We have briefly covered, thus far, the
life and work of Roger Williams until he was compelled to flee to
America for safety from religious persecutors in Europe. But the
paramount reason for his coming to America was to preach the gospel in
all its fullness, and to help create a republic in the New World in
which the natural rights of all men would be respected before the law,
and in which the conscience of the individual would be supreme in the
religious realm without civil molestation.
Roger Williams was compelled to flee from
England under persecutions by Bishop Laud, or surrender his religious
convictions; "and for him, as for all noblest natures," says judge
Durfee, in speaking of his flight, "a life of transparent truthfulness
was alone an instinct and a necessity. This absolute sincerity is the
key to his character, as it was always the mainspring of his conduct. It
was this which led him to reject indignantly the compromises with his
conscience which from time to time were proposed to him. It was this
which impelled him when he discovered a truth to proclaim it, when he
detected an error to expose it, when he saw an evil to try and remedy
it, and when he could do a good, even to his enemies, to do it."
Upon his arrival in Boston on February 5,
1631, Roger Williams was welcomed with open arms, and the ecclesiastical
authorities invited him to succeed Mr. Wilson, who was about to return
to England, as a teacher in the Boston church. The Boston Puritans
believed their church to be the "most glorious on earth," and they were
astonished because Roger Williams felt conscientiously bound to decline
their invitation because that church was still "unseparated" from the
Established Church of England and was under Bishop Laud’s control.
Roger Williams, possessing the religious
convictions which he cherished, had good reasons for refusing a
pastorate in any church that was still officially connected with the
Established Church of England. In his home district in England, from
which he fled, he had just witnessed, before he sailed to America, the
persecution in all its hellish cruelty, of Doctor Leighton, who had
become a Puritan. Neal, in his "History of the Puritans," tells of
Doctor Leighton’s arrest and of the inhumane persecution that followed
under Archbishop Laud’s ecclesiastical sentence pronounced against him,
which provided that he be "committed to the prison of the Fleet for
life, and pay a fine of ten thousand pounds; that the High Commission
should degrade him from his ministry; and that he should be brought to
the pillory at Westminster while the court was sitting and be publicly
whipped; after whipping be set upon a pillory a convenient time and have
one of his ears cut off, one side of his nose split, and be branded in
the face with a double S.S. for a sower of sedition; that then he should
be carried back to prison, and after a few days be pilloried a second
time in Cheapside, and have the other side of his nose split and his
other ear cut off, and then be shut up in close prison for the rest of
his life."
Roger Williams had not come to America to
place his head in that kind of ecclesiastical noose, and every freeman
in America today justifies the exiled Williams for repudiating a church
establishment which at that time was so cruel in its persecutions. He
conscientiously refused the "unanimous call" as pastor of the Boston
church because the Boston church still held connections with the Church
of England, and because the church would not deny the power of "the
civil magistrate to punish any breach of the first table" of the
decalogue, and declare itself in favor of the principle of the
separation of church and state. His declaration that the civil
magistrates had "no rights as such, to rule in spiritual matters,"
struck the New England Puritans with wonder and amazement, as the whole
system of the "Holy Commonwealth" of the Bay Colony was based upon the
Bible as their statute book; and the ten commandments as a whole, as
they interpreted them, were the warp and woof of their whole social
fabric as administered by the clergy and the magistrates. The Puritans
believed, as many religious legalists believe today, that if the
violations of the first four commandments of the decalogue, which are
purely offenses against God, are not punished by the civil magistrate,
religion will be destroyed and civil society cannot exist. But Roger
Williams believed that religion would flourish and the state would
prosper when they are entirely separated from each other.
By refusing the best "call" in New
England, and asking the Boston church to separate itself from the state
religion, Roger Williams created a dilemma for the Boston Puritans. They
violently disagreed with him, and would have ordered him sent back to
England, but they did not dare for fear of losing the friendship and
support of Sir William Masham, a member of the company in England, Sir
Thomas Barrington, Earl of Warwick, Sir Oliver St. Johns, Sir Henry
Martin, and many other influential friends of Williams in England.
