“Accept, O Lord! our thanks for mercies past; Thou wast our cloud by day, our fire by night, While yet we journeyed through the dreary vast; Thou Canaan more than givest to our sight;-- Lord! ’tis possessed, not seen from Pisgah’s height. We deeply feel this high beneficence; And ages hence our children shall recite Of Thy protecting grace their Father’s sense, And, when they name their Home, Proclaim Thy PROVIDENCE!” NOTES.[23] [23] These notes were mostly written for the poem as first published in 1832;--none after 1847, when the author died.--[EDITOR.] CANTO FIRST. STANZA I. _I_ SING _of trials, toils and sufferings great, Which_ FATHER WILLIAMS _in his exile bore, That he the conscience-bound might liberate, And to the soul her sacred rights restore_. “ROGER WILLIAMS was born of reputable parents in Wales, A. D. 1598. He was educated at the University of Oxford; was regularly admitted to Orders in the Church of England, and preached for some time as a minister of that Church; but on embracing the doctrines of the Puritans, he rendered himself obnoxious to the laws against the non-conformists, and embarked for America, where he arrived with his wife, whose name was Mary, on the 5th of February, A. D. 1631.” He had scarcely landed ere he began to assert the principle of religious freedom, and insist on a rigid separation from the Church of England. A declaration that the magistrate ought not to interfere in matters of conscience could not fail to excite the jealousy of a government constituted as that of Massachusetts then was; and this jealousy was roused into active hostility when, in the April following his arrival, he was called by the Church of Salem as teaching Elder under their then Pastor, Mr. Skelton. “Of this appointment,” says Winthrop, “the Governor of Massachusetts was informed, who immediately convened a Court in Boston to take the subject into consideration.” Their deliberations resulted in a letter addressed to Mr. Endicot, of Salem, to this effect:--“That whereas Mr. Williams had refused to join the churches at Boston, because they would not make a public declaration of their repentance, for having communion with the Churches of England while they tarried there, and besides had declared his opinion that the magistrate might not punish the breach of the Sabbath, nor any other offence that was a breach of the first table; and therefore they marveled they would choose him without advising with the council, and withal desired him that they would forbear to proceed until they had considered about it.”