ARTICLE II.-AS TO ROGER WILLIAMS.

As to Roger Williams, and His "Banishment" from the Massachusetts Plantation; with a Few Further Words concerning the Baptists, the Quakers, and Religious Liberty; A Monograph. By HENRY MARTYN DEXTER, D.D., Member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, &c., &c. Boston. Congregational Society.

AS TO ROGER WILLIAMS not much remains to be said, since the publication of Dr. Dexter's monograph. We are somewhat late in our notice of this work; but we may express our judgment the more confidently for having taken time to think about it. Our judgment is that whatever questions may be raised, here and there, touching the author's interpretation of some subordinate and incidental facts, his vindication of the Massachusetts authorities in their dealings with Roger Williams is complete. Concede to that "fiery Welchman" all that is claimed for him as the apostle of what he called "soul liberty" -admit that the Massachusetts fathers had no just conception of the distinction between church and State, and that they never doubted their right or their duty to suppress by power whatever opinion might seem to them dangerous-the fact remains (and Dr. Dexter has set it in a clear light), that Roger Williams, with all his genius, and all the picturesqueness of his figure in history, was not, at the time when he lived in Massachusetts, the right man in the right place. Erratic, enthusiastic, heady, fascinating in his gift of eloquence, magnetic in his influence on kindred minds, he was just the man with whom it was impossible to get on except by absolute submission to his whims; and his whims, in the then perilous condition of that colony, were hardly less dangerous than the caprices of a child playing with fire. The case was this:

A certain corporation, named "the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay," was the chartered proprietor of the territory in which it was beginning to plant a religious colony. The Company was formed, and the colony was to be established

in the interest of certain religious convictions. Whether those convictions were correct or erroneous, liberal or narrow, is neither here nor there; the doctrine of "soul liberty" is that religious convictions, as such, are to be respected. Were not the religious convictions of "the Governor and Company" as sacred a thing as the religious convictions of Roger Williams? By their charter from the English crown, and by the equity of common sense, the founders of Massachusetts had a right to admit whom they would into their partnership, and to shut out any who seemed likely to be troublesome members—the same right that a missionary society has to determine who shall, and who shall not, partake in its management at home or in the work at its missionary stations. They had a right to determine who should inhabit their territory, and under what conditions -the same right which a "tetotal" colony by the name of Greeley or by any other name, whether in Colorado or in New Jersey, has to make some pledge of total abstinence a condition of the tenure of town lots. Outside of Massachusetts there was room enough for all who could not accept the principles on which that colony was to be established. If Roger Williams could not accept those principles, there was room for him elsewhere, and not very far away--as was afterwards demonstrated by experiment.

Williams knew full well that the enemies of Massachusetts were numerous, and were ever on the look-out for matter of accusation against it. He knew that the Governor and Company had been careful to disavow all the extreme opinions professed by Separatists, and had proclaimed their intention to maintain fellowship with "their brethren in and of the Church of England." He knew what accusations against the colony had been current among its enemies, and were even preferred in a petition to the King in Council: that it intended rebellion, was casting off its allegiance, was separating wholly from the church and laws of England; and that its ministers and people were continually railing against the State, and the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the mother country. He knew what danger there was that the charter on which all the legal rights of the colony depended, and without which no title to real estate in the colony was valid, might be revoked by an unscrupulous

king or nullified by sycophant judges. He knew that every wild opinion, political or religious, and every fantastic practice that might be tolerated in the colony, would help the enemies that were plotting to bring over a royal governor, and with him not the Prayer-book only but the ecclesiastical courts, and all that machinery of oppression from which he himself in common with the Pilgrims of Plymouth, and the Puritans of Massachusetts had fled across the ocean. Knowing all this, how did he behave himself?

He arrives at Boston in February, 1631, hardly six months after the beginning of the settlement there, and was received with welcome as "a godly minister." He begins by condemning the Boston church for its too great liberality, inasmuch as it had not in his views sufficiently "separated" from the Church of England, or, more explicitly, "because they would not make a public declaration of their repentance for having communion with the churches of England while they lived there." Next we find him at Salem, a year later, where the church, charmed with his gifts, was ready to make him one of its official ministers. He has broached the opinion "that the magistrate may not punish the breach of the Sabbath, nor any other offense, as a breach of the first table," or in other words as an offense against God. The opinion, as we now understand it, is a sound one; but, there and then, it was novel and startling, and if not suppressed, was quite as likely as any other radical doctrine to bring reproach upon the colony, and to strengthen the hands of those who were plotting to bring New England into the enjoyment of such liberty and liberality as might be had under the lordship of William Laud. Was the alarming novelty suppressed? Was the man who had propounded it called to account before any other tribunal than that of public opinion? All that appears is that some of the leading men, at the most not more than six-being convened at Boston on public business, and hearing that the church in Salem-a very conspicuous church was likely to make that erratic dogmatizer its official teacher, united in addressing to another leading man, Capt. Endicott of Salem, a letter of advice and caution. Thereupon, it seems, the church, "for the present, forebore proceeding;" and next we find Mr. Williams among the Separatists in

