The Complete Writings of Roger Williams

by Roger Williams

This is a facsimile reprint of the 1964 edition published in New York by Russell & Russell, Inc., which was itself an enlarged version of the original produced in 1867 by the Narragansett Club Publications, Providence, RI.

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Roger Williams (c. 1603 – between January and March 1683) was an English Puritan theologian who was an early proponent of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. He was expelled by the Puritan Leaders because they thought he was spreading "new and dangerous ideas", so in 1636, he began the colony of Providence Plantation, which provided a refuge for religious minorities. Williams was a member of the first Baptist church in America, the First Baptist Church of Providence.

Williams was also a student of Native American languages, an early advocate for fair dealings with Native Americans, and arguably the first abolitionist in North America, having organized the first attempt to prohibit slavery in any of the British American colonies.

Reviews

[Alan Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a 2005 reprint by the Baptist Standard Bearer of volume 2 of the 1963 edition (Russell & Russell) of The Complete Writings of Roger Williams. It includes the following works: John Cotton's Reply to Mr. Williams, his Examination (originally published in 1647 with John Cotton's Bloudy Tenent, Washed) and Williams's Queries of Highest Consideration (originally published in 1644). The Queries commenced Williams's long engagement with the church-state issues of the English Civil War and Interregnum during his two return visits (1643-44 and 1651-54) to England.

The writings in this edition denote the pagination of the originals in brackets within the texts. Although not facsimiles of the originals, they reproduce the orthography and other features of the originals. Accordingly, the 1963 edition (or a reprint of same) is frequently cited in the scholarly literature. The originals of these publications are now also available on Early English Books Online (EEBO).

I give this edition five stars in view of the accuracy of the reprints of the originals as well as the power and cogency of Roger Williams's Queries of Highest Consideration. This rating does not apply to the March 1867 editorial commentary of the Reverend J. Lewis Diman on Cotton's Reply, which is sorely deficient. However, Reuben Albridge Guild's March 1867 introduction to Queries of Highest Consideration does provide some helpful historical background to that work. Cotton's Reply to Mr. Williams, his Examination is a stubborn defense of the indefensible: theocracy and its necessary concomitant, religious persecution. It is not merely anachronistic to disagree fundamentally with Cotton when Roger Williams himself performed a devastating deconstruction of his arguments in the seventeenth century.

I discuss these writings by Williams and Cotton in depth in my book The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience.

(Originally posted 10/26/2014; revised 8/20/15)