Roger Williams Witchhunt

Roger Williams University in Rhode Island has shut down the campus' only conservative/Republican publication because it dared to voice a conservative argument against what it considered to be the university's anti-religious policies. Below, FrontPage Magazine has included the article "Roger Williams Witchhunt,"an account of the events as they unfolded, written by RWU student and the editor of the publication in question Jason Mattera. We have also posted the Students for Academic Freedom press release. Following that, we show you the letter Dr. Roy J. Nirschel, president of RWU, wrote voicing his personal condemnation of the conservative publication as "pornographic in nature, puerile (and) mean spirited." Sara Russo of SAF wrote him a letter in response, appended immediately afterward. Finally, we provide a link to the publication itself, so you can read it and judge its contents for yourself. We hope this exposure will give RWU -- and other universities around the country -- reason to think twice before imposing ideological uniformity on campus. - The Editors.

American universities shun intellectual diversity. Or, at least, that’s the grim conclusion conservatives at one Rhode Island campus have been reaching in recent weeks. At Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, members of the school’s chapter of College Republicans have been physically threatened, accused of hate speech, and have stood by as the university forcibly shut down its only conservative publication and cut off funding to the school’s only Republican organization. The Hawk’s Eye, which I edit, has been judged the second-best College Republican newspaper in the country, according to the College Republican National Committee. It is now a victim of a university administration’s intolerance. The crime we committed? Speaking out in public against university policies we consider to be anti-religious and intolerant.

The story begins in August, when the university sponsored two speakers under the ostensible banner of diversity. As things turned out, the speakers, Judy Shepard, mother of slain homosexual Mathew Shepard, and James Dale, a gay man kicked out of the Boy Scouts, were interested in anything but diversity. Instead, the speakers took the occasion to denounce organized religion and cast aspersion upon President Bush’s demonstrable commitment to civil rights.

“Churches are damaging us as a society,” Shepard explained in a mandatory speech to freshmen during Welcome Week. “They don’t allow us to grow,” she continued. Students expecting a talk focusing exclusively on the evils of homophobia—what we would expect from Shepard—were unpleasantly surprised by Shepard’s tirade against churches.

Did the university knowingly require freshmen to undergo a seminar in anti-religious sentiment? Why did it subject freshmen to such views in a forum with clear university endorsement? Does the university takes sectarian positions on organized religion? These are the questions thoughtful students have posed to the university community. But the university did not answer them, and at the very least appeared content to allow impressionable newcomers to conclude that the university endorses such positions.

The second of the two speakers, James Dale, the gay man who was kicked out of the Boy Scouts, was just as inflammatory as Judy Shepard. He used the podium to argue that President Bush “is not an advocate of civil rights” because he doesn’t support gay marriage. Dale said that when he was a Boy Scout “nobody knew about its discrimination policy. Nobody knew [the Boy Scouts] was anti-gay.”

Roger Williams’s conservative students, sensing some views going unrepresented, pointed out that according to senate regulations, student organizations—including the ones that organized the Shepard and Dale events—are supposed to represent views across the spectrum. Indeed, the student senate’s rules of financial sponsorship are specifically designed to combat partisan agendas from non-partisan organizations. Section V, article I of the student senate bylaws defines an organization “as a group that targets the general campus population in its scope of activities and programs.” Clubs, including my own College Republicans, can be ideologically partisan. But the organizations in question—The Campus Entertainment Network, the Inter Residence Hall Association, and the Department of Campus Programs—were the groups who sponsored Shepard and Dale and paid their way to campus. Together, they have a combined budget of over $715,000. As anyone can judge by the names of these groups, clear university endorsement is implied when a “Department of Campus Programs” or some such official-sounding entity sponsors an event.

I decided it was time to confront this ideological programming and the system that fosters it. As a student senator in college government, founder of The Hawk’s Right Eye, the College Republicans’ periodical, and president of the Rhode Island Federation of College Republicans, I called upon College Republicans to take common-sense steps to promote intellectual diversity to defend traditional values that the university was marginalizing.

