Page
Statue of Roger Williams[Frontispiece]
Copy of Shorthand Found in Indian Bible[4]
Sir Edward Coke[5]
Charterhouse School[9]
“A Key into the Language of America”[12]
Boston, 1632[13]
The Fort and Chapel on the Hill Where Roger Williams
Preached		[13]
Pembroke College[17]
Fac-simile from Original Records of the Order for the
Banishment of Roger Williams		[20]
Original Church at Salem, Mass.[21]
Site of Home of Roger Williams in Providence, R. I.[21]
Sun-dial and Compass Used by Roger Williams in His
Flight		[30]
Spring at the Seekonk Settlement[31]
Tablet Marking Seekonk Site[31]
What Cheer Rock. Landing-place of Roger Williams[31]
Original Deed of Providence from the Indians[35]
Williams’ Letter of Transference to His Loving Friends[39]
The Original Providence “Compact”[41]
The First Division of Home Lots in Providence[45]
“Simplicities Defence”[47]
The Arrival of Roger Williams with the Charter[49]
“Mr. Cotton’s Letter Lately Printed”[52]
“The Bloudy Tenent, ... discussed”[53]
Roger Williams’ Reference to “An Humble Supplication”
in His “Bloudy Tenent”		[54]
“Christenings make not Christians”[63]
First Baptist Church of Providence[65]
Roger Mowry’s “Ordinarie.” Built 1653, Demolished 1900[65]
Interior of First Baptist Church, Providence[69]
Bell of First Baptist Church, Providence[73]
“The Fourth Paper, ... by Maior Butler”[82]
“The Bloudy Tenent, Washed”[84]
“The Bloody Tenent yet More Bloody”[85]
“The Hireling Ministry”[87]
“Experiments of Spiritual Life and Health”[88]
“George Fox Digg’d out of his Burrowes”[90]
Models of Indian Village in Roger Williams Park Museum[91]
“A New-England Fire-Brand Quenched”[94]
Rhode Island Historical Society Museum[95]
Apple Tree Root from the Grave of Roger Williams[95]
Grave of Roger Williams[95]
New Testament Title-page of Roger Williams’ Indian Bible[98]
Indian Bible Used by Roger Williams, the Pioneer Missionary
to the American Indians		[99]
Original Home of Brown University, in Providence, R. I.[109]
Brown University in Early Nineteenth Century[109]
Capitol Building in Providence, Where the Charter is Kept[113]
City Hall, Providence, Where the Compact, Indian Deed, and
Letter of Transference Are Kept		[113]
Order Banishing the Founders of the First Baptist Church
in Boston		[123]
“Ill Newes from New-England”[125]
John Clarke Memorial, First Baptist Church of Newport, R. I.[127]
Grave of John Clarke[127]
The Law in William Penn’s Colony[129]
The Law Concerning Religious Toleration in Maryland
Colony		[130]
Puritan-Religious-Liberty![131]
William Rogers[133]
James Manning[133]
Isaac Backus[133]

I

THE APOSTLE OF SOUL-LIBERTY

That body-killing, soul-killing, state-killing doctrine of not permitting but persecuting all other consciences and ways of worship but his own in the civil state.... Whole nations and generations of men have been forced (though unregenerate and unrepentant) to pretend and assume the name of Jesus Christ, which only belongs, according to the institution of the Lord Jesus, to truly regenerate and repentant souls. Secondly, that all others dissenting from them, whether Jews or Gentiles, their countrymen especially (for strangers have a liberty), have not been permitted civil habitation in this world with them, but have been distressed and persecuted by them.—Roger Williams’ Estimate of Religious Persecution.

The principle of religious liberty did not assert itself, save in one instance, at once that American colonization was begun. For the most part, the founders of these colonies came to this country imbued with the ideas concerning the relations between government and religion, which had been universal in Europe.... This makes the attitude of our American exception, Roger Williams, the more striking and significant. More than one hundred years in advance of his time, he denied the entire theory and practice of the past.—Sanford Cobb.

Roger Williams advocated the complete separation of Church and State, at a time when there was no historical example of such separation.—Newman.

A GOVERNMENT of the people, formed by the people for the people, with Church and State completely separate, and with political privileges not dependent on religious belief, was organized and maintained successfully for the first time in Christendom in Rhode Island, the smallest of the American Colonies. Its inspiration and founder was Roger Williams, the apostle of soul-liberty. Because he was the first asserter of the principle which has since been recognized as the distinctive character of our national greatness, he has been called “The First American.”

Little is known of the personal appearance of Roger Williams. His contemporaries describe him as a man of “no ordinary parts,” with “a never-failing sweetness of temper and unquestioned piety.” They also said he was a man of “unyielding tenacity of purpose, a man who could grasp a principle in all its bearings and who could incorporate it in a social compact.” “He was no crude, unlearned agitator, but a scholar and thinker.” Governor Bradford speaks of him as “having many precious parts.” Governor Winthrop refers to him as “a godly minister.”

The artist’s conception, based upon these characteristics, is best expressed by a monument in Roger Williams Park, Providence, R. I. It is the work of Franklin Simmons, and was erected by the city of Providence in 1877. In a beautiful park of over four hundred acres with hills and drives and lakes, surrounded by trees and shrubbery, and on land originally purchased from the Indians by Williams, the illustrious pioneer of a new order is seen in heroic form. He seems to be looking out over the very colony he formed. In his hand he holds a volume, entitled “Soul-Liberty, 1636,” a title which has since become synonymous with his name. History is seen writing “1636,” the birth year of soul-liberty in America. She continues to write with increasing appreciation of the far-reaching influence of this illustrious hero of religious and political democracy.