very obscure and implicative phrases, might well admit of doubtful interpretation,) they found the matters not to be so evil as at first they seemed. Whereupon they agreed, that, upon his retraction, &c. or taking an oath of allegiance to the King, &c. it should be passed over." Vol. i. p. 123. The conduct of Mr. Williams on this occasion was, it must be acknowledged, mild and conciliatory. He offered to burn the offensive book, though he did not retract his opinions. He wrote to the Court, we are told, "submissively," and afterwards appeared before them "penitently," and furnished satisfactory evidence of his "loyalty." We cannot determine, how far these expressions may be construed to imply an acknowledgment of error on the part of Mr. Williams; but they are valuable, as a proof that he was not so obstinate and contumacious as the world have been taught to regard him. He was now permitted, for a while, to continue his ministry at Salem, without interruption from the magistrates. He was popular as a preacher, and the people at Salem became strongly attached to him. Mr. Skelton died in August, 1634, and Mr. Williams was soon after invited to become the teacher of the church. The magistrates sent to the church a request, that they would not ordain him; but the church persisted, and Mr. Williams was regularly introduced to the office of teacher. This "great contempt of authority," as it was afterwards pronounced to be by the magistrates and ministers, was not forgotten. We shall soon see how it was punished. We may here take notice of two charges against Mr. Williams, which, trivial as they are, have been often al leged to his disadvantage. It has been said, that he preached on the use of veils by females, and insisted that they should wear them in religious assemblies. We have no record of his real sentiments on this frivolous subject. Dr. Bentley asserts, that Mr. Endicott had introduced it before Mr. Williams arrived, and that the latter adopted the notion, rather to gratify Mr. Endicott and Mr. Skelton, than because he felt any interest in it himself.* And if it * Mr. Endicott's zeal on this point may be learned from the following incident, related by Winthrop: "March 7, 1633. At the lecture at Boston a question was propounded about veils. Mr. Cotton concluded, that where (by the custom of the place) they were not a were true, that he was the author of the custom, and wasted his time in establishing it, we should regard it as a venial weakness, springing from a reverence for the Scriptures, and a desire for the decorum of public worship. Before we condemn him, we should call to mind, that other divines of great name in New-England, such as President Chauncy and John Elliot, preached vehemently against wigs, and that, in 1649, the magistrates signed a grave protest against the custom among men of wearing long hair, and requested the clergy to preach against it, thing uncivil and unmanly, whereby men do deform themselves, and offend sober and modest men, and do corrupt good manners."* 66 as a The other charge is of more importance. It is said, that in consequence of Mr. Williams' preaching, Mr. Endicott cut the cross out of the military colors, as a relic of antichristian superstition. This act was doubtless unjustifiable, because the colors were established by the authority of the King, and ought to have been viewed as a merely civil regulation. But there is no evidence that Mr. Williams advised the measure. It seems rather to have been a practical application, by Mr. Endicott, of the doctrine maintained by Mr. Williams on the unlawfulness of the ceremonies and symbols which had been used in the service of idolatry and of Popery. The great controversy between the Puritans and the Prelates in England mainly turned on the use of the surplice, and the sign of the cross, and other Popish ceremonies, which the English Church retained. The Puritans would not conform to the church, on account of these ceremonies, which they regarded as abominable relics of Popery. It was a principle among them, on which they sign of the woman's subjection, they were not commanded by the apostle. Mr. Endicott opposed, and did maintain it by the general arguments brought by the apostle. After some debate, the Governor, perceiving it to grow to some earnestness, interposed, and so it brake off." Vol. i. p. 125. Hutchinson (vol. i. p. 379) says, on the authority of Hubbard, that "Mr. Cotton, of Boston, happening to preach at Salem, soon after this custom began, he convinced his hearers that it had no sufficient foundation in the Scriptures. His sermon had so good an effect, that they were all ashamed of their veils, and never appeared cover. ed with them afterwards." Hutchinson, vol. i. p. 142. * acted, that "such rites and ceremonies as had been abused to idolatry, and manifestly tended to lead men back to Popery and superstition, were no longer indifferent, but to be rejected as unlawful.' Mr. Williams probably preached this doctrine at Salem, and Mr. Endicott deemed it his duty, as a magistrate, to remove from the colors the cross, which was the favorite symbol of Popery.t Dr. Bentley asserts, that Mr. Williams was the "innocent, though the real cause of it." Mr. Endicott was summoned before the Court, admonished, and declared incapable, for one year, of holding any public office, as a punishment for the act; but neither he, nor the Court, appear to have attributed any blame to Mr. Williams, which we may, without a want of charity, suppose they would have done, if there had been any reasonable pre tence. * Neal's Hist. Puritans, vol. i. p. 