Roger Williams, Prophet and Pioneer of Soul-Liberty

by Arthur Barsazou Strickland

In December, 1633, he forwarded to the governor and his assistants a document which he had prepared at Plymouth, in which he disputed their right to have the land by the king’s grant. Williams claimed, “they have no title except they compounded with the natives.” He also accused King James of telling a lie in claiming to be “the first Christian prince to discover this new land.” This treatise had never been published or made public. Its appearance now terrified the governor and the assistants, for at that very time they were holding the possession to their colony on a charter originally given for a different purpose. It had been granted in England to a trading company, and its transfer was questionable. They feared the king might withdraw it. This treatise of Williams would be considered treason by the king. They met on December twenty-seventh and counseled with Williams. Seeing the grave danger to the colony, he agreed to give evidence of loyalty. Today we do not question the ethical correctness of the advanced position held by Williams.

It was not long before this pioneer of soul-liberty raised a new question concerning “the propriety of administering an oath, which is an act of worship, to either the unwilling or the unregenerate.” Williams’ position was peculiarly obnoxious to the magistrates who were then on the point of testing the loyalty of the colonists by administering an oath of allegiance which was to be, in reality, allegiance to the colony instead of to the king. The Court was called to discuss the new objection to its policy. Mr. Cotton informs us that the position was so well defended by Williams that “it threatened the court with serious embarrassment.” The people supported Williams’ position, and the court was compelled to desist. On the death of Skelton, in August, 1634, the Salem church installed Roger Williams as their teacher. This act gave great offense to the General Court in Boston. Williams commenced anew his agitation against the right to own land by the king’s patent. The Salem church and Williams were both cited to appear before the General Court, July 18, 1635, to answer complaints made against them.

The elders gave their opinion:

He who would obstinately maintain such opinions (whereby a church might run into heresy, apostasy, or tyranny, and yet the civil Magistrates may not intermeddle) ought to be removed, and that the other churches ought to request the Magistrates so to do.

The church and the pastor were notified “to consider the matter until the next General Court, and then to recant, or expect the court to take some final action.” At this same court, the Salem people petitioned for a title to some land at Marblehead Neck, which was theirs, as they believed, by a just claim. The court refused even to consider this claim, “until there shall be time to test more fully the quality of your allegiance to the power which you desire should be interposed on your behalf.” Professor Knowles says:

Here is a candid avowal that justice was refused to Salem, on the question of civil right, as a punishment for the conduct of church and pastor. A volume could not more forcibly illustrate the danger of a connection between the civil and ecclesiastical power.

Pembroke College
Reduced from Loggan’s print, taken about 1688

Teacher and people at Salem were indignant, and a letter was addressed to the churches of the colony in protest against such injustice. The churches were asked to admonish the magistrates and deputies within their membership. These churches refused or neglected to do this. In some cases the letters never came before the church. Williams then called on his own church to withdraw communion with such churches. It declined to do this, and he withdrew from the Salem church, preaching his last sermon, August 19, 1635. Here was a repetition of the first conflict. Straus writes:

Here stood the one church already condemned, with sentence suspended over it. Against it were arrayed the aggregate power of the colony—its nine churches, the priests, and the magistrates. What could the Salem church and community do, threatened with disfranchisement, its deputies excluded from the General Court, and its petition for land to which it was entitled, denied? Dragooned into submission it had to abandon its persecuted minister to struggle alone against the united power of Church and State. To deny Williams the merit of devotion to a principle in this contest, wherein there was no alternative but retraction or banishment, is to belie history in order to justify bigotry, and to convert martyrdom into wrong-headed obstinacy. This is exactly what Cotton sought to do in his version of the controversy given ten years later in order to vindicate himself and his church brethren from the stigma of their acts in the eyes of a more enlightened public opinion in England. Williams pursued no half-hearted or half-way measures. He stood unshaken upon the firm ground of his convictions, and declared to the Salem church that he could no longer commune with them, thereby entirely separating himself from them and them from him.