“The magistrates were selected exclusively from the church-members; with equal propriety, reasoned Williams, might ‘a doctor of physic or a pilot’ be selected according to his skill in theology and his standing in the church. It was objected, that his principles subverted all good government. ‘Oh no,’ said he; ‘the commander of the vessel of state may maintain order on board the ship and see that it pursues its course steadily, even though the dissenters of the crew be not compelled to attend the public prayers of their companions.’”[852] The Pilgrims heard all this aghast. Soon they wearied of discussion; they invoked the syllogism of the law to rebut the heresies of the bold declaimer. Williams was cited in 1635, to appear before the General Court at Boston, for examination. Taking his staff in his hand, he set out. The session was stormy. Cotton argued; others scolded; Winthrop pleaded; Endicott was wrenched away from Williams’ side; but Williams, while maintaining some odd opinions, spoke boldly for God and liberty that day, and “maintained the rocky strength of his grounds.”[853] “To the magistrates he seemed the ally of a civil faction; to himself he appeared only to make a frank avowal of the truth. The scholar who is accustomed to the pursuits of abstract philosophy, lives in a region of thought quite remote from that by which he is surrounded. The range of his understanding is aside from the paths of common minds, and he is often the victim of the contrast. ’Tis not unusual for the world to reject the voice of truth, because its tones are strange; to declare doctrines unsound, only because they are new; and even to charge obliquity or derangement on a man who brings forward principles which the average intelligence repudiates. ’Tis the common history; Socrates, and St. Paul, and Luther, and others of the most acute dialecticians, have been ridiculed as drivellers and madmen.”[854] Roger Williams now evinced his kinship with the martyrs for human progress, by suffering that rejection common to those who venture to project their revolutionary thoughts from the front of a century’s advance. Misunderstood and condemned, he was commanded to abjure his heresies or else expect “sentence.”[855] Of course, he could not reject himself; therefore, saying with Job, “Though I die, I will maintain my integrity,” he uncovered his head with serene patience to “bide the pelting of the pitiless storm.” The thunderbolt soon fell. The church at Salem was coerced into abandoning the immortal pastor; and in November, 1635, he was ordered “to depart out of the jurisdiction of Massachusetts Bay within six weeks;”[856] a sentence which is said to have been mainly due to Cotton’s eloquence.[857]