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From Here to Forever
a different creed, he [Williams] regarded as an open violation of
their natural rights; to drag to public worship the irreligious and the
unwilling, seemed only like requiring hypocrisy. ... ‘No one should
be bound to worship, or,’ he added, ‘to maintain a worship, against
his own consent.’
Roger Williams was respected, yet his demand for religious
liberty could not be tolerated. To avoid arrest he was forced to flee
amid the cold and storms of winter into the unbroken forest.
“For fourteen weeks,” he says, “I was sorely tossed in a bitter
season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean.” But “the ravens
fed me in the wilderness,” and a hollow tree often served for a
shelter
He continued his painful flight through snow and trackless
forest until he found refuge with an Indian tribe whose confidence
and affection he had won.
He laid the foundation of the first state of modern times that
recognized the right “that every man should have liberty to wor-
ship God according to the light of his own conscience.
His little
state, Rhode Island, increased and prospered until its foundation
principles—civil and religious liberty—became the cornerstones of
the American Republic.
Document of Freedom
The American Declaration of Independence declared: “We hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The
Constitution guarantees the inviolability of conscience: “Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or pro-
hibiting the free exercise thereof.”
[185]
“The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle
that man’s relation with his God is above human legislation, and his
rights of conscience inalienable. ... It is an inborn principle which
nothing can eradicate.
7
Bancroft, pt. 1, ch. 15, par. 2.
8
Martyn, vol. 5, pp. 349, 350.
9
Ibid., vol. 5, p. 354.
10
Congressional Documents (U.S.A.), serial No. 200, Document No. 271.