ROGER WILLIAMS.
“I venerate the man whose heart is warm,
Whose hands are pure, whose doctrine and whose life,
Coincident, exhibit lucid proof
That he is honest in the sacred cause.”
COWPER’S _Task_.
The Pilgrim Fathers were enamoured of the Mosaic code. They esteemed
it to be a diamond without a flaw. Their constant, persistent effort
was to naturalize the Jewish ritual in New England. For this their
statesmen planned and their divines dogmatized. They did not remember
that the judicial government which fitted the world in its infancy
had been outgrown, and now sat awkwardly upon Christendom twenty-one
years of age. They did not remember that Christ had “rung out” the
old dispensation and “rung in” a grander and broader one.
Of course, in standing under the Mosaic code they were perfectly
sincere; and to their sincerity they wedded a Titanic earnestness.
They regarded toleration as a snare and a curse. It was either the
badge of indifference or the corslet of Atheism; therefore a vice
entitled to no terms. The advocates of toleration in the seventeenth
century may be counted on the fingers of one’s two hands. The most
advanced thinkers of that epoch scarcely ventured, even in their
most generous moments, to hint at a toleration of all creeds—each
man responsible alone to God. The Romanist denied it amid the
crackling flames of his _auto da fé_, and held with the Sorbonne and
with Bossuét, that the stake is bound to extirpate heresy.[814] The
Protestant urged exceptions when he asked for toleration; and, with
Cartwright, forsook those who came under his ban, “that they might
not corrupt and infect others.”[815]
Tindale appealed not to the Pope, or to councils, or to the king, but
to the Bible. So did Latimer; so did the Ridleys; so did Cranmer; so
did Bradford: all of whom were blessed martyrs: yet none of these
believed in full toleration; they had not yet reached it. They
accepted what was behind them; they had a shadowy conception of what
was in advance; but they feared, and were tolerant only up to their
own position, while they cried “halt!” to a farther progress.
This European wave of sentiment swept in strong eddies to America;
and in New England Cotton wrote: “It was toleration that made
the world anti-Christian; and the church never took harm by the
punishment of heretics.”[816] The cobbler of Agawam[817] responded:
“Yes: to authorize an untruth by a toleration of state, is to build
a sconce against the walls of heaven, to batter God out of his
chair.”[818]
Therefore, the Pilgrim Fathers, backed by the public opinion of
Christendom, tabooed toleration, and gave it no place under the
theocracy. When Roger Williams landed with his wife at Boston, in
1631, this was the sentiment and so stood the law.
He was a Welchman—for he had been cradled in the crags of
Carmarthen—some thirty years of age, ripe for great acts, and though
sometime a minister of the English church, he had thrown up his
living because he could not, in Milton’s phrase, “subscribe him
slave,” by conforming to Laud’s idea.[819]
He had heard of America as a land of splendid possibilities—as the
Holy Land of a grander crusade than that which had been launched to
clutch the East from beneath the Saracenic scimetars; for this meant
not empty sentimentality, it was an effort to win the wilderness
for God. In that essay he longed to share; and his quick-flowing
blood, his bold energy, and what Winthrop called his “godly fervor,”
united to decide him to quit England, cramped in forms and chained in
wrongs, for the young, elastic, unbounded freedom of the west of the
Atlantic.
Roger Williams was an earnest seeker after truth. Like Robinson, he
smiled at the idea that the acme of knowledge had been reached. He
knew, moreover, that his goal was to be run for “not without toil and
heat.” He was romantically conscientious; but he held to his opinions
with grim determination, while the slowly-ripening principles of the
English revolution of 1640 had already flowered in his brain. Now, in
New England, he longed to set his ideas on two feet, and bid them run
across the continent.
Like all positive characters, the young Welchman speedily attracted
attention and made himself felt. His clear, ringing heel had scarce
sounded in Boston streets ere he was cordoned by friends and
surrounded by foes.[820] His opinions were novel; some of them have
been grafted into the fundamental law of our Republic, and are now
justly considered the palladium of religious peace; others are still
unsettled and partly unaccepted, being held by certain sects, and
rejected by several as the _disjecta membra_ of divinity; but to the
Pilgrims they were alike odious and revolutionary.
