Latest Roger Williams Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• How frequent, how constant ought we to be, like Christ Jesus our example, in doing good, especially to the souls of men and especially to the household of faith (yea, even to our enemies), when we remember that this is our seed time, of which every minute is precious, and that as our sowing is, so shall be our eternal harvest.

  Roger Williams

  Jesus, Men, Soul

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• In my plea for freedom to all consciences in matters merely of worship, I have impartially pleaded for freedom of the consciences of the Papists themselves, the greatest enemies and persecutors in Europe of the saints and truths of Jesus; yet I have pleaded for no more than is their due and right. Whatever else shall be the consequence of this plea, it shall stand for a monument and testimony against them and be an aggravation of their former, present, and future cruelties against Christ Jesus the Head, and all that uprightly love Him, His true disciples and followers.

  Roger Williams

  Jesus, Europe, Aggravation

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• Whatever tumults and strifes await God's witnesses, it remains clear that the doctrine of persecution for the sake of conscience is most evidently and lamentably contrary to the doctrine of Christ Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

  Roger Williams

  Jesus, Doctrine, Prince Of Peace

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• When He send, His messengers will go, His prophets will prophesy, though all the world should forbid them.

  Roger Williams

  World, Messengers, Prophet

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• I do not condone hostility toward any church simply to vent personal malice or umbrage.

  Roger Williams

  Church, Malice, Hostility

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• The ministry or service of prophets and witnesses, mourning and prophesying in sackcloth, God has directly commissioned and upheld all during the reign of the beast and antichrist of Rome. This witness is probably near finished, and the bloody storm of slaughter is yet to be expected and prepared for.

  Roger Williams

  Rome, Mourning, Storm

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• All who are entrusted with spiritual and temporal talents must lay them out for the Lord and Master's advantage.

  Roger Williams

  Spiritual, Talent, Lord

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• It is but little of the world yet that hath heard the lost estate of mankind and of a Savior, Christ Jesus; and as yet the fullness of the gentiles has not come, and probably shall not until the downfall of the Papacy.

  Roger Williams

  Jesus, Littles, World

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• A false worship will not hurt the civil state if the worshipper breaks no civil law.

  Roger Williams

  Hurt, Law, Worship

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• It is less hurtful to compel a man to marry someone whom he does not love than to follow a religion in which he does not believe.

  Roger Williams

  Believe, Men, Hurtful

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• A false religion out of the church will not hurt the church, any more than weeds in the wilderness hurt an enclosed garden, or poisons hurt the body when they are not taken, and antidotes are received against them.

  Roger Williams

  Weed, Hurt, Taken

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• My aim is to lay bare and proclaim the crying and horrible guilt of the bloody doctrine of persecution as one of the most seditious, destructive, blasphemous, and bloodiest in any or all the nations of the world, notwithstanding the many fine veils, pretenses, and colors of not persecuting Christ Jesus, but heretics; not God's truth or servants, but blasphemers and seducers; not persecuting men for their conscience, but for sinning against their conscience; and like specious reasonings to justify the cruelty of intolerance.

  Roger Williams

  Jesus, Men, Color

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• Pray that no sleep may seize upon your eyes, nor slumber upon your eyelids until your thoughts have seriously, calmly, and unchangably fixed.

  Roger Williams

  Sleep, Eye, Slumber

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• 'Tis but worldly policy and compliance with men and times (God's mercy overruling) that holds your hands from the murdering of thousands and ten thousands, were your power and command as great as the bloody Roman emperors' formerly was.

  Roger Williams

  Men, Hands, Mercy

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• Reflect upon your own spirit, and believe Him that said it to His overzealous disciples, 'You know not what spirit you are of.'

  Roger Williams

  Believe, Spirit, Said

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• Is 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

  Jesus, Hunting, Blood

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• There is a moral virtue, a moral fidelity, ability and honesty, which other men, besides church members, are, by good nature and education, by good laws and good examples nourished and trained up in; so that civil places and trust and credit need not be monopolized into the hands of church members (who sometimes are not fitted for public office), while all others are deprived and despoiled of their natural and civil rights and liberties.

  Roger Williams

  Honesty, Men, Hands

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• If any refuse to obey the common laws and orders of the ship concerning their common peace or preservation; if any shall mutiny or rise up against their commanders and officers; if any should preach or write that there should be no commanders or officers because all are equal in Christ, therefore no master or officers, no laws nor orders, nor corrections nor punishments - I say I never denied that in such cases, the commander may judge, resist, compel, and punish such transgressors according to their deserts and merits.

  Roger Williams

  Writing, Order, Law

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• There 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 Williams

  Prayer, Sea, Practice

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• Even 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

  Religious, Men, Fire

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• While I deplored and denounced the incivilities of Quakerism in my day (such as the going naked in public by some at sundry times), my position regarding their religious views was, "They will answer to God, at their own peril, in the great day approaching [that is, the day of divine judgment]."

  Roger Williams

  Religious, Views, Great Day

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• If 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 Williams

  Christian, Sweet, Jesus

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• This scripture [Romans 13:1-6] is wrested from the scope of God's Spirit, and the nature of the place, and cannot truly be interpreted to mean that the power of the civil magistrate may be exercised in spiritual or soul matters.

  Roger Williams

  Spiritual, Mean, Soul

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• Some eminent witnesses of God's truth believe that before the downfall of Antichrist [which virtually all Reformers construed to be Romanism], England must once again bow down her fair neck to his proud usurping yoke and foot.

  Roger Williams

  Believe, Feet, Bows

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

• The magistrates of whom Paul wrote were natural, ungodly, persecuting, and yet lawful magistrates, to be obeyed in all lawful civil things.

  Roger Williams

  Natural, Magistrates

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org