is a misery much to be lamented ; for though they were burning and shining lights in their time , yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God , but were they now living , would be as willing to embrace further light as that which they first received ." --D . Neal , History of the Puritans , vol . 1 , p . 269 .
" Remember your church covenant , in which you have agreed to walk in all the ways of the Lord , made or to be made known unto you . Remember your promise and covenant with God and with one another , to receive whatever light and truth shall be made known to you from His written word ; but withal , take heed , I beseech you , what you receive for truth , and compare it and weigh it with other scriptures of truth before you accept it ; for it is not possible the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick antichristian darkness , and that full perfection of knowledge should break forth at once ." --Martyn , vol . 5 , pp . 70 , 71 .
It was the desire for liberty of conscience that inspired the Pilgrims to brave the perils of the long journey across the sea , to endure the hardships and dangers of the wilderness , and with God ' s blessing to lay , on the shores of America , the foundation of a mighty nation . Yet honest and Godfearing as they were , the Pilgrims did not yet comprehend the great principle of religious liberty . The freedom which they sacrificed so much to secure for themselves , they were not equally ready to grant to others . " Very few , even of the foremost thinkers and moralists of the seventeenth century , had any just conception of that grand principle , the outgrowth of the New Testament , which acknowledges God as the sole judge of human faith ." -- Ibid ., vol . 5 , p . 297 .
The doctrine that God has committed to the church the right to control the conscience , and to define and punish heresy , is one of the most deeply rooted of papal errors . While the Reformers rejected the creed of Rome , they were not entirely free from her spirit of intolerance . The dense darkness in which , through the long ages of her rule , popery had enveloped all Christendom , had not even yet been wholly dissipated . Said one of the leading ministers in the colony of Massachusetts Bay : " It was toleration that made the world antichristian ; and the church never took harm by the punishment of heretics ." -- Ibid ., vol . 5 , p . 335 . The regulation was adopted by the colonists that only church members should have a voice in the civil government . A kind of state church was formed , all the people being required to contribute to the support of the clergy , and the magistrates being authorized to suppress heresy . Thus the secular power was in the hands of the church . It was not long before these measures led to the inevitable result --persecution .
Eleven years after the planting of the first colony , Roger Williams came to the New World . Like the early Pilgrims he came to enjoy religious freedom ; but , unlike them , he saw --what so few in his time had yet seen--that this freedom was the inalienable right of all , whatever might be their creed . He was an earnest seeker for truth , with Robinson holding it impossible that all the light from God ' s word had yet been received . Williams " was the first person in modern Christendom to
179