"As the hart panteth for the water brooks,' he longed for the wisdom that rouses the might which so often and so long slumbers in a peasant's arm. He communed with the past and with his own startling thoughts. He summoned around him the venerable sages of antiquity, and in their presence made a feast of fat things.

'A perpetual feast of nectared sweets,

Where no rude surfeit reigns.'

"At the fount of holiest instruction he cleared his vision; and, from the mount of contemplation, breathed in worlds to which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.

"But his soul was too free for the peace of his sycophantic associates; his principles were too philanthropic for the selfishness of that age; the doctrines which he scorned to disavow, were too noble for Old England, and he sought an asylum among the icy rocks of this wilderness world. He came, and was driven from the society of white men, through wintry storms and savages more lenient than interested factions, to plant the first free colony in America. That boy was the founder of Rhode Island; that man was the patriot who stooped his anointed head as low as death for universal rights, and

ever

Fought to protect, and conquered but to bless ;'

that Christian was ROGER WILLIAMS, the first who pleaded for liberty of conscience in this country, and who became the pioneer of religious liberty for the world."-Magoon.

"Roger Williams justly claims the honour of having been the first legislator in the world, in its latter ages, that fully and effectually provided for and established a full, free, and absolute liberty of conscience," says Governor Hopkins.

"Roger Williams possessed one of those rare minds, which looks upon truth with an eagle gaze, and what he saw clearly, that he maintained with invincible courage.

"But the war he waged was with 'soul oppression.' Having been a Puritan minister, he was driven from England by those persecutions for opinion, which, like the confusion of languages at Babel, drove men asunder, and peopled the earth. When Williams arrived in Massachusetts, he proclaimed that the only business of the human legislator is with the actions of man as they affect his fellow-man ; but, as for the thoughts of his mind, and the acts or omissions of his life as respects religious worship, the only lawgiver is God, the only human tribunal, a man's own conscience.

"Williams opposed the church membership right of suffrage, all law compelling attendance, and all taxes for the support of worship. Great astonishment and disturbance arose about their ill-gotten egg of toleration; but the eloquent young Episcopal divine had won the hearts of the people of Salem, who called him to be their pastor. The court forbid it. Williams withdrew, and exercised with great celebrity the pastoral office in Plymouth for two years, when he returned to Salem, and was received with gladness by the people, to punish whom, the court withheld from the town of Salem a tract of granted land."-Mrs. Emma Willard.

Williams complained to the churches of the injustice of the court; but that court disfranchised Salem until ample apology should be given. Williams then met the clamour of all; and even his own wife turned against him. But he declared his determination rather to die than abjure his principles. The court sentenced him to exile. It being midwinter, his earnest request to remain till spring was granted. Soon again the voice of Williams, their recently beloved pastor, was heard pleading for the emancipation of the soul from sin and from man's dominion. Throngs listened with saving delight to him whom they expected would soon plead with and for them no

more.

The court was alarmed, and sent a vessel to convey him to England; but he was not to be found. Williams was an exile: a wanderer in a wilderness and savage land,-in the cold of winter and on stormy nights,-had not "food or fire or company,-knew not what bed or bread did mean, or better shelter than a hollow tree."

A few adherents joined him, and they stopped at Sekonk. Governor Winslow, fearing his remaining in his province would offend others, wrote to Williams, by Governor Winthrop, that he had better "steer his course to Narragansett Bay." Williams embarked, and threw himself upon the mercy of Canonicus, a savage chief, who protected the wanderer, no longer sustained but banished by his Christian brethren.

Canonicus would not sell, but gave Williams all the land between Pawtucket and Mashassuck rivers, "that they might sit down in peace, and enjoy it for ever." Regarding the whole transaction as the result of Divine overruling, they named their new home PROVI

DENCE.

The Pequod or King Philip's war ensued. Williams's influence among the Indians kept other tribes from joining the enemy. He says, "The Lord helped me immediately to put my life into my

hand, and, scarce acquainting my wife, to ship myself alone, in a poor canoe, and to cut through a stormy wind, with great seas every minute, in hazard of life, to the sachem's house. Three days and nights my business forced me to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequod ambassadors, whose hands and arms, methought, reeked with the blood of my countrymen, murdered and massacred by them on Connecticut river, and from whom I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my own throat also. God wonderfully preserved and helped me to break in pieces the Pequods' negotiations and design, and to make a finish, by many travels and charges, the English league with the Narragansetts and Mohegans against the Pequods."

Thus by the influence of this "martyr spirit," this young divine, whose spiritual and political attainments seemed two centuries in advance of the world, were the colonies of New England, which had so recently exiled him, saved from falling a prey to the savage knife.

Williams was founder and first President of Rhode Island colony; he continued in that office many years; was several times ambassador at the court of England. He obtained a charter from the king, and stood high in the estimation of the civilized world and savage nations. None finally did him more honour than his persecutors, whom he requited kindly the cruelties he had received.