I co-sponsored a Student Senate bill—similar to David Horowitz’s Students For Academic Freedom Bill of Rights—that would require politically divisive lectures sponsored by well-funded, non-partisan organizations to represent views inclusive to liberal and conservative students alike. Basically, it would have required organizations to follow their charter and not become mascots for a particular agenda. In addition, I wrote articles in The Hawk’s Right Eye exposing the intolerance of militant homosexuals, explaining the bastardization of the word “diversity,” and contesting the claim that failure to affirm homosexual practices, due to moral or religious convictions, constitutes bigotry. You can read The Hawk’s Right Eye at www.rwucr.com/hre.

The day after I introduced the Student Senate bill, I was fired from my job at the Department of Campus Programs.

I was suddenly accused of breaking and entering the programming office to flip through personnel and payroll files in order to see budget figures for the Department of Campus Programs. The charge was ludicrous, not least because these figures are a matter of public record which can be obtained openly by any member of the university, according to the President.

It got worse. The university administration proceeded to attack The Hawk’s Right Eye, the only conservative publication on campus. Three days after The Hawk’s Right Eye was distributed, RWU’s president Roy J. Nirschel sent an e-mail letter to the entire student body accusing our paper of flirting with racism and “cross[ing] seriously over the lines of propriety.” “The university will not condone publications that create a hostile environment for our students and community,” Nirschel wrote. The university is “too busy for hate,” he told the student body. We have since offered $25 to the first reader to find racist rhetoric in The Hawk’s Right Eye; no one to date has been able to do so.

Then came the death-blow. The administration cut off all funding to The Hawk’s Right Eye. This act is totally in violation of the Roger Williams University student handbook which says, “Roger Williams does not discriminate on the basis of…political affiliation.” According to RWU, “such discrimination is prohibited by Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972.”

The administration did so abruptly and in the middle of a semester, in contradiction of standard procedures which require funding decisions to go through the student senate.

The senate bill was portrayed as an anti-gay bill that would welcome the KKK and encourage gay lynchings on campus. “In my classes and from my peers, all I heard was the same hyperbole surrounding the senate bill—that it was a College Republican ploy which would welcome a KKK rally in the parking lot,” said former student senator Elysia Rodriquez.

The senate bill called for basic intellectual diversity only, but situated as it was in a climate of uproar and hysteria, it was not ratified. Next, after the uproar, RWU provost Edward Kavanagh asked CR advisor Professor June Speakman to step down from her role as the club’s faculty sponsor. It was not clear to us what Speakman had done wrong. According to Kavanagh, the College Republicans do not accurately represent the Republican Party, and therefore need a different adviser who would correct their folly.

Kavanagh, thinking it fitting to tell a tenured faculty advisor how she should conduct herself and how she should manage her own voluntary university service, tried to solve the controversy with a heavy-handed approach. We thank her publicly and often for her support, but we are only students, and the provost is second in command. If Speakman does resign, our club will become an unofficial campus organization with a severely limited means of expression. Campus demonstrations, statewide activism, lectures, our Internet forum, and our periodical will all come to an end. The “politically correct” liberal view will effectively be the only one seen or heard on campus.

Director of Student Affairs Richard Stegman has convinced liberal student senators to propose my impeachment from the student senate finance committee owing to unsubstantiated charges of “dereliction of duty” and “gross negligence.” The university administration has already cut off all funding to The Hawk’s Right Eye, while ignoring standard protocol. Stegman claims to support intellectual diversity and has said that he would never micro-manage any organization or club sanctioned by the student senate. By halting these funds for CR and calling for my impeachment, he has shown himself to be a blatant hypocrite.

If you are a liberal, there are no stipulations on the campus of Roger Williams University, but if you are a conservative, there are many. As David Horowitz says, the rule of the Left is “tolerance for me and not for thee.” Cowards shun debate and rely on turbid epithets to compensate for their political and intellectual vacuity. The administration at RWU craves leftist uniformity and plans to silence discordant views that are not in lockstep with their oppressive, narrow-minded agenda. If you agree that this progression of events at RWU is symptomatic of a dangerous national trend, we encourage you to speak your mind.

