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ROGER WILLIAMS, 
 
 THE PROPHETIC LEGISLATOR, 
 
 A PAPER 
 
 READ BEFORE THE RHODE ISL.iND HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 
 
 NOVEMBEK 8, 18*11. 
 
 By THOMAS T. STONE. 
 
 FEINTED BY REQUEST OF THE R. I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 ^. 
 
 PROVIDENCE: 
 
 A. CRAWFORD GREENE, PRINTER TO THE STATE. 
 18(2. 
 

ROGEE WILLIAMS 
 
 It will be my chief endeavor at this time to bring- before you, 
 not so much the story, as the character, the service, the idea, of 
 Eoger Williams. And in doing this, admitting such limitations, 
 as bound all human souls, and even acknowledging' ^nthout re- 
 serve some things which seem errors, I shall try to show the 
 relation of these also to his higher qualities, and to lead your 
 minds especially to the unity which amidst all chang'es charac- 
 terizes his whole course. At the outset, however, it may not be 
 improper to refer to the main facts — simply as facts — of his life. 
 Here I have to repeat what history and' tradition report to us ; 
 that he was born probably about the close of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, in Wales ; that he received an University training for the 
 ministry of the Established Church ; that after a short ministry 
 within that church he was drawn into another connection ; that 
 he followed the Puritan immigrants to Massachusetts Bay, join- 
 ing them in February, 1831 ; that in April of that year he became 
 minister in Salem ; that from Salem he removed to Plymouth 
 the following August, remaining there about two years ; that in 
 August, 1633, he returned to Salem, becoming on the death of 
 Mr Skelton, in 1634, his successor in the ministry, and continu- 
 ing such until his removal by order of the General Court, in 
 January, 1636. 
 
 Thus is closed the first great period of his life, which we may 
 consider as his education for the great future before him. Thence 
 it is known that to his character as a man and a preacher, is 
 added that of the founder of a Commonwealth. Beginning with 
 a few friends a settlement on the eastern side of the Seekonk, he 
 removed, by request of the Governor of the Plymouth Colony, 
 which claimed that territory, to the western bank, laying the 
 
foundation of tliis City and State ; a foundation which, it is well 
 known, through his influence, bore as its distinguishing- feature, 
 absolute exemption of religion and conscience from political 
 imposition. Here, severed from his former associates of Ply- 
 mouth and the Bay, he remained steadily their friend, gaining 
 by his virtues, as in his earlier abodes, the confidence of the na- 
 tive tribes, so helping to preserve them in peace, and when war 
 came, even in his old age, accepting a military commission in 
 the last great struggle. Twice at least, alone and with slight 
 pecuniary resources, he spent no little time in England in prose- 
 cution of the interests of his feeble Commonwealth, sometimes 
 when at home its chief officer, always in or out of office laboring 
 for its grov/th, its honor, and prosperity. During all this time 
 his mind, ever active, is pressing after what of truth he per- 
 ceived in advance of his age, so that instead of staying where 
 his predecessors had conducted him, he must go forward, asking 
 new questions, inviting and welcoming new ideas, seeking to "re- 
 form the reformation." At Plymouth he had been suspected of 
 tendencies to what was called Anabaptism ; he was baptized by 
 immersion at Providence. In Boston he had been dissatisfied 
 with the position of the churches^ censuring them for communion 
 with the English Church ; this church, in his view, being so cor- 
 rupted by adherences to Rome, which in common with a largo 
 portion of his Protestant contemporaries he regarded as unchrist- 
 ian, if not Antichrist itself: — scarcely had he joined the Bap- 
 tists, but he felt that the true church is still unattained and 
 withdraws, neither Jrom his ministry nor from spiritual com- 
 munion with devout men and women, but from oiitward ecclesi- 
 astical relations. In such an external isolation he seems to have 
 remained through the rest of his life. As facts equally signifi- 
 cant we should observe that he strenuously maintained the rights 
 of the natives to their own soil, denying the authority of the 
 king, in virtue of wluit was deemed his Christianity, to appro- 
 priate it : — the colonies ought to purchase fairly and pay for all 
 the land which they occupied. Another of his peculiar opinions : — 
 Instead of regarding an oath as a mere form or as an appeal to 
 fear, he deemed it a solemn act of religious worship, to be freed 
 from all superstitious ceremonies, and not to be taken irreligious- 
 ly, so not by one deemed unregenerate. 
 
