Here is a mossy spot upon the patriarch's back; let us sit down in the warm sunlight and wind-sheltered nook, and glance at the record.
A few months after the arrival of Winthrop and his company at Boston, and before Hooker and Cotton, afterward eminent ministers in the colony, had sailed from England, there landed February 5, 1631 at Nantasket an enlightened and ardent Puritan divine, young in years (for he was thirty-one), but mature in judgment and those enlightened views of true liberty of conscience, which distinguish the character of modern theological jurisprudence from the intolerance of the seventeenth century. He was a fugitive from English persecution; but his wrongs had not clouded his accurate understanding. In the capacious recesses of his mind he had resolved the nature of intolerance, and he alone had arrived at the great principle which is its sole effectual remedy. He announced his discovery under the simple proposition of sanctity of conscience. The civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control opinion; should punish, guilt, but never violate the freedom of the soul. *** This was a wonderful discovery in modern science; too wonderful for the hierarchy of England, or the magistrates and ministers of the Puritan colony of America. They could not comprehend
* This view is on the left bank of the Seekonk, looking south. The point on which the figure stands is the famous rock, composed of a mass of dark slate, and rising but little above the water at high tide. The high banks are seen beyond, and on the extreme left is India Point, with the rail-road bridge near the entrance of the river into Narraganset Bay.
** Mosheim's Church History (external), part i., chap, i., sec. xiv.
*** Bancroft, i., 367.
Narrow Views of the old Puritans.—Zeal of Roger Williams.—Disturbance at Salem.—Williams arraigned for Treason.
its beauty or utility; and as it had no affinity with their own narrow views of the dignity of the human soul, they pronounced it heresy, as soon as the discoverer began to make a practical development of his principles. Yet they perceived, with a yearning affection for the truth, that it would quench the fires of persecution, abrogate laws making non-conformity a felony, abolish tithes, and all forced contributions to the maintenance of religion, and protect all in that freedom of conscience to worship God as the mind should dictate, for which they had periled their lives and fortunes in the wilderness. Still, its glory was too brilliant it dazzled their vision; the understanding could not comprehend its beneficent scope; they looked upon it with the jealous eye of over-cautiousness, and, true to the impulses of human nature, what they could not comprehend, they rejected. This great apostle of toleration and intellectual liberty was Roger Williams.
The New England Churches had not renounced the use of coercion in religious matters, and Williams, so soon as his tolerant views were made known, found himself regarded with suspicion by the civil and religious authorities. Disappointed, yet resolutely determined to maintain his principles, he withdrew to the settlement at Plymouth, where he remained two years, and by his charity, virtues, and purity of life, won the hearts of all. The people of Salem called him to be their minister, a movement which made the court of Boston marvel. Being an object of jealousy, and now having an opportunity to speak in the public ear, he was in perpetual collision with the clergy. The magistrates insisted on the presence of every man at public worship. Williams reprobated the law. To compel men to unite with those of a different creed he regarded as an open violation of their natural rights; to drag to public worship the irreligious and unwilling seemed only like requiring hypocrisy. This doctrine alarmed both magistrates and clergy, and they began to denounce Williams. In proportion to the severity of their opposition his zeal was kindled, and so earnest did he become in enforcing his tolerant views, that intolerance and fanaticism marked his own course. He denounced King James as a liar; declared that the settlers had no right to the lands they occupied, these belonging to the aborigines; raised a tumult about the red cross of St. George in the banner; (a) at last boldly denounced the Churches of New England as anti-Christian, and actually excommunicated such of his parishioners as held intercourse 1634 with them. The vision of that great mind which saw general principles of righteousness in a clear light, became clouded in his practical endeavors to bring the power of those principles to bear upon society. When weak and persecuted, the scope of his vision of intellectual liberty and Christian charity embraced the earth; when in power and strong, it contracted to the small orbit of his parish at Salem—himself the central sun of light and goodness. Such is the tendency of all human minds under like circumstances; and Roger Williams, great and good as he was, was not an exception.
The magistrates were greatly irritated; some of Williams's language was construed as treasonable and schismatic, and he was arraigned before the General Court at Boston on this charge. There he stood alone in defense of his noble principles; for his congregation, and even the wife of his bosom, could not justify all his words and acts. Yet he was undaunted, and declared himself "ready to be bound, and banished, and even to die in New England," rather than renounce the truth whose light illuminated his mind and conscience. He was allowed to speak for himself before the court, and also to dispute upon religious points with the Reverend Mr. Hooker. Every effort to "reduce him from his errors" was unavailing, and the court, composed of all the ministers, proceeded to pass sentence October, 1635 of banishment upon him. He was ordered to leave the jurisdiction of the colony
* The preaching of Williams warmed the zeal of Endicott, then one of the board of military commissioners for the colony, and afterward governor. The banner of the train-bands at Salem had the cross of St. George worked upon it. Endicott, determining to sweep away every vestige of what he deemed popish or heathenish superstition, caused the cross to be cut out of the banner. The people raised a tumult, and the court at Boston, mercifully considering that Endicott's intentions were good, though his act was rash, only "adjudged him worthy admonition, and to be disabled for one year from bearing any public office."—Savage's Winthrop, i., 158; Moore's Colonial Governors, i., 353.