E-mail or call Professor June Speakman to praise her commitment to intellectual diversity:

To read president Nirschel’s all-student e-mail and the Hawk’s Right Eye article used to prompt his “straw man” response, visit www.rwucr.com.

Jedediah Jones, a sophomore at Roger Williams University majoring in political science and a frequent writer for The Hawk’s Right Eye, contributed to this article.

Jason Mattera, an economics fellow at the National Journalism Center, was named Best College Republican State Chairman in 2003 and is a junior at Roger Williams University.

Students for Academic Freedom Protests Roger Williams University’s Suppression of Free Speech

Students for Academic Freedom issued a call today for Roger Williams University to cease their suppression of free speech on campus. The president and administration of the school froze the funding of a conservative student publication, The Hawk’s Right Eye, and publicly castigated the paper’s editors for their viewpoints. The newspaper had printed articles criticizing the lack of diversity of opinion among university-sponsored speakers this fall.

In an email sent to the entire campus, University President Roy J. Nirschel stated that The Hawk’s Right Eye had “crossed seriously over the lines of propriety and respect” and accused the editors of having “flirted with racist and anti-Islamic rhetoric.”

Despite claiming to support the free speech rights of campus groups, the administration froze $2700 in funding granted to the Hawk’s Right Eye to publish nine issues, effectively silencing them. The administration together with the student senate will now decide whether the paper should be permanently defunded.

“This is a direct assault on the right of students to express opinions and is a stain on the reputation of a university that bears the name of one of America’s most famous defenders of freedom of conscience,” said Sara Russo, the National Campus Director of Students for Academic Freedom. "The charges brought against these student journalists are baseless and President Nirschel’s intervention in a dispute over controversial public issues violates the posture of organizational neutrality that an institution of higher learning ought to maintain.”

Students at Roger Williams are currently in the process of registering an official chapter of Students for Academic Freedom which will defend the free speech rights of the editors of The Hawk's Right Eye and will urge the administration to adopt an Academic Bill of Rights.

Students for Academic Freedom is a new national initiative dedicated to restoring academic diversity and educational values to America’s institutions of higher learning. The organization recommends that colleges and universities adopt an Academic Bill of Rights to ensure that these principles are respected. The Academic Bill of Rights is available on the organization’s website. “An environment conducive to the civil exchange of ideas being an essential component of a free university, the obstruction of invited campus speakers, destruction of campus literature or other effort to obstruct this exchange will not be tolerated,” states one clause in the Academic Bill of Rights which would have protected The Hawk’s Right Eye from attempts at censorship.

Roger Williams University is committed to intellectual inquiry and discourse. Among our core values is a celebration of the liberal arts, service, a global perspective and respect for the individual. Inherent within these core values is the affirmation of free expression as well as civility and mutual respect.

In recent days, a publication of a student-funded organization has crossed seriously over the lines of propriety and respect. In the past, this organization has flirted with racist and anti-Islamic rhetoric. The most recent issue of their publication, the Hawks Right Eye, is pornographic in nature, puerile, mean spirited and stereotypes gay individuals as child molesters, criminals or deviants. The views expressed therein do not represent the viewpoint of the Republican Party or most individual members of the party.

While we affirm the right of campus organizations to hold different points of view and to disagree, the university will not condone publications that create a hostile environment for our students and community.

Roger Williams continues to believe in respect for diversity of opinion and a civil exchange of views as well as respect for individuals regardless of their beliefs, backgrounds, or orientation. As an institution whose namesake preached, for his time, inclusiveness and respect for human dignity, we are a university too busy for hate.

You can visit the website of the RWCR's at http://www.rwucr.com and you can email President Roy Nirschel at rnirschel@rwu.edu.

I am the national campus director of Students for Academic Freedom, an organization with individual chapters on 90 campuses nationwide. I write to protest the attack by the Roger Williams administration on the free speech rights of the editors of the Hawk’s Right Eye and treatment by the university of students who have the temerity to express views that challenge university orthodoxy.

