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endeavored to preserve something of the tone of feeling which pervades the latter. I flatter myself, however, that the Plymouth elder is a more moderate man than Mr. Cotton. As a proof, hear Mr. Cotton in his own words set forth the advantages which a state derives from persecuting heretics, and the summary mode in which the civil magistrate may deal with them.

To the question of Mr. Williams, What glory to God-what good to the souls and bodies of their subjects, did these princes bring in persecuting? Mr Cotton thus replies: "The good that is brought to princes and subjects, by the due punishment of apostate seducers and idolaters and blasphemers, is manifold.

First; It putteth away evil from the people, and cutteth off a gangrene which would spread to further ungodliness.

Secondly; It driveth away wolves from worrying and scattering the sheep of Christ; (for false teachers be wolves.)

Thirdly; Such executions upon such evil doers causeth all the country to hear and fear, and do no more such wickedness.

Fourthly; The punishments, executed upon false prophets and seducing teachers, do bring down showers of God's blessings upon the civil state.

Fifthly; It is an honor to God's justice that such judgments are executed." He says, "If there be stones in the streets the magistrate need not fetch a sword from the smith's shop, nor a halter from the roper's, to punish a heretic.”

It will appear that time has made no improvement upon the leading principles of Williams, as gathered from different parts of his replies to Cotton. He says that "the people are the origin of all free power in government." "That the people are not invested by Christ Jesus with power to rule his Church." That they can give no such power to the magistrate. "That the kingdom of Christ is spiritual"-that to introduce the civil sword into this spiritual kingdom is "to confound Heaven and earth together, and lay all upon heaps of confusion”—“ Is to take Christ and make him king by force (John vi, 15)-to make his kingdom of this world-to set up a civil and temporal Israel-to bound out new earthly lands of Canaan; yea, and to set up a Spanish inquisition, in all parts of the world, to the speedy destruction of millions of souls," &c.

Cotton says, "that when the kingdoms of this carth become the kingdoms of the Lord, it is not by making Christ a temporal king; but by making the temporal kingdoms nursing fathers to the Church"-" that religion was not to be propagated by the sword; but protected and preserved by it."

Williams replies, "that the husbandman weeds his garden to increase his grain, and that consequently it is the object of the hand that destroys the heretic to make the Christian"-"That the sword may make a nation of hypocrites, but not of Christians," &c.

I have thrown together these few detached sentences, that the reader, who may have little inclination to peruse a controversy on a question which happily has no place in the present age, may form some opinion of its character. The discussion occupies two considerable volumes.

STANZA XL.

Williams, he said, it is my thankless lot,
Thee with no pleasant message now to greet;
Nor hath our Winslow, in his charge, forgot
(For his behest I bear and words repeat)
His former friendship, but right loath is he
To vex his neighbors by obliging thee.

After Williams had built and planted at Seekonk, he was visited by a messenger

from Plymouth with a letter from Winslow, then Governor. Professing his and others friendship for him, he lovingly advised Williams, since he had fallen into the edge of their bounds, and they were loath to displease the Bay, to remove but to the other side of the water, and there he had the country before him, and might be as free as themselves, and they should be loving neighbors together.-Sec Williams' letter to Mason. Mass. His. Col.

STANZA XLV.

By the black prophet was to Dulley shown

Thy purchase feigned-by him to us made known.

Williams, in his letter to Mason, says, that Governor Winthrop and some of the council of Massachusetts were disposed to recall him from banishment, and confer upon him some mark of distinguished favor for his services. "It is known," says Williams, "who hindered-who never promoted the liberty of other men's consciences." Mr. Davis, in a note to his edition of the New England Memorial, conjectures that he alludes to Mr. Dudley. The reader will not consider me as doing violence to historical probability, by supposing that this man gave information to the magistrates of Plymouth that Williams had established himself within the limits of their patent, and required his expulsion. He was the author of the following lines:

"Let men of God in courts and churches watch

O'er such as do a toleration hatch,

Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice

To poison all with heresy and vice.

If men be left and otherwise combine,
My epitaph's I dy'd no libertine."

