Excerpt from Roger Williams: The Pioneer of Religious Liberty In 1834 Professor James D. Knowles pub lished a memoir Of Roger Williams, which, though encumbered with documents, was a valuable contribution toward a more cor rect estimate of the character and work Of this great reformer. This, in 1846, was fol lowed by a shorter life written by Professor William Gammell of Brown University; and in 1852 Rev. Dr. Romeo Elton published a life containing some additional data de rived from the Sadleir correspondence. All of these biographies are long out of print. Since these were written some valuable ad ditional material has been discovered. I have freely consulted this, as well as every reliable source of information, especially the records and the works Of Roger Williams himself. Wherever possible I have let him speak through his own writings, as best cal culated to illustrate his motives and personal characteristics. He was the pioneer Of Re ligious Liberty. His whole life throbbed with that principle, upon which as a basis he was the first to establish a political com munity. The influence Of his lively experi ment I will not attempt to measure. He was the apostle Of the American system Of a free Church in a free State. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.