Roger Williams, 1606-83.

Nathaniel Ward's “Simple Cobler” voices with characteristic fervor the utterance of Puritan bigotry; but there was in the colony one powerful champion of religious tolerance who constitutes one of its most attractive figures. This was Roger Williams, an independent among the independents. Born in Wales, a university man and a clergyman in the Church of England, he had turned nonconformist, and appeared in Plymouth colony in the usual way. In 1633, two years after his arrival at Plymouth, Williams went to Salem to be the minister there; but his teachings were altogether too radical to suit his stern and narrow-minded Puritan brethren. He preached a real liberty of thought and worship -- even for Baptists and Quakers; taught that it was unrighteous to rob the Indian of his land, and to treat captives with cruelty; and maintained that the State's authority did not extend over the individual conscience or opinion. Roger Williams was one of those who proclaim the truth so far in advance of the conceptions held by those about them, that they seem to be living years before their proper time. He was banished from Massachusetts in 1636. Williams revisited England several times, and was no inconspicuous figure there. He knew Milton and had the friendship of Cromwell. It was on one of these visits that he wrote his first important treatise on "Soul Liberty," – “The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience”. This was published at London in 1644. Williams's “Bloody Tenet” was the beginning of a famous literary battle between himself and that belligerent Puritan defender, John Cotton.

John Eliot, 1604-90.

He is to be remembered as a translator of the entire Bible into the Algonquin tongue. It was a tremendous task and a remarkable achievement. He published the New Testament in 1661 and the Old Testament in 1663. It was the first Bible in any language, printed in British America. This translation of the Scriptures into the vernacular of a people who had no written language is a most remarkable monument to "Apostle" Eliot's laborious industry and his missionary zeal.

The Mathers: a distinguished Family

The scholarly attainments of colonial Puritanism have been amply shown by this record of the New England ministry in the literature of the time. The history of a single family furnishes our most conspicuous and most curiously interesting illustration of scholastic eminence and its position in popular regard. Through three generations the Mathers -- in grandfather, son, and grandson -- appear as brilliant intellectual leaders of the Massachusetts clergy. The first of the "dynasty," Richard Mather, an Oxford graduate, who arrived in Boston in 1635, was one of that conscientious Puritan brotherhood that of necessity sought a refuge and a field for spiritual conquest in the New World. He became the minister. Although he was a prolific writer, it is sufficient here to recall the fact that Richard Mather's name was the one appended to the preface of the old “Bay Psalm Book”.