All men of conscience or prudence ply to windward, to maintain their wars to be defensive.
Roger WilliamsConsider England. Within a few score years how many unsettling changes in religion has the whole kingdom made, according to the change of its rulers, in the various religions which they embraced.
Roger WilliamsIf the civil magistrate be a Christian, a disciple or follower of the meek Lamb of God, he is bound to be far from destroying the bodies of men for refusing to receive the Lord Jesus Christ: for otherwise he would be ignorant of the sweet end of Christ's coming, which was to save the bodies and souls of men.
Roger WilliamsThere goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out sometimes that Papists, Protestants, Jews, and Turks may be embarked in one ship; upon which supposal I affirm that all the liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for turns upon these two hinges: that none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks be forced to come to the ships prayers or worship, nor be compelled [restrained] from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.
Roger WilliamsIs it possible that since I hunt, I may be hunting for the life of my Savior and the blood of the Lamb of God? I have fought against many differing sorts of conscience. Is it beyond all possibility and hazard that I have not fought against God, and that I have not persecuted Jesus in some of them?
Roger Williams