The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 296

But “the ravens fed me in the wilderness,” and a hollow tree often served
him for a shelter.—Martyn, vol. 5, pp. 349, 350. Thus he continued his
painful flight through the snow and the trackless forest, until he found
refuge with an Indian tribe whose confidence and affection he had won
while endeavoring to teach them the truths of the gospel.
Making his way at last, after months of change and wandering,
to the shores of Narragansett Bay, he there laid the foundation of
the first state of modern times that in the fullest sense recognized
the right of religious freedom. The fundamental principle of Roger
Williams’s colony was “that every man should have liberty to worship
God according to the light of his own conscience.”—Ibid., vol. 5, p.
354. His little state, Rhode Island, became the asylum of the oppressed,
and it increased and prospered until its foundation principles—civil and
religious liberty—became the cornerstones of the American Republic.
In that grand old document which our forefathers set forth as their
bill of rights—the Declaration of Independence—they declared: “We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And the
Constitution guarantees, in the most explicit terms, the inviolability of
conscience: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification
to any office or public trust under the United States.” “Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof.”
“The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle that
man’s relation with his God is above human legislation, and his rights
of conscience inalienable. Reasoning was not necessary to establish this
truth; we are conscious of it in our own bosoms. It is this consciousness
which, in defiance of human laws, has sustained so many martyrs in
tortures and flames. They felt that their duty to God was superior to
human enactments, and that man could exercise

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