Though responsible for all the doings of justice in his colony, yet Williams ceased not to teach and preach unto the people whom he governed, and the natives near, the unsearchable riches of Christ. He made tedious journeys to other settlements as an herald of salvation to lost men. Having taken the Bible for his rule of doctrine and practice, he soon discovered that it taught no infant baptism, but required repentance and faith in all, and especially such as professed Christ, which must be done by being "buried with Christ in baptism."

Hubbard says, "Many of his people entertained the same views." There being no minister in New England who had been baptized by immersion on a profession of faith: in March, 1639, Ezekiel Holliman baptized Roger Williams, who then administered the rite to Holliman and ten others.

The course pursued was the best and only way, by which they, and persons shut out from access to all organized Baptist churches, could afford. Williams had been ordained by an English Episcopal Church Bishop, a professed successor of the Apostles; none, and certainly not our Episcopal brethren, will deny his "divine right" to administer the ordinance; and his Prayer Book required that he "dip the candidate

!

in the water in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost."

Thus was founded, under Roger Williams, as Governor of Rhode Island, and minister of the Lord Jesus, and by Ezekiel Holliman, deputy governor, with ten others, the first Baptist church on the continent of America. To these members twelve others were soon added, and from that day to the present that church has been a burning and a shining light; by its instrumentality thousands have been born to live eternally. Among its membership and bishops it has enrolled some of the most eminent scholars, statesmen, jurists, and divines, that ever consecrated talents, time, property, and acquirements, to the glory of God and the good of mankind.

In 1638, Rev. Hanserd Knollys, an Episcopalian, fled English persecution for his Baptist views, and came to Boston; here he was opposed, so he left and settled in Dover, New Hampshire, where he preached for four years. He returned to London in 1641, and founded a Baptist church in that city, where he had crowds of hearers, whose pastor he continued until 1691, when he died in peace, at the good old age of ninety-three years. Dr. Mather, says, "He had a respectful character in the churches of this wilderness."

Baptist sentiments prevailed much in Boston vicinity about 1646. Records show that the popularity of sentiment against infant baptism was the chief means of calling a Synod of Congregationists, to compose a platform for the government of their churches. Hooker, the founder of Hartford, Connecticut, died too soon to attend; but he had published a book teaching, that "children as children had no right to baptism, so that it belongs not to any predecessor either nearer or farther off removed from the next parents, to give right of this privilege to their children."

In 1639 attempts to form a Baptist church in Boston were legally frustrated, and the society was broken up by the court. Five years later, a legislative act was passed, for the "suppression of the obnoxious sect;" but says Hubbard, "With what success it is hard to say, all men being inclined to pity them that suffer."

The "bloody tenet" was framed and executed upon the Baptists. Sir Henry Vane and Sir Richard Saltonstall in vain remonstrated, being then in England; and the people who had fled persecution in the old world, rebuilt its prisons, recast its bolts and bars, and rekindled its fires in the new world, and sought thereby to break down the consciences of their brethren for whom Christ died.

Dunster, President of Cambridge College, embraced Baptist scnti

ments, and lost his high office as a consequence. But his preaching against infant baptism enlightened the Rev. Thomas Gould, in Boston, who with others, in 1665, founded the first Baptist church in that city.

Rev. Thomas Dungan, in 1684, with others, formed a church in Cold Spring, near Bristol, Pa., but the same was dissolved in 1702. The ancestors and parents of Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, were exemplary members of this church.

Penepack Church, ten miles north of Philadelphia, is the oldest in this State, and second on the continent, it having been formed in 1686. This church has continued flourishing and useful from its origin up to the present time. It dismissed members to form the first church in Philadelphia, which was the second in the State. These two churches jointly, for many years enjoyed the pastoral labours of the Rev. G. Eaton, Elias Keach, and others.

In process of time emigrants from the old country who were Baptists, and members of these first formed churches, planted themselves in Virginia, and in most of the principal towns of the colonies, so that quite a number of Baptist churches were founded in the seventeenth century. The first Baptist church in New York was founded in 1762; but from 1669 Baptist worship and an irregular church arrangement had been maintained in that city.

All of the first formed churches in the different States were fruitful vines, whose branches hung over the wall; they sent out members and ministers who planted much of the seed that has produced so abundant an harvest in the former and latter years.

A

Very early attention was given to learning by our churches. Literary and Theological School was opened at Hopewell, New Jersey, in 1756; Rev. Isaac Eaton, A. M. was the president. Another by his pupil, Samuel Jones, D. D., at Penepack, in 1766.

Brown University, Rhode Island, was founded 1762. From these early nurseries of learning and theological knowledge came forth scholars, who mingling in with their less cultivated but strong-minded and self-educated brethren, the pastors in those times, laid a foundation for the prosperity and success which has attended our denomination's progress, under a similar and harmonious union of ministerial graces and gifts ever since. God grant that while the world stands, we may be as humble and prosperous, as uncorrupt in doctrine, and as holy in practice, as were the fathers of the Baptist churches in North America.

During the revolutionary war many of our churches were scattered by the male members being engaged with the army in defending the