Lewis G. Janes

“ CONCLUSION In conclusion, what shall we say were the peculiar and distinctive contributions of Samuell Gorton to the Commonwealth which he helped to found, and the life of our later day? I answer, first, to him more than to any other we are indebted for the recognition and establishment of the principle that English law and the rights of English citizenship are coextensive with English supremacy; and that to secure these rights in the Colonies, together with the privileges of local administration, a charter from the Home Government was necessary. ”

“ I walked up the hill-side back of the house which now occupies the site of the old Gorton homestead, to the little family graveyard where tradition says that Samuell Gorton was laid to rest with the patent of the Town of Warwick which he 114obtained in England,—a nobler decoration than a royal order—upon his breast. No monumental stone—not even a green mound or an over-arching tree—now marks the sacred bit of earth where his body long since turned to dust. ”

“ The substance of his teaching is that righteousness is life eternal; sin is eternal death. This is no arbitrary penalty inflicted at the close of man’s earthly career, or on some future day of judgment; it is the intrinsic and natural result of evil action. The popular distinction between a man and his actions is delusive and unreal. He could not hate the sin and love the sinner. The actions are the man. If the actions are predominantly evil there is nothing left to save. The divine work of regeneration is at one and the same time the salvation of the good and the destruction of the evil. ”

“ Connecticut, an offshoot from Massachusetts Puritanism, under the leadership of Hooker reversed the Massachusetts theory that citizenship should be conditioned on church membership, and absorbed the theocratic Colony of New Haven. Rhode Island gained, in numbers and in internal cohesion, and Massachusetts lost, with every attack which she made on heresy. The idea that intolerance and persecution were necessary to insure the survival of the community—to prevent its disintegration—broached by apologetic writers, is therefore disproven by the palpable facts of history. ”

“ The character of the writing makes it exceedingly trying to the eyes. The orthography, though in some respects archaic, is more regular and consistent than in most American documents of our Revolutionary era. I have examined many papers of contemporary and more recent dates, but with the exception of those left by his eldest son, Capt. Samuell Gorton, who was evidently instructed by his father, and whose hand-writing resembles his so closely as to be distinguishable from it with difficulty, I have never seen any so clear, systematic, and scholarly in appearance. ”

“ In philosophy, Samuell Gorton was an 102original thinker rather than a student of past systems. In theology, he was far in advance of the prevailing thought of his time. Only a few of the minor sects of our own day have yet approximated to his views as to the equal position of woman in the pulpit and the church; only an occasional strong and independent mind has reached his conception of religion as a birthright of the individual soul, to which belongs the unalienable privilege of investigation and interpretation, free from priestly mediation and sectarian bias. ”

“ E. L. FREEMAN & SONS, PROVIDENCE, R. I.
PREFACE It has been the misfortune of Rhode Island to have had its earlier history written and read under the bias of prejudices engendered by the controversies which led to its settlement. Justice has not yet been done to the prescience and statesmanship of the remarkable men who were the builders of the first Commonwealth in the world’s history dedicated to Soul Liberty.
Among these men, none were possessed of a personality more striking and picturesque than the subject of this paper, Samuell Gorton. ”

“ When the reader has searched diligently beneath the quaint and involved phraseology, bristling with scriptural references and illustrations, and come into sympathetic contact with the living thought of the writer, the surprising thing which is discovered is the remarkable modernness of many of Samuell Gorton’s ideas. ”

“ The busy Pawtuxet and its tributary streams, partly excused from the drudgery of mill-turning by the more potent substitutes of the later day, are pumped away to quench the thirst of the distant city whose contentions a quarter of a millenium ago drove Samuell Gorton [1] and 9his colleagues to seek their homes in the Shawomet wilderness, there to become the founders of a State. ”

“ Though in the highest degree Christocentric, Samuell Gorton’s theology was not in harmony with the prevailing Trinitarianism of his day. The doctrine “received from the schoole men of the church of Roome, that hold and teach a trinitie of persons in one simple and divine essence, without having respect for the humane nature of Christ,” he characterizes as “a most dangerous and pernicious doctrine.” It is, he says, “most derogatory to the glory of the son; for in that time he is deprived of the glory of a saviour; for without man’s nature hee is not Jesus; hee is no saviour but in man ”

“ Early Rhode Island Houses gives a clear and accurate account of the early buildings and methods of construction, showing the historical development of architecture among the Rhode Island colonists, the striking individuality in the work of the colony and the wide difference between the buildings here and the contemporary dwelling in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Those interested in colonial life may here look into the early homes of Rhode Island with their cavernous fireplaces and enormous beams. ”

“ While he agreed with the Friends as to outward ordinances, Samuell Gorton strongly contested some of their other teachings, especially the doctrine of the “inner light,” which he saw might be 94interpreted as a particular revelation of infallible truth to the individual. [72] Such an assumption, he claimed, is mischievous and erroneous. All revelations must appeal for examination, recognition and interpretation to the natural human reason, which is a common possession of all men. Mr. Gorton combined with a remarkably equable balance, the methods of the mystic and the rationalist. ”

“ In his own day he held, simply, that no Englishman expatriated himself by becoming a colonist in the possessions of the Mother Country; that he did not by emigration to America forfeit the rights of an Englishman, or the protection guaranteed by the long line of statutes, decisions and precedents, beginning with Magna Charta, which had become the heritage of Englishmen everywhere.
Samuell Gorton held that as subjects of Great Britain the Colonial governments should conform in their legislation and judicial action to the principles of 77English common and statute law. ”

“ With Channing, Samuell Gorton also taught the essential divinity of human nature—the equal nearness of the divine spirit to the sinner and to the saint. He recognizes a divine spark in every human soul, and to this he made his appeal. [75] He also, however, accepted 97the eternal antagonism of good and evil as an unquestionable fact both in scriptural teaching and in human experience. The tendency of the one is to eternal life ”

