[39]. Extract from a letter of Mr. Cotton. Hutchinson, Appendix iii.
[40]. See Dr. Wisner’s valuable Historical Discourses, May 9 and 16, 1830.
[41]. Mr. Backus, and some other writers, have this date 1631, either by mistake, or by neglecting the difference between the old and the new style. Some confusion has thus been introduced into the accounts of Mr. Williams.
[42]. Magnalia, b. v. ch. 17.
[43]. Emerson in his History of the First Church is not more explicit. He says, (p. 13) “It has been said of this man, that he refused communion,” &c.
[44]. Winthrop, vol. i. p. 91.
[45]. The moral law was considered as divided into two tables, the first table containing the first four commandments, which relate to our duties towards God; and the second table, containing the other six commandments, which prescribe certain duties towards men.
[46]. The note of Mr. Savage, in his edition of Winthrop, vol. i. p. 53, deserves to be quoted:
“All, who are inclined to separate that connection of secular concerns with the duties of religion, to which most governments, in all countries, have been too much disposed, will think this opinion of Roger Williams redounds to his praise. The laws of the first table, or the four commandments of the decalogue first in order, should be rather impressed by early education than by penal enactments of the legislature; and the experience of Rhode Island and other States of our Union is perhaps favorable to the sentiment of this earliest American reformer. Too much regulation was the error of our fathers, who were perpetually arguing from analogies in the Levitical institutions, and encumbering themselves with the yoke of Jewish customs.”
[47]. 1 His. Col. vi. p. 246.