Among these early inconsistencies and disagreements Roger Williams stood
out as the sole fearless and logical figure. Consistency and bravery were
far from being his only good qualities; in drawing his portrait, the
difficulty is to find shadows with which to set off the lights of his
character. The Puritans feared the world, and even their own constancy;
Williams feared nothing; but he would reverence and obey his conscience as
the voice of God in his breast, before which all other voices must be
hushed. He was not only in advance of his time: he was abreast of any
times; nothing has ever been added to or detracted from his argument. When
John Adams wrote to his son, John Quincy Adams, "Your conscience is the
Minister Plenipotentiary of God Almighty placed in your breast: see to it
that this minister never negotiates in vain," he did but attire in the
diplomatic phraseology which came naturally to him the thought which
Williams had avouched and lived more than a century before. Though
absolutely radical, Williams was never an extremist; he simply went to the
fountain-head of reason and truth, and let the living waters flow whither
they might. The toleration which he demanded he always gave; of those who
had most evilly entreated him he said, "I did ever from my soul honor and
love them, even when their judgment led them to afflict me." His long life
was one of the most unalloyed triumphs of unaided truth and charity that
our history records; and the State which he founded presented, during his
lifetime, the nearest approach to the true Utopia which has thus far been
produced.

Roger Williams was a Welshman, born in 1600, and dying, in the community
which he had created, eighty-five years later. His school was the famous
Charterhouse; his University, Cambridge; and he took orders in the Church
of England. But the protests of the Puritans came to his ears before he
was well installed; and he examined and meditated upon them with all the