Roger Williams and Witchcraft
THERE is a connection between the two. On another page is a picture of a modest little pharmacy in the city of Salem, Massachusetts. It is noted as the place where persons were charged with witchcraft, and from which they went forth to Gallows Hill for execution. Salem invited this persecution when she rejected the principles that would have saved her from it. In 1633 Roger Williams came to Salem for the second time, and the next year he was settled as pastor over the church in Salem. He was distinguished as an eloquent preacher and a ripe scholar, but he held the heresy that "he denied the right of magistrates to inflict punishment for Sabbath-breaking, or 'any other offense that was a breach of the first table.'" Another heresy was that he maintained that the land belonged to the Indians, and not to the king of England. He maintained "that 'no human power had the right to intermeddle in matters of conscience; and that neither Church nor State, neither bishop nor king, may prescribe the smallest iota of religious faith.' For this, he maintained, 'man is responsible to God alone.'" In 1635 he was summoned before the general court at Boston, and was told to quit the colony within six weeks; but learning that many repaired to his house for religious instruction (by the way, it was the house which stood where the old witch house now stands, in which latter is some of the very wall of the former), the colony concluded to send him at once to England, especially as they learned that he, with others, thought of founding a colony upon Narragansett Bay, in which the principle of religious toleration should be strictly upheld. This was in July or August, 1635, that he was driven out. When, Salem drove him out, they drove out the principles of liberty. Intolerance grew worse; and in 1692, fifty-seven years later, innocent men and women were put to death in Salem, many times on mere suspicion and accusation, as witches. If Roger Williams had been allowed to remain, and his principles to dominate, the black disgrace of witchcraft would never have stained America's record. He believed in toleration for others; and true to that principle, when that restless agitator Samuel Gorton began his work in Salem, and a movement was started to expel him, Roger Williams opposed it. The same great principles are worthy of thought to-day.