ROGER WILLIAMS.
Literature.
See Lives of Roger Williams by Knowles (1834), Gammell (1845, 1846, 1854), and Elton (1852); also Arnold's History of Rhode Island (1860), Vol. I.; Palfrey's History of New England, Vols. I. and II.; Bancroft's History of the U. S., Vol. I.; Masson, Life of Milton, Vol. II. pp. 560 sqq., 573 sq.; Allibone, Dict. of Brit. and Amer. Authors, Vol. III. p. 2747; Dexter, As to Roger Williams and his 'Banishment' from the Massachusetts Plantation (Boston, 1876); J. L. Diman, Monument to R. W. in Providence (Providence, 1877).
The works of Williams were republished by the Narragansett Club (First Series, Vol. I., Providence, 1866), and by Underhill for the Hanserd Knollys Society (London, 1848).
In America the Baptists trace their origin chiefly but not exclusively to Roger Williams (b. probably in Wales, 1599, [1627] d. in Providence, R. I., 1683), the founder of Rhode Island. Originally a clergyman in the Church of England, he became a rigid separatist, a radical come-outer of all Church establishments, an 'arch-individualist,' and an advocate of 'soul-liberty' in the widest acceptation of the term. He was a pious, zealous, unselfish, kind-hearted, but eccentric, 'conscientiously contentions,' and impracticable genius, a real troubler in Israel, who could not get along with any body but himself; and this accounts for his troubles, which, however, were overruled for good. Cotton Mather compared him to a windmill, which, by its rapid motion in consequence of a violent storm, became so intensely heated that it took fire and endangered the whole town.
Pursued out of his land by Bishop Laud, as he says, he emigrated with a heavy heart, in company with his wife Mary, to the colony of Massachusetts, and arrived after a tedious and tempestuous voyage in February, 1631.
He first exercised his ministerial gifts as an assistant to the pastor of Plymouth Colony, and acquired a knowledge of the Indian language. In 1633 he removed to Salem as assistant of Mr. Skelton, and in 1635 he was ordained pastor of Salem Church. But he was even then in open opposition to the prevailing views and customs of the colony, and refused to take the oath of fidelity. Besides this, he was charged with advocating certain opinions supposed to be dangerous, viz., that the magistrate ought not to punish offenses against the first table; that an oath ought not to be tendered to an unregenerate man; that a regenerate man ought not to pray with the unregenerate, though it be his wife or child; that a man ought not to give thanks after the sacrament nor after meat. He was unwilling to retract, and advised his church to withdraw from communion with the other churches of the colony, 'as full of anti-Christian pollution.' For these reasons the court banished Williams (Oct., 1635). The question of toleration was implied in the first charge; he denied the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate over matters of conscience and religion, and defended this principle afterwards in a book, 'The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience,' against John Cotton (1644). [1628] His views on baptism were developed afterwards; but they would only have aggravated his case, and in fact his rebaptism brought upon him the sentence of excommunication from the church of Salem, of which he was still nominally a member. [1629]
The banishment was the best thing that could have happened to Williams: it led to the development of his heroic qualities, and gave him a prominent position in American history. He left Salem with a few friends, and made his way in dreary winter through 'a howling wilderness' to the wigwams of his Indian friends, and was sorely tossed in frost and snow among barbarians for fourteen weeks, 'not knowing what bread or bed did mean.' In June, 1636, he founded with five families who adhered to him the town of Providence. He scrupulously bought the land from the Indians, and acted as pastor of this democratic settlement. In 1638 he became a Baptist; he was immersed by Ezekiel Hollyman, and in turn immersed Hollyman and ten others. This was the first Baptist church on the American Continent. But a few months afterwards he renounced his rebaptism on the ground that Hollyman was unbaptized, and therefore unauthorized to administer the rite to him. He remained for the rest of his life a 'Seeker,' cut loose from all existing Church organizations and usages, longing for a true Church of God, but unable to find one on the face of the whole earth. He conceived 'that the apostasy of Antichrist hath so far corrupted all that there can be no recovery out of that apostasy till Christ send forth, new apostles to plant churches anew.'
In 1643 he went to England, and obtained through the Commissioners of Plantation a charter which allowed the planters to rule themselves according to the laws of England, 'so far as the nature of the case would admit.' In 1663 he accepted for the colony another and more successful charter, a patent from the English crown similar to that of Massachusetts, to which he had formerly objected. He kept up friendly relations with the Indians, and twice saved the Massachusetts colony from danger, thus returning good for evil. His fame rests on his advocacy of the sacredness of conscience. Bancroft goes too far when in his eloquent eulogy he calls him 'the first person in modern Christendom who asserted in its plenitude the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before the law.' The Anabaptists and Mennonites had done the same a hundred years before. But Williams planted the first civil government on the principle of universal 'soul-liberty,' and was followed by William Penn in his Quaker colony in Pennsylvania. Roger Williams has been called 'that noble confessor of religious liberty, that extraordinary man and most enlightened legislator, who, after suffering persecution from his brethren, persevered, amidst incredible hardships and difficulties, in seeking a place of refuge for the sacred ark of conscience.' [1630]
In the other colonies the Baptists were more or less persecuted till the time of the Revolution, but after that they spread with great rapidity.
The American Baptists differ from their English brethren by a stricter discipline and closer communion practice. They are very zealous in missions, education, and other departments of Christian activity. In theology they cultivate especially biblical studies with great success.