The Quakers found Rhode Island a safe asylum from persecution, whether Puritan or Dutch.
More disorderly and mischievous characters, withal, quartered themselves, unwelcome guests, on the young commonwealth, a thorn in its side and a reproach to its principles.

It became clear to Williams before his death that the declaration of individual rights and independence is not of itself a sufficient foundation for a state.

The heterogeneous population failed to settle into any stable polity.

After two generations the tyranny of Andros, so odious elsewhere in New England, was actually welcome as putting an end to the liberty that had been hardly better than anarchy.
The results of the manner of the first planting on the growth of the church in Rhode Island were of a like sort.

There is no room for question that the material of a true church was there, in the person of faithful and consecrated disciples of Christ, and therefore there must have been gathering together in common worship and mutual edification.
But the sense of individual rights and responsibilities seems to have overshadowed the love for the whole brotherhood of disciples.