Roger Williams

As one of the first volumes in the "Makers of the American Tradition Series," Roger Williams by Perry Miller may decide the success of what its editors call "a new and fresh approach" to the great figures of the American past. The format for the series is neither strictly biographical nor completely anthropological, instead it presents the speeches and writings of its subject with critical interpretation and explanation by the author. Therefore the author has a double task; to glean only the most significant of a man's published thoughts, and to reveal enough of his physical life to give his words coherence.

Because the great bulk of Roger Williams' thoughts were both written and printed in a haphazard fashion, American Literature Professor Perry Miller did necessary and extensive editing to make the tracts readable. He has done so in an expert and conscientious way, clarifying considerably the flowery intricacies of Williams' prose.

Miller also faces a good deal of popular misconception about Williams, "the prophet of religious liberty," and strives to answer and correct it. He ardently denies that the scope of his thought was "social rather than theological," and asserts that Williams came to his final ideas solely because he was originally a Separatist. From that position, and through a peculiar method of Bible interpretation called typology, he came ultimately to the separation of church and state, and to freedom from enforced religion within the church.

Explaining Williams' typological stand, Miller says, "He belonged to that rare and furtive brotherhood who, here and there throughout the centuries, have taken the New Testament to mean not a continuation but a repudiation of the Old." Because Williams' powerful opponents had modeled the Massachusetts Bay Colony after the fire and thunder kingdoms of the Old Testament, and considered it a social crime to differ with the Massachusetts' Congregational dogma, the implications of Williams' opinions were treasonous and heretical. According to him, the kingdoms of Saul and David were nothing but anachronisms.

Professor Miller devotes fully half of his volume to excerpts from Williams' writings, and this is my one criticism. Although the prose has been modernized, there is tremendous amount of refugee, verbose metaphor and heaped-up simile. I think in many instances, Miller's excellent paraphrasing and meticulous explanation evident elsewhere in the book could replace these passages. Williams was not an especially lucid writer, and if the series is to achieve its goal of appealing to "every literate American of whatever age and description," the way does not lie in copious quotations from the subject but impartial and scholarly interpretation by the author.