They came here with an intense love for certain truths and practices, which persecution had only served to make exceedingly precious to them.

To have proclaimed at once universal toleration of every wind of doctrine, would have proved them libertines in religion.

Because they did not so, reproach is cast upon them by some, who seem to me to be free-thinkers on the subject of religious liberty.

If other men wished to found a community with doctrines and practices adverse to those of the New England fathers, the land was wide, and it would have been the part of good manners in Mr.Williams to have gone into the wilderness at once, to subdue it and to fight the savages, all for love and zeal for his own tenets, instead of poaching upon the hard-earned soil of those who had laid down their all for what they deemed to be the truth.

It seems to me unphilosophical in some of our historians to reflect, as they do, upon our forefathers for not being so totally indifferent to what they deemed error, as to allow it free course.
Their strict, and, if you please, rigid ways, were the necessary defences of their principles, which were just taking root here.
They did right in passing stringent laws to protect them; and religious liberty was no more violated in doing so than is the liberty of our town's people here, who, by the law of the State protecting game, cannot take fish, or kill birds, during certain seasons.
"Besides, I never saw any proof that Mr.Williams was himself the great apostle of toleration.