" There is glorious writing here,
and its effect cannot be suggested by quoting sentences. But
there is one sentence in a letter written by Williams in his old
age to his fellow-townsmen of Providence which points the whole
moral of the terrible mistake made by the men who sought
spiritual liberty in America for themselves, only to deny that
same liberty to others. "I have only one motion and petition,"
begs this veteran pioneer who had forded many a swollen stream
and built many a rude bridge in the Plantations: "it is this,
that after you have got over the black brook of some soul bondage
yourselves, you tear not down the bridge after you."
It is for such wise and humane counsels as this that Roger
Williams is remembered. His opponents had mightier intellects
than his, but the world has long since decided against them.
Colonial sermon literature is read today chiefly by antiquarians
who have no sympathy for the creed which once gave it vitality.
Its theology, like the theology of "Paradise Lost or the Divine
Comedy," has sunk to the bottom of the black brook.
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