There is reason to believe, that for some time previously to his banishment, he had conceived the idea of residing among the Indians, and that in his intercourse with the sachems, some propositions had been made respecting a cession of land. His strong desire to benefit the natives was a sufficient inducement; and he had, perhaps, seen such indications of the state of feeling towards him among the colonists, as to awaken an apprehension that he would not long be allowed to remain within their jurisdiction. Mr. Williams continued about two years at Plymouth. While there, we may easily believe, he uttered his sentiments on those points which had occasioned his removal from Salem, as well as on other subjects, in relation to which his opinions were at variance with those of that age. They were not acceptable to the principal personages at Plymouth, though it does not appear that any public expression of disapprobation was made by the church. His heart was evidently drawn towards Salem, and being invited to return,[56] to assist Mr. Skelton, whose declining health unfitted him for his duties, Mr. Williams requested a dismission from the church at Plymouth. Some of the members were unwilling to be separated from him, and accompanied him to Salem, after ineffectual efforts to detain him at Plymouth.[57] But the ruling elder, Mr. Brewster, prevailed on the church to dismiss him and his adherents. Mr. Brewster probably disliked his opinions, and feared that he would be successful in diffusing them at Plymouth. He, therefore, alarmed the church, by expressing his fears, that Mr. Williams would “run the same course of rigid separation and anabaptistry, which Mr. John Smith, the Se-Baptist, at Amsterdam, had done.”[58] Anabaptism was a spectre, which haunted the imaginations of the early settlers. The word possessed a mysterious power of inspiring terror and creating odium. It has, perhaps, been sometimes employed to justify measures, which might else have wanted the appearance of justice and humanity. It was one of those terms, which, in the language of the most original writer, perhaps, of this age—himself liable to the charge of anabaptism[59]—“can be made the symbol of all that is absurd and execrable, so that the very sound of it shall irritate the passions of the multitude, as dogs have been taught to bark, at the name of a neighboring tyrant.”[60] While Mr. Williams was at Plymouth, his eldest daughter was born there, in the first week in August, 1633.[61] She was named Mary, after her mother. CHAPTER IV. Returns to Salem—Ministers Meetings—Court again interferes—the rights of the Indians—his book against the patent—wearing of veils—controversy about the cross in the colors.