I remember reading to father, during his sickness, some remarks of the late John Quincy Adams, in which he vindicates the New England fathers for banishing Roger Williams as a 'nuisance.'[3] Mr.Adams surely cannot be accused of bigotry, nor of being an enemy to the cause of freedom; and his remarks seemed to me more just than the eulogies, by historians and orators, of Mr.Williams.Father once showed me an old book of Mr.
Williams's, which we have now, called 'George Fox digg'd out of his Burrowes,' in which Mr.W.inveighs against the Quakers for their want of 'civil respect,' and for using 'thee' and 'thou,' in addressing magistrates and others.

He says, on the two hundredth page, 'I have therefore publickly declared myself, that a due and moderate restraint and punishing of these incivilities (though pretending conscience) is as far from persecution, properly so called, as that it is a duty and command of God unto all mankinde, first in families, and thence unto all mankinde societies.'-- It is also a matter of history that the colony settled by Mr.Williams refused their franchise to Roman Catholics, though even then the Roman Catholics of Maryland were tolerating people of his own faith, and Quakers also.

Mr.Williams always seemed to me like one of our pious, zealous 'come-outers.' He even forsook his own denomination in three months after he had been baptized, and for forty years denied the validity of their sacraments, and the scripturalness of their churches and ministry.

Such a man would even at this day be excommunicated by every society, unless it were some association for the encouragement of radical notions of liberty.

I no more see in him the impersonation of religious freedom, than in some other good people who go or stay where they are not wanted.