“ A majority of the community desired a more democratic form of government; and Coddington, the judge (afterwards Governor of the united Colony) , with the elders, and a few other free-holders, emigrated to the southern end of the island, where they founded the town of Newport. [20] The remaining free-holders, 31including Samuell Gorton, thus forsaken by their magistrates, instituted a new town government, and changed the name of the settlement to Portsmouth. ”

“ The naturall temporary or tipicall goodnesse of any creature is uselesse unlesse it bee communicated with another; God never made any creature in heaven or in earth simply for it selfe, but for the use of another; how infinitely more is this true of God, who hath made him selfe in Christ to bee the goodnesse of the world.”
Heaven, Samuell Gorton taught, is not 101to be sought in a future life or in some distant part of the universe. The soul is even now in eternity. Heaven is a condition of the soul. ”

“ The latter turns his most powerful batteries upon Paul’s doctrine of “justification by faith,” while Gorton stands with Luther in its defence.
The “law of works” by which Gorton says no man is justified, he rightly interprets as the conception of salvation through ceremonial observances; not merely the ritual of Pharisaic Judaism denounced by the Master, but the ritual and ordinances as well of his own day and generation. Here he stands with the Friends, as he also did in his opposition 91to a “hireling ministry.” Worship, he taught, is natural to man. ”

“ Winthrop had secured possession of Prudence Island in Narragansett Bay by purchasing the half originally owned by Roger Williams, [43] and now with a marvellous inconsistency, held the whole by a title derived solely from Miantonomi, the chief sachem of the Narragansetts. If he could maintain his denial of the rights of Gorton to the Shawomet lands claimed by even a stronger title, he 51would succeed in his efforts to divide the Narragansett settlements and establish the claims of Massachusetts. ”

“ Cook, the commander of their captors, was a good captain, replied, “I can not tell; but the Indians regard those as good captains when a few stand out against many.”
Their chief grievance during imprisonment seems to have been that they were compelled to attend the Sunday services 47in the churches, and be “preached at” by the Puritan ministers. “They brought us forth unto their congregations to hear their ministers,” says Gorton, with a grim humor, illuminated by some knowledge of natural history, “which was meat to be digested, but only by the hearte or stomacke of an ostrich.” ”

“ He was especially active in assuring the protection of the Colony for the persecuted Quakers. [56] He sent them messages of sympathy when they were in prison in Massachusetts, and was authorized by the General Assembly to reply to the epistles of the Massachusetts authorities protesting against their finding an asylum in Rhode Island. When Massachusetts appealed to England, Samuell Gorton was designated to prepare a letter on behalf of the Rhode Island Government to John Clarke, the representative 67of the Colony in the Mother Country, to be presented to the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. ”

“ Samuell Gorton, was at the same time chosen Town Treasurer. On the 20th of July the father signed a deed of lands owned by him in the Narragansett Country to his sons, his six daughters and their husbands also being remembered in the disposition of this property; and on the 27th of November of the same year, by another deed, he divided his entire remaining estate among his three sons, Samuell, John and Benjamin. ”

“ The descendants of Samuell Gorton are also widely distributed in other portions of the country. In the independence of mind and literary ability which they have often illustrated, the believer in heredity will recognize the out-cropping of the same sterling qualities which characterized the first of their honored name who made his home in the new world.
The house which Samuell Gorton 113erected and where he spent his later years was a land-mark in Old Warwick until within the last half century. ”

“ During the following year, he was Moderator or Speaker of the General Assembly, and he several times subsequently served as General Assistant. He was also active in the affairs of the Town of Warwick, being for many years a member of the Town Council, and holding other positions of honor and responsibility. “After the venerable founder of Providence,” 66says his biographer, [55] “no man was more instrumental in establishing the foundations of equal civil rights and ‘soul liberty’ in Rhode Island than Samuell Gorton.” ”

“ Gorton and his companions were summoned to Boston to make answer to Pomham’s claim. [31] Denying the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, in a spicy correspondence, Gorton refused to obey the summons. Increase Nowell, Secretary of the Colony, and the Boston Elders, discovered no less than twenty-six instances of blasphemy, “or thereabouts,” in the terms of Gorton’s epistle. The Gortonists were warned that if they continued contumacious they would be regarded as “fitted for the slaughter,” [32] 40and would be peremptorily dealt with by force of arms. ”

“ A year later, [21] the two settlements were united under one government for the transaction of affairs of common interest, and the influence of Coddington and the Newport magistrates became potent throughout the island. Gorton and his friends regarded this coalition as irregular and illegally constituted. It seems never to have been sanctioned by a majority of the free-holders. He appears to have declined to admit allegiance to it, and to have permitted his citizenship to lapse, though still retaining his residence. ”

“ All men are naturally moved to prayer; all men, therefore, may rightfully exhort and interpret. To the conventional interpretations of churches, universities and schools, he preferred “the universitie of humane reason, and reading of the great volume of visible creation.” Mr. Gorton defined prayer as “nothing else but the true breath and spirit of the eternall word, according to God’s intent taken and rained into the soule, concocted and digested in the cauldron of man’s necessities, 92breathing out it selfe unto the fountaine and originall of all suply.” ”

“ Gorton and his friends purchased land and commenced a settlement at Popaquinepaug, or Pawtuxet, within the jurisdiction of Providence; but certain 36of his enemies who owned adjoining property determined to prevent his peaceful occupancy. William Arnold and a few others, to insure his expulsion, gave in their allegiance to Massachusetts, and called on the government of that Colony to remove the intruders. ”