Rhode Island, a work entitled, “The Bloudy Tenent, of Persecution for
cause of Conscience, discussed.” It is considered the best written of
all his works. These discussions were prepared in London,
for publike view, in charge of roomes and corners, yea, sometimes in
variety of strange houses, sometimes in the fields, in the midst of
travel, where he hath been forced to gather and scatter his loose
thoughts and papers.
It is written in an animated style and has the adornment of beautiful
imagery. Original copies are rare, eight only are known to exist, one
in the British Museum, one in Bodleian Library, one in Brown University
Library, one in Harvard College Library.
[Illustration]
Mʳ Cottons
LETTER
Lately Printed,
EXAMINED
AND
ANSVVERED:
By _Roger Williams_ of _Providence_
In
_New·England_.
[Illustration]
LONDON,
Imprinted in the yeere 1644.
[Illustration]
THE
BLOVDY TENENT,
of PERSECUTION, for cause of
CONSCIENCE, discussed, in
_A_ Conference _betweene_
TRVTH and PEACE.
WHO,
In all tender Affection, present to the High
Court of _Parliament_, (as the _Result_ of
their _Discourse_) these, (amongst other
_Passages_) of _highest consideration_.
[Illustration]
Printed in the Year 1644.
This work is based on a Baptist publication, entitled “An Humble
Supplication to the King’s Majesty, as it was presented 1620.” This
latter was a clear and concise argument against persecution and
for liberty of conscience. It was written by Murton, or some other
London Baptist, who was imprisoned in Newgate for conscience sake.
His confinement was so rigid that he was denied pen, paper, and ink.
A friend in London sent him sheets of paper, as stoppers for the
bottles containing his daily allowance of milk. He wrote his thoughts
on these sheets with milk, returning them to his friends as stoppers
for the empty bottles. They were held to the fire and thus became
legible. Roger Williams based his book on the argument of this “Humble
Supplication.”
[Illustration: Roger Williams’ Reference to “An Humble Supplication”
in His “Bloudy Tenent”]
In such Paper written with _Milk_ nothing will appeare, but the way
of reading it by _fire_ being knowne to this _friend_ who received
the Papers, he transcribed and kept together the Papers, although
the _Author_ himselfe could not correct, nor view what himselfe had
written.
It was in _milke_, tending to soule _nourishment_, even for _Babes_
and Sucklings in _Christ_.
It was in _milke_, spiritually _white_, pure and innocent, like
those _white horses_ of the _Word_ of _truth_ and _meeknesse_, and
the _white Linnen_ or _Armour_ of _rightousnesse_, in the _Army_ of
_Jesus_. _Rev._ 6. & 19.
It was in _milke_, soft, meeke, peaceable and gentle, tending both to
the _peace_ of _soules_, and the _peace_ of _States_ and Kingdomes.
[Sidenote: The Answer writ in Bloud.]
_Peace._ The _Answer_ (though I hope out of milkie pure intentions) is
returned in _bloud_: _bloudy_ & slaughterous _conclusions_; _bloudy_
to the _souls_ of all men, forc’d to the _Religion_ and _Worship_
which every civil State or Common-weale agrees on, and compells all
subjects to in a dissembled _uniformitie_.
Bloudy to the _bodies_, first of the holy _witnesses_ of _Christ
Jesus_, who testifie against such invented worships.
Secondly, of the _Nations_ and Peoples slaughtering each other for
their severall respective Religions and Consciences.
* * * * *
The little band which settled Providence on that June day, 1636,
had grown into a large town. With other towns they suffered the
same injustice from neighboring colonies. The assembly in Newport,
September 19, 1642, which intrusted the work of securing a charter to
Williams, was in reality fusing together these separate groups, which
had a common enemy and common principles, into a State. The Town of
Providence, a great monument to Roger Williams, must now give way to
the State of Rhode Island, which was destined to become a still larger
monument to the ideals of this great exponent of civil and religious
liberty, “a liberty which does not permit license in civil matters in
contempt of law and order.”
