MEMOIR OF ROGER WILLIAMS. [Illustration: _FAC SIMILE OF THE HANDWRITING_ OF ROGER WILLIAMS. _Copied from a Document written in 1677._ ] =MEMOIR= OF ROGER WILLIAMS, THE FOUNDER OF THE STATE OF RHODE-ISLAND. BY JAMES D. KNOWLES, PROFESSOR OF PASTORAL DUTIES IN THE NEWTON THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION. “Roger Williams justly claims the honor 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.” GOVERNOR HOPKINS. BOSTON: LINCOLN, EDMANDS AND CO. 1834. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1833, BY JAMES D. KNOWLES, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. Lewis & Penniman, Printers. Bromfield-street. TO THE =Citizens of Rhode-Island,= THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PREFACE. The citizens of the United States, have sometimes been ridiculed, for an alleged propensity to please their imaginations with romantic visions concerning the future glory of their country. They boast, it is said, not of what the nation has been, nor of what it is, but of what it will be. The American faculty, it is affirmed, is anticipation, not memory. If the truth of this charge were admitted, it might be replied, that the ‘proper motion’ of the youthful imagination—in states as well as in individuals—is towards the future. It springs forward, with buoyant wing, forgetting the past, and disregarding the present, in the eagerness of its desire to reach fairer scenes. It is the instinct of our nature, the irrepressible longing of the immortal soul for something higher and better. It is never extinguished, though frequent disappointments abate its ardor, and long experience confirms the testimony of revelation, that perfect happiness is sought in vain on earth. In mature age, therefore, reason has corrected the errors of the imagination, and the old man looks backward to his early years, as the happiest period of his life, and praises the men and the scenes of his youthful days, as far surpassing those which he now sees around him.[1]