Roger Williams quotes
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“The greatest crime is not developing your potential. When you do what you do best, you are helping not only yourself, but the world.”
-- Roger Williams -
“But who is to decide who truly fears the Lord? The magistrate has no power to enforce religious demands. The laws of the First Table of the Ten Commandments are not regulations for a civil society or a political order. They belong to the realm of religion, not politics.”
-- Roger Williams -
“God is too large to be housed under one roof.”
-- Roger Williams -
“Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Narragansett Club, Providence, Roger Williams (1866). “Publications of the Narragansett Club: First series”, p.52
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“It is less hurtful to compel a man to marry someone whom he does not love than to follow a religion in which he does not believe.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Source: www.libertymagazine.org
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“The sovereign power of all civil authority is founded in the consent of the people.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Source: www.libertymagazine.org
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“That cannot be a true religion which needs carnal weapons to uphold it.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Roger Williams (2001). “The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience: Discussed in a Conference Between Truth and Peace : Who, in All Tender Affection, Present to the High Court of Parliament, (as the Result of Their Discourse) These, (among Other Passages) of Highest Consideration”, p.82, Mercer University Press
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“There is no regularly constituted church of Christ on earth, nor any person qualified to administer any church ordinances; nor can there be until new apostles are sent by the Great Head of the Church for whose coming I am seeking.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : "Picturesque America, or the Land We Live In". Book edited by William Cullen Bryant, Volume 1, p. 502, 1872.
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“God requireth not a uniformity of religion to be enacted in any civil state; which enforced uniformity (sooner or later) is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Roger Williams, John Cotton, John Murton (1848). “The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed: And Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and Answered”, p.2
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“There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out sometimes that Papists, Protestants, Jews, and Turks may be embarked in one ship; upon which supposal I affirm that all the liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for turns upon these two hinges: that none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks be forced to come to the ships prayers or worship, nor be compelled [restrained] from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Source: www.libertymagazine.org
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“Men's consciences ought in no sort to be violated, urged, or constrained.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : "The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience". Book by Roger Williams. "Address to Parliament", 1644.
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“An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Roger DAVIS, Roger Williams (2009). “On Religious Liberty: Selections from the Works of Roger Williams”, p.87, Harvard University Press
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“The human body heals itself and nutrition provides the resources to accomplish the task.”
-- Roger Williams -
“Having bought truth dear, we must not sell it cheap, not the least grain of it for the whole world.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Roger Williams, John Cotton, John Murton (1848). “The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed: And Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and Answered”, p.9
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“How frequent, how constant ought we to be, like Christ Jesus our example, in doing good, especially to the souls of men and especially to the household of faith (yea, even to our enemies), when we remember that this is our seed time, of which every minute is precious, and that as our sowing is, so shall be our eternal harvest.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Source: www.libertymagazine.org
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“When they have opened a gap in the ... wall of separation between the Garden of the Church and the wildernes of the world, God hath ever ... made his Garden a Wildernesse.”
-- Roger Williams -
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“There is a moral virtue, a moral fidelity, ability and honesty, which other men, besides church members, are, by good nature and education, by good laws and good examples nourished and trained up in; so that civil places and trust and credit need not be monopolized into the hands of church members (who sometimes are not fitted for public office), while all others are deprived and despoiled of their natural and civil rights and liberties.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Source: www.libertymagazine.org
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“In my plea for freedom to all consciences in matters merely of worship, I have impartially pleaded for freedom of the consciences of the Papists themselves, the greatest enemies and persecutors in Europe of the saints and truths of Jesus; yet I have pleaded for no more than is their due and right. Whatever else shall be the consequence of this plea, it shall stand for a monument and testimony against them and be an aggravation of their former, present, and future cruelties against Christ Jesus the Head, and all that uprightly love Him, His true disciples and followers.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Source: www.libertymagazine.org
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“Sometimes the truth is stupid.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Roger Williams (2006). “The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect”, p.132, Lulu.com
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“The natives are very exact and punctual in the bounds of their lands, belonging to this or that prince or people, even to a river, brook, &c. And I have known them make bargain and sale amongst themselves for a small piece or quantity of ground; notwithstanding a sinful opinion amongst many, that christians have right to heathen's lands.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : "The Book of the Indians of North America". Book by Samuel G. Drake, 1835.
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“All civil states, with their officers of justice, in their respective constitutions and administrations, are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual, or Christian, state and worship.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Roger DAVIS, Roger Williams (2009). “On Religious Liberty: Selections from the Works of Roger Williams”, p.86, Harvard University Press
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“When they [the Church] have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the Candlestick, etc., and made His Garden a wilderness as it is this day. And that therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and Paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world, and all that be saved out of the world are to be transplanted out of the wilderness of the World.”
-- Roger Williams -
“Kings and magistrates are invested with no more power than the people entrust to them.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Source: www.libertymagazine.org
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“God requireth not an uniformity of Religion to be inacted and inforced in any civill state.”
-- Roger WilliamsSource : Roger Williams (1867). “The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution”, p.3
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