III
THE HISTORIC CUSTODIANS OF SOUL-LIBERTY
Roger Williams must forever rank as one of the great epoch-makers
of the world, and to him impartial historians accord the honor of
being the first democrat. It was not until his expulsion from Salem
Colony that he became a Baptist, but the evidence is indisputable
that he had long been a Baptist at heart. He had spent much time
among the Baptists in England and was familiar with their doctrines
and writings. No sooner had Williams set foot in America than he
found himself in conflict with the authorities, both civil and
religious.--_S. Z. Batten, in “The Christian State.”_
There is not a confession of faith, nor a creed, framed by any of the
Reformers, which does not give the magistrate a coercive power in
religion, and almost every one at the same time curses the resisting
Baptists.--_E. B. Underhill, in “Struggles and Triumphs.”_
Godly princes may lawfully issue edicts for compelling obstinate and
rebellious persons to worship the true God and to maintain the unity
of the faith.--_Calvin._
Democracy, I do not conceyve that ever God did ordeyne as a fit
government eyther for Church or Commonwealth.... As for monarchy and
aristocracy, they are both of them clearly approved, and directed in
Scripture.--_John Cotton._
It is said that Men ought to have Liberty of their Conscience, and
that it is Persecution to debar them of it; I can stand amazed than
reply to this: It is an astonishment to think that the brains of
men should be parboiled in such impious ignorance.--_Rev. Nathaniel
Ward, Lawyer Divine, of Ipswich, who drew up the first legal code for
Massachusetts Bay Colony._
THE HISTORIC CUSTODIANS OF SOUL-LIBERTY
Roger Williams, both minister and citizen, probably led the Providence
planters in their religious activities. He was neither identified with
the Established Church of England, nor in sympathy with the intolerance
of the new established order at Boston and Salem, or even the one at
Plymouth. He was a Separatist of the most pronounced type, and that was
exactly the accredited Baptist position. He was one with the Baptists
in his ideas concerning a complete separation from the State Church
of England, one with them in the absolute separation of Church and
State, one with them in insisting upon a regenerate church-membership.
So according to the logic of the situation he turned to the Baptist
movement. He may have been instructed as to their position by Mrs.
Scott (the sister of the Antinomian, Mrs. Ann Hutchinson), who came to
Providence shortly before the baptism of Williams. Roger Williams had
been accused of tendencies toward the Anabaptists while in Plymouth,
Salem, and Boston. Before he met Mrs. Scott, however, he held the
Baptist positions of the time. It is not unlikely that she, being an
intelligent Baptist, showed Williams the remarkable similarity between
his position and that of the Baptists. Some time before March, 1639,
Williams was baptized. In the absence of a Baptist minister, Ezekiel
Holliman, an exile from Salem, baptized Roger Williams, who in turn
baptized Mr. Holliman and some ten others. Like the disciple band of
old the Baptist movement in Providence and America commenced with a
band of twelve disciples. Their names are as follows: Roger Williams,
Ezekiel Holliman, William Arnold (?),[1] William Harris, Stukely
Westcott, John Green, Richard Waterman, Thomas James, Robert Cole,
William Carpenter (?), Francis Weston, and Thomas Olney. Thus was
organized the First Baptist Church in America.
[1] The “?” is after Arnold’s name in First Baptist Church Register.
Great was the consternation in Salem when news reached there of the
baptism of Williams and others who had been members of their church.
The Puritan church took action at once. The letter announcing to the
church at Dorchester the exclusion of the offenders is interesting:
REVEREND AND DEARLY BELOVED IN THE LORD:
We thought it our bounden duty to acquaint you with the names of such
persons, as have had the great censure passed upon them, in this our
church, with the reasons thereof, beseeching you in the Lord, not
only to read their names in public to yours, but also to give us the
like notice of any dealt with in like manner by you, so that we may
walk toward them accordingly, for some of us here have had communion
ignorantly with some of other churches. 2 Thess. 3:14. We can do no
less than have such noted as disobey the truth.
Roger Williams and his wife, John Throckmorton and his wife, Thomas
Olney and his wife, Stukely Westcott and his wife, Mary Holliman,
Widow Reeves.
These wholly refused to hear the church, denying it, and all the
churches in the Bay, to be true churches, and (except two) are all
rebaptized.