In an email sent to the entire campus, you stated that the Hawk’s Right Eye had “crossed seriously over the lines of propriety and respect” and accused the editors of having “flirted with racist and anti-Islamic rhetoric.” These are baseless and outrageous charges that have a chilling effect on the free speech rights of all students. Your intervention in a dispute over controversial public issues violates the posture of organizational neutrality that an institution of higher learning ought to maintain.

Despite claiming to support the free speech rights of campus groups, the administration has frozen $2700 in funding granted to the Hawk’s Right Eye to publish nine issues, effectively silencing them. The administration together with the student senate will now decide whether the paper should be permanently defunded. This is a direct assault on the right of students to express opinions and is a stain on the reputation of a university that bears the name of one of America’s most famous defenders of freedom of conscience.

Students for Academic Freedom will defend the free speech rights of the editors of the Hawk’s Right Eye and will work to bring this to the attention of as wide an audience as possible. Additional information is available on our website at www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org.

Wrong guy. :-)

A PLEA FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
by Roger Wiliams 1
[Roger Williams (ca. 1603-83), religious leader and one of the founders of Rhode Island, was the son of a well-to-do London businessman. Educated at Cambridge (A.B., 1627) he became a clergyman and in 1630 sailed for Massachusetts. He refused a call to the church of Boston because it had not formally broken with the Church of England, but after two invitations he became the assistant pastor, later pastor, of the church at Salem. He questioned the right of the colonists to take the Indians' land from them merely on the legal basis of the royal charter and in other ways ran afoul of the oligarchy then ruling Massachusetts. In 1635 he was found guilty of spreading "new authority of magistrates" and was ordered to be banished from the colony. He lived briefly with friendly Indians and then, in 1636, founded Providence in what was to be the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. His religious views led him to become briefly a Baptist, later a Seeker. In 1644, while he was in England getting a charter for his colony from Parliament, he wrote the work from which this dialogue is taken. During much of his later life he was engaged in polemics on political and religious questions. He was an important figure in the intellectual life of his time, though the direct influence of his writings is considered by Professor Brockunier to have been slight: "Earliest of the fathers of American democracy, he owes his enduring fame to his humanity and breadth of view, his untiring devotion to the cause of democracy and free opportunity, and his long record of opposition to the privileged and self-seeking"]

First, that the blood of so many hundred thousand souls of Protestants and Papists, spilt in the wars of present and former ages, for their respective consciences, is not required nor accepted by Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace.

Secondly, pregnant scriptures and arguments are throughout the work proposed against the doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience.

Thirdly, satisfactory answers are given to scriptures, and objections produced by Mr. Calvin, Beza, Mr. Cotton, and the ministers of the New English churches and others former and later, tending to prove the doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience.

Fourthly, the doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience is proved guilty of all the blood of the souls crying for vengeance under the altar.

Fifthly, 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.

Sixthly, it is the will and command of God that (since the coming of his Son the Lord Jesus) a permission of the most paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or antichristian consciences and worships, be granted to all men in all nations and countries; and they are only to be fought against with that sword which is only (in soul matters) able to conquer, to wit, the sword of God's Spirit, the Word of God.

Seventhly, the state of the Land of Israel, the kings and people thereof in peace and war, is proved figurative and ceremonial, and no pattern nor president for any kingdom or civil state in the world to follow.

Eighthly, God requireth not a uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced 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.

Ninthly, in holding an enforced uniformity of religion in a civil state, we must necessarily disclaim our desires and hopes of the Jew's conversion to Christ.

Tenthly, 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 is come in the flesh.

Eleventhly, the permission of other consciences and worships than a state professeth only can (according to God) procure a firm and lasting peace (good assurance being taken according to the wisdom of the civil state for uniformity of civil obedience from all forts).

Twelfthly, lastly, true civility and Christianity may both flourish in a state or kingdom, notwithstanding the permission of divers and contrary consciences, either of Jew or Gentile....

TRUTH. I acknowledge that to molest any person, Jew or Gentile, for either professing doctrine, or practicing worship merely religious or spiritual, it is to persecute him, and such a person (whatever his doctrine or practice be, true or false) suffereth persecution for conscience.

