Ar a time when Germany was the battle-field for all Europe in He THE founders of Massachusetts having fled from persecution on account of their religious opinions, were chiefly anxious to secure to themselves and their descendants the unmolested enjoyment of these opinions in the country where they had taken refuge. The Puritans had not learned to separate moral and religious from political questions, nor had the governors of any other state or sovereignty in the world, at that period, learned to make this distinction. We must not be surprised, therefore, to find that what was considered heresy by the rulers of Massachusetts should be regarded as subversive of the very foundations of society, and that, in accordance with these views, it should receive from them precisely the same sort of treatment which at the same period dissent from the established religion of the state was receiving from the rulers of the most enlightened nations of Europe. But the impracticability of maintaining a uniformity of religious opinion even [1630 A.D.] in a small community, most favourably situated for the purpose, soon became apparent. Among, the emigrants of 1630 was Roger Williams, a Puritan minister who officiated for some time as a pastor in New Plymouth; but subsequently obtained leave to resign his functions at that place, and in 1633 was appointed minister of Salem. His unflinching assertion of the rights of conscience, and the new views which he developed of the nature of religious liberty, had early attracted the attention of the leading men of the colony, and excited the hostility of a great portion of the people. Indeed, there was much in his doctrine to awaken the prejudices and excite the alarm of those who had adopted the exclusive theory of Winthrop and his adherents. "He maintained," says Grahame,c "that it was not lawful for an unregenerate man to pray, nor for Christians to join in family prayer with those whom they judged unregenerate; that it was not lawful to take an oath of allegiance, which he had declined himself to take, and advised his congregation equally to reject; that King Charles had unjustly usurped the power of disposing of the territory of the Indians, and hence the colonial patent was utterly invalid; that the civil magistrate had no right to restrain or direct the consciences of men; and that anything short of unlimited toleration for all religious systems was detestable persecution." These opinions, and others of a kindred nature, enforced with an uncompromising zeal, soon occasioned his separation from his pastoral charge. A few admirers clung to him in his retirement; and when he denounced the use of the cross on the British flag, the fiery and enthusiastic Endicott cut the popish emblem," as he styled it, from the national standard; nor did the censure of this act by the provincial authorities convince the military trained bands of Williams' error. With them the leaders were obliged to compromise. While measures were in agitation for bringing Williams to a judicial reckoning, Cotton and other ministers proposed a conference with him, of the fruitlessness of which the far-sighted Winthrop warned them: "You are deceived in that man, if you think he will condescend to learn of any of you." Subsequent events showed that these two men, the most distinguished in the colony, regarded each other with mutual respect throughout the whole controversy.e BANCROFT ON ROGER WILLIAMS AND THE FOUNDING OF RHODE ISLAND Purity of religion and civil liberty were the objects nearest the wishes of the emigrants. The first court of assistants (August 23rd, 1630) had taken measures for the support of the ministers. As others followed, the form of the administration was considered; that the liberties of the people might be secured against the encroachments of the rulers: "For," say they, "the waves of the sea do not more certainly waste the shore than the minds of ambitious men are led to invade the liberties of their brethren." The polity was a sort of theocracy; God himself was to govern his people; and the select band of religious votaries-the men whose names an immutable decree had registered from eternity as the objects of divine love, whose election had been manifested to the world by their conscious experience of religion in the heart, whose union was confirmed by the most solemn compact formed with heaven and one another, around the memorials of a crucified Redeemer-were, by the fundamental law of the colony, constituted the oracle of the divine will. An aristocracy was founded, but not of wealth. The servant, the bondman, might be a member of the church, and therefore [1630-1634 A.D.] a freeman of the company. Other states have limited the possession of political rights to the opulent, to freeholders, to the first-born; the Calvinists of Massachusetts, scrupulously refusing to the clergy the least shadow of political power, established the reign of the visible church-a commonwealth of the chosen people in covenant with God. The dangers apprehended from England seemed to require a union consecrated by the holiest rites. The public mind of the colony was in other respects ripening for democratic liberty. Roger Williams was in 1631 but a little more than thirty years of age; but his mind had already matured a doctrine which secures him an immortality of fame, as its application has given religious peace to the American world. He was a Puritan, and a fugitive from English persecution, 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 great 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 nonconformity; 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 the civil government to be enlisted against the mosque of the Mussulman or the altar of the fire-worshipper, against the Jewish synagogue or the Roman cathedral. It is wonderful with what distinctness Roger Williams deduced these inferences from his great principle, the consistency with which, like Pascal and Edwards, those bold and profound reasoners on other subjects, he accepted every fair inference from his doctrines, and the circumspection with which he repelled every unjust imputation. In the unwavering assertion of his 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. So soon, therefore, as Williams arrived in Boston, he found himself among the New England churches, but not of them. They had not yet renounced the use of force in religion, and he could not with his entire mind adhere to churches which retained the offensive features of English legislation. What, then, was the commotion in the colony when it was found that the people of Salem desired to receive him as their teacher! The court of Boston "marvelled" at the precipitate decision, and the people of Salem were required to forbear. Williams withdrew to the settlement of Plymouth, and remained there about two years. But his virtues had won the affections of the church of Salem, and the apostle of intellectual liberty was once more welcomed to their confidence. He remained the object of public jealousy. How mild was his conduct is evident from an example. He had written an essay on the nature of the tenure by which the colonists held their lands in America; and he had argued that an English patent could not invalidate the rights of the native inhabitants. The opinion sounded, at first, like treason against the cherished charter of the colony; Williams desired only that the offensive [1634 A.D.] manuscript might be burned; and so effectually explained its purport that the court (January 24th, 1634) applauded his temper, and declared "that the matters were not so evil as at first they seemed." But the principles of Roger Williams led him into perpetual collision with the clergy and the government of Massachusetts. 