 Now to understand the character supposed in most of the 
 
facts thus presented, wc must forgot our century and its ques- 
 tions, and opinions, and endeavor to open within us the con- 
 sciousness, so far as it was Protestant, of the seventeenth 
 century, — the seventeenth century, moreover, as specifically 
 English. In doing so we may go still further back. Protest- 
 antism did not then regard itself as purely an onward movement 
 in the process of humanity : it rather assumed a reverse step. 
 Primeval Christianity Avas supposed to have sprung into exist- 
 ence, full grown, perfect, armed with every weapon of assault 
 or defence, thence going forth to summon and subdue mankind 
 to itself, that thus ibllowing its Divine voice and step, the great 
 hope of the world might be reached. So to understand the 
 Hebrew and Greek Scriptures as seen in the light of the New 
 Testament, was the highest knowledge ; the results of what were 
 considered the four first General Councils being accepted as 
 valid statements of Christian doctrine and the system which as 
 strictly theological is represented by Athanasius, as what may 
 be called anthropological is represented by Augustine, borne 
 down through twelve centuries, being identified with Christian- 
 ity as the very essence and foundation of all true religion. Bred 
 within the compass of this faith, neither he nor any who might 
 meet him as antagonists, appear ever to have thought of with- 
 drawing from it. Luther and Melanchthon, Zuinglius, and 
 Calvin, Cranmer and Jewell, Hooker and Robinson, differing 
 much as they might, — as some of them actually did, — stood 
 thus far essentially together. The Augsburg Confession, the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, the Presbyterian Standards, and the Con- 
 gregational Platforms, were thus in harmony with each other. 
 Nor do I find indications that in regard to these subjects Roger 
 Williams had at anytime departed, or been charged with depart- 
 ing, from the ecclesiastical formulas. 
 
 Now apply this statement to some of what were deemed his 
 errors ; these two especially : — an oath should not be adminis- 
 tered to " the unregenerate ; " it is wrong to join with an unre- 
 generate man in prayer. However we may regard these propo- 
 sitions, I confess it seems to me very far fi-om discreditable either 
 to his logic or to his religious and moral character, standing on 
 the ground of the theology received by his antagonists as well 
 as by himself, to have advanced them. All agreed that the man 
 imregenerate was in a state which made his whole moral action 
 
sinful ; he was unfit, previously to reg'eneration, to offer any 
 worship but in the language of the day would have been hypo- 
 critical, pei'haps not deliberately and consciously so, but actually 
 so, notwithstanding. But the oath and the prayer Williams 
 believed two solemn acts ol' worship ; so what would it be but 
 })i-ofanation of both to demand oi- request them of one in whose 
 lips both would be false and sinful ? 
 
 This view becomes still clearer and reaches to other positions 
 of Williams, when we consider more distinctly the relation in 
 which regeneration was suppose<l to stand to the church. A 
 common opinion refers the limitation "to the regenerate" of 
 the right to communion as exprcs-^ed in the Lord's supper, oidy 
 to what were termed " gathered churches," those in particular 
 of a congregational form. The opinion is erroneous, if applied 
 to the period in which Williams lived, the seventeenth century. 
 Among all the nations confessing Christianity, regeneration so 
 far as the word went, was virtually presupposed, I believe 
 demanded, as a condition of such communion. Through the fall 
 of the first man, the whole human race, such the doctrine, had 
 become involved in one universal ruin. The original sin trans- 
 mitted from him polluted as it dwelt in each and all of his natural 
 posterity. All thus dead must be raised to new life ; otherwise 
 they are incapable of incorporation into the church. To the 
 majority in Western Europe, to the Roman church, and to a 
 large section of the Englit»h, baptism was regeneration. And 
 as in the prevalence of such a view nearly all, if not quite, had 
 been baptized, so, all or nearly all, had become regenerate ; so 
 nothing but either their own choice or some act of ecclesiastical 
 discipline could hinder their exercise of the right. Within the 
 church of England there came to be those wlio doubted this 
 identity of baptism, an outward observance, with regeneration 
 which they believed an inward divine process. And to this 
 inward process they naturally applied the traditional view ; only 
 the regenerate, all said, may be accepted to communion. But 
 the regenerate are, not the baptized, — these may still remain 
 dead in the original sin, — -but those, only those, who Iiave been 
 born within their own consciousnf^ss into the new and heavenly 
 life ; severed from the first Adam, united to the second, the Lord 
 from heaven. So there can be no such thing as a true cliurch 
 built up and constituted as either the Roman or the English. 
 
