Some time after this, I called upon a cousin of ours, a young married lady of our congregation, who, within a year, had come to us from another place, she having been married to an educated, intelligent member of another congregation, and who, from his great love for her, had come with her to our place of worship from another denomination, this having been made a condition of their marriage. For she felt that she could not be debarred the privilege of sitting at the Lord's table with her mother, three sisters, and brother, as she would be if she united herself with her friend's church. The idea of going to any table of Christ on earth where they could not come, thus seeming to disfranchise her whole family whom Christ had gathered into his fold, and some of them into heaven, did violence to her feelings. At one time, it seemed likely that the engagement of marriage would be terminated, on this ground alone. Some one of the gentleman's persuasion, who thought that she "ought to follow Christ in ordinances," and "take up her cross" in this instance, whispered to her that she was, perhaps, in danger of denying Christ, from love to her kindred, and he said to her, "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me." This had the opposite effect from that which was intended, for it showed her, in the strongest light, the error of supposing that love to Christ could ever require her to separate from herself, at the table of Christ, such friends of Jesus as the members of her dear Christian home,—a home which had been like that of Bethany to many of the Saviour's friends. She felt more sure of being actuated by right motives in giving up her marriage, and not withdrawing fellowship from her mother and the family, than she would be in sacrificing that fellowship to gratify a new affection. Her next younger sister was baptized after the father's death. She was a deaf-mute. The mother was a very beautiful woman. She had borne severe trials for her religion with a spirit of patience and Christian propriety which won the love and esteem of the community. She went to the altar of God, a widow, with the little deaf and dumb child, and presented it for baptism. It was as though the impending calamity of its father's death had shut up some of the senses of the child, and God had placed it in the mother's hand as a silent memorial to her, for life, of his chastising love. She left her fatherless flock in the family pew, and went with her nursling, not merely to give it to God, but to receive for it the seal of his covenant, bowing submissively to his inscrutable appointment, and imploring the God of Abraham to be still her God, and the God of this her seed. That scene had not failed to make deep impressions upon the other children; and now it was proposed to one of them that she should, by connecting herself in marriage, disavow her mother's right to cling, in those hours of anguish, to that asylum of the fatherless, infant baptism,—that very present help in trouble, the covenant of God with believers and their offspring. The little child, moreover, had become a Christian, and had sat with her sister, side by side, at the communion-table, for several years. "Forbid it," she prayed with herself, "that I should go where I cannot be allowed to follow Christ till I have separated this dear one from my side."
She once wrote a letter on the subject to the gentleman, which he showed, after their marriage, to some of his friends. There will be no impropriety in its appearing here. It ran thus:
"My dear Mr. E.: Though I am not willing to deny that Roger Williams was, as you say, raised up to illustrate some important principles, and to help on the general cause of truth, I must say that he strikes me as a very unreasonable man in much of his behavior. Our puritan fathers did not come to this wilderness with French, atheistic, idolatrous love for a goddess of liberty. They came here, it is true, for liberty of conscience and freedom to worship God. With a great sum they purchased this freedom. But infidels could as well claim to be absolved by the laws from all recognition of God, under the plea of liberty, as Mr. Williams and his friends could make his demands for toleration. To insist that our fathers, in their circumstances, should have opened their doors wide to every doctrine, and to the denial of everything professed by them, is unreasonable. They came here with an intense love for certain truths and practices, which persecution had only served to make exceedingly precious to them. To have proclaimed at once universal toleration of every wind of doctrine, would have proved them libertines in religion. Because they did not so, reproach is cast upon them by some, who seem to me to be free-thinkers on the subject of religious liberty. If other men wished to found a community with doctrines and practices adverse to those of the New England fathers, the land was wide, and it would have been the part of good manners in Mr. Williams to have gone into the wilderness at once, to subdue it and to fight the savages, all for love and zeal for his own tenets, instead of poaching upon the hard-earned soil of those who had laid down their all for what they deemed to be the truth. It seems to me unphilosophical in some of our historians to reflect, as they do, upon our forefathers for not being so totally indifferent to what they deemed error, as to allow it free course. Their strict, and, if you please, rigid ways, were the necessary defences of their principles, which were just taking root here. They did right in passing stringent laws to protect them; and religious liberty was no more violated in doing so than is the liberty of our town's people here, who, by the law of the State protecting game, cannot take fish, or kill birds, during certain seasons.
