There was,
nevertheless, a gravity and a certain staidness of deportment which I
could but ill conform unto, and I was not sorry when they took leave.
My Uncle Rawson need not fear my joining with them; for, although I do
judge them to be a worthy and pious people, I like not their manner of
worship, and their great gravity and soberness do little accord with my
natural temper and spirits.
May 16.
This place is in what is called the Narragansett country, and about
twenty miles from Mr. Williams's town of Providence, a place of no small
note. Mr. Williams, who is now an aged man, more than fourscore, was
the founder of the Province, and is held in great esteem by the people,
who be of all sects and persuasions, as the Government doth not molest
any in worshipping according to conscience; and hence you will see in
the same neighborhood Anabaptists, Quakers, New Lights, Brownists,
Antinomians, and Socinians,--nay, I am told there be Papists also. Mr.
Williams is a Baptist, and holdeth mainly with Calvin and Beza, as
respects the decrees, and hath been a bitter reviler of the Quakers,
although he hath ofttimes sheltered them from the rigor of the
Massachusetts Bay magistrates, who he saith have no warrant to deal in
matters of conscience and religion, as they have done.
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