Not the Roman ; all Puritans and non-conformists consented that 
 this was apostate. Not the English, many believed, though 
 some among our New England fathers hesitated to admit this 
 conclusion. Of these Roger Williams seems not to have been 
 one. To him the church was spiritual, not national. A church 
 might indeed grow till it should gather all the persons of a 
 nation within its communion ; but a nation cannot as such grow 
 to be a church. This principle enters into his doctrine of free- 
 dom of conscience and soul. 
 
 Now apply this order of thought. Communion in the memo- 
 rial of the Lord's supper had become the expression, the silent 
 word, of religious sympathy, — confined to those whom each 
 church pronounced regenerate : excommunication the counter 
 expression, the word which pronounced separation from the body 
 deemed regenerate ; withholding communion without excom- 
 munication the most expressive reproof for delinquency. Roger 
 Williams is censured, pronounced comparatively illiberal, because 
 he declined communion with the church in Boston when that 
 church refused to acknowledge sin in communing with the church 
 of England. But mark this ; lie did not denounce individual men 
 and women ; toward them he never failed to leel and express the 
 most tender affection ; it is the church, not the persons, to which 
 his objection reaches. If equally consistent with the central ideas 
 acknowledged on all sides, would not the church in Boston — the 
 people of New England in general — have stood with him ? I 
 am not undertaking to say how far those opinions were true, how 
 far false,^ — this is not the task I have assumed ; I simply say, 
 the ministers, the magistrates, the churches, of Massachusetts 
 Bay stopped short in the application of their own principles ; 
 Roger Williams had the eye to see what was their true applica- 
 tion, and the heart to go forward just so far as he saw his way 
 clear. If anything illiberal, the illiberality was not of himself, 
 but of his age ; the consistency, the sincerity, the freedom, the 
 manly utterance of thought, were not of his age, but of his own 
 nobility of spirit. 
 
 An example of this nobility is furnished in one instance, — 
 suppose Williams to have been concerned in the action. Gov- 
 ernor Endicott had the sign of the cross — the cross, I suppose, 
 of St. George — removed from the flag. And it is thought the 
 influence of Williams led him to do it. For this act I do not 
 
8 
 
 remember ever to have seen anything which went in favor of 
 Williams beyond excuse or apolog-y. I shall venture something 
 else. The reformers even of the English church put away not a 
 few things wliich the earlier church regarded as sacred ; the 
 Puritans went further, seeking to leave nothing which could lead 
 to idolatry or endanger relapse to the church which they had 
 left, for what they honestly believed its corruptions and its false- 
 ness. The flag was indeed an emblem of the kingdom, not of 
 the church, farther than the church was connected with the 
 kingdom. But was St. George a saint to worship in the state, 
 to renounce in the church ? Should the cross which must be 
 banished from the church be suffered to invite homage from the 
 Commonwealth ? Idolatry is idolatry everywhere and anywhere. 
 And I doubt whether any tiling nobler than fear of exciting a new 
 displeasure in England prevented a general sympathy with this 
 act through the whole colony. I will not excuse it. I will ofter 
 no apology. I will say, taking the act according to what I 
 understand to have been its meaning, it was another great protest 
 against falsehood ; another assertion of the incompetency of the 
 State to sanction wrong ; another utterance in the face of impe- 
 rial authority, whether it be right in the sight of God to 
 hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. The thing 
 may be pronounced a trifle ; the significance is infinite. 
 
 Another thing, not uncertain like this, but of undoubted cer- 
 tainty in his political relations. The king in his grant to the 
 colonies claimed to be sovereign lord of the continent, transfer- 
 ing it to the colonists on the ground of his own prerogative, 
 without intimation of the antecedent rights of the original pos- 
 sessors and occupants. It is by no means strange that men 
 clear of sight as Roger Williams, should perceive the falseness 
 as well as arrogance of this claim, and that seeing it one so 
 frank as he should have given distinct utterance to his percep- 
 tion. This he did in a letter to the king, of which I do not 
 find that any copy exists. So far as we have means — chiefly 
 from his own expressions — of ascertaining his views, they were 
 far enough from dishonorable to his character ; views perfectly 
 true in themselves, and not unworthy to be declared and serious- 
 ly heeded at a time when there were such temptations to 
 overlook, to invade, even to set at nought, the rights of the 
 native people. At that hour Williams denied the right of those 
 
9 
 
 who were called kings " by virtue of their Christianity to take 
 and give away the lands and countries of other men." An , 
 evident truth, and the utterance then might appear most timely ! 
 And this letter, he tells us that he drew up, not only moved by 
 his own solemn conviction, but sustained by the concurrence of 
 others, — "not without the approbation of some of the chiefs of 
 New England." 
 