But the principle upon which hangs his immortality of fame is that of
complete toleration. “He was a Puritan, and a fugitive from English
persecution,” remarks Bancroft, “but his wrongs had not clouded his
accurate understanding. In the capacious recesses of his mind he
had revolved the nature of intolerance, and he, and he alone, had
arrived at the grand principle which is its sole effectual remedy.
He announced his discovery under the simple proposition of the
sanctity of conscience. The civil magistrate should restrain crime,
but never control opinion; should punish guilt, but never violate
the freedom of the soul. The doctrine contained within itself an
entire reformation of theological jurisprudence; it would blot from
the statute-book the felony of non-conformity; would quench the
fires that persecution had so long kept burning; would repeal every
law compelling attendance on public worship; would abolish tithes
and all forced contributions to the maintenance of religion; would
give an equal protection to every form of religious faith; and never
suffer the authority of civil government to be enlisted against the
mosque of the Mussulman, or the altar of the fire-worshipper; the
Jewish synagogue, or the Roman cathedral. It is wonderful with what
distinctness Roger Williams deduced these inferences from his central
tenet, the consistency with which, like Pascal and Edwards, those
bold and profound reasoners on other subjects, he accepted every
fair inference from his doctrine, and the circumspection with which
he repelled every unjust imputation. In the unwavering assertion of
these views he never changed his position; the sanctity of conscience
was the great tenet, which, with all its consequences, he defended
as he first trod the shores of New England; and in his extreme
old age it was the last pulsation of his heart. But it placed the
young emigrant in direct opposition to the whole system on which
Massachusetts was founded; and forbearing and forgiving as was
his temper, prompt as he was to concede every thing which honesty
permitted, he always asserted his belief, however unpalatable it
might be, with temperate firmness and an unbending benevolence.”[821]
And just here, it is only fair to add, that his opponents, on their
part, usually applied their principles without personal animosity.
Between Williams and his great antagonist, Cotton, there was always,
in their most heated moods, a substratum of cordial respect, while
Winthrop, though consenting to the banishment of the pioneer American
reformer, continued his fast friend through all.[822]
This principle of toleration, together with several other obnoxious
tenets, all of which Williams avowed with frank courage, soon brought
him under the frown of the colonial authorities—a frown which
deepened when he refused to unite with the church at Boston “because
its members would not make public declaration of their repentance
for having communion with the church of England before their
emigration.”[823]
This declaration—and the same thing may be said of several of his
tenets—looks narrow and bigoted in our eyes; but Roger Williams had
an undoubted right to cherish his own views under the very principles
which he first of all men in America proclaimed, that “the public or
the magistrate may decide what is due from man to man, but when they
attempt to prescribe a man’s duties to God, they are out of place,
and there can be no safety; for it is clear, that if the magistrate
has the power, he may decree one set of opinions or beliefs to-day
and another to-morrow; as has been done in England by different kings
and queens, and by different popes and councils in the Roman church;
so that belief would become a heap of confusion.”[824]
Be this as it may, the Pilgrims came to regard Roger Williams as a
dangerous heresiarch; as “unsettled in judgment;”[825] as carrying
“a windmill in his head.”[826] Indeed, so strong was this feeling
that many years afterwards Cotton Mather headed his account of
Williams’ advent, in the “Magnalia,” with this Latin: “_Hic se aperit
Diabolus_”—Here the devil shows himself.[827]
Under these circumstances, we may easily imagine the consternation
which reigned in Boston, when, in April, 1631, it was rumored
that Roger Williams was about to be installed in the vacant place
of Francis Higginson at Salem as assistant to Mr. Skelton.[828]
The court was convened; and a letter was at once indited to John
Endicott, “one of the chief promoters of the settlement,” in which,
says Winthrop, the judges “marvelled that he should countenance such
a choice without advising with the Council; and withal desiring him
to use his influence that the Salem church should forbear till all
could confer about it.”[829]
In that day good ministers were not common in New England; and,
moreover, the Salem churchmen liked Williams; so, without heeding
the remonstrance of the authorities, they proceeded to settle the
teacher of their choice. He at once began to preach; but with the
advance of summer the temper of the government grew hot with the
season, and finally he decided to bid Salem farewell and take refuge
at Plymouth.[830] This he did, being soon after elected assistant to
Ralph Smith.[831] At Plymouth as at Salem, he made many friends, and
Bradford bears witness that he was “a man godly and zealous, having
many precious parts.”[832] But his “strange opinions” were not fully
approved; and consequently, when, after the death of Mr. Skelton, in
1633, the Salem church urged their truant pastor to return to them,
Williams acceded. He was dismissed, as Brewster counselled, from the
Plymouth church, but was followed back to Salem by a body-guard of
devoted admirers, “who would have no other preacher.”[833]
It was during his sojourn at Plymouth that Roger Williams began to
cement that famous friendship with the Indians which was one day to
stand him in such good stead.[834] “My soul’s desire,” he said, “was
to do the natives good.”[835] And later, when
“Declined
Into the vale of years,”
he wrote again: “God was pleased to give me a painful, patient
spirit, to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes, to gain
their tongue.”[836] In this way he became acquainted with Massasoit,
the chief of the Wampanoags, and with Canonicus and Miantonomoh, the
sachems of the Narragansetts, among whom, in after-years, he sought
and found a home.