But withal I desire it may be well observed that this distinction is not full and complete: for beside this that a man may be persecuted because he holds or practices what he believes in conscience to be a truth (as Daniel did, for which he was cast into the lions' den, Dan. 6), and many thousands of Christians, because they durst not cease to preach and practice what they believed was by God commanded, as the Apostles answered (Acts 4 & 5), I say besides this a man may also be persecuted, because he dares not be constrained to yield obedience to such doctrines and worships as are by men invented and appointed....

Dear TRUTH, I have two sad complaints:

First, the most sober of the witnesses, that dare to plead thy cause, how are they charged to be mine enemies, contentious, turbulent, seditious?

Secondly, shine enemies, though they speak and rail against thee, though they outrageously pursue, imprison, banish, kill thy faithful witnesses, yet how is all vermilion'd o'er for justice against the heretics? Yea, if they kindle coals, and blow the flames of devouring wars, that leave neither spiritual nor civil state, but burn up branch and root, yet how do all pretend an holy war? He that kills, and he that's killed, they both cry out: "It is for God, and for their conscience."

'Tis true, nor one nor other seldom dare to plead the mighty Prince Christ Jesus for their author, yet (both Protestant and Papist) pretend they have spoke with Moses and the Prophets who all, say they (before Christ came), allowed such holy persecutions, holy wars against the enemies of holy church.

TRUTH. Dear PEACE (to ease thy first complaint), 'tis true, thy dearest sons, most like their mother, peacekeeping, peacemaking sons of God, have borne and still must bear the blurs of troublers of Israel, and turners of the world upside down. And 'tis true again, what Solomon once spake: "The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water, therefore (saith he) leave off contention before it be meddled with. This caveat should keep the banks and sluices firm and strong, that strife, like a breach of waters, break not in upon the sons of men."

Yet strife must be distinguished: It is necessary or unnecessary, godly or Ungodly, Christian or unchristian, etc.

It is unnecessary, unlawful, dishonorable, ungodly, unchristian, in most cases in the world, for there is a possibility of keeping sweet peace in most cases, and, if it be possible, it is the express command of God that peace be kept (Rom. 13).

Again, it is necessary, honorable, godly, etc., with civil and earthly weapons to defend the innocent and to rescue the oppressed from the violent paws and jaws of oppressing persecuting Nimrods 2 (Psal. 73; Job 29).

It is as necessary, yea more honorable, godly, and Christian, to fight the fight of faith, with religious and spiritual artillery, and to contend earnestly for the faith of Jesus, once delivered to the saints against all opposers, and the gates of earth and hell, men or devils, yea against Paul himself, or an angel from heaven, if he bring any other faith or doctrine....

PEACE. I add that a civil sword (as woeful experience in all ages has proved) is so far from bringing or helping forward an opposite in religion to repentance that magistrates sin grievously against the work of God and blood of souls by such proceedings. Because as (commonly) the sufferings of false and antichristian teachers harden their followers, who being blind, by this means are occasioned to tumble into the ditch of hell after their blind leaders, with more inflamed zeal of lying confidence. So, secondly, violence and a sword of steel begets such an impression in the sufferers that certainly they conclude (as indeed that religion cannot be true which needs such instruments of violence to uphold it so) that persecutors are far from soft and gentle commiseration of the blindness of others....

For (to keep to the similitude which the Spirit useth, for instance) to batter down a stronghold, high wall, fort, tower, or castle, men bring not a first and second admonition, and after obstinacy, excommunication, which are spiritual weapons concerning them that be in the church: nor exhortation to repent and be baptized, to believe in the Lord Jesus, etc., which are proper weapons to them that be without, etc. But to take a stronghold, men bring cannons, culverins, saker, bullets, powder, muskets, swords, pikes, etc., and these to this end are weapons effectual and proportionable.