 After all Roger Williams has been characterized by a phrase 
 so brief, — if true, so felicitous, — that we need to examine it : 
 " Conscientious contentiousness." Conscientious — -none have 
 ever ventured to deny this ; what is the evidence of his conten- 
 tiousness ? I have been able to find nothing which seems to n^e 
 Xso much as to countenance it except in one of his last acts, and 
 quite, 1 think, his last book ; — his controversy with the Friends, 
 usually called Quakers, in Newi)ort and Providence, and his 
 report of it in a volume afterward publislied, bearing lor part of 
 its title, George Fox digged out of his Burowes. So far as I 
 am aware, the theology of this work is the same as in his other 
 writings, the same as generally received at that, time in New 
 England. The movement of his mind, quick, energetic, earnest 
 as it was, directed itself always, I think, to another course than 
 that of original inquiry concerning doctrine ; the right of unob- 
 structed thought, not the question of the results of thought, 
 was enough to fill out one life. And as with him the doctrine 
 was traditional, so the method of his presenting it in this contro- 
 versy. The grand soul of Milton had not risen above the use 
 of severe words ; scarce any, even if there were any, in his 
 ago had surmounted it. George Fox himself certainly had not. 
 What wonder at the. contrast then of this work with his other 
 writings, so full of sweetness and brotherly affection ? These 
 other works are utterances of his own soul ; this is echo of his 
 age. Here again besides defending what he deems truth, he has 
 a side purpose ; he wishes to show to his friends who were 
 averse to his opinions and his legislation, and to the people 
 everywhere who might distrust them, that he too could defend 
 what they alike believed truth, and defend it as strenuously as 
 they. Hence in part at least these errors. 
 
 He could dispute, and dispute keenly too, against what he 
 believed to be false. But he could never be drawn to relinquish 
 his central idea. That idea he had set forth within the first years 
 
10 
 
 of Ilis ministry in New England. That idea he had carried with 
 him from Salem to Providence. That idea he had incorporated 
 into the fundamental law of the infant State. That idea he con- 
 tinued by deed and word to proclaim with a breadth greater than 
 any known writer of his century. Milton was y':'ung-er than ho, 
 and his personal friend, as he was also the high champion of 
 freedom ; but Milton set bounds to the liberty of religi()us utter- 
 ance. Taylor was younger than either, and gave to his country 
 the great plea for liberty of prophesying ; but the pro})hesying 
 after all must be within tlie compass of acknowledged Christ- 
 ianity. And later still, Locke urges similar enlargement of con- 
 fession and speech; but even Locke,* I think, failed of reaching 
 the amplitude of Williams's thought; he made the claim large 
 as humanity — Jew, Mahometan, Gentile, are all included. Per- 
 haps even Williams might have never distinctly stated to himself 
 the difieren(;e between toleration and freedom. But that difl'er- 
 cnce underlies all his arguments. Their spirit exclaims, " I beg 
 no privilege, I demand a right. Talk of tolerating me, — of 
 bearing with me, of graciously suilering me to think and to tell 
 my thought ! What have you to do with this ? Who empow- 
 ered you to assume that you are in the right, yet that from your 
 loftier elevation you will let me speak a word which you do not 
 accept ? — Thought is of God, not of man ; to utter his thought 
 is the right which God has given, not a favor which churches or 
 states have conferred." And the prophet holds this prerogative 
 of speech as not a right only inherent in his nature, but as a trust 
 which God conunands him to put into use. Our moral hero 
 received the trust and obeyed the commandment. 
 