On his return to Salem his struggle with the government recommenced.
While at Plymouth he had written a pamphlet against the validity
of the colonial charter, and submitted it to Bradford.[837] Now he
published it. He said: “Why lay such stress upon your patent from
King James? ’Tis but idle parchment: James has no more right to
give away or sell Massasoit’s lands, and cut and carve his country,
than Massasoit has to sell James’ kingdom or to send his Indians to
colonize Warwickshire.”[838]
Since the Pilgrims had legalized their title to the land _in foro
conscientiæ_, by actual purchase from the aborigines,[839] it is
somewhat difficult to conceive why Williams, already staggering
under a load of odium, should have added to the pack by a declaration
entirely useless, yet certain to kindle anger because it was looked
upon as treason against the cherished charter.[840]
The fact should seem to be that he had the _certaminis gaudia_—the
joy of disputation; common to intellectual gladiators. Occasionally
this got the better of his prudence; and when it did, like a
skilful rider, he soon recovered the reins of his caution and made
glad amends. On this occasion, he confessed his penitence for the
ill which had arisen from the unfortunate polemic, and offered to
burn the manuscript if the authorities chose to countenance the
bon-fire.[841]
Roger Williams next pronounced himself upon an exciting local
question. It was then a mooted point at Salem whether women were
commanded to appear at church veiled.[842] Singularly enough, the
radical Williams said Yes, and the conservative Cotton said No; the
historic opponents for once changed places; and Cotton, going to
Salem, handled the subject so convincingly in his morning sermon,
that the ladies came to church in the afternoon unveiled; upon which
“Williams, though unconvinced, desisted from opposition.”[843]
Behind these frivolities were graver issues. In 1633, trouble
seemed brewing between England and the Pilgrim colonists. Charles,
Laud, and Strafford, had hinted at a “commission” for the regulation
of the non-conforming American plantations; and the Privy Council
had commanded Cradock to order the colonial charter home, to be
“regulated.” The ex-president of the Massachusetts Company did write
for it in 1634, and in 1635 “quo warranto”[844] was issued. But the
provisional authorities, while answering Cradock’s missive, declined
to return the charter.[845]
Affairs looked black indeed. Resistance was seriously contemplated;
what was called the “freeman’s oath,” which bound the colonists to
allegiance to the colony rather than to the king, was ordered to be
subscribed throughout Massachusetts Bay; and at the same time it was
decided to “avoid and protract.”[846] Nothing prevented England from
launching her cohorts upon the plantations but the presence of those
home troubles which now began to press the royalist party as closely
as the serpents enveloped Laocöon. It was a time of general anxiety,
and men cried Hush! and held their breath to see what should next
occur.
But “Williams could not keep quiet in this seething world,” affirms
Elliot; “nor could Endicott. Both of them saw the inevitable
tendencies of the Roman church; and feeling that such a church was
dangerous to their infant liberties, they decided that the symbol
under which the pope and Laud marched should not be their symbol: so
Endicott cut the cross out of the king’s colors. At such a crisis,
when the aim was to ‘avoid and protract,’ this audacious act of
course made trouble; and Endicott, at the next court, was ‘sadly
admonished,’ and disabled from office for a year.[847] Williams
held peculiar views respecting oaths, and cited the Scripture
command—‘swear not at all.’ And as the freeman’s oath clashed with
the oath to the king, he also spoke against that, and dissuaded some
from taking it.”[848]
Besides this, Roger Williams was an avowed democrat. He proclaimed
this truth: “Kings and magistrates are invested with no more power
than the people intrust to them.”[849] And he said again: “The
sovereign power of all civil authority is founded in the consent of
the people.”[850] Republicanism was the logical sequence of religious
liberty—came from it as naturally as the bud expands into the flower.
