church, was not at all in keeping with the spirit of that age, and it shows that there were men who would have purified and elevated the national mind, had it not been for that alliance between the Church and the State, which was designed to crush in the germ every undertaking which looked toward the improvement of the people. * Such was the state of nonconformity in Italy. They had good reason for saying that they introduced no innovation; for apart from the proofs which they might have brought from their own country, there are for us, strong corresponding ones in Wales, where there is good reason to believe that the gospel was introduced as early as the year 63, and where it was preserved in a great degree free from the corruptions of Romanism. In the year 596, when Austin was sent into England by that most politic and ambitious Pope, Gregory VII, he found it much easier to bring the Pagan Saxons to his terms, than the old British bishops. It would be a natural supposition that as Constantine was himself of British origin, and had promoted christianity in his own country with royal munificence, that religion must have deteriorated from its primitive simplicity. Nevertheless, Austin found it in a state of comparative purity, for the British bishops of that day, were like those of whom Dupin speaks, at an earlier period, who were freely supported by their brethren, and who would have deemed it beneath them to accept of the Emperor's allowance.* The demands which Austin made of them, shed some light on their condition, and need no comment. They were these; first, they should keep Easter after the Romish manner; and secondly, that they should give christendome to children. They abjured his authority, and refused compliance, although he endeavored to dazzle them with a miracle. Austin was incensed, and threatened to enforce his demands with the sword; a menace which was afterwards put in execution against a class of men, whose most heinous fault in the sight of Rome, was a desire to preserve their religious freedom, to maintain the spirituality of the church, and to keep it independent of the state. I trust no apology is necessary for my thus causing to pass in review before you on this occasion, a class of men to whom we owe a debt of gratitude, and who deserve to be held in lasting remembrance, who proclaimed through evil and through good report the same great principles, for the sake of which Roger Williams came as a pilgrim to these our shores, for the opera * Rapin, p. 29. tion of which this commonwealth furnished the first clear field, wherein this Church stands as the first sacred memorial. I have done it the more readily, because there is to some extent, a popular impression that he was the father of our denomination in this country, and also that by his political sagacity, he discovered the worth of that great principle of unlimited religious liberty which is so essential to the peace and progress of states, which only of late years has triumphed in New-England, and which is only beginning its conquests in other lands. I have wished to show that he derived that principle from his Bible, that it was a primary element of his religious faith, that he held it in common with many contemporaries in England, who had received it as a moral heritage from the earliest times. Lured by the sound of religious liberty in America, he crossed the ocean; and when he found in Boston a church enforcing its creed by the sword of the magistrate, he at once declared it to be anti-christian, and refused to unite with it unless they abjured that principle. Having thus on his first landing, announced the truth which was so dear to him, he ceased not to maintain it, until he had seen the wrath of man overruled for its promotion, and had established here a commonwealth in which the Church was disconnected from the State, and religion was proclaimed to be free. To him then belongs not the honor of making a moral discovery, but the honor of nobly maintaining a truth for which he knew others were contending even unto death; the honor of a distinguished place in a long line of faithful witnesses which is seen through the vista of ages stretching into the dim distance, but which shall shine with immortal glory in that day when the secrets of all hearts shall be made manifest, when the first shall be last, and the last first. The character of Roger Williams is an interesting subject of study. The more we contemplate it, the more shall we be struck with the rare combination of virtues which formed it; "the more shall we admire the strength of his mind and the enlargedness of his heart, the warm attachment which he felt for his own opinions, connected with a deep respect for the right of private judgment in others; the zeal with which he maintained his own mental independence, and his "godly jealousy" for that of his neighbor; the frankness with which he avowed his sentiments, and the heroic fortitude with which he defended them; the clearness with which he saw the bearings of a principle, and the unflinching fidelity with which he carried it out to its just conclusion. This last trait of his character explains an act of his life, which to many has seemed at the first quite unaccountable. I mean, his leaving the church a few months after its constitution, and joining the Seekers, who, as they looked over christendom and saw the corruptions which generally prevailed, concluded that the divinely authorized ministry of the church had been lost, and that before any could be empowered to administer ordinances, a new apostleship must be commissioned. His mind seems to have been pressed with difficulties touching the right of a church to revive a lost institution, and his conclusion was only a logical deduction from what was then a popular principle, that the authority of a ministry to dispense ordinances depended on the evidence of an apostolic succession. In his view the line of that succession could not be traced; for he would as soon have thought of calling the christian dispensation itself a failure, as of admitting the Romish priesthood to be the authorized ministry of Christ. In regard to that body of men, it appears that very many, during ages before him, had declared the same opinion; but instead of leading them to wait for a new apostleship, it prepared them to feel the force of the truth, that since all Christ's commands are to be obeyed, the church hath power at any period to restore |