ministry, or, at least, his country, than wound his conscience with unlawful compliance; the issue whereof was, that instead of bringing Mr. Cotton back to what he had now forsaken, he brought them off altogether from what they had hitherto practised. Every one of those eminent persons, Dr. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, and Mr. Davenport, now became all that he was, and at last left the kingdom for their being so.” If, then, these distinguished ministers had practised a conformity which Mr. Cotton esteemed “unlawful,” and which Cotton Mather seems to have considered as a breach of the second commandment, it is probable, that many private Christians had done the same. The members of the Boston church had undoubtedly shared in these “compliances.” But if Mr. Cotton could not conform, without wounding his conscience, he must have thought the practice criminal. There is no question, that Mr. Williams was of the same opinion; and as his temper was more ardent and bold than that of Mr. Cotton, his opposition to what he must have regarded as highly censurable, would naturally be strong and decided. It is not very surprising, therefore, if, on his arrival in America, with a vivid sense of recent wrong from the persecuting church, he was disinclined to a cordial union with those who had, in any measure, yielded to her despotic pretensions, and sanctioned, by any acts of compliance, her unscriptural requirements. We are not told, precisely, in what terms, and to what extent, he wished the members of the Boston church to express their repentance for their conduct. He, perhaps, allowed his feelings to bias his judgment in this case, and to make him forget his own principles of liberty of conscience; but the facts to which we have alluded show, that his objections were not altogether frivolous, nor his conduct the offspring of bigotry and caprice. It appears, that his feelings were afterwards allayed; and while at Plymouth, the next year, he communed with Governor Winthrop and other gentlemen from Boston.[44]