Yet it startled the Pilgrims. They were constantly making forays
into the domain of absolutism. They never scrupled, when they had
a chance, at clutching popular prerogatives. They were always busy
in enacting democracy into law; but they were shocked when Roger
Williams put it into propositions.
“Had Cromwell been in power at the time, with his republican
bias,” remarks Felt, “these sentiments would have been crowned
with approbation; but being uttered under one of the Stuarts, they
were hissed as the expression of sedition. It has ever been in
accordance with the spirit of human policy, that principles under the
circumstances of one period are accounted patriotism, which under the
circumstances of another era are denounced as treason.”[851]
Thus it was that the theories of Roger Williams “led him into
perpetual collision with the clergy and the government of
Massachusetts Bay. It had ever been their custom to respect the
church of England, and in the mother-country, they had frequented
its service; yet its principles and its administration were still
harshly exclusive. The American reformer would hold no communion
with intolerance; for, said he, ‘the doctrine of persecution for
conscience’ sake is most evidently and lamentably contrary to the
doctrine of Jesus Christ.’
“The magistrates insisted on the presence of every man at public
worship; Williams reprobated the law; the worst statute in the
English code was that which did but enforce attendance upon the
parish church. 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 the unwilling, seemed
like requiring hypocrisy. ‘An unbelieving soul is dead in sin’—such
was his argument. ‘And to force the indifferent from one worship
to another, is like shifting a dead man into several changes of
apparel.’ He added: ‘No one should be forced to worship, or to
maintain a worship against his own consent.’ ‘What!’ exclaimed his
antagonists, amazed at his tenets, ‘is not the laborer worthy of his
hire?’ ‘Yes,’ replied he, ‘from those who hire him.’
“The magistrates were selected exclusively from the church-members;
with equal propriety, reasoned Williams, might ‘a doctor of physic
or a pilot’ be selected according to his skill in theology and
his standing in the church. It was objected, that his principles
subverted all good government. ‘Oh no,’ said he; ‘the commander of
the vessel of state may maintain order on board the ship and see
that it pursues its course steadily, even though the dissenters of
the crew be not compelled to attend the public prayers of their
companions.’”[852]
The Pilgrims heard all this aghast. Soon they wearied of discussion;
they invoked the syllogism of the law to rebut the heresies of the
bold declaimer. Williams was cited in 1635, to appear before the
General Court at Boston, for examination. Taking his staff in his
hand, he set out. The session was stormy. Cotton argued; others
scolded; Winthrop pleaded; Endicott was wrenched away from Williams’
side; but Williams, while maintaining some odd opinions, spoke
boldly for God and liberty that day, and “maintained the rocky
strength of his grounds.”[853]
“To the magistrates he seemed the ally of a civil faction; to himself
he appeared only to make a frank avowal of the truth. The scholar
who is accustomed to the pursuits of abstract philosophy, lives in a
region of thought quite remote from that by which he is surrounded.
The range of his understanding is aside from the paths of common
minds, and he is often the victim of the contrast. ’Tis not unusual
for the world to reject the voice of truth, because its tones are
strange; to declare doctrines unsound, only because they are new;
and even to charge obliquity or derangement on a man who brings
forward principles which the average intelligence repudiates. ’Tis
the common history; Socrates, and St. Paul, and Luther, and others of
the most acute dialecticians, have been ridiculed as drivellers and
madmen.”[854]
Roger Williams now evinced his kinship with the martyrs for human
progress, by suffering that rejection common to those who venture to
project their revolutionary thoughts from the front of a century’s
advance. Misunderstood and condemned, he was commanded to abjure his
heresies or else expect “sentence.”[855]
Of course, he could not reject himself; therefore, saying with Job,
“Though I die, I will maintain my integrity,” he uncovered his head
with serene patience to “bide the pelting of the pitiless storm.”
