The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed and Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and Answered, by Roger Williams CHAP. VII. CHAP. VII. Mr. Cotton. “And to speak freely what I think, were my soul in your soul’s stead, I should think it a work of mercy of God to banish me from the civil society of such a commonweal, where I could not enjoy holy fellowship with any church of God amongst them without sin. What should the daughter of Sion do in Babel, why should she not hasten to flee from thence?” Answer. Love bids me hope, that Mr. Cotton here intended me a cordial to revive me in my sorrows:[240] yet, if the ingredients be examined, there will appear no less than dishonour to the name of God, danger to every civil state, a miserable comfort to myself, and contradiction within itself. A land cannot be Babel, yet a church of Christ. For the last first. If he call the land Babel, mystically, which he must needs do or else speak not to the point, how can it be Babel, and yet the church of Christ also? Famous civil states where yet no sound of Jesus Christ. Secondly, it is a dangerous doctrine to affirm it a misery to live in that state, where a Christian cannot enjoy the fellowship of the public churches of God without sin. Do we not know many famous states wherein is known no church of Jesus Christ? Did not God command his people to pray for the peace of the material city of Babel, Jer. xxix. [7,] and to seek the peace of it, though no church of God in Babel, in the form and order of it? Or did Sodom, Egypt, Babel, signify material Sodom, Egypt, Babel? Rev. xi. 8, and xviii. 2. A true church of Jesus Christ in material Babylon. There was a true church of Jesus Christ in material Babel, 1 Pet. v. 13. Was it then a mercy for all the inhabitants of Babel to have been banished, whom the church of Jesus Christ durst not to have received to holy fellowship? Or was it a mercy for any person to have been banished the city, and driven to the miseries of a barbarous wilderness, him and his, if some bar had lain upon his conscience that he could not have enjoyed fellowship with the true church of Christ? The mercy of a civil state distinct from mercies of a spiritual nature. Thirdly, for myself, I acknowledge it a blessed gift of God to be enabled to suffer, and so to be banished for his name’s sake: and yet I doubt not to affirm, that Mr. Cotton himself would have counted it a mercy if he might have practised in Old England what now he doth in New, with the enjoyment of the civil peace, safety, and protection of the state.[241] Old and New England, for the countries and civil government incomparable. Or should he dissent from the New English churches, and join in worship with some other, as some few years since he was upon the point to do in a separation from the churches there as legal,[242] would he count it a mercy to be plucked up by the roots, him and his, and to endure the losses, distractions, miseries that do attend such a condition? The truth is, both the mother and the daughter, Old and New England—for the countries and governments are lands and governments incomparable: and might it please God to persuade the mother to permit the inhabitants of New England, her daughter, to enjoy their conscience to God, after a particular congregational way, and to persuade the daughter to permit the inhabitants of the mother, Old England, to walk there after their conscience of a parishional way (which yet neither mother nor daughter is persuaded to permit), I conceive Mr. Cotton himself, were he seated in Old England again, would not count it a mercy to be banished from the civil state. Mr. Cotton not having felt the miseries of others can be no equal judge of them. And therefore, lastly, as he casts dishonour upon the name of God, to make Him the author of such cruel mercy, so had his soul been in my soul’s case, exposed to the miseries, poverties, necessities, wants, debts, hardships of sea and land, in a banished condition, he would, I presume, reach forth a more merciful cordial to the afflicted. But he that is despised and afflicted, is like a lamp despised in the eyes of him that is at ease, Job xii. 5.