Soul Liberty
In those days in England, many members of the Established Church believed that the Church needed reforming, or purifying. These members were called Puritans.
They were severely persecuted. A number of them emigrated from England to Massachusetts Bay. One body of these colonists settled in Salem, and another founded Charlestown and Boston.
About a year after the settlement of Boston, a young man came thither from England. He, too, had left home because of religious persecution. He was known to be a godly man, and thought to be a Puritan. He was warmly welcomed by the Boston folk. He was Roger Williams.
But soon the good folk of Boston were scandalized.
The Puritans of Boston had not actually separated from the Established Church, as had their neighbours, the Separatists of Plymouth; they had merely purified their mode of worship. They had, moreover, decreed that the Government of their Colony should be directed by their church. They did not permit any man not in good church-standing to have a vote in public affairs. They even persecuted folk who did not believe as they did, and who would not attend their church.
Roger Williams soon electrified them by urging not only separation from the Established Church, but asserting that no Government had a right to interfere with the religious faith of any one. The place of the Government, he said, was to prevent crime, not to enforce any form of religion. Every man had the right to “soul liberty” he asserted.
He also insisted that the King of England had no right whatsoever to give away the lands belonging to the Indians, without their consent.
The Puritans bitterly opposed him. After a few years, since he continued to preach and teach his beliefs, they tried him in their court and banished him from the Colony.
In the middle of a New England Winter, he was forced to leave his wife, child, and many sorrowing friends, and flee through the snow to safety. He had with him to direct his way, only a sun-dial and compass.
His sufferings were terrible. He never got over the effects of the cold and hunger which he endured on that flight through the Wilderness.
He had made friends among the Indians, with Massasoit and Canonicus. He had most lovingly carried the Gospel to them and their peoples. He had passed many a night with them in their lodges.
And now that he was in want and distress, it was his Indian friends who succoured him.
In the Spring, he had begun to build and plant at Seekonk, when Governor Winslow of Plymouth, in the kindest of spirits, sent him word that Seekonk was within the bounds of Plymouth Colony; and in order that there might be no trouble with the Massachusetts Bay Colony, he advised him to move across the water, where he would be as free as the Plymouth folk themselves, adding that then Roger Williams and the Plymouth Folk might be loving neighbours together.