The bloudy tenent of persecution for cause of conscience discussed; and Mr. Cotton's letter examined and answered

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.



IT was on the 1st day of December, in the year 1630, that
Mr. Roger Williams, with his wife, embarked at Bristol for
America, in the ship Lyon, Captain William Pierce.

Two years and a half before, a number of eminent and
enthusiastic men had gone forth, animated by religious prin
ciples and purposes, to seek a home and a refuge from perse
cution, on the wild and untenanted shores of Massachusetts
Bay. Charles I. had announced his design of ruling the
English people by arbitrary power, only a few days before
a patent for the Company of Massachusetts Bay passed the
seals. 1 No provision was made in this document for the
exercise of religious liberty. The emigrants were puritans,
and although they had suffered long for conscience sake,
on this subject their views were as contracted as those of
their brethren who in Elizabeth s reign sought the overthrow
of England s hierarchy. 2 The patent secured to them, how
ever, to a great extent, a legislative independence of the
mother country; but they soon employed that power to
persecute differing consciences.

The emigrants landed at Salem at the end of June, 1629.






A few mud hovels alone marked the place of their future
abode. On their passage they arranged the order of their
government, and bound themselves by solemn covenant to
each other and the Lord. As religion was the cause of their
abandonment of their native land, so was its establishment
their first care. At their request a few of the settlers at
Plymouth, where, in 1620,a colony had been established by
the members of Mr. John Robinson s church, came over to
assist and advise on the arrangement of their church polity.
After several conferences, the order determined on was the
congregational, and measures were immediately taken for
the choice of elders and deacons. A day of fasting and
prayer was appointed, and thirty persons covenanted together
to walk in the ways of God. Mr. Skelton was chosen pastor,
Mr. Higginson teacher, both puritan clergymen of celebrity,
and Mr. Houghton ruling elder. They agreed with the
church at Plymouth, " That the children of the faithful are
church members with their parents, and that their baptism is
a seal of their being so." 3

The church was thus self-constituted. It owned no alle
giance to bishop, priest, or king. It recognized but one
authority the King of saints: but one rule the word of
God. The new system did not, however, meet with the
approbation of all this little company. Some still fondly
clung to the episcopacy of their native land, and to the more
imposing rites of their mother church. The main body of
the emigrants did not altogether refuse to have communion
with the church which had so unnaturally driven them away ;
but, as they said, they separated from her corruptions,
and rejected the human inventions in worship which they
discovered in her fold. Not so all. Liberty of worship they
desired indeed, but not a new form of polity. Two brothers,
John and Samuel Browne, the one a lawyer, the other a
merchant, were the leaders of this little band. They wished
the continuance of the Common Prayer, of the ceremonies ...