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| John Cotton |
Williams’s theological and scriptural arguments for liberty
of conscience are most evident in his ongoing debate with John Cotton, the
eminent Puritan minister in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. When one of Cotton’s
letters to Williams was published without authorization while Williams was in
London, Williams published a line-by-line refutation of that letter: Mr. Cotton’s Letter Lately Printed, Examined
and Answered. When Cotton angrily wrote in reply, Williams then more fully
responded in The Bloudy [Bloody] Tenent
of Persecution for Cause of Conscience. Cotton responded with his The Bloudy Tenent, Washed and made white in
the Bloud of the Lambe (1647), to which Williams responded with his The Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloudy
(1652).
The parable of the Wheat and Tares plays a major role in
their debates, because Williams believes this parable is central to Jesus’
advocacy of religious liberty. He also argues that it had been tragically
misinterpreted over the centuries to justify the persecution of those believed
to be heretics (Byrd 2002: 88), a misapplication which resulted in the
“spilling of the blood of thousands” (Williams 2001: 55).
Cotton argues that the field in the parable symbolizes the
church. The wheat designates faithful Christians, the servants represent God’s
ministers, and the tares, since they look so much like wheat, symbolize
hypocrites within the church. Therefore, those tares should not be “rooted
out”; Jesus commands toleration, since just as tares look similar to wheat so
do these people look similar to faithful Christians. On the other hand, sinners
and heretics are stubborn, prideful people who, even though they know better,
rebel on purpose. They are easily discerned from Christians; Cotton compares
them to “briars and thorns.” If these sinners are warned, given opportunities
to repent, and still refuse to change their ways, they should be punished,
either by the church by censure or excommunication or, if they corrupt others,
then by the “Civil Sword” of the state (Byrd 2002: 106). Otherwise, these
sinners would expose others in society to “a dangerous and damnable infection”
(Williams 2001: xxxi).
Williams responds that any such persecution is a perversion
of the teachings of Jesus. Jesus clearly says that the field represents the world
(Matt. 13:38), not the church, and the tares symbolize all sorts of dissenters,
separatists, heretics, and even non-believers in society, not Cotton’s
hypocritical sinners within the church. The wheat
plants are “children of the kingdom” who must co-exist in society with the
followers of Satan until the end of the world. The servants denote messengers or ministers of the church, and the
crucial point is that Jesus’s parable commands Christians to advocate religious
liberty and oppose any coercive policies of the state concerning religion, even
when it concerns “heretics and pagans” (Byrd 2002: 117). Jesus warns against
civil persecution of those deemed as heretics, because it is impossible in this
fallen world always to distinguish between God’s people and those opposed to
God. The “weeds” will be collected when Jesus returns, and then they will
receive the punishment they deserve at the hands of God, not by human beings.
Like Jesus commands, it is better to allow the wheat and tares to coexist in
the world until he returns than to risk the damage that uprooting the sinful
ones would do.
The analysis of this dialogue/debate will be continued in the next post.
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