In the meanwhile, Williams received a
"call" from the Salem church to serve as its pastor, to the great alarm
of the magistrates and elders at Boston. The court at Boston held a
special session to consider the matter, and it decided to write a letter
of warning to the Salem church and to Mr. Endicott to this effect, that
whereas Mr. Williams taught that the Boston church should separate
itself from the legal Established Church of England, and besides had
declared his opinion that "the magistrate might not punish the breach of
the Sabbath nor any other offense that was a breach of the first table,"
therefore the court marveled that Salem would choose him without
advising with the council, and withal desired that they would forbear to
proceed till they had conferred about it.
The Salem church, jealous of its
independent rights, gave the magistrates and clergy of Boston the rebuke
they so richly deserved, and insisted that Roger Williams accept their
call and enter upon his charge at once, which he did. Here Williams
preached his views freely, and the freemen of Salem welcomed him with
open arms. But the spiritual dictators and autocrats of Boston hounded
his steps and stirred up an active opposition against him in the colony
outside the town of Salem. The cruel hand of persecution was lifted
against him, and inside of six months he was forced to retire to
Plymouth and seek refuge among the Pilgrims, who held far more liberal
views toward dissenters than did the Puritans.
For the next two years, Roger Williams
preached at Plymouth as assistant pastor to Elder Smith, and the
independent colony of Plymouth protected him from persecution by
Massachusetts Bay. His teachings were well received by the people of
Plymouth, and Governor Bradford esteemed him highly. While here he did
missionary work among the Indian tribes, and entered into a treaty
agreement with Massasoit and other Indian chiefs, which laid the
foundation for the establishment of Rhode Island a little later, when he
was banished the second time from Salem. It was well for him that he
stayed two years at Plymouth and won his way into their hearts, for his
Plymouth friends served as a buffer ally between the Bay Colony and the
Providence Plantation.
The Pilgrims also had a union of church
and state, and punished and persecuted those who broke the first four
commandments of the decalogue, but they were more mild and tolerant than
the Puritans. Roger Williams became restless under the Plymouth
theocracy, and hoped they would improve affairs. In the summer of 1633
he received a second "call" to assume the pastorate of the Salem church,
which he gladly accepted.
The return to Salem marked the beginning
of a series of controversies between the authorities of Salem and
Boston. The Puritan clergy of Boston were so strongly Calvinistic that
their new-founded utopia, which they styled the "Holy Commonwealth,"
gave no quarter to religious dissenters.
They believed that it was their duty to
see that all men "obeyed the inexorable will of God," not as each
individual understood it, but as the Puritan theocracy interpreted it.
This theory led to the justification of the most cruel persecutions ever
perpetrated upon dissenters, except, perhaps, for the atrocities of the
Inquisition.
All this persecution was done in the name
of God and for the good of the church and the state. The civil
magistrate and the civil law were used as the vehicle to carry forward
the dogmas and propaganda of the Puritan church. Theocracy and oligarchy
combined to share the spoils of religious and civil power. The most
powerful weapons they employed were the whipping post, confiscation of
property, and banishment. They held that they were justified "to use the
sword of the civil magistrate to open the understanding of the
heretics," in order to save them from hell-fire.
Roger Williams charged that the New
England clergy, "under a pretense of holy orders in themselves, selves,
put over the drudgery of execution to their enslaved seculars." "I
affirm there was never civil state in the world," declared Williams,
"that ever did or ever shall make good work of it, with a civil sword in
spiritual matters." Instead, the state should give "free and absolute
permission of conscience to all men in what is merely spiritual."
Years later Cotton Mather remarked in his
"Magnalia," "There was a whole country in America like to be set on fire
by the rapid motion of a windmill in the head of one particular man."
That man was Roger Williams, whose opinions relative to the limitation
of civil magistrates in the exercise of their proper functions,
excluding their authority in spiritual matters, had within two and a
half years set all New England on fire, and what hurt most was that the
common people heard him gladly.
In April, 1634, the magistrates ordered
all Bay residents who were not freemen to take a Resident’s Oath,
pledging themselves to submit to the orders of the General Court. On May
14, 1634, the court passed a new Freeman’s Oath, which required the
freemen to pledge allegiance to the General Court and officers. The
purpose was to eradicate all opposition to the "Holy Commonwealth," and
the penalty for refusing to take the oath was banishment.