"Besides, I never saw any proof that Mr. Williams was himself the great apostle of toleration. I remember reading to father, during his sickness, some remarks of the late John Quincy Adams, in which he vindicates the New England fathers for banishing Roger Williams as a 'nuisance.'[3] Mr. Adams surely cannot be accused of bigotry, nor of being an enemy to the cause of freedom; and his remarks seemed to me more just than the eulogies, by historians and orators, of Mr. Williams. Father once showed me an old book of Mr. Williams's, which we have now, called 'George Fox digg'd out of his Burrowes,' in which Mr. W. inveighs against the Quakers for their want of 'civil respect,' and for using 'thee' and 'thou,' in addressing magistrates and others. He says, on the two hundredth page, 'I have therefore publickly declared myself, that a due and moderate restraint and punishing of these incivilities (though pretending conscience) is as far from persecution, properly so called, as that it is a duty and command of God unto all mankinde, first in families, and thence unto all mankinde societies.'—It is also a matter of history that the colony settled by Mr. Williams refused their franchise to Roman Catholics, though even then the Roman Catholics of Maryland were tolerating people of his own faith, and Quakers also. Mr. Williams always seemed to me like one of our pious, zealous 'come-outers.' He even forsook his own denomination in three months after he had been baptized, and for forty years denied the validity of their sacraments, and the scripturalness of their churches and ministry. Such a man would even at this day be excommunicated by every society, unless it were some association for the encouragement of radical notions of liberty. I no more see in him the impersonation of religious freedom, than in some other good people who go or stay where they are not wanted. I am not disposed to deny that you and your friends, with their principles, of which you, erroneously, I think, claim Mr. Williams as the great exponent, 'have a mission,' as you say, to perform; but I do not feel called upon to join in it. Some of your writers seem to me—shall I say it?—a little too sure of having just the right pattern and patent-right in ordinances, and somewhat too complacent in not being liked by other denominations, and perhaps a little disposed to look for persecution. Now I was pleased with a remark of Matthew Henry's, on Mark 10:28, that 'It is not the suffering, but the cause, that makes the martyr.' But we were brought up under different associations, and cannot see just alike in all things. I cannot, however, contradict, by any step which my feelings would incline me to take, the Christian citizenship of those who are dear to Christ, and are so precious to me. As much as I love you, I think you should feel perfectly free to leave me in my happy home, if you cannot allow me to retain my fidelity to my own conscientious convictions of truth, and to the sacred rights of those whom nature and grace have conspired to make inseparable from my own Christian hopes and joys."
The gentleman agreed to allow her the largest liberty, and they were married. He knew that she had a mind and heart that were more precious than rubies, and that the heart of a husband could safely trust in her. The sequel will show, however, how good it is to be matched as well as mated, and, in the conjugal relation, to be "perfectly joined together in the same judgment."
The object of my call, that evening, was to rejoice with her, and to be the bearer of some congratulations at the recovery of their infant, whose death had been expected for some time. The child was now perfectly restored.
As I stood in the entry, not having rung the door-bell, and was hanging up my hat and coat, some one in the parlor said:
"What good can it do the child or us to sprinkle a little water on its head?"
"Good-evening, Mr. M.," said the husband, as I went in. I was interrupted in my expression of a fear that I had intruded upon their conversation, by their assurances to the contrary. "I am glad you came in," said Mr. Kelly, "for perhaps you can help us. You heard, I suppose, what I was saying as you came in. If I am not mistaken, Mr. M., you yourself are not very strenuous about infant baptism, for I have heard of your making inquiries on the subject."