921.73 W589w.pdf - Mesa FamilySearch Library

I84 Memoir of
he could see the evident progress of those
principles for which he had made so great a
sacrifice, he expressed his confident belief that
the New England colonists would become a
virtuous and religious people, and would maintain
their freedom in matters of conscience, and
the complete independence of the Church from
the interference of courts or governments.
After the lapse of two hundred years, it is no
easy task to do full justice to the memory of a
Puritan minister, who was of "large and lib-
eral mind." Opinions, now unquestioned, were
then condemned as the dreams of atheists or
of political incendiaries. Therefore it is difficult
for us, at this late day, to appreciate the
genius, the moral courage, the wisdom, or the
beneficence, of those who maintained princi-
ples which were then oplzosed, and which
could be understood only by a more enlight-
ened posterity. Their modest disinterestedness
poured its silent stream of blessings into the
swelling tide of public welfare; its individ-
uality was then lost, and can now no longer
be traced back to its fountain-head. It is not