Roger Williams and John Milton

The things you learn as you trundle along.  

Roger Williams (1603-1683) was the founder of Rhode Island Plantation.  He first arrived in Boston in 1631 from early on clashed with other Puritan leaders.  Williams was mush more tolerant, inclusive and committed to freedom of thought, speech, and religion than were the other Puritans arriving in New England.  Those clashes ultimately leading to Williams departing Plymouth and Boston and establishing the settlements in Rhode Island.

John Milton (1608-1674) was the famous Puritan poet of Paradise Lost fame.  He was also famous for Areopagitica, an argument dealing with freedom of speech, expression and freedom from censorship published in 1644.  

What I learned today was that they were known to one another and friends.  

From Roger Williams, the Gentle Zealot Who Refused America’s ‘City on a Hill’ by Becky Garrison.  

Like other Puritans of his era, Williams honed a rigid moral code based upon biblical teachings that informed how he chose to conduct his life. However, he never felt anyone else should be compelled to follow his faith journey.

In particular, he disagreed vehemently with the Quakers about their beliefs and worship practices, like their tendency to “quake” at their meetings. Yet he extended a compassionate hand to Anne Hutchinson after she was also banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and gave her space to build her own meeting house in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

In defining his role in the public sphere, rather than creating Puritan enclaves designed to separate the saved from the damned or encouraging dialogue to “discuss” the rights of the “outsider,” Williams chose to live with people even though they disagreed with one another. Taking advantage of his skills as a gifted linguist, he embraced all, knowing people are not isolated individuals but part of a shared global humanity.

Over the years, he paid dearly for his blunt and forcible language. Besides his exile, the House of Commons burned his masterpiece, “The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience,” published in 1644. In the book he details a host of vile acts committed by religious authorities at the behest of the Crown.

That same year Williams’ colleague John Milton published the “Areopagitica,” his plea for religious toleration. The friends were cut from the same intellectual cloth, with Williams teaching Milton Dutch in exchange for Milton tutoring him in other languages. But Milton’s commentary was far more tempered, as he stressed the need for all to live together in harmony without demanding the individual right of soul liberty.

Two giants, connected in ways I did not know.