_Order Banishing the Founders of the First Baptist Church in Boston_ 123 “_Ill Newes from New-England_” 125 _John Clarke Memorial, First Baptist Church of Newport, R. I._ 127 _Grave of John Clarke_ 127 _The Law in William Penn’s Colony_ 129 _The Law Concerning Religious Toleration in Maryland Colony_ 130 _Puritan-Religious-Liberty!_ 131 _William Rogers_ 133 _James Manning_ 133 _Isaac Backus_ 133 I THE APOSTLE OF SOUL-LIBERTY That body-killing, soul-killing, state-killing doctrine of not permitting but persecuting all other consciences and ways of worship but his own in the civil state.... Whole nations and generations of men have been forced (though unregenerate and unrepentant) to pretend and assume the name of Jesus Christ, which only belongs, according to the institution of the Lord Jesus, to truly regenerate and repentant souls. Secondly, that all others dissenting from them, whether Jews or Gentiles, their countrymen especially (for strangers have a liberty), have not been permitted civil habitation in this world with them, but have been distressed and persecuted by them.--_Roger Williams’ Estimate of Religious Persecution._ The principle of religious liberty did not assert itself, save in one instance, at once that American colonization was begun. For the most part, the founders of these colonies came to this country imbued with the ideas concerning the relations between government and religion, which had been universal in Europe.... This makes the attitude of our American exception, Roger Williams, the more striking and significant. More than one hundred years in advance of his time, he denied the entire theory and practice of the past.--_Sanford Cobb._ Roger Williams advocated the complete separation of Church and State, at a time when there was no historical example of such separation.--_Newman._ THE APOSTLE OF SOUL-LIBERTY A government of the people, formed by the people for the people, with Church and State completely separate, and with political privileges not dependent on religious belief, was organized and maintained successfully for the first time in Christendom in Rhode Island, the smallest of the American Colonies. Its inspiration and founder was Roger Williams, the apostle of soul-liberty. Because he was the first asserter of the principle which has since been recognized as the distinctive character of our national greatness, he has been called “The First American.”