but it gave great offence to the government of Boston, and he was summoned before the general court, to answer to Governor Winthrop for having promulgated such notions.  He did not, however, attempt to defend them, but good-humoredly declared that they were privately addressed to Bradford, who, with tin chief men of Plymouth, agreed with him in all the material points of his essay, and he offend to burn it if it had given offence at Boston.  The subject was then dropped, and Williams returned to Plymouth, where he continued to reside for a considerable time.

During that period, he not only gained many friends among the inhabitants, but he also, by a constant intercourse with the Wampanoges and other neighboring tribes, obtained a considerable knowledge of their language and manners, and secured their veneration and love.  This, as we shall have occasion to observe, proved afterwards of the greatest advantage to him.

But his own restless spirit was not satisfied with quietly discharging the duties of his office, and enjoying the society of his own countrymen and their Indian allies.  Again he drew upon himself the wrath of the Boston Church, by openly stating his conviction that no civil government had a right to punish any individual for a breach of the Sabbath, or for any offence against either of the four commandments, or the first table.  He maintained that these points should be left to the conscience alone; or, in the case of those who had agreed to a church covenant, to the authorities of the church.  The civil magistrates he considered as only empowered to punish such violations of the law as interfered with the public peace.  This unheard-of heresy against the principles by which the Bostoners were governed, was received with amazement and indignation:  and, although they could not take any immediate measures to testify their displeasure, and to punish the offender, yet he thenceforth became the object of hatred and suspicion to the rulers, and they only waited for a fitting opportunity of openly manifesting it.

Williams was aware of the feeling entertained towards him by the government of Massachusetts, but he was not thereby deterred from expressing his opinions in New Plymouth; and so great was his attachment to the people of Salem, who had first afforded him a home, that he would again have ventured thither, had he not been detained by his new friends.  They were both numerous and sincere:  and, among them, none were more attached to him than the Maitland family, who agreed with him in most of his religious and political opinions, and valued his society on account of his unaffected piety, and the various powers and accomplishments of his mind.  Possibly, it was the attraction that Roger Williams found in this family that caused him so long to turn a deaf ear to the repeated solicitations of his old friends at Salem, that he would again take up his abode among them.  Certainly, it was not fear of the rulers of Boston that kept his undaunted spirit in a district over which they had no authority; neither was it altogether the harmony that subsisted between his views and those of the hospitable Plymouthers.  On many points they agreed, but not on all; and those who differed from him feared that his continued residence among them might excite a party spirit, and mar that peace which had hitherto reigned in their community.