the old colony. Surely the Pilgrims had sufficiently professed their repentance for whatever communion they, in the time. before their separation, had held with the parish churches in England.

In the church at Plymouth, Mr. Williams, being "a godiy minister," is received as he was at Boston. He preaches, unofficially, in "the exercise of prophesying :" and his preaching stimulates thought and discussion. Here he comes out with a new crotchet. In the English language of the seventeenth century, the word "Goodman" has very nearly the same meaning (or the same no-meaning) with "Mr." in our nineteenth century English; and "Goodwife" or "Goody" is the feminine form of the familiar title. But in the burning and shining light wherewith Plymouth is illuminated by Roger Williams, the momentous truth appears that if, conforming to the fashion of this world, we address John Doe as Goodman Doe, and Richard Roe as Goodman Roe, we thereby testify that the said John Doe and Richard Roe are "good," in the highest and theological sense, and have been divinely regenerated. Pastor Ralph Smith and Brother Roger Williams insist vehemently on the discovery, until "by their indiscreet urging of this whimsey, the place begins to be disquieted." It happens that Governor Winthrop of the new and Puritan colony, and Pastor Wilson of the Boston church, with others, come to Plymouth on a friendly visit. On the Lord's day, the brethren from Boston partake with the Plymouth church in the sacramental communion. We have a glimpse of what was the Sunday afternoon service in that church. After prayer and psalm (doubtless), "Mr. Roger Williams, according to their custom, propounds a question," and "the wiser people" in the church have. so arranged the procedure, that he propounds the question by which the place has been disquieted: Is it lawful to call any unregenerate man by the name of "Goodman such an one?" Pastor Smith speaks briefly to the question. Then Mr. Williams prophesies, and is followed by Governor Bradford, by Elder Brewster, and by "some two or three more of the congregation." Then "the elder," Brewster, the venerable president of the assembly, invites "the Governor of Massachusetts and Mr. Wilson to speak," not to exhort at random, but to speak "to

the question," "which they did." All this was "the exercise of prophesying." Cotton Mather tells us (and his testimony may pass for what it is worth), "That speech of Mr. Winthrop's put a lasting stop to the little, idle, whimsical conceits, then beginning to grow obstreperous.'

As if the aforesaid whimsey were not strange enough, the author of it, after another year or two in the same church, "begins" (as we learn from Governor Bradford,) "to fall into some strange opinions, and from opinion to practice, which causes some controversy between the church and him, and in the end some discontent on his part by occasion whereof he leaves them something abruptly." He returns to Salem in 1633, and becomes informally an assistant to the pastor there. He "exercises his gifts, but is in no office." It seems that he has brought with him the strange opinions which were the occasion of controversy at Plymouth, and of discontent on his part because he was "seeking to impose them on others." Of course he is no less opinionated, and no less desirous of making others adopt his convictions in the place to which he has now returned after a three years' absence. So important in his view are those opinions, that he has written a "treatise" in support of them; and the treatise, though not printed (for as yet there is no printing in New England), has become, as of course it could not but become, a matter to be talked about and discussed. At the request of Governor Winthrop, the "treatise" is submitted to the consideration of the magistrates at Boston. Thus we learn, definitely, what the strange opinions are which have produced disquiet at Plymouth, and are now propagated at Salem. What are they? It appears that Mr. Williams denies the authority assumed by the late King, James I, and the reigning King, Charles I, in giving the successive patents and charters under which the colonization of this great wilderness has been begun and thus far carried on. The charter of Massachusetts was granted in the exercise of usurped authority, and has no real validity. "He chargeth King James to have told a solemn public lie, because in his patent he blessed God that he was the first Christian prince that had discovered this land." "He chargeth him [King James] with blasphemy for calling Europe Christendom or the Christian world." "He personally applies to"