 AVliy charge the prophetic soul with contentiousness ?• — with 
 loving to produce excitement ? with something like a necessity 
 to live in controversy ? For myself I see no shadow of evidence 
 that this was his characti'r. Not only was he conscientious, but 
 moreover of a very kindly and aflectionate disposition ; a man 
 whose integrity is not juore marked than his power of attracting 
 friends to himself. At Plymouth and at Salem he was loved as 
 few are ever loved ; men like VV^inthrop, and Winslow, when 
 they miglitnot approve eitlier liis ojiinion or his action, continued 
 still to love his person. And probably no man ever lived in 
 New England who at once exerted such influence over the origi- 
 jial, inhabitants of our soil, aiul gained so perfectly their affection 
 
11 
 
 and confidence. Do characteristics so unquestionable as these 
 indicate contentiousness of disposition or conduct ? When men 
 speak in this way they seem to me to come nearer convicting 
 themselves of ignorance of some high moral experiences, than 
 justifying either their censures or the conduct of the ministers 
 and magistrates of Massachusetts. Great thoughts, such as 
 those which inspired him amidst the usurpations of his day, 
 must out ; they cannot be kept in. Men who have never known 
 such experiences, can never judge ariglit of the laws which 
 they embosom. Tiio old Hebrew })rophet was charged with 
 disturbing Lsracl ; the fire of God flamed from his heart. But 
 the ages have confessed that his retort was just ; and tlie tyrant 
 king was the real troubl(;r of his nation. The government of 
 Massachusetts Avas introducing tyranny not the less real because 
 it was in unconsciousness ; it is something diviner than conten- 
 tiousness which pronounced the redeeming truth. There was 
 disturbance ; who made it ? — the intruders on the rights of the 
 soul ? — or the gentle young man wlio declared the intrusion 
 wrong ? — who practically proved his declaration and inaugurated 
 thereby the most beneficent revolution in government which the 
 history of eighteen centuries has recorded. Massachusetts was 
 certainly wrong ; Roger Williams was as certainly right. It is 
 the old story forever repeated. A prophet was never denounced 
 or punished as a prophet ; there is something else always pro- 
 duced against him. A martyr never suffered, if we believe his 
 antagonists, because he attests the truth ; he is heretic or obsti- 
 nate, seditious or disobedient. We know whom men once tried 
 to make a king, and could not, because he retired into a solitude 
 to escape the pressure ; yet not long after a charge on his trial 
 for lilb or death is that he made himself king. So it is always. 
 So it is here. To clear the guilty oppressor; the innocent victim 
 must be charged with fault not his own. 
 
 In fact I think we should drop the tone of apology. What I 
 have said thus far may seem like vindication of the prophetic 
 preacher and statesman. If so, let me ask you to put it in your 
 own minds into some higher language befitting more truly the 
 subject ; especially when I add one thing more. Religious tole- 
 ration, as men are accustomed to call it, seems to be grounded 
 in some minds on the presupposition that religion is not of suffi- 
 cient value to be meddled with by the state ; men's opinions and 
 
12 
 
 worships may bo let alone simply because they are all trifles ; 
 wiser heads care for none of these things. The precise opposite 
 of Williams. With him man should be free to think, free to 
 worship, because thought and worship are things too high, too 
 sacred, for any government of men to control. To him God is 
 the supreme perfection ; to him man is sacred as child of his 
 destined to immortality ; to him the soul is the man himself; to 
 him the mysteries which lie hidden in tlie depths of the religicms 
 consciousness are the groat interests of humanity ; to him true 
 faith and inward worship and sincere obedience to the highest 
 voice, are the great realities. But faith, hope and charity can 
 never be forced ; they can grow only from the free soul rising 
 by virtue of the quickening spirit to tiu^ living God. Within 
 such holy ground, within these precincts of love and truth, let 
 none dare intrude with endeavor to compel or control what God 
 makes iree. Enovigh lor human government to protect the bodies 
 and estates of men ; to guard and watch over what it is able to 
 manage ; bej^ond its ability, beyond its ])rovince, let it never 
 presume to pass. Let it do what it can and ought, not usurp- 
 ing dominion where it has neither right nor fitness. As illustra- 
 tion of his spirit let me give one grand declaration : — " Chaines 
 of gold and diamonds are cliaines, and nuiy [»inch and gall as 
 sore and deepe as tliose of brasse and iron and so forth. All 
 lawes to force even the grossest conscience — of the most besot- 
 ted idolaters in the world, Jew or Turke, Papist or Pagan — I say 
 all such laws restraining from or constraining to worsliij), and in 
 matters merely si>iritual, and of no civil nature, such laws, such 
 acts, are chaines, ai-e yokes not possibly to be fitted to the soules 
 neck, without oppression and exasperation." 
 
