There is difference of opinion on this point, but certain words of Williams himself seem to bear on it. After his retirement from Salem to Plymouth he received a letter from Winthrop, which appears to have intimated that no man under twenty-five ought to be ordained. Williams explains in reply that he is "nearer upwards of thirty than twenty-five," but avers, "I am no elder in any church ... nor ever shall be, if the Lord please to grant my desires that I may intend what I long after, the natives souls." Williams's Letter, Narragansett Club Publications, vi, 2. Of course, these words might have been written if he had resigned the eldership before leaving Salem, but they would have had much less pertinency. [Sidenote: Note 6, page 276.] Mr. Straus, in his Life of Roger Williams, says aptly that Massachusetts was under a government of congregations rather than of towns, since only church members could vote. A fuller discussion of the source and evolution of the town system is deferred to a later volume of this series. [Sidenote: Note 7, page 278.] David Pieterzen de Vries, in his Voyages, reports this feeling of superiority as freely expressed at Hartford in 1639. There is a quaint humor in what he says of it that is enhanced by the naïve Dutch phrase in which it is set down: "Dit Volck gaven haer uyt det sy Israëliten waren, ende dat wy aen onse colonie Egyptenaren waren, end' Engelsen inde Vergienies waren mede Egyptenaren," p. 151. [Sidenote: Note 8, page 279.] "And such was the authority ... Mr. Cotton had in the hearts of the people, that whatever he delivered in the pulpit was soon put into an Order of Court, if of a civil, or set up as a practice in the church, if of an ecclesiastical concernment." Hubbard, History of Massachusetts, 182. [Sidenote: Note 9, page 281.] Knowles's Life of Williams, 58, note, quotes from a letter of Coddington's appended to Fox's reply to Williams, in which Coddington, who was one of the magistrates that examined the treatise, charges Williams with having "written a quarto against the King's patent and authority." [Sidenote: Note 10, page 288.] Cotton's Answer to Williams's Examination, 38. I have followed Cotton implicitly here, but without feeling sure that his memory can ever be depended on where his polemical feeling is concerned. On the next page he is guilty of a flagrant but no doubt unconscious suppression of an important fact. "It pleased the Lord to open the hearts of the Church to assist us," etc., he says, putting out of sight the sharp dealing by which the Salem church was brought to ignominious subjection. [Sidenote: Note 11, page 289.]