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 only like requiring hypocrisy. An unbelieving soul is dead in sin"-such was his argument; and to force the indifferent from one worship to another "was like shifting a dead man into several changes of apparell.' "No one should be bound to worship, or," he added, "to maintain a worship, against his own consent." The magistrates were selected exclusively from the members of the church; with equal propriety, reasoned Williams, might "a doctor of physick or a pilot" be selected according to his skill in theology and his standing in the church. It was objected to him that his principles subverted all good government. The commander of the vessel of state, replied Williams, may maintain order on board the ship, and see that it pursues its course steadily, even though the dissenters of the crew are not compelled to attend the public prayers of their companions. But the controversy finally turned on the question of the rights and duty of magistrates to guard the minds of the people against corruption, and to punish what would seem to them error and heresy. Magistrates, Williams d asserted, are but the agents of the people, or its trustees, on whom no spiritual power in matters of worship can ever be conferred; since conscience belongs to the individual, and is not the property of the body politic; and with admirable dialectics, clothing the great truth in its boldest and most general forms, he asserted that "the civil magistrate may not intermeddle even to stop a church from apostasy and heresy," "that his power extends only to the bodies and goods and outward estate of men." With corresponding distinctness he foresaw the influence of his principles on society. "The removal of the yoke of soul-oppression"-to use the words in which, at a later day, he confirmed his early view-" 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." The same magistrates who, on November 27th, 1634, punished Eliot, the apostle of the Indian race, for censuring their measures, could not brook the independence of Williams, and the circumstances of the times seemed to them to justify their apprehensions. An intense jealousy was excited in England against Massachusetts; "members of the generall court received intelligence of some episcopal and malignant practises against the country"; and the magistrates on the one hand were scrupulously careful to avoid all unnecessary offence to the English government, on the other were sternly consolidating their own institutions, and even preparing for resistance. It was in this view that the Freeman's Oath was appointed, by which every freeman was obliged to pledge his allegiance, not to King Charles, but to Massachusetts. There was room for scruples on the subject, and an English lawyer would have questioned the legality of the measure. The liberty of conscience for which Williams contended denied the right of a compulsory imposition of an oath. When he was summoned before the court (March [1635 A.D.] 30th, 1635), he could not renounce his belief; and his influence was such "that the government was forced to desist from that proceeding." To the magistrates he seemed the ally of a civil faction; to himself he appeared only to make a frank avowal of the truth. In all his intercourse with the tribunals he spoke with the distinctness of settled convictions. He was fond of discussion, but he was never betrayed into angry remonstrance. If he was charged with pride, it was only for the novelty of his opinions. Perhaps Williams pursued his sublime principles with too scrupulous minuteness; it was at least natural for Bradford m and his contemporaries, while they acknowledged his power as a preacher, to esteem him "unsettled in judgment." The court at Boston remained as yet undecided, when the church of Salem-those who were best acquainted with Williams-taking no notice of the recent investigations, elected him to the office of their teacher. Immediately the evils inseparable on a religious establishment began to be displayed. The ministers got together and declared anyone worthy of banishment who should obstinately assert that "the civil magistrate might not intermeddle even to stop a church from apostasy and heresy"; the magistrates delayed action (July 8th), only that a committee of divines might have time to repair to Salem and deal with him and with the church in a church way. Meantime, the people of Salem were blamed for their choice of a religious guide, and a tract of land, to which they had a claim, was withheld from them as a punishment. As his townsmen had lost their lands in consequence of their attachment to him, it would have been cowardice on his part to have abandoned them, and the instinct of liberty led him again to the suggestion of a proper remedy. Williams, in modern language, appealed to the people, and invited them to instruct their representatives to do justice to the citizens of Salem. This last act seemed flagrant treason,1 and at the next general court Salem was disfranchised till an ample apology for the letter should be made. The town acquiesced in its wrongs, and submitted; not an individual remained willing to justify the letter of remonstrance; the church of Williams would not avow his great principle of the sanctity of conscience; even his wife, under a delusive idea of duty, was for a season influenced to disturb the tranquillity of his home by her reproaches. Williams was left alone, absolutely alone. Anticipating the censures of the colonial churches, he declared himself no longer subjected to their spiritual jurisdiction. When summoned to appear before the general court, in October, he avowed his convictions in the presence of the representatives of the state, " maintained the rocky strength of his grounds," and declared himself "ready to be bound and banished and even to die in New England," rather than renounce the opinions which had dawned upon his mind in the clearness of light. The principles which he first sustained amidst the bickerings of a colonial parish, next asserted in the general court of Massachusetts, and then introduced into the wilds on Narragansett Bay, he soon found occasion to publish to the world, in 1644, and to defend as the basis of the religious freedom of mankind. In its defence he was the harbinger of Milton, the precursor and the superior of Jeremy Taylor. For Taylor limited his toleration to a few Christian sects; the philanthropy of Williams compassed the earth. Taylor favoured partial reform, commended lenity, argued for forbearance, and entered a special plea in behalf of each tolerable sect; Williams would permit persecution of no opinion, of no religion, leaving heresy unharmed by law, 'Cotton calls it crimen majestatis læsæ, [with which we are more familiar to-day under the name of lèse majesté.] |