The new oath was evidently aimed at Roger
Williams, as it sanctioned "the right of magistrates to punish for
breaches of the first table and to rule in religion." Williams accepted
the challenge, and denied the right of the state to enforce an oath
which was in fact "a spiritual form and act of worship and prayer," and
he attacked its legality so vehemently that he swayed public opinion
against it, and made it impossible for the court to enforce the oath. He
became the people’s champion in the cause of liberty, and his victory
made him very popular in Salem. The religio-political authorities of the
"Holy Commonwealth" found metal of no common temper in Roger Williams.
Some new occasion must be found to
apprehend this "first rebel against the divine church order established
in the wilderness." They determined to subdue Williams or banish him.
Through guile and threats, the General Court finally won John Endicott,
Mr. Williams’ defender and friend, over to its side. By the same means,
the court officials succeeded in turning the majority of the Salem
church against him. Finally Roger Williams was summoned for trial on the
charge of entertaining "dangerous opinions." The Bay governor,
twenty-five court magistrates, the deputies, and all the ministers of
the Bay were present. It was the most spectacular assembly and trial,
and the most far reaching in its results, that ever convened in America,
aside from the Continental Congress of 1776, which was made possible
only by the courageous stand of Roger Williams at this eventful trial.
The clergy as the advisers to the General
Court gave, an inquisitorial color to the whole procedure. They acted in
conjunction with the court, at once as legislators, executives, and
judiciary–judge, jury, and final court of appeal–in the trial of Roger
Williams, against whom they were also the complaining witnesses. There
was, for Roger Williams, no more hope of escape from this inquisition
than there would have been if he had been held in the jaws of a
crocodile.
Governor Haynes, presiding officer of the
court, was chief prosecuting attorney and the judge who was to pronounce
the sentence. Roger Williams had no attorney to defend his case, as
none, through fear, dared to defend him. Undaunted and alone, like
Christ, he faced the inquisitorial court and stood in the "rockie
strength" of his principles. He pleaded his case so eloquently and
logically that he forced a division between the magistrates and
deputies. Not for nought had he sat at the feet of Sir Edward Coke in
the Star Chamber of England. With the courage of a Luther, he launched
his broadsides against fifty of the ablest men of Massachusetts Bay
Colony.
The ministers moved among the magistrates
and deputies who were favorable to Mr. Williams to turn their votes
against him. The lobbying was successful, and the "holy brethren"
rejoiced in securing his conviction.
Before sentence of banishment was
pronounced, the court gave him a chance to recant. Would he recant, or
would he stand his ground like Luther? Upon his decision depended the
future of Rhode Island, yea, more–to a large extent the future of
America and of the world. Worn out and desperate, through lengthy hours
of disputation, would he lose heart and yield? Never! Never! He stood
unshaken as the eternal hills in the "rockie strength" of his
convictions. "I shall be ready ... not only to be bound and banished,
but to die also in New England" for the truth, declared Williams. So
hour after hour he argued in defense of his principles, unsubdued and
undismayed, till the sun sank into darkness and the weary court
adjourned, hoping that he might recant on the morrow. In this hope they
were disappointed.
The next morning, October 9, 1635, Roger
Williams made it known that he was as unshaken as the Rock of Gibraltar,
and that he had faith to believe that the principles he advocated would
triumph, even if he were killed.
One of the laws enacted by the
Massachusetts Bay Colony was: "If any person or persons within this
jurisdiction . . . shall deny their [the magistrates’] lawful right or
authority ... to punish the outward breaches of the first table [of the
decalogue], . . . every such person or persons shall be sentenced to
banishment." As Roger Williams stoutly denied the jurisdiction of the
civil magistrates in religious matters covered by the first four
commandments written upon the first table of the decalogue, he was
condemned to banishment.