 Dropping now wliether vindication or eulogy, let us mark the 
 adjustment of all these things, the natural qualities of Koger 
 Williams, his earnest religious convictions, the successive evenfs 
 of his own life compared with the condition of society both in 
 England and America, meeting to render him the Prophetic 
 Legislator of a new Commonwealth. Out ihnn the depths of 
 his own soul quickened by heavenly inspiration grew the one 
 grand principle which he- proclaimed almost as soon as he touched 
 the coast of New England. Like every Divine principle, it 
 gained strength and clearness by the opposition which it encoun- 
 tered. Could he have uttered his thought unchecked, not only 
 
might wo never have heard his fervent protests against "the 
 bloody tcnent of persecution," but the whole might have re- 
 mained a mere theory, privately or occasionally expressed, and 
 so died with other kindred utterances. His idea demanded a 
 state to embody it ; the prophet was needed somewhere else 
 than in the pulpit, or at the printing press ; the jdace is ready 
 waiting as unconscious as himself for the new law. A pro- 
 phetic legislator, moreover, not only when we consider the higli 
 source ol" his service, but when we note the conse juences which 
 have llowed from what seemed his }iuiid)le condition ; — freedom 
 of religious speech and worshij), illustrated in a state of which 
 he was lather, per|)etuated through its wliole histo-'y, proved not 
 only safe but beneficent to mankind, has passed from the faith 
 of one living soul, into the grandeur of an institution destined 
 to encircle and bless the world. 
 
 But this opens a larger range of view. 
 
 Thus far we have contemplated the historical character. Let 
 us endeavor now to translate it into its ge7iuin( significance ; 
 the living idea which, in the growth of our owi. nation and in 
 the progress of humanity, he brought into manifestation and 
 distinct action. The idea of humanity which Cliristianity em- 
 bodied, man as man true son of the Eternal Father, was per- 
 secuted in behalf of their national theocracy by the Jews, in 
 behalf of their lo'cal gods by the nations which we call heathen. 
 So soon as it had overcome and outlived this series of persecu- 
 tions, diversities of thought inevitable to tlie human mind, if, 
 declining to stand still, it seeks to advance toward the truth 
 Avhich seems always near, but is always receding as we tliink 
 ourselves ai)proaching ; sucli inevitable diversities called i'orth 
 internal contlicts fearful as those which had been surmounted. 
 Alternately with the changes of imperial opinion in Constantine 
 and those of his predecessors who acknowledged the new faith, 
 the adherents of Athanasius and the Nicaean decisions on the 
 one side, and on the other those of Arius and other teachers 
 deemed heretical, were like their respective leaders exposed to 
 extreme severities of punishment from the magistrates. The 
 Divine idea was broken into discordant idol-s. And these idols 
 of dogma and sect surrounded themselves with the powers of 
 the governments which accepted them. So it was until at 
 length one of them is either destroyed or driven into silence and 
 
14 
 
 submission. Throiig-li the wliole medieval period this enforced 
 sil(M!cc was the establislied order ; wlionever that silence was 
 broken, tlu; Puntihcate pronounced Catholic had attained the 
 power ill all Western Europe either to suppress the voice or to 
 punish tlio speaker. Herein 'Ciiurch and State had become one. 
 I'rotestantism brought the same idols of dogma and sect from 
 the church whicdi it abandoned and d(Miounced, and with them 
 the same instruments of protection and ])unish!nent. In Eng- 
 land it Avas the state which assumed control of the church ; — 
 its political sovcu'eign constituted and acknowledged Head of 
 the Cliurch. Through several reigns, the claim we may perhaps 
 say, was made good. With Henry the eighth and Edward the 
 sixth accordingly, there is a Church of England called Protes- 
 tant ; the churcli of England comes under the Pope with Mary 
 f(u- the |)apal power eipially with the true reformed thought 
 denies the king's suprenuicy in the church ; Elizabeth, we might 
 almost say, Avas the English Church, so complete the dominion 
 which the magistracy had gained over the conscience and reli- 
 gious thouglit. But the soul of man lives through all these 
 oppressions. James would be wluit Elizabeth had been. But 
 neitlier was he a Tudor, nor was the tliouglit of England the 
 same as a half century earlier. Charles mistook both himself 
 and his age as really as his father ; men were determined to ask 
 their own questions and to declare the answers made to them. 
 Thirteen centuries of political usurpation over human thought 
 had made jjersecution an established institution; as much so, 
 for a familiar ilhistration, as slavery thirty years agfi in America, 
 possibly more so. Thirteen centuries, the combined powers of 
 church and state enibrced to tlie utmost of their ability, com. 
 plete submission to what they declared the truth of God. AVho 
 shoidd question such antliority ? What the idea which should 
 go forth in untried armor to drive from the temple and the pal- 
 ace those idols which mistaken piety and imperious power had 
 united to set up ? No doubt that idea — for it is ancient as the 
 stiiil of man, nay, as the being ol" God, liad often appeared, 
 recognized or unrecognized, welcomed as Divine by some pre- 
 pared heart, or laid as demon by some priestly charm ; at length 
 during that very reign which ended in the practical demonstra- 
 tion that man is greater tliaii king,' and mind holier than liie- 
 ran;hy, here amidst strenuous endeavors both of church and 
 
