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engines, which are carried through many pullies, must needs be more steady, equal, deliberate, and uniform. The best man's passions (which at no time work the righteousness of God) are too often apt to mix themselves with their definitive sentences, if not wholly to overrule them, therefore hath the wisdom of all ages found out some way to balance sovereign and absolute power, which else would move very extravagantly, if not destructively as to the good of the whole. The want of which, as some wise men think, was that which made the Israelites complain so much of the heaviness of Solomon's yoke, with whom it was no more than go and fall upon him; and the people had too much reason to fear that his successor, that had not the tithe of his father's wisdom, might yet double or increase the weight of his father's hand in point of severity. It cannot but be more safe for any people not to have sentences pass, or take place, without the consent of neighbours and peers, as is well known in England, commended for the most equal and best tempered government of any in the whole world. Too much rigour and severity in church administrations is attended also with as great inconveniences as the other; for though negligence and remissness in all publick administrations tends to the ruin of a church or state, like a ship or vessel, whose tackling is loosed, so as they can. not strengthen the mast, and where the law will easily take the prey; yet on the other hand when things are by an undue severity, or an unjustifiable exp, strained to the height, it hazards the breaking all in pieces. Witness the experience of late attempts in those that, not content with the wisdom of their predecessors, have endeavoured the new moulding of societies, after a more exact mode, (as at Frankfort, Amsterdam, and elsewhere,) but have generally shipwrecked their designs upon this undiscerned rock.

A great errour was likewise committed by these gentlemen that founded New Haven colony, in that, having been most of them inhabitants and traffickers in the great city of London, the famous mart of the whole world in a

manner, they contrived the frame of their chief towns as if trade and merchandize had been as inseparably annexed to them as the shadow is to the body, in the shining of the sun; in expectation whereof, and hope of drawing the whole stream thereof to themselves, they laid out too much of their stocks and estates in building of fair and stately houses, wherein they at the first outdid the rest of the country, which had been much better reserved till afterwards, when they could have found the matter feasible; therein forgetting the counsel of the wise man, first to prepare their matters in the field, or abroad, before they go about to erect their fabricks. Who ever built a tower and wine press before he planted his vineyard, or proved the soil to be commodious for that purpose, that did not thereby leave behind some monument of his errour and mistake? Thus the lot is cast into the lap, but the disposing thereof is from the Lord. Riches is not always to men of understanding, (of which there seemed less want in the aforesaid gentlemen than elsewhere,) but time and chance happens to them all. It is the providence of the Almighty that rules the world, and not the wisdom and contrivements of the sons of men; he pulleth down one and raiseth up another. However the grace and blessing of God eminently appeared towards that people, who were brought up to a different course of life, yet did they willingly submit themselves to the pleasure of him that governs the world, when his providence put them upon another kind of employment than formerly they had been accustomed unto, and wherein they have been very successful, and in a manner outdone others, that by their education had much more advantage to attain the greatest skill therein. As to the planting of Rhode Island, Providence, and the places adjoining, near the Narraganset bay, in the years 1637 and 1638:

The persons who were dismissed out of the colony of the Massachusetts, especially from Boston, or disfranchised therein for their tumultuous and seditious car. riages, tending to the subversion both of church and

state, being advised of an island beyond Cape Cod, and near adjoining to, or in the Narraganset bay, called Aquidneyk, made means to purchase it for themselves, and those that should see cause to remove their families thither upon occasion of the troubles they met with at Boston. There were several of them men of estate and quality, who engaged in the business, and had peaceable possession of the island by lawful purchase as well as free consent of the natives, that inhabited it before. And so having transplanted themselves, within a few years by the commodiousness of the soil, with other advantages, that attended the planters, they soon raised two flourishing plantations upon the island; and not long after, the bounds of the said island proving too narrow, those that were willing to join with them in their way of living and government made purchase of some of those lands that lie upon the main, where Mr. Williams and his friends had made some beginnings of a plantation before, anno 1634 and 1635, calling it by the name of Providence, by whom also was procured another neck of land not far off, in like manner, called by them Warwick.

