Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-9pm4c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T00:43:42.326Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

John Cotton and Roger Williams: Their Controversy Concerning Religious Liberty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Elisabeth Feist Hirsch
Affiliation:
Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, N. Y.

Extract

Many people in the United States today feel that England is fighting a battle that is also their own. The English people, on the other hand, note with great satisfaction and gratitude the sympathy that the United States displays for their life and death struggle. A similar mutual interest existed between the American colonies of the seventeenth century and the England of the age of the Revolution. We have only to look at the many impassioned controversies on both sides of the Atlantic. They tell us a lively story of the exchange of ideas between Old and New England. Robert Baillie, Samuel Rutherford, William Twiss, three outstanding members of the Westminster Assembly, engaged in long arguments with John Cotton on various problems of doctrine and church government. John Cotton and other New England ministers in long pamphlets answered any reproaches of heresy made by the English or Scotch Presbyterians. It is safe to say, furthermore, that the controversy between John Cotton and Roger Williams, with which we are here concerned, would never have been started without Williams's participation in the debates of the Long Parliament in 1643/44.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1941

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Letter of John Cotton (1643) and Roger Williams' Reply (London, 1644)Google Scholar; Cotton, John, Master John Cotton's Answer to Master Roger Williams (London, 1644)Google Scholar; Williams, Roger, The Bloody Tenent of Persecution … (London, 1644)Google Scholar; Cotton, John, The Controversy concerning Liberty of Conscience (London, 1646)Google Scholar; Cotton, John, The Bloody Tenent washed and made white in the Blood of the Lamb, (London, 1647)Google Scholar; Williams, Roger, The Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody (London, 1652).Google Scholar All these pamphlets are published in modern editions by the Narragansett Club, which are used here except for Cotton, 's “The Bloody Tenent washed …”Google Scholar which we quote from the original edition.

2 Cotton, Hooker, and Davenport were invited to take part in the Westminster Assembly, but they declined. See Miller, Perry, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts (Cambridge, 1933), 276.Google Scholar

3 On the same subject, see Parkes, Henry Bamford, “John Cotton and Roger Williams Debate Toleration, 1644–1652,” in New England Quarterly, IV, 735–56.Google Scholar Parkes emphasizes the medieval features in Cotton.

4 Jordan, W. K., The Development of Seligious Toleration in England, from the Convention of the Long Parliament to the Restoration, 1640–1660 (Cambridge, 1938), 5152.Google Scholar

5 The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, 24Google Scholar

6 The Controversy concerning Liberty of Conscience, 78.Google Scholar

7 See Heim, Karl, Das Gewissheitsproblem in der systematischen Theologie bis zu Schleiermacher (Leipzig, 1911), esp. 176.Google Scholar

8 Some Treasure fetched out of Rubbish (London, 1660), 19Google Scholar

9 Miller, Perry, The New England Mind (New York, 1939), 107.Google Scholar

10 Some Treasure fetched out of Rubbish, 25Google Scholar

11 The Bloody Tenent still wore Bloody, 67Google Scholar

12 The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, 63.Google Scholar See also Ernst, JamesThe Political Thought of Roger Williams (Seattle, 1929), 178179Google Scholar

13 See A Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time … (London 1645), 57Google Scholar

14 Kühn, Johannes, Toleranz und Offenbarung (Leipzig, 1923)Google Scholar, in. a chapter on Williams emphasizes also this point; see 168.

15 “The Parable of the Tares as the Proof Text for Religious Liberty to the End of the Sixteenth Century,” Church History, I (1932), 6789.Google Scholar

16 The Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody, 118.Google Scholar

17 On the Anabaptists, see Bainton, Roland H., “David Joris, Wiedertäufer und Kämpfer für Toleranz im 16. Jahrhundert,” ia Archiv für Religionsgeschichte (Leipzig, 1937), 8.Google Scholar

18 The question of a possible separation from the Church of England was, of course, of the greatest importance for the Puritans in seventeenth century Massachusetts. But for us who try to interpret Roger Williams's religious outlook, it appears only as a by-product of his fundamental concept of the Church.

19 Church History, 1, 68Google Scholar

20 Letter of John Cotton and Roger Williams' Reply, 19Google Scholar

21 Cotton, John, Of the Holiness of Church Members, (London, 1650), 29.Google ScholarRutherford, Samuel, The Due right of Presbyteries or a Peaceable Plea for the Government of the Church of Scotland … (London, 1644), passim.Google Scholar

22 Cotton, John, Of the Holiness of Church Members, 65Google Scholar

23 The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (New York, 1931), II, 597.Google Scholar

24 The Bloody Tenent washed 13Google Scholar

25 The Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody, 80Google Scholar

26 Exchange of Letters between Cromwell, Oliver and Cotton, John, in Hutchinson Papers (1679), 233–37.Google Scholar

27 See Hutchinson, , The History of the Colony of Massachusetts-Bay (2 volumes, London, 1760)Google Scholar; we quote from the edition of 1936 by Mayo, Lawrence Shaw (Cambridge, Mass.), IGoogle Scholar, Appendix III.

28 First ed., 1576; see edition 1608, 961. There exists an English translation of 1606 by Richard Knolles. See Baudrillart, Henry, Jean Boain et son temps (Paris, 1853).Google Scholar

29 Weill, G., Les théories sur le pourvoir royal en France pendant les guerres de religion (Paris, 1901.).Google Scholar

30 On Bodin see Allen, I. W., The History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1928), 44Google Scholar, where he points out that Bodin's influence on England in the seventeenth century was very important: See also Mattern, Johannes, Conception of the State (Baltimofe-Oxford, 1928), 78.Google Scholar

31 In A Model of Church and Civil Power, a pamphlet published by Roger Williams as second part of the Blooay Tenent of Persecution, the author or authors also quote Bodin, , p. 224.Google Scholar The authorship of this tract is problematic. Caldwell, Samuel L., the editor of the Bloody Tenent of PersecutionGoogle Scholar for the Narragansett Club believes that several authors are responsible for it whilst James Ernst mentions Richard Mather as author. Roger Williams had attributed it to John Cotton who, however, had denied the authorship.

32 The Bloody Tenent washed, 62Google Scholar

33 Bodin, Jean, Les Six Livres de la République, 11Google Scholar; Williams, Roger, The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, 242Google Scholar; Ernst, James, The Political Thought of Roger Williams, 46Google Scholar does not mention Bodin in this connection.

34 Bloody Tenent of Persecution, 180Google Scholar

35 On Buchanan, see Gooch-Laski, , English Democratic Ideas in the 17th Century (Cambridge, 1929, 2nd. ed.), 3941.Google Scholar Also Allen, , Political thought, 336–42.Google Scholar

36 The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, 249Google Scholar

37 The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, 378.Google Scholar

38 See above, p. 43.

39 It is interesting to note that a modern scholar came to a similar solution, in regard to our present religious situation. He found that Congregationalism was best prepared to combine “concepts of the church which transcend historie circumstances” and that it conforms best with the true spirit of Christianity which means: “The genius of Christianity is that it seeks to be in the world without being of the world.” See Bainton, Roland H., “Congregationalism; The Middle Way,” in Christendom, III (1940), 354.Google Scholar