It was well understood by the Puritans
that the first table of the decalogue embraced the first four
commandments, and the second table, the last six commandments. Roger
Williams pointed out that the first four commandments of the law of God
enjoined purely spiritual and religious duties which the individual owed
to God, and that the violation of these four commandments–namely, the
refusal to recognize Jehovah as the one and only supreme God, the
worshiping of images, taking God’s name in vain, and refusing to observe
the Sabbath as a day of worship and rest–was an offense against God and
religion which the civil magistrate had no right in justice to punish.
He held that whenever a human being attempted to judge another
individual in matters of conscience and religion, the judge was assuming
the prerogatives of God and would have to sit as a discerner of the
motives of a man’s heart, which required divine discernment.
The first four commandments of the
Decalogue prescribe a man’s duties toward God, and the last six, a man’s
duties toward his fellow man. Therefore, Roger Williams contended, the
civil magistrate, who rightfully could deal only with civil matters, had
no authority in justice to enforce the commandments upon the first table
of the decalogue. If the civil magistrates and legislators had always
recognized this line of distinction between the first and the second
table of the decalogue, there never would have been formed a union
between the church and the state, and religious persecution would have
been impossible. The failure to recognize a line of demarcation between
the duties we owe to Caesar and the obligations we owe to God has been
the root cause of all religious persecutions, as well as of bitter
experiences which have come to religion. Politics and religion never did
form a friendly mixture, and the sooner the state and the church learn
this lesson, the better it will be for both. Roger Williams finally
demonstrated this truth in his experiment in Rhode Island by completely
separating the church and the state and permitting the civil magistrate
to function "only in civil things."
He was accused of advancing opinions that
were dangerous to the peace and order of the commonwealth; but in Rhode
Island he founded a community in which perfect religious liberty
prevailed, and in which his doctrines and teachings were given free
course; yet life, property, peace, and order were far more secure than
they were in Puritan Massachusetts, where life, property, and peace were
frequently sacrificed for conscience’ sake. He demonstrated beyond
question that his teachings promoted peace and order in the state, and
that the charges against him were unsustained and his banishment was
unjustifiable. It was thus that a kind Providence permitted the evil
which befell him in Salem, Massachusetts, to enable him to work out a
system of government in Rhode Island which not only constituted a
requital for the injustice he had suffered, but served as a model for
the great American Republic.
That sentence of exile, instead of being
the doom of religious liberty in America, was its harbinger. It opened
the door of opportunity to establish a model republic as an asylum for
the oppressed of America and of Europe, where all could worship God
unmolested, in harmony with the dictates of their own consciences. It
enabled Roger Williams to do for America and for the world what would
have been impossible within the Holy Commonwealth.
The Honorable Oscar S. Straus, twice
American ambassador to Turkey, and Secretary of Labor and Commerce in
the Cabinet of the late President Theodore Roosevelt, fittingly spoke
thus of Roger Williams: "If I were asked to select from all the great
men who have left their impress upon this continent; ... if I were asked
whom to hold before the American people and the world to typify the
American spirit of fairness, of freedom, of liberty in church and state,
I would without any hesitation select that great prophet who established
the first political community on the basis of a free church in a free
state, the great and immortal Roger Williams."
STANZAS ON FREEDOM
Men! whose boast it is that
ye
Come of fathers brave and
free,
If there breathe on earth a
slave,
Are ye truly free and
brave?
If ye do not feel the
chain,
When it works a brother’s
pain,
Are ye not base slaves
indeed,
Slaves unworthy to be
freed?
Women! who shall one day
bear
Sons to breathe New England
air,
If ye hear, without a
blush,
Deeds to make the roused
blood rush
Like red lava through your
veins,
For your sisters now in
chains
Answer! are ye fit to be
Mothers of the brave and
free?
Is true freedom but to
break
Fetters for our own dear
sake,
And, with leathern hearts,
forget
That we owe mankind a debt?
No! true freedom is to
share
All the chains our brothers
wear,
And, with heart and hand,
to be
Earnest to make others free
!
They are slaves who fear to
speak
For the fallen and the
weak;
They are slaves who will
not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and
abuse,
Rather than in silence
shrink
From the truth they needs
must think
They are slaves who dare
not be
In the right with two or
three.
–James Russell Lowell.