The thunderbolt soon fell. The church at Salem was coerced into
abandoning the immortal pastor; and in November, 1635, he was ordered
“to depart out of the jurisdiction of Massachusetts Bay within six
weeks;”[856] a sentence which is said to have been mainly due to
Cotton’s eloquence.[857]
Finally, Williams was permitted to remain at Salem until the
following spring, as the season then shivered on the verge of
winter.[858] Then the Pilgrims grew alarmed; the reformer’s opinions
were contagious; they thought, after all, that it would be best to
send Williams home to England. A ship was about to sail; a warrant
was issued; officers were despatched to arrest the disturber of that
Israel. But on coming to his house and opening the door, they found
“darkness there, and nothing more.” Roger Williams, apprized of the
change of purpose, had quitted Salem “in winter snow and inclement
weather.”[859] On, on he pressed, for Laud and the Tower of London
were behind him. Without guide, without food, without shelter,
he suffered tortures. “For fourteen weeks I was sorely tossed
in a bitter season”—so he wrote in the evening of his life—“not
knowing what bread or bed did mean.”[860] “But,” said he sweetly,
“the ravens fed me in the wilderness;”[861] and he often made his
habitation in the hollow of a tree. But nothing could daunt him. His
cheerful faith,
“Exempt from public haunt,
Found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.”
So he fled on, on, through the snow, the darkness, the dreary forest;
“fled from Christians to the savages, who knew and loved him, till
at last he reached the kind-hearted but stupid Indian heathen
Massasoit.”[862]
This winter banishment of Roger Williams was cruel and bigoted,
but it was not without palliation. He had run a tilt against the
law and order of his time; he had sneered at the validity of the
charter, then the fundamental law; he had impeached the theocracy;
he had the dangerous advantage of being personally equipped with
those gifts which win and “grapple to the soul with hooks of steel.”
Every motive of worldly prudence seemed to dictate banishment. These
things extenuate, but they do not excuse; because we are bound to
impeach an untrue order. Paul cried, “God is God,” and trampled
wicked laws beneath his feet. The catacombs of Pagan Rome were choked
with martyrs who went against the law and order of their time. Huss
and Wickliffe, Latimer and Ridley, violated law precisely as Roger
Williams did. The law-breaker is not necessarily immoral and a pest.
Society is bound to see that the statute-book does not fetter the
human conscience. If society is recreant to its duty, individuals
must not be false to God. Therefore, in this matter of opposing the
colonial law, we hide Roger Williams behind the apostles, and enclose
him within the leaves of the New Testament.
After months of vicissitude, the great exile reached the shores of
Narragansett Bay, and founded Providence. As he floated down the
stream in his canoe, and neared the site of the beautiful city born
of his piety, the Indians shouted, “Wha-cheer, friend; wha-cheer?”
and grasped his hand with cordial sympathy as he stepped ashore.[863]
A large grant of land was easily obtained from Canonicus and
Miantonomoh—easily obtained because of the love and favor which they
bore him, since Williams says that money could not have bought it
without affection and confidence[864]—and as the whole domain was
his, he might have lived as lord-proprietor; but principle forbade.
“On the hill the forests, just clothed in their full leafage, bowed
their heads to this fugitive, the hero of a great idea, and whispered
‘Liberty!’”[865]
He heeded that whisper, and dedicated the infant state to the
most radical idea of liberty; so that it became the asylum of the
oppressed; and as the Hebrew prophet always prayed with his window
open towards Jerusalem, so distressed consciences, when they felt the
sting of persecution, murmured, Providence.
Roger Williams planted a democracy—a government of the people, by the
people, for the people.[866] He cemented his state by toleration.
