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ON WHY ROGER WILLIAMS LEFT THE BAPTIST CHURCH

To the twenty-first century thinker with a vast array of knowledge almost instantly available, it is hard to conceive of the mental struggles of the man of the sixteen hundreds. The conscience of the seventeenth century man of religion ran deep. A man would struggle for years seeking the truth with what was to him a deep, theological question. Although the tenants of the Baptist faith and baptism by immersion had been practiced since the time of Christ by a few, to Williams and his contemporaries this way was new.  Such was the question of the proper administration of baptism by immersion and the ordination of ministers. Many believers in England crossed to Holland for the sole purpose of being baptized by a baptized minister. 

Roger Williams, as chosen minister of the about-to-be formed fist Baptist church of Providence, pondered the problem of proper administration of baptism. There were no previously baptized ministers in the colonies to baptize him and the others. Sometime in March of 1639, he solved this problem by allowing Ezekiel Holliman, a companion exile from Salem, to first baptize him. Then Williams in turn as a baptized minister baptized the others including Holliman and John Greene.

Williams agonized over this decision for years to come. He never fully answered this question. When the church experienced a decline a few years hence, Williams reasoned that possible the cause was God’s proper succession had be broken by his own baptism by an un-baptized man.  Being a man of principle, he resigned. His subsequent writings show even though separated from the organized church he retained his Baptist views through out his life time “on every question save that of the proper administration of Baptism and its kindred ordination. In all other views he was a loyal Baptist unto his death.” (Strickland p 61)

QUOTE OF WILLIAMS ON HIS EXPULSION FROM SALEM
From a letter to Major Mason dater 35 years later:
“First, when I was unkindly and unchristianly, as I believe, driven from my house and land, and wife and children (in the midst of a New England winter, now about thirty-five yeas past), at Salem, that ever honored Governor, Mr. Winthrop, privately wrote me to steer my course to Narragansett Bay and the Indians, for many high and public ends, encouraging me from the freeness of the place from and English claims or patents. I took his prudent notion as a hint and voice from God, and waving all other thoughts and notions, I steered my course from Salem (though in winter snow, which I feel yet) unto those parts where in I may say “Peniel”; that is, I have seen the face of God.” (Strickland p29)
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