Their civil government was by way of combination at first, until they had opportunity afterwards to purchase a patent for themselves. The laws by which they were governed were those of England, unless in some particulars, which those laws could not reach, in which cases they made some orders and constitutions of their own.

CHAP. XLIII.

Ecclesiastical affairs, with other occurrences, at Providence and Rhode Island to the year 1643. Intercourse between them and the Massachusetts.

As to matters of religion it was hard to give an exact account to the world of their proceedings therein, by any who have not been conversant with them from the beginning of their plantations; yet this is commonly said, by all that ever had any occasion to be among them, that they always agreed in this principle, that no

man or company of men ought to be molested, by the civil power, upon the account of religion, or for any opinion received or practised in any matter of that nature; accounting it no small part of their happiness that they may therein be left to their own liberty, as if they were in those things, sine jure, and not liable to give any account of what they practise or profess in the matters either of doctrine or worship; by which means it hath come to pass that the inhabitants are of many different persuasions, as Quakers, Anabaptists, Familists, Seekers. But what tendency that liberty hath had by so long experience towards the promoting of the power of godliness, and purity of religion, they are best able to judge that have had occasion to be most conversant amongst them.

Mrs. Hutchinson persisting in her opinions, notwithstanding all the means which had been used both in the court and in the church to reclaim her, she was at last ordered to remove out of the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts; whereupon, on the 28th of March, 1638, she went by water to her farm at Mount Wollaston, with intent (as was supposed) there to take water with her brother Wheelwright, his wife and family, to go to Pascataqua; but there she changed her mind, and went by land to Providence, and so to Aquidneyk, or Rhode Island, with her husband, who, with the rest of that persuasion, had purchased the island of the Indians: Plymouth men having first refused to grant them liberty to make a plantation within their jurisdiction, as they had desired. Amongst those, who at that time removed from about Boston, divers inclined to rigid separation, and favoured Anabaptism, and they removed to Providence, purposing to join with Mr. Williams and those of his company. But others, who were the greater number, passed over to the said island, on the account of Mrs. Hutchinson, so as that side of the country by this occasion began to be well peopled; they all agreeing fully in one principle, not to trouble one another on the account of religion, although in other principal and fundamental points of civil power there was no small difference between them.

Those who took up their station at the island, like men that are wandered out of the right way, and know not where to stop, daily invented and broached new errours, which they disseminated in their new plantation: and since that time they have flourished well in that soil, as to outward things.

Nicholas Eason, a tanner, that removed thither from Newbury, taught that gifts and graces were the Antichrist, mentioned in the Thessalonians, and that which withheld, &c. was the preaching of the law; and that every one of the elect has the Holy Ghost, and also the Devil, indwelling in him. One Hearne maintained there likewise, that Adam was not created in true holiness, &c. for then he could not have lost it.

At Providence also the Devil was not idle; for whereas at their first coming thither Mr. Williams had made an order, that no man should be molested for his conscience; men's wives, children, and servants, in that place, claimed liberty thereby to go to all religious meetings, although never so often, and on the week day, or never so private; and, therefore, because one Verrin refused to let his wife go to Mr. Williams, so often as she was called for, they required to have him censured. But there stood up one Arnold, of their own company, (who, though he was bewildered in his notions, about some religious points, yet was minded not to go against the very light of nature, and dictates of right reason, no more than the express word of God,) and withstood it, telling them, that when he consented to that order, he never intended it should extend to the breach of any ordinance of God, such as the subjection of wives to their husbands, and gave divers solid reasons against it. Then one Green (who had married the wife of one Beggerly, who was yet living, and not divorced) answered, that if they should restrain their wives, &c. all the women in the country would cry out of them, &c. Arnold answered him thus: Did you pretend to leave the Massachusetts because would not offend God to please men, you would you now break an ordinance and commandment

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