 3477^-54 
 
15 
 
 state, of ministers of religion invoking power to suppress sup- 
 posed error, -and (jf magistrates controlling by their acts, both 
 ministers and churches, lived and moved in one banished man, 
 t'ac prophetic founder of a state, the grand idea which at once 
 interprets his own history and opens a new era in the progress 
 of mankind : — he called it Soul Freedom. Soul Freedom : that 
 is tlie meaning of tlie (iity years struggle, suflbriiig, labor, which 
 in establisliing a state, whose inauguration was rescue of the soul 
 from all i)oliticul impositions, should introduce a new order to go 
 forth over all the earth, overtluxnving wliat were deemed among 
 the most sacred traditions of so many centuries, and dismissing 
 the state i'roni all supervision over the free thought and word of 
 num. 
 
 But this freedom of soul means more than that. The state is 
 not the only tyrant of the conscience. From Constantine — go- 
 ing no further back as we might — the church has been no less 
 tyrannous. Nor has one soul ever risen within the bosom of the 
 church, seeking in solemn and hearty earnestness to indicate 
 the way to higher vision and larger thought and deeper commu- 
 nion, without finding in the church perhaps the sternest repres- 
 sion and the fastening of by no means the lightest bond. All 
 the force of this majestic idea whose triumph over the state 
 marked the seventeenth century, must be transferred with no 
 limitation to the church, and advanced so far that every man 
 shall feel himself encouraged by the church as well as by the 
 state, and cheered in all his efibrts to gain and spread abroad 
 loi'tier conceptions of the truth and a holier communion of man- 
 kind. 
 
 No limitation 1 Freedom is never a thing to fear ; the only for- 
 midable enemy is slavery. Men sometimes think there is too 
 nuich freedom ; forgetting that slavery is sole parent of all those 
 evils which they refer to freedom. Men not seldom ask what 
 should be the limitations of freedom ? — of freedom even in relig- 
 ion ? No limitations, we may answer, not limitations, only pro- 
 tections, encouragements, growths. Freedom of soul I What 
 does this phrase mean ? The soul itself in the unrestrained ac- 
 tion of its own essential and immortal elements. The soul first 
 of all within itself uncontrolled, uimioved by tyrannous passions, 
 by enthralling appetites, by reasonless i)rcjudices, by selfish 
 impulses, by anything which can be pronounced sin ; just so far 
 
 '}>• '-. 
 
16 
 
 as an^^ sin, just so far frcoJi)in is lost, just so far slavery is intro- 
 duced. The soul is so far fettered by an alien force. Its own 
 laws, the laws one with its godlike essence, are dethroned, and 
 laws which are not truly laws are enthroned. Men are accus- 
 tomed to 2)ut freedom and' law in contrast; true freedom and right 
 law are one — one everlasting- reality appearing in two aspects. 
 The soul once in freedom evolves law ; the soul obedient to law 
 finds the law but the life itself from God, wherein it rises and 
 soars, unbounded, through cloudless air, evermore nearer to the 
 great sun whicli (piickens and erdightens the universe. It lives 
 in tlod, because (iod lives in it. Its own freedom is his unshack- 
 led life ; its law is that same life concentrating all its powers, 
 guiding all its movements, enlarging its freedom, and uniting it 
 with the great harmonies of the spiritual sphere and of the 
 realms of nature. 
 

 
 
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