trate to suppress all violences to the bodies and goods of men for their souls' belief, and to provide that not one person in the land be restrained from or constrained to any worship, ministry, or maintenance, but peaceably maintained in his soul [liberty] as well as corporal freedom."*

At the General Court in 1635, two letters were produced against him, the sentiments of which he boldly defended, and the next morning his sentence of banishment was pronounced. It stands recorded in the State papers of that day, proclaims as the "head and front of his offending" his doctrine touching the authority of magistrates, and commands him to depart out of the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth within six weeks, on penalty of forcible expulsion. The very rulers who had before sought to get rid of

* Judge Pitman well suggests, that two other charges mentioned by Winthrop were thrown in for the sake of effect. These were, that a man ought not to pray with unregenerate persons, nor to give thanks after sacrament or after meat. It is probable that what Mr. Williams uttered on these points was connected with the fact that men indiscriminately were constrained to these duties, and that the church forms treated all as regenerate. Certain it is that the letter which several of the nobility and gentlemen of England wrote to the rulers of Massachusetts in behalf of Mr. Williams, asserted that each party spoke well of the other, except in regard to religious liberty.

two men among them on account of their cherishing what was deemed too great an attachment to the forms of the Church of England, now banish another for defending the rights of all who were persecuted for conscience's sake.

Such was the excitement which the publication of this sentence produced in Salem, that the government considered it expedient at first to allow him to remain through the winter. But on hearing that a number of persons resorted to his house, that about twenty of them had been drawn to his opinions, and that they intended to depart together to erect a new plantation about the Narragansett Bay, the court feared the spread of his contagious doctrines from thence through all the churches of their commonwealth, and resolved to crush in the bud a plan so dangerous. Thence they sent him a peremptory order to repair forthwith to Boston to be shipped. He replied that he could not come without hazard of his life. On this a pinnace was sent with a commission to Captain Underhill, to take him by force. But their design was anticipated, and when they reached his house, they found that he had been gone three days. In the midst of winter, this venerable pilgrim, this apostle of religious liberty, went forth from his home, like the patriarch Abraham, not knowing whither he

went.

Yet like Abraham, he walked by faith.

He moved with a firm unfaltering step. Who can tell what perils he braved, what hardships tried his soul? Who can adequately picture the dangers which beset the path of the lonely traveller through an unexplored forest, amidst piercing cold, and drifting snows, uncertain at every step where to find firm footing, making his bed now under the covert of a rock, now in a hollow tree, and only relieved at times by the luxury of an Indian wigwam? No wonder is it that he said in his old age, he felt "the effects of those severities." But well may we wonder that his spirit was undaunted, that his bodily strength endured.

Deeply must he have felt that he was made strong by the power of the mighty God of Jacob; a sentiment which he has expressed with sweet simplicity in stanzas which allude to the fact that when exiled by his brethren, the hearts of the savages were open to receive him.

"How kindly flames of nature burn

In wild humanitie

God's providence is rich to his,

Let none distrustful be;

In wilderness in great distress,

These ravens have fed me.

Lost many a time, I've had no guide,
No house but hollow tree;

In stormy winter night, no firc,

No food, no company.

God makes a path, provides a guide,
And feeds in wilderness;

His glorious name while earth remains,

O that I may confess."*

True benevolence, though it always confers inward peace, is not always attended in this world with visible and outward reward. otherwise in the case of Mr. Williams.

It was

He was

the first Christian Missionary to the Indians in North-America. While at Plymouth and Salem, he says, "My soul's desire was to do them good. God was pleased to give me a painful patient spirit to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes, to gain their tongue." Little did he think, however, while he was taking such pains to impart to them the knowledge of eternal life, that he was preparing the means of his own temporal salvation. Yet so it was. The knowledge of their language, which he thus gained, enabled him to hold intercourse with them in the wilderness, to awaken their sympathies, and to command their confidence; and after having been warned by the Plymouth government to leave Seekonk, where he "first pitched and began to build and plant," it enabled him as he sailed around yonder point, to answer the friendly cry of "Whatcheer," with which

*Key, chap. II. &c.

† A friendly greeting, which the Indians had learned from the English.

the Indians hailed him there, in words that won upon their hearts. Thus, led by a "right way to a city of habitation," his spirit was deeply touched with a sense of the interposition of God, and thence he says, in view of the counsel and advice which he received, "as to the freedom and vacancy of this place, and many other providences of the Most Holy and Only Wise, 1 called it Providence."*

It is not to be supposed that a man so devout as he, could reach the end of his pilgrimage, without, like the ancient patriarch, erecting an altar and calling upon the Lord. There is no reason to doubt that he immediately commenced public worship. He who had panted to preach the gospel to the Indians, who amidst his trials in Massachusetts had become almost exhausted with his ministerial labors, constantly conversing and preaching thrice a week, he certainly could not long remain on this spot, which by its very name he had solemnly consecrated, without endeavoring to promote the institutions of religion. Thence we are not surprised to learn from Winthrop, "that he was accustomed to hold meetings both on the Sabbaths and on week days."+ Those who had been members of the church in '

* Major Mason's Letter.

+ Vol. 1, p. 283.