On the other side, to batter down idolatry, false worship, heresy, schism, blindness, hardness, out of the soul and spirit, it is vain, improper, and unsuitable to bring those weapons which are used by persecutors, stocks, whips, prisons, swords, gibbets, stakes, etc. (where these seem to prevail with some cities or kingdoms, a stronger force sets up again, what a weaker pull'd down), but against these spiritual strongholds in the souls of men, spiritual artillery and weapons are proper, which are mighty through God to subdue and bring under the very thought to obedience, or else to bind fast the soul with chains of darkness, and lock it up in the prison of unbelief and hardness to eternity....

PEACE. I pray descend now to the second evil which you observe in the answerer's position, viz., that it would be evil to tolerate notorious evildoers, seducing teachers, etc.

TRUTH. I say the evil is that he most improperly and confusedly joins and couples seducing teachers with scandalous livers.

PEACE. But is it not true that the world is full of seducing teachers, and is it not true that seducing teachers are notorious evildoers?

TRUTH. I answer, far be it from me to deny either, and yet in two things I shall discover the great evil of this joining and coupling seducing teachers, and scandalous livers as one adequate or proper object of the magistrate's care and work to suppress and punish.

First, it is not an homogeneal (as we speak) but an hetergeneal 3 commixture or joining together of things most different in kinds and natures, as if they were both of one consideration....

TRUTH. I answer, in granting with Brentius 4 that man hath not power to make laws to bind conscience, he overthrows such his tenent and practice as restrain men from their worship, according to their conscience and belief, and constrain them to such worships (though it be out of a pretense that they are convinced) which their own souls tell them they have no satisfaction nor faith in.

Secondly, whereas he affirms that men may make laws to see the laws of God observed.

I answer, God needeth not the help of a material sword of steel to assist the sword of the Spirit in the affairs of conscience, to those men, those magistrates, yea that commonwealth which makes such magistrates, must needs have power and authority from Christ Jesus to fit judge and to determine in all the great controversies concerning doctrine, discipline, government, etc.

And then I ask whether upon this ground it must not evidently follow that:

Either there is no lawful commonw earth nor civil state of men in the world, which is not qualified with this spiritual discerning (and then also that the very commonweal hath more light concerning the church of Christ than the church itself).

Or, that the commonweal and magistrates thereof must judge and punish as they are persuaded in their own belief and conscience (be their conscience paganish, Turkish, or antichristian) what is this but to confound heaven and earth together, and not only to take away the being of Christianity out of the world, but to take away all civility, and the world out of the world, and to lay all upon heaps of confusion? . ..

PEACE. The fourth head is the proper means of both these powers to attain their ends.

First, the proper means whereby the civil power may and should attain its end are only political, and principally these five.

First, the erecting and establishing what form of civil government may seem in wisdom most meet, according to general rules of the world, and state of the people.

Secondly, the making, publishing, and establishing of wholesome civil laws, not only such as concern civil justice, but also the free passage of true religion; for outward civil peace ariseth and is maintained from them both, from the latter as well as from the former.

Civil peace cannot stand entire, where religion is corrupted (2 Chron. 15. 3. 5. 6; and Judges 8). And yet such laws, though conversant about religion, may still be counted civil laws, as, on the contrary, an oath cloth still remain religious though conversant about civil matters.

Thirdly, election and appointment of civil officers to see execution to those laws.

Fourthly, civil punishments and rewards of transgressors and observers of these laws.

Fifthly, taking up arms against the enemies of civil peace.

Secondly, the means whereby the church may and should attain her ends are only ecclesiastical, which are chiefly five.

First, setting up that form of church government only of which Christ hath given them a pattern in his Word.

Secondly, acknowledging and admitting of no lawgiver in the church but Christ and the publishing of His laws.

Thirdly, electing and ordaining of such officers only, as Christ hath appointed in his Word.

Fourthly, to receive into their fellowship them that are approved and inflicting spiritual censures against them that o end.

Fifthly, prayer and patience in suffering any evil from them that be without, who disturb their peace.

