A colonial Minister, Roger Williams wrote:
"It is the will and command of God, that...a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish (Islam), or Antichristian consciences and worships, be granted to all men, in all nations...," he wrote in The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience (1644).
Most of those writing in support of religious freedom had similar remarks.
Thomas Paine 'Age of Reason':"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church."
Thomas Paine may have been the strongest influence on the Religious Freedom movement in America. |