After some time Roger Williams left the Baptist church he had organized
in Providence. Because of this fact many have asked the question,
“Was Roger Williams after all a Baptist?” His life-story reveals the
fact that he held the Baptist views before he left Plymouth. Elder
Brewster detected the Baptist heresy in his teaching to the people of
the Pilgrim colony and warned the leaders of the Bay Colony of this
tendency to “Anabaptistery.” Williams’ ministry in the Bay Colony
reveals the fact that he was against everything which was related to
the Episcopacy or that might even lead to a “presbytery.” He refused to
minister to the Boston church because it was related to the Episcopal
State Church of England. He also questioned the propriety of the
ministers’ conference in New England, for fear they might establish
a presbytery which would rob the local church of its congregational
privileges. His whole life in America was universally true to the
accepted Baptist position relative to church polity.
At the time of Williams’ baptism, English Baptists were agitated
in regard to the proper administrators of Christian baptism. Many
crossed to the Continent and were baptized by ministers in Holland.
Williams was soon troubled also in regard to the same question. Was
he properly baptized? That was the question which confronted him. He
would not juggle with his conscience. He knew of no Baptist minister
or baptized believer ordained to the ministry in America when he was
baptized. His own baptism was by an unbaptized person. He made diligent
study of the question and could not satisfy his mind that there was a
real succession of proper administrators. In the awful decline of the
church he was convinced that the sacred succession had been broken.
He believed that either that succession must be in existence, or
God must raise up a new “apostolate,” to commence again the sacred
succession. True to principle, he felt he must withdraw from the church
at Providence. In the years which followed nothing which he said or
did ever changed the facts that he was the first recognized pastor
of the first Baptist church that was organized in America, that he
was the first known case in America of a believer being immersed upon
profession of faith into the fellowship of a local Baptist church, and
that he was the organizer of the first Baptist church in America.
In the years which followed his separation from the church at
Providence, he left no uncertainty as to his Baptist views on every
question save that of the proper administrator of baptism and its
kindred subject of ordination. In all other views he was a loyal
Baptist until his death. In his day, the Baptists were divided into
two recognized divisions, namely, Particular and General Baptists. Dr.
Henry M. King, of Providence, one of the successors of Roger Williams
in the pastorate of the Providence church, describes Roger Williams as
a “High-church Baptist.”
The late Reuben A. Guild, for many years librarian of Brown University
Library, and a thorough student of the original sources of information,
writes thus of Roger Williams in his history of Brown University:
In regard to the other great doctrines held by the Baptists, liberty
of conscience, or soul-liberty, the entire separation of Church and
State, the supreme headship of Christ in all spiritual matters,
regeneration through the agency of the Holy Spirit, and a hearty
belief in the Bible as God’s divinely inspired and miraculously
preserved word and the all-sufficient rule for faith and practice,
he was throughout life a sincere believer in them all and an earnest
advocate of them, as his letters and published works abundantly show.
In Williams’ book, “Christenings make not Christians,” we have the most
radical Baptist teaching in regard to the errors of infant sprinkling.
He attacked the very foundation of the pedobaptists. He insisted that
only the regeneration of the heart, through the ministry of the Holy
Spirit, could make any person a Christian.
He believed that believers’ immersion is the New Testament baptism. In
a letter to Governor Winthrop, dated December 10, 1649, he writes:
Mr. John Clarke hath been here lately and hath dipped them. I believe
their practice comes nearer the practice of our great Founder, Jesus
Christ, than any other practices of religion do.
In his debate with Fox, he writes thus, eleven years prior to his death:
That gallant and heavenly and fundamental principle of the true
matter of a Christian congregation, flock or society, namely, actual
believers, true disciples and converts, such as can give an account of
how the grace of God hath appeared unto them.
We should think of Roger Williams as a man chosen of God to be champion
of a great distinctive Baptist doctrine held by the Baptists centuries
prior to his day and taught by the Baptists after his time until it
was made an essential part of our national Constitution. Released from
pastoral duties, Roger Williams gave himself completely to the task of
establishing and guarding the sacred fires of soul-liberty which he
had kindled in Rhode Island. For this sacred cause he sacrificed his
comfortable home at Salem and devoted the earnings of a lifetime in
trips to England to secure parliamentary protection for the colony when
envious neighbors on all sides were coveting his purchased possessions.
