We have seen that by the time Roger Williams had made up his mind to emigrate to America, the most important colonies in New England were Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Plymouth was Separatist and the Bay Colony Puritan, but every day growing farther and farther from the English Church. We would expect Roger Williams to decide upon the Plymouth settlement as a home, as its people held similar views to his own and it was the more liberal colony of the two. Why, instead, he chose to live in Massachusetts Bay Colony cannot be easily explained. Possibly in far-away England he did not rightly understand just how matters stood in New England.
However, there was great rejoicing when the young minister and his wife first appeared in Boston. The talented stranger was hailed as a “godly minister” and a welcome addition to the little colony. Far different language was used a few years later when he was turned out of that same colony, a homeless fugitive, disgraced and forbidden ever to return! The friendship between Roger Williams and the Bay authorities lasted only until each had an opportunity to get better acquainted with the other.
At first, the future loomed bright and promising to Roger Williams. Hundreds of miles behind him were tyrannical king, heartless bishop, and all that had made life on English soil a burden. Ahead were long years of peace, freedom and usefulness among new neighbors who were his own people.
How different was to be the future from what he imagined! He had yet to learn that here, in the wilds of New England, was a tyranny, in some respects as narrow as that of King Charles. Here, too, was unjust persecution very much like that from which he had fled. The Massachusetts Puritans who had left the mother country because they could not worship according to their consciences now refused to let others worship according to their consciences. They who had been made to suffer for thinking as they pleased now caused their neighbors to suffer for the same reason. They held that while they had objected to the corruptions of the established church, now that a purer form of worship had taken its place, it must and should be supported. They had bitterly criticized the English Church, but nobody must criticize theirs!
The accepted law was the Ten Commandments. These were divided into “two tables.” The first four, or those which summed up man’s duty to God, were the “first table,” while the remaining six, which covered the duties of man to man, were the “second table.” A person guilty of breaking any one of the Commandments was liable to be punished by the magistrates. The government of the colony was based upon the old Mosaic Law. Severe and heartless were the penalties meted out to offenders—often more severe and more heartless than those of England. Naturally the world had progressed during the hundreds of years that had elapsed since the rigid code of the Hebrew law-giver was in force.
Into this narrow body of believers came Roger Williams, who was to become the “apostle of soul liberty.” From the very start, he was looked upon as a troublemaker. A Boston clergyman, Cotton Mather, writing about this period some years later, said that Roger Williams had a windmill in his head.
“In the year 1654, a certain windmill in the Low Countries, whirling round with extraordinary violence, by reason of a violent storm then blowing, the stone at length by its rapid motion became so intensely hot as to fire the mill, from whence the flames, being dispersed by the high winds, did set a whole town on fire. But I can tell my reader that, about twenty years before this, there was a whole country in America like to be set on fire by the rapid motion of a windmill, in the head of one particular man.”
Immediately upon his arrival, the earnest young minister was given a chance to preach in a Boston church, but he refused for two reasons. First, the church members were an “unseparated people” and would not confess they were sorry for having had communion with English churches. Now it would seem that, on this first point, Roger Williams was quite as narrow as his neighbors. Yet he was at least consistent. Here were his fellow-fugitives who had suffered abuse and persecution for protesting against the “corruptions” of the established church. For the sake of their convictions they had given up home and friends in the Old World to face the trials and hardships of the New. Yet they still persisted in clinging fondly to the old church.
What Roger Williams practically said to them was:
“You have left the old life behind and have started in on the new. You have been given a chance to found a church after your own heart. Why, then, are you not a separated people? I cannot preach to you, for I have broken away forever from the church that has persecuted me.”