184. The question about the lawfulness of the cross caused much agitation and controversy. "Some of our chief worthies," says Cotton Mather, (Magnalia, b. vii. c. ii. § 9) "maintained their different persuasions, with weapons indeed no more dangerous than easy pens, and effects no worse than a little harmless and learned inkshed." Mr. Hooker wrote a tract of nearly thirteen pages, in defence of the cross. Winthrop says, that the Court were" doubtful of the lawful use of the cross in an ensign." The militia refused to march with the mutilated banners. The matter was finally settled, by leaving out the cross in the colors for the trained bands, and retaining it in the banners of the castle and of vessels. #1 His. Col. vi. p. 246. CHAPTER V. Proceedings which led to his banishment-freeman's oath-various charges against him-sentence-birth of his second child-leaves Salem for Narraganset Bay-review of the causes of his banish ment. We will now proceed to narrate the measures which issued in the banishment of Mr. Williams. We shall follow the guidance of Winthrop, as to the facts, because this truly great man wrote without the angry temper which most of the early writers on the subject exhibited. "1634, Nov. 27. The Court was informed, that Mr. Williams, of Salem, had broken his promise to us, in teaching publicly against the King's patent, and our great sin in claiming right thereby to this country, &c. and for usual terming the churches of England antichristian. We granted summons to him for his appearance at the next Court." Winthrop, vol. i. p. 151. We are not informed of the terms of Mr. Williams' promise, here referred to, and cannot decide how far he had broken it. The epithet which he is said to have applied to the churches in England, might, in his judgment, have been well deserved by many of them. He, of course, referred to the established churches, then practising, as the Puritans believed, idolatrous ceremonies, and under the direction of wicked men. Mr. Cotton, in his "Bloody Tenet Washed," (p. 109) acknowledges it to be a source of grief to himself and others, "that there is yet so much of those notorious evils still continuing in the parishes, (in England) worldliness, ignorance, superstition, scoffing, swearing, cursing, whoredom, drunkenness, theft, lying; I may add, also, murder, and malignity against the godly, suffered to thrust themselves into the fellowship of the churches, and to sit down with the saints at the Lord's table." We may be allowed to think, that Roger Williams was not remarkably bigoted, if he did call such churches as these antichristian, and deem it a sin to hold fellowship with them. He obeyed the summons of the Court: "1635, Mo. 2, 30.* The Governor and Assistants sent for Mr. Williams. The occasion was, for that he had taught publicly, that a magistrate ought not to tender an oath to an unregenerate man, for that we thereby have communion with a wicked man in the worship of God, and cause him to take the name of God in vain. He was heard before all the ministers, and very clearly confuted. Mr. Endicott was at first of the same opinion, but he gave place to the truth. Vol. i. p. 157. We may repeat, here, what ought to be constantly borne in mind, that the statements of Mr. Williams' opinions come, not from himself, but from his opponents. We need not insist on the liability to mistake, in cases where a man's sentiments are thus disjoined from all those explanations and arguments with which he would himself have accompanied them. In the present case, we are not informed of the precise views of Mr. Williams respecting oaths.† He * That is, April 30. Winthrop adopted, a few months before, this mode of denoting time. It seems to have arisen from a desire to avoid the Roman nomenclature, as heathenish. Perhaps an aversion to the Romish church had a share in producing the change. The custom continued for more than fifty years, when it was gradually abandoned, except by the Friends, or Quakers, and Hutchinson thinks, that the popular prejudice against them hastened the decline of the custom. The months were called 1st, 2d, &c. beginning with March, and the days of the week were designated in the same way. + Since these remarks were written, the author has found in Mr. Williams' "Hireling Ministry none of Christ's," an "Appendix as touching oaths, a query." This Appendix is as follows: " Although it be lawful (in case) for Christians to invocate the name of the Most High in swearing; yet since it is a part of his holy worship, and therefore proper unto such as are his true worshippers in spirit and in truth; and persons may as well be forced unto any part of the worship of God as unto this, since it ought not to be used but most solemnly, and in solemn and weighty cases, and (ordinarily) in such as are not otherwise determinable; since it is the voice of the two great lawgivers from God, Moses and Christ Jesus, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses (not swearing) every word shall stand: Whether the enforcing of oaths and spiritual covenants upon a nation, promiscuously, and the constant enforcing of all persons to practise the worship in the most trivial and common cases in all courts (together with the ceremonies of book and holding up the hand, &c.) be not a prostituting of the holy name of the Most High to every unclean lip, and that on slight occasions, and a taking of it by millions, and so many millions of times in vain, and whether it be not a provoking of the eyes of his jealousy who hath said, that he will not hold him (what him or them soever) guiltless, that taketh |