WILLIAMS. 477 this confession, he said, " It is the grief of my soul, that I used such vehement and censorious speeches. I repent me that I did adhere to persons of corrupt judgments, to the countenancing and encouraging of them in any of their errors or evil practices." The order of the court for taking off the sentence of his banishment, and receiving him as a member of the commonwealth, is dated Boston, May 29, 1644.. His difficulties taught him wisdom. After his confession and restoration he lived nearly forty- years " a valued servant of the church ;"s and he died about the year 1680, being an old man and full of years. ROGER WILLIAms.--This remarkable person was born in Wales, in the year 1599, and educated in the university of Oxford. He became a subject of divine grace at ten or twelve years of age. In early youth he attracted the attention, and obtained the patronage, of Lord Chief Justice Coke ; who, seeing him at some place of public worship, was struck with the attentive behaviour of one so young, and his taking notes of the sermon. When the service was over, he sent for young Williams, and desired to see his notes, and, finding them very judiciously taken, took him under his patronage, and sent him to Oxford. Having finished his studies at the university, he entered into the ministerial office, and was some years minister in the established church. He afterwards joined the puritans, and became azealous nonconformist; but the intolerable oppressions of Bishop Laud forced him from his native country, when he fled to New England.t Mr. Neal, says he was a rigid Brownist, precise, uncharitable, and of most turbulent and boisterous passions.g But Mr. Hubbard, who lived in those times, denominates him " a godly and zealous preacher."H Mr. Williams arrived in New England February 5, 1631, and was immediately called by the church at Salem to be assistant to Mr. Samuel Skelton. His settlement was, however, opposed by the magistrates,'' because he refused to communicate with the church at Boston, unless they would make a public declaration of their repentance, for having held communion with the church of England when in their native country ; and because he declared it as his opinion, Backus's Hist. of Baptists, vol. i. p, 154. Morse and Parish's Hist. p. 101. 7 MS. Account. Neal's Hist. of New Eng. vol. 1. p. 140, 141. Backus's Hist. of Baptists, vol. i. p. 55, 598.
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