Yet we ought, perhaps, to blame the system, rather than the magistrate whose duty it was to carry it into effect.

STANZA XLVI.

God gave James Stuart this, and James gave us.

The patents of the companies which settled in this country granted them lands without any reference to the rights of the natives. But the companies never availed themselves of these grants to that extent. Whatever may have been their opinions, they acted under them as if they had only invested them with the right of pre-emption. Cotton Mather is the only historian, that I recollect, who makes a merit of paying the Indians for their lands, and of not expelling them immediately from the soil in virtue of these patents.

CANTO NINTH.

STANZA III.

Early that morn, beside the tranquil flood,
Where, ready trimmed, rode Waban's frail canoe,
The banished man, his spouse and children stood,
And bade their lately blooming hopes adicu.

I have represented Williams, throughout this narrative, as unaccompanied by any of his Salem friends. And such, I think, was the fact up to the time he left, or was about leaving, Seekonk. Indeed, there was no necessity for any of his friends to accompany him in his flight from Salem "in the winter's snow." They could

render him no assistance in negotiations with the Indians.-They could not alleviate his hardships by participating in them. But what seems to settle the question, (if in fact it be a question) is, that he himself, though he frequently alludes to his sufferings and transactions "during that bitter cold winter," no where intimates that any white man participated in them. He uniformly speaks in the first person singular: "I was sorely tossed for fourteen weeks-I left Salem in the winter's snowI found a great contest going on between the chiefs-I travelled between them-I first pitched and began to build and plant at Seekonk-I received a message from Mr. Winslow-I crossed the Seekonk and settled at Mooshausick." It is strange that he should, on no occasion, mention that some of his friends suffered with him, if any actually did. All accurate information concerning Williams, during these fourteen weeks, must, I apprehend, be drawn from his writings; and I have chosen to follow them. And indeed had he been accompanied by one, or more of his friends, they could not have aided the author in the conduct of his narrative, any more than they could have borne a part in the trials and labors of Williams.

Williams says that he mortgaged his house and land in Salem to go through, and all that came with him afterwards were not engaged, but came and went at pleasure; but he was forced to go through and stay by it. (His purchase of the Indians.)

I have not been able to ascertain in what particular part of Seekonk Williams attempted to form his plantation, and have consequently felt myself at liberty to suppose it was in the neighborhood of Pawtucket Falls.

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STANZA XXV.

Netop, Whatcheer!" broke on the listening ear.

Netop-friend. The tradition is, that when Williams in a canoc approached the eastern banks of the river, at a place now called Whatcheer Cove, he saw a gathering of the natives. When he had come within hail, he was accosted by them in broken English with the friendly salutation, "Wha-cheer! Wha-cheer!" Here he landed, and was kindly received by them. The land which was afterwards set off to him included this spot, and he commemorated the amicable greeting of his Indian friends by naming the field there assigned to him the Manor of Whatcheer, or Whatcheer Manor. This field is now the property of Governor Fenner, and the field adjoining it, which was likewise set off to Williams, has continued to the present day in the possession of his descendants. We are probably indebted to the name which Williams gave the first mentioned field, for the preservation of this tradition.

STANZA XXXVIII.

Ay, almost hears the future pavements jar
Beneath a people's wealth, and half divines,

From thee, Soul-Liberty! what bright glories wait
Thy earliest altars-thy predestined state.

To show that Williams was not without a presentiment of the temporal advantages that might arise to his projected settlement, from a full liberty in religious concernments, I quote the following from his memorial to Parliament, prefixed to his Bloody Tenent made more bloody, &c. Speaking of Holland he says: "From Enchuysen, therefore, a den of persecuting lions and mountain leopards, the persecuted fled to Amsterdam, a poor fishing town, yet harborous and favorable to the flying, though dissenting consciences. This confluence of the persecuted, by God's most gracious coming with them, drew boats-drew trade-drew shipping, and that so mightily in so short a time, that shipping, trade, wealth, greatness, honor, (almost to astonishment in the eyes of all Europe and the world,) have appeared to fall, as out of Heaven, in a crown or garland upon the head of this poor fishertown."

