[1626] Knollys fled to Massachusetts (1638), and preached for some time in the extreme northern part of the colony, but, being exposed to danger as a Baptist and Separatist, he returned to England in 1641. The society for the republication of scarce old Baptist tracts is called after him.
[1627] The accounts of the year of his birth vary from 1598 to 1606. He was a protégé of the celebrated judge, Sir Edward Coke. Historians differ as to whether he was Rodericus Williams, from Wales, who entered Jesus College, Oxford, in 1624, or Rogerus Williams, whose name appears in the subscription-book of Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1626. Elton and Masson take the former, Arnold and Dexter the latter view, which better agrees with his Christian name.
[1628] This book was anonymously published in London, when Williams was there occupied in obtaining a charter for Rhode Island, and is exceedingly rare, only six copies being known to exist; but it has been reprinted from the copy in the Bodleian Library by Edward Bean Underhill, together with the Answer to Cotton's Letter and a Memoir of Williams (London, 1848, pp. 439 and xxxvi.). It is written in a kindly and moderate spirit, free from the controversial bitterness of the age, in the form of a conference between Truth and Peace. Williams begins with this sentence: 'The blood of so many hundred thousand souls of Protestants and Papists, spilt in the wars of present and former ages, for their respective consciences, is not required nor accepted by Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.' He maintains that civil government has nothing whatever to do with spiritual matters, over which God alone rules, and that religious liberty should be extended not only to all Christian denominations and sects, but even to 'the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or anti-Christian consciences and worships' (p. 2). John Cotton, his chief opponent, wrote in reply 'The Bloudy Tenent washed, and made white in the Bloud of the Lambe: being discussed and discharged of blood-guiltiness by just Defense' (London, 1647). Williams defended his position in 'The Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody by Mr. Cotton's endeavour to wash it white in the Blood of the Lambe' (London, 1652, 4to, pp. 373). John Cotton (1585-1652), who emigrated to America two years after Williams (1633), was one of the patriarchs of New England, and, together with Hooker and Stone, constituted the 'glorious triumvirate' that supplied the Puritans in the wilderness with their three great necessities--'Cotton for their clothing, Hooker for their fishing, and Stone for their building.'--Cotton Mather's Magnalia, Vol. III. p. 20.
[1629] Dr. Dexter's monograph is a learned and elaborate partisan defense of the action of the young Colony, which, he says, 'was reluctantly compelled to choose between the expulsion of Williams and the immediate risk of social, civil, and religious disorganization' (p. 88). He takes the ground that Williams was banished, not on religious, but on political grounds. But religion and politics were inseparably interwoven in the New England theocracy.
[1630] Mrs. P. S. Elton, in The Piedmontese Envoy; or, The Men, Manners, and Religion of the Commonwealth: A Tale (London, 1852), puts this eulogy into the mouth of John Milton; hence it is sometimes falsely quoted as Milton's (Allibone, Vol. III. p. 2747).
[1631] In a letter to the author.
[1632] Letter to the author.
[1633] F. Wayland, Principles and Practices of Baptist Churches, pp. 13, 14.
[1634] London, 3d ed. 1645; 7th ed. 1660. The spirit of this book may be judged from the title and the following passage of the Epistle Dedicatory: 'Of all heretics and schismatics, the Anabaptists ought to be most carefully looked into, and severely punished, if not utterly exterminated and banished out of the Church and Kingdom. . . . They preach and print and practice their heretical impieties openly; they hold their conventicles weekly in our chief cities and suburbs thereof, and there prophesy by turns; . . . they flock in great multitudes to their Jordans, and both sexes enter into the river, and are dipt after their manner with a kind of spell, containing the heads of their erroneous tenets. . . , And as they defile our rivers with their impure washings, and our pulpits with their false prophecies and fanatical enthusiasms, so the presses sweat and groan under the load of their blasphemies.'
[1635] Printed in Underhill's Collection, pp. 11-48. The title-pages, which are all given by Underhill, slightly differ in the three editions of 1644, '46, and '51. I have before me a copy of the fourth ed., London, 1652, which has been for more than two hundred years in the family of the Rev. Dr. Holme, a Baptist clergyman of New York. It has the same title as the third ed., but, only fifty-one Articles; Art. XXXVIII., on the support of the ministry by the congregation, being omitted.
[1636] Underhill, pp. 74-106.
[1637] The following certificate was prefixed: 'We, the ministers and messengers of, and concerned for, upwards of one hundred congregations in England and Wales, denying Arminianism, being met together in London, from the third day of the seventh month to the eleventh of the same, 1689, . . . have thought meet for the satisfaction of all other Christians that differ from us in the point of baptism, to recommend to their perusal the confession of our faith, . . . which confession we own, as containing the doctrine of our faith and practice; and do desire that the members of our churches respectively do furnish themselves therewith.' Signed by thirty-seven persons in the name of the whole assembly.
[1638] Editions of 1699, 1719, 1720, etc. An American ed. was issued by Benj. Franklin, and one at Pittsburgh (S. Williams), 1831. It is also reprinted by Crosby, Vol. III. Append. II. pp. 56-111; Underhill, pp. 169-246.
[1639] Dr. Angus.
[1640] See Vol. III. pp. 738 sqq.
[1641] Underhill says, p. xv.: 'It is the only Catechism of value among Baptists.' He gives it from the 16th Engl. ed., pp. 247-270, but says nothing of Keach's co-authorship, and ascribes to him another Catechism ('The Child's Instructor: a New and Easy Primer,' 24mo, 1664), for which he was imprisoned under Charles II. The American Baptist Publication Society publishes it under the title, 'The Baptist Catechism commonly called Keach's Catechism; or, A Brief Instruction in the Principles of the Christian Religion, agreeably to the Confession of Faith put forth by upwards of a hundred congregations in Great Britain, July 3, 1689, and adopted by the Philadelphia Baptist Association, Sept. 22, 1742.' Here the name of Collins is omitted. But the Catechism is literally the same as the one in Underhill's Collection.
[1642] It is printed in Vol. III. pp. 742 sqq.