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 WilliamsI do not condone hostility toward any church simply to vent personal malice or umbrage.
Roger WilliamsThe Christian church [in its true identity] does not persecute; any more than a lily scratches the thorns, or a lamb pursues and tears the wolves, or a turtledove hunts the hawks and eagles, or a chaste and modest virgin fights and scratches like whores and harlots.
Roger WilliamsEven if the civil magistrate is so gifted as to prophesy in the church, yet in the sphere of his civil duties he is forbidden to call down fire from heaven, that is, to procure or inflict any corporal punishment upon offenders in religious doctrine or practice, remembering Christ's admonition that He came not to destroy men's lives, but to save them.
Roger Williams