He sacrificed his opportunity to become wealthy and died a poor man.
All honor to John Clarke, physician and pastor at Newport, for the
splendid cooperation which he gave to Williams. They were comrades, not
rivals for fame in those days. They were happy in life and should not
be made enemies in death. Their names should be linked together as
the pioneers and perfecters of soul-liberty in Rhode Island.
[Illustration]
Christenings
make not
CHRISTIANS,
OR
A Briefe Discourse concerning that
name _Heathen_, commonly given to
the INDIANS.
_As also concerning that great point of their
CONVERSION._
[Illustration]
_Published according to Order._
_London_, Printed by _Iane Coe_, for I. H. 1645.
THE HISTORY OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH
The early Providence Baptists met at first in a grove under the trees.
In inclement weather they would meet in private homes. They adopted no
articles of faith, and to this day the First Church of Providence has
been without a formal creed or covenant. For sixty years the church
founded by Roger Williams had no house of worship. Pardon Tillinghast,
its sixth pastor, built them a house of worship in 1700 and deeded it
to the Society in 1711. It stood on the corner of North Main and Smith
Streets. A larger church, forty feet square, built in 1726, succeeded
this first edifice. The present edifice was built in 1775, and was
dedicated “for the worship of Almighty God and to hold commencements
in.” It cost $35,000, a part of which was raised by a lottery,
authorized by the State. The building was designed by Joseph Brown
and James Sumner, who used as a model Gibb’s church in London, _St.
Martin-in-the-Fields_. It is recognized as one of the finest examples
of colonial architecture in America.
It has a beautiful interior. The upper gallery at the west end was
originally set apart for slaves and colored people. It was removed to
give place for the pipe-organ in 1832. The same year the old-fashioned
square pews were exchanged for the present ones; the lofty pulpit and
sounding-board were taken down. The beautiful crystal chandelier,
imported from England in 1792 was lighted for the first time when Hope
Brown, daughter of Nicholas Brown, was married to Thomas Poynton Ives.
It was the bride’s gift to the church.
The bell in the tower weighs two thousand five hundred pounds, and bore
originally this inscription:
For freedom of conscience the town was first planted;
Persuasion, not force, was used by the people;
This church is the eldest, and has not recanted,
Enjoying and granting bell, temple, and steeple.
It has been cracked three times and recast in this country. It now
bears the date of the origin of the church, and the name of Roger
Williams, “its first pastor and the first asserter of liberty of
conscience.” The bell is rung at sunrise, at midday, and at nine
o’clock as in the days of old.
[Illustration: First Baptist Church of Providence]
[Illustration: Roger Mowry’s “Ordinarie.” Built 1653, Demolished 1900]
In the vestries are pictures of many of the former leaders of this
historic church. In the hallway, in a glass case, is a piece of the
original “What Cheer Rock,” the landing-place of Williams. At the
entrance to the church a bronze tablet commemorates the fact that
the First Baptist Church of Providence was the first Baptist church
established in America and that Roger Williams was its first pastor.
The present organization, known as the First Baptist Church of
Providence, has every valid reason for claiming to be the true
successor of the original church, organized before 1639, by Roger
Williams. In the Rhode Island Baptist State Annual the date of the
church’s organization is given as 1638. A committee appointed by the
church, when reporting, on March 16, 1899, the reasons for claiming
that the present organization is the true successor of the first
Baptist church organized in America, quoted in defense of this position
the following writers: Arnold, “History of Rhode Island”; Caldwell,
“History of the First Baptist Church”; Guild, “History of Brown
University and Manning”; Prof. Geo. P. Fisher, of Yale, “In Colonial
Era”; Cramp, “Baptist History”; Dexter, “As to Roger Williams”; Morgan
Edwards, “Materials for a History of Baptists in Rhode Island.” In the
following fall this report was also presented to the Warren Association
and was ordered printed in the Minutes of the Association.
In the “Historical Catalogue” of this church, a book prepared by a
committee consisting of Rev. H. M. King, D. D., Pres. W. H. P. Faunce,
Prof. Wm. C. Poland, and others, a committee familiar with the original
sources of information, we find Roger Williams listed as the first
member in its list of members and as the first pastor in its list of
pastors. The bronze tablet in front of the present meeting-house and
the inscription on the bell both state that Roger Williams was the
first pastor.
