[57]. Memorial, p. 151.
[58]. Memorial, p. 151. Mr. Smith was an English minister, who separated from the Church of England, and went to Holland, where he embraced the sentiments of the Baptists. He is said to have baptized himself, for want of a suitable administrator, and hence was called a Se-Baptist. Dr. Toulmin remarks, on this assertion, “This is said on the authority of his opponents only, who, from the acrimony with which they wrote against him, it may be reasonably concluded, might be ready to take up a report against him upon slender evidence.” Neal’s History of the Puritans, vol. ii. p. 72, note. Mr. Neal says, that “he was a learned man, of good abilities, but of an unsettled head.” His adoption of Baptist principles explains this reproach.
[59]. The Rev. John Foster, in his essay on the epithet Romantic.
[60]. See Appendix B. for some remarks on the Anabaptists.
[61]. Backus, vol. i. pp. 57, 516. Dr. Bentley, 1 His. Col. vi. p. 247, says, that the child was born in Salem, but Mr. Backus’ statement is more probable, and he quotes the Providence Records as authority.
[62]. There is a strange confusion in the statements of different writers respecting the duration of Mr. Williams’ stay at Plymouth, and the date of his removal. Morton says, that he preached at Plymouth about three years, and was dismissed in 1634. Baylies repeats this statement. Hutchinson says, that he remained at Plymouth three or four years; Cotton Mather says two years, and Dr. Bentley states, that he returned to Salem before the end of the year 1632. But Mr. Backus supposes the time of his removal from Plymouth to have been in August, 1633. “His first child was born there the first week in August, 1633, (Providence Records) and Mr. Cotton, who arrived at Boston the fourth of September following, says, he had removed into the Bay before his arrival.” (Tenet Washed, part 2, p. 4.) It is certain, from Winthrop’s Journal, vol. i. p. 117, that Mr. Williams had returned to Salem previously to November, 1633, for under that date Winthrop says, that he “was removed from Plymouth thither, (but not in any office, though he exercised by way of prophecy).” The expression implies, that he had recently removed, and this agrees with the supposition that he returned to Salem in August.
[63]. Mr. Skelton’s name is first mentioned by Winthrop, and Dr. Bentley (1 His. Col. vi. p. 248) attributes to Mr. Skelton the open opposition.
[64]. “Perhaps,” says Mr. Savage, “the same expressions from another would have given less offence. From Williams they were not at first received in the mildest, or even the most natural sense; though further reflection satisfied the magistrates that his were not dangerous. The passages from the Apocalypse were probably not applied to the honor of the King; and I regret, therefore, that Winthrop did not preserve them.”
[65]. It was probably this book, to which Mr. Coddington alluded, in his bitter letter against Mr. Williams, inserted at the close of Fox’s Reply. Mr. W. is there charged with having “written a quarto against the King’s patent and authority.”
[66]. A writer in the North American Review, for October, 1830, p. 404, says: “The Kings of Europe did, in some instances, assert the right to subdue the natives by force, and to appropriate their territory, without their consent, to the uses of the colonists. The King of Spain founded this right solely on the grant of the Pope, as the vicegerent of Christ upon earth. The Kings of England, in the sixteenth century, placed it on the superior claims, which Christians possessed over infidels.”