“The removal of the yoke of soul-oppression,” said he, “as it will
prove an act of mercy and righteousness to the enslaved nations, so
it is of binding force to engage the whole and every interest and
conscience to preserve the common liberty and peace.”[867]
So it proved; for, spite of Cotton Mather’s epigram, that it was
“_bona terra, mala gens_”[868]—a good land and a wicked people—it
increased and prospered from the outset, justifying the motto of the
commonwealth, _Amor vincet omnia_.[869]
While Roger Williams believed in toleration, he did not believe in
license, but was always earnest for liberty regulated by law. Thus
when the _Ranters_ appeared and railed against all order, he invoked
the judicial arm to suppress their madness.[870] But when the Quakers
invaded the state, he attacked them only with syllogisms. He was
ardently opposed to their tenets; but he essayed to “dig George Fox
out of his burrows” with words only, and returned a stern “No” to the
thrice-repeated request of Massachusetts that they be expelled from
his jurisdiction.[871] “We find,” he wrote, “that where these people
are most of all supposed to declare themselves freely, and are only
opposed by argument, there they least of all desire to come.”[872]
In 1643, Williams went to England to obtain a charter for his
plantation. He “found all in a flame; civil war raging, Hampden just
killed, Charles fled from London, and the city and the government
in the hands of the Parliament.” Here he lived on intimate terms
with Sir Harry Vane and Milton, kindred spirits, who were doing in
England what he had done in America. His mission was successful, and
a twelvemonth later he returned to Providence with a liberal patent,
the free-will offering of jubilant democracy across the water.[873]
Eight years later, under the Protectorate, Roger Williams once
more visited England on colonial business; and his admission and
recognition among the foremost thinkers of the time were general and
hearty. The acquaintance with Vane and Milton was continued, and
Marvell and Cromwell were added to his list of friends.[874] But his
heart was in America, and in 1654 he came back to Providence;[875]
whereupon he was elected president of the cluster of plantations
which, in after-days, were moulded into the little state of Rhode
Island.[876]
For many years Williams and his colony were under the frown of their
brother Pilgrims; but through it all they bore cheerily up, trusting
to God, time, and success, to remove all prejudice, and “keeping
always to that one principle, ‘that every man should have liberty to
worship God according to the light of his own conscience.’”[877]
Roger Williams had learned that most difficult of lessons, to
return good for evil. He never wearied in well-doing; and his
fine tact, broad statesmanship, and friendly zeal, on more than
one occasion came between the colonists who had flung him into
dishonorable banishment and impending harm.[878] With the Indians
he was singularly influential, and frequently his presence at
their camp-fires and in their wigwams served to explode a maturing
conspiracy.[879]
On the Restoration, an event occurred which finely illustrates
the beautiful text, that “He who goeth forth and weepeth, bearing
precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing
his sheaves with him.” The American republican had been the warm
friend and coadjutor of Cromwell, and Milton, and Pym. When Charles
II. came to the throne, all looked to see his hand stretched across
the Atlantic to menace and chastise. It was outstretched, but only
to bless; for the foppish Stuart actually renewed the charter which
the wise Protector had first granted to the Providence plantations.
He paid unconscious homage to the principle of Roger Williams, and
assented to what Gammel calls “the freest paper that ever bore the
signature of a king—the wonder of the age.”[880]
Such was one instance of the influence of a man whose beneficent
career is at once an example and an inspiration; not because he was
always right or always wise, but because he was always true to his
own ideal. Roger Williams was the initiator of many changes; and
he, first of all in America, boldly framed the creed of democracy.
But the brightest jewel in his crown is that he, taking his life in
one hand and his good name in the other, “was the first reformer in
modern Christendom to assert in its plenitude the doctrine of the
liberty of conscience, the equality of all opinions before the law.
At a time when Germany was the battle-field for all Europe in the
implacable wars of religion; when even Holland was bleeding with
the anger of vengeful factions; when France was still to go through
a fearful struggle with bigotry; when England was gasping under
the despotism of intolerance; almost half a century before William
Penn became an American proprietary; and two years before Descartes
founded modern philosophy on the basis of free reflection,” Roger
Williams demanded the enfranchisement of the human soul.
“We praise the man who first analyzed the air, or resolved water
into its elements, or drew the lightning from the clouds, even
though the discoveries may have been as much the fruits of time as
of genius. A moral principle has a much wider and nearer influence
on human happiness; nor can any discovery of truth be of more direct
benefit to society than that which establishes perpetual religious
peace, and spreads tranquillity through every community and every
bosom.
“If Copernicus is held in everlasting reverence because, on his
death-bed, he published to the world that the sun is the centre of
our system; if the name of Kepler is preserved in the annals of
human excellence for his sagacity in detecting the laws of planetary
motion; if the genius of Newton has been almost adored for dissecting
a ray of light and weighing heavenly bodies in a balance—let there be
for the name of Roger Williams at least some humble place among those
who have advanced moral science, and made themselves the benefactors
of mankind.”[881]