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few words of encouragement and exhortation from this portion of the 34th Psalm: ‘The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.’
When the meeting was over, some of the ancient women came and spake kindly to me, inviting me to their houses.
In the evening certain of these people came to my brother's, and were kind and loving towards me. There was, nevertheless, a gravity and a certain staidness of deportment which I could but ill conform unto, and I was not sorry when they took leave.
My Uncle Rawson need not fear my joining with them; for, although I do judge them to be a worthy and pious people, I like not their manner of worship, and their great gravity and soberness do little accord with my natural temper and spirits.
May 16.
This place is in what is called the Narragansett country, and about twenty miles from Mr. Williams's town of Providence, a place of no small note.
Mr. Williams, who is now an aged man, more than fourscore, was the founder of the Province, and is held in great esteem by the people, who be of all sects and persuasions, as the Government doth not molest any in worshipping according to conscience; and hence you will see in the same neighborhood Anabaptists, Quakers, New Lights, Brownists, Antinomians, and Socinians,—nay, I am told there be Papists also.
Mr. Williams is a Baptist, and holdeth mainly with Calvin and Beza, as respects the decrees, and hath been a bitter 