On examination, it is evident that the two statements do not materially differ. Mr. Williams held the patents to be sinful "wherein Christian kings, so called, are invested with right by virtue of their Christianity, to take and give away the lands and countries of other men."9 It were easy to represent opposition to the patent of New England as overthrowing the foundation on which colonial laws were framed, and as a denial of the power claimed by the ministers and the General Court "to erect such a government of the church as is most agreeable to the word." Such was Mr. Cotton's view, and which he succeeded in impressing on the minds of the magistrates. Mr. Williams may perhaps have acquired somewhat of his jealousy concerning these patents from the instructions of Sir Edward Coke, who so nobly withstood the indiscriminate granting of monopolies in the parliament of his native land. There can be no question that Williams was substantially right. His own practice, when subsequently laying the basis for the state of Rhode Island, evinces the equity, uprightness, and generosity of his motives. Perhaps too his views upon the origin of all governmental power may have had some influence in producing his opposition. He held that the sovereignty lay in the hands of the people. No patent or royal rights could therefore be alleged as against the popular will. That must make rulers, confirm the laws, and control the acts of the executive. Before it patents, privileges, and monopolies, the exclusive rights of a few, must sink away.

Moreover, it is clear, from Cotton's own statement, that this question of the patent involved that of religious liberty. The colony claimed under it the right of erecting a church, of framing an ecclesiastical polity: and it exercised it. Ecclesiastical laws were made every whit as stringent as the canons of the establishment of the mother country. Already we have seen that church members alone could be freemen. Every adult person was compelled to be present at public congregational worship, and to support both ministry and church with pay

Bloody Tenent more Bloody, p. 276.
b

Fancroft, i. 327.

ment of dues enforced by magisterial power. "Three months was, by the law, the time of patience to the excommunicate, before the secular power was to deal with him:" then the obstinate person might be fined, imprisoned, or banished. Several persons were banished for noncompliance with the state religion.3 In 1644, a law was promulgated against the baptists, by which "it is ordered and agreed, that if any person or persons, within this jurisdiction, shall either openly condemn or oppose the baptizing of infants,” or seduce others, or leave the congregation during the administration of the rite, they "shall be sentenced to banishment." The same year we accordingly find that a poor man was tied up and whipped for refusing to have his child sprinkled. Heresy, blasphemy, and some other the like crimes, exposed the culprit to expatriation. It was against this course that Mr. Williams afterwards wrote his " Bloudy Tenent;" and through the "sad evil" "of the civil magistrates dealing in matters of conscience and religion, as also of persecuting and hunting any for any matter merely spiritual and religious," which he opposed, was he banished.5

The question of the patent could not therefore be discussed in the General Court without involving a discussion upon religious liberty. Mr. Cotton has chosen to make most prominent, in his articles of accusation, the question of the

2 See pp. 249, 257, 262. Mr. Cotton pleads that anabaptists and others were not compelled against conscience; nor were they punished for conscience' sake; but for sinning against conscience. Tenent Washed, pp. 165, 189; Backus, i. 98.

See pp. 186, 331; Bloody Tenent more Bloody, p. 122. By the law of September 6, 1638, the time was extended to six months. Backus, i. 45, 98; Bancroft, i. 349.

"The Lady Moody, a wise and amiable religious woman, being taken with the error of denying baptism to nfants, was dealt withal by many of

the elders and others, and admonished by the church at Salem." To avoid more trouble, she went amongst the Dutch; but was excommunicated. In 1651, the Rev. J. Clarke and Mr. O. Holmes, of Rhode Island, for visiting a sick baptist brother in Massachusetts, were arrested, fined, imprisoned, and whipped. At an earlier period, they had been compelled to leave Plymouth for their opinions. Mr. Cotton approved of this. Backus, i. 146, 207, 225.

6 Williams's Letter to Endicot. Bloody Tenent more Bloody, p. 305. See p. 245.

origin of the patent; the magistrate, whose statement is adduced by Mr. Williams, places in the forefront that of the magistrate's power over conscience. As the matter stood, these two subjects were allied. To doubt the one was to doubt the other. But Mr. Williams was decided as to the iniquity of both.

On the subject of the denial of the oath of fidelity, it is evident, from Mr. Cotton's statement, that the oath owed its origin to intolerance. Episcopacy should have no place under congregational rule, no more than independency could be suffered to exist under the domination of the English hierarchy. But Mr. Williams appears to have objected to the oath chiefly on other grounds: it was allowed by all parties that oath-taking was a religious act. If so, it was concluded by Mr. Williams, in entire consistency with his other views, that, 1, It ought not to be forced on any, so far as it was religious; nor, 2, could an unregenerate man take part in what was thought to be an act of religious worship. Whether an oath be a religious act, we shall not discuss; but on the admitted principles of the parties engaged in this strife, Mr. Williams's argument seems to us irrefragable.

