History has no nobler record to show, of courage and fortitude in both men and women, than that of New England in the Indian wars.

But the terrors of those days of tribulation, the breaking up of communities, the decimation of the population, the long absences of the young men on the bloody business of the soldier, were not favorable for maturing the fruits of the Spirit.
Withal, the intrigues of British politicians, the threatened or actual molestations of the civil governments of the colonies, and the corrupting influences proceeding from every center of viceregal authority, abetted the tendency to demoralization.

By the end of the first third of the eighteenth century, New England, politically, ecclesiastically, theologically, and morally, had come into a state of unstable equilibrium.

An overturn is impending.
* * * * * The set and sturdy resolution of the founders of the four colonies of the New England confederacy that the first planting of their territory should be on rigorously exclusive principles, with a homogeneous and mutually congenial population, under a firm discipline both civil and ecclesiastical, finds an experimental justification in the history of the neighbor colony of Rhode Island.

No commonwealth can boast a nobler and purer name for its founder than the name of Roger Williams.