According to this paragraph, Mr. Williams left the church about three or four months after its formation. This fact is confirmed by a letter of Richard Scott, inserted in George Fox’s “Firebrand Quenched.” Scott says of Roger Williams, “I walked with him in the Baptist way, about three or four months, in which time he broke from the society, and declared at large the grounds and reason of it, that their baptism could not be right, because it was not administered by an apostle. After that, he set up a way of seeking with two or three that had dissented with him, by way of preaching and praying; and there he continued a year or two, till two of the three left him.”[212] Mr. Scott was at Providence, when the church was formed, and there can be no doubt, that he soon became a member of it, though he afterwards joined the Quakers. The “three or four months” which he mentions must, on this supposition, be estimated as commencing at, or near, the formation of the church, and consequently Mr. Williams must have left it in June or July, 1639, as Winthrop states. Of his reasons for this step, we are not clearly informed. The motives assigned by those who disapproved his conduct, are loosely stated, and must be received with caution. The principal reason, as stated by Winthrop, Scott, and others, was, that Mr. Williams doubted the validity of the baptism which he and his associates had received, because it was not “administered by an apostle,” or because he could not “derive the authority of it from the apostles, otherwise than by the ministers of England, whom he judged to be ill authority.”