On the concurring causes referred to by Mr. Cotton, it will be unnecessary to make extended comment. The first of these is treated of at length in the second piece of this volume. Mr. Cotton and Mr. Williams were representatives of the two great bodies of dissentients from the law-established church of England. One party deemed it to be an anti-christian church, its rites to be avoided, its ministry forsaken, its communion abjured: these were the Separatists, or true Nonconformists, to whom Mr. Williams belonged." The other party, although declaiming against the supposed corruptions of the church, loved its stately service, its governmental patronage, its common prayer, and its parishional

"Whilst he lived at Salem, he neither admitted, nor permitted any church members but such as rejected all communion with the parish assemblies, so

much as in hearing the word amongst them." Cotton's Answer, p. 64. See p. 397 of this volume.

assemblies: these were the puritans who, in New England, became Independents, or Congregationalists in Old England, during the Commonwealth, chiefly Presbyterians, and some Independents: to these Mr. Cotton belonged.

Mr. Williams thought it his duty to renounce all connection with the oppressor of the Lord's people, and also with those who still held communion with her.9 Let us not deem him too rigid in these principles of separation. There can be no fellowship between Christ and Belial. And if, as was indeed the case, the Anglican church too largely exhibited those principles which were subversive of man's inalienable rights, exercised a tyrannous and intolerable sway over the bodies and consciences of the people, and drove from her fold, as outcasts, many of her best and holiest children,-it is no wonder that they should in return regard her touch as polluting, her ecclesiastical frame as the work of anti-christ. The Congregationalists introduced her spirit and practice into the legislation of the New World, and it behoved every lover of true liberty to stand aloof and separate from the evil. This did Mr. Williams. He was right in regarding the relation of the Congregational polity to the civil state in New England as implicitly a national church state, although that relation was denied to be explicitly national by Mr. Cotton and his brethren. "I affirm," said Williams, "that that church estate, that religion and worship which is commanded, or permitted to be but one in a country, nation, or province, that church is not in the nature of the particular churches of Christ, but in the nature of a national or state church."1

It is, however, to this controversy that we are indebted

7 The substance of the true estate of churches abideth in their congregational assemblies." Cotton's Answer, p. 109. Cotton refers here to the parish congregations.

See pp. 243, 244, 392. Mather's Magnalia, i. 21.

"Cotton charges Williams with at

tempting to draw away the Salem church from holding communion with all the churches of the Bay, "because we tolerated our members to hear the word in the parishes of England." Tenent Washed, p. 166.

1 See p. 246. Bloody Tenent more Bloody, p. 230.

for the second of the pieces reprinted in this volume. While wandering among the uncivilized tribes of Indians, Mr. Cotton's letter came into Mr. Williams's hands. It seems to have been a part of a somewhat extended correspondence between them, and to have originated in Mr. Cotton's twofold desire to correct the aberrations, as he deemed them, of his old friend, and to shield himself from the charge of being not only an accessory, but to some degree the instigator of the sentence of banishment decreed against him. His defence of himself is unworthy of his candour, and betrays, by its subtle distinctions and passionate language, by his cruel insinuations and ready seizure of the most trifling inaccuracies, a mind ill at ease and painfully conscious that he had dealt both unjustly and unkindly with his former companion in tribulation. By some means, but without his knowledge, Mr. Cotton's letter got into print, to him most "unwelcome;" and while in England, in 1644, Mr. Williams printed his reply. It will be seen that Mr. Williams has given the whole of it: and with scrupulous fidelity, adding thereto his remarks and reasonings. Mr. Cotton, however, did not hesitate to aver the righteousness of the persecution and banishment which Williams endured.3

In the Colonial Records, the date of Mr. Williams's sentence is November 3, (1635). He immediately withdrew from all church communion with the authors of his sufferings. A few attached friends assembled around him, and preparations were made for departure. It would seem that he had, for some time, contemplated the formation of a settlement where liberty, both civil and religious, should be enjoyed. This reached the ears of his adversaries. His

2 It must have reached Williams after
his settlement at Providence. Cotton,
in 1647, says he wrote it about "half a
score years ago," which would give the
date of 1637.
3 See p. 377.
8, 9, 13, 36-39.

Cotton's Answer, p.
"I did never intend

to say that I did not consent to the

justice of the sentence when it was passed."

Cotton says, "Some of his friends went to the place appointed by himself beforehand, to make provision of housing and other necessaries against his coming." Answer p. 8. This, however, is very doubtful.