American Minute for February 5th:

    Guilty of preaching religious liberty in England, Roger Williams fled to Boston, FEBRUARY 5, 1631. He pastored briefly before being banished by Puritan John Cotton, who himself had been persecuted by Anglicans in England. Roger Williams befriended the Narragansett Indians, who gave him land for Providence Plantation, Rhode Island-the first place where church government was not controlled by the state government. In 1639, Williams organized the first Baptist Church in America. His "notorious disagreements" with Cotton led to his publishing "Mr. Cotton's Letter Lately Printed, Examined and Answered," 1644, in which Roger Williams wrote: "The church of the Jews under the Old Testament in the type, and the church of the Christians under the New Testament in the anti-type, were both separate from the world; and when they 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 broken down the wall...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." In 1802, Jefferson referred to Roger Williams' "wall of separation" in his letter to the Danbury Baptists.

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American Minute with Bill Federer FEBRUARY 5. Williams, Roger. "Mr. Cotton's Letter Lately Printed, Examined and Answered," 1644. The Bloudy Tenet of Persecution, in The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, 7 vols, (New York, 1963), III, 333, and quoted in Timothy L. Hall, Separating Church and State: Roger Williams and Religious Liberty (Urbana, IL, 1998), 62. Quoted in Sargent Bush, Jr., The Corrsepondence of John Cotton, (The University of North Carolina Press, 2001) Correspondence 1621-1626, p. 97. John Cotton wrote "Conjoined twins- 'Roger Williams provides a useful gloss in writing that church and state are 'like Hippocrates twins, they are borne together, grow up together, laugh together, weepe together, sucken and die together.'" also page 7, "Cotton's notorious disagreements with Roger Williams, which began soon after Cotton's arrival in Boston." Perry Miller: Roger Williams: His Contribution to the American Tradition 89, 98, (1953). The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, Vol. 1, 108 (1644). Roger Williams, 1644, Writings, 1:392 Mr. Cottons Letter Lately Printed, Examined and Answered," Roger Williams, Feb. 5 1644, London, from "The Complete Writings of Roger Williams," Vol. I, edited by Reuben Aldridge Guild, Russell & Russell Inc., New York: 1963, page 108. The World Book Encyclopedia, 18 vols. (Chicago, IL: Field Enterprises, Inc., 1957; W.F. Quarrie & Co., 8 vols., 1917; World Book, Inc., 22 vols., 1989), Vol. 14, p. 6931; Vol. 18, pp. 8780-8781. Lynn R. Buzzard & Samuel Ericsson, The Battle for Religious Liberty (Elgin, IL: David C. Cook, 1982), p. 51. John Eidsmoe, Christianity & the Constitution - The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, A Mott Media Book, 1987, 6 printing 1993), pp. 215, 243. Senator Henry Bowen Anthony delivers the Eulogy of Roger Williams in Congress. Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, OR: American Heritage Ministries, 1987; Mantle Min, 228 Still Ridge, Bulverde, TX), p. 16.

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