I am not disposed to deny that you and your friends, with their principles, of which you, erroneously, I think, claim Mr.Williams as the great exponent, 'have a mission,' as you say, to perform; but I do not feel called upon to join in it.

Some of your writers seem to me--shall I say it ?--a little too sure of having just the right pattern and patent-right in ordinances, and somewhat too complacent in not being liked by other denominations, and perhaps a little disposed to look for persecution.

Now I was pleased with a remark of Matthew Henry's, on Mark 10:28, that 'It is not the suffering, but the cause, that makes the martyr.' But we were brought up under different associations, and cannot see just alike in all things.

I cannot, however, contradict, by any step which my feelings would incline me to take, the Christian citizenship of those who are dear to Christ, and are so precious to me.

As much as I love you, I think you should feel perfectly free to leave me in my happy home, if you cannot allow me to retain my fidelity to my own conscientious convictions of truth, and to the sacred rights of those whom nature and grace have conspired to make inseparable from my own Christian hopes and joys." [Footnote 3: "Can we blame the founders of the Massachusetts Colony for banishing him from their jurisdiction?
In the annals of religious persecution is there to be found a martyr more gently dealt with by those against whom he began the war of intolerance; whose authority he persisted, even after professions of penitence and submission, in defying, till deserted even by the wife of his bosom; and whose utmost severity of punishment upon him was only an order for his removal as a nuisance from among them ?"--_Discourse before Mass.Hist.