So that magistrates, as magistrates, have no power of setting up the form of church government, electing church officers, punishing with church censures, but to see that the church does her duty herein. And on the other side, the churches as churches, have no power (though as members of the commonweal they may have power) of erecting or altering forms of civil government, electing of civil officers, inflicting civil punishments (no not on persons excommunicate) as by deposing magistrates from their civil authority, or withdrawing the hearts of the people against them, to their laws, no more than to discharge wives, or children, or servants, from due obedience to their husbands, parents, or masters; or by taking up arms against their magistrates, though he persecute them for conscience: for though members of churches who are public officers also of the civil state may suppress by force the violence of usurpers, as Iehoiada did Athaliah, yet this they do not as members of the church but as officers of the civil state.

TRUTH. Here are divers considerable passages which I shall briefly examine, so far as concerns our controversy.

First, whereas they say that the civil power may erect and establish what form of civil government may seem in wisdom most meet, I acknowledge the proposition to be most true, both in itself and also considered with the end of it, that a civil government is an ordinance of God, to conserve the civil peace of people, so far as concerns their bodies and goods, as formerly hath been said.

But from this grant I infer (as before hath been touched) that the sovereign, original, and foundation of civil power lies in the people (whom they must needs mean by the civil power distinct from the government set up). And, if so, that a people may erect and establish what form of government seems to them most meet for their civil condition; it is evident that such governments as are by them erected and established have no more power, nor for no longer time, than the civil power or people consenting and agreeing shall betrust them with. This is clear not only in reason but in the experience of all commonweals, where the people are not deprived of their natural freedom by the power of tyrants.

And, if so, that the magistrates receive their power of governing the church from the people, undeniably it follows that a people, as a people, naturally consider (of what nature or nation soever in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America), have fundamentally and originally, as men, a power to govern the church, to see her do her duty, to correct her, to redress, reform, establish, etc. And if this be not to pull God and Christ and Spirit out of heaven, and subject them unto natural, sinful, inconstant men, and so consequently to Satan himself, by whom all peoples naturally are guided, let heaven and earth judge....

PEACE. Some will here ask: What may the magistrate then lawfully do with his civil horn or power in matters of religion?

TRUTH. His horn not being the horn of that unicorn or rhinoceros, the power of the Lord Jesus in spiritual cases, his sword not the two-edged sword of the spirit, the word of God (hanging not about the loins or side, but at the lips. and proceeding out of the mouth of his ministers) but of an humane and civil nature and constitution, it must consequently be of a humane and civil operation, for who knows not that operation follows constitution; And therefore I shall end this passage with this consideration:

The civil magistrate either respecteth that religion and worship which his conscience is persuaded is true, and upon which he ventures his soul; or else that and those which he is persuaded are false.

Concerning the first, if that which the magistrate believeth to be true, be true, I say he owes a threefold duty unto it:

First, approbation and countenance, a reverent esteem and honorable testimony, according to Isa. 49, and Revel. 21, with a tender respect of truth, and the professors of it.

Secondly, personal submission of his own soul to the power of the Lord Jesus in that spiritual government and kingdom, according to Matt. 18 and 1 Cor. 5.

Thirdly, protection of such true professors of Christ, whether apart, or met together, as also of their estates from violence and injury, according to Rom. 13.

Now, secondly, if it be a false religion (unto which the civil magistrate dare not adjoin, yet) he owes:

First, permission (for approbation he owes not what is evil) and this according to Matthew 13. 30 for public peace and quiet's sake.

Secondly, he owes protection to the persons of his subjects (though of a false worship), that no injury be offered either to the persons or goods of any....

...The God of Peace, the God of Truth will shortly seal this truth, and confirm this witness, and make it evident to the whole world, that the doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience, is most evidently and lamentably contrary to the doctrine of Christ Jesus the Prince of Peace. Amen.

1. Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution ... ("Publications of the Narragansett Club" [Providence, R.I.], Vol. III [1867]), pp. 3-4, 63, 58-59, 138-39, 148, 170-71, 201, 247-50, 372-73, 424-25.

2. See Gen. 10:8-9

3. Old forms for "homogeneous" and "heterogeneous."

4. Johann Brenz (1499-1570), German Lutheran theologian.

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