersion of believers and also of infants. Later President Dunster, of Cambridge College, went further and denounced the whole system of infant baptism. About the same time, Lady Moody, of Lynn, denied infant baptism. In 1644, a poor man by the name of Painter, reaching the same conclusion, refused to have his child baptized. The court interfered and the man was tied up and whipped. On November 13, 1644, two months after Williams arrived in Boston, en route to Providence, with the charter, the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law against the Baptists, in which they were described as “The incendiaries of commonwealths, the troublers of churches.” They ordered that all who “openly condemn or oppose the baptizing of infants shall be sentenced to banishment.” The General Court issued an order in 1644 banishing the founders of the Boston Baptist Church. In 1651, Obadiah Holmes, John Clarke, and John Crandall came to Lynn, Massachusetts, from Newport, Rhode Island. They were holding a service in Mr. Witter’s house, about two miles out from Lynn. Mr. Clarke was preaching from Revelation 3:10. The service was broken up by the arrival of two constables, who, with clamorous tongues, interrupted the discourse and arrested the preachers. The prisoners were held in Lynn until the morning, when they were taken to the Boston prison. Two weeks later, they were sentenced to pay heavy fines. The fines of Clarke and Crandall were paid by friends. Holmes refused any assistance in paying his fine of thirty pounds and was publicly whipped with thirty lashes from a three-corded whip. Thirteen others, who sympathized with these brethren, were arrested and were ordered to pay a fine of forty shillings each or take ten lashes. John Hazel, an old man from Rehoboth, was whipped and died a few days afterward. Clarke published the story of this incident in “Ill Newes from New-England”—an original copy is in the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, R. I. Cotton was the religious leader in Boston, back of this persecution. In 1680 the doors of the Baptist meeting-house in Boston were nailed up by the authorities. Finally the Baptists in Boston won some freedom, which, however, was denied to other Baptist churches throughout the State. Isaac Backus was the leader among the Massachusetts Baptists for soul-liberty. With President Manning, he appealed to the Massachusetts delegates at the Continental Congress to provide in the Constitution for separation of Church and State. John Adams replied to them: “They might as well turn the heavenly bodies out of their annual and diurnal courses as to expect they would give up their establishment.” This spirit of opposition was continued until 1833, in which year the last vestige of oppressive religious intolerance was removed from the statute-books of Massachusetts.

ILL
NEWES
FROM
NEW-ENGLAND
OR
A Narative of New-Englands
PERSECUTION.
Wherein is declared
That while old England is becoming new,
New-England is become Old.
Also four Proposals to the Honoured Parliament and Councel of State,
touching the way to Propagate the Gospel of Christ (with small
charge and great safety) both in Old England and New.
Also four conclusions touching the faith and order of the Gospel of
Christ out of his last Will and Testament, confirmed and justified
By John Clark Physician of Rode Island in America.
Revel. 2. 25. Hold fast till I come.
3. 11. Behold I come quickly.
22. 20. Amen, even so come Lord Jesus.
LONDON,
Printed by Henry Hills living in Fleet-Yard next door to the Rose
and Crown, in the year 1652.

In Virginia, the opposition to the Baptist movement was bitter and unrelenting. The early settlers of Virginia left England, when their church, the Established Church of England, had won a complete victory over all other persuasions. The Virginians sought to duplicate in the new land the spirit of the victors across the sea and make religion uniform in their colony. Laws were passed against popish recusants as early as 1643. Other laws were passed by their assembly between the years 1659 and 1663 against those who failed to have their children baptized. The Quakers especially found these laws most severe. The early Baptists of Virginia were of the common people; their ministers were illiterate; and for a while they escaped notice. The first imprisonment of Baptists was in the county of Spottsylvania, Va., June 4, 1768. Three Baptists, John Waller, Lewis Craig, and James Childs, with others, were arrested for disturbing the peace. (There was no law against preaching.) The opposing lawyer in the court-room made this charge:

May it please your worships, these men are great disturbers of the peace; they cannot meet a man on the road, but they ram a text of Scripture down his throat.