STANZA XLI.

From wild Pawtucket to Pawtuxet's bounds,
To thee and thine be all the teeming grounds.

The first grant made by Canonicus and Miantonomi to Williams, appears to have been a verbal grant of all the lands and meadows upon the two fresh rivers, called Mooshausick and Wanaskatucket; but on the 24th of March, 1637, they confirmed this grant by deed, and, in consideration of the many kindnesses and services he was constantly rendering them, made the bounds Pawtuxet river on the south, Pawtucket on the northwest, and the town of Mashapauge on the west. This grant includes nearly all the county of Providence, and a part of the county of Kent.

STANZA XLII.

For at that moment down the boundless range
Of angel spheres, did some bright being take
Wing to the soul, and wrought to suited change
The visual nerve, and straight in outward space
Its form stands manifest in all its heavenly grace.

This passage, it is true, supposes action on the mind by a supernatural being, but it does not suppose the outward bodily manifestation of the angelic form described. It simply supposes the image or conception, wrought in the mind by the supernatural agency, to externize itself through a change effected by a sympathetic action in the visual organ. Or, in other words, it supposes the internal image to become so distinct as to reflect itself into the retina and overcome the action of external objects thereon; whereby the internal image is made to appear in the field of vision as an external reality. In justification of this idea, I am glad to have it in my power to refer to No. C. of the Family Library, entitled "Outlines of Disordered Mental Action, by Professor Upham, of Bowdoin College"-p. 117.

I feel that these remarks are due to the very friendly criticism which this poem has received on the other side of the Atlantic; in which, understanding (as I suppose) the apparition to be represented as an external reality, the reviewer blames it as an extravagance not in accordance with the general character of the narrative.

STANZA XLVIII

Her well-cast anchor here-her lasting hope in Thee.

The Anchor, with the motto Hope, which formed the device on the seal of the Colony, may be considered as having reference to the dangers and difficulties through which the settlers had passed, and were passing at the time it was adopted. This was done in 1663.

STANZA L.

And ages far shall o'er our graves recite

Of Thy protecting grace their father's sense,

And, when they name their home, proclaim Thy Providence. Williams carried the philanthropy, which breathes in his great principle of SoulLiberty, into all the important acts of his life. Although the munificent grant of Canonicus and Miantonomi had been made to him only, he shortly after made it the common property of his friends who joined him at Providence, reserving to himself no more than an equal share, and receiving from them the small sum of thirty pounds, not as purchase money, but as a remuneration for the gratuities which he had made to the Indians out of his own estate.

"The following passage," says Mr. Benedict, "in his history of the Baptists, explains, in a very pleasing manner, Mr. Williams's design in these transactions.

'Notwithstanding I had frequent promise from Miantonomi, my kind friend, that it should not be land that I should want about these bounds mentioned, provided I satisfied the Indians there inhabiting, I having made covenant of peaceable neighborhood with all the sachems and natives round about us, and having in a sense of God's merciful Providence to me in my distress, called the place Providence; I desired it might be for a shelter to persons distressed for conscience. I then considered the condition of divers of my countrymen. I communicated my said purchase unto my loving friends, John Throckmorton and others, who then desired to take shelter here with me. And whereas, by God's merciful assistance, I was procurer of the purchase, not by moneys nor payment, the natives being so shy and jealous that moneys could not do it, but by that language-acquaintance and favor with the natives, and other advantages which it pleased God to give me, and also bore the charges and venture of all the gratuities which I gave to the great sachems and natives round about us, and lay engaged for a loving and peaceable neighborhood with them to my great charge and travel; it was therefore thought fit that I should receive some consideration and gratuity.' Thus, after mentioning the said thirty pounds, 'this sum I received, and in love to my friends and with respect to a town and place of succor for the distressed as aforesaid, I do acknowledge this said sum a full satisfaction,' he went on, in full and strong terms, to confirm those lands to said inhabitants, reserving no more to himself than an equal share with the rest; his wife also signing the deed."

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