cious sensitiveness, and resolved to maintain their dearly-
purchased based rights to religious freedom, against any pretensions
that might be made by the church of Boston.

This latter community was frequently subject to divisions and disputes,
on those points of faith and discipline that each party regarded as
all-important, but on the carrying out of which they could not agree;
and a certain spirit of intolerance had already begun to show itself
among them, which, in later times, ripened into actual cruelty and
persecution.

The first instance of any display of this unchristian spirit with which
our narrative is concerned, was the treatment of a young clergyman,
named Roger Williams, who came over to New England several years after
the emigration of the Pilgrim Fathers, when the renewed oppression of
the Puritan ministers, by the English bishops, drove many of their
number to seek a refuge in America. In the same year also arrived John
Elliott, a man whose name is deservedly remembered and respected in New
England, as standing conspicuous for zeal and virtue. So great and so
successful were his labors among the native heathen, and so eminent
were his piety and his self-denying charity, that he has been well
named the _'Prince of Missionaries'_ and 'the Great Apostle of the
Indians.'

The arrival of these holy and zealous--though somewhat eccentric--men,
and of several others equally resolved to maintain the freedom of their
religious views and practices, tended greatly to strengthen and
establish the emigrants; and also added considerably to their comfort,
as every settlement became provided with regular and authorized
ministers of the gospel, and could enjoy all those religious privileges
from which they had been so long debarred. But it must also be
confessed that it became the source of much dissension and party
feeling, and led to that display of bigotry and intolerance that
eventually disgraced the Christian profession of the men of
Massachusetts.[*]

[Footnote: The cruel fate of Mary Dyer, the Quaker, who was condemned
to death by Governor Endicott, at Boston, is a lamentable instance of
the narrow-minded and cruel policy of the rulers of that community.
She was banished from the state, but 'felt a call' to return and rebuke
the austerity of the men of Boston, and reprove them for their
spiritual pride. She was accompanied by two friends, William Robinson
and Marmaduke Stevenson, and all three were seize