921.73 W589w.pdf - Mesa FamilySearch Library

Re_. Samuel W_iti_g. 8 x
gious liberty, no forecast of the future of this
great country. Nor could it be safely predicted
what would be its destiny. Some of its lead-
ing men, saturated with a natural instinct of
bigotry, intolerance, and tyranny, insisted that
it was the right and duty of the civil authority
to prescribe and regulate the religious opinions
of its subjects ; but few were inspired by a pas-
sion for freedom of the people, and independence
of the Church from the control of the
government. The most discordant principles
which could have entered as elements into
the constitution of civilized society had been
thrown into the crucible ; and it was beyond the
power of the wisest to foresee what of "pure
metal would be spared by the fire of mutual
persecution, the savagery of Indian wars, the
ambition, selfishness, and wickedness of men,
or to conjecture the form and pattern into which
that metal would finally be moulded.
So novel, so unlike the condition of any
other community, was that of the Massachu-
setts-bay Colony, that its progress from such
anomalous beginnings, through so many dan-
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