n
was perfectly logical in "enlarging" Roger Williams into the wilderness,
but he showed less than his usual discretion in attacking the
quick-tempered Welshman in pamphlets. It was like asking Hotspur if
he would kindly consent to fight. Back and forth the books fly, for
Williams loves this game. His "Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of
Conscience" calls forth Mr. Cotton's "Bloody Tenet washed and made white
in the Blood of the Lamb;" and this in turn provokes the torrential
flood of Williams's masterpiece, "The Bloody Tenet yet more Bloody, by
Mr. Cotton's endeavor to wash it white in the Blood of the Lamb." There
is glorious writing here, and its effect cannot be suggested by quoting
sentences. But there is one sentence in a letter written by Williams in
his old age to his fellow-townsmen of Providence which points the whole
moral of the terrible mistake made by the men who sought spiritual
liberty in America for themselves, only to deny that same liberty to
others. "I have only one motion and petition," begs this veteran pioneer
who had forded many a swollen stream and built many a rude bridge in the
Plantations: "it is this, that after you have got over the black brook
of some soul bondage yourselves, you tear not down the bridge after
you."

It is for such wise and humane counsels as this that Roger Williams
is remembered. His opponents had mightier intellects than his, but the
world has long since decided against them. Colonial sermon literature
is read today chiefly by antiquarians who have no sympathy for the
creed which once gave it vitality. Its theology, like the theology of
"Paradise Lost or the Divine Comedy," has sunk to the bottom of the
black brook. But we cannot judge fairly the contemporary effect of this
pulpit literature without remembering the passionate faith that made
pulpit and pews copartners in a supreme spiritual struggle. Historians
properly insist upon the aesthetic poverty of the New England Puritans;
that their rule of life cut them off from an enjoyment of the dramatic
literature of their race, then just closing its most splendid epoch;
that they had little poetry or music and no architecture and plastic
art. But we must never forget that to men of their creed the Sunday
sermons and the week-day "lectures" served as oratory, poetry, and
drama. These outpourings of the mind and heart of their spiritual
leaders were the very stuff of human passion in its intensest forms.
Puritan chur