ROGER WILLIAMS’ IDEAL, A DISTINCTIVE BAPTIST PRINCIPLE
We have already noted the fact that Roger Williams was accused of
Anabaptist tendencies. The Baptists, or Anabaptists, throughout the
ages have stood for the most advanced principles of Protestantism.
They existed long before Luther. Many historians claim for them a
historic continuity from the days of the early Christians. Their
principles--democracy of the local church, sovereignty of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and the authority of the Scriptures--have been
perpetuated by local distinct bodies rather than by the historic
continuity of a general denomination with a common name and a common
governing body.
The Master, in the parable of the Tares, taught the principle advocated
by the Baptists and by Roger Williams. The field is the world; the good
seed, the children of the kingdom; the tares are the evil-doers. Wheat
and tares should be allowed to grow together in the world (not in the
church) until the end of the age, when the angels, the reapers of God,
will gather them together for reward or punishment. Force must never be
used to make disciples for Christ.
In the early Christian centuries, the church longed for liberty to live
for Christ and preach his gospel. Ten great general persecutions were
launched by the Roman emperors to crush the church. The promise that
the gates of hell would not prevail against it was realized. The Edict
of Milan, issued in 313, by Constantine and Licinius, joint emperors,
gave the church an opportunity to grow and prosper and it was soon in
the lead throughout the Roman Empire. Then the church turned persecutor
and put to death those who differed from the ruling order, which now
had lost its democratic ideals. When the Montanists, the Donatists, the
Paulicians, the Albigenses, and the Waldenses in turn resisted the evil
tendencies and assumptions of a corrupt church, they were persecuted
with a fierceness greater than that formerly waged by the pagans
against the church. The principle of religious liberty was almost
lost. It became the far-off dream of idealists. These dreamers were
usually called Anabaptists. At first they were dissenters from Roman
Catholicism, but afterward they were also dissenters from the dominant
forms of Protestantism.
[Illustration: Interior of First Baptist Church, Providence]
The Protestant Reformation was a case of arrested development. It was
like the exodus from the Egyptian bondage. There was a long lingering
in the wilderness before the day dawned with full religious liberty.
Henry Melville King says:
The absolute supremacy of the word of God, the spiritual nature of the
Christian church, the Christian ordinances for believing souls, the
divorce of Church and State, full, unrestricted religious freedom for
every man, these essential truths of the gospel of Christ found no
room at the inn of the sixteenth century, and were thrust aside into
the manger ... the inn was not open for it, but the manger was. The
principle of religious liberty did not fail to get born.
The Anabaptists of Europe kept alive the ideals of religious liberty.
They sought to carry out the principles of the Protestant Reformation
to its scriptural and logical conclusion. Many, called by this name,
had little in common with the movement which now bears the Baptist
name. The actions of the fanatics under Münzer have been cited since
Williams’ day as an argument against his principles. Münzer, who
“never submitted to, nor administered rebaptism, who persisted in
baptizing infants, and who sought to set up the kingdom of Christ by
carnal warfare, was not correctly classed.” Cornelius, Roman Catholic
historian of the Münzer uprising, shows that the Anabaptists repudiated
the actions of this fanatic.
The only crime of which they (the Baptists) were accused as a body
by their contemporaries, and which is substantiated by evidence,
the crime for which they were inhumanly persecuted by Catholics and
Protestants alike, and for which they went cheerfully and in large
numbers to death by drowning or the stake, was the crime of advocating
soul-liberty. They claimed the right to interpret the Scriptures for
themselves. They demanded freedom of faith and worship for all men.
They apprehended the sublime doctrine of civil and religious liberty,
and they were _the only_ men who did apprehend it.
Most of the creeds and confessions of the Reformation gave to the
magistrate a coercive power in religion, and included a curse for the
despised Baptists. Luther, in the early years of his Reformation work,
said:
No one can command or ought to command the soul except God, who alone
can show it the way to heaven. It is futile and impossible to command,
or by force to compel any man’s belief. Heresy is a spiritual thing,
which no iron can hew down, no fire burn, no water drown... Whenever
the temporal power presumes to legislate for the soul, it encroaches.