The character of the Puritans has been greatly misunderstood on this point, and there has been much common-place declamation respecting their bigotry and inconsistency in persecuting others, after having suffered persecution themselves. But a candid mind, which understands their principles, will not, while it must lament and condemn their conduct, use the language of harsh censure. They were so far from believing, that liberty of conscience in religious concerns ought to be extended to all men, that they regarded toleration as a crime. They argued, that they ought to promote truth, and oppose error, by all the methods in their power. If they were able to suppress false doctrines, it was, they believed, a solemn duty to God to employ force, if necessary, for their suppression. They thought, that he who permitted error to be believed and preached, was chargeable with a participation in the guilt. Intolerance became, in their view, a paramount duty to God and to the heretic himself; and the greater their love of God and of truth, the greater was their zeal to extirpate, with a strong hand, every noxious weed from the garden of the Lord.[88] It was not, therefore, a bigoted preference merely for their own views which made them persecute others, but a conviction that they only embraced the truth, and that all opposing doctrines were pernicious, and must not be allowed. It was not, in their judgment, inconsistent to act thus towards others, after having themselves endured persecution; for they regarded themselves as having been sufferers for the truth, and they were urged, by these very sufferings, to be more faithful in upholding that truth, and suppressing what they deemed to be error. It is due to the Pilgrims to remember, that they acted from principles, erroneous certainly, and deplorable in their effects, but sincerely adopted and cherished in hearts which, nevertheless, glowed with love to God. The grand doctrine of LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE was then a portentous novelty, and it was the glory of Roger Williams, that he, in such an age, proclaimed it, defended it, suffered for it, and triumphantly established it. The principles of Roger Williams stood in the attitude of irreconcilable opposition to the system which the Pilgrims had established in New-England. They could not blend with it. They came into collision with it, at every point. We have accordingly seen, that Mr. Williams was continually at variance with the government, because their measures were adjusted to their settled policy, but were repugnant to his great doctrine. There could be no peace between them, unless he yielded, or they abandoned their system. He was firm, and they were unconvinced. They possessed the power, and they banished him; not so much to punish him, as to remove from the colony a man whose doctrines they believed to be wrong, whose influence they feared, and whom they could neither intimidate nor persuade to abandon his principles.