"[Roger Williams] did indeed think that the Lord had forsaken New England for failing to separate her churches wholly from the filthiness of English corruption. And to [John] Winthrop he offered the very advice that Winthrop could least willingly listen to. Where Winthrop had urged him to pause and consider whether everyone was wrong but him, he replied with an invitation to join him in splendid isolation: 'Abstract yourself,' he urged, 'with a holy violence from the Dung heape of this Earth.' Williams would not learn the lesson which Winthrop had taught himself so painfully before he left England, that there was no escape from the dung heap of this earth; and that those who sought one or thought they had found it acted with an unholy, not a holy, violence."
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| Roger Williams (From: Wikimedia) |
Morgan explains a series of stages Williams passed through to purify himself by associating only with other righteous people. The final stage was Williams' conclusion that "he could not conscientiously have communion with anyone but his wife... He had effectively demonstrated the proposition to himself as he withdrew successively from the Church of England, from the churches of Massachusetts, and finally from everyone but his wife. What he saw at last was what Winthrop had tried to point out to him, that he was seeking an unattainable goal, that there was no escape from the dung heap of this earth."
After reaching this conclusion, Williams progressed to a radically new position of extreme tolerance. Or, as Morgan tells us, "since he could not escape the dung heap, he would embrace it."
Why did I share this with you? Because I am fascinated by the metaphor of this world as a heap of dung. No other reason (besides the fact that I enjoy early New England history)!
